DGM, "Phoenix Generous"
Christmas is a trying time for Allen, but Lavi doesn't plan to give Allen anything ordinary. He has to give Allen something thoughtful. Something unique. Something -- irreplaceable.
Warnings: Slightly saladfic'd. Lavi is stubborn and also creative. Completely unfounded extrapolations of canon. Part of the Phoenix chronology, but not directly following Sparking.
Contains Lavi/Allen. For the Lavi/Allen prompt "Late".
.phoenix generous.
"Have you thought about what you're going to get everyone for Christmas?" Allen asked him, some envy in his tone.
Lavi paused, looking up from his newspaper. He'd forgotten -- not about Christmas, but rather that finally, for the first time in four years, being part of humanity at large once again, he'd be expected to get others things for Christmas.
The old man had told him: No one really expects much from a Bookman, but if you give them nothing at all, they'll mutter behind your back and it will make you stand out all the more. He had made it his practice (and Lavi had made it his) to always offer his hosts and companions little things, candy canes and pretty ornaments, when the holiday rolled around.
But real, thoughtful gifts, things that the others would want and appreciate...
"Man, they still aren't letting you get them Christmas presents?" he returned the question instead.
Allen sighed, obligingly distracted. "Now everyone's doing it," he said, dropping onto his back on the bed. "Even -- even Jerry."
"Jerry, turning down a gift from the love of his life? That is serious."
Allen gave him a dirty look, which he pointedly ignored, returning to quickly scanning pages. Lavi was on his eighteenth newspaper of the morning and Allen was still lounging in his bed, naked as sin and just as tempting, the really striking unbalanced beauty of him presented in lean white muscle and black leather skin and half-hidden by the blanket slung over his hips. If Lavi stopped his reading to do half of the things he'd really like to do to the younger man, it would be the next morning and his stack of papers would double.
Allen murmured thoughtfully, "Maybe we could say they're from both of us."
Lavi said, dry, "Then they'll give back my presents too. And don't even ask if I'll let you help me pick them out. They can smell if you've had a hand in it."
Allen's first Christmas with the Order had been the last one before Lenalee mounted her offense. It was outrageous, she thought, that Allen should be expected to give other people gifts on the day he celebrated as his birthday; she went around and wheedled virtually everyone into turning away all his efforts to give them things. Miranda almost broke down weeping with her unworthiness when he tried, and Komui found himself too busy with 'work' for Allen to locate for weeks after, and even Kanda -- who only received a gift as a peace offering in the first place -- had thrown his away (as if he wouldn't have done that without Lenalee's coaxing).
It made a good excuse, as far as Lavi had been concerned. Holding onto material things was a bad enough sign; holding on to material things that were only valuable in the context of the one who had given them to him... Much, much worse. The old man would never have let it slide. So it had been such a perfect excuse as to why he couldn't accept a gift from Allen, without even having to admit that he'd wished he could.
"Can I get you something for Christmas?" Allen asked softly.
Lavi didn't look at him. "Not as long as it's your birthday," he said.
Being back with the Order definitely had its perks. He had access to the Ark now, easy transportation to anyplace in the world. Lavi hopped a door to China, where a remote temple in a dry, cool region of the mountains had served as home base for many centuries of Bookmen who were lucky to visit it once every few years.
It took two hours to hike up the mountain, past the defenses erected generations ago -- illusions, traps, that sort of thing. They had been drilled into him as a child, even though technically there had been no need for it, when once through he would have remembered the whole thing.
The monks bowed out of his way and left him to go about his business, and in the vaults below the temple, Lavi buried himself in their treasure.
Newspapers.
From all over the world, every issue in every language in every country where they published newspapers. They were carefully sorted and bundled and preserved, years and years and mountains and mountains of newspapers. Lavi sent them regularly to the monks to be treated and stowed away, even when he couldn't come himself.
