Title: Spilled Wine
Fandom: D.Gray-man
Author: su-dama/tempusfugit3
Pairing: Allen/Kanda
Rating: PG-13 for language and implications
Words: 3,450
Disclaimer: DGM belongs to Hoshino Katsura et al.
A/N: Something I started when I was tipsy and couldn't let go. Looked over by fallia on LJ. Contains slight spoilers from recent chapters.
-Spilled Wine-
Allen had done it. He had done what no man had done before.
He had succeeded in making Kanda as drunk as the day—well, it was obvious Kanda had never touched a drop in his life.
Woe betide he who learns the hard way.
"Um, Kanda."
His body was leaning dangerously toward Allen's throat. Yes, right there, where Kanda's nose could touch the junction between collarbones. Kanda was also eyeing him like a glazed-over whore, albeit in a sort of nice way, cute way even, which prompted Allen to be the gentleman he was in situations like these.
"Kanda, you're falling over."
Kanda tried to glare at him, but he was still all a glaze, lashes curtaining dark icy blues that continued to chill the child in Allen. It was a good chill; it felt like rain seeping into his skin, standing on black ice in the middle of nowhere with the sky was so close for touching.
"What are you doing now? Are you touching me, because, uh, I don't think you know whom you're touching?"
"I know," Kanda said fluidly, stopping to loosen his hair.
"But wait!"
"No."
"Don't loosen your hair! That's quite, uh!"
"My hair is be—ipp!—autiful." He touched his fingers to his lips after burping.
"How much have you had exactly?" Allen checked the glass, which was half full. Well now. "What the—! Kanda, you're not drunk."
"Who said I was?"
"But you're supposed to be!"
"Mm."
"That's not an answer!"
"Yo, Allen. No worries, I slipped him a little present."
Allen turned to smile in hopeful praise at Lavi, the Order's usual suspect. "Aha oh youuu, what did you slip him?"
"Somethin' to calm him."
"Something?!"
"Something." Lavi zipped his mouth shut, wiggled his brows, and pressed on through the crowd. (He had a sign taped to his ass that read try and die.)
So. Kanda was now drunk and drugged, special thanks to Lavi, in the middle of a party in the middle of Headquarters where they sooner than later would have to answer to somebody for whatever the higher ups wanted to keep blaming Allen for. What if they had to answer to those scary robe people? Was Link watching? Was his superior watching?
Would Kanda ever be embarrassed for being intolerant to the smallest amount of alcohol known to mankind? Would he be embarrassed when those scary robe people eventually found out they were harboring an Exorcist who couldn't even stand half a glass, even under an oath to God?
Because Allen didn't know for sure.
He kind of wanted to poke at Kanda for his weakness, tit for tat, settle the ongoing score, that sort of thing. Allen really wanted it. And then he got to thinking he'd had too much wine.
However, it seemed he couldn't settle the score with Kanda, based on the fact that Lavi just spoiled it for him. Allen felt spoiled and shy, like he couldn't do anything but sit and wish he wasn't sitting here like a sitting duck.
Oh well. Either way, there was still a rosy-cheeked Kanda and a glass half full of wine.
"Oh Kanda."
Kanda smiled at him, licking the center of his lips like an itsy bitsy snake's tongue.
"Hey, Kanda, remember when it was you and me and nothing but a party tree?"
"What." He was busy keeping his eyes open.
"It's just an expression." It just popped out! "Would you like an appetizer?"
Kanda was trying to keep his eyes open. "I know one. I saw you watching me." He then tugged at his tie and wondered what the fuck he was doing aloud. It sounded like he was fine, the same. But not. With him trying to strangle himself without doing so.
Allen suddenly felt much older, maybe as old as Bookman.
"When?" Allen said, genuinely curious but afraid to know.
"Hush, in the—in the baf."
"In the bath?"
"In the bathsss. I said that."
"No you didn't."
"Don't tell me how to pronunc—pronunc—to say baths, I know how to say it."
Allen leaned in against his will. Or maybe it was a little of his will. Kanda looked good with his hair down. He looked good with it up, and with it to the side, and with it all wet. Allen knew; he'd seen it. The thought made him grimace, also, against his will, because he'd much rather think of pretty boys than not.
But the grimace was for show.
Kanda grunted and was already weaving his way across the room. It looked like he wanted out.
