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vilnius2008-04-29 05:33 pm
heartbeats) wrote in vilnius2008-04-29 05:33 pm
Entry tags:
not enough to kill me; PART TWO
WHO?! Kanda and Ravi!
WHEN?! Like maybe early November? Before the ball, maybe two weeks after Ravi and Allen's arrival in Babylon? Before Kanda knows that rhode is one of the Noah, for sure.
WHAT?! This has been sitting, unfinished, on my hard drive for literally months. I really liked this log (okay, I loved this log), but Erin and I couldn't post it because it was never finished. So I guess I'm putting it here. ERIN IF YOU EVER SEE THIS AND WANT ME TO TAKE IT DOWN I TOTES WILL. OH ALSO AS A WARNING, this thing is massive. No, seriously, it is thirty-five pages single-spaced in word, hence why I am so intent on letting someone besides me read the blessed thing.
THE FIRST HALF OF THIS THING IS HERE.
He fell asleep waiting for him. In his bed. And left his coat afterward. Kanda’s vision is swimming with the sheer number of boundaries he’s set that Ravi has managed to barrel through in the relatively limited time since Kanda left the apartment this morning. He’s certain that Ravi does it on purpose, of course, because there’s no way that one person can push so many of Kanda’s buttons simultaneously (unless, of course, they’re General Theodore; but that’s a thought for another day and time).
Kanda’s gotten his breathing under control now, but he slides down the wall anyway, sitting uncomfortably on the kitchen floor and looking up almost bewilderedly at Ravi. He pushes his bangs out of his eyes, not meeting the Bookman’s single good one, as he grumbles,
"I am not tense. Keep your naps to your own bed, you idiot."
This is the most embarrassed that Kanda can remember having been in a while, though if it’s because of his complete inability to carry out any threats he’s made, the kittens bouncing haphazardly and now somewhat indignantly around the room, or the fact that Ravi took a nap on his bed and now he’s standing over Kanda in the kitchen, he isn’t sure.
In his smile there's something even he can't hide: it flickers like light reflecting from the blade of a knife, cutting through the air, cutting through the awkwardness, cutting straight to the heart of the situation: "Y'know, boss, there's chairs for this kinda thing." He isn't making matters better. It's probably because he's shocked and somewhat satisfied that he's gotten that ridiculously cute expression from Kanda Yuu of all God's creations.
And that's precisely why he needs to make it worse.
As quickly as his smile appeared, it's gone in a jack-rabbit flash. "Sittin', I mean. Kitchen floor's not too comfortable for tense muscles, y'know? Leaves ya open to a cat-attack, too." Frankly, being anywhere leaves Kanda open to a cat-attack.
Because he's ever-so-helpful, Ravi sucks down the rest of his tea in a diligent, unlady-like manner and leaves the cup on the counter. When it's out of his hands, he wraps the exorcist's coat around his neck like it's his scarf, doubling over the headband. Eventually, he's going to get too warm to wear it like this, but for now it frees his hands.
"Hey, boss!" he barks, still cheerful as a puppy, advancing at the slow speed of someone who is cautious about picking dangerously rabid creatures. "I'll carry ya!" Although he's likely smart enough not to lay his hands on Kanda and pick him up, the threat is there all the same.
The combination of the infuriating face that the junior Bookman made for a split second and the threat of being picked up – by Ravi, of all people – is enough to kick Kanda out of his funk, and he scrambles back to a standing position, glaring in a way that clearly demonstrates that he’s personally affronted by the very idea of it. Embarrassed or not, he still has his dignity, he reassures himself, and he narrows his eyes at Ravi, hands searching around him for something blunt that he can wield as a weapon if he decides he needs to.
"You’ll do nothing of the sort, idiot." His cheeks are threatening to flush with the ridiculousness of this whole situation – as soon as he can, he determines that he has to talk to someone about fixing Mugen. "And I told you, my muscles are not tense!" He gets tenser as he snaps this at Ravi, but hypocrisy and untruths have always been a specialty of Kanda’s and he isn’t going to start paying attention to it now.
He crosses his arms frustratedly as Ravi advances, making a face that says I do not trust where this conversation is going!, and grumbles, "Stop moving closer, idiot, I still have to think of what to do about breakfast and I can’t do it if I have to keep an eye on you the whole time." It’s unfortunately true; Kanda isn’t much of a multi-tasker.
The threat isn't what stops Ravi -- it's the confession. He blinks his eye once at Kanda, perfectly paused, both palms still in the air half as if he's in the act of mid-grab -- as if he really was about to snatch Kanda up regardless of what the other actually wanted.
Did he...
Did he realize what he said? It's tantamount to saying I can't breathe and think at the same time, you moron!
One of the safest (yet at times most dangerous) things about Kanda Yuu is the fact he isn't much of a thinker. He's cunning, sure, and ruthless when a job needs to be done -- it isn't that he's stupid (he's smarter than Allen!), but he isn't too big on the act of thinking.
When Ravi lowers his arms to his sides, he tips his head to the other side (the earrings shift again; a kitten's head turns in interest once more) and his smile lights up, bright and sudden like a fire on flashpaper. There's a sort of cheerful haphazardness in his voice when he bravely offers himself, "Don'tcha worry, Yuu! Don'tcha worry at all! Breakfast isn't an issue, yeah? Let me handle it! C'mon! Go rest your tense muscles!" He's not having any of that 'They're not tense!' denial. "Take a nap~ on the couch~ or in the bed~ take a break~"
Bookmen know a lot of things. In their time in the world, they doubtlessly have read several recipe and cook books and know a lot of really excellent combinations for food.
However, you probably can't trust a Bookman like Ravi to do it right. It was just asking for something like I knew it only called for a tablespoon of crushed hot peppers, but I thought a cup would be more interesting! What do you mean you feel like you're going to die? Come on, Allen, cheer up! Maybe your Secret Santa will take the time to buy something really nice for you now that you're confined to a bed!
"Like hell," Kanda grumbles, relaxing slightly as he falls back into the familiar routine of [Ravi says something absurd], [rebuke], repeat as necessary. He moves toward the stove, muttering to himself as he pulls out the ingredients necessary to make his breakfast. With a quick, assessing glance over his shoulder, he seems to compare the probable damage if Ravi’s allowed to run free and bored in the apartment versus if he’s given a task to accomplish. Finally, kitting his brows together in a frustrated scowl, he barks,
"If you really want to help, put some water on to boil and help me cut up this onion."
If he’s going to have help, he’d much rather it be on his own terms.
That is probably one of the most big-thinker-like decisions Kanda has made in a long time. Then again, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that, for all their likenesses to cats, Bookmen really aren't that much different from bored, destructive Labrador puppies. The only difference is once they tear the pages out of books, they put them together in a completely new, more accurate book. "Sure, sure!" he chirps, pleased and chipper. Giving him something to do is important: it doesn't seem to matter what the task is more than that he's being given something.
Any attention is good attention.
"I'd ask where ya kept the pots 'n pans, but I guess I found it already." Well, it would have been difficult not to: he opened every drawer. While he's talking about it, he's already got the pot and is filling it with water. If there's anything about this place, it's that it's convenient.
Hey, boss, I wonder where it's coming from, is what he's thinking, but making Kanda Yuu so paranoid he won't eat or drink is probably unwise -- because he probably will stop eating and drinking. Best to leave those thoughts with the thinkers. "Here, here, give me a knife~"
Surely that isn't going to have negative consequences!
Luckily for all parties involved, Kanda hasn’t thought to ask where the water is coming from, or what the "refrigerator" that keeps his food cold is, or how the stove works. He simply knows what he was told when he got here, and he takes it as providence that things work in a way that makes things easier for him. This lack of the spirit of scientific questioning is probably either a result of a battle-learned pragmatism or a complete lack of creativity, but either way it makes his life a whole lot simpler.
He shoots Ravi yet another quick, appraising look, before taking the kitchen knife that he’s pulled out of the drawer and offering it to the junior Bookman, handle-first. "Don’t do anything stupid, it’s new so it’s still sharp." His warning is not due particularly to concern for Ravi’s well-being, but rather his desire not to have blood all over the kitchen floor whenever his roommate does get home – not to mention, he wouldn’t put it past the two kittens to develop a taste for the stuff and seek more out.
He’s pulled out his new rice cooker and reaches around Ravi to fill it with water, all business; although he’s certainly probably not as knowledgeable about cooking as the other boy, he is functional and hungry.
Ravi understands these kinds of things. It would be unheard of for Kanda to do something like clean up the blood on the floor. It would also definitely be an inconvenience for him if Ravi does manage to cut himself, because a junior Bookman who is bleeding tends to bleed everywhere and you can't make someone who is bleeding everywhere pick up after himself -- it will only make him bleed more, which defeats the purpose. Then Kanda would have to deal with the kittens -- two! Not just one: one would be manageable, but two is simply insane! -- and an acquired taste for blood, and nothing but bad things c--
Well.
That's all been thought of before. On several occasions, probably.
When he takes the handle of the knife, it's as if his hand isn't there at all and no weight has been added -- like gravity hasn't yet kicked in and ownership of the knife belongs to nothing but air. This is not because he's reluctant to take it, but because if it's still sharp, that means it has a chance of still cutting Kanda if he's not careful. There's no apathy in the gesture: he doesn't want to hurt Kanda on accident.
When he's holding the knife, he flips it between his fingers to get a better grip, turning his head slightly, both brows raised, and mouth curved into a thoughtful shape as he watches Kanda's hand reach around him. "Y'know, boss, I could fill it for ya." There's no need for all that reaching!
Either way -- it's all right: Ravi doesn't mind.
"An' don't worry, I won't make ya eat my blood. Hey, hey, boss, d'ya want the onions cut big or really tiny? Size matters~ well, according to some, it doesn't, so I guess it just 'pends on your preference!"
The worst part is Kanda might not be the kind of horrible person to get the embarrassing references.
The worst worst part is he definitely would have no problem saying the same thing to someone like Allen.
It hadn't even occurred to Kanda to ask Ravi to fill the rice cooker for him, but he shrugs the suggestion off with the practiced ease of someone who has thought of after-the-fact explanations for his behavior a thousand times before. "I gave you a job to do, and I don't want to distract you from it." Never mind that his reaching is probably distracting Ravi far more than simply asking for help would have; as far as he's concerned, people should do with tasks they are given without assistance or complaint. It's as if they're back out on a mission, and Ravi is tasked with trying to figure out the location of the missing innocence, and Kanda doesn't want to distract him by asking for help holding off an incoming akuma. There is no sense of differences in situation, here; for the Japanese exorcist, all of his reactions are the same, whether he's on a life-or-death mission or simply making breakfast in his apartment with Ravi.
Luckily for both of them, the obvious reference goes flying straight over Kanda's head - or if he's registered the double-entendre, he's choosing to ignore it.
"Medium-size. And try to make them sort of asymmetrical, it makes them hold in flavor better." He learned this tidbit on the road from Mari, who in spite of her imposing appearance made a mean pot of vegetable stew. He'd thought it foolish drivel at the time, but anything to sound like he knows what he's talking about.
The fact Kanda won't acknowledge it is the exact reason why Ravi says it. There's no need to worry about bad jokes around someone who isn't capable of seeing a bad joke for what it is: he's free to make as many as he wants. Kanda is right when he gets the impression Ravi knows a secret: Ravi does, and he has just that many more hidden from people like Kanda and Allen.
The worst part is he thinks he's clever.
And sometimes, he is.
His answer is "Sure!" even though he isn't sure how valid Kanda's statement is. Ravi knows better than to argue. When he's gotten his instructions (no matter how vague "medium-sized" is), he lays the onion down on the counter and begins to cut.
In some part, some of him is still tempted to pick the onion up and cut the slices between his fingers -- but he's not willing to test the extent of how much Kanda actually cares about Ravi's blood on the floor, or if he actually cares at all.
"Hey, boss," he begins again, cutting as nonchalant as could be. "Did I ever tell ya the story 'bout the guy who died eleven years ago?"
Kanda is measuring out scoops of rice; Ravi’s comment peaks his interest a little bit, because he knows that when Ravi starts out a story like that that it’s going somewhere. This is the most difficult facet of the junior Bookman for Kanda to understand: sometimes he says things without a point, that don’t matter, and then other times he says things which not only have a specific point in mind but also have merit, and Kanda is never really sure when he should be tuning the other boy out.
