Good afternoon, bunnies. What fun, what fun.
Anyways, Kanda is probably OOC in this... If not unusually emotional.
Playlist update: The title of this chapter corresponds to the song "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls. I wrote the chapter while listening to the song.
Half an hour later—by some miracle unbeknownst to even god himself—Allen stumbled upon the fifth level training room. (Most of the castle was located underground; it was actually larger level-wise than their previous location had been. Which was scary when one thought about it.)
Still more than a bit tipsy, the white haired teen pranced through a set of mahogany doors and into the dojo-inspired space.
Rice paper shoji panels lined the side walls, and artificial lights had been placed behind them to give the illusion of the space being above ground; however, these were currently turned off, and the only light that graced elegant design spilled through the open double doors from the hallway.
"Kanda-chan?" Came a very-innocent and uncharacteristically confident voice.
The swordsman's eyes shot open, catching on the shadowed outline of a small body in the doorway.
And so it begins, Kanda thought.
"It's just Kanda," the Japanese man growled irritably. "And whatever it is, the answer is no. Now screw off, Moyashi."
"Awe," Allen whined childishly. "You didn't even let me ask, you grouchy old man!"
"Says the one with white hair!" Kanda shot back.
"Come on," the boy pleaded. "Won't you even let me ask?" To the swordsman's dismay, Allen's voice was growing closer… Which meant that whatever the freak-boy was doing, Lavi had obviously put him up to it; Allen would not have persisted if the damned rabbit was not involved.
"You deaf, Sprout? I said get lost!"
"Come on, Yuu. Aren't you even a little bit curious?" The voice was now mere centimeters from the man's face. Kanda growled, springing to his feet and drawing his beloved katana, Mugen.
"You die now, insect!" the Japanese man proclaimed, aiming an attack at the boy. Allen dodged effortlessly, still smiling.
"I just wanted you to come to the party. Yeesh. You might as well enjoy yourself every once in a while…" The silver-haired boy slipped past Kanda's ruthless, enraged attacks without a bat of the eye.
One after the other, Kanda's attacks became a seamless dance of failed attempts. No matter how many the swordsman threw at the boy, Allen never even came within a foot of the blade, and that sickening, fake smile was still glued to the boy's lips.
"Please?" Allen nagged, breathing regularly. Mugen slipped past the shorter exorcist's head again.
"Die already!" Kanda screamed, bringing the sword down vertically over the beansprout's head.
Suddenly, the blade halted, caught from the top by the cursed left hand of said white-haired exorcist.
The boy appeared deep in thought. "No, I don't feel like dying right now, Yuu-kun," the boy hummed with another smile.
"It's Kanda you bastard!" The Japanese man roughly pulled his weapon back and aimed for the boy's head again, only to be blocked a second time.
"I told you, baKanda: I don't feel like dying right now."
"The fucking rabbit put you up to this, didn't he," Kanda hissed, grabbing the boy's collar and dragging Allen's throat up to the blade of his katana.
"No," Allen answered, coolly, prompting the swordsman to tighten his grip on the smaller exorcist's shirt. "I just thought you might want to join the festivities," Allen giggled.
Because of the proximity of the boy's face, Kanda finally noticed the scent of alcohol on Allen's breath.
Wordlessly, he released the boy and sheathed his sword. "Leave," the swordsman ordered, heading back into his dark corner.
Allen decided he would sit and meditate with Kanda, who simply glared and returned to his breathing exercises.
After forty five minutes of silence, the white-haired boy spoke.
"I have something to tell you," Allen announced, sounding far more sober. "I love you, Kanda." At the boy's sudden confession, the swordsman's cheeks turned a very light shade of pink, and he crossed his arms, facing away from the boy.
"Find your room and go to sleep already! You're totally intoxicated, idiot!" The Japanese man snapped back, keeping his eyes away from the face that he knew would show no trace of inebriation, the eyes that would be perfectly clear, the half-smile that ruined Allen's boyish disposition and turned him into something that wasn't quite young or ingenuous anymore, the same thing that made the boy a destroyer, regardless of how many lives he had saved or how much love he held for both human and akuma life.
Allen was completely sober. Kanda didn't even need to see the boy's face to know that his blood stream was already completely pure, that Allen's thoughts—the boy's words were all his own, free from the rose-hued tint of alcohol.