"Can't breathe in here," he said through his teeth when Allen lunged to grab his arm. So Allen let him go with a jerk.
Someone bumped into them. It was Lenalee with a ball in the crook of her arm. It quivered and two long ears came quivering out. The fluffiest cheeks, which almost made everything better.
Allen's heart immediately quivered in tune to the rabbit's whiskers. "Haha! That's so precious!"
She thought differently. "I know, but my brother is allergic." Miranda Lotto sneezed nearby. "Um, and Miranda." She averted her eyes and fingered the rabbit's ears. Allen used to think a lot about her fingers and how they fit into his palm; now the fingers were fitting between the rabbit's ears.
"Oy. That's a rabbit," Kanda said, narrowing his eyes. Allen pursed his lips at the delay.
Lenalee sighed. "Someone brought it in for Lavi, thinking it funny or something thoughtful like that. I mean, it is cute, but now I have to go find a safe place for—"
"Stupid fucking rabbit," Kanda mumbled, intending to poke at it, to most likely poke at it, but instead missed and poked at Lenalee's chest. She went pink, and then squeezed her eyes shut, pout-like-a-prune-stained-with-wine.
"Uh, we better leave now, Kanda," Allen laughed nervously, practically shoving him out the double doors.
"I'm telling on you!" Lenalee called after them. But it was okay, she was laughing too, though as if she had just encountered a gang of sexual deviants.
"What was that?" Kanda demanded in the corridor.
Allen walked behind Kanda until he remembered that Kanda was the one being walked. "What was what?"
Kanda didn't answer but chose to make the walk to his room a difficult journey. He snarled when Allen grabbed him; he did that Japanese speech thing when Allen didn't grab him; and he was altogether self-involved with his sinuses. He kept pinching the bridge of his nose. It was almost contagious.
Allen brought up the question again, but only Kanda Yuu would avoid it with an exaggerated glare that went past Allen's shoulder and into the wall beyond. It wasn't a wall when Allen checked: it was a window into the gym space.
Kanda's gym space. The church people did well to ensure this. He was snorting through his nose.
"Are you sure you're up to it? You're going to break a limb," Allen worried, naturally.
"I don't break," Kanda snorted. Allen ignored his own intuition and followed him in.
"Kanda. You're barely walking. You're not even walking. You're, like . . ."
Kanda was already stretching his limbs against the wall, unknotting the black tie, unbuttoning his pants, breathing heavily against the stone. Allen started to breathe heavy because he refused to look away, so that his fingertips tingled and settled against his waistline. He suddenly had this crazy thought to take his pants off, to kick some ass in the process, to smile doing it.
"What."
"What?" Allen echoed.
"I'm done."
"No, I don't think you should be doing that."
Kanda was on the mat in a weird crouch, certainly one that made Allen want to look away. He was obstinate, though. Allen asked if he was going to be doing this on a mat in the creepy dark of a cathedral.
Kanda asked what the fuck he was talking about, and if Allen could brighten the lamps, but not too much because it's fucking late.
Allen did this spitefully. He turned around and watched as Kanda straightened and faced him. Oh dear God Kanda was facing him and Allen wanted to suddenly run away or wet himself a little. If he wet himself, would Kanda notice? Would Kanda then tell everybody else and make his life more of a living hell?
"Take me," Kanda said.
"Oh God," Allen said.
"What. I said take me on. Fight me."
"Are you drunk? You're drunk."
"I am . . . not." There was a slight change in demeanor.
Allen smiled and nodded. "You've never been drunk before? Or just tipsy? It's okay, it happens. I'd take you any day, but not when you're like this."
"What. Fuck."
"W-what? What did you think I meant?"
"What did you think I meant?"
They managed to get over their differences and compromise. It wasn't turning out how Allen planned it; plans seemed to drop dead anyway these days. Kanda wanted to wrestle (and just perhaps he was keeping himself from calling Allen sick) like boys do. Like how they'd done before, almost. Kanda wanted it, apparently, to be something unforgettable.
"How much have you had to drink, 'cause that's—"
"What I say?"
"I don't want to wrestle you."
"You coward."
"It wouldn't be fair!" Allen would lose anyway.
Kanda bah'd at him; Allen smiled, then giggled, then laughed out loud. He was so amused by this, he told Kanda that he sounded like an old lady, that he sounded just like their dear nurse, to which Kanda reacted with a kick that knocked Allen bottom side up. He rolled and glared.
