A/N: Dear God, I finally completed chapter 2! YAY! *falls off chair and dies* I am so sorry for the wait, i hope it wasn't too long for those of you who kindly waited! But I have good news... upcoming chapters shouldn't run into any delays any time soon, because I am FINALLY finished all my exams for last semester AND this semester I have it SO easy, so I'm really happy about that! :D But ahem, anyways, on with the story...
Terms for this chapter:
Big Blind: mandatory bet made at the beginning of a poker game.
Community Cards: cards dealt face-up and available to all players.
The Flop: first three cards that become a part of the Community cards in poker.
The Turn: 4th card that becomes a part of the Community cards in poker.
The River: 5th and final card that becomes a part of the Community cards in poker.
Oyasumi: good night
Holy hell, all this poker knowledge is frying my brain! (I taught myself specially how to play for this story) And I'm pretty sure that I screwed up the rules for the Head's-Up game played in this chapter, but WHATEVER I am a poker newbie, leave me alone! D':
Enjoy~~~
The playing board was suddenly covered in poker chips, all of which appeared like poignant little land mines ready to blow Allen's guts out if he dared touch one of them. However, he decided that being blown into bloody smithereens of human confetti was a far better option than becoming trapped in Lenalee's deadlock sergeant glare, a glare that could no doubt terrorize and brutally torture men into doing anything she wanted them to; his overly confident persona was now nothing more than a war casualty at the unforgiving hands of female fury.
At this point, all he could do to defend himself was blow her away with some kind of semi-acceptable excuse. All words containing even slight romanticist credulity flooded Allen's head, composing monologues melted in cheese and soliloquies oozing of sap that could poetically, rhetorically form brilliant lines of apology, lines that, in his mind, would save both his dignity and resurrect Lenalee's positive views of him; in the end, though, only one utterance of idiotic jargon exited his mouth:
"Uhhh…"
He could've sworn Lenalee's eyes glinted. Maliciously.
"What's wrong, Allen-sama? Lost your touch already?"
He didn't like how she had called him sama. It was like one of those venomous slaps in the face that left behind a chronic feeling of psychological pain rather than any actual physical pain. He just didn't like it.
"You sure you really wanna challenge me?" Allen posed the question with an uncomfortable air of indifference. "I am the unbeatable poker champ—"
"Oh believe me, Mr. Walker, I have heard the rumours," Lenalee's voice was drenched in sweet disgust as she took a seat opposite Allen. "I am most positive that a fair-playing, completely genuine poker genius such as yourself would provide me with a very memorable game."
There was no way he could cheat on her. No. Fucking. Way.
"Lavi, deal the cards!"
It wasn't like Lenalee was that great of a poker player anyway... right? He didn't even know if she knew how to play...
"Dealer is Allen," Lavi muttered, placing the little white dealer button beside him. The cards were then swiftly passed out, although their presence was unable to divorce Allen and Lenalee's tightly locked gaze of lovingly derisive magnetism. This was no doubt going to be the riskiest game of his life, gambling with the very likes of hellish femininity itself.
"Starting bet for all Head's-Up games is $50.00," Lavi muttered, his eyes glancing at Lenalee as if they too couldn't get over the fact that she was dirtying her hands in the world of gambling.
Allen groped the stack of poker chips before him, petting them as if they were exotic animals meant to be lavishly flaunted with bourgeoisie finesse. "I bet $200.00."
He hadn't even looked at his cards yet. Normally he didn't even need to check them before placing his Big Blind, due to the fact that he'd just shrewdly cheat his way to victory no matter the cards dealt anyways. But, despite the fact that this was his first time placing all trust into the hands of raw, impetuous probability, he felt no inclination to change his ways especially for Lenalee. The riskiest card game she'd probably ever played was Go Fish (and no doubt against a completely biased Komui). This would be a cinch.
"I wager $100.00 then," Lenalee's voice sang, her eyes peeking out from behind her fan of cards like twin orchid-stained sunsets. The blob of spectators around them responded with a hushed cacophony of 'ooooh's.
Lavi quickly proceeded in arranging the Flop, the three cards exhibiting their suit of numeracy with laminated sheen; queen of hearts, three of diamonds, and six of diamonds. The dealer button was transferred to Lenalee.
Almost immediately Allen heard the sliding of poker chips. "$500.00."
