i got an open ear, a gaping hole.
Title: When We Were Rich
Pairing: Kanda/Lavi, Allen/Lenalee
Rating: R
Disclaimer: DGM belongs to Hoshino Katsura et al.
A/N: High school AU; the one where Lavi wants to play a board-game and Kanda refuses to marry him.
&
“Ah, the classics. This is Life, my good men. And good lady.” Lavi bows his head like a freak.
Lenalee nods, eating out of the ice cream carton.
Kanda doesn’t have time to ignore Lavi’s quip since the Walking Waste Receptacle is busy trying to suck on a player’s piece.
“Are you teething, Walker?” Kanda says, stealing the bag of plastic cars from him.
Walker frowns and sticks out his tongue like sixteen-year-old infants do. They share a few undisclosed looks.
Lenalee sighs and puts down the carton. “This is delicious!”
They look at her. She pretends there is something on her chest.
Never mind.
“I’m so green,” Lavi says.
“You are most certain,” Walkers says blithely.
“Am not, and stop eating all my food,” Lavi says forcibly.
Then they smile at each other and pick at their loans, with the looks of cheaters.
Kanda really hates board-games, which should have been obvious to them from the start. Yet still, no one ever listens around here. “Do I have to play?”
“Yes!” the three of them shout.
Kanda almost smites them. “Do I have to play by your rules, Lavi?”
“Yes!” Lavi shouts, and both Walker and Lenalee shout back at Lavi in disagreement after a moment of mishearing things.
“Lavi, I am not going to be a lesbian in this game, sorry,” Lenalee informs him fitfully, taking another thou-art-hungry scoop from the carton. The chocolate smears across her top lip.
“Lavi, me too.”
“Allen, I could never take full responsibility for your lesbianism.”
“I meant the other thing.”
Eh.
“Oh. That’s a bit disappointing. You can still play the white one.”
“Lavi, my hair is black now. You colored it.”
“I never noticed,” Kanda says dryly, and Walker does a double-take at him. He pouts.
“Hey, I’mma be red then. Yuu? You be blue.” But Lavi is shoving the white car under Walker’s nose.
Kanda can’t find anything else to say that’s fitting. “Fine.”
“Lenalee, you’re green.”
She seems to take after Allen, pouting in a way that makes Kanda’s eye twitch. It’s rather disengaging. “Are you calling me green, Lavi?”
*
They start the game of Life by deciding who gets to roll, and if they should follow the rules in the first place.
“Hey, hey, guys, that’s what the roller thingy is for,” Walker says.
Lenalee pats him on the shoulder for his smartass input and Walker shrugs.
Kanda flares his nostrils and refuses to keep watching them.
Then Walker leans slightly to kiss her hand, and Kanda decides they have been spending too much time together. Despite it being none of his business. Yes. Who cares. He doesn’t.
“I need a break,” he says, and Lavi clings to his foot.
*
After Kanda is settled back onto his spot on the floor, he spins (not rolls) the spinner (not roller) thing, and naturally he is rewarded with a ten. His hand muscles are that amazing. Lavi spins a five, Walker spins a nine, and Lenalee a one. She is not too happy.
“Don’t worry, it just means you’re number one in my book,” Walker says sickeningly to her. “If Kanda didn’t get to roll it an extra time, you would probably be going first.”
Kanda gets up on his knees. “It’s - spin - you British idiot.”
Walker gets up on his knees as well. “Well!”
“Well what.”
Walker backs down, adjusting his polka-dotted suspenders that look utterly preposterous and yet oddly . . .
Just no.
“Errrmmm,” Lavi says, fingering the newest piercing in his lip. Kanda sighs in annoyance because he knows what Lavi wants to do with that piercing later, and he knows Lavi will probably get his way. (And he knows Lavi is risking another infection.)
Contrary to popular belief, Kanda can be very accommodating.
He trains his mind on something else, like kendo, but then he starts to think about Lavi opening his mouth. So he viciously spins on his turn, not arguing with Lavi when he decides to go to university this time. He digs his car into the square and picks up a Life tile that says he wins whatever.
He is on the square that requires him to make friends.
They fall into a pickling silence.