"I told you," Kanda said.
It occurred to Allen that Kanda might be stronger when he was in fact intoxicated. For all he knew, Kanda could be the world's next savior, from a mother and her virgin womb, or simply Link's brother-from-another-mother.
The thought wasn't too engaging for a distraction, and he rolled again when Kanda went for his thigh.
At this part of the church they couldn't hear the musical instruments or party banter or drunken hoorahs. They couldn't hear anything except what went on within these four walls, and Allen couldn't hear anything except Kanda's voice and the pulse in his ears as he got on all fours and then on two feet.
"Are you trying to kick me?" Allen asked flatly.
"Yes."
"Oh."
Kanda somehow got Allen on his back again, where it hurt like a pinched nerve.
"Great, you kept kicking me, now you broked my back."
"Broked?" Kanda laughed at Allen's slip. He stopped to look away.
Allen realized what Kanda was referring to, aside from the word itself, and breathed even faster. "Shut up!" he said, although it was too late. He would know, Kanda would know everything about Allen and this was wrong.
Kanda might have lost his zeal, because he was kneeling beside him in a strange position that could only be affiliated with non-English cultures. Allen had seen it before on his travels, and here; he might have been accustomed to it by now, in a perfect world.
They stared at each other.
"Where'd you come from?" Kanda asked, straight-lipped.
Allen thought about it.
"Did you grow up broken?" Kanda asked, each word calculated for the fullest effect. It was mean, in a way. He was drunk, or just tipsy, but still mean. It was probably the first serious question Kanda had asked him in a long time. Very personal, very unsafe.
"I grew up. The end," Allen said tersely.
"How grueling."
Allen started to move his hand, red on black, off of Kanda's knee, rising; then something else occurred to him that made him clutch his hand into a fist: he had never asked the same of him.
"Kanda? How'd you grow up?"
"Did you talk like that when you were a brat?"
"You mean speak."
"Are you correcting yourself in hindsight?" Kanda smirked.
Allen brought his fist to the floor and rose jerkily from it. "I thought you were drunk." He wanted to use that fist. He didn't know why except that it would complete him. A clean punch right through a person who was supposed to repulse him. (But Kanda wasn't among those who repulsed him.)
Kanda rose, too, like a swan's neck. His words were as graceful: "I was curious."
"Oh. About being drunk?"
"No. About your childhood."
Allen stepped back as Kanda waved at him to come on, get with it, you idiot. Allen shook his head, knowing. Kanda nodded, knowing.
Allen wondered if Kanda remembered everything about his childhood, and if Kanda would remember everything of Allen's childhood if it was all laid out in front of him, in a store window. Something carnal in him wanted Kanda to pay for the view. And he still wanted, God he wanted Kanda to ask him again.
"If I lose this round, I'll tell you." Allen's throat constricted.
"Good. You're gonna lose big."
"Please don't punch me, though. You hit too hard. Do you love to hit me that hard?"
They sparred for not even a minute until Allen conceded beneath Kanda's ass, his cheek mashing into the mat. His fingers were growing numb. He tried to lift up. Impossibly mashed into the mat.
"Umf. You are. Heavy."
"It's not me, it's you. You're such a child. Tell me about it."
"Can't. Breathe. Okay. I'll tell you, but you can't laugh."
"Tch."
"I, um, I was kinda a street-rat? I stole—but I bartered once in a while! Not a lot of people liked me. Now geroff."
"And what else? What about that hoodlum."
"H-hoodlum?"
"Don't play dumb."
Allen spit out his hair that had snuck its way between his lips. He sputtered inside. He flailed inside. He was a spitting machine. He wanted it all to start over. To stop? He pretended he'd lost all of his air and turned blue for emphasis.
"Shit, get up," Kanda said. He was kind enough to brush Allen's shoulders to introduce life back into him. "You know," Kanda began as Allen was beginning to think it was over, "I'm not what you think I am. Who I am. Whatever."
"Oh? And who are you? What are you?"
Kanda sneered. "I'm much worse. Don't go beating yourself up, especially when you don't need the stress."
"Um, I'll try not to?"
"Try not to my ass."
"I'll try not to touch your ass." It came out sarcastic and horrible, strangely very clear and ringing in his ears.