At this, the room was filled with a haemorrhage of wild gasping, quickly accompanied by the ghostly lullaby of communal whispering. Lavi gave an impressed whistle. "You sure about that Lenalee? This is Allen you're playing wi—"
"The bet's been made, Dealer," Lenalee snapped, shooting Lavi a fleeting look of 'shut-the-fuck-up-right-now' before resting her gaze back on her opponent; clearly, Lavi had become the latest victim of her ruthless wrath.
The audience, meanwhile, fell into a feverish hush, all eyes glued with invisible hunger on Allen as he finally decided to look at his cards.
A three of spades and a six of hearts. Lovely.
He dared himself to sneak a peek at Lenalee; she offered a teensy smile of amiably-disguised rage, one that succeeded in a complete genocide of Allen's soul with hardly a blink. He flickered back to the safety of his cards, their emotionless and neutral appearance suddenly quite comforting.
"I bet $800.00."
The pool of spectators nearly drowned themselves in a monsoon of churning cheers. Allen couldn't help but crack a smile; even playing perfectly fair, Lenalee still stood no chance.
"Chicks and gents, it's time for the Turn to join the party!" Lavi's hollering jeer pierced through the howling storm of overly-spastic voices, and, with an over-the-top holler, the red-headed dealer introduced a queen of clubs into the Community.
Allen had suddenly developed the urge to spout words of considerable profanity; with the dealer button now in his possession, he had no choice but to take action.
"$900.00." An air of nonchalant coolness studded his words; he'd never let Lenalee think he was in a sore position.
Her bet rocketed back at him like a firecracker: $1500.00. Damn, she was getting pretty cocky here…
"Feeling pretty good, are we?" Allen smirked, unable to control his desire to bite into her confident layer of taffy coating and pull it apart till her vulnerability was fully naked. Their eyes exchanged coded glints of malice as Lavi revealed the River card.
A six of clubs.
The glorious bells of victory had already begun their ego-healing orchestration; Allen had a Full House. Normally, such a hand would've been despicable to him, but, considering his competitor, he couldn't have been happier. Hell, within minutes he'd be spoon feeding Lenalee pure, raw defeat!
"Hey, Mr. Dealer," although her inquiry was directed at Lavi, her eyes were locked firmly on Allen, a strange, never before seen look of selfish foreshadow contouring her face as she whispered something into Lavi's ear. Allen was starting to find this devilish side of Lenalee kinda cute…
"Uhh, I don't see a problem with it," Lavi interrupted the lukewarm silence, the uncertainty tainting his eyes making his words seem rather capricious.
"Well then, I'd like to make an offer," Lenalee thrusted her entire palace of poker chips into the middle of the board, her glittering eyes like lilacs dripping in dewdrops of poison. "Not only do I bet all my money, but if I win," her voice reeked of hazardous calculation, "I get all the money your team's made so far!"
Not even the crowd had a response fit for that offer. Allen felt like he was obliviously snuggling a skeleton of barbed wire; Lenalee had somehow managed to make the term 'All In' look like baby food compared to this massive bet. Not bad.
"Fine," Allen intervened casually, his own castle of poker chips shoved to the center of the board. "I match her wager."
A light tremor of excited whispering shook the air into a condition of breathless exhilaration. Lavi took full advantage of the vulnerable state of fervour now antagonizing the room. "Competitors…. reveal your cards!"
Allen hucked his hand onto the board with a cheeky grin. "Full House!"
The crowd became an explosion of glass-threatening shrieks and cheers, chanting Allen's name with fanatic synchronicity.
However, rather than the anticipated look of blatantly shocked defeat, Lenalee was smiling. No, not smiling, giggling. She was giggling like a sweet-hearted maniac, like a child twirling in a snowstorm of sugar, like a…. why the hell was she giggling?
"You're so cute when you act cocky, Allen-kun…"
She placed her cards atop the table with irritating gentleness, an act that quite rightly spanked the audience silent in a matter of two seconds flat.
Lenalee had a Four of a Kind.
A Four
of a fucking
Kind.
The world had suddenly become a sloppy, half-done-drying watercolour painting, one that was moving and animated and made Allen feel rather dizzy and coated his throat in the defeated flavour of vomit. He had been…
He'd been…
Defeated.
Allen Walker, the reigning poker champion who hadn't lost a match in five years… had been irrefutably defeated. By Lenalee Lee.
He had officially lost all feeling in his body. Actually, he wasn't even inside of his body at this point. His body had become a forgotten relic of the past, a hollow shell of untameable trounce, a mummified reminder of cold, grisly defeat…
The last thing he could remember was Lenalee's killer smile, drizzling him in honeyed mockery as he vainly tried to dissociate the traumatizing event from implanting into his long-term memory…
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
The phrase hit Allen like a strategically timed, perfectly aimed grenade ambush. He hadn't seen Lavi this pissed in quite some time.