Putting the lid of the rice cooker down and turning it on, Kanda turns and leans back almost lazily, his elbows resting heavily on the counter and supporting his weight.
"Lots of people died eleven years ago, idiot, you’ll have to be more specific." He doesn’t think that he’s heard this story before, thinks he would remember; but he can’t let Ravi know that he remembers things that he tells him, so he sets his mouth in a displeased line and feigns annoyance as he watches him chop the onion.
This is how Kanda interacts with his friends, bizarrely; he's too proud to admit attachment on any level, even if it's only I listen to what you're saying sometimes, which has cost him a number of relationships over the years. As it is, it's probably dumb luck that he managed to meet someone like Ravi, who actually finds joy in Kanda's overreactions and anger.
The chopping is not particularly fast, but it isn't slow -- it has no real rhythm and is as haphazard as the medium-sized pieces, which have nothing to boast except for the fact they are imperfect in size and shape. As he cuts them, Ravi thinks of people and how lots of people have died eleven years ago and how they may as well be slices of onion.
"Yeah, but this one's different, 'cause he didn't actually die -- just his name did! It's 'cause he got involved in that secret, shady side of life -- that one they don't really tell ya 'bout in the church. The kind of side that involves things the police lock ya up for since you're a danger to the public for all kinds'a things, like illegal herbs an' bad drinks an' murders. Kinda like how Allen talks 'bout General Cross, 'cept the murder part." Ravi, for his part, is paying attention to the onion, although his eye slides sideways in an attempt to catch even just a glimpse at what Kanda is looking at while he speaks.
It's curiosity. Ravi knows Kanda Yuu doesn't hate him, but he also isn't sure, when he's not boasting about how well they get along, about how much Kanda likes him. If Ravi has any idea Kanda listens to him and remembers things he's said, he definitely has given no indication in the last two years.
For all his observations, Ravi can be slow and occasionally stupid when it comes to noticing things pertaining to himself.
"Hn? How should I know if you’ve told me that story before?" Ravi hasn’t; Kanda knows it, and really he should just admit that he knows it. "I guess you’ll have to tell it again." It’s this practiced ignorance – ignorance for the sake of pushing people away, really – that the adults used to scold him for as a child, and Linali usually thwacks him on the head with her clipboard when she thinks he’s doing it.
He inclines his head slightly toward Ravi, not really looking at him but keeping his eye trained on something just slightly to the right of his head, like he’s deep in thought about something. Whether it’s friendship or like or not, Kanda couldn’t and probably wouldn’t tell you; after all, it isn’t like Ravi would be trusted to give a straight answer about his feelings, since he’s a Bookman and all, and it isn’t really relevant either way.
He shudders visibly at the mention of General Cross; he has some holdover resentment toward generals.
There are times when we express ourselves in backhanded ways -- when our body language means more than our words; when our silences say more than our sentences; when a letter means more than a lifetime; when I needja for a second means I like you; when I had a good time~ traveling's no worry even that far north, I don't get cold means I thought about you; when the More fun for me means I'll miss you a bit and I'm handling it all right means I wish you were here.
If anyone is a master of this kind of language interpretation, it's a Bookman.
"Well, there's this guy..." In mid-sentence, Ravi pauses and begins to grin. Without realizing it at all, he's stilled his hand and shifts his eye more obviously toward Kanda, tilting his head to get a better look. When it starts like that, it might not be a good sign.
"...his name's Ran. Ran wasn't a bright kid -- got involved in too many things he shouldn't'a got involved in, like 'n underground slave trade an' drug dealin'. Spent a few years like that, doin' nothin' but tradin' women, children, an' drugs. Ran became friends with this guy, Lenny. Ran 'n Lenny were inseparable. Great friends. Did the trade together, did their drugs together. Next thing you know, he's twenty-six an' seven years passed! One day, in a back alley after a bad deal, he sees Lenny kill a guy. That's nothin' new, but afterwards, Lenny kills the guy's dog an' then somethin' clicks. It's like a whole world opened up an' he could see again. It wasn't enough that Lenny just killed the guy 'cause he sold bad drugs, but Lenny killed the dog, too, when it didn't even bare its fangs. It just cowered over its master.
"It's different, he thought, when it's people. Dog's innocent. Just an animal. No more good or evil than'a brick." He pauses there for a second, cutting into the remaining onion, idly chopping smaller pieces before he realizes if he continues like this, he's going to get scolded. "Anyway," he continues, putting the knife down and stretching both of his onion-stained hands in the air. "Ran disappears for like a year an' hides halfway across the continent -- this takes place on the Western continent, by the way -- an' meets a girl. She's great -- her name's Sue, she's blonde, she's fit, she's a li'l bit dumb, but he likes 'em a li'l bit dumb. The only thing wrong with 'er is she's fourteen. They've got a whole love affair goin' on anyway, but she's frustrated 'cause he won't consummate 'cause she's too young. She loves him, he loves her innocence, he loves her dog, too, 'cause it reminds him a li'l bit of the one Lenny killed. She says her brother bought it for 'er. Eventually, she invites 'im over to dinner and says her brother'll be over since she lives with 'im.
"It's like they say, y'know? The world's not big enough to hide one guy for too long. Suddenly, Sue, Ran, an' Lenny are all together, staring at each other over the table, an' Sue's too dumb to get that a different world ago, both of 'em knew each other real well."
There are three things in this world that Kanda can’t wrap his head around: logic puzzles, skeleton keys, and morals of stories. In some ways, they’re all due to the same basic problem; Kanda is determined not to complicate his world by thinking too hard about it. As the Junior Bookman unfolds his tale to Kanda, he notes with gently rising irritation that this is completely typical of conversations with a Bookman; there’s never a straight answer, always a story, always something you have to extract from their words and derive your own meaning from.
To Kanda, that isn’t an answer; it’s dodging one.
When Ravi’s story ends, Kanda moves to take the onions from him and adds them to the boiling water on the stove. "I don’t get what you’re trying to say. Say it plainly." He’s trying to sound commanding, but somehow it comes out as more snappish and petulant than anything else.
Cheerfully, he chirps, "It's not done yet!" As if it matters what Kanda says. "Anyway, so after these guys meet face to face, Lenny gets real mad, right? Ran starts getting dead animals in the mail -- that kinda thing. He gets stabbed by a guy when he's walkin' with Sue. Sue's upset since she found out. Not 'bout her brother and her boyfriend, but about the dead animals an' the stabbing. Ran's afraid Sue's gonna find out about his past and who he was, so he fakes his own death."
Somewhere in between the beginning of his story and the middle, he lets Kanda remove the onions -- but still holds on to the knife, examining it. "She was distraught at the funeral but Lenny was satisfied. Ran's name died eleven years ago, y'know, but he's still livin'. Half a year ago, he returned to the place he 'n Sue used to go in the woods. He surveyed the area -- there were dandelion weeds all over but he didn't mind 'cause they reminded him of her. She showed up! She had a little baby girl and a husband. Her baby girl has to be about seven. He turned and looked at Sue, right, and was kind of surprised. Sue stared at him like she was lookin' right through him. He complimented the baby girl, gave her a dandelion, an' said she looked a lot like her mother. The girl was delighted but Sue didn't say anything. When he was gone, the little girl asked, 'Mom, what's the matter?' Sue responded, 'I thought I saw a ghost.' "
Ravi's hip knocks against the side of the counter when he re-leans against it. He abandons the knife on the counter top and stretches his hands above his head, eye shut and mouth curved up like a cat's smile at the corners of his mouth.
Because Kanda asks him to say it plainly, he says, "I was thinkin' it's not true, y'know, that one cliché -- 'the world's not large enough to hide one man for long'? It's easy to be found, but it's just as easy to disappear." He lifts his left hand, folds it into a fist, and slams it into his right palm. " Wham! Like that. Y'don't even hafta die to be a ghost."
Bookman would have hit him, but not because he was long-winded. It would have been for saying far too much. Without constant supervision, Ravi tends to become more reckless.
Before any further discussion can happen, he opens his eye and the grin that stretches across his mouth is almost predatory -- but it's definitely not predatory like the expression that crosses Allen's face when he's tempted by good food. "Yuuuuu~ when's it gonna be ready?!"
As if chopping onions for Kanda means Ravi deserves to eat.
Kanda’s eyebrows knot in annoyance, grumpily muttering as he adds miso and stirs the soup experimentally, "It’ll be ready when it’s ready. There wasn’t any seaweed when I looked, so I’ve added this green onion and we’ll see what happens." If they’re lucky, it’ll be mediocre; if they aren’t, Kanda’ll kill the first person to complain about it. Easy. As an afterthought, he takes the spoon and takes a rather careless swing at Ravi. "And what have I told you about calling me by my given name?!"
Really. No one but Ravi has called him "Yuu" since well before he ever arrived at the order, and he isn’t really sure what he finds so irritating about it. It’s probably the implied familiarity, the way it advertises that Ravi thinks that they’re friends, that they’re on the same level. Kanda’s instinctive reaction to expressions of camaraderie, however false they may actually be, is to pull away as quickly as he possibly can.
And as far as the story went… "That may have been the case before, where we came from, but it certainly isn’t the case now." There isn’t much that can cause Kanda to actually feel claustrophobic, but the dome is doing a really admirable job of it. "The world is much smaller now. It’s impossible for anyone to disappear, no matter how they want to."
Personally, Kanda’s never really understand the desire to disappear. He’s been driven too long by the urge to keep living, no matter what the cost. If he had any idea about Ravi’s name-changing past and Bookmen’s tendencies to leave an area when their histories are updated, he certainly isn’t thinking about it now. Why would anyone run away from his own life like that? Did he hold his life that cheaply to begin with? It doesn’t make sense.
The rice cooker clicks over, and Kanda absently reaches and opens it, allowing the steam to rise from the machine freely. "Get some bowls, will you?"
Ravi exhales a sharp "Ah!" and bothers to widen his eye and duck as if he truly is shocked Kanda decided to hit him with a spoon. "Boss! Boss!" he stresses quickly, like this blow is the one that is going to end his life. "Don't kill!" is what follows, kind of like giving a command to an exceptionally deadly attack dog.
He lifts his arms to block the hit and tilts his head to the side, eye suddenly squeezed shut as if he expects the force behind the spoon to drive it straight through his skull. Even if his response is over dramatic, it's still a valid concern: sharing space with Kanda is like living with a viper, only it doesn't have any corrosive deadly poison -- it has seven different sets of fangs. The lack of poison is nice, but when you think about it, fourteen needle-sharp teeth don’t seem like a good compromise.
The really cute thing, Ravi notes while peeking like a child under the cover of his right arm like it's a visor, is that Kanda never quite realizes when he's being hypocritical -- and chances are the word doesn't even come anywhere near his head. (Kanda never seemed like the type to have extensive knowledge of the English language.) As far as non-answers go, 'It'll be ready when it's ready' is a pretty good one -- and somewhat intimidating, when you consider whom it's coming from.
When Ravi straightens up, when he rolls his shoulders as if rolling off the sting of pain the spoon brought, when he finds the bowls (sometimes it's hard to keep track when you go through so many cupboards), brings them over, and sets them down near Kanda, he finally answers as if he hadn't fussed about being hit at all. "'Cept the world itself isn't so small -- it's just boxed in!" Like that's anything to be excited about. "The air's stale 'cause it keeps getting reused an' there's no wind to mix it up. That's why everything feels so stuffy." It seems like an elementary explanation, but it's entirely possible Kanda didn't think of it -- and the only reason Ravi is okay with saying it is because there's no way possible even Kanda could convince his body not to breathe even if it meant inhaling stale air that's already been in everyone else's lungs a hundred times over with no atmosphere to purify it. "I dunno, boss..." he begins, sliding one of the bowls a bit closer. "'Bout people not being able to disappear in plain sight. Y'get used to the same faces every day an' it gets easier to think they're always there, y'know?"
The bowl slides closer like Ravi's hand suddenly belongs to an insistent kid who wants to get his meal as soon as possible. His eye lifts to the bland ceiling, as if he hasn't looked at it a hundred times before while lying in Kanda's bed, drifting in and out of a nap. As if the bowl isn't close enough already, without any warning, he nudges it even nearer until it's sitting in front of Kanda and speaks in a voice that's some kind of gentle insistence: "Hey, Yuu-" He pauses, almost like he caught his mistake of using the first name again so soon after being hit for it. "-take a lot of rice, okay?"
