Allen didn't know how long he stayed in his room, thinking over the encounter he'd just had. It was far from a beautiful experience, but it was far better than he'd come to expect lately and what he said about Allen holding onto who he was . . .

Almost against his will, Allen felt a swell of warm happiness rising in his stomach.

Well, if Kanda said it would be alright, then surely it would be! Any questions he might have had about what was morally right for him to do in this situation were now swept away with this acknowledgment from his supposed-to-be partner.

And since Lavi served Kanda too, then he couldn't get too upset at Allen for doing something that he had permission to do. That, too!

With his newly granted permission to look into what he could of himself, Allen jauntily left his quarters and headed to what was quickly becoming his favorite room in the mansion, the library. His feet carried him to the room with absolutely no conscious thought, allowing Allen's mind to wander as his eyes gazed around the now familiar hallways.

He doubted Lavi would just leave a notebook or other writing about Allen specifically in the library - if that existed, it would probably be in the basement - but perhaps some information on how he was brought back to life?

The library was the place for books and from Allen's previous trips to the place, it contained a fair amount of books on each topic. Allen's feet transferred from the hard wood of the hallway to the comparatively softer wood of the library room and Allen's eyes drifted around the variety of shelving structures.

He needed to decide where he was going to start looking. Despite the fact that it was an upscale library and how well kept the rest of the mansion was, the library had no strict organization to it.

That Allen found out the first opportunity he took to spend time there recreationally.

Sure, there were shelves and books were on them . . . books were also on the floor. In piles. And on the scant tables in the room. In piles.

He supposed he should be grateful for the tables even being there, otherwise the books might be in the piles on the floor and the piles on the floor were - no joke - taller than him while he was standing.

He felt the urge to check to see if Lavi was buried in one of them. Regardless, Allen really hoped he didn't have to dig through those.

To add even more confusion to the lack of organization, the bookshelves, while tidy enough themselves and seemingly having all similar books together (that weren't on desks or on the floor), didn't have anything written on them. The shelves, that is.

Nothing to identify what the books they held in each section were about, which would have helped immensely. There was no way to tell by just looking at them which subjects they housed, so Allen had to check the spines to learn about the shelf's contents.

Thinking that it would behoove him to try reading a book on bringing people back to life, Allen stepped towards the closest shelf and proceeded to look for books relating to death. He saw a shelf of cooking books, a large amount of healing books, and some anatomy books following that.

Allen may have had to open one of the books to know what "anatomy" was; his knowledge of complex words was a little bit spotty, weird as it seemed. At first, the silver haired boy was excited, thinking that these anatomy books might be able to help him, but that quickly cooled off.

Anatomy was about the structure of either living humans' bodies or the bodies of the dead; he doubted it would have something written on someone who was both. He put the book back and glanced at the next bit of shelving, which he promptly skipped and went over to the next section; he recognized it as the gardening books he'd thoroughly looked over during an earlier trip.

Things went on like that, with him stopping at each shelf and evaluating its contents. Once or twice more, he would recognize a section he''d looked over well enough before, but most of the library was still new to him.

Allen hadn't been feeling hopeful before starting his search that it would be over quickly, but he couldn't help feeling tired after having gone through three-quarters of a library and with probably half an hour behind him. That's when he found himself standing in front of a very familiar section of books: the monster species anthologies.

He was about to pass by that section too, when he noticed something he hadn't noticed before.

All of the shelves were so full that any spots where a book was missing really stood out, making Allen think that the piles of books in the rest of the library was overflow. It was only after going through the rest of the library and identifying this fact that Allen was able to realize that a book was missing from the monster section.

Not one that he'd read, the spot had been open the last time he'd been there, he just hadn't realized that a related book wasn't there.

. . .

He couldn't help but wonder where it was.

The next morning, Allen was woken up by the sun coming in through the window, Allen having forgotten to close the curtains the previous night. Since it was pitch black outside every night, it was easy to do that.

At least he wasn't as sensitive to the sun the way Lavi was and the brightness of it was lessened by the light fog that seemed to be ever-present each day.

Allen groggily pulled himself out of his large bed, went over to the window for a short look outside, and then changed into a new outfit for the day. It was the semblance of a routine that he'd somewhat settled into in the time he'd been there. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he always wanted to get a quick look outside each morning when he woke up.