Mana Walker was too obscure a name to track, but Lavi had another reference to follow up on -- a man named Cosimo, who Allen had mentioned once or twice. The man who had raised him before Mana; the ringleader of the circus where Allen had spent his early years. That was the only piece of information Lavi needed. He had a time period (winter, between twenty and eighteen years ago) and a location (England) and a name (the ringleader Cosimo).
There was always a feature somewhere in the local newspapers to note that the circus had come to town.
With the speed Lavi went through papers, it didn't take any time at all. All the ones he had read already he could dismiss offhand; he would have remembered if they had mentioned Cosimo's circus on those dates. The ones that remained were easy to scan through, and in a matter of hours he had his dates.
January 30, 1881: Cosimo's circus in Edinburgh.
December 4, 1880: Cosimo's circus in Middlesbrough.
October 15, 1879: Cosimo's circus in Liverpool.
Lavi stood and carefully sorted the papers back into their proper places, and then left the vault, tossing a cheerful smile at the monks as he left. He'd return to the place where he'd left the door to the Ark, and then he would head to Middlesbrough.
Occam's razor, after all. The year that they assumed Allen was born in was probably the most likely.
At the beginning of the century, Middlebrough could have been politely described as a hamlet, with scarcely two dozen people living scattered in farm houses. But the hamlet had veritably exploded midway through the century, and now it was a fine town, proud of its achievements and its residents, even though they didn't have a professional football club (which meant it wasn't a real city, in Lavi's opinion).
Pride meant that they were more than happy to gossip about the goings-on in the town; even nineteen years ago.
Lavi found a likely-looking woman in a bakery and spun her a tidy yarn about how he was a scholar doing research about the Lord Mayor Isaac Bell who had resigned as MP in 1880. What all happened that year?
Two hours later he knew everything about the mysterious deaths of Millie's chickens, the fire-eater from the circus who had charmed his way into the skirts of half the women in town, and how Charlie Smith was found thieving and created quite a scandal.
And he knew about Lillian Carter (bless her soul), who had been seventeen and rose-pretty and pregnant at the time, but tragically miscarried after the new year.
Lillian Carter lived in a pleasant area of town with her husband and their three (surviving, god rest the poor bairne) children. Lavi knocked at the door and told the cute little moppet who answered that he was looking for her mum, was she at home? The child ran off, leaving the door open, and so Lavi invited himself into the sitting room and gazed out the window at the two other girls playing in the backyard.
So Allen had been her only son.
This could have been his family. Should have been, in a just world. Lavi felt something tighten in his chest.
They were all brunet.
A slim woman emerged from the kitchen, smiling and drying her hands with a towel, which she slung over the shoulder. She seemed to have been busy baking. She was a very pretty woman indeed, delicate in feature, with long, slender fingers and compassionate blue eyes, faded and pale so that they almost looked like Allen's gray.
"May I help you?" she asked, her smile fading slightly as she saw him already inside her home, uninvited.
"Lillian Carter?" Lavi said, smiling. Very convincingly natural.
"Yes, that's me."
Lavi tucked his gloved hands into his coat pockets. He said, "I won't waste your time here -- I'd rather get straight to the point. I heard that you had a miscarriage early in 1881."
The smile slipped entirely off her face, her eyes widening, stunned. "Oh, god," she whispered. "He-- He survived, didn't he."
All these years she had been at peace, thinking she had murdered her firstborn son. You don't have even the slightest idea what you were willing to kill. Lavi felt his jaw tighten. Never mind the Earl; never mind that the world might have been ended by the akuma. Allen was the most selfless, generous, loving person that Lavi had ever known. The kind of person he never could have thought existed.
"You must understand," Lillian said, urgently, and now tears were starting to rise in her eyes. "We had no choice -- we were poor then, and very newly-married, and he was deformed... We had no way of taking care of him, and word would have gotten out that our marriage was cursed-- Tom said it was the only way--"
Lavi held up a hand. "I'm not capable of forgiving you for your actions," he said, still smiling. "I'm only here to ask what day he was born."