Oh. Not quite.
But that meant the bowl he'd been pushing hadn't been intended for himself after all.
It’s lucky for Kanda that he has literally no idea what the word hypocrisy means, as he’s frankly a walking talking example of the phenomenon. As it is, he frowns angrily at Ravi, snapping, "What did I just say about using my first name? Listen when other people talk to you, damn it."
Grabbing the bowl from the other boy, he dishes out a scoop or two of rice and reaches for a second bowl to put his soup into. He opens and closes drawers frustratedly, searching for chopsticks; apparently he doesn’t know the layout of his own kitchen as well as Ravi does. Granted, the other boy has something of an advantage, what with that perfect memory and all, but this is another symptom to Kanda of unwanted, unnecessary familiarity. Finally, he finds them. "Take however much you want, I’ll have the rest later."
He wouldn’t be feeding Ravi in the first place, he reassures himself, if he weren’t sure that the other boy would just take whatever food he wanted anyway, regardless of whether he’d been invited. This is how people who are too familiar with you act, he grumbles to himself. He doesn’t bother to go to the couch in the common room, opting rather to eat his breakfast in the kitchen.
If there’s anyone who knows how fleeting people’s lives can be, it’s Kanda; he’s written other people’s ability to disappear and die as wasteful years ago, but there’s a part of him that acknowledges Ravi’s point. Over the years, it’s gotten easier and easier for Kanda to get used to people being around him – which made it unnerving how uncomfortable it could be when they weren’t anymore. He finds himself thinking briefly of General Theodore, of Mari, of Rinali and Komui-san. It isn’t like he misses them or anything, but he certainly was surprised how aware he kept finding himself of their non-presence in the dome.
Grumpy because of the train of thought Ravi had forced him down, Kanda digs almost sulkily into his rice, mumbling "Itadakimasu" hurriedly under his breath. "The government here’d find anyone who tried to go missing," he insists, not really caring if he’s right or not but arguing for the sake of arguing. "They need all of the possible breeders they can get." Ugh.
No matter how perfect his memory is, 'in one ear and out the other' is his religion and 'huh? What did you say?' his bible. It's easy to temporarily discard a piece of knowledge simply because you're not thinking about it.
Especially when you're as easily distracted as Ravi.
Ravi glances at the scoops Kanda took and regards them with a look like skepticism. It isn't that Kanda is one to starve himself: he always eats a sufficient amount of food, no more and no less. The problem is Kanda seems thinner and weaker than he was since he'd last seen him (then again, Ravi hadn't been in a good condition himself the last time he'd seen Kanda, either) and Ravi doesn't entirely trust him to be the type of person who is going to acknowledge that about himself. (He might, but would he change anything?)
As soon as Ravi retrieves his own bowl (only one bowl. The soup will be saved for later, maybe?) and scoops out rice (three scoops), he pauses for a moment. When the word 'breeders' leaves Kanda's mouth, half of Ravi's third scoop finds itself in Kanda's bowl as if it's the most natural thing in the world and that half-scoop of rice couldn't possibly belong anywhere else except with Kanda's rice and all's right with the world. "Prolly right, but I dunno, boss -- I think the male-to-female ratio here is pretty high. For every girl, there's like a handful of guys!" If given a few seconds to do the proper calculation, Ravi could probably give an accurate measure but the truth is he just doesn't care about it that much right now. "Betcha they're already tryin' to figure out how t'turn guys into girls~"
The act of moving the rice and this line of conversation is probably the exact reason Ravi hadn't been willing to take soup right away.
The extra scoop added to his rice throws Kanda off for a minute, and he has to readjust his grip on the bowl to prevent himself from dropping the whole thing embarrassingly onto the floor. Everything in this world is an adjustment, he thinks sourly to himself, shooting Ravi a look that will, if it goes according to plan, actually kill him. The clothes he has been provided with are different from what he’s used to buying, and walking down the street in his exorcist’s coat is a fast way to get stared at.
All he needs, he thinks bitterly, is someone who delights in making his life even more complicated than it already is.
Luckily, no matter where he ends up, the universe seems perfectly content to provide those sorts of people to him.
He directs a halfhearted kick at Ravi’s shins; although it barely manages to make contact at all, it’s more the principle of the thing than anything else. "Don’t even bring that kind of thing up, they might be listening for just those kind of ideas!" Even in the safety of his own apartment, even though he knows that the war is over (never went on in the first place), he can’t shake the feeling that there’s something that they should be being cautious of.
He elects not to mention the looks that his roommate has been shooting him, or how the other day he found a pair of stockings that were clearly his size, not hers, lying around the apartment.
If there is anyone on the face of the earth who is fantastic at gross over-exaggerations, it's Ravi. His bottom lip pulls down, his teeth clench, his eye widens, body tensing in (but never moving away from) anticipation of the impact. When Kanda's foot touches his right shin, Ravi barks, " Autsch!" and leans over, supporting the bowl of rice in one hand while the other goes about the business of nursing his newly-given non-bruise. (Truthfully, it won't even turn red.)
An hour ago he would have said Ite!
Three hours ago it would have been Aj!
Yesterday it may not have been intelligible.
His initial reactions are often based on where his head is at the moment, so it's safe to say, even though he was holding a conversation, his mind was wandering somewhere in Germany, far away from Babylon and its dome.
"That hurt!" It didn't, but it'd be too easy for Kanda if he gets away without dealing with the consequences of completely needless fussing.
It's fair, though, because Ravi seems intent on giving him a real reason.
"Naaaaah~ I was teasin'! When it comes t'that kinda thing, we're really safe for now!" Who's safe for now? It isn't Ravi if he continues this train of conversation. "They've already thought of stuff like that." Because he's aware his rice may eventually find its way on his face, he begins to shovel it in his mouth. In between mouthfuls, he casually mentions, "I've been readin' the books they have here, yeah? An' it seems like it's completely possible and plausible -- 'cept, y'know, there's no way to get guys t'reproduce naturally even if y'could make 'em look like girls! Plus the guys' families will proooobably disown any of their sons who do it..."
To be truthful, the scarf and coat around his neck is starting to get a bit warm: he feels it in his face. That's probably why, for just one moment, he glances at Kanda in the vague, contemplative manner he used to have when he was sixteen, as if trying to figure out if Kanda Yuu really was a guy for real this time.
In a sense, it's good Kanda decided not to mention it.
Mentioning it would start a whole new horrifying line of conversation, like Didja try 'em on?!
To be perfectly fair, he would have asked Allen the same thing.
Kanda shoots him a distant, measuring look, as if he’s trying to ascertain exactly what Ravi means by ‘we’, if he should be concerned about his name being volunteered for some experimental tests or something. He takes a few more bites of his rice, chews them thoughtfully, grumbles in an offhanded way that sounds like he hasn’t ever thought about it even a little bit, "Well, it isn’t like most of us have families to disown us, anymore." Never had families, only came into existence a few weeks ago, whatever. The point was the same.
He reaches over, sips his soup. Like most of his interactions with Ravi, he’s caught the glance but has no idea what it means. It could be anything; while Kanda can only think of concrete things in his present or immediate future, he’s well aware that Ravi’s brain can take him places that are so far out of Kanda’s mental range that he can’t even imagine what they are. For someone who puts on such an airheaded face, the Japanese exorcist knows that the junior Bookman is light years ahead of him in terms of thought processes.
It makes Kanda mad; one minute he’s having to shove Ravi out of his personal bubble with all the strength he can muster, only to find the next minute that the damn idiot is far, far out of Kanda’s reach.
"Also," he snaps, annoyed, "don’t whine about things more than they deserve. I barely even goddamn tapped you, so don’t make a noise like I cut your leg off, or I’ll do it."
In one of his nicer moods, back when Ravi was considered a child by most, Bookman had called him an insufferable little gremlin. When his face lights up, if Kanda would have known, then it would have become obvious that 'insufferable little gremlin' still isn't an inaccurate way to describe him. The only difference is he isn't so little anymore -- he's taller, and if his mixed mutt genes have anything to say about it, he's going to grow even more.
The grin on his mouth is definitely nothing but raw, playful impudence. Whatever reaction he'd been going for, he must have gotten it -- but in his defense, the look in his eye isn't at all lofty and doesn't give an indication that for a moment he believes Kanda wouldn't pick up a sawtoothed knife and go after his leg, even though he's absolutely (well, absolutely ninety-five percent) sure he actually wouldn't.
He also doesn't say But, Boss, it hurt a lot! It hurts right here! It hurts in my heart! We're friends, right?!
That would have brought the chances of 'general safety' and 'living to see tomorrow' down to about sixty-percent.
When dealing with Kanda, Ravi understands he can't blame Kanda for losing his mind and throwing a fit any more than he could blame a bear for eating a small child with honey on its head. It's just its nature -- and that kid should have known better before he decided to go walking in the woods with a honey head.
Instead, he settles for something as equally annoying: "Hey, boss -- if y'really did that, betcha they have technology t'replace it! Betcha they could make it reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal intimidating-like!" It's here that he gets too into his demonstration, setting his rice down for the purpose of cheerfully throwing both hands into the air, as if making a gesture to denote something large. "It'd be made'a metal an'have, like, six -- no, seven huge lasers!" Lasers are a new thing for Ravi, and he probably isn't going to drop the idea of them any time soon. "It'd be so cool~ kinda like Allen's arm, 'cept not as freaky since it wouldn't be natural!"
"What the hell is a laser?" Kanda, unlike Ravi, is not good at keeping up with the newer technology; he’s just learned last week how to operate the toaster without killing everyone in the building, and microwaves still largely elude him, let alone lasers. Still, he barks the question in a way that suggests that it isn’t that he doesn’t know what one is, but rather that he just doesn’t care enough to retain the information. "Anyway, anyone who’s spent more than three seconds with you can see that giving you an upgraded limb would be a terrible idea. It isn’t going to happen. You’d have to hobble along on one damn leg and if the akuma did show up after all I would not help you." It’s an empty threat; Kanda knows it and Ravi probably does, too, but it doesn’t stop Kanda from scowling I mean it!! into his bowl of rice.
"Besides, one of the Beansprout’s arms in this world is more than enough," he continues meanly, talking grumpily around mouthfuls of rice, "especially if they all come with a bleeding heart like his."
Unfortunately for Kanda, his pretty face hasn’t mellowed his disposition any, and even the statement we’re not at war anymore hasn’t quite sunk in. Kanda’s a child of war, has lost his family and homeland to it, has traded a sizeable chunk of his lifespan in order to continue his work in it. He can’t just turn something like that off with the knowledge that the war never existed in the first place. So even though Allen’s kindness is both appropriate and even appreciated in this place, it still touches on one of Kanda’s sorest nerves.
Speaking of getting on someone’s nerves –
"Did you want something?" Technically, if Kanda was going to ask this question, it should have been half an hour ago, when he’d just walked into the apartment, before he’d had a long conversation and fed Ravi breakfast. But in his defense, he’d just thought to ask.
In this particular case, Ravi knows Kanda probably really doesn't care to retain information about lasers. He lets that one go, because when it comes to discussing useless topics, he has far from exhausted his supply of needless, constant conversation -- and if he's going to be obnoxious, he might as well choose a brand of obnoxiousness that's going to stick with Kanda for at least a few minutes.
While Kanda speaks, Ravi does something amazing: he says nothing and doesn't interrupt.
Oh, his mind registers. That threat again.
Ravi is listening, but he doesn't need to devote all of his attention to the words because Kanda is saying nothing (out loud or unspoken) that he hasn't heard before. Instead, he chooses to focus on the thought that there's definitely something sweet in being fed breakfast (no matter how simple a bowl of rice is) by someone like Kanda. Even though he was going to make rice and soup anyway, it's almost like Kanda was being nice or acting like a friend or even showing some vague signs that he was truly domesticated after all! When he thinks of it like that, it brings another curve of a smile to his face and he lowers his hands to scoop up the bowl of rice, momentarily peeking into it to see, roughly, how many grains are left.
Five-hundred, he thinks.
No, more like five-hundred fifty.
No, five-hundred forty-seven.
Well, five-hundred twenty-one, now.
