Title: Breakwater
Chara/Pairs: Allen/Lavi with a wee bit of Lenalee
Warnings: Confusions abound; choppy, choppy scenes. ./.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Rewritten (major change OTL;;;) birthday fic for Sheilaluv
1.
Lavi remembered well.
He started his journey with Panda in hope of seeing new things, leaving old things. Panda promised him knowledge. He promised Panda his loyalty –that he would (will) never turn his back once he decided he wanted a future as a Bookman. There was no out. It was both freedom and imprisonment he never knew before.
.
A Bookman absorbs, absorbs, absorbs and imparts only when the moment is right. It's an absolute clause –taken to his heart, stamped to the marrow of his bones. No hyperbole. No hysteria.
.
And he knew, investing your hope on someone who would die—change, taken over, disappear, whatever—was foolish. It would someday drive the wicked end of the matter right into his heart –no matter what excuses, dilly-dallying he teased and played coy shield with.
(He had a heart. A concept he still learned to accept, but no less true).
But, how, how, how could Lavi resist when someone was so eager to reach, so eager to help? So everything that that someone didn't even has the notion to spare himself a little of that help?
.
He stabs Rhode. He stabs himself.
Right.
Into.
His.
Heart
.
Lavi wonders whether the revelation would finally snuff a little of that blinding light off the kid.
Because, really, he already knew. There just no fucking way someone could be that intense, that full of good meaning without something wrong in his head.
Whether or not 'something wrong in his head' had anything to do with a Noah was relatively not important.
Not as important as the fact that Lavi was a—albeit a Bookman shaped one—fucking furniture in the room where Cross handed Allen his fucked-up-life-that-had-just-to-be-fucked-once-more on a fucking silver platter.
.
.
2.
When Allen approached him, he did it with no preamble, no feigned emotions.
He asked. Just so.
"You've known it all along, Lavi?"
Lavi pretended to read, flipped the yellowing pages of his precious book.
And there must be a cue somewhere, because he tipped his book down after several beats of silence.
He lifted his eyes to meet Allen's.
Grey.
The iciest shade of winter.
"How do you think I'll answer that?" Lavi retaliated. An unspoken 'I'm a Bookman' was lost somewhere between the words.
Allen wasn't naïve, far from it. But the kid was so trusting beyond measure once you got into him (or he got into you, whichever came first). A kind of disease, perhaps. A selective pandemic. Something to do with 'something wrong in his head'.
"I don't know Lavi," Allen said, still an odd semblance of calm.
The kid was just a few steps from his perch on the sofa.
Anyone who stayed in Black Order more than three days knew Lavi could almost always be founded in the library sans missions, sleep, poking at Kanda, and three meals a day. Allen's visit reeked of purpose.
The ends of Lavi's mouth twitched up into a smile.
"In case the poor fellow escapes your notice. There is an empty, inviting, fluffy, striped—although I prefer flower patterns, pity we don't have any—sofa there. Sits 'sprout'"—Lavi gestured to the sofa adjacent to his—"and maybe after that we can talk."
.
.
3.
Allen's face goes from crumpled to blank to wretched to a small, disturbingly not fake 'I'm fine' smile once he sees Lenalee and Johny. The two not even awake to watch.
.
4.
Allen sought Lavi out, ergo the kid became his responsibility.
Did it matter? He didn't want it to matter; but the kid sought him out, not Lenalee, not Kanda, not Komui, not even friggin' General Cross. That must mean something; something that mattered. Or he could be overanalyzing thing (again) when in fact, it all tumbled down to a kid with 'something wrong in his head' asking 'you've known it all along, Lavi?' to a Bookman.
Allen was on a class of his own, really.
Lavi's smile segued into a lopsided grin. "But you took it rather well," he said, had no use of tact at the moment. It was meant to be a praise and he made it sounded like one.
A line of amusement formed on Allen's face. "You know, when you think of something so hard and you can't solve the problem even after that much thinking, you'd be better off not thinking about it."
Lavi took in the sight before him. Grey eyes—no color like it, at least not on anyone's eyes—vivid among the destruction and dust and crumbling dimensions.
His fingers itched to do something, to write. He settled to thumbing the pages of the book in his hand, forgotten now.
"Yeah? Then why not give me a benefit of the doubt? Positive thinking and all? Bookmen aren't all knowing, you know."
Allen hitched an eyebrow. "I gave you one. I asked, remember?"
"Right. 'You've known it all along, Lavi?'" he mimicked, dour, mocking. "According to the correct use of grammar to ask someone, shouldn't it be, technically, 'Have you known all along, Lavi?' to be a, you know, valid question?"
"Urgh. Now you're just being difficult."
.
.
5.
If he had his way at all, this conversation should never happen in the first place. This was yet another proof that he's just another pawn for the universe –to be played, and someday cast aside like a ragdoll. No consideration for the human heart whatsoever.
.
.
6.
"You are one big emotional retard, Lavi." Lenalee raises her hands in exasperation.
Lavi just stands there, purposely not thinking; pretending Lenalee has had not just hit a bit too close to home. He is very capable of analyzing and drawing conclusion out of his own person, thankyouverymuch. But there's a wide gap between feelings and actions that he'd much rather not cross.
"You and Allen both, really," Lanalee huffs.
There's little left of his dignity as a Bookman as it is.
.
7.
He could almost hear it when Kanda was thinking. (The swordman rarely think. As a fact, that's what made it easier to tell when Kanda was in the midst of one).
On the contrary, only few, select people could read Allen's expression and he wasn't one of them. So when the kid smiled and bounced back his every caustic remark like ever when the world should fall apart, he reacted in kind –in stride.
"Oh, come on, Sprout. Don't ask me something you know I can't give an answer to," he stated, defeated.
"It's Allen, douche. Fine, then don't speak."
But this –this was a game. In which none—not even them—understood the rules. He should like to pretend there were no set rules at all, although that ship had sailed and left him bound down to uncertainty and insecurity (fuck. shitshitshit.)
Lavi had had once not understood, why human did this so much. But there was a language here –the press of lips, sliding of tongues, none within the territory of his lexicon of familiarity but spoke far more than words ever did nonetheless.
.
.
8.
Lenalee would have laughed if she knew. Giving him a knowing look, maybe with a leer thrown in. 'See?' she'd say. 'I just know it.'
Yeah, right. And Panda would throw him away, abandon him on the sidewalk eventually.
A matter of time, really.
He just wished it would happen on someday far, far away from this moment.
Something must be very, very wrong in his head, too.
.
.
END