Disclaimer: I do not own D. Gray Man, no matter how I wish I could. That privilege belongs to Katsura Hoshino only.

A/N: *tired yawn* hey guys~ How're you all doing? I'm fine but quite tired with my new job that's draining me out. I promised that I'd update this sometime in the summer, and I intend to keep my promise to you guys. Don't give up, because this story isn't over yet!

Enjoy~

One Step Back, Two Steps Forward

"Link, can I go now?"

"No, Walker. You will not leave this room until you finish answering all the questions of this questionnaire."

"That's gonna take me at least two more hours to fill. You know that I won't last that long."

"I am not the one who drank ten pounds of water at lunch. It is not my problem."

"But-But I really need to go!"

"Walker—"

"Please!"

Link chanced a glance at his charge from the paper he'd been scribbling notes into, taking in his sweating face, his tightly crossed legs and incessant squirming. Allen sent him a pleading puppy dog eyed look, silently begging him to let him go and do his buisness.

Link huffed, turning back to his paper. The white haired teen let out an agonized whimper but stayed in his seat.

Five more minutes passed. The squirming increased, the chair creaking repeatedly with the constant movement.

"Liiiiink..." came the pathetic whine.

An inaudible sigh. "Be quick about it."

The Inspector hadn't even finished his phrase that the teen was already out of his chair with a loud, hurried "Thank you!" and scrambling for the door of the bathroom like his life depended on it. In his haste, however, Allen accidently knocked over the bottle of ink that had been lying just beside a stack of paper, and it swirled on itself a couple of times before gracefully spilling its content right onto Link's paper.

"My report!"

Allen's attention was centered sorely on emptying his painful bladder, completely ignoring Link's horrified shout. He let out a loud sigh of relief once all the fluids were out of his body, and quickly tucked himself back into his pants after flushing the toilet. Going to the bathroom had never felt so good in his life before.

He walked back to the room, rubbing the pain from his lower stomach. His eyes went wide, however, when he took in the sight of the fuming Inspector holding his ruined journal by the tip of his fingers, whose sharp glare went from his damaged notebook to him in a split second.

"Walker—!"

"I'm so sorry Link! I—"

"—I cannot believe that you of all people would do something like that—"

"It was an accident, I swear!—"

"—an accident you say?"

"Yes! I didn't mean for this to happen!"

"As if I would believe that."

"Huh?"

"Don't play dumb with me, it won't work."

"W-What?"

Howard snorted derisively. "I am no blind fool, Walker. I knew you were targeting my report from the beginning."

"But I—"

"Don't bother sprouting useless excuses."

"Will you list—"

"—I saw you speak in low tones with Miss Lee at lunch and glance at me warily from the corner of your eye when we walked out of the cafeteria. I believe those clues were enough proof for me to take some precautions before this whole mess started."

The dripping journal in Link's hand suddenly glowed bright red, and shifted—no, erased its image, Allen realized—to reveal what it had really been the entire time he thought it was the journal: a Crow Spell Tag. The real copy must have been sent when he wasn't looking earlier... Hopefully Lenalee would be able to do whatever she wanted to do to her brother before it landed under his nose. Now to clear this misunderstanding.

"Wait Link! I had my eyes just on today's report! I hadn't planned on ruining all the others!" he said as he thought he saw a sparkle come off the tag.

Link huffed. "How many more lies are you going to tell me?"

Allen growled in irritation. "I'm saying the truth dammit!"

Link glared back, equally irritated. "You'll have to do better than that if you want me to believe you."

"Fine then. I'll show you why I did it albeit unwillingly." Before Link could even know what hit him, Allen activated his Innocence, surged towards him and tackle-bowled him over.

They fell... right onto the bed.

~X~

Lenalee knocked over Kanda's door. "Kanda-kun! Are you there?"

She heard a muffled grunt. Seconds later the door opened, and a tense Kanda greeted her. "What do you want?"

She showed him the plate in her hands. "When I told him that you were unusually absent from the cafeteria today, Jerry became worried that you'd not show up for lunch and asked that I bring you your meal."

Kanda stared at her mutely, then at the warm soba with chopsticks and green tea cup in the plate she held in her hands. Now that he smelt the food, he did feel hungry. He took it with a nod of thanks. Before he closed the door, Lenalee caught a glimpse of Lavi settled on the bed with a raised eyebrow.