*
“It’s not that bad, Kanda,” Walker says.
“Shut up.”
“Do you want to go again, Kanda?” Lenalee says.
“Shut - what. Don’t give me the upper hand.”
She’s wearing that oh? be my guest expression she had learned to do when she was eleven.
Walker spins and takes university by storm, getting all the way to graduation. Kanda glowers. This does not piss him off this does not piss him off.
But Walker does piss him off. “Stop gloating, you British idiot,” Kanda gripes, and Walker keeps gloating, clapping and digging his hand into a bag of pretzel mix.
“Ack, grubby grasshopper fingers on my collector’s board-game!” Lavi says, spinning. He chooses the career route, which just goes to show how much of a lazy ass he really is.
Possibly braver than he is stupid, too.
They all stare at the top of his head as he leans over the board, configuring something. He looks up. “What?”
“Are you cheating again?” Lenalee says.
“I was just, uh, counting squares.”
Walker throws a few pretzels at him and Kanda knocks them out of the air before they can even blink.
“Keep moving,” he says.
*
You see, playing a game like Life is life-threatening. For them. For Kanda, it’s a mind game he’d rather do without. Especially when he can be putting his skills to better use.
Like weeding his vegetable garden at home. He also has that graduation project to work on.
“I have homework. Bye.”
They all holler and clamber for him to sit back down. He stands there, deafened. They smile and nod and coax him into sitting back down.
God. Help. Them.
It is Kanda’s turn again. (Lenalee had chosen university, chattering on about going abroad.) However, while Kanda was the first to go, he seems to be the last to finish.
What happened here.
“You have to stop there, Kanda.”
“I got that.”
“You have to marry somebody!”
“Walker, just eat.”
“Hey, baby, how you doin’?”
“Not tonight, Lavi.” Then Kanda realizes what he’s just said. “L-Lavi, it is just a tiny inanimate person. Do not go pretending it is you.”
Lavi grabs his heart and fakes a heart attack all over the board.
They stare at him. They cluck their tongues.
“Who wants dinner?” Walker says happily, and Kanda joins them as they leave Lavi there, who is pretending to be dead.
*
“I can’t believe you’re a policeman,” Lenalee says over chopped seasoning.
Walker sips a coke, burps, and wipes his mouth. “Does Lavi have any more of these?”
Kanda deadpans. “A policeman in a game, Lenalee.”
“Oh officer, I had gum on the bottom of my shoe. It just stuck to the pedal.”
“Walker.”
“And this would be Kanda to the poor girl: Then you must have a gum addiction, and should be charged mercilessly. Off to court!”
“I do not sound like that, you fu - ”
“Sooo, my darling boys, who wants pasta?” Lenalee says.
Kanda chooses to go find Lavi in the sitting room as Walker is burping in German again and Lenalee is turning the knob on the stove to blow them all to hell. It would be just his luck.
Kanda finds Lavi resting against the foot of the special study chair where Lavi likes to read all published writings. His eyes are closed, mouth opened.
“Are you still in pain?”
Eyes open. “Nah, I can’t really feel my lip.”
“Lavi.” Kanda squats in front of him, cocking his head.
“Reckon I miss another week of school?”
“Now you’re deliberately being an idiot.”
Eyes just keep diving deep into Kanda’s. He nearly wilts under the weight of them. Lavi runs a finger around Kanda’s ear. It’s just his luck he should wilt under that, too.
His willpower snaps, forcing him to shove his lips into Lavi’s and kiss them mercilessly, the way Walker might have been describing. He is chapped and soft at the same time, delicious and tasting that - that - taste. There is no English word for it. There is no reason for it either. His groin tightens and he pulls back to breathe again.
Lavi has closed his eyes.
Kanda leans in, again, and before he can lose the nerve, licks the lip piercing and tongues between Lavi’s lips.
Lavi’s lips pull into a smile, then a toothy grin, and Kanda scoffs. “You manipulative bastard.”
Eyes, so bright, open again. “If that’s the best you can do.”
Kanda gives him the time-out sign with the finger and stalks back to the kitchen.
Only to find Lenalee sitting on the counter top and Walker between her legs, stuck to her face like gum.