That night, Lavi slid into Allen's bed, startling the younger man awake. "Mmm?"
Lavi curled around his back, arms twining around Allen's waist from behind. "I've been giving some thought to what we talked about this morning," he murmured.
"What now," Allen said vaguely, turning slightly into him, half-awake affectionate reflex.
"About Christmas," Lavi said, grinning against his ear. "I've decided that you can give me a present after all."
A little husky laugh escaped Allen's throat, burrowing into Lavi's stomach suggestively. "How generous of you." He was smiling, even as exhausted as he was.
"You're welcome," Lavi said impishly.
Allen settled back down to sleep, and Lavi waited, patiently, until his breathing evened out.
He deserved a family. Not the one that had abandoned him, although Lavi would give him the option to find them if he really wanted that. He deserved a family that would see him as beautiful, as wanted, as precious...
The Order had become that, in Allen's eyes -- his family, his home, the people who valued him. But they didn't see him the way that Lavi did, and it wasn't what Lavi wanted for him. It wasn't enough.
Maybe I can give him that, he thought, and then, Fuck. I'm the worst Bookman ever.
It was impossible to regret that for a moment. Lavi trailed a fingertip over Allen's bicep, the skin of his Innocence inhumanly cool and smooth and hard.
Lavi cradled his gift in his lap and smiled, leaning over it. "Open yours," he urged Allen.
The younger man frowned. "I open gifts every year. There's nothing interesting about that. I want you to open yours."
"Nope," Lavi said promptly. Allen scowled at him. "Your gift is special."
Allen sighed, long-suffering. "Fine," he said, irritable. "But only because the faster I open these, the faster you'll open yours."
He reached for the first of two wrapped gifts. The one was thin, like a jewelry box, and the other was broader. Lavi watched impatiently as he reached for the one on top, and grinned in spite of himself as Allen opened the box and his eyebrows drew together, puzzled.
No doubt he was reading the note inside.
You'll get your birthday gift on January 16.
"Do you like it?" Lavi asked when he just stared at it numbly. "For Christmas, I got you -- Christmas."
Warnings: Slightly saladfic'd. Lavi is stubborn and also creative. Completely unfounded extrapolations of canon. Part of the Phoenix chronology, but not directly following Sparking.
Contains Lavi/Allen. For the Lavi/Allen prompt "Late".
.phoenix generous.
"Have you thought about what you're going to get everyone for Christmas?" Allen asked him, some envy in his tone.
Lavi paused, looking up from his newspaper. He'd forgotten -- not about Christmas, but rather that finally, for the first time in four years, being part of humanity at large once again, he'd be expected to get others things for Christmas.
The old man had told him: No one really expects much from a Bookman, but if you give them nothing at all, they'll mutter behind your back and it will make you stand out all the more. He had made it his practice (and Lavi had made it his) to always offer his hosts and companions little things, candy canes and pretty ornaments, when the holiday rolled around.
But real, thoughtful gifts, things that the others would want and appreciate...
"Man, they still aren't letting you get them Christmas presents?" he returned the question instead.
Allen sighed, obligingly distracted. "Now everyone's doing it," he said, dropping onto his back on the bed. "Even -- even Jerry."
"Jerry, turning down a gift from the love of his life? That is serious."
Allen gave him a dirty look, which he pointedly ignored, returning to quickly scanning pages. Lavi was on his eighteenth newspaper of the morning and Allen was still lounging in his bed, naked as sin and just as tempting, the really striking unbalanced beauty of him presented in lean white muscle and black leather skin and half-hidden by the blanket slung over his hips. If Lavi stopped his reading to do half of the things he'd really like to do to the younger man, it would be the next morning and his stack of papers would double.
Allen murmured thoughtfully, "Maybe we could say they're from both of us."
Lavi said, dry, "Then they'll give back my presents too. And don't even ask if I'll let you help me pick them out. They can smell if you've had a hand in it."