Somewhere between the transition of chopsticks and rice from the bowl to Ravi's mouth, his good green eye sneaks a glance at Kanda's bowl, examining how much of Kanda's rice is left. When he swallows, the word 'something' has just left Kanda's tongue and Ravi is more than happy to supply, "'Course I did!" his voice practically radiating sunshine and puppies. "I wanted t'see ya, boss!" He knows, for the most part, this is a bad answer to give someone like Kanda.
And that's exactly why he does it. In that vein, that's also why he makes it worse: "I was thinkin', boss, that y'spend most'a your time here by yourself--" didn't he spend most of his time by himself in their world, too? "--an' I spend a lotta time by myself when Allen's not around! It gets really lonely!" Which is a joke, because he's certain neither of them are actually lonely, not even when they're by themselves. The closest thing to loneliness Kanda and Ravi feel is the sensation of missing someone that comes with their presence no longer being there, but it isn't quite loneliness. (Maybe it is and neither of them will admit it in seriousness -- and Kanda would never admit it at all.)
It's the desire to have those people around, no matter how kind, obnoxious, or homicidal they might be.
"'Sides," he continues, popping thirty-two grains of rice in his mouth, swallowing quickly before continuing (how many times had Bookman hit him to beat it into him that you should never talk with your mouth full?), "It's been a long time since I've been able t'see ya alone~"
Kanda bristles at the first mention of the possibility of loneliness, fingers tightening almost imperceptibly around the rim of his rice bowl as he settles his mouth into a hard line, tries his best to keep from showing his anger, continues to eat his food. I don’t get lonely, he reassures himself furiously, partially aware that Ravi said something like that specifically to get a rise out of him. Kanda’s a loner; he has been since he came to the Order, and even Rinali’s best efforts otherwise haven’t managed to break him of it. He doesn’t even entertain the notion that Ravi might be telling the truth about being lonely himself; Kanda knows enough about Bookmen (partially from stories, partially from offhand comments about Ravi from General Theodore, mostly just from years of forced interaction with Ravi himself) to know that there’s no way a Bookman could do his job if he got attached enough to the people around him to get lonely when they left.
There’s a lot about Ravi that Kanda doesn’t understand, but this is not one of them. Kanda knows, is perhaps even more sure than Ravi at this point, that "friendship" is a useless waste of time and energy.
He sips sullenly at his soup, glowering over the rim at the other boy. "I spend a lot of time by myself because I like it that way, idiot." He sighs long-sufferingly – it infuriates Allen when he does it, but it doesn’t seem to have the same effect on Ravi, more’s the pity – and doesn’t make direct eye contact. "And how does wanting to see me justify breaking into my goddamn apartment and taking a nap on my bed? People are going to get the wrong idea."
What wrong idea, Kanda doesn’t specify. He hasn’t really even thought of it himself. There are numerous wrong ideas – that they’re familiar. That they’re on a first-name-basis. That they miss each other when they’re absent. That they’re friends at all.
All of these ideas send cold shivers of disgust down Kanda’s spine.
"Anyway," he continues, lecturing somewhat in spite of his desire to remain terse and to the point, "don’t just drop in for no reason, you idiot."
Of course, if the Japanese exorcist really had a problem with that kind of behavior, feeding Ravi had probably not been the best course of action in response. Kanda hadn’t thought of that, though – offering Ravi food had seemed natural because the fact that he was going to get food was inevitable – at least if Kanda offered, he maintained a little control of the situation.
He isn't mocking Kanda when he peers over the edge of his rice bowl (he's still understandably reluctant about soup) which he has lifted to his face, chopsticks shuffling the last few renegade grains of rice into his mouth. When he's finished, he doesn't lower the bowl or the chopsticks and looks at Kanda with a wide eye and an innocent, doe-like expression. The only thing visible is the upper half of his face.
This is because, behind the bowl, where Kanda can't see, Ravi is grinning. It isn't just any grin, either, it's that self-satisfied, one-hundred percent entirely pleasant thing that denotes he received the kind of answer he was looking for -- the kind that will take the innocence straight out of his eyes if it's not hidden.
"But, boss," he chirps, lowering the bowl suddenly, his mouth nothing of wicked shapes, but more along the lines of haphazardly happy-go-lucky. "It's okay!" It's now, wisely, that he sets the bowl of rice down on the counter and places the chopsticks horizontally along the top of it. "Nobody's gonna get any ideas they don't already have!"
Well, he's removed the possibility of being harmed with his own bowl, but is that going to stop Kanda from harming him? "An', y'know, it's not like it's reaaaaally breaking an' entering. It was really easy to get in and your bed was invitin' me! It's a lot softer than I thought it'd be."
If Kanda didn't have a problem with that kind of behaviour to begin with, he probably will now.
"Hey boss, let's do somethin' together~" Be seen in public with each other alone -- like real friends! "Y'know, like... somethin'!" Well, that's specific and sure to win favourable responses. Afterwards, he lifts his palm so he can press an index finger to his lips, expression the pinnacle of thoughtfulness. His eyebrows knit together and he stares at the ceiling as if it's going to offer a better suggestion. "There's gotta be somethin'..."
It's just a matter of finding out what something is.
"Just because it’s easy doesn’t make it not breaking and entering," Kanda retorts, only the bowl of rice in his hands keeping him from burying his face in them in exasperation. And as for my bed," he continues, an uncomfortable flush rising to his cheeks – why are they even having this conversation?!, "it’s the exact same mattress that they’ve given everyone else. It’s probably exactly the same as yours. Don’t just fall asleep wherever you please, damn it!"
Of course, now that they aren’t at war anymore, it’s actually probably safe to take naps in random places without a posted guard. But frankly that kind of shift in thinking is much too complex for Kanda at this hour of the morning (or ever really), so when the thought occurs to him he brushes it aside. Whenever the akuma do finally show up (and there is no doubt in Kanda’s mind that they will) it’ll be better to be prepared.
Ravi’s backwards invitation out causes Kanda’s eyebrows to knot even further than usual. It isn’t actually an unfamiliar request, but while at the Order he always had a regular arsenal of excuses for Ravi to ignore, he isn’t really sure how to respond anymore.
"If you can’t be more specific than something, I am not doing anything with you." His mouth twists with thought, "or, really, I probably am not doing anything with you anyway. But for fuck’s sake, show some initiative."
This coming from the boy who can’t be bothered to think of any good ideas on his own.
Ravi doesn't point out the lovely princess rose flush that begins to bud in Kanda's pale cheeks. It isn't because he's very wise, or because he values his life, or because he doesn't want to prolong the duration of the feminine coloration, but because he wants to see how long it will last if left on its own. Perhaps, he imagines, it'll bloom and travel across the bridge of his nose -- or perhaps he'll recover quickly and it'll disappear completely. Either way, it's that fair skin that gives Kanda away instantly: if he'd spent a little more time in the sun in their world, it might not have been so bad. (Against Ravi's skin, which is a completely different color scheme in addition to being a bit darker, it wouldn't have been as obvious.)
It's cute, he notes, because even though Kanda is spitting profanity and being disagreeable, the notion of someone sleeping in his bed is enough to unsettle and ruffle him -- not much unlike the unsettled and ruffled feathers that had been ripped from the comforter on Kanda's bed by a pair of kittens with a pair of very sharp claws.
He wonders, briefly, if it will bother Kanda when he goes to sleep -- if he'll take the couch for a few nights instead until his memory has been wiped clean of the encounter.
When he blinks his eye, he realizes his silence has stretched on for too long like he's been lost in thought, or in a daydream.
He doesn't immediately know it's because he has been. It doesn't occur to him to be alarmed that he has just taken thirty-one and a half seconds to contemplate the effeminate flush on his friend's face -- and because it doesn't, he cheerfully recovers, "But I asked ya, so that's still initiative!" But because he's a fool, he advances toward Kanda, lifting his left hand and waving it from side-to-side as if Kanda's refusal meant nothing, swatting it away.
This is because it doesn't mean anything.
"Don't worry, don't worry~" he continues. "Once we get outside, I'll definitely think of somethin'! The whole place is enclosed, yeah? Even if it's like that, boss, it's still no good to stay inside an apartment all day!"
Because he still isn't content with how he's worried the situation already, Ravi's entire expression lights up with his cheerful grin when he adds, "An' boss -- that's not true! Your bed's better 'n mine! More interesting, y'know?" More interesting just by virtue of it being someone else's.
In his defense, he'd also probably give this answer to Allen.
It’s good that Ravi hadn’t referred to the uncomfortable blush staining Kanda’s face as a "lovely princess rose flush" out loud, because if he had, Kanda would have done his very best to beat him to death with the bag holding Mugen’s powdered remains. Probably because of his feminine features, Kanda has never taken kindly to being compared to a woman; his unpleasant, prickly personality, while largely simply due to his character, has been encouraged to develop over the years precisely because it separates him from the weak, feminine image conveyed by his face.
Ravi’s contemplative, mulling silence sends him spinning into his own thoughts; what the hell is the junior Bookman planning for him? Should he be looking for escape routes? What’s with the appraising look? It isn’t necessarily unusual for Ravi to be lost in thought like this, and under normal circumstances Kanda would even be grateful for the brief patch of silence, but the way he’s being watched puts him on guard. "What?" he snaps out irritably, partially embarrassed but mostly just increasingly annoyed. "If you want to say something, then say it."
Never mind that if Ravi had gone on and said what he was thinking, the best he could have hoped for was an irritated ‘don’t say useless things’. No one ever said that it isn’t possible for a conversation to be a lose-lose situation. With Kanda, it's actually fairly common.
As Ravi advances, Kanda stands his ground – he’s put up with this nonsense for far too long to be put off by these basic intrusions on his personal space, though he does prickle somewhat in spite of himself. He places his now-empty breakfast bowls on the counter, crossing his arms defensively.
"I don’t need to go outside. I’m fine here."
The truth is that he isn’t, really, but he’s not sure what else there is to do here; at the Order his life was mostly taken up by missions, and his free time was eaten by searching for that person and by activities that Rinali had planned for the people living at the Headquarters. He hasn’t had to plan his own life in years; he’s baffled as to how to start here.
He leans back onto the counter once more, elbows holding him steady as his disdainfully sniffs out, "There isn’t anything to do outside, and I do not spend all day in the apartment." With Ravi’s final statement, his expression morphs instantly back from aloof boredom to fury. "I don’t care if it’s more interesting than yours – beds aren’t interesting in the first place, they’re just a tool for getting rest, so stay out of mine!"
This is a hollow argument; Ravi managed to find his way into Kanda’s bed a thousand times at the Order, so there’s really no way that Kanda is going to be able to stop him here.
Kanda is holding out hope, however, that if he beats Ravi up enough times, it’ll sink in that he shouldn’t intrude.
At least it's safe to say one thing: even if Kanda wasn't as beautiful as an ethereal blooming white flower (a lotus, probably, with his luck), glowing against a black backdrop, he would have received the same treatment from Ravi, who says, "Nothin'~ I didn't wanna say anything! I was just thinkin'." He could have been grotesque -- he could have looked like Crowley, even -- and there was nothing that would have kept Ravi away from him. There wasn't anything in the world that would have stopped him from stepping closer and taking the crossed arms as an invitation to suddenly and mercilessly glue himself to Kanda's side, one arm slung over the other's shoulder while he grins. He leans his weight against the slimmer boy, not unlike a dog soliciting attention from a negligent master.
It's the princess face that made him do it, he tells himself needlessly -- if only for the sake of thinking it, because he knows he doesn't actually need a reason to start touching people, least of all Kanda and Allen, who are always the objects of some kind of (messed up) expressions of affection.
"See, that's the thing," he offers, tactfully glazing over the subject of beds and what makes a bed interesting. (Why bother explaining that any further to Kanda, who won't get it?) "Y'don't need t'go out, but if ya were doin' things an' gettin' your mind offa the state the place is in, ya'd feel even better! Wouldn't be so tense all the time~" Wouldn't run the risk of Rhode doing something to him; wouldn't run the risk of losing weight from stress. Ravi makes a mental note to pay a special amount of attention to Kanda at least once a week to watch for the signs.
Like all the others, it's one he'll never forget.
"C'mooooon boss," he whinges, leaning harder. "I'll buy ya somethin'~" With what money? "It'll be good for ya!"
He doesn't say anything, but even right now, even though Kanda's hackles are raised and his muscles still retain some of the stone-like quality from being a ridiculously high-strung creature, he can feel Kanda isn't as tense or rigid as he was before.
