The overwhelming relief that came from learning that Kanda didn't expect sex from him led to Allen crying himself to sleep in Kanda's arms. The brat's tears were getting incredibly annoying - Allen had cried more in the last week than he had in the four and a half years he'd been with the Order - yet Kanda loved the honesty and openness that they represented. It made him believe that the blatant hostility the Moyashi was showing towards him wasn't how he truly felt, and that in turn gave him hope that he could get Allen to love him.

Kanda and Allen had slept in the same bed before, as the inns they stayed at on missions often had only one bed available, and this wasn't even the first time they had woken up in each other's arms, as they occasionally needed the warmth, but this morning was different. Whether they liked it or not, they were married now, and things between them had changed.

Waking up to find Kanda's arms still wrapped around him was quite annoying to Allen, but he unwillingly resigned himself to the fact that the cuddling was never going to stop so long as he shared a bed with the samurai. He knew that the cuddling wasn't a romantic gesture, it was symbolic of possession, and nothing he said on the subject would make Kanda quit doing it. As far as Kanda was concerned, Allen belonged to him now. Allen hated that, but it was just the samurai's nature, and until he had the baby, he was stuck with it.

He tried to get up but found that he couldn't move. Kanda was still asleep, yet his hold on the body in his arms wouldn't budge. Allen was going to have to wake him up if he wanted to do anything other than just lay there. He knew things that would wake the samurai in an instant, but claiming that there was an akuma when there wasn't one was not something an exorcist should do, so Allen had to settle for less drastic measures.

Of course, about ten seconds later, when Kanda shifted his weight on the bed, Allen immediately regretted ever trying to wake him. The samurai had rolled closer to him, if such a thing were even possible, and now there was something quite hard pushed against Allen's thigh. Even half asleep, Allen knew exactly what it was, and it made his skin crawl. Logically, he knew that he had no right to be disgusted by having Kanda's erection touch him, not when it had been inside him god knows how many times that day in the forest, but he was not in a place where he was thinking logically.

"What's wrong, Moyashi?" While Kanda had only just woken and didn't know what was upsetting the boy in his arms, he could tell that Allen was upset and he wanted to at least try to make him feel better.

Allen ignored the question, not recognizing the sincerity in it. "Do you mind letting go of me? I have to pee and you've got a problem to take care of."

The reference to his erection only made Kanda adjust his hold on the Moyashi and push his bulge more firmly against Allen's thigh. "But I want you to take care of it for me."

The blatant way the samurai was asking for sex startled Allen. Just last night he had been willing to wait, yet now he was trying to instigate things. But Allen was far too scared to ask what had changed his mind; he couldn't risk learning that the sensitivity from the night before had been a lie. "Can't you just do whatever it is you normally do to get rid of it?"

Kanda was silent for a moment before he spoke. "This has never happened before."

The ridiculousness of the statement made Allen laugh despite how uncomfortable he was with the situation. "You're twenty-two, Bakanda. And I'm pregnant with your baby. It's not possible for you to have never had an erection before."

Instead of spouting off the insult to his intelligence that Allen was expecting to get in return, Kanda sighed and quietly set him straight. "That's not what I meant, brat. I've obviously had other erections, but I've never ... woken up with one before."

There was something in his voice that made Allen pause. "Wait. You're serious? You really haven't-?"

But Kanda had reached the limit of his emotional honesty and shoved him away. "Che. Don't you have to pee?"

Allen sat up slowly, unable to decide if he wanted to know more or if he wanted to take the out Kanda had given him. But when he looked back at the samurai to find him curled up with his back towards him, he found the behavior to be so out of character that he just had to find out more. He had never seen Kanda embarrassed before.

Kanda was surprised when Allen didn't get up from the bed. He had expected the boy to flee the moment he'd been let go; the Moyashi clearly hadn't bought his attempt to initiate sex by being honest about his feelings. And the coldness in Allen's voice when he spoke only confirmed that he was suspicious of Kanda's motives. "Are you being serious or are you just trying to manipulate me into having sex with you?"

That was a question that had a right answer and a wrong answer - one that would calm the Moyashi down and one that would make him attempt murder. Kanda actually knew which was which for a change, but neither of the options that Allen had presented were the true answer to his question, and despite desperately wanting to end the discussion about his feelings, he knew that his current discomfort was nothing compared to the hell Allen was experiencing, so he owed his pregnant husband an honest answer. "...Both."

Allen was dumbfounded by the response. If it was indeed the truth, Kanda wasn't just admitting to trying to get sex out of him, he was confirming that he was sexually inexperienced, and while that supported his claim that their little tryst had been his first time, all it really did was further convince Allen that Kanda was willing to say and do anything to have sex with him. "So then you were lying last night?"