Kanda surprised him by simply pushing him very hard to the floor, as if that had been already on his mind. Knock Allen around a bit and see what happens, was that it? Would the Fourteenth emerge? Allen looked up at him, finally scared. Kanda stood very still, the darkness of his eyes looming over the whole room, over Allen's broken body.
Then again, he wasn't broken. It was more of an ensnarement; Allen was possessed, and not by whatever he could explain.
"What's with that doe look?"
"I'm scared that you really want to take my life and that you're just practicing right now."
"The real thing would hurt. Wouldn't it," Kanda added, quietly.
"When you say it like that, I'm sure it would!" Allen had not forgotten that part of Kanda, that one fact, like a lavender blue glow, with crimson spikes flowering out.
"Calm down." Kanda sighed and pinched his nose. "Fucking headache."
"You get those a lot."
"No, I don't. Only around you."
"Well, um, you're around me a lot now."
"That's my point."
"You don't have a point!"
Kanda rubbed his forehead and shook the headache out of his neck. Allen watched him become apart of this room, melting and yet totally an unpardoned entity in the middle of it. Kanda caught him staring, as always. "If I tell you the truth, will you stop annoying me?"
Allen would have dropped his jaw if he weren't possessed.
Kanda looked at the high ceiling and said, chin up, "This is my only home."
Allen chuckled briefly before shutting up. It was an accident. He knew it wasn't necessary. It wasn't all it was cracked up to be, being happy. It could have been better; it could have been sweeter and Kanda should now be holding him or something. But then the pity would make Allen cry. So he didn't want Kanda to hold him.
Allen smiled. Kanda scowled, but it was a distant relative of a smile, maybe. Purposely the opposite, like Allen could easily chop into it. He could try, anyway.
He would try. "Um, Kanda?"
"Didn't you say you'd stop staring?"
"No, that was stop annoying. You said that."
"What."
"I couldn't stop staring even if I tried."
Kanda then looked as if he truly wanted to kill him. Somehow, he didn't, he wasn't, and he wouldn't. There was something shirking in his gaze. He was probably faced with that one issue he couldn't forever avoid, and it was killing him behind an invisible wall.
Kanda had sequestered himself, and it was all too familiar, past this room, into a lonely childhood that sent such a poor thing to the Order. It probably wasn't the childhood exactly; it was the agent who found him. Someone, maybe Theodore, had saved Kanda, and Allen was finding himself a little in Theodore's debt for this.
Cross' debt was something else entirely.
"I wish I had a home," Allen continued. "I wish a lot of things."
Kanda tilted his head to the side, all hair and sharp shoulder.
"Are they silly things? Kanda?"
"Probably, whatever they are. Stand up."
"That's what . . . Cross said. No thank you."
Kanda sighed and squatted, sat and crossed his legs. He clasped his hands together loosely in his lap. He hummed behind closed lips. He curled his toes. It made Allen's chin twitch. Kanda didn't catch this.
"You can't say it you're so dead in the head."
"Say? What?"
"That everything in front of you is yours."
"But not everything in front of me is mine. I don't have everything. Hold on, what?"
"That everything can be yours." Kanda looked murderous, with thinking eyes. He could be a doctor with a clipboard in one hand and a scalpel in the other. "Just take it like a man."
"I . . . don't know what you mean."
"Do you ever." The scalpel was large, so large that it was a sword.
They stared for the longest time tonight. Then the earth just stopped:
Kanda had put his hand on Allen's arm—and dragged it all the way to his knee. Down. All the way. All the way all the way down down there. It wasn't how Cross had once done it. It wasn't how women had done it. It wasn't how Jerry or Lavi had done it. So how had Kanda done it?
Allen also realized that Kanda talked a lot, sorry, spoke a lot when he was drunk, which caused Allen to think too much, and to possibly act more than possessed.
Allen must have been very drunk, too, hopefully, because he heard himself saying absolutely nothing nothing nothing! His heart wasn't beating as fast as it had been; he was no longer pulling teeth to catch a breath. That hand was on his knee, gripping through the pants, into his kneecap, and even though the act itself was filling the silence—
He finally had to speak. "Look."
Kanda frowned a bit. Lavi's rabbit had sought them out, and it was in this moment that Allen hated all rabbits, because it was responsible for the reason why the Hand That Touched Allen had moved. It moved, and it was gone, and there was nothing Allen could do about it.
"Stupid rabbit," they said, together.