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maxfieldparrishes · 5 years

Text

shake the bones

Part III. Having a new roommate requires some adjusting.

(nota bene: this is definitely set before pt. II)

(read on AO3)

Kallen hates mornings, and always has.

When her alarm beeps, she slams the snooze button and tries to curl herself into a ball, but the sunlight filtering in through her blinds naturally falls right into her eyes no matter how she squirms, so she grumbles and growls to herself and slides clumsily out of bed.

She’s tired. She hasn’t slept well, she has the oddest feeling that something important happened the previous day, but doesn’t remember what it is...

... until she spots the physical reminder making himself at home in her kitchen.

“Oh, Jesus!” she exclaims, and staggers against the wall in complete and utter shock, hand over her heart like a character from one of Milly’s soap operas.

“Not quite,” Lelouch answers. “We both came back from the dead, but I think that’s about where the similarities end.”

“Right. You’re alive now.” She sits down heavily at the table and starts to rub the sleep out of her eyes. “I haven’t compartmentalized yet. Or woken up. Sorry.”

“Still not a morning person, I see,” he says. “Here, I made some coffee.” He sets a steaming mug down before her drooping eyes, and takes a long, hard look at her. “How do you take it?”

“Black,” she says. Testing the white ceramic with the pad of her pointer finger, she rotates the cup in her hands, waiting for it to cool.

“Funny. So do I.” Lelouch sits down across from her at her little table with his own mug, and they sit in awkward, uneasy silence, not meeting each others’ eyes, until a hiss from the stove calls him away.

“Is that bacon?” She’d had some in her freezer for months, but hadn’t had the time (or the inclination) to make it. It smells amazing.

“Yes. I’d ask if you want cheese on your omelet but there isn’t any in your fridge.”

“No. I don’t really like cheese that well. I never ate it much growing up.”

Lelouch chuckles, turning the bacon over with a pair of tongs Kallen didn’t even know she had. “Strange to think how different our childhoods were. When I was... in Britannia, we had cheese in some form at every meal, every day.”

“Ugh.” It slips out before she can help herself, and she winces. “Sorry. You probably thought some of our food was gross too when you first got here.”

“I’m still not very fond of sazae, but you have managed to change my mind about most shellfish.”

Lelouch takes the bacon out of the pan and chops it up, before he sets it aside and starts chopping up the half an onion she left in a plastic bag, from the last time she attempted to cook something. He sets that aside too and then starts chopping up two large shiitake mushrooms, then dumps everything in a bowl and tosses it together with a spatula.

Kallen is amazed. She didn’t even know she owned a spatula.

In a second bowl, he cracks six eggs and adds a dash of water--in place of milk, he tells her, which is what makes the eggs fluffy. He adds a bit of vegetable oil to the pan used for the bacon--in place of butter, he tells her again, because the lipids provide a protective layer between the eggs and the heat, so they can cook without burning, and pours in half of the eggs too.

After the eggs have hardened, he delicately pours half of the bacon-onion-mushroom mix into the pan, flips half of the egg-patty over, and slides it out onto a plate, which he sets at her seat with a flourish.

“You like to cook, don’t you?” she asks as she digs around in a drawer for forks, and then in her tiniest, most awkward cabinet for the salt, pepper, and hot sauce.

“I didn’t really have a choice,” he replies. “I had my sister to take care of, and eventually Suzaku too, so I had to figure it out or we all would have starved.” Lelouch slides out the second omelet onto his own plate, and takes a glance at the cabinet she’s rummaging around in. “That’s where you keep your salt and pepper?”

“This cabinet isn’t good for much else,” she responds, groping around at the back of a shelf for a specific bottle, stiffening when she feels Lelouch appear close behind her.

“You have exactly three vegetables in your entire fridge, but two whole sacks of white rice and five different kinds of hot sauce,” he complains, peering over her head into the cabinet. “What are you looking for?”

“The sriracha.”

“Here,” he says, sliding his arm around her to push a bottle of curry powder out of the way, and grabs the sriracha before he hands it down. She takes it primly and sits down at the table with a thud, before sprinkling salt, pepper, and a torrential amount of sriracha over her omelet. Lelouch adds a much more moderate amount to his own before before they start eating, but not before asking Kallen what her weekly schedule is like.