And the Moyashi was back to being openly hostile. Kanda sighed and bit back the urge to snarl at the brat. "Look, I meant everything I said last night. I'm willing to wait for you to be ready for sex. I'm not going to force myself on you, but that doesn't mean that I'm just going to sit around and do nothing until you get up the courage to initiate things. I want to have sex with you, Moyashi. And I'm going to keep trying until I get what I want. That being said, it was not my intention to push the issue again so soon. I was going to wait a few days, but apparently, my body had other plans."

Kanda stopped abruptly. He had been about to apologize, but seeing that Allen still didn't understand what he was trying to tell him, he decided that the gesture would be pointless. "Don't hurt yourself thinking about it, Moyashi. Just go to the bathroom."

This time Allen actually dropped the subject and left the room. Kanda groaned in relief, though he knew that they'd probably be talking about this again several more times before the Moyashi was finally ready to sleep with him.

When Allen finished using the toilet, he didn't come all the way back into the room and just hovered in the bathroom doorway. Kanda could tell that the awkwardness was because the Moyashi was trying to think of a way to broach a sensitive subject, but he was beyond done talking about his feelings by that point, so he ignored the brat in favor of getting dressed. It was easier said than done, as Allen was especially obnoxious when he was being nervous silently, but Kanda at least managed to not ask the boy what was going on in his head.

Once he was dressed, Kanda stepped into the bathroom to brush his hair, and that was when Allen finally found the courage to ask his question; Kanda's hands were busy with his hair, so he didn't run the risk of getting hit for asking his question. "Can I go eat breakfast now?"

Kanda was floored by the simple question and dropped his hairbrush. The handle snapped in two when it hit the floor, but he didn't notice. He was too busy trying to process the ridiculous thing that Allen had just asked.

The wide-eyed stare Kanda was giving him made Allen shrink in on himself and hide behind the doorframe. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and Kanda's anger as he could. He knew he shouldn't have asked such a stupid question; Kanda hated his eating habits and was going to put him through hell before he'd allow him to go eat.

But while Kanda was pissed off by the question, it wasn't for the reasons Allen was thinking. Kanda understood the true reason why the Moyashi had asked his permission for something so basic, and that reason was so monumentally stupid that it made Kanda want to hurt the boy for even thinking such a thing. The Moyashi clearly thought that being married to Kanda made him Kanda's slave, and that had to be the most moronic thing that Kanda had ever heard from the brat.

He may have been furious, but Kanda knew that he had to remain outwardly calm and set Allen straight before the misunderstanding went any further. "Let me get this straight. You want me to give you permission to go down to the cafeteria?"

Allen nodded and shrunk further in on himself to make himself less of a target. "I'm sorry. I should have just waited for you to tell me to go. I never should have asked something so impertinent."

Kanda stomped closer and grabbed Allen, firmly wrapping his hands around the boy's upper arms so that he couldn't escape. He was seeing red, but he managed to restrain himself - mostly because the boy was carrying their child. "If you weren't pregnant, I'd slap you into next week for that comment."

Scared to the point of almost wetting himself, Allen's restrained tears finally started to fall, and he began muttering repeated apologies as Kanda bodily moved him into a nearby chair. Once the Moyashi was seated, Kanda growled fiercely at him. "Stop talking."

Allen's mouth snapped shut immediately at the demand, though his tears only fell faster; he was kicking himself internally for pissing off his husband on their first day of marriage and probably making the rest of their marriage even more miserable than it was already going to be.

Kanda sighed in irritation. Getting Allen to see reason was proving to be a herculean task, and while he wished that he didn't have to be the one to do it, he knew that the Moyashi was never going to believe the truth if it came from someone other than him. "I want to know where you got the idiotic idea that being married makes you my slave. Though that certainly explains why you can't seem to get it through your head that I'm not going to force you into having sex with me. So let's get this straight before things go any further. You're my husband, not my slave. You do not need to ask my permission to do things, and you certainly don't need to apologize for everything you do. Got it?"

Allen shook his head, trying and failing to stop his tears. Kanda's words made sense, but he just couldn't wrap his head around what the samurai was telling him. Not when so many of the men he used to gamble with had treated their wives like property. The master-servant dynamic was the only side of marriage that he had ever seen before, and after having Cross further cement the inferiority of women into his brain, he just couldn't believe that there were other ways to do it.

Kanda clicked his tongue and flicked the Moyashi's ear. He was going to have to try a different approach. "Think of it this way. Last week, when I told you that Komui had a mission for us, you were worried that it was a ruse for ordering you to take care of the baby. Well, our marriage is that mission. We're partners working together towards the goal of having a healthy baby. I'm here to help and support you, not tell you what to do."

Understanding lit up Allen's face, but the look immediately turned to one of extreme embarrassment. Now that he finally understood that they were supposed to be equals, he just felt stupid for ever thinking otherwise. He should have known from the start that Kanda was never going to want to boss him around. "You'd think I'd know by now not to believe the things Master Cross taught me about relationships."