"Do you have any idea how much money we'd made? And now, just like that, the girls have it! THE GIRLS, ALLEN!" He punched the wall for needless effect. "Why didn't you just cheat like you always do? Christ, I wouldn't have agreed to Lenalee's fucking bet in the first place if I'd 'ave known you'd act all retarded about it!"
Allen felt his vocal cords adopt a fake bout of arthritis; he didn't want to answer that question. It was a question he had asked himself before, during and after the whole god damn poker match, yet it had remained unanswered. It was the type of question that desperately wanted to be rhetorical, but, deep down, knew there was a linguistically tangible answer. But still…
"What, is it cause you like her or something? That's why, isn't it?"
Was that why he hadn't cheated? Just looking into her deep lavender eyes, he had developed the feeling, that inner kick of the intuition, that cheating on Lenalee would've really hurt her, in a way that wasn't quite comprehendible to Allen but understood all the same. Cheating against complete strangers and in order to pay off debts was a completely different category of cheating than cheating against… against a friend. It would've been like taking Lenalee's heart, already frail with disappointment, and letting it drip-dry of all its blood, all its fuel, all its meaning. He couldn't just piss around with her emotions so carelessly, using them as leverage in his bet against their relationship. He just wouldn't allow himself to compromise her… her anything.
"You fucking like her, so you just jump on board with her and ditch us, right?"
It was up to Allen to protect Lenalee, from the thorns of society and the uncharted isolation lying within the shadows, those hazy silhouettes that stalked every individual into a state of unsuspecting, sometimes even unfelt paranoia. And, after seeing the contempt, the raw ionic contempt enveloping her face, gruelling her eyes into little balls of half-masked disappointment…
"Are you even listening Allen?"
… this huge wave of yearning, of desire, began sizzling his insides, searing his hands and his feet, every ounce of his skin and his mind till they were all coated in acid, hot, viscous acid, acid that propelled him to speak, to defend, to fight for Lenalee's behalf no matter if the whole world had suddenly deemed her the enemy and sought to eliminate her. The acid wouldn't stop, it just ate away at his heart, corroded its chambers into mushy tubes and gave his blood a hostile identity that scoured everything it licked and slicked over with its saline liquidity. This cripplingly intense desire to suddenly protect Lenalee at all costs, to win back her trust and her happiness and her approval, to once again see her face smile at him with that blissful benevolence he had so come to love, to crave, to obsess over…
"ALLEN!"
Was this…
"Yoohoo, earth to Allen Walker!"
… love?
"Oi, Moyashi-chan!"
All confusion was suddenly extirpated from his head as a violent surge of pain arrested his body, squeezing his organs and twisting his spine in a way that made the vocal chords silently scream for mercy, made the tear ducts weep invisible droplets of agony, left all bodily functions in a forced, fitful state of horrific hibernation. His body was being devoured from the inside out.
"E-Excuse… m-me…"
Allen barely had the strength to force himself to his feet and head for the nearest bathroom, the horrendous sensation of wanting to vomit up every object inside him immobilizing his limbs from moving in a normal manner. He staggered away from Lavi and the others, clutching his stomach in a vain attempt to soothe the slicing spurts of pain skewering his insides.
His surroundings soon became a whirling canvas of indefinableness, though he did manage to recognize a mirror echoing back a visual replication of his pitiful complexion. His body though, it was acting as if it was self-destructing, as if every organ was suddenly suffering a severe bout of amnesia and couldn't remember what to do or how to act. The muscles that were supposed to be holding him up were shrivelling into useless coils of protein, causing his knees to buckle and his body to come crashing to the ground with agonizing flaccidity. His skin, it was tightening against his bones till large sections of it felt like it was snapping apart, like rows and rows of taut string being clipped with a knife, and his muscles, they were contracting rhythmically to their own unheard tune, nudging Allen atop the cold, lonely floor with gelatinous staccato jerks, until, ever so rapidly, an ear-murdering 'pop' commanded eternal, unbroken silence. Everything – every little thing – had stopped.
Eyes barely able to open, Allen felt as if he could see every sound wave swirling and reverberating throughout the air, colliding with each other and bouncing off walls and solid objects with such fascinating flexibility. They were rather pretty, how they spiralled and twