Less than Innocent, More than Like, 36/?
Title: Less Than Innocent, More than Like
Pairing: LaviYuu
Rated: PG for the moment...Just because Lavi's a bad boy >:]
Warnings: Well, it's yaoi...but you already knew that, surely. No spoilers, because this is all speculation about their past. Just don't take this like it's really their past, and you're good.
Disclaimer: Saya owns the play, but not the actors. They belong to Hoshino.
Summary: Lavi hasn't even been in the Order for two weeks, and he's already bored with it! Lucky for him a very interesting new exorcist comes in around the same time. Will Kanda be simple entertainment? Or will unfortunate circumstances force Kanda to stay close to Lavi?
Aha~ Merry Christmas, even though it's a bit early~! Saya hasn't had time to make a special Christmas fic, though she's hoping to get this nice LK pic up by then <3 Maybe she'll link to it? Whatever... onto the fic, which you've all been waiting for with baited breath?
36. Getting Better -- Getting Worse
It was sort of odd, the feeling of foreboding that was growing within Yuu. He never felt this way when he was going to meet Yori; if he did then he wouldn’t meet up with the older boy everyday like he always had. He pushed the feeling into the back of him mind, knowing that if there was one person he could trust it was Yori.
Maybe it was just the place they were meeting today? It was an old storehouse that they used to play in when they were younger. They’d stopped going there when a part of the ceiling had collapsed and had almost hit Yori, so why on earth would they go there to meet? Especially considering that they lived on the same street and it would be easier to just meet at one of their houses. Then again, Yori had been getting strange lately, so Yuu supposed it made sense that he would start making odd decisions. Kanda would just have to ask him about it today.
That bad feeling nagged at the back of Kanda’s mind when he saw there was no one outside of the storehouse. It wasn’t like Yori to make him go into someplace like that alone. The older boy was usually the first one to make sure Yuu didn’t endanger himself even that much. Yori was definitely getting strange.
Hesitantly, Yuu walked inside, looking to the ceiling as though he was waiting for it to fall down on him. Instinct had barely been enough to save him from the quick fist that came his way unexpectedly; it seemed the danger was with him on the ground.
Kanda looked around for his attacker and found it was an ex-member of his family’s dojo. The boy hadn’t had the control necessary for proper swordsmanship, he’d attacked one too many classmates without provocation and had been kicked out. If Yuu remembered correctly, this kid hated him. That wasn’t so unusual; most people his age disliked him to some extent. Yuu was an introvert, he had no idea how to communicate normally. Most mistook that for being snobbish or arrogant; it made for a lot of enemies.
After a few minutes of dodging blows, Kanda had seen enough of the storehouse to know that there was not one but three people there excluding himself. All three of them were people who didn’t exactly like him, because they thought he was proud and then he’d proven that he would’ve had every right to be arrogant when he kicked their asses. He was pretty sure he could do that again, but it was going to be a real chore.
Then again, he was facing all of them at the same time now, things could be different. Damn it all.
Yuu felt a rush of relief when Yori walked into the storehouse, a little backup never hurt and the two of them fought well together. His relief wilted away when he realized that Yori didn’t seem at all surprised by the situation, and he didn’t seem inclined to do anything about it either.
“You always did like to show up early, Yuu-chan,” Yori said casually, as though Yuu had just been bored waiting around for him.
“What the hell is going on here Yori?” Kanda hissed out as he ducked out of the way of one attacker’s fist, just as another delivered a painful kick to his side. Even with most of his concentration on the fight at hand, Kanda’s mind was still able to process the situation. He didn’t really want to think of what was happening though; his thoughts were wandering in a bad direction. He wished he had the ability to think more positively, maybe then he could hide in naivety for a while longer.
“Ain’t it obvious? These fine men are gonna try and beat the crap outta you. I’m gonna see how long I can watch.”
Yuu knew something like that was going to be said, but the bluntness of it still caught him off guard. The second he took to stare incredulously was enough of an opening for one of his attackers to land a hit on his face.
“What the hell? What’s the point of this?” Yuu demanded an answer once he’d gotten his bearings.
“I’m tired of being taken care of and pitied. I don’t need it, I don’t want it. Your self-satisfying pity sickens me!”
Pity? When had Kanda shown pity? Concern, maybe, but he never pitied Yori. He cared, of course he did, Yori was his friend. Pitying him had never crossed Yuu’s mind though. Why would Yori think that? Well, Yuu was about as good at showing emotion as he was at communicating in general, maybe he hadn’t done a good enough job of expressing his true feelings? Yuu wasn’t sure.
Either way though, Kanda was sure of one thing: he’d done nothing to deserve this. He was almost certain that this was Yori’s over-done way of turning his back to Kanda. Why hadn’t Yori just said something if he was so annoyed with the way Yuu acted? There was no reason to set him up like this.
Kanda’s aggravation made him forget all about holding back, and soon enough he’d given back to the three what they’d given him. He’d have to do worse though; these three were sturdy, if nothing else.
“I’d never bother with pity! You’re a fool for thinking I pitied you and an asshole for setting this up!” Kanda yelled, and with an annoyed jab he hit the pressure points on the back of his first assailant’s neck. Yuu was done with this game. The trio seemed to have no sense of loyalty to one another, because the other two quickly scampered off when the first one fell.
“You damned coward,” Kanda said venomously. He could hardly get over the pettiness of this whole mess, the pointlessness of it. He was angry and didn’t really understand just why this had to happen. “If you hate me then say it to my face. If you want to see me hurt, then damnit hurt me yourself!”
For a moment, Kanda’s eyes burned into Yori’s trying to read into their very depths to find his old friend’s reasons for doing this. This uncalled for betrayal. There had to be a bigger reason, a reason Kanda could understand and accept. The realization of what was happening was really starting to sink in now. Yuu didn’t want to think about what life was going to be like without this person constantly at his side. He didn’t want to think about what was going to happen to himself without that important person in his life. And he definitely didn’t want to think about what would happen to Yori if he didn’t have anyone to patch him up every morning, either.
He could find nothing in those deep brown eyes that he’d once thought he knew so well. If Yori had a reason for this, he was doing a fantastic job of hiding it. There was nothing but some unreadable emotion flickering in the back of Yori’s eyes. Kanda scowled deeply, this felt so very wrong.
“Che, and now you go quiet. Can you only talk to me when I’m preoccupied? You really are a coward; you can’t even say what you want to my face.” Kanda didn’t bother holding back as he spoke coldly to this person whom he no longer knew. His indignity raged, and he was tempted to lash out at this person. Yuu was stopped though when the pain coursing through his body suddenly made itself known to his consciousness. Damnit, he needed to get home, he needed to have Hayate help him clean up these wounds.
Yori made no move to react to his words, to speak in his defense or anything, he just stared, that strange emotion deadening his eyes. Kanda shook his head at the older boy; this was childish, it wasn’t worth it to pick a fight with Yori now, there was no point. With an air of anger and disappointment, Kanda left the storehouse.
He wasn’t the only one asking ‘why’ when he left.
000
Yori was sort of amazed when Kanda walked around his house the next morning as if nothing had been wrong just the night before. He’d checked Yuu’s back before the irate boy woke up to see if it had healed, and to his surprise the wound from the night before was almost completely gone. There was no scar, just a bit of discoloration where the wound had been, and even that was fading away. How strange, Yuu hadn’t always been that way.
The redhead seemed to think it was strange that Yori was so surprised by Kanda’s suddenly accelerated healing. He walked over to Yori’s side as the older boy pulled the blanket covering Kanda back up to his shoulders; the kid had fallen asleep in what could hardly be considered scraps, he’d definitely needed the covering.
“Surprised he healed so fast?” Lavi asked as he stared at Kanda’s face, his eye one-part admiring, two-parts denial. Yori could sort of see where the conflicting feelings came into play; Yuu was a real doll when he was sleeping. The two had been quick to avert their eyes when Kanda’s fluttered open.
“Who wouldn’t be surprised?” Yori muttered back, as if the question was crazy. It seemed stupid to Yori, but what did he know? Maybe all exorcists were like this? Maybe that Order they belonged to performed experiments on them to make them more superhuman than they already were? “I’ve never seen someone heal that quickly.”
“Really? I asked Yuu-chan about his healing once, and he said that he’d always healed fast, said it was normal for him.” Well Yuu had, just not in so many words and not to Lavi; he’d said something along those lines to Bookman and Komui after their first mission together.
Yori snorted at the statement. “Yuu said such an obvious lie and you actually believed him? Huh, he must’ve gotten good at bull shittin’ people if he could pull that off.” Yori wondered what else had changed while Yuu had been away. Who’d taught his Yuu to lie?
“Give me some credit Yori-san, if I believed him would I be asking you about it? I don’t really know how he came to have this ability, but I know it’s not something people are born with.” Lavi wasn’t stupid, and neither was Bookman; the old panda had reminded him to investigate Kanda’s healing abilities before he left the tower.
“Yeah… Am I the only one made uneasy by it though? I mean, you’re an exorcist and all so I guess you’ve seen stranger things, but I see that and wonder what he had to do in order to get that ability, you know? It must’ve been costly. Can’t be healthy for him in the long run, either.”
Lavi opened his mouth to respond to that, but quickly shut it again. In all honesty, he’d been so curious about the ability itself that he’d never thought about what it was actually doing to Yuu. Now that he thought about it though, he too realized just how bad the long term effects would be. Forgetting that he was having a conversation for a moment, Lavi started mumbling to himself about cell reproduction and the like.
“Accelerated healing means a higher rate of mitosis… but that means the cells are splitting and dying faster than they should… After a while they’d all stop undergoing mitosis and… Oh hell, what did that idiot do to himself?” Lavi’s eye widened as he realized that Kanda’s healing ability was probably killing him slowly.
“Oi, Lavi-san, what are you mumbling about?” Yori asked, not understanding a thing as Lavi had been mumbling to himself in the bookman’s secret language.
“That idiot!” Lavi exclaimed suddenly and loudly. Everyone in the room turned to face him, looking at him curiously. Lavi tried to stop himself from storming up to Yuu and punching him. Lavi had no idea what Kanda was thinking when he’d done whatever he had to get that stupid ability, but he definitely felt that it wasn’t worth the sacrifice. Then again, that ability had saved Kanda’s life a few times and without it Kanda’s life would’ve been even shorter than it was destined to be. Perhaps that made it a good thing? It’d be a totally worthless ability when the war was over though, assuming it ended during Kanda’s lifetime.
A light knock on the head brought Lavi out of his revelry. Kanda was standing beside him, one hand hitting Lavi’s head, the other slowly closing the buttons on the shirt Marie had brought for him.
“Baka, stop saying pointless things so early in the morning,” he said, though his voice held no real anger or annoyance. If anything, Kanda was just as confused as the rest of the group. Lavi could tell he was; confusion and curiosity were blending in his eyes.
“Ah…right, right. Sorry Yuu-chan,” Lavi said with a sheepish grin, trying to get back into character. That outburst had been very un-Lavi-ish of him. Lately he felt like he was coming undone at the seams and he hadn’t a clue as to why. It was like something was disrupting Lavi’s persona, making it impossible to act out his role properly, making it impossible to not feel the emotions he showed.