“I have classes starting at nine in the morning, until nine at night, Mondays and Wednesdays. Tuesdays are Black Knights stuff or Guren and Rakhshata stuff, and so on. Fridays I have two labs, then I usually spend the evening with Mom. Alternate Saturdays are also Black Knights, Guren, Rakhshata...”

“No wonder you don’t cook,” he grumbles. But then he smiles, and Kallen would be lying if she doesn’t notice the melancholy which sneaks, like a flash of lightning, across his face. “I’m glad you’re still in contact with your mother.”

“Well, of course,” she says, a little confused. “Why wouldn’t I be? Hey, that reminds me: how did you know I lived by myself?”

“I didn’t,” Lelouch answers, wincing a little as he wipes a bit of hot sauce off of what Kallen suddenly notices is a cracked lip, “but I figured you wouldn’t have agreed to come get me so quickly if you weren’t alone,” and she has to concede he has a fair point.

“Yeah, after a... year and a half or so, Mom said I’d sacrificed enough for her sake, that I had so much ahead of me, blah blah blah. She wanted me to live my own life and not worry so much about her, so she--very gently--told me that I should find my own place, and that I was welcome to visit her whenever I wanted.”

“So she evicted you.”

Kallen nods. “She kicked me out. In the absolute, nicest way possible, but still. She kicked me out.”

Lelouch laughs at that, and worries his lip with his tongue and teeth when his smile causes the crack to widen. Kallen looks to the side and begins to chuckle too, but starts in alarm when she notices that she should have been out the door about fifteen minutes ago. Pushing out of her chair, she races into her room, shimmies out of her pajamas and tosses them on the bed, pulls on her clothes, and races back out without washing her face or brushing her teeth.

“I didn’t realize it was so late,” Lelouch begins as she careens into the living room, grabs her backpack and throws on a sweatshirt, before he trails off, regarding her with a curious look, which puzzles her. Does she have hot sauce on her face or something?

Suddenly Kallen realizes that Lelouch is looking at her clothes, not her face, and remembers that he’s been dead for three fucking years and has no idea that she’s a medical student, as she pats down the pockets of her scrubs to double-check she has her keys even as she’s bolting towards the door.

“Okay, okay,” she says breathlessly, trying to organize her thoughts, as she’s fumbling at the doorknob. “Uh, I’ll be back, don’t go outside, help yourself to food, we can talk about my life choices later, I’ll see you and... goodbye?”

“We need to talk about the... situation...” he reminds her, stepping neatly to the side as she slips through the door and pulls it shut, shouting “Later!” and he isn’t sure if she means it as a farewell or a promise as the echo of her footsteps in the hall fade away. The sudden quiet that follows in her absence is deafening.

Kallen had been a tornado on the battlefield. She is, evidently, not so different off of it.

Lelouch shrugs, suddenly wishing he could turn on a radio or the television to break the silence, and starts to clean up the dishes.

He spends the day being nosy. Lelouch methodically goes through the entire kitchen, the bathroom, leaving Kallen’s room alone to respect her privacy (for the most part--he pokes his head in to note the location of the window and the vents), and makes mental notes of all the windows, doors, and vents. He hopes she doesn’t mind that he rearranges the furniture in the living room ever so slightly, just to make sure that a body lying down on the sofa won't immediately be seen from the front door.

He makes notes of what else he finds in her apartment: the unusual blend of artwork on her walls, the titles on her bookshelves, her textbooks. A keyboard in her (exceedingly crowded) coat closet. A record player on her bookshelves, the small contingent of records underneath serving as a bookend for a diverse collection, ranging from nonfiction to manga. He’s surprised, despite himself, and he takes a moment to self-chastise--why shouldn’t Kallen have an intellectual life, her own interests? Suddenly, the weight of his lost time is unbearable. Why should it hurt him, to think--to know--that Kallen had a life outside of and beyond him?

She’s her own person. But all of these things--her choices, her music, her art, her books, all her possessions--reveal somebody he isn’t sure he knows. However, that doesn’t mean he can’t start: Lelouch selects a thick volume (high fantasy, he judges from the cover) and sits down on the couch to read.