WHEN?! Like maybe early November? Before the ball, maybe two weeks after Ravi and Allen's arrival in Babylon? Before Kanda knows that rhode is one of the Noah, for sure.
WHAT?! This has been sitting, unfinished, on my hard drive for literally months. I really liked this log (okay, I loved this log), but Erin and I couldn't post it because it was never finished. So I guess I'm putting it here. ERIN IF YOU EVER SEE THIS AND WANT ME TO TAKE IT DOWN I TOTES WILL. OH ALSO AS A WARNING, this thing is massive. No, seriously, it is thirty-five pages single-spaced in word, hence why I am so intent on letting someone besides me read the blessed thing.
THE FIRST HALF OF THIS THING IS HERE.
He fell asleep waiting for him. In his bed. And left his coat afterward. Kanda’s vision is swimming with the sheer number of boundaries he’s set that Ravi has managed to barrel through in the relatively limited time since Kanda left the apartment this morning. He’s certain that Ravi does it on purpose, of course, because there’s no way that one person can push so many of Kanda’s buttons simultaneously (unless, of course, they’re General Theodore; but that’s a thought for another day and time).
Kanda’s gotten his breathing under control now, but he slides down the wall anyway, sitting uncomfortably on the kitchen floor and looking up almost bewilderedly at Ravi. He pushes his bangs out of his eyes, not meeting the Bookman’s single good one, as he grumbles,
"I am not tense. Keep your naps to your own bed, you idiot."
This is the most embarrassed that Kanda can remember having been in a while, though if it’s because of his complete inability to carry out any threats he’s made, the kittens bouncing haphazardly and now somewhat indignantly around the room, or the fact that Ravi took a nap on his bed and now he’s standing over Kanda in the kitchen, he isn’t sure.
In his smile there's something even he can't hide: it flickers like light reflecting from the blade of a knife, cutting through the air, cutting through the awkwardness, cutting straight to the heart of the situation: "Y'know, boss, there's chairs for this kinda thing." He isn't making matters better. It's probably because he's shocked and somewhat satisfied that he's gotten that ridiculously cute expression from Kanda Yuu of all God's creations.
And that's precisely why he needs to make it worse.
As quickly as his smile appeared, it's gone in a jack-rabbit flash. "Sittin', I mean. Kitchen floor's not too comfortable for tense muscles, y'know? Leaves ya open to a cat-attack, too." Frankly, being anywhere leaves Kanda open to a cat-attack.
Because he's ever-so-helpful, Ravi sucks down the rest of his tea in a diligent, unlady-like manner and leaves the cup on the counter. When it's out of his hands, he wraps the exorcist's coat around his neck like it's his scarf, doubling over the headband. Eventually, he's going to get too warm to wear it like this, but for now it frees his hands.
"Hey, boss!" he barks, still cheerful as a puppy, advancing at the slow speed of someone who is cautious about picking dangerously rabid creatures. "I'll carry ya!" Although he's likely smart enough not to lay his hands on Kanda and pick him up, the threat is there all the same.
The combination of the infuriating face that the junior Bookman made for a split second and the threat of being picked up – by Ravi, of all people – is enough to kick Kanda out of his funk, and he scrambles back to a standing position, glaring in a way that clearly demonstrates that he’s personally affronted by the very idea of it. Embarrassed or not, he still has his dignity, he reassures himself, and he narrows his eyes at Ravi, hands searching around him for something blunt that he can wield as a weapon if he decides he needs to.
"You’ll do nothing of the sort, idiot." His cheeks are threatening to flush with the ridiculousness of this whole situation – as soon as he can, he determines that he has to talk to someone about fixing Mugen. "And I told you, my muscles are not tense!" He gets tenser as he snaps this at Ravi, but hypocrisy and untruths have always been a specialty of Kanda’s and he isn’t going to start paying attention to it now.
He crosses his arms frustratedly as Ravi advances, making a face that says I do not trust where this conversation is going!, and grumbles, "Stop moving closer, idiot, I still have to think of what to do about breakfast and I can’t do it if I have to keep an eye on you the whole time." It’s unfortunately true; Kanda isn’t much of a multi-tasker.
The threat isn't what stops Ravi -- it's the confession. He blinks his eye once at Kanda, perfectly paused, both palms still in the air half as if he's in the act of mid-grab -- as if he really was about to snatch Kanda up regardless of what the other actually wanted.
Did he...
Did he realize what he said? It's tantamount to saying I can't breathe and think at the same time, you moron!
One of the safest (yet at times most dangerous) things about Kanda Yuu is the fact he isn't much of a thinker. He's cunning, sure, and ruthless when a job needs to be done -- it isn't that he's stupid (he's smarter than Allen!), but he isn't too big on the act of thinking.
When Ravi lowers his arms to his sides, he tips his head to the other side (the earrings shift again; a kitten's head turns in interest once more) and his smile lights up, bright and sudden like a fire on flashpaper. There's a sort of cheerful haphazardness in his voice when he bravely offers himself, "Don'tcha worry, Yuu! Don'tcha worry at all! Breakfast isn't an issue, yeah? Let me handle it! C'mon! Go rest your tense muscles!" He's not having any of that 'They're not tense!' denial. "Take a nap~ on the couch~ or in the bed~ take a break~"
Bookmen know a lot of things. In their time in the world, they doubtlessly have read several recipe and cook books and know a lot of really excellent combinations for food.
However, you probably can't trust a Bookman like Ravi to do it right. It was just asking for something like I knew it only called for a tablespoon of crushed hot peppers, but I thought a cup would be more interesting! What do you mean you feel like you're going to die? Come on, Allen, cheer up! Maybe your Secret Santa will take the time to buy something really nice for you now that you're confined to a bed!
"Like hell," Kanda grumbles, relaxing slightly as he falls back into the familiar routine of [Ravi says something absurd], [rebuke], repeat as necessary. He moves toward the stove, muttering to himself as he pulls out the ingredients necessary to make his breakfast. With a quick, assessing glance over his shoulder, he seems to compare the probable damage if Ravi’s allowed to run free and bored in the apartment versus if he’s given a task to accomplish. Finally, kitting his brows together in a frustrated scowl, he barks,
"If you really want to help, put some water on to boil and help me cut up this onion."
If he’s going to have help, he’d much rather it be on his own terms.
That is probably one of the most big-thinker-like decisions Kanda has made in a long time. Then again, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that, for all their likenesses to cats, Bookmen really aren't that much different from bored, destructive Labrador puppies. The only difference is once they tear the pages out of books, they put them together in a completely new, more accurate book. "Sure, sure!" he chirps, pleased and chipper. Giving him something to do is important: it doesn't seem to matter what the task is more than that he's being given something.
Any attention is good attention.
"I'd ask where ya kept the pots 'n pans, but I guess I found it already." Well, it would have been difficult not to: he opened every drawer. While he's talking about it, he's already got the pot and is filling it with water. If there's anything about this place, it's that it's convenient.
Hey, boss, I wonder where it's coming from, is what he's thinking, but making Kanda Yuu so paranoid he won't eat or drink is probably unwise -- because he probably will stop eating and drinking. Best to leave those thoughts with the thinkers. "Here, here, give me a knife~"
Surely that isn't going to have negative consequences!
Luckily for all parties involved, Kanda hasn’t thought to ask where the water is coming from, or what the "refrigerator" that keeps his food cold is, or how the stove works. He simply knows what he was told when he got here, and he takes it as providence that things work in a way that makes things easier for him. This lack of the spirit of scientific questioning is probably either a result of a battle-learned pragmatism or a complete lack of creativity, but either way it makes his life a whole lot simpler.
He shoots Ravi yet another quick, appraising look, before taking the kitchen knife that he’s pulled out of the drawer and offering it to the junior Bookman, handle-first. "Don’t do anything stupid, it’s new so it’s still sharp." His warning is not due particularly to concern for Ravi’s well-being, but rather his desire not to have blood all over the kitchen floor whenever his roommate does get home – not to mention, he wouldn’t put it past the two kittens to develop a taste for the stuff and seek more out.
He’s pulled out his new rice cooker and reaches around Ravi to fill it with water, all business; although he’s certainly probably not as knowledgeable about cooking as the other boy, he is functional and hungry.
Ravi understands these kinds of things. It would be unheard of for Kanda to do something like clean up the blood on the floor. It would also definitely be an inconvenience for him if Ravi does manage to cut himself, because a junior Bookman who is bleeding tends to bleed everywhere and you can't make someone who is bleeding everywhere pick up after himself -- it will only make him bleed more, which defeats the purpose. Then Kanda would have to deal with the kittens -- two! Not just one: one would be manageable, but two is simply insane! -- and an acquired taste for blood, and nothing but bad things c--
Well.
That's all been thought of before. On several occasions, probably.
When he takes the handle of the knife, it's as if his hand isn't there at all and no weight has been added -- like gravity hasn't yet kicked in and ownership of the knife belongs to nothing but air. This is not because he's reluctant to take it, but because if it's still sharp, that means it has a chance of still cutting Kanda if he's not careful. There's no apathy in the gesture: he doesn't want to hurt Kanda on accident.
When he's holding the knife, he flips it between his fingers to get a better grip, turning his head slightly, both brows raised, and mouth curved into a thoughtful shape as he watches Kanda's hand reach around him. "Y'know, boss, I could fill it for ya." There's no need for all that reaching!
Either way -- it's all right: Ravi doesn't mind.
"An' don't worry, I won't make ya eat my blood. Hey, hey, boss, d'ya want the onions cut big or really tiny? Size matters~ well, according to some, it doesn't, so I guess it just 'pends on your preference!"
The worst part is Kanda might not be the kind of horrible person to get the embarrassing references.
The worst worst part is he definitely would have no problem saying the same thing to someone like Allen.
It hadn't even occurred to Kanda to ask Ravi to fill the rice cooker for him, but he shrugs the suggestion off with the practiced ease of someone who has thought of after-the-fact explanations for his behavior a thousand times before. "I gave you a job to do, and I don't want to distract you from it." Never mind that his reaching is probably distracting Ravi far more than simply asking for help would have; as far as he's concerned, people should do with tasks they are given without assistance or complaint. It's as if they're back out on a mission, and Ravi is tasked with trying to figure out the location of the missing innocence, and Kanda doesn't want to distract him by asking for help holding off an incoming akuma. There is no sense of differences in situation, here; for the Japanese exorcist, all of his reactions are the same, whether he's on a life-or-death mission or simply making breakfast in his apartment with Ravi.
Luckily for both of them, the obvious reference goes flying straight over Kanda's head - or if he's registered the double-entendre, he's choosing to ignore it.
"Medium-size. And try to make them sort of asymmetrical, it makes them hold in flavor better." He learned this tidbit on the road from Mari, who in spite of her imposing appearance made a mean pot of vegetable stew. He'd thought it foolish drivel at the time, but anything to sound like he knows what he's talking about.
The fact Kanda won't acknowledge it is the exact reason why Ravi says it. There's no need to worry about bad jokes around someone who isn't capable of seeing a bad joke for what it is: he's free to make as many as he wants. Kanda is right when he gets the impression Ravi knows a secret: Ravi does, and he has just that many more hidden from people like Kanda and Allen.
The worst part is he thinks he's clever.
And sometimes, he is.
His answer is "Sure!" even though he isn't sure how valid Kanda's statement is. Ravi knows better than to argue. When he's gotten his instructions (no matter how vague "medium-sized" is), he lays the onion down on the counter and begins to cut.
In some part, some of him is still tempted to pick the onion up and cut the slices between his fingers -- but he's not willing to test the extent of how much Kanda actually cares about Ravi's blood on the floor, or if he actually cares at all.
"Hey, boss," he begins again, cutting as nonchalant as could be. "Did I ever tell ya the story 'bout the guy who died eleven years ago?"
Kanda is measuring out scoops of rice; Ravi’s comment peaks his interest a little bit, because he knows that when Ravi starts out a story like that that it’s going somewhere. This is the most difficult facet of the junior Bookman for Kanda to understand: sometimes he says things without a point, that don’t matter, and then other times he says things which not only have a specific point in mind but also have merit, and Kanda is never really sure when he should be tuning the other boy out.
Putting the lid of the rice cooker down and turning it on, Kanda turns and leans back almost lazily, his elbows resting heavily on the counter and supporting his weight.