“I could make your dinner, Walker,” Kanda offers. “But I’m not sure how you’d get your mouth around it.” Plus, with all the poison . . .
*
Sitting down to continue the game, Lavi is popping pills in the sly and Walker is eating the noodles like finger food. Lenalee is humming a very unpopular song (according to Kanda), and Kanda is losing his appetite.
Lenalee pats her belly after a few minutes and Lavi makes a comment about her being -
“What,” Kanda says.
“She is so not!” Walker says.
“I mean, c’mon,” Lavi says.
Lenalee just gapes at him, blushing. She puts her fork down. Her money down.
Walker starts to edge away from her. Kanda sneers. Lavi shrugs. “It’s okay if ya are; it’s quite common these days. All the girls are doin’ it.”
Walker makes a motion to pull the band out of Lavi’s hair, to possibly stuff it into his mouth. Kanda purses his lips and crosses his arms. Lavi waves at Lenalee with his thumb and says to Walker, “Back me up here. You’re the one who got her into trouble.”
“Whatever are you talking about?!” Lenalee explodes, throwing her money at Lavi, her whole face on fire. “I’m menstruating, you - ”
She goes on with her Chinese epithets, some of what Kanda may recognize as Cantonese. He wonders if her brother taught her those. Then she barges out in that heavier-than-usual way and slams the door to the lavatory; and she is not one to slam so easily.
Walker winces, reaches over, and pinches Lavi in the chest.
“Ow! Nice aim!”
Silence.
Lavi is soon persuaded to go talk to Lenalee through the lavatory door.
Which, of course, leaves Kanda alone with Walker.
*
Kanda stares at his tiny pile of Life tiles.
Walker coughs.
They can hear Lavi calling softly through the door and Lenalee telling him a few more things in Mandarin, then in plain English.
She’s got a mouth on her. But so does Lavi.
“Don’t be such a goose egg, Lenalee,” Lavi is saying.
Kanda tries not to listen too hard. Walker is making faces at his feet. He abruptly looks up. “Hey.”
“You’re just a starving artist who owns a rundown Victorian. Do not talk to me.”
“But.”
Kanda glares. “I could have you arrested.”
Walker huffs through his nose. “Just because you couldn’t take care of her, doesn’t mean I can’t.”
“What are - ” Sodding shit. “Walker, piss off.”
Walker doesn’t seem to get the point. “No.”
Oh really.
“Then go wank off, I don’t care.”
“Of course you don’t!”
“Of course not.”
“What about Lenalee?”
“What about. Her.” Kanda looks away.
There’s a very nasty wallpaper on the sitting room wall. Lavi should probably redecorate. Black would be nice.
Walker and Lavi trade places with the job of luring Lenalee out of hiding. But first they have a scuffle that doesn’t harm Lavi’s recuperating period. Kanda can hear them jabbing each other in the chest and fretting about girls in general; how the bloody hell are we supposed to be honest when they take offense to bloody everything? It was just a question, after all.
“I’m bloated, you idiot!” Kanda can hear Lenalee through the door.
Her voice nearly matches his usual one.
Kanda knows exactly how to remedy this. He goes up to them, passes them, and stops at the lavatory door. “Lenalee?”
She sniffs in response.
“I can make you some dessert.”
She opens the door in response.
*
“And you two don’t get any!” she tells them, watching the dough rise in the oven.
Lavi and Walker groan against each other. Kanda scowls at them, but relaxes it when Lenalee looks up at him in appreciation.
Fine. He is accommodating for Lenalee as well.
But she’s been his best friend since they were in primary school.
So it’s a respectable reason.
“Will you put the faces on them, too?” she asks innocently, pointing at the glass.
Kanda juts his chin out in anticipation. Respectable reason.
Lavi and Walker begin their teasing, practically jumping down Kanda’s throat.
*
Back at the game again, things are going smoothly.
Or at least smoother than one can expect in this kind of group dynamic. Kanda has learned this in sociology. (And yes, that is a whole entire story altogether, emphasis, emphasis.)