Allen's first Christmas with the Order had been the last one before Lenalee mounted her offense. It was outrageous, she thought, that Allen should be expected to give other people gifts on the day he celebrated as his birthday; she went around and wheedled virtually everyone into turning away all his efforts to give them things. Miranda almost broke down weeping with her unworthiness when he tried, and Komui found himself too busy with 'work' for Allen to locate for weeks after, and even Kanda -- who only received a gift as a peace offering in the first place -- had thrown his away (as if he wouldn't have done that without Lenalee's coaxing).
It made a good excuse, as far as Lavi had been concerned. Holding onto material things was a bad enough sign; holding on to material things that were only valuable in the context of the one who had given them to him... Much, much worse. The old man would never have let it slide. So it had been such a perfect excuse as to why he couldn't accept a gift from Allen, without even having to admit that he'd wished he could.
"Can I get you something for Christmas?" Allen asked softly.
Lavi didn't look at him. "Not as long as it's your birthday," he said.
Being back with the Order definitely had its perks. He had access to the Ark now, easy transportation to anyplace in the world. Lavi hopped a door to China, where a remote temple in a dry, cool region of the mountains had served as home base for many centuries of Bookmen who were lucky to visit it once every few years.
It took two hours to hike up the mountain, past the defenses erected generations ago -- illusions, traps, that sort of thing. They had been drilled into him as a child, even though technically there had been no need for it, when once through he would have remembered the whole thing.
The monks bowed out of his way and left him to go about his business, and in the vaults below the temple, Lavi buried himself in their treasure.
Newspapers.
From all over the world, every issue in every language in every country where they published newspapers. They were carefully sorted and bundled and preserved, years and years and mountains and mountains of newspapers. Lavi sent them regularly to the monks to be treated and stowed away, even when he couldn't come himself.
Mana Walker was too obscure a name to track, but Lavi had another reference to follow up on -- a man named Cosimo, who Allen had mentioned once or twice. The man who had raised him before Mana; the ringleader of the circus where Allen had spent his early years. That was the only piece of information Lavi needed. He had a time period (winter, between twenty and eighteen years ago) and a location (England) and a name (the ringleader Cosimo).
There was always a feature somewhere in the local newspapers to note that the circus had come to town.
With the speed Lavi went through papers, it didn't take any time at all. All the ones he had read already he could dismiss offhand; he would have remembered if they had mentioned Cosimo's circus on those dates. The ones that remained were easy to scan through, and in a matter of hours he had his dates.
January 30, 1881: Cosimo's circus in Edinburgh.
December 4, 1880: Cosimo's circus in Middlesbrough.
October 15, 1879: Cosimo's circus in Liverpool.
Lavi stood and carefully sorted the papers back into their proper places, and then left the vault, tossing a cheerful smile at the monks as he left. He'd return to the place where he'd left the door to the Ark, and then he would head to Middlesbrough.
Occam's razor, after all. The year that they assumed Allen was born in was probably the most likely.
At the beginning of the century, Middlebrough could have been politely described as a hamlet, with scarcely two dozen people living scattered in farm houses. But the hamlet had veritably exploded midway through the century, and now it was a fine town, proud of its achievements and its residents, even though they didn't have a professional football club (which meant it wasn't a real city, in Lavi's opinion).
Pride meant that they were more than happy to gossip about the goings-on in the town; even nineteen years ago.
Lavi found a likely-looking woman in a bakery and spun her a tidy yarn about how he was a scholar doing research about the Lord Mayor Isaac Bell who had resigned as MP in 1880. What all happened that year?
Two hours later he knew everything about the mysterious deaths of Millie's chickens, the fire-eater from the circus who had charmed his way into the skirts of half the women in town, and how Charlie Smith was found thieving and created quite a scandal.
And he knew about Lillian Carter (bless her soul), who had been seventeen and rose-pretty and pregnant at the time, but tragically miscarried after the new year.