After changing, Allen found himself faced with the problem he's dealt with basically every day since he'd woken up in the lab, what to do for that day. Barring perhaps the first day, Allen had no particular purpose to his days. No hobbies besides reading and few ideas on how to answer the many questions he'd had.

In lieu of finding a concrete answer on what to do for the whole day, Allen turned to the book he'd placed beside himself on the bed before going to sleep late last night and laid back down on the bed. He hadn't really managed to read more than the first page of the book before he'd felt himself getting tired, but he was excited to read what was in it.

The book was the only one he'd managed to find that related directly to bringing back the dead, which was strange; he'd felt sure that there would be more, given the situation.

. . . Perhaps they were in those piles.

Anyway, the book was a large, black one with dark vines woven into the cover that wound around to the spine. On the front of the book, the title was simply: The Lost and Dark Art of Necromancy.

The first page of the book didn't say much about how necromancy was supposed to work, but Allen did feel it gave a good introduction to what Necromancy is. Apparently, necromancy was any kind of magic used to summon the spirits of the dead.

The most well known use of it was to raise them from death, but Allen was surprised to read that it is most often used by Necromancers to communicate with the dead in order to tell the future or get further information about past events.

A person's soul, once recovered in this way, could rarely be placed into a body that was not their own.

"Ahem." Some aggressively cleared their throat to get his attention and they certainly did that.

"AH!" Allen cried out in surprise as he toppled off the bed, crashing painfully onto the floor. Groaning and massaging the shoulder that got the brunt of the fall, Allen peeked his head over the bed to see who was standing in the open doorway, not surprised in the least to see that it was Kanda.

Kanda glanced intensely at the book of Necromancy that Allen had dropped on the bed, before glancing disinterestedly towards the boy. "Get up, we're going down for breakfast." He turned on his heel and made to leave.

"Uh, wait! Why?" Allen struggled to stand up and call out to him before the taller man left.

It worked, Kanda's steps halted and he looked over his shoulder. "Don't tell me you've eaten already." The dark eyes looked him up and down critically and Allen had to fight the instinctual urge to hide back behind the bed. "You don't look like you've been awake that long."

"I-I haven't." Allen found himself answering before he really knew what he thought about it. "But why are we eating breakfast together today? We haven't before."

It took Allen a second to realize Kanda was looking at him like he was an idiot for what he'd just said. It looked so similar to how he always looked at him! "I said that we were going to spend several hours a day together starting today. You do remember that, right?" The demon reminded him.

No, he hadn't remembered that and Allen blushed at the reminder. "Oh, right! Sorry, Kanda, I'll be down in a minute!"

"No, you won't. We're walking down there together right now. Hurry up." The demon ordered. This time, he really went off down the hall, leaving Allen to stumble hurriedly after him to keep up.

Breakfast was initially not the . . . easiest affair to get through. Allen was used to going down to the kitchen and seeing what there was to eat or otherwise sometimes finding a meal put together by Lavi before the vampire went to sleep.

Kanda instead stopped when they got to the dining room and sat at the large table. That brought Allen's attention to the contents of the table. At the head of the table, where Kanda had sat himself down, was a large bottle that looked like it should hold alcohol and a delicate glass goblet for him to pour it in. Behind them was a large but elegant plate with a kind of meat in sauce on it.

On the opposite end of the lengthy table was a beautiful plate and bowl and set of cutlery. The plate was small and held a kind of roast meat, while the larger bowl had a thick orange soup with red flecks in it. A glass goblet of water was next to it.

Allen was already looking between the place set out for Kanda and the place presumably set out for him in confusion. Why were they so far apart? Well. He collected himself, straightening his shoulders. That won't do.

And with that, Allen proceeded to that end of the table and picked up the plate in one hand, utensils in the other. For once, Allen moved swiftly, getting down to the other side of the table and placing both handfuls onto the spot next to Kanda.

The demon, who was pouring a deep red liquid that smelled strongly of alcohol, stopped to look at him with slightly wide eyes as Allen went back for the rest of it. The boy picked up the bowl and cup and placed them with the plate and utensils, then sat down in the seat himself.

Allen hadn't even had the chance to have a bite of the food he knew from experience would be tasty, before he felt the prickling of eyes on him. He didn't have to guess where it came from and looked up to see Kanda looking at him in curiosity with a dark eyebrow raised.