"Lots of people died eleven years ago, idiot, you’ll have to be more specific." He doesn’t think that he’s heard this story before, thinks he would remember; but he can’t let Ravi know that he remembers things that he tells him, so he sets his mouth in a displeased line and feigns annoyance as he watches him chop the onion.
This is how Kanda interacts with his friends, bizarrely; he's too proud to admit attachment on any level, even if it's only I listen to what you're saying sometimes, which has cost him a number of relationships over the years. As it is, it's probably dumb luck that he managed to meet someone like Ravi, who actually finds joy in Kanda's overreactions and anger.
The chopping is not particularly fast, but it isn't slow -- it has no real rhythm and is as haphazard as the medium-sized pieces, which have nothing to boast except for the fact they are imperfect in size and shape. As he cuts them, Ravi thinks of people and how lots of people have died eleven years ago and how they may as well be slices of onion.
"Yeah, but this one's different, 'cause he didn't actually die -- just his name did! It's 'cause he got involved in that secret, shady side of life -- that one they don't really tell ya 'bout in the church. The kind of side that involves things the police lock ya up for since you're a danger to the public for all kinds'a things, like illegal herbs an' bad drinks an' murders. Kinda like how Allen talks 'bout General Cross, 'cept the murder part." Ravi, for his part, is paying attention to the onion, although his eye slides sideways in an attempt to catch even just a glimpse at what Kanda is looking at while he speaks.
It's curiosity. Ravi knows Kanda Yuu doesn't hate him, but he also isn't sure, when he's not boasting about how well they get along, about how much Kanda likes him. If Ravi has any idea Kanda listens to him and remembers things he's said, he definitely has given no indication in the last two years.
For all his observations, Ravi can be slow and occasionally stupid when it comes to noticing things pertaining to himself.
"Hn? How should I know if you’ve told me that story before?" Ravi hasn’t; Kanda knows it, and really he should just admit that he knows it. "I guess you’ll have to tell it again." It’s this practiced ignorance – ignorance for the sake of pushing people away, really – that the adults used to scold him for as a child, and Linali usually thwacks him on the head with her clipboard when she thinks he’s doing it.
He inclines his head slightly toward Ravi, not really looking at him but keeping his eye trained on something just slightly to the right of his head, like he’s deep in thought about something. Whether it’s friendship or like or not, Kanda couldn’t and probably wouldn’t tell you; after all, it isn’t like Ravi would be trusted to give a straight answer about his feelings, since he’s a Bookman and all, and it isn’t really relevant either way.
He shudders visibly at the mention of General Cross; he has some holdover resentment toward generals.
There are times when we express ourselves in backhanded ways -- when our body language means more than our words; when our silences say more than our sentences; when a letter means more than a lifetime; when I needja for a second means I like you; when I had a good time~ traveling's no worry even that far north, I don't get cold means I thought about you; when the More fun for me means I'll miss you a bit and I'm handling it all right means I wish you were here.
If anyone is a master of this kind of language interpretation, it's a Bookman.
"Well, there's this guy..." In mid-sentence, Ravi pauses and begins to grin. Without realizing it at all, he's stilled his hand and shifts his eye more obviously toward Kanda, tilting his head to get a better look. When it starts like that, it might not be a good sign.
"...his name's Ran. Ran wasn't a bright kid -- got involved in too many things he shouldn't'a got involved in, like 'n underground slave trade an' drug dealin'. Spent a few years like that, doin' nothin' but tradin' women, children, an' drugs. Ran became friends with this guy, Lenny. Ran 'n Lenny were inseparable. Great friends. Did the trade together, did their drugs together. Next thing you know, he's twenty-six an' seven years passed! One day, in a back alley after a bad deal, he sees Lenny kill a guy. That's nothin' new, but afterwards, Lenny kills the guy's dog an' then somethin' clicks. It's like a whole world opened up an' he could see again. It wasn't enough that Lenny just killed the guy 'cause he sold bad drugs, but Lenny killed the dog, too, when it didn't even bare its fangs. It just cowered over its master.
"It's different, he thought, when it's people. Dog's innocent. Just an animal. No more good or evil than'a brick." He pauses there for a second, cutting into the remaining onion, idly chopping smaller pieces before he realizes if he continues like this, he's going to get scolded. "Anyway," he continues, putting the knife down and stretching both of his onion-stained hands in the air. "Ran disappears for like a year an' hides halfway across the continent -- this takes place on the Western continent, by the way -- an' meets a girl. She's great -- her name's Sue, she's blonde, she's fit, she's a li'l bit dumb, but he likes 'em a li'l bit dumb. The only thing wrong with 'er is she's fourteen. They've got a whole love affair goin' on anyway, but she's frustrated 'cause he won't consummate 'cause she's too young. She loves him, he loves her innocence, he loves her dog, too, 'cause it reminds him a li'l bit of the one Lenny killed. She says her brother bought it for 'er. Eventually, she invites 'im over to dinner and says her brother'll be over since she lives with 'im.
"It's like they say, y'know? The world's not big enough to hide one guy for too long. Suddenly, Sue, Ran, an' Lenny are all together, staring at each other over the table, an' Sue's too dumb to get that a different world ago, both of 'em knew each other real well."
There are three things in this world that Kanda can’t wrap his head around: logic puzzles, skeleton keys, and morals of stories. In some ways, they’re all due to the same basic problem; Kanda is determined not to complicate his world by thinking too hard about it. As the Junior Bookman unfolds his tale to Kanda, he notes with gently rising irritation that this is completely typical of conversations with a Bookman; there’s never a straight answer, always a story, always something you have to extract from their words and derive your own meaning from.
To Kanda, that isn’t an answer; it’s dodging one.
When Ravi’s story ends, Kanda moves to take the onions from him and adds them to the boiling water on the stove. "I don’t get what you’re trying to say. Say it plainly." He’s trying to sound commanding, but somehow it comes out as more snappish and petulant than anything else.
Cheerfully, he chirps, "It's not done yet!" As if it matters what Kanda says. "Anyway, so after these guys meet face to face, Lenny gets real mad, right? Ran starts getting dead animals in the mail -- that kinda thing. He gets stabbed by a guy when he's walkin' with Sue. Sue's upset since she found out. Not 'bout her brother and her boyfriend, but about the dead animals an' the stabbing. Ran's afraid Sue's gonna find out about his past and who he was, so he fakes his own death."
Somewhere in between the beginning of his story and the middle, he lets Kanda remove the onions -- but still holds on to the knife, examining it. "She was distraught at the funeral but Lenny was satisfied. Ran's name died eleven years ago, y'know, but he's still livin'. Half a year ago, he returned to the place he 'n Sue used to go in the woods. He surveyed the area -- there were dandelion weeds all over but he didn't mind 'cause they reminded him of her. She showed up! She had a little baby girl and a husband. Her baby girl has to be about seven. He turned and looked at Sue, right, and was kind of surprised. Sue stared at him like she was lookin' right through him. He complimented the baby girl, gave her a dandelion, an' said she looked a lot like her mother. The girl was delighted but Sue didn't say anything. When he was gone, the little girl asked, 'Mom, what's the matter?' Sue responded, 'I thought I saw a ghost.' "
Ravi's hip knocks against the side of the counter when he re-leans against it. He abandons the knife on the counter top and stretches his hands above his head, eye shut and mouth curved up like a cat's smile at the corners of his mouth.
Because Kanda asks him to say it plainly, he says, "I was thinkin' it's not true, y'know, that one cliché -- 'the world's not large enough to hide one man for long'? It's easy to be found, but it's just as easy to disappear." He lifts his left hand, folds it into a fist, and slams it into his right palm. " Wham! Like that. Y'don't even hafta die to be a ghost."
Bookman would have hit him, but not because he was long-winded. It would have been for saying far too much. Without constant supervision, Ravi tends to become more reckless.
Before any further discussion can happen, he opens his eye and the grin that stretches across his mouth is almost predatory -- but it's definitely not predatory like the expression that crosses Allen's face when he's tempted by good food. "Yuuuuu~ when's it gonna be ready?!"
As if chopping onions for Kanda means Ravi deserves to eat.
Kanda’s eyebrows knot in annoyance, grumpily muttering as he adds miso and stirs the soup experimentally, "It’ll be ready when it’s ready. There wasn’t any seaweed when I looked, so I’ve added this green onion and we’ll see what happens." If they’re lucky, it’ll be mediocre; if they aren’t, Kanda’ll kill the first person to complain about it. Easy. As an afterthought, he takes the spoon and takes a rather careless swing at Ravi. "And what have I told you about calling me by my given name?!"
Really. No one but Ravi has called him "Yuu" since well before he ever arrived at the order, and he isn’t really sure what he finds so irritating about it. It’s probably the implied familiarity, the way it advertises that Ravi thinks that they’re friends, that they’re on the same level. Kanda’s instinctive reaction to expressions of camaraderie, however false they may actually be, is to pull away as quickly as he possibly can.
And as far as the story went… "That may have been the case before, where we came from, but it certainly isn’t the case now." There isn’t much that can cause Kanda to actually feel claustrophobic, but the dome is doing a really admirable job of it. "The world is much smaller now. It’s impossible for anyone to disappear, no matter how they want to."
Personally, Kanda’s never really understand the desire to disappear. He’s been driven too long by the urge to keep living, no matter what the cost. If he had any idea about Ravi’s name-changing past and Bookmen’s tendencies to leave an area when their histories are updated, he certainly isn’t thinking about it now. Why would anyone run away from his own life like that? Did he hold his life that cheaply to begin with? It doesn’t make sense.
The rice cooker clicks over, and Kanda absently reaches and opens it, allowing the steam to rise from the machine freely. "Get some bowls, will you?"
Ravi exhales a sharp "Ah!" and bothers to widen his eye and duck as if he truly is shocked Kanda decided to hit him with a spoon. "Boss! Boss!" he stresses quickly, like this blow is the one that is going to end his life. "Don't kill!" is what follows, kind of like giving a command to an exceptionally deadly attack dog.
He lifts his arms to block the hit and tilts his head to the side, eye suddenly squeezed shut as if he expects the force behind the spoon to drive it straight through his skull. Even if his response is over dramatic, it's still a valid concern: sharing space with Kanda is like living with a viper, only it doesn't have any corrosive deadly poison -- it has seven different sets of fangs. The lack of poison is nice, but when you think about it, fourteen needle-sharp teeth don’t seem like a good compromise.
The really cute thing, Ravi notes while peeking like a child under the cover of his right arm like it's a visor, is that Kanda never quite realizes when he's being hypocritical -- and chances are the word doesn't even come anywhere near his head. (Kanda never seemed like the type to have extensive knowledge of the English language.) As far as non-answers go, 'It'll be ready when it's ready' is a pretty good one -- and somewhat intimidating, when you consider whom it's coming from.
When Ravi straightens up, when he rolls his shoulders as if rolling off the sting of pain the spoon brought, when he finds the bowls (sometimes it's hard to keep track when you go through so many cupboards), brings them over, and sets them down near Kanda, he finally answers as if he hadn't fussed about being hit at all. "'Cept the world itself isn't so small -- it's just boxed in!" Like that's anything to be excited about. "The air's stale 'cause it keeps getting reused an' there's no wind to mix it up. That's why everything feels so stuffy." It seems like an elementary explanation, but it's entirely possible Kanda didn't think of it -- and the only reason Ravi is okay with saying it is because there's no way possible even Kanda could convince his body not to breathe even if it meant inhaling stale air that's already been in everyone else's lungs a hundred times over with no atmosphere to purify it. "I dunno, boss..." he begins, sliding one of the bowls a bit closer. "'Bout people not being able to disappear in plain sight. Y'get used to the same faces every day an' it gets easier to think they're always there, y'know?"
The bowl slides closer like Ravi's hand suddenly belongs to an insistent kid who wants to get his meal as soon as possible. His eye lifts to the bland ceiling, as if he hasn't looked at it a hundred times before while lying in Kanda's bed, drifting in and out of a nap. As if the bowl isn't close enough already, without any warning, he nudges it even nearer until it's sitting in front of Kanda and speaks in a voice that's some kind of gentle insistence: "Hey, Yuu-" He pauses, almost like he caught his mistake of using the first name again so soon after being hit for it. "-take a lot of rice, okay?"