Walker is fawning over the plate of cupcakes Lenalee is hording; Lenalee is nibbling at the frosting face on one cupcake while spinning her turn; Lavi is laughing at Walker despite focusing on Kanda’s knee; and Kanda is split between telling Lavi off first and smashing a cupcake in Walker’s face second. Lenalee passes him a cupcake and he refrains from smashing it into Walker’s sulking face.
(Walker has low blood sugar. He will have diabetes someday.)
“Lay off!” Kanda grumbles around a bite. Lavi’s hand goes to settle on the threads of Kanda’s sweater. He jolts.
Seeing the cat free and about doesn’t help his situation.
“Who let the cat out,” Kanda demands, shoving it out of the way. It has his car in its mouth now.
“Don’t choke my Yuu-chan, Yuu,” Lavi simpers, hugging the cat to his chest.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t close the lav’s door when I got out,” Lenalee says, which doesn’t leave room for Kanda to curse her.
Walker makes retarded baby sounds with Lenalee, sneaking a taste of a cupcake and smacking his lips in kisses. Lavi manhandles the fuzzball, cooing at it.
Ffff.
“That thing,” Kanda begins to say.
“Yeah?” they say, distracted by all their own stupid cooing.
Lavi promptly puts the cat down on the board and it waddles over the plastic buildings to sneak a taste at the cupcakes, tail curling. And Kanda refuses to think it’s cute.
“It ate my car,” he says dumbly.
“Yuu-chan only took a bite out of it, Yuu-kun,” Lavi says even more dumbly, car parts in his open palm.
So naturally Kanda gets up and locks himself in the lavatory.
*
Once he’s in there for a few minutes, he starts to wonder why, exactly, he’s in there.
He’s not the one bleeding out the -
Well.
There are no words for this. Except they must stop knocking on his door.
“Give me a good damned reason to come out.” He sits on the toilet and crosses his arms.
“I can’t eat all the cupcakes. Really, Kanda,” Lenalee says.
“I can,” Walker says.
“I very much don’t think so,” Lenalee chides.
Kanda smiles.
“C’mon, Yuuuuu.”
Kanda frowns.
“Oh I know! I’ll do your maths for a week!”
Kanda crosses his legs.
“I’ll weed your garden!”
Kanda thinks about it while he can hear Walker chuckling.
“I’ll even clean your car!”
Kanda scoffs. “I’ve already cleaned the vomit off of it without your help.”
“But ya hafta admit it’s kinda ugly,” Walker says.
“That’s ‘cause Yuu is too uppity for the gorgey one, Allen,” Lavi says.
“You two are being silly. Kanda only drives the ugly one because he pays for it with his own money.”
Silence.
“Um, Kanda, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” Lenalee says, knocking on the door again.
“Hmph,” he says.
“I’ll leave you the scary-faced cupcakes?” she offers.
He considers it for a second before re-crossing his legs. In short, playing them like this is fun.
Not that he’s really playing them. He surmises he’s owed them this much all along.
Lavi knocks and whines. “We can’t play without you. You’re the one who makes Life interesting.”
Kanda can hear Walker scoffing and Lenalee nodding along.
“I swear, Kanda, baby. And it’s your turn, anyway,” Lavi continues.
He is talking about that dumbass game that Kanda is totally failing. He is making Kanda a pawn in his own games. He is a bastard.
And here Kanda was thinking Lavi wasn’t being a bastard for once.
He springs up and opens the door nonetheless.
“We’ll see how I make your life interesting,” Kanda says, flexing his arm.
*
Walker falls back laughing again as Lavi fesses up another English banknote. Lenalee makes it her mission to count the banknotes and arrange them in a nice pile for Kanda.
Now, this is Life.
Kanda spins and moves his new black car (which is the white car he had taken from Walker and colored with a black marker that Lavi was very against giving up. Walker is using a yellow car because he is full of fucking sunshine.) He lands on a payday. The game’s bank pays him and Lavi remains quiet.
“Say my name,” Kanda says softly.
Lavi purses his lips.
Walker has his turn, then Lavi, and it’s around Lenalee’s turn when Lavi whines, “Yuuuu.”
Kanda holds his hand out for another banknote. Lavi hugs his wallet. “Isn’t it enough that I had to put my Yuu-chan in the lavatory again for you? All aloney-on-his-owney?”
