"Bad+Pathos" - [FIC] -completed!-
And now I'm going to hitch a ride on the Waaaambulance to see why my muse took me down such an alley. o.o'
Title: Bad+Pathos
Rating: T for language and confusion
Pairing: LaviYuu
Fandom: D.Gray-Man
"I know you want me, baby."
To which Kanda rolled his eyes and gave no comment, considering Lavi and sexual harassment were basically two sides of the same perverted eighteen year-old coin, because it all amounted to something like--
"You think I'm sexy, don'cha?"
Some distant place in Kanda's mind stirred at the question as quickly as he could knock it out again. This weekend had been an absolute hell-raiser because of him, the grinning redhead in the passenger's side, who, despite the fact that he had taken a forty-minute shower, still looked as if he had rolled out of bed and hit the floor running.
"You wanna see me naked, eh? Like this?"
Kanda heard Lavi lift his shirt up, heard him laughing because the people in the next car over were gaping-- half saw it, but quickly tore his eyes from the mirror. The redhead was much too pale anyway, like some kind of empty canvas. Like the paste they used in art class, the kind Lavi used to eat in secret. The kind Lavi used to glue elbow macaroni to his forehead during naptime.
"What, Yuu? The pants? Well, I'm terribly modest, but since you and I are p-r-e-t-t-y well freakin' acquainted--"
Kanda roared, exasperated, punching the horn and slamming the brake as the car came to yet another halt. Because traffic jam + Lavi + sexual innuendos = agonizing mental breakdown up in here, and that was it. That was [definitely] absolutely all there was to this situation.
Because Lavi was grabbing his hand-- more like prying, trying to tear it off the steering wheel he was gripping to hold it in his own-- "Because I'm hot, Yuu-chan, and I want you to feel it!"
"Don't even know why I offered to drive you," Kanda muttered. "Fifteen minute walk from the apartment, but no, you don't want to waste your energy."
Which reminded him of days in gym class where Lavi would lie about forgetting his shoes. Days in which Lavi would write punitive lines of neatly cramped handwriting-- 'I will remember to bring the proper footwear from now on, for real, I swear'-- and Kanda would watch him from the sidelines, sullenly, because something about the whole situation would make him want to lie about it too.
"Don't ya want it, Yuu-chan? My young, flexible, nubile body in that gigantic empty bed of yours?"
"No way. There's not enough room for idiots like you."
Which changed nothing about the fact that they'd shared the same bed when they were little, and Lavi would sprawl out and steal all the covers and---
"Because I know you think about me, even when you're in the shower, because you always come out all flushed and red and--"
"I come out flushed because it's a fucking shower," Kanda said immediately, a little too quickly, and Lavi was laughing again. Great big peals of something hysterical, and instantly, Kanda had an image of himself getting crushed beneath it like some gigantic bouncing ball.
"Yuu-chan, Yuu-chan," Lavi laughed, and the tone of his voice made Kanda's eyes narrow. " To think that ya think about me when you're all alone, because seriously---"
Lavi, for the last damn time," Kanda threatened, "I've going to grab you up by your neck and shake you until your eyeballs--"
"You wanna tie me up and---"
Kanda slammed the brake so sharply that his entire body did something reminiscent of a whip-crack, the back of his head crashing into his seat. Lavi was cursing now, holding his nose and whining about faces and dashboards, caught now in the middle of a valiant struggle to save the tan interior of Kanda's Prius.
"Don't. Ever. Say stuff to me like that when I'm driving," Kanda hissed. "And wear your damn seatbelt, for Christ's sake. I don't want what little brain you have all over my windshield."
" S'true," Lavi mumbled, green eye glinting a little resentfully between parted fingers. "You act like it's some kind of a joke, y'know?"
It took a while for that information to hit home inside Kanda's brain. He sat there blankly, blinking as it processed-- Point A to Point B, Lavi wants to get in your pants and he probably always has, maybe even during those stupid 'sleepovers', the ones where he showed up on your doorstep with the case of beer you would never drink (not smooth enough for your tastes) and all those stupid movies you never watched. Dumb and Dumber, especially, because Lavi always said stupid stuff like, "Hey, there's me and you! 'Cept I'm the blonde guy because you'd never drive a van shaped like a giant dog, but I would, because that's the difference between us, see? Then again, I don't think you'd ever pee in a bottle, either. Would you? Would you pee in a bottle, Yuu? Because honestly, that'd be a little gross, especially if a cop pulled us over an' he was all, hey, is that beer in your car?"
Which would obviously result in a game of Truth-or-Dare that gradually grew less intelligent as the night went on. Like when Lavi looked at you all seriously, eye sparkling with alcohol and dead inhibition, and said---
"Would you kiss a guy, Yuu-chan? Just to try it out?"
And of course, you went 'che' and made to get up, but no, Lavi was grabbing your hand, laughing, daring you, mocking you, calling you a geisha girl and a yellow taxi cab, anything to get you angry enough to tangle your fingers in his stupid red hair and force your mouth against his, your frown against his smile---
Lavi was smiling again.