000
“Hey, Yuu!” Kanda looked up from his position in the yard. It was his turn to stay home, but not his turn to sleep, so he’d just been walking around the yard without purpose. The voice from above had stopped him in his tracks.
Yori was waving down at him from a tree; Kanda recognized it as the one he’d always hidden from Hayate and his crazy schemes in. He and Yori had spent a lot of time up there as kids. Kanda looked up and sighed, shaking his head a little and trying not to smile. Just because he’d forgiven Yori didn’t mean he could start smiling all the time and being happy. He had a reputation to uphold and Lavi would never let it go if he was nice for even a second. Then again Lavi was sleeping at the moment.
“Well, are you just going to stand there or are you going to come up here?” Yori asked, seeing that he had Kanda’s attention.
“Do you really think that branch can hold us both anymore?” Kanda asked even as he made his way to the tree’s trunk.
“Of course it can, unless you’re trying to say you think I’m fat now. Sit on another branch if you’re so scared.” Hmph, Kanda scared of a little fall? Never. Yuu quickly climbed up to the branch Yori was sitting on and sat beside him. This was oddly nostalgic, he could still see the messy carving of their names in the bark of the tree; they’d had this labeling phase where they just had to write their names on everything when Yuu was about 7. They’d turned it into a little competition, seeing who could claim the most as theirs. Yori had won when he’d taken a calligraphy brush to Kanda’s face while he was sleeping. “I’ve claimed Yuu, so now anything you claim goes to me!” He’d said, declaring his victory. Damn cheater.
Something like a smile tugged the corners of his mouths upward just as much as he would allow as his fingers traced over the crudely carved names. A moment later he felt a thin finger tracing out the symbol for ‘trust’ onto his cheek.
“Remembering this?” Yori asked, giving a little sigh as he too looked over to the names scrawled on the wood. Kanda made a little noise of agreement in the back of his throat. Something in the back of Kanda’s mind told him that he was slipping, that just because he’d forgiven one person didn’t mean he could suddenly trust everyone in the world again. Thinking that way would get him killed, especially now. What had happened in the past had prepared him for the future.
That one little dark spot clouded the otherwise pleasant atmosphere that surrounded the two. If Yori noticed the dip in Kanda’s unusually happy mood, he didn’t say it. One thing they both did notice though was the slow dipping of the tree branch they were on. With an exchange of panicked looks, the two quickly jumped out of the tree, landing on the uneven ground with a roll to absorb the impact. They stopped rolling a few feet away from the tree, something like a chuckle welling up in Kanda’s throat.
This…this happiness was so foreign to him, he couldn’t really remember the last time he’d felt like things were right. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d just sat together with anyone for even a moment without getting angry at them. Being here, in this familiar place with all of these familiar people was making him regress, almost. He wished he didn’t know about akuma or the danger that lurked just outside of this town, because then maybe he could be perfectly happy for the first time in what felt like forever.
Yori rolled onto his stomach and folded his arm in front of him, looking perfectly content with the idea of just lying in the snow until they got too cold to stay outside. Kanda stayed on his back, looking up at the leaden sky that promised another storm soon. He could feel Yori staring at him, and questioningly stared back. He found that he still couldn’t completely read the brown eyes he’d once been so familiar with, but at least now he wasn’t staring at blank, flat irises. On the contrary, he was only having trouble reading Yori’s eyes because there was too much in them to comprehend. Oh, how things have changed.
The moment was peaceful, but the world had this way of making sure it wasn’t forgotten.
“Yuu-chan, it’s your nap time,” Lavi called out into the yard groggily from the side door of his room. Kanda exhaled loudly and got up, putting on his work face. He was not going to walk up to Lavi looking happy or content; he didn’t want the rabbit getting any weird ideas about him being a secretly nice or joyful person or anything like that. He obviously wasn’t, it was just this place.
“I hardly think sleeping like the dead for five hours in considered a nap,” Kanda snapped as he walked past Lavi. Annoyingly enough, his voice didn’t have its usual coldness in it, and damn it all Lavi noticed.
“In a good mood, Yuu-chan?”
“…hn.”
“Never thought I’d see the day where you were happy and not murderous,” Lavi said with general surprise. Usually the closest thing Kanda got to being in a good mood was being in a crazed, “I get to kill you now” mood. Normal happiness didn’t seem to be part of Kanda’s emotional spectrum. Huh.
‘Well I’ll be damned. Guess you really do learn something new everyday.’
“Who said a thing about happy?” Kanda asked with a huff, as though he could hide the light dancing in his eyes. Lavi sighed as though Kanda were a lost cause, shrugging his shoulders.
“I can just tell, and might I say that a happy Yuu is an adorable one?” Lavi’s face stretched into a shit-eating grin as he prepared himself to run just in case Kanda gave chase, but amazingly enough Kanda just rolled his eyes and walked past him. Oh, he was definitely in a good mood, it was almost frightening.
“It’s my turn to sleep right? Then get your ass ready to take Marie’s place when he comes back,” Kanda said evenly, as if he didn’t care either way what Lavi did. It almost annoyed the redhead to know that at the moment he couldn’t get under Kanda’s skin. How unfair.
“Okay boss,” Lavi muttered with another sigh. He wasn’t sure if he liked the happy Kanda or not. As he left the room, Lavi looked over to the place Kanda had been just a moment before, and found the potential reason for why Kanda was so happy. Yori was still lying in the snow, staring at him curiously. Things had been oddly peaceful between Yuu and Yori since Kanda had gotten injured, so naturally Lavi had assumed that something between them had been resolved.
Lavi casually walked over to Yori and sat where he was pretty sure Yuu had been a moment before.
“I’ve gotta be honest with you Red, if I had to chose between you and Yuu, I’d chose Yuu.”
“Well gee, I’m flattered.” Lavi rolled his eyes, as did Yori.
“You know who I meant.”
“Of course I do, my opinion is the same.”
“I’m glad we’re in agreement.”
An odd moment of silence passed between them; that seemed to happen a lot when they were attempting conversation. Lavi figured it was probably because they were two rivals who were trying to stay civil with each other. Of course, Junior didn’t really consider himself a rival; he was just acting out the role of one. This was the kind of thing “Lavi” would do after all.
“So I guess the two of you kissed and made up, hm?” Lavi asked, looking over to Yori. The older boy’s face was priceless, he didn’t seem to realize Lavi was just using a common expression and had taken the statement literally.
“O-Of course not! I am not like you, who just steals kisses from Yuu whenever you feel like it! Fiend, don’t put me in the same group as you!”
“It’s just an expression Yori, just an expression…”
“Oh.”
“Bet you wish you had though, huh?” Yori did so hate Lavi’s knowing grin.
There was another moment of relative silence where Lavi tried not to chuckle over the misunderstanding. The calm moment was destroyed though when the golem that followed Lavi everywhere started going crazy. Lavi was so used to it being somewhere around his head that he wouldn’t even notice it anymore if he weren’t a bookman who noticed everything always. Grabbing in out of the air, he spoke into it in quick English.
“What’s happening, Marie?”
“I just heard multiple barriers shut down, leaving wide gaps in the shield around this town. Akuma are quickly swarming in. Get Kanda and come out here quick.”
“Shit. Where are you now?”
“Two miles east of you.”
“We’ll be there soon.”
The line was disconnected as Lavi jumped up from his spot in the snow. Yori gave him a worried look; he didn’t understand what Lavi and Marie had said, but he understood the urgency in his voice.
“Yori, get inside and stay there. I can’t explain it right now, but you need to get to a safe place. Tell the others to stay inside, too,” Lavi said in a tone that left no room for argument. Yori was still confused about what was going on, but he did as told. To him, a serious Lavi meant something was seriously wrong.
Lavi followed Yori to the house’s porch, running into the room he’d just left. He hardly noticed that Kanda was in the middle of changing, for once not thinking it was important enough to comment on.
“Yuu, we’ve got to go.” Kanda didn’t need an explanation; he just grabbed his exorcist coat and threw it on over his work pants and half-undone nightshirt. He followed the redhead when he broke out into a run, keeping pace until they reached Marie on the east side of the town.
“What’s happening?” Kanda finally asked, now that they were together.
“An invasion, from the sounds of it,” Marie replied, stress aging his face. Kanda cursed under his breath.
“Where are they coming in from?”
“A few barriers shut down around this area, the finders are probably dead. The akuma will show themselves soon, and hopefully we can keep them within this area.” Marie inclined his head to the right, a clear sign that he was concentrating on listening to everything carefully. Kanda and Lavi were silent for a moment as Marie assessed the situation in a way they could never comprehend.
“We should spread out over a distance of about a mile; we can catch most of them that way.” The three nodded in unison, and quickly split up with every intention to follow through with this plan.
000
The Kanda family and Yori were tense as they sat together in the dojo. They didn’t really know what was going on, except for what Yori had told them. All he knew was that they needed to be safe, so they all just assumed that they were under attack.
“Is Yuu-nii going to be alright?” Naoko asked the question that had been plaguing all of their minds. None of them had ever seen Kanda come back from a night’s patrol injured except for Yori, so they were very unsure of what would happen to their missing family member. It felt so wrong to be sitting on their hands in the dojo while the family’s youngest son was fighting in a battle so serious that they had to take cover.
Yori was especially worried, naturally. He’d actually seen the injuries Yuu had gotten while on a normal patrol before they’d healed. If he was getting such injuries while running a routine patrol, how bad would his wounds be when the danger was this great? How often did Yuu have to run into battles like this? Had he lived through worse? Yori was becoming painfully aware of just how little any of them knew about this war.
“Yuu is going to be just fine, he’s not alone out there, you know,” Hayate soothed, keeping Naoko close. As much as he’d like to think she was too young to really understand the situation, he knew she did. It would take more than a few reassuring words to stop her from worrying.
“Che, I can hardly stand this,” Yori muttered as he paced around like a caged tiger, “How can they just tell us to stay here while they go out to battle?”
“You know why, Yori,” Kanda’s father said, looking just as frustrated by the situation as Yori, “We don’t have the ability to fight off these demons. We’d just be in their way.” Yori grit his teeth at the truth in this, he knew that he’d be useless in this sort of fight but that didn’t make anything easier. Still, couldn’t someone at least be there to take care of the exorcists when the got injured? They could only fight for so long with open wounds. Yori didn’t care what he did, as long as he wasn’t sitting at home feeling useless!
Curling his hands into fists, Yori stopped pacing the dojo. For a moment everyone was relieved, figuring that he was finally going to join them on the floor. For an unsure moment Yori just stood, closing his eyes and trying to decide what it was he wanted to do. When he opened them again, he’d made his decision.
“I don’t care if I can’t fight, I can’t stay here either!” he declared and ran out of the dojo. The family shouted after him, but it was clear that he would not be stopped. Hayate cursed under his breath and got up off the floor, running after Yori.
‘We’re so gonna get killed,’ he thought, and decided that if he did manage to drag Yori back to the dojo in one piece, he was going to kill that stubborn jerk anyway.
Pairing: LaviYuu
Rated: PG for the moment...Just because Lavi's a bad boy >:]
Warnings: Well, it's yaoi...but you already knew that, surely. No spoilers, because this is all speculation about their past. Just don't take this like it's really their past, and you're good.
Disclaimer: Saya owns the play, but not the actors. They belong to Hoshino.
Summary: Lavi hasn't even been in the Order for two weeks, and he's already bored with it! Lucky for him a very interesting new exorcist comes in around the same time. Will Kanda be simple entertainment? Or will unfortunate circumstances force Kanda to stay close to Lavi?
Aha~ Merry Christmas, even though it's a bit early~! Saya hasn't had time to make a special Christmas fic, though she's hoping to get this nice LK pic up by then <3 Maybe she'll link to it? Whatever... onto the fic, which you've all been waiting for with baited breath?
36. Getting Better -- Getting Worse
It was sort of odd, the feeling of foreboding that was growing within Yuu. He never felt this way when he was going to meet Yori; if he did then he wouldn’t meet up with the older boy everyday like he always had. He pushed the feeling into the back of him mind, knowing that if there was one person he could trust it was Yori.
Maybe it was just the place they were meeting today? It was an old storehouse that they used to play in when they were younger. They’d stopped going there when a part of the ceiling had collapsed and had almost hit Yori, so why on earth would they go there to meet? Especially considering that they lived on the same street and it would be easier to just meet at one of their houses. Then again, Yori had been getting strange lately, so Yuu supposed it made sense that he would start making odd decisions. Kanda would just have to ask him about it today.
That bad feeling nagged at the back of Kanda’s mind when he saw there was no one outside of the storehouse. It wasn’t like Yori to make him go into someplace like that alone. The older boy was usually the first one to make sure Yuu didn’t endanger himself even that much. Yori was definitely getting strange.
Hesitantly, Yuu walked inside, looking to the ceiling as though he was waiting for it to fall down on him. Instinct had barely been enough to save him from the quick fist that came his way unexpectedly; it seemed the danger was with him on the ground.
Kanda looked around for his attacker and found it was an ex-member of his family’s dojo. The boy hadn’t had the control necessary for proper swordsmanship, he’d attacked one too many classmates without provocation and had been kicked out. If Yuu remembered correctly, this kid hated him. That wasn’t so unusual; most people his age disliked him to some extent. Yuu was an introvert, he had no idea how to communicate normally. Most mistook that for being snobbish or arrogant; it made for a lot of enemies.
After a few minutes of dodging blows, Kanda had seen enough of the storehouse to know that there was not one but three people there excluding himself. All three of them were people who didn’t exactly like him, because they thought he was proud and then he’d proven that he would’ve had every right to be arrogant when he kicked their asses. He was pretty sure he could do that again, but it was going to be a real chore.
Then again, he was facing all of them at the same time now, things could be different. Damn it all.
Yuu felt a rush of relief when Yori walked into the storehouse, a little backup never hurt and the two of them fought well together. His relief wilted away when he realized that Yori didn’t seem at all surprised by the situation, and he didn’t seem inclined to do anything about it either.
“You always did like to show up early, Yuu-chan,” Yori said casually, as though Yuu had just been bored waiting around for him.
“What the hell is going on here Yori?” Kanda hissed out as he ducked out of the way of one attacker’s fist, just as another delivered a painful kick to his side. Even with most of his concentration on the fight at hand, Kanda’s mind was still able to process the situation. He didn’t really want to think of what was happening though; his thoughts were wandering in a bad direction. He wished he had the ability to think more positively, maybe then he could hide in naivety for a while longer.
“Ain’t it obvious? These fine men are gonna try and beat the crap outta you. I’m gonna see how long I can watch.”
Yuu knew something like that was going to be said, but the bluntness of it still caught him off guard. The second he took to stare incredulously was enough of an opening for one of his attackers to land a hit on his face.
“What the hell? What’s the point of this?” Yuu demanded an answer once he’d gotten his bearings.
“I’m tired of being taken care of and pitied. I don’t need it, I don’t want it. Your self-satisfying pity sickens me!”
Pity? When had Kanda shown pity? Concern, maybe, but he never pitied Yori. He cared, of course he did, Yori was his friend. Pitying him had never crossed Yuu’s mind though. Why would Yori think that? Well, Yuu was about as good at showing emotion as he was at communicating in general, maybe he hadn’t done a good enough job of expressing his true feelings? Yuu wasn’t sure.
Either way though, Kanda was sure of one thing: he’d done nothing to deserve this. He was almost certain that this was Yori’s over-done way of turning his back to Kanda. Why hadn’t Yori just said something if he was so annoyed with the way Yuu acted? There was no reason to set him up like this.
Kanda’s aggravation made him forget all about holding back, and soon enough he’d given back to the three what they’d given him. He’d have to do worse though; these three were sturdy, if nothing else.
“I’d never bother with pity! You’re a fool for thinking I pitied you and an asshole for setting this up!” Kanda yelled, and with an annoyed jab he hit the pressure points on the back of his first assailant’s neck. Yuu was done with this game. The trio seemed to have no sense of loyalty to one another, because the other two quickly scampered off when the first one fell.
“You damned coward,” Kanda said venomously. He could hardly get over the pettiness of this whole mess, the pointlessness of it. He was angry and didn’t really understand just why this had to happen. “If you hate me then say it to my face. If you want to see me hurt, then damnit hurt me yourself!”
For a moment, Kanda’s eyes burned into Yori’s trying to read into their very depths to find his old friend’s reasons for doing this. This uncalled for betrayal. There had to be a bigger reason, a reason Kanda could understand and accept. The realization of what was happening was really starting to sink in now. Yuu didn’t want to think about what life was going to be like without this person constantly at his side. He didn’t want to think about what was going to happen to himself without that important person in his life. And he definitely didn’t want to think about what would happen to Yori if he didn’t have anyone to patch him up every morning, either.
He could find nothing in those deep brown eyes that he’d once thought he knew so well. If Yori had a reason for this, he was doing a fantastic job of hiding it. There was nothing but some unreadable emotion flickering in the back of Yori’s eyes. Kanda scowled deeply, this felt so very wrong.
“Che, and now you go quiet. Can you only talk to me when I’m preoccupied? You really are a coward; you can’t even say what you want to my face.” Kanda didn’t bother holding back as he spoke coldly to this person whom he no longer knew. His indignity raged, and he was tempted to lash out at this person. Yuu was stopped though when the pain coursing through his body suddenly made itself known to his consciousness. Damnit, he needed to get home, he needed to have Hayate help him clean up these wounds.
Yori made no move to react to his words, to speak in his defense or anything, he just stared, that strange emotion deadening his eyes. Kanda shook his head at the older boy; this was childish, it wasn’t worth it to pick a fight with Yori now, there was no point. With an air of anger and disappointment, Kanda left the storehouse.
He wasn’t the only one asking ‘why’ when he left.
000
Yori was sort of amazed when Kanda walked around his house the next morning as if nothing had been wrong just the night before. He’d checked Yuu’s back before the irate boy woke up to see if it had healed, and to his surprise the wound from the night before was almost completely gone. There was no scar, just a bit of discoloration where the wound had been, and even that was fading away. How strange, Yuu hadn’t always been that way.
The redhead seemed to think it was strange that Yori was so surprised by Kanda’s suddenly accelerated healing. He walked over to Yori’s side as the older boy pulled the blanket covering Kanda back up to his shoulders; the kid had fallen asleep in what could hardly be considered scraps, he’d definitely needed the covering.
“Surprised he healed so fast?” Lavi asked as he stared at Kanda’s face, his eye one-part admiring, two-parts denial. Yori could sort of see where the conflicting feelings came into play; Yuu was a real doll when he was sleeping. The two had been quick to avert their eyes when Kanda’s fluttered open.
“Who wouldn’t be surprised?” Yori muttered back, as if the question was crazy. It seemed stupid to Yori, but what did he know? Maybe all exorcists were like this? Maybe that Order they belonged to performed experiments on them to make them more superhuman than they already were? “I’ve never seen someone heal that quickly.”
“Really? I asked Yuu-chan about his healing once, and he said that he’d always healed fast, said it was normal for him.” Well Yuu had, just not in so many words and not to Lavi; he’d said something along those lines to Bookman and Komui after their first mission together.
Yori snorted at the statement. “Yuu said such an obvious lie and you actually believed him? Huh, he must’ve gotten good at bull shittin’ people if he could pull that off.” Yori wondered what else had changed while Yuu had been away. Who’d taught his Yuu to lie?
“Give me some credit Yori-san, if I believed him would I be asking you about it? I don’t really know how he came to have this ability, but I know it’s not something people are born with.” Lavi wasn’t stupid, and neither was Bookman; the old panda had reminded him to investigate Kanda’s healing abilities before he left the tower.
“Yeah… Am I the only one made uneasy by it though? I mean, you’re an exorcist and all so I guess you’ve seen stranger things, but I see that and wonder what he had to do in order to get that ability, you know? It must’ve been costly. Can’t be healthy for him in the long run, either.”
Lavi opened his mouth to respond to that, but quickly shut it again. In all honesty, he’d been so curious about the ability itself that he’d never thought about what it was actually doing to Yuu. Now that he thought about it though, he too realized just how bad the long term effects would be. Forgetting that he was having a conversation for a moment, Lavi started mumbling to himself about cell reproduction and the like.
“Accelerated healing means a higher rate of mitosis… but that means the cells are splitting and dying faster than they should… After a while they’d all stop undergoing mitosis and… Oh hell, what did that idiot do to himself?” Lavi’s eye widened as he realized that Kanda’s healing ability was probably killing him slowly.
“Oi, Lavi-san, what are you mumbling about?” Yori asked, not understanding a thing as Lavi had been mumbling to himself in the bookman’s secret language.
“That idiot!” Lavi exclaimed suddenly and loudly. Everyone in the room turned to face him, looking at him curiously. Lavi tried to stop himself from storming up to Yuu and punching him. Lavi had no idea what Kanda was thinking when he’d done whatever he had to get that stupid ability, but he definitely felt that it wasn’t worth the sacrifice. Then again, that ability had saved Kanda’s life a few times and without it Kanda’s life would’ve been even shorter than it was destined to be. Perhaps that made it a good thing? It’d be a totally worthless ability when the war was over though, assuming it ended during Kanda’s lifetime.
A light knock on the head brought Lavi out of his revelry. Kanda was standing beside him, one hand hitting Lavi’s head, the other slowly closing the buttons on the shirt Marie had brought for him.
“Baka, stop saying pointless things so early in the morning,” he said, though his voice held no real anger or annoyance. If anything, Kanda was just as confused as the rest of the group. Lavi could tell he was; confusion and curiosity were blending in his eyes.
“Ah…right, right. Sorry Yuu-chan,” Lavi said with a sheepish grin, trying to get back into character. That outburst had been very un-Lavi-ish of him. Lately he felt like he was coming undone at the seams and he hadn’t a clue as to why. It was like something was disrupting Lavi’s persona, making it impossible to act out his role properly, making it impossible to not feel the emotions he showed.
000
“Hey, Yuu!” Kanda looked up from his position in the yard. It was his turn to stay home, but not his turn to sleep, so he’d just been walking around the yard without purpose. The voice from above had stopped him in his tracks.
Yori was waving down at him from a tree; Kanda recognized it as the one he’d always hidden from Hayate and his crazy schemes in. He and Yori had spent a lot of time up there as kids. Kanda looked up and sighed, shaking his head a little and trying not to smile. Just because he’d forgiven Yori didn’t mean he could start smiling all the time and being happy. He had a reputation to uphold and Lavi would never let it go if he was nice for even a second. Then again Lavi was sleeping at the moment.
“Well, are you just going to stand there or are you going to come up here?” Yori asked, seeing that he had Kanda’s attention.
“Do you really think that branch can hold us both anymore?” Kanda asked even as he made his way to the tree’s trunk.
“Of course it can, unless you’re trying to say you think I’m fat now. Sit on another branch if you’re so scared.” Hmph, Kanda scared of a little fall? Never. Yuu quickly climbed up to the branch Yori was sitting on and sat beside him. This was oddly nostalgic, he could still see the messy carving of their names in the bark of the tree; they’d had this labeling phase where they just had to write their names on everything when Yuu was about 7. They’d turned it into a little competition, seeing who could claim the most as theirs. Yori had won when he’d taken a calligraphy brush to Kanda’s face while he was sleeping. “I’ve claimed Yuu, so now anything you claim goes to me!” He’d said, declaring his victory. Damn cheater.
Something like a smile tugged the corners of his mouths upward just as much as he would allow as his fingers traced over the crudely carved names. A moment later he felt a thin finger tracing out the symbol for ‘trust’ onto his cheek.
“Remembering this?” Yori asked, giving a little sigh as he too looked over to the names scrawled on the wood. Kanda made a little noise of agreement in the back of his throat. Something in the back of Kanda’s mind told him that he was slipping, that just because he’d forgiven one person didn’t mean he could suddenly trust everyone in the world again. Thinking that way would get him killed, especially now. What had happened in the past had prepared him for the future.
That one little dark spot clouded the otherwise pleasant atmosphere that surrounded the two. If Yori noticed the dip in Kanda’s unusually happy mood, he didn’t say it. One thing they both did notice though was the slow dipping of the tree branch they were on. With an exchange of panicked looks, the two quickly jumped out of the tree, landing on the uneven ground with a roll to absorb the impact. They stopped rolling a few feet away from the tree, something like a chuckle welling up in Kanda’s throat.
This…this happiness was so foreign to him, he couldn’t really remember the last time he’d felt like things were right. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d just sat together with anyone for even a moment without getting angry at them. Being here, in this familiar place with all of these familiar people was making him regress, almost. He wished he didn’t know about akuma or the danger that lurked just outside of this town, because then maybe he could be perfectly happy for the first time in what felt like forever.
Yori rolled onto his stomach and folded his arm in front of him, looking perfectly content with the idea of just lying in the snow until they got too cold to stay outside. Kanda stayed on his back, looking up at the leaden sky that promised another storm soon. He could feel Yori staring at him, and questioningly stared back. He found that he still couldn’t completely read the brown eyes he’d once been so familiar with, but at least now he wasn’t staring at blank, flat irises. On the contrary, he was only having trouble reading Yori’s eyes because there was too much in them to comprehend. Oh, how things have changed.
The moment was peaceful, but the world had this way of making sure it wasn’t forgotten.
“Yuu-chan, it’s your nap time,” Lavi called out into the yard groggily from the side door of his room. Kanda exhaled loudly and got up, putting on his work face. He was not going to walk up to Lavi looking happy or content; he didn’t want the rabbit getting any weird ideas about him being a secretly nice or joyful person or anything like that. He obviously wasn’t, it was just this place.
“I hardly think sleeping like the dead for five hours in considered a nap,” Kanda snapped as he walked past Lavi. Annoyingly enough, his voice didn’t have its usual coldness in it, and damn it all Lavi noticed.
“In a good mood, Yuu-chan?”
“…hn.”
“Never thought I’d see the day where you were happy and not murderous,” Lavi said with general surprise. Usually the closest thing Kanda got to being in a good mood was being in a crazed, “I get to kill you now” mood. Normal happiness didn’t seem to be part of Kanda’s emotional spectrum. Huh.
‘Well I’ll be damned. Guess you really do learn something new everyday.’
“Who said a thing about happy?” Kanda asked with a huff, as though he could hide the light dancing in his eyes. Lavi sighed as though Kanda were a lost cause, shrugging his shoulders.
“I can just tell, and might I say that a happy Yuu is an adorable one?” Lavi’s face stretched into a shit-eating grin as he prepared himself to run just in case Kanda gave chase, but amazingly enough Kanda just rolled his eyes and walked past him. Oh, he was definitely in a good mood, it was almost frightening.
“It’s my turn to sleep right? Then get your ass ready to take Marie’s place when he comes back,” Kanda said evenly, as if he didn’t care either way what Lavi did. It almost annoyed the redhead to know that at the moment he couldn’t get under Kanda’s skin. How unfair.
“Okay boss,” Lavi muttered with another sigh. He wasn’t sure if he liked the happy Kanda or not. As he left the room, Lavi looked over to the place Kanda had been just a moment before, and found the potential reason for why Kanda was so happy. Yori was still lying in the snow, staring at him curiously. Things had been oddly peaceful between Yuu and Yori since Kanda had gotten injured, so naturally Lavi had assumed that something between them had been resolved.
