The first time Allen received a kiss wasn't at all what he'd expected it to be like. And it was something he'd thought about, even if all his friends who called him old-fashioned and too-polite wouldn't have thought it of him.
Nothing he'd imagined had involved being grabbed the moment he stepped into a room and being kissed hard on the lips by one of his worst enemies. She looked so young too, even if in cruelty she had all the evil ever wrought by mankind to draw on.
She'd left a sweet taste on his lips, he noticed, detached from the noise around him as his friends all burst out talking at once, horror-struck. Like sugar, like those lollipops she always carried with her. She'd had one in her hand the first time they'd met too, he remembered.
In a way it was fitting that they'd stolen his first kiss from him, when they'd taken so much already.
The first time Allen was kissed was also the first time he felt he might know what it was like to feel hate, all the while burying deep inside himself the thought that he'd always known what it felt like. From memories other than his own, memories forced on him, but still there, still part of him.
No. He refused to be like them. To become consumed with it till nothing but the end of everything would bring relief. He had to save them, all of them, to continue walking forward…
Sweets always reminded him of the taste of blood after that day.