Oh. Not quite.
But that meant the bowl he'd been pushing hadn't been intended for himself after all.
It’s lucky for Kanda that he has literally no idea what the word hypocrisy means, as he’s frankly a walking talking example of the phenomenon. As it is, he frowns angrily at Ravi, snapping, "What did I just say about using my first name? Listen when other people talk to you, damn it."
Grabbing the bowl from the other boy, he dishes out a scoop or two of rice and reaches for a second bowl to put his soup into. He opens and closes drawers frustratedly, searching for chopsticks; apparently he doesn’t know the layout of his own kitchen as well as Ravi does. Granted, the other boy has something of an advantage, what with that perfect memory and all, but this is another symptom to Kanda of unwanted, unnecessary familiarity. Finally, he finds them. "Take however much you want, I’ll have the rest later."
He wouldn’t be feeding Ravi in the first place, he reassures himself, if he weren’t sure that the other boy would just take whatever food he wanted anyway, regardless of whether he’d been invited. This is how people who are too familiar with you act, he grumbles to himself. He doesn’t bother to go to the couch in the common room, opting rather to eat his breakfast in the kitchen.
If there’s anyone who knows how fleeting people’s lives can be, it’s Kanda; he’s written other people’s ability to disappear and die as wasteful years ago, but there’s a part of him that acknowledges Ravi’s point. Over the years, it’s gotten easier and easier for Kanda to get used to people being around him – which made it unnerving how uncomfortable it could be when they weren’t anymore. He finds himself thinking briefly of General Theodore, of Mari, of Rinali and Komui-san. It isn’t like he misses them or anything, but he certainly was surprised how aware he kept finding himself of their non-presence in the dome.
Grumpy because of the train of thought Ravi had forced him down, Kanda digs almost sulkily into his rice, mumbling "Itadakimasu" hurriedly under his breath. "The government here’d find anyone who tried to go missing," he insists, not really caring if he’s right or not but arguing for the sake of arguing. "They need all of the possible breeders they can get." Ugh.
No matter how perfect his memory is, 'in one ear and out the other' is his religion and 'huh? What did you say?' his bible. It's easy to temporarily discard a piece of knowledge simply because you're not thinking about it.
Especially when you're as easily distracted as Ravi.
Ravi glances at the scoops Kanda took and regards them with a look like skepticism. It isn't that Kanda is one to starve himself: he always eats a sufficient amount of food, no more and no less. The problem is Kanda seems thinner and weaker than he was since he'd last seen him (then again, Ravi hadn't been in a good condition himself the last time he'd seen Kanda, either) and Ravi doesn't entirely trust him to be the type of person who is going to acknowledge that about himself. (He might, but would he change anything?)
As soon as Ravi retrieves his own bowl (only one bowl. The soup will be saved for later, maybe?) and scoops out rice (three scoops), he pauses for a moment. When the word 'breeders' leaves Kanda's mouth, half of Ravi's third scoop finds itself in Kanda's bowl as if it's the most natural thing in the world and that half-scoop of rice couldn't possibly belong anywhere else except with Kanda's rice and all's right with the world. "Prolly right, but I dunno, boss -- I think the male-to-female ratio here is pretty high. For every girl, there's like a handful of guys!" If given a few seconds to do the proper calculation, Ravi could probably give an accurate measure but the truth is he just doesn't care about it that much right now. "Betcha they're already tryin' to figure out how t'turn guys into girls~"
The act of moving the rice and this line of conversation is probably the exact reason Ravi hadn't been willing to take soup right away.
The extra scoop added to his rice throws Kanda off for a minute, and he has to readjust his grip on the bowl to prevent himself from dropping the whole thing embarrassingly onto the floor. Everything in this world is an adjustment, he thinks sourly to himself, shooting Ravi a look that will, if it goes according to plan, actually kill him. The clothes he has been provided with are different from what he’s used to buying, and walking down the street in his exorcist’s coat is a fast way to get stared at.
All he needs, he thinks bitterly, is someone who delights in making his life even more complicated than it already is.
Luckily, no matter where he ends up, the universe seems perfectly content to provide those sorts of people to him.
He directs a halfhearted kick at Ravi’s shins; although it barely manages to make contact at all, it’s more the principle of the thing than anything else. "Don’t even bring that kind of thing up, they might be listening for just those kind of ideas!" Even in the safety of his own apartment, even though he knows that the war is over (never went on in the first place), he can’t shake the feeling that there’s something that they should be being cautious of.
He elects not to mention the looks that his roommate has been shooting him, or how the other day he found a pair of stockings that were clearly his size, not hers, lying around the apartment.
If there is anyone on the face of the earth who is fantastic at gross over-exaggerations, it's Ravi. His bottom lip pulls down, his teeth clench, his eye widens, body tensing in (but never moving away from) anticipation of the impact. When Kanda's foot touches his right shin, Ravi barks, " Autsch!" and leans over, supporting the bowl of rice in one hand while the other goes about the business of nursing his newly-given non-bruise. (Truthfully, it won't even turn red.)
An hour ago he would have said Ite!
Three hours ago it would have been Aj!
Yesterday it may not have been intelligible.
His initial reactions are often based on where his head is at the moment, so it's safe to say, even though he was holding a conversation, his mind was wandering somewhere in Germany, far away from Babylon and its dome.
"That hurt!" It didn't, but it'd be too easy for Kanda if he gets away without dealing with the consequences of completely needless fussing.
It's fair, though, because Ravi seems intent on giving him a real reason.
"Naaaaah~ I was teasin'! When it comes t'that kinda thing, we're really safe for now!" Who's safe for now? It isn't Ravi if he continues this train of conversation. "They've already thought of stuff like that." Because he's aware his rice may eventually find its way on his face, he begins to shovel it in his mouth. In between mouthfuls, he casually mentions, "I've been readin' the books they have here, yeah? An' it seems like it's completely possible and plausible -- 'cept, y'know, there's no way to get guys t'reproduce naturally even if y'could make 'em look like girls! Plus the guys' families will proooobably disown any of their sons who do it..."
To be truthful, the scarf and coat around his neck is starting to get a bit warm: he feels it in his face. That's probably why, for just one moment, he glances at Kanda in the vague, contemplative manner he used to have when he was sixteen, as if trying to figure out if Kanda Yuu really was a guy for real this time.
In a sense, it's good Kanda decided not to mention it.
Mentioning it would start a whole new horrifying line of conversation, like Didja try 'em on?!
To be perfectly fair, he would have asked Allen the same thing.
Kanda shoots him a distant, measuring look, as if he’s trying to ascertain exactly what Ravi means by ‘we’, if he should be concerned about his name being volunteered for some experimental tests or something. He takes a few more bites of his rice, chews them thoughtfully, grumbles in an offhanded way that sounds like he hasn’t ever thought about it even a little bit, "Well, it isn’t like most of us have families to disown us, anymore." Never had families, only came into existence a few weeks ago, whatever. The point was the same.
He reaches over, sips his soup. Like most of his interactions with Ravi, he’s caught the glance but has no idea what it means. It could be anything; while Kanda can only think of concrete things in his present or immediate future, he’s well aware that Ravi’s brain can take him places that are so far out of Kanda’s mental range that he can’t even imagine what they are. For someone who puts on such an airheaded face, the Japanese exorcist knows that the junior Bookman is light years ahead of him in terms of thought processes.
It makes Kanda mad; one minute he’s having to shove Ravi out of his personal bubble with all the strength he can muster, only to find the next minute that the damn idiot is far, far out of Kanda’s reach.
"Also," he snaps, annoyed, "don’t whine about things more than they deserve. I barely even goddamn tapped you, so don’t make a noise like I cut your leg off, or I’ll do it."
In one of his nicer moods, back when Ravi was considered a child by most, Bookman had called him an insufferable little gremlin. When his face lights up, if Kanda would have known, then it would have become obvious that 'insufferable little gremlin' still isn't an inaccurate way to describe him. The only difference is he isn't so little anymore -- he's taller, and if his mixed mutt genes have anything to say about it, he's going to grow even more.
The grin on his mouth is definitely nothing but raw, playful impudence. Whatever reaction he'd been going for, he must have gotten it -- but in his defense, the look in his eye isn't at all lofty and doesn't give an indication that for a moment he believes Kanda wouldn't pick up a sawtoothed knife and go after his leg, even though he's absolutely (well, absolutely ninety-five percent) sure he actually wouldn't.
He also doesn't say But, Boss, it hurt a lot! It hurts right here! It hurts in my heart! We're friends, right?!
That would have brought the chances of 'general safety' and 'living to see tomorrow' down to about sixty-percent.
When dealing with Kanda, Ravi understands he can't blame Kanda for losing his mind and throwing a fit any more than he could blame a bear for eating a small child with honey on its head. It's just its nature -- and that kid should have known better before he decided to go walking in the woods with a honey head.
Instead, he settles for something as equally annoying: "Hey, boss -- if y'really did that, betcha they have technology t'replace it! Betcha they could make it reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal intimidating-like!" It's here that he gets too into his demonstration, setting his rice down for the purpose of cheerfully throwing both hands into the air, as if making a gesture to denote something large. "It'd be made'a metal an'have, like, six -- no, seven huge lasers!" Lasers are a new thing for Ravi, and he probably isn't going to drop the idea of them any time soon. "It'd be so cool~ kinda like Allen's arm, 'cept not as freaky since it wouldn't be natural!"
"What the hell is a laser?" Kanda, unlike Ravi, is not good at keeping up with the newer technology; he’s just learned last week how to operate the toaster without killing everyone in the building, and microwaves still largely elude him, let alone lasers. Still, he barks the question in a way that suggests that it isn’t that he doesn’t know what one is, but rather that he just doesn’t care enough to retain the information. "Anyway, anyone who’s spent more than three seconds with you can see that giving you an upgraded limb would be a terrible idea. It isn’t going to happen. You’d have to hobble along on one damn leg and if the akuma did show up after all I would not help you." It’s an empty threat; Kanda knows it and Ravi probably does, too, but it doesn’t stop Kanda from scowling I mean it!! into his bowl of rice.
"Besides, one of the Beansprout’s arms in this world is more than enough," he continues meanly, talking grumpily around mouthfuls of rice, "especially if they all come with a bleeding heart like his."
Unfortunately for Kanda, his pretty face hasn’t mellowed his disposition any, and even the statement we’re not at war anymore hasn’t quite sunk in. Kanda’s a child of war, has lost his family and homeland to it, has traded a sizeable chunk of his lifespan in order to continue his work in it. He can’t just turn something like that off with the knowledge that the war never existed in the first place. So even though Allen’s kindness is both appropriate and even appreciated in this place, it still touches on one of Kanda’s sorest nerves.
Speaking of getting on someone’s nerves –
"Did you want something?" Technically, if Kanda was going to ask this question, it should have been half an hour ago, when he’d just walked into the apartment, before he’d had a long conversation and fed Ravi breakfast. But in his defense, he’d just thought to ask.
In this particular case, Ravi knows Kanda probably really doesn't care to retain information about lasers. He lets that one go, because when it comes to discussing useless topics, he has far from exhausted his supply of needless, constant conversation -- and if he's going to be obnoxious, he might as well choose a brand of obnoxiousness that's going to stick with Kanda for at least a few minutes.
While Kanda speaks, Ravi does something amazing: he says nothing and doesn't interrupt.
Oh, his mind registers. That threat again.
Ravi is listening, but he doesn't need to devote all of his attention to the words because Kanda is saying nothing (out loud or unspoken) that he hasn't heard before. Instead, he chooses to focus on the thought that there's definitely something sweet in being fed breakfast (no matter how simple a bowl of rice is) by someone like Kanda. Even though he was going to make rice and soup anyway, it's almost like Kanda was being nice or acting like a friend or even showing some vague signs that he was truly domesticated after all! When he thinks of it like that, it brings another curve of a smile to his face and he lowers his hands to scoop up the bowl of rice, momentarily peeking into it to see, roughly, how many grains are left.
Five-hundred, he thinks.
No, more like five-hundred fifty.
No, five-hundred forty-seven.
Well, five-hundred twenty-one, now.
Somewhere between the transition of chopsticks and rice from the bowl to Ravi's mouth, his good green eye sneaks a glance at Kanda's bowl, examining how much of Kanda's rice is left. When he swallows, the word 'something' has just left Kanda's tongue and Ravi is more than happy to supply, "'Course I did!" his voice practically radiating sunshine and puppies. "I wanted t'see ya, boss!" He knows, for the most part, this is a bad answer to give someone like Kanda.