"Actually, Master and I used to play drinking games whenever we got into an argument. For some reason," the smaller exorcist recollected, "everything turned into the 'who's going to be sicker in the morning?' contest…" Kanda remained silent, unsure of how he should react or how he even wanted to react. "Funny…" Kanda allowed himself one glance at the white-haired boy, noting both immense joy and pain on the boy's face. "I never lost…"
Much to the stoic swordsman's horror, gleaming tears appeared on the boy's cheeks as Allen gazed longingly into the darkness.
Stop that, the samurai thought.
"Well, I guess if you don't want to answer, you don't have to. I already know how you feel about me so I guess it never really mattered in the first place," Allen said, rising to his feet. "I just wanted… I wanted you to know before I'm gone."
Kanda felt like someone was driving bamboo slivers underneath his fingernails. Why? Why does the Moyashi have to be so much like him?
The white-haired boy was already halfway across the room when Kanda recovered from his state of shock.
"Idiot!" The swordsman shouted, springing to his feet and darting to obscure the exit. "What are you talking about?" Kanda grabbed the boy's shoulders, shoving him roughly into the wall. "I thought you weren't going to let that bastard get control of you! Don't just give up now, dumbass!" Stop, Kanda ordered. Stop for god's sake!
Allen's brilliant silver irises met the swordsman's, painted with sorrow and surrender.
Endless tears made the journey down Allen's flushed cheeks and slipped from his jawline onto the boy's collar.
The only sound that filled the silence was that of Allen's broken, wretched sobs, and to Kanda, they were torture beyond hell.
That moan and hiccup…the sound was universal—the sensation, the action, the pain—pain was universal. No matter how many years passed, how many lives Kanda had seen, how many times he had been brought back into the world, the pain never changed.
And it never ended.
Pain was the same now on the face of the white-haired teen as it had been on the swordsman's back when the Order had forced his synchronization with Innocence, the same as it had been on hisface, and the same as it would always be on any face, regardless of age or wisdom or power. Hell.
That boy's face brought back hisface, brought back thosedays—that place.
"Idiot! Stop crying!" Kanda screamed.
The sound endured; the bludgeoning continued.
"Stop! Fuck, Allen…stop." The swordsman bit down on his bottom lip, gripping the boy's arms fiercely.
When the sound did not cease, Kanda's tortured subconscious broke free of the man's meticulously constructed barriers, overriding pride, apprehension, and thought alike as he gathered Allen's trembling frame into his arms and crushed their lips together.
For those moments, the world didn't matter. Allen wasn't the fourteenth, and Kanda wasn't a second exorcist. They weren't pawns of knights or bishops or exorcists; they were just two people in millions, two faces in the crowd, unaffected by the world around them and held in their moment of stillness by mutual longing and agony.
The pain and desperation that had initiated the action dissipated when the white-haired boy relaxed, giving into the pressure of the swordsman's exceptional strength and deepening the kiss.
After several seconds passed in stillness, Kanda allowed his eyelids to slip open. The Japanese swordsman gazed indifferently at the peacefully closed eyes before him.
So much for 'never again,' Kanda mused bitterly, closing his eyes once more. At least the idiot shut up…
In the blank-minded, placid silence, when Kanda finally allowed himself to think that the situation might not be as horrible as it seemed, the foretell shadow of a human body marred the perfect slit of golden light that streaked across the floor, accompanied by a blissful, energetic voice that could belong to none other than a certain oh-so-smug to-be-bookman whose name began with a god damn 'l,' which Kanda could not properly pronounce. If there was a god, he had purposely chosen to begin the red-head's name with an 'l,' just to make Kanda's day that little bit more troublesome.
The swordsman already had issues with god—if there was one. But now, in addition to paying the swordsman back for the Black Order, the Earl, the Noah, Alma's death, and possibly the Fourteenth, Kanda decided that whatever god there was owed him compensation for creating the damned rabbit…substantial compensation.
A second voice accompanied Lavi's...
Okay, so there's a lot of fluff in this... Like... enough to stuff a couple thousand pillows. Fluff: good? bad? too much? too little?
I know you guys are reading this. Anyways, maybe you'd be more happy to answer a question.
Alright! So here's the poll!
Who should the second voice belong to? If no one comments in the next week, I'll decide myself, but otherwise, majority wins! Lenalee? Komui? Link? Bookman? Rohfa? Lvellie? Just some of my ideas... I have a plan for Link, so I'll probably end up writing an alternate for him anyways...
But Komui would be funny too...
Well, let me know... If you actually read this.