And Kanda didn't quite know what to do about that. Because something told him their thoughts were the same, taking that same trip to visit that same memory. Coinciding, one inside the other-- no, wait, that was a dirty thing to think, because---
"I-- I don't know," Kanda heard himself say, stumbling over the English language, even though the words would never be enough to please the [ever-asking] other. "And I don't think I meant it back then, so don't start pressuring me into some kind of--"
And he couldn't finish, because Lavi was looking at him like he always did. He traced the shape of his visible eye, the firm line of his mouth-- and a sweet one too, because he'd kissed him when he wasn't drinking before, before alcohol bit into his flavor. He'd just leaned over when Lavi was crashed on the couch, visiting for yet another weekend, already knowing he'd never remember it.
Because he didn't remember it, and that's what hurt him the most.
"Great," Kanda muttered. "Just great. I expect you want to hear something about feelings, right?"
Lavi didn't answer, but Kanda, who had known him for what felt like an entire lifetime, knew that this was already an answer in itself.
"You.. Well, you know." Kanda sharply glanced away and tried to focus on something else, the frown never quite leaving his face. It was glued there, and Lavi used to joke about that too, that maybe if he hadn't have decorated his face in kindergarten-- he could still hold the capability of smiling.
"Look," he said finally, grumbling, when the silence reached a pitch that made him squirm in his seat, made his ears ring-- "You drive me absolutely fucking crazy. And that's all you really need to know."
And after a few awkward minutes of nothing, Kanda tensed. Because Lavi was looking at him again, and he was smiling-- a bit awkwardly, he noticed, but that was fine. Like everything else, it reminded him of some distant memory they probably shared-- or probably didn't, but what did that matter to him?
Looking at him still. Against all will, their gazes locked, and Kanda felt trapped as the day he was born, helpless and stuck inside his head in this cold still world--
Except Lavi wasn't cold at all. And he was looking at him questioningly, expectantly-- almost kind of pleasantly, and he didn't like it because it was too forward, too certain of things to come, and he really just wanted to end it before it began.
"Mmm," Lavi said, almost amused, and it took a moment for Kanda to realize it had even happened.
"And don't I know it, eh? You think I haven't gotten that hint once since we were kids?"
He shook his head at that, not really sure how to respond outside of his usual nature with, "Che, not really. I just figured you would've, I don't know, handled it better?
Because we aren't kids. I don't see what any of that matters. It was just shit we did when we were little, all that.. grade school stuff. Stupid macaroni jokes, gym class, all that.."
And here he looked up again, more irritated now than anything Lavi had put him through in the past 48 hours. Sleeping half-naked on his couch, leaving the milk out on the counter, waking the neighbors with drunken laughter, watching pointless shows on television and bugging him to try new foods like Mediterranean-style lobster because he was too poor to afford it himself, you know, expensive stuff, but if they actually put their money together, then maybe they could actually---
"Forget it. That's what I do, so you should just grow up and do the same."
Which came out slightly colder than he'd liked, but Lavi didn't seem to mind his pinched expression.
Instead, he just sat there, not really smiling or frowning anymore-- just staring with his lone green eye and crafting his words, carefully, a small sound of disappointment slipping out when he finally hesitated before saying--
"Well, here I was, all these years, waitin' for you to actually get a backbone an' act on it."
Without thinking, Kanda struck the center of the steering wheel hard with his fist, blasting everyone without the nearest ten feet of them with his horn. The couple in the car beside them were looking on with disdain.
"And who's to say I don't already have one? What's with you, pressuring me into something useless like this?" The words tore from his throat far too easily, as if they'd been waiting for ages to break down the branch that suspended them.
"C'mon, Yuu, you know I didn't--"
"I never talk this much and you're.. Christ, do you honestly know," he said, giving him an open glare, "how much I honest-to-God fucking hate you, Lavi?"
If only to reach the ground again, he thought, before Lavi came in again and interrupted-- and he'd really never noticed how rough his hands were, but--
--the cars were shifting around him slowly, rousing from sleep, soft headlight eyelids--
"Y'might want to drive a little. Traffic's pretty smooth again, yeah?"
"What the-- Damn it, Lavi, you're just--"
"Just drive."
And he did, and it was, and in a matter of uneventful, awkward minutes they made it to the airport in what seemed to be absolutely no time at all.
When his Prius sidled up to the sidewalk of the lobby entrance, Lavi got out slowly and grabbed everything in plain sight that belonged to him-- two pairs of boxer shorts, one blue duck print and the other pink hula girls, a few solid T-shirts and a single well-worn pair of jeans-- and he was walking off again, through revolving doors, his wallet tucked noticeably in his back pocket.
And Kanda took off again like nothing was wrong, because his pride kept him from acknowledging certain things like the fact that his passenger's seat was not only vacant, but empty.
Or that his chest was burning and that he hadn't exactly liked the way things had happened this time around.
But that was okay, because this was how things like this were always meant to end, right?
And with that affirmation he blended into the rest of them, into the cold metallic crowd they called a city.