Kanda leaves his hand out. He holds up three fingers.
Lavi shakes his head. “That was just one, you rotten cheat.”
Kanda holds up another finger. “Four.”
“But I only said your name once!”
“That Damned Cat has my name.”
“So!”
“So I can never tell anymore; you abuse it, I earn the royalties.”
Lavi raises his eyebrows. “Does this mean I can get the royalties for all the times you’ve cockblocked me?”
Silence.
Lavi must run to save his life.
*
Standing by the lavatory door again, Kanda practically kicks it down and Lenalee has to hold him back.
He rounds on them. “Don’t listen to that bastard.”
“Oh I dunno. He was painfully serious,” Walker says. Kanda struggles when Lenalee tries to hold him back from throwing his body through the door.
“Calm down, Lenalee, you don’t want to aggravate it,” Walker whispers. Kanda turns around to tear his head off. Lenalee steps in between them, strong enough to deflect Kanda’s premeditated blow.
“Oh shit, did I leave my wallet out there, Allen?” Lavi says against the door.
“Um.” Walker rushes off to the sitting room.
“Get out here so I can gut you, Bookman,” Kanda hisses.
The cat hisses back, scratching at the door.
Lenalee laughs and Kanda glares at her. She coughs into a fist. Walker comes hurrying back with the wallet. Kanda easily takes it from him. Walker makes a wah-ing sound; Lenalee steps in again.
“Good God if I ever did have children, I do hope none of them would take after either of you prats,” she says, frowning and taking a nicked cupcake from Walker. She takes a bite and walks away.
Kanda looks at Walker. They share an inquisitive look.
“Er,” Walker says.
Kanda follows him back to the sitting room.
*
They finish the game without Lavi, the nice stack of bills in Kanda’s pocket.
Lavi will owe him the rest later.
In fact.
Kanda should take a few more out of Lavi’s wallet.
For insurance.
Lenalee sings along with Walker to that song Lily Allen was singing while Lavi was in the hospital a week ago; they’re pretending to be married in the game, gleeful over their success in contrast to Kanda’s or Lavi’s.
Kanda finishes up his reverie and says, “Walker, do you know how to pick a lock?”
Walker stops singing in that schoolboy I-can-try-making-it-as-a-singer tone, grinning.
*
“Just because I’m teaching you something does not mean I approve,” he is saying moments later, Lenalee’s hairpin in the doorknob. He does some fiddling.
Kanda’s groin seems to lift into his stomach. He says, “Hmph,” to keep up appearances.
“Because. It’s like. You’re an absolute horror to have around,” Walker says.
Right.
“Not that you’re truly horrid.”
Right.
“You do have your valuable qualities.”
“Right. I have a brain and you can pick locks. I wonder what this means.”
Walker does a trick and the door unlocks. Lavi doesn’t seem to notice.
Kanda gives him a pointed glare and Walker rolls his eyes.
“Have a nice day,” Walker says like a flight attendant, and Kanda could stick that pin right up his ass.
He opens the door and closes it just as swiftly.
Lavi is sitting on the edge of the tub, leg up, nail lacquer in hand.
Kanda raises an eyebrow, arms akimbo. “What have we here.”
“What. I got bored,” Lavi says. “You arrived just in time.”
Kanda raises a finger and Lavi mirrors it in come-hither fashion. “You have my wallet.”
Kanda raises another finger. He approaches Lavi. He arranges it so he is standing in between Lavi’s legs.
“Took you long enough.”
Kanda raises another. He lowers himself, looking up at Lavi, and Lavi spreads his legs further, Kanda’s knees hitting the rug.
“Uhhh.”
“What now,” Kanda says, unzipping and dipping his hand into Lavi’s -
“I’m gonna get my money back, right?” Lavi lets out a puff of air, tongue licking the corner of his lips, licking the piercing. Kanda hardens all the way.
Kanda pauses. He smiles. “Sure. Sure. Just as long as I get - ” He lowers his lips to Lavi’s tip - “Mine.”
They do not come out of the lavatory for a very long time.
And, if you’re curious, the kitten is sleeping in the sink.