Lillian Carter lived in a pleasant area of town with her husband and their three (surviving, god rest the poor bairne) children. Lavi knocked at the door and told the cute little moppet who answered that he was looking for her mum, was she at home? The child ran off, leaving the door open, and so Lavi invited himself into the sitting room and gazed out the window at the two other girls playing in the backyard.
So Allen had been her only son.
This could have been his family. Should have been, in a just world. Lavi felt something tighten in his chest.
They were all brunet.
A slim woman emerged from the kitchen, smiling and drying her hands with a towel, which she slung over the shoulder. She seemed to have been busy baking. She was a very pretty woman indeed, delicate in feature, with long, slender fingers and compassionate blue eyes, faded and pale so that they almost looked like Allen's gray.
"May I help you?" she asked, her smile fading slightly as she saw him already inside her home, uninvited.
"Lillian Carter?" Lavi said, smiling. Very convincingly natural.
"Yes, that's me."
Lavi tucked his gloved hands into his coat pockets. He said, "I won't waste your time here -- I'd rather get straight to the point. I heard that you had a miscarriage early in 1881."
The smile slipped entirely off her face, her eyes widening, stunned. "Oh, god," she whispered. "He-- He survived, didn't he."
All these years she had been at peace, thinking she had murdered her firstborn son. You don't have even the slightest idea what you were willing to kill. Lavi felt his jaw tighten. Never mind the Earl; never mind that the world might have been ended by the akuma. Allen was the most selfless, generous, loving person that Lavi had ever known. The kind of person he never could have thought existed.
"You must understand," Lillian said, urgently, and now tears were starting to rise in her eyes. "We had no choice -- we were poor then, and very newly-married, and he was deformed... We had no way of taking care of him, and word would have gotten out that our marriage was cursed-- Tom said it was the only way--"
Lavi held up a hand. "I'm not capable of forgiving you for your actions," he said, still smiling. "I'm only here to ask what day he was born."
That night, Lavi slid into Allen's bed, startling the younger man awake. "Mmm?"
Lavi curled around his back, arms twining around Allen's waist from behind. "I've been giving some thought to what we talked about this morning," he murmured.
"What now," Allen said vaguely, turning slightly into him, half-awake affectionate reflex.
"About Christmas," Lavi said, grinning against his ear. "I've decided that you can give me a present after all."
A little husky laugh escaped Allen's throat, burrowing into Lavi's stomach suggestively. "How generous of you." He was smiling, even as exhausted as he was.
"You're welcome," Lavi said impishly.
Allen settled back down to sleep, and Lavi waited, patiently, until his breathing evened out.
He deserved a family. Not the one that had abandoned him, although Lavi would give him the option to find them if he really wanted that. He deserved a family that would see him as beautiful, as wanted, as precious...
The Order had become that, in Allen's eyes -- his family, his home, the people who valued him. But they didn't see him the way that Lavi did, and it wasn't what Lavi wanted for him. It wasn't enough.
Maybe I can give him that, he thought, and then, Fuck. I'm the worst Bookman ever.
It was impossible to regret that for a moment. Lavi trailed a fingertip over Allen's bicep, the skin of his Innocence inhumanly cool and smooth and hard.
Lavi cradled his gift in his lap and smiled, leaning over it. "Open yours," he urged Allen.
The younger man frowned. "I open gifts every year. There's nothing interesting about that. I want you to open yours."
"Nope," Lavi said promptly. Allen scowled at him. "Your gift is special."
Allen sighed, long-suffering. "Fine," he said, irritable. "But only because the faster I open these, the faster you'll open yours."
He reached for the first of two wrapped gifts. The one was thin, like a jewelry box, and the other was broader. Lavi watched impatiently as he reached for the one on top, and grinned in spite of himself as Allen opened the box and his eyebrows drew together, puzzled.
No doubt he was reading the note inside.
You'll get your birthday gift on January 16.
"Do you like it?" Lavi asked when he just stared at it numbly. "For Christmas, I got you -- Christmas."