A/N: I should not be doing this, this is, like, literally the last thing I should be doing. I do not have time for this. ...I'm doing it anyway.
Title: When Angels Are Near
Author: liketolaugh
Rating: T
Pairings: Link/Allen
Genre: Romance/Friendship
Warnings: AU
Summary: In a world where the love of others makes your wings grow, Leverrier tells Link that CROWs do not need feathers. Link tries to believe him, until he meets Allen, and his wings start to grow. And Link realizes that he has never wanted anything more.
Disclaimer: I only wish I owned D. Gray-man.
Everyone, Red knew, had wings.
Wings occurred naturally in humans; they grew feathers according to how many people loved them, and how much. Some people had huge, intimidating wings and kind smiles. Some had tiny, shrivelled wings and hunched shoulders. A few had wings that once were large but were now almost bare; those people wore looks that were haunted and miserable. Most people had a wingspan somewhere between eight and twelve feet, thick with feathers.
The first thing a person looked at when meeting someone new was their wings. They were usually a good judge of character; someone with large wings was lovable and trustworthy. Someone with unusually small wings was instantly suspect. People with thick, waterproof wings were hardy, and those with thin, stringy ones were fragile.
In a world where your worth is measured by your wings, Red has none.
Link's wings have always been more or less the same size - a little smaller than average at about six feet wide, but dense and warm. Their size fluctuated slightly, over days and months, as things went wrong and things went right. Feathers fell out and grew back and filled in thicker than before. They weren't much, but Link was proud of them. And he was proud of his friends.
Of course, wings only did so much to help on a cold winter night, and nothing at all when you were hungry. They didn't help when Kiredori and Tewaku couldn't sleep because they were so hungry, or when Link couldn't, either, but wouldn't admit it.
This man - Leverrier - his wings were small. Tiny. Six to eight inches across, if Link was any judge; it was almost comical. They were also bare, with not a feather in sight.
Still, they couldn't afford to turn down his help.
A few weeks after Allen - for he is Allen now, not Red, according to the weird clown - is picked up from the circus, he wakes up and feels something pressing into his back.
Allen stretched, and the things at his back flexed. He frowned, sat up, twisted to look- and stared.
He had wings. Tiny, one-foot wings, pathetic and bedraggled, but he had wings.
...What?
His mouth opened, and then closed, and he reached back, twisting awkwardly, and touched them, fingers brushing through the mottled down.
A yawn, and the accompanying sound of Mana stirring from his slumber, wasn't enough to make Allen tear his eyes away from his new appendages. Neither was the soft 'oh' the man let out, or the patter of footsteps when he crossed the room.
When the man finally sat down beside him, Allen whispered, voice rough with disbelief, "What?"
"They're wings, Allen," Mana explained, voice cheerful but still soft. "They show that someone loves you."
"No one loves me," Allen replied automatically, not taking his eyes off the fluffy evidence.
Mana laughed, and his hand landed on Allen's head, ruffling his hair fondly. Allen was momentarily distracted, growling and batting his hand away indignantly. When he was done laughing, Mana smiled at him and said,
"I love you, silly boy."
Allen froze, staring at him with wide silver eyes; Mana's smile never wavered, but his eyes softened. Allen looked from Mana, to the wings on his back, and then to Mana again, slowly, painstakingly, drawing the connection between the two.
Mana's wings had once been large. Allen didn't know how large; he didn't know how big most wings really were under the feathers. Now they were naked, save for a short, soft coat of tiny contour feathers, coating the bases of both wings.
As the realization of what his new wings meant, what he meant to Mana, washed over him, new feathers, brilliant brown and fluffy, crept up from the smooth contour feathers, until Mana's entire six-foot wingspan was covered in down that looked more like fur than feathers.
Link hated taking showers.
Oh, that didn't stop him from taking them; he still showered every morning and every night, keeping himself neat and clean at all times. But he hated them nonetheless.
He didn't know how this had happened, how they had let this happen, how they'd let themselves grow so desperate - but still, he supposed this was for the best, that they served a greater cause now.
Link had been seeing his friends less and less lately. All of them were busy now - with training, with different missions, different tasks, different paths. That would be okay, he supposed, if lonely, except-
Every time he took a shower, more feathers fell, waterlogged and pathetic, around his feet.
And that was a form of distance that was not so easily remedied.
He shut the water off, knelt down, and gathered them up, placing them in a bag to be thrown away and never seen again - the evidence of his shame.
Leverrier - whom Link somewhat wanted to blame, and yet at the same time, admired for his resourcefulness and his single-minded ruthlessness - had once told him something that was now all that kept him going.
In an ironic twist of fate, CROWs did not need feathers.
Even on the nights when Mana didn't remember who Allen was, he remembered to groom Allen's wings. He wondered what that meant.
"Always take care of your wings, Neah," Mana murmured to Allen, smiling vaguely as he combed carefully through the feathers of his now three-foot wings. Then, teasingly, "I won't always be able to do this for you, you know!"
"...Okay, Mana," Allen muttered, keeping his voice low and rough. He felt Mana chuckle behind him, pausing to ruffle his hair gently.
"Don't worry," Mana assured him softly. "Even if I can't always take care of you, I'll always have you on my mind, okay?"
"...Okay."
Mana was a fucking liar. But it wasn't his fault.
And, Allen thought, glancing back at his mottled wings, at least I know he means it when he says he loves me.
Link's feathers had stopped falling out, but the feathers of others lay scattered around his feet.
Perhaps the most nauseating discovery of his life was the fact that, when someone died, all of their feathers fell off, one by one, and then two or three at a time, and then all at once.
Link had nearly thrown up the first time he saw it, glancing back at the body of a man he'd killed (an enemy of the Church, he was assured) to find his wings bare, feathers lying in shallow, wide piles around him.
He wondered how many feathers he would lose the day he died.
He wondered how many feathers others would lose.
The day Mana died, all of Allen's feathers fell out. He picked up every single one of them, and kept them close to his chest as he fell asleep on Mana's grave.
When the akuma skeleton containing Mana attacked him, they scattered in the wind.
Link missed his friends. But he had a job to do, and love would have to fall by the wayside.
He swore it to himself.
CROWs did not need feathers.
Okay! So that's the first chapter of 'When Angels Are Near' - I'll be updating every other week because I literally cannot handle another weekly fic. *wilt* And this, along with Murmured Magic Words (which this will be alternating with), will be my first Linkllen multichapters. Thanks for reading, and please review!