He’s still reading when the door to the apartment slams shut, well after dark. He looks down the hallway to see a pair of bloody scrubs stampeding towards him, and does a double take.

“Dissection,” Kallen says, kicking off her shoes in the hallway, “and I wouldn’t ask which part if I were you.”

“Nice to see you too,” he responds. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving. Did you actually have anything to work with?” Kallen looks around. “I thought the kitchen was pretty much empty. I haven’t been grocery shopping in ages.”

“I’m a master at making food stretch. You have the staples, even if you don’t know it, and I can deal with the rest.” Lelouch stands and makes his way to the kitchen, and Kallen follows him. “Time to eat.”

“You mean you haven’t eaten?” she remarks, looking absolutely scandalized. “It’s almost eleven!”

“Not waiting is rude,” Lelouch responds. “And we can talk over dinner. It’s chicken and rice pilaf.”

He microwaves both the plates, sets them on the table, and Kallen wastes no time in digging in. Lelouch is surprised by his own appetite, as he attacks the food with a vehemence similar to Kallen’s own.

She swallows a bite down. “So. You said we needed to talk, right? About... this?”

“Mm,” he agrees. “I think both of us would like to know just what the hell is going on.”

“And you think I can help find out?”

“I think you’re well-placed to make some discreet inquiries. I can guide you with that. What we really need is C.C., but as she’s currently... in the wind, I think the best thing to do would be to have you try to find her, then go from there.”

“There’s a break in two weeks or so,” Kallen says. “I’m not sure how much I can help when I have my exams coming up, but after that I can spend more time digging around.”

“That’s fair. I don’t think I’m going anywhere,” Lelouch says, bringing another bite of food to his mouth, “which brings me to my next point--”

“You need a wig,” Kallen interrupts, on the tail end of a swallow. “And contacts. So you can go outside. I was thinking about that too, because you can’t be stuck in here all day. It’s not healthy. Or useful.”

“Yes.” He swallows a bite of chicken. “Seeing as I’m still legally dead, you’ll have to get them. I’m not fussy about the wig, but you’ll need to get the contacts made custom, because they have to block my Geass. I’ll give you the name of the company. They respond quickly and you can do the whole thing online. And once I have them I can be more useful. I may not be able to access the same spaces as you, but I can at least make myself useful in the domestic sphere.”

“The wig will be easy,” Kallen says. “I’ll just raid the drama department, no one will miss a wig. The contacts... would using a public library computer to order them be wise? They don’t save any information. Also, I don’t believe you when you say you won’t be fussy. You’ll absolutely be fussy. You are the definition of fussy.”

“That’s a good idea. And I know what I like--that isn’t being fussy, it’s being precise.” He sets his fork down, having somehow beat Kallen at finishing a meal.

Kallen mutters “fussy” underneath her breath as she scrapes the last bit of rice from her plate. “You cooked. I’ll do the dishes.” She takes them to the sink, scrapes the food into a bin, and wrenches on the faucet, which gives a grating squeak. She removes her scrub top, revealing a tank top underneath, and tosses it on to her chair.

“You didn’t have to do that. You could at least let me earn my keep.”

“You’re a guest,” she says brusquely. “The least we could do is trade off on it.” For some reason, a prickly feeling starts to move through his chest at her words. What could there possibly be in those sentences that hurts his feelings?

“I suppose you’re right,” he says after a beat, “but we will be trading off. Mark my words.”

“Sure.” Kallen dries the last plate and puts it in the cabinet with the others. “Hey, I’ve got an early morning tomorrow, so I’m going to turn in. Goodnight, okay?”

He watches her as she gathers her discarded shirt and heads into her bedroom without a backwards glance. The sound of her door closing reminds him of when she’d left earlier in the day, but while she’s only a room away, suddenly Kallen feels far more distant than she was during her actual absence.

Lelouch finds himself irrationally bothered by it. He isn’t quite sure why. He grabs Kallen’s book from the table, not that she had noticed, and heads to the sofa to steel himself for a late night.

#kalulu #lulukare #lelouch x kallen #kallen x lelouch #otp: you have to live #LMAO IF YOU THOUGHT I GAVE UP HONEY YOU GOT A BIG STORM COMIN #you'll have to pry this ship from my cold dead hands #code geass

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