Feigning ignorance over his presence, she smiled at the dark-haired man and left with a cheerful wave. "Have a good meal!"

"Che."

~X~

The door to Komui's office opened, admitting in his female sibling. "Nii-san!"

"Lenalee."

"I brought you some coffee!"

The Supervisor's head rose from the pile of papers it's been resting against, his dull eyes meeting the shinning ones of his sister. He grinned welcomingly at her despite his sour mood, obviously not wanting her to worry over his condition. "You did? Great! I'm thirsty!" he made grabby gestures with his hands towards the mug.

Covering her wince over her brother's tired figure, she laughed at his childish actions and gladly gave him his drink with a shake of her head. "Mou nii-san, don't drink it too fast, it's still hot!"

"Hai~!"

In five minutes flat, the mug was empty. Komui, with a mild contented expression on his face, licked his lips to get every last drop of the heavenly liquid, then managed to free himself of the mountain of papers and books overloading his desk to glomp his little sister. "Thank you for your so delicious hand-made coffee! My sweet little Lenalee-chan's coffee is the best!" Lenalee rolled her eyes in amusement at that.

"Now don't you go and slack on your work because of me, brother. Up and back you go!" she shooed him away with a grin, the Supervisor chuckling along with her as he returned to his desk and picked up his pen.

It was maybe around fifteen minutes later, when Lenalee was out and he was dragging over another sheet of paper to sign off that Komui noticed the first signs that something was definitely wrong with his body. His eyelids begin to drop, his head felt heavy and his vision started to blur and flicker out of sharpness. Next came the multiple yawns, quickly followed by drowsiness and finally the familiar numbness in his limbs that foretold of a deep slumber to come.

And Komui didn't resist, falling asleep atop his desk with surfacing snores, his pen still in hand and drooling slightly. The pen, along with the saliva that dripped down from his mouth, stained the paper black and blurred its writings, steadily erasing the fading title that said 'Report n.231 on Exorcist Allen Walker: His Suspicious Conversation with Lenalee Lee at Lunch'.

A/N: dear readers, I have good news and bad news for you all.

The good news is that Challenged Pleasure has only one 1 chapter left to update and we'll finally know who'll have won the bet in it.

The bad news is that despite my best encouragements and serious MSN conversations with my writing partner, Evanescent Silence (also known as hakasha) has abandoned the fic due to lack of interest and inspiration to write the rest of it, so the task has now fallen on my shoulders to finish the much waited next chapter and epilogue. I hope you guys won't be too disappointed with the end, since our writing style differs in many ways that will make it obvious which of us has written what in it for those who have read separate work from us both before.

So. Unless I manage to somehow twist everything and blend my style enough with ES's to fill in some major missing scenes without making it appear too obvious, you're all going to have to wait even longer than wanted because I have a writer's block that's a little hard to evade. Worse case scenario, I will write a detailed summary of what was supposed to happen at the end (who won and the consequences that came with hearing Allen screaming through HQ). Let's hope I will not have to resort to such a method.

ES presents her deepest apologies to everyone that has read this story and diligently kept watch over it ever since it was published nearly a year ago (already been that long, eh?) and is now encouraging me from the sidelines with my other ffn friend, Kayday. I too present my deepest apologies to all of you, both for failing to keep in my partner and having broken the promise we made to finish this story together. That is why I will try my best to make the story's climax as epic and mind-blowing as its beginning and development.

For all the readers of What Ignorance of Grown up Matters Can do, its chapters may be updated later than expected due to the unexpected addition in my to-do list. I wanted to publish them around the end of summer since I'm stuck quite deliberately ¾ down chapter 11, but now I'm not sure when the next chaps are gonna get updated. Sorry about that ^^"

As for Pleasured Into Insanity, it will have to wait for some more months before seeing a next update since I have my arms full with CP and my other story. I hope the readers of PII won't mind too much to wait even more, although I will not be able to comfort you if you snap and take your anger on me with angry PMs. Again, I'm sorry for the unexpected events that's been falling on me lately.

With all that said, I still hope that you'll have enjoyed the new chapter~

Don't forget to leave a review!

AF