The moonlight beats against Allen's eyelids, settling starkly across his bed. He's left the curtains open as he always does and even now, getting up, makes no move to close them. Instead he shrugs on his dressing gown and leaves the bedroom altogether, shuffling down the halls.

Near the library he notices a warmer light coming through the doorway—a gas light, flickering intermittently. Lavi lies on the chaise lounge, papers and writing table balanced on the arm and a book balanced in his other hand, slit-eyed and still wearing that obnoxiously colorful vest that Claude had tried to tell him was about ten years out of fashion. They suit him, both the vest and the sleepy expression: he looks warm, the orange in his vest bringing out the orange tones in his hair, everything a little hazy in the light. Lavi's pen scratches idly across the paper and Allen thinks about how nice it would be to tuck himself into the hollow next to Lavi's body, to fall asleep there, feeling the motion of the writing layered on top of the steady rhythm of Lavi's breathing.

Allen remembers then the pressure of Kanda against his shoulder in the carriage, solid and somehow invasive, and stumbles involuntarily to the side and into the light. He clears his throat.

"What are you doing?" he asks. Lavi's head tilts back, the corners of his mouth twitching up.

"Not sleeping," Lavi says. When Allen steps into the room Lavi swings his legs down and pats the seat next to him. Allen hesitates, looking at the stiff-backed armchair a respectable distance away and then at the chaise lounge, which still holds the imprint of Lavi's body. "I have trouble, when I've been drinking."

"Oh," Allen says. Lavi drops an arm around his shoulders when he sits down.

"Too many useless thoughts, you know, churning around, and nothing I can do to stop it. I've got the options of either staying awake until I sober up or drinking until I pass out."

The slide of Lavi's hair against Allen's face is different from Kanda's, the strands shorter and finer but just as cool. The weight of him against Allen's body is relaxed but not lax, not like Kanda was. Allen twists his hands together in his lap and asks,

"What are you reading?"

"Beadle's Dime Book of Etiquette," Lavi says. "Bore myself unconscious. Did you know that according to this we're supposed to go calling on those breathtaking Laroche ladies in two days?"

"Do you want to?"

"Not particularly, no. Not that they weren't lovely, but—Yuu might be overcome by his barbaric lusts if he sees them again before his blood gets the chance to cool."

"God."

"Mmm," Lavi says, muddled. "I'm sure you'll think of something."

"What?"

"Make our excuses. You're good at that kind of thing, right?"

"What does that mean?" Allen says, voice thin and hoarse. When he twists around there's nothing like accusation on Lavi's face, just half a smile and a crease across his forehead. Lavi's pupil is shot, iris a thin green line around it. Allen looks at his hands.

"You're good at it," Lavi repeats, eye closing.

"I used to think that—Cross was trying to break every rule in that book. Here. God." Allen swipes a hand across his face. He's speaking in a whisper; he doesn't know if Lavi has fallen asleep or not. "He probably used it as a list. It was like a game to him. I mean, he's been playing it for as long as I've known him, but never somewhere like this. This house. He used to entertain, you know, before he got too sick to, and I kept trying to explain—that he was. Something."

He was ridiculous, inappropriate, loud and lewd, everything that Allen knew to expect but had allowed himself to hope would be different, here in this house with its spotless marble floors and rich brocade, such a far cry from the dingy brothels Allen had spent three years of his life in. Lavi's breath is soft and even in his ear.

"And the worst part was everyone thought he was—eccentric," he continues. "They loved it."

"The thing about people," Lavi says, so clearly that Allen starts. His eye is still closed. "Is that they don't change. Not—not significantly. The environment changes, circumstances change, but there isn't any way to just—start over. Every action—history—is just a culmination of everything that came before. The only thing you can do is move forward."

"Lavi," Allen says, but Lavi has slumped back over against the arm of the lounge, jaw slack. After swallowing around the lump in his throat, Allen stands and tugs Lavi's legs back up, hesitating just a bare second before shrugging his dressing gown off and covering Lavi with it. When he leaves, he puts out the lights.