"What?" Allen asked.

"What are you doing?" Kanda asked, sounding incredulous but not mad.

"Moving my food." Allen responded simply. "It was too far away." So saying, he picked up a utensil and spooned up some of the speckled soup. The food Lavi sometimes left out for him was always better than the food Allen put together himself and true to form, the soup was delicious.

"It wasn't, that's where you're supposed to sit." Kanda informed him.

"No, it's not." Allen disagreed, but made sure to keep his voice light. He didn't want to sound confrontational and invite an argument like the first one they'd had. Then he added, "I'm supposed to be your 'lover', aren't I? My place is next to you."

That's how he thought it should be, anyway. He didn't know much about the topic, but it felt right.

Kanda looked at him for a moment longer, both eyebrows raised now. He looked surprised. The demon looked like he was going to say something for a minute but instead huffed and turned his attention to his drink instead.

Allen smiled lightly, taking it as the permission it was. He started to eat, too. They ate their food quietly for a time before Allen found himself curious again.

"What are we eating, Kanda?" The boy asked, turning again to the older man.

"That depends." Kanda replied with his eyes closed, placing his glass down. "You are eating beef tripe soup with lamb. I'm having wine and human meat that's been preserved since my last hunt." The demon nonchalantly spoke.

Allen's breath caught in his throat violently and he could only be glad that he hadn't been eating or drinking anything at the moment. "You're eating human meat?" He repeated, his voice not even attempting to hide how startled he was by this information.

"Yes." Kanda stated, opening his eyes to give Allen a look. "I'm aware you don't know much about demons but we feed on humans."

"I-but-" He couldn't get anything out, his mind roiling too hard. He must have looked truly pathetic because Kanda actually took the initiative to speak again.

"You're aware that vampires feed off of humans too, but you don't have a problem with him." Kanda pointed out.

"I-Well, yes, but that's-" That's blood. It was not a winning argument, Allen realized, but he couldn't think of another one. It wasn't completely different, the different ways of feeding on humans. The thought of both made Allen a little uncomfortable, all the same.

But there was something so much more visceral and upsetting to eating human flesh that knowing Lavi drank their blood couldn't achieve. It was . . .

"Couldn't you eat something else?" Allen asked weakly, his voice trembling with his effort to get his emotions under control.

"Look, Beansprout, I can't eat anything besides humans for very long. I can eat the meat of other monsters, but not for an extended period of time. Creature meat not only tastes bad, but it doesn't have the nutrients I need to not die of some sort of deficiency. Now if that's all, get back to eating. We've got more to do today."

And Allen tried, he really did, but even as he forced himself to go back to eating, he couldn't take his eyes off of Kanda's plate. He flinched every time the demon went for another bite. Given his reactions, it wasn't surprising that it didn't take Kanda long to notice that the boy wasn't okay.

What was surprising was the other man's reaction. Upon realizing that Allen wasn't going to be alright with this anytime soon, the demon put down his fork mid-bite and sighed deeply. Then with only a hint of reluctance, he tipped his plate and slid the remaining meat into his goblet, topped it off with more wine, and chugged the whole thing down on one go.

The silver haired boy was left staring with his mouth open as the demon put down the empty glass with a huff and wiped his mouth. Allen was just opening and closing his mouth, trying to find his words when the demon spoke for him.

"Happy now?" He asked pointedly, his dark eyes glancing at him.

"Huh?" Allen let out, unintelligently.

Then the demon actually rolled his eyes at him, of all things and said something even more unbelievable! "I did that for you, so you had better appreciate it and actually finish your own food."

Oh. He got it now.

Kanda . . . Kanda had thought of a way to finish his food quickly and in a way where he wouldn't see the meat . . . so Allen would be comfortable. That . . . he hadn't expected that. It was thoughtful.

Allen felt that warm feeling in his stomach again, briefly before he again tried to ignore its presence. "Thank you, Kanda." Allen found himself smiling at the demon as he thanked him.

Now it was Kanda's turn to stare at his lover with his mouth hanging open, before awkwardly clearing his throat. "Just make sure to eat all of your breakfast so that I didn't do that for nothing." He ordered, his voice softer than before and his face undeniably embarrassed.

Allen smiled widely.

"Yes, Kanda."