Lavi casually walked over to Yori and sat where he was pretty sure Yuu had been a moment before.
“I’ve gotta be honest with you Red, if I had to chose between you and Yuu, I’d chose Yuu.”
“Well gee, I’m flattered.” Lavi rolled his eyes, as did Yori.
“You know who I meant.”
“Of course I do, my opinion is the same.”
“I’m glad we’re in agreement.”
An odd moment of silence passed between them; that seemed to happen a lot when they were attempting conversation. Lavi figured it was probably because they were two rivals who were trying to stay civil with each other. Of course, Junior didn’t really consider himself a rival; he was just acting out the role of one. This was the kind of thing “Lavi” would do after all.
“So I guess the two of you kissed and made up, hm?” Lavi asked, looking over to Yori. The older boy’s face was priceless, he didn’t seem to realize Lavi was just using a common expression and had taken the statement literally.
“O-Of course not! I am not like you, who just steals kisses from Yuu whenever you feel like it! Fiend, don’t put me in the same group as you!”
“It’s just an expression Yori, just an expression…”
“Oh.”
“Bet you wish you had though, huh?” Yori did so hate Lavi’s knowing grin.
There was another moment of relative silence where Lavi tried not to chuckle over the misunderstanding. The calm moment was destroyed though when the golem that followed Lavi everywhere started going crazy. Lavi was so used to it being somewhere around his head that he wouldn’t even notice it anymore if he weren’t a bookman who noticed everything always. Grabbing in out of the air, he spoke into it in quick English.
“What’s happening, Marie?”
“I just heard multiple barriers shut down, leaving wide gaps in the shield around this town. Akuma are quickly swarming in. Get Kanda and come out here quick.”
“Shit. Where are you now?”
“Two miles east of you.”
“We’ll be there soon.”
The line was disconnected as Lavi jumped up from his spot in the snow. Yori gave him a worried look; he didn’t understand what Lavi and Marie had said, but he understood the urgency in his voice.
“Yori, get inside and stay there. I can’t explain it right now, but you need to get to a safe place. Tell the others to stay inside, too,” Lavi said in a tone that left no room for argument. Yori was still confused about what was going on, but he did as told. To him, a serious Lavi meant something was seriously wrong.
Lavi followed Yori to the house’s porch, running into the room he’d just left. He hardly noticed that Kanda was in the middle of changing, for once not thinking it was important enough to comment on.
“Yuu, we’ve got to go.” Kanda didn’t need an explanation; he just grabbed his exorcist coat and threw it on over his work pants and half-undone nightshirt. He followed the redhead when he broke out into a run, keeping pace until they reached Marie on the east side of the town.
“What’s happening?” Kanda finally asked, now that they were together.
“An invasion, from the sounds of it,” Marie replied, stress aging his face. Kanda cursed under his breath.
“Where are they coming in from?”
“A few barriers shut down around this area, the finders are probably dead. The akuma will show themselves soon, and hopefully we can keep them within this area.” Marie inclined his head to the right, a clear sign that he was concentrating on listening to everything carefully. Kanda and Lavi were silent for a moment as Marie assessed the situation in a way they could never comprehend.
“We should spread out over a distance of about a mile; we can catch most of them that way.” The three nodded in unison, and quickly split up with every intention to follow through with this plan.
000
The Kanda family and Yori were tense as they sat together in the dojo. They didn’t really know what was going on, except for what Yori had told them. All he knew was that they needed to be safe, so they all just assumed that they were under attack.
“Is Yuu-nii going to be alright?” Naoko asked the question that had been plaguing all of their minds. None of them had ever seen Kanda come back from a night’s patrol injured except for Yori, so they were very unsure of what would happen to their missing family member. It felt so wrong to be sitting on their hands in the dojo while the family’s youngest son was fighting in a battle so serious that they had to take cover.
Yori was especially worried, naturally. He’d actually seen the injuries Yuu had gotten while on a normal patrol before they’d healed. If he was getting such injuries while running a routine patrol, how bad would his wounds be when the danger was this great? How often did Yuu have to run into battles like this? Had he lived through worse? Yori was becoming painfully aware of just how little any of them knew about this war.
“Yuu is going to be just fine, he’s not alone out there, you know,” Hayate soothed, keeping Naoko close. As much as he’d like to think she was too young to really understand the situation, he knew she did. It would take more than a few reassuring words to stop her from worrying.
“Che, I can hardly stand this,” Yori muttered as he paced around like a caged tiger, “How can they just tell us to stay here while they go out to battle?”
“You know why, Yori,” Kanda’s father said, looking just as frustrated by the situation as Yori, “We don’t have the ability to fight off these demons. We’d just be in their way.” Yori grit his teeth at the truth in this, he knew that he’d be useless in this sort of fight but that didn’t make anything easier. Still, couldn’t someone at least be there to take care of the exorcists when the got injured? They could only fight for so long with open wounds. Yori didn’t care what he did, as long as he wasn’t sitting at home feeling useless!
Curling his hands into fists, Yori stopped pacing the dojo. For a moment everyone was relieved, figuring that he was finally going to join them on the floor. For an unsure moment Yori just stood, closing his eyes and trying to decide what it was he wanted to do. When he opened them again, he’d made his decision.
“I don’t care if I can’t fight, I can’t stay here either!” he declared and ran out of the dojo. The family shouted after him, but it was clear that he would not be stopped. Hayate cursed under his breath and got up off the floor, running after Yori.
‘We’re so gonna get killed,’ he thought, and decided that if he did manage to drag Yori back to the dojo in one piece, he was going to kill that stubborn jerk anyway.