theme/day: disguise (optional), day 4.
pairing: bizarre Allen/Kanda, Kanda/Allen.
rating: heavy t+.
warnings: implied sex, implications of sex, language.
a/n: Short chapter is short. This is more drabble-ish than anything but I kind of like how it turned out. Could have turned out better. But… Oh well. Anyways, here's number four, so enjoy and leave a review on your way out!
disguise
It was a strange dance, what they had gotten themselves into.
Spinning out of control, slipping on the tiles and falling against cracked walls; built-up dams overflowed by too much water, massacred feelings rupturing. Spidery veins, so tangled in a weaved web of interlaced fingers and locked lips. Touching but never seeing. A kaleidoscope of broken colors and distorted pictures, all tied together in an intricate knot of hope and pain and understanding; bruised flesh against scarred skin.
This was how Allen described his relationship—or what constituted as one, anyways.
He was a cocoon of confusion when he was with Kanda, desperately trying to release the barriers that barricaded him but knowing all attempts were futile. Being with Kanda was like sleeping underneath a blanket of stars on a hot summer night, the adrenaline of battle draining slowly from his limbs and the apprehension for another attack cloying itself around his thoughts. He could never get enough, not when their hands were tangled in day-washed sheets, not when the rain beat against the window in a steady rhythm with their bodies, sweat-slicked and craving for more with fired nerves.
It was a strange dance, what they had gotten themselves into.
But sometimes they lost their footing.
They weren't together often.
They'd avoid each other in the corridors and go on separate missions; they'd meet in the infirmary, day-old wounds healed and puckered, tired bodies with Innocence straining overworked muscles, and they wouldn't speak. Allen smiled, and he smiled often, and the smile was always forced. A bitter aftertaste lingering on his buds when he realized he was fooling everyone; a sick feeling when he realized he was fooling everyone.
But when they were with each other by choice or by demand, they'd find themselves locked in a not-so-real embrace, trapped in a sticky snare of sins and guilt and pleasure and god, Kanda, what—
Allen died a bit each time.
It was pitiful, Kanda thought, how little the beansprout had to try to put on a façade.
It was like an extension of himself—always in place, never once fracturing, little fissures in the porcelain perfectly smoothed over like a freshly painted doll. Perhaps he was a boy on strings, edging closer to an invisible stage each day, guided by a transient puppeteer with no clear motives on a set with no clear lines. The boy was a mystery, a puzzle, a game with no ending and no beginning.
So innocent.
But Kanda had seen past the masquerade, and Allen wasn't innocent at all.
He liked pain.
Or some variation of it, Kanda learned. Swaying to the pulse of their bodies, Allen would sometimes maneuver himself so the angle was just a little bit too uncomfortable or the inside of his flesh would tear just the tiniest bit. The elder exorcist had risen an inquisitive eyebrow at this but the boy beneath him just smirked, like it was the greatest secret in the world and it had been Kanda to uncover it.
And it was then, Kanda realized, that he had managed to slither past one of Allen's defenses.
The next day, Allen wasn't sure why Lavi's "joke" was funny.
Allen was dangerous.
He'd focus a bit less in battle, taking unnecessary battle damage at inappropriate times. The seventh time this happened, Kanda had to step in to stop a fatal blow to the kid's head because he was too stupid and distracted to watch what the fuck he was doing. Allen had blinked, laughed, rubbed the back of his neck—eyes twinkling with mischievous amusement, a sense of accomplishment twirling in the gray depths that reminded Kanda of foggy skies.
Oh.
"You ever try to get me killed again and I swear to fucking God—"
They ended up in the same hotel bed that night.
The kid was crazy.
At least, he was to Kanda; the latter still hadn't unraveled all the threads that held Allen's persona together, but he had unraveled enough to garner some kind of understanding of how the boy's brain worked. A disfigured blend of wires behind the clouded eyes, Kanda figured; slowly turning into molten gold, traces of sunshine peaking through the stormy weather each day that went by. It unnerved the exorcist because he could comprehend the amount of weight that one change carried.
Disturbing how Allen was falling fast, leaving Kanda to pick up the pieces.
Because Allen's disguise was only a trick of the eye.
"Disguise? What's that?"
"Says the clown."
And if breaking through meant going a bit crazy too, Kanda didn't care.