closed | safer waters

[inksplashes]

Who: Lavi & Kanda
Where: Leith/Noah (their ship).
When: W3D7
Summary: What happens when you add paranoid delusions and manic hallucinations to an already strained relationship?
Restrictions/Warnings: Craaaaaazy going on; Kanda has a foul mouth, will edit accordingly.

Continued from here.

[ He sleeps, though he does not rest. Bouts of gray slumber pass so dark and deep that time ceases to exist or function, his moments of wakefulness punctuated by confusion and haze. He tries, with each successive waking, to find his place in this world and gather his bearings, but all too quickly the ground beneath him crumbles, the cruel hands of disease dragging him back out to murky seas.

He pushes through the dark waters one final time, rising with the gasp of a man suffocated, his heart pounding, his hands shaking. Lashes flutter in tandem to blind movement, body shifting, upright and dizzy--

(He's in a place that's foreign, a bed that isn't his, and there's the sound of breath beside him, soft and shallow.)

In the space of a blink, he calms his body, wide-eyed gaze roving around the room, panic dissipating, tremors subsiding. He turns his head slowly, swallows back a second gasp at the sight of person warming the covers around him.

("Of course it would be Yu," a voice of reason says, "This is his room."

But that voice has no place in his mind just now, illness swiftly quieting and smothering it.)

Lavi draws a few more measured breaths to ease the frantic energy built within him, his lungs shuddering softly. The sight of his partner stirring from the sleep he so badly needs sends a wave of guilt over him, rebuking him.

There's something else too, beneath that guilt, something warm and anxious and--

(Long lashes like dark silk kissing pale skin, lips barely parted to allow the passage of breath, hair a frame of soft ink around chiseled features.)

One hand rises to cage the still shaky breath, an apology readying at his mouth, but his voice is drowned out as a second whisper enters his mind, sharper than the last, darker. So close and seemingly real he can feel the murmur of lips at his ear.

("He's breaking you," it says, "Making you look at him like that.")

No, he thinks in protest, hands lifting to shield his ears from the brush of teeth felt on his skin, it's not like that, he just--

("Fool," the whisper grows to an angry edge, a savage tenor, the teeth still sharp against his ears despite the hands caging them, "He wants you to fail. He's trying to make you forget what you are. Look at yourself--look where he's brought you.")

Lavi complies, taking a second look around the room and the bed he's in, fingers lowering to knot in the sheets before he throws them off.

The voice is right. He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't look at Yu like that. It isn't his place.

("You need to leave," the voice tells him, calmer now, pleased with his obedience. Lavi wants to obey it, trusts it. It's always been there for him, hasn't it? Telling him where to go, how to act--it knows best.)

Blue eyes meet green and his breath stalls out again, trapped in his chest.

Yes, he agrees, I have to leave. ]

Comments

[lotusmesenpai]

[Not as much sleep as he would have liked - but then, it's never really as much as he'd like, not anymore. Even so, it doesn't take much by way of movement beside him, to start pulling Kanda from the inky blackness of sleep, lids flickering slowly, his eyes dry as if he's blinking away sand.

So he misses the initial signs of distress, the way Lavi's hands press to hard against his own ears, as if to shut out an unwanted voice... but the feel of the sheet tugging away, then down, is enough to finally draw him fully into the present.

A present where, much to his consternation, his idiot partner is trying to get up and move around after days of sleeping and no real food to sustain him. And the way Lavi is looking at him... eye wide, pupil blown, something almost like panic in that verdant gaze...

Unease curls deep in his gut, weighs him down like swallowed lead.

Pushing up to sitting, Kanda's brow furrows with worry beneath sleep-mussed hair as he reaches out towards Lavi's forehead. As he does so, he clears his throat, but the voice that comes out is lower than usual, still a little rough with sleep.]

...Finally awake again, huh? How's the fever?