And that's exactly why he does it. In that vein, that's also why he makes it worse: "I was thinkin', boss, that y'spend most'a your time here by yourself--" didn't he spend most of his time by himself in their world, too? "--an' I spend a lotta time by myself when Allen's not around! It gets really lonely!" Which is a joke, because he's certain neither of them are actually lonely, not even when they're by themselves. The closest thing to loneliness Kanda and Ravi feel is the sensation of missing someone that comes with their presence no longer being there, but it isn't quite loneliness. (Maybe it is and neither of them will admit it in seriousness -- and Kanda would never admit it at all.)
It's the desire to have those people around, no matter how kind, obnoxious, or homicidal they might be.
"'Sides," he continues, popping thirty-two grains of rice in his mouth, swallowing quickly before continuing (how many times had Bookman hit him to beat it into him that you should never talk with your mouth full?), "It's been a long time since I've been able t'see ya alone~"
Kanda bristles at the first mention of the possibility of loneliness, fingers tightening almost imperceptibly around the rim of his rice bowl as he settles his mouth into a hard line, tries his best to keep from showing his anger, continues to eat his food. I don’t get lonely, he reassures himself furiously, partially aware that Ravi said something like that specifically to get a rise out of him. Kanda’s a loner; he has been since he came to the Order, and even Rinali’s best efforts otherwise haven’t managed to break him of it. He doesn’t even entertain the notion that Ravi might be telling the truth about being lonely himself; Kanda knows enough about Bookmen (partially from stories, partially from offhand comments about Ravi from General Theodore, mostly just from years of forced interaction with Ravi himself) to know that there’s no way a Bookman could do his job if he got attached enough to the people around him to get lonely when they left.
There’s a lot about Ravi that Kanda doesn’t understand, but this is not one of them. Kanda knows, is perhaps even more sure than Ravi at this point, that "friendship" is a useless waste of time and energy.
He sips sullenly at his soup, glowering over the rim at the other boy. "I spend a lot of time by myself because I like it that way, idiot." He sighs long-sufferingly – it infuriates Allen when he does it, but it doesn’t seem to have the same effect on Ravi, more’s the pity – and doesn’t make direct eye contact. "And how does wanting to see me justify breaking into my goddamn apartment and taking a nap on my bed? People are going to get the wrong idea."
What wrong idea, Kanda doesn’t specify. He hasn’t really even thought of it himself. There are numerous wrong ideas – that they’re familiar. That they’re on a first-name-basis. That they miss each other when they’re absent. That they’re friends at all.
All of these ideas send cold shivers of disgust down Kanda’s spine.
"Anyway," he continues, lecturing somewhat in spite of his desire to remain terse and to the point, "don’t just drop in for no reason, you idiot."
Of course, if the Japanese exorcist really had a problem with that kind of behavior, feeding Ravi had probably not been the best course of action in response. Kanda hadn’t thought of that, though – offering Ravi food had seemed natural because the fact that he was going to get food was inevitable – at least if Kanda offered, he maintained a little control of the situation.
He isn't mocking Kanda when he peers over the edge of his rice bowl (he's still understandably reluctant about soup) which he has lifted to his face, chopsticks shuffling the last few renegade grains of rice into his mouth. When he's finished, he doesn't lower the bowl or the chopsticks and looks at Kanda with a wide eye and an innocent, doe-like expression. The only thing visible is the upper half of his face.
This is because, behind the bowl, where Kanda can't see, Ravi is grinning. It isn't just any grin, either, it's that self-satisfied, one-hundred percent entirely pleasant thing that denotes he received the kind of answer he was looking for -- the kind that will take the innocence straight out of his eyes if it's not hidden.
"But, boss," he chirps, lowering the bowl suddenly, his mouth nothing of wicked shapes, but more along the lines of haphazardly happy-go-lucky. "It's okay!" It's now, wisely, that he sets the bowl of rice down on the counter and places the chopsticks horizontally along the top of it. "Nobody's gonna get any ideas they don't already have!"
Well, he's removed the possibility of being harmed with his own bowl, but is that going to stop Kanda from harming him? "An', y'know, it's not like it's reaaaaally breaking an' entering. It was really easy to get in and your bed was invitin' me! It's a lot softer than I thought it'd be."
If Kanda didn't have a problem with that kind of behaviour to begin with, he probably will now.
"Hey boss, let's do somethin' together~" Be seen in public with each other alone -- like real friends! "Y'know, like... somethin'!" Well, that's specific and sure to win favourable responses. Afterwards, he lifts his palm so he can press an index finger to his lips, expression the pinnacle of thoughtfulness. His eyebrows knit together and he stares at the ceiling as if it's going to offer a better suggestion. "There's gotta be somethin'..."
It's just a matter of finding out what something is.
"Just because it’s easy doesn’t make it not breaking and entering," Kanda retorts, only the bowl of rice in his hands keeping him from burying his face in them in exasperation. And as for my bed," he continues, an uncomfortable flush rising to his cheeks – why are they even having this conversation?!, "it’s the exact same mattress that they’ve given everyone else. It’s probably exactly the same as yours. Don’t just fall asleep wherever you please, damn it!"
Of course, now that they aren’t at war anymore, it’s actually probably safe to take naps in random places without a posted guard. But frankly that kind of shift in thinking is much too complex for Kanda at this hour of the morning (or ever really), so when the thought occurs to him he brushes it aside. Whenever the akuma do finally show up (and there is no doubt in Kanda’s mind that they will) it’ll be better to be prepared.
Ravi’s backwards invitation out causes Kanda’s eyebrows to knot even further than usual. It isn’t actually an unfamiliar request, but while at the Order he always had a regular arsenal of excuses for Ravi to ignore, he isn’t really sure how to respond anymore.
"If you can’t be more specific than something, I am not doing anything with you." His mouth twists with thought, "or, really, I probably am not doing anything with you anyway. But for fuck’s sake, show some initiative."
This coming from the boy who can’t be bothered to think of any good ideas on his own.
Ravi doesn't point out the lovely princess rose flush that begins to bud in Kanda's pale cheeks. It isn't because he's very wise, or because he values his life, or because he doesn't want to prolong the duration of the feminine coloration, but because he wants to see how long it will last if left on its own. Perhaps, he imagines, it'll bloom and travel across the bridge of his nose -- or perhaps he'll recover quickly and it'll disappear completely. Either way, it's that fair skin that gives Kanda away instantly: if he'd spent a little more time in the sun in their world, it might not have been so bad. (Against Ravi's skin, which is a completely different color scheme in addition to being a bit darker, it wouldn't have been as obvious.)
It's cute, he notes, because even though Kanda is spitting profanity and being disagreeable, the notion of someone sleeping in his bed is enough to unsettle and ruffle him -- not much unlike the unsettled and ruffled feathers that had been ripped from the comforter on Kanda's bed by a pair of kittens with a pair of very sharp claws.
He wonders, briefly, if it will bother Kanda when he goes to sleep -- if he'll take the couch for a few nights instead until his memory has been wiped clean of the encounter.
When he blinks his eye, he realizes his silence has stretched on for too long like he's been lost in thought, or in a daydream.
He doesn't immediately know it's because he has been. It doesn't occur to him to be alarmed that he has just taken thirty-one and a half seconds to contemplate the effeminate flush on his friend's face -- and because it doesn't, he cheerfully recovers, "But I asked ya, so that's still initiative!" But because he's a fool, he advances toward Kanda, lifting his left hand and waving it from side-to-side as if Kanda's refusal meant nothing, swatting it away.
This is because it doesn't mean anything.
"Don't worry, don't worry~" he continues. "Once we get outside, I'll definitely think of somethin'! The whole place is enclosed, yeah? Even if it's like that, boss, it's still no good to stay inside an apartment all day!"
Because he still isn't content with how he's worried the situation already, Ravi's entire expression lights up with his cheerful grin when he adds, "An' boss -- that's not true! Your bed's better 'n mine! More interesting, y'know?" More interesting just by virtue of it being someone else's.
In his defense, he'd also probably give this answer to Allen.
It’s good that Ravi hadn’t referred to the uncomfortable blush staining Kanda’s face as a "lovely princess rose flush" out loud, because if he had, Kanda would have done his very best to beat him to death with the bag holding Mugen’s powdered remains. Probably because of his feminine features, Kanda has never taken kindly to being compared to a woman; his unpleasant, prickly personality, while largely simply due to his character, has been encouraged to develop over the years precisely because it separates him from the weak, feminine image conveyed by his face.
Ravi’s contemplative, mulling silence sends him spinning into his own thoughts; what the hell is the junior Bookman planning for him? Should he be looking for escape routes? What’s with the appraising look? It isn’t necessarily unusual for Ravi to be lost in thought like this, and under normal circumstances Kanda would even be grateful for the brief patch of silence, but the way he’s being watched puts him on guard. "What?" he snaps out irritably, partially embarrassed but mostly just increasingly annoyed. "If you want to say something, then say it."
Never mind that if Ravi had gone on and said what he was thinking, the best he could have hoped for was an irritated ‘don’t say useless things’. No one ever said that it isn’t possible for a conversation to be a lose-lose situation. With Kanda, it's actually fairly common.
As Ravi advances, Kanda stands his ground – he’s put up with this nonsense for far too long to be put off by these basic intrusions on his personal space, though he does prickle somewhat in spite of himself. He places his now-empty breakfast bowls on the counter, crossing his arms defensively.
"I don’t need to go outside. I’m fine here."
The truth is that he isn’t, really, but he’s not sure what else there is to do here; at the Order his life was mostly taken up by missions, and his free time was eaten by searching for that person and by activities that Rinali had planned for the people living at the Headquarters. He hasn’t had to plan his own life in years; he’s baffled as to how to start here.
He leans back onto the counter once more, elbows holding him steady as his disdainfully sniffs out, "There isn’t anything to do outside, and I do not spend all day in the apartment." With Ravi’s final statement, his expression morphs instantly back from aloof boredom to fury. "I don’t care if it’s more interesting than yours – beds aren’t interesting in the first place, they’re just a tool for getting rest, so stay out of mine!"
This is a hollow argument; Ravi managed to find his way into Kanda’s bed a thousand times at the Order, so there’s really no way that Kanda is going to be able to stop him here.
Kanda is holding out hope, however, that if he beats Ravi up enough times, it’ll sink in that he shouldn’t intrude.
At least it's safe to say one thing: even if Kanda wasn't as beautiful as an ethereal blooming white flower (a lotus, probably, with his luck), glowing against a black backdrop, he would have received the same treatment from Ravi, who says, "Nothin'~ I didn't wanna say anything! I was just thinkin'." He could have been grotesque -- he could have looked like Crowley, even -- and there was nothing that would have kept Ravi away from him. There wasn't anything in the world that would have stopped him from stepping closer and taking the crossed arms as an invitation to suddenly and mercilessly glue himself to Kanda's side, one arm slung over the other's shoulder while he grins. He leans his weight against the slimmer boy, not unlike a dog soliciting attention from a negligent master.
It's the princess face that made him do it, he tells himself needlessly -- if only for the sake of thinking it, because he knows he doesn't actually need a reason to start touching people, least of all Kanda and Allen, who are always the objects of some kind of (messed up) expressions of affection.
"See, that's the thing," he offers, tactfully glazing over the subject of beds and what makes a bed interesting. (Why bother explaining that any further to Kanda, who won't get it?) "Y'don't need t'go out, but if ya were doin' things an' gettin' your mind offa the state the place is in, ya'd feel even better! Wouldn't be so tense all the time~" Wouldn't run the risk of Rhode doing something to him; wouldn't run the risk of losing weight from stress. Ravi makes a mental note to pay a special amount of attention to Kanda at least once a week to watch for the signs.
Like all the others, it's one he'll never forget.
"C'mooooon boss," he whinges, leaning harder. "I'll buy ya somethin'~" With what money? "It'll be good for ya!"
He doesn't say anything, but even right now, even though Kanda's hackles are raised and his muscles still retain some of the stone-like quality from being a ridiculously high-strung creature, he can feel Kanda isn't as tense or rigid as he was before.
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Poor Ravi :'(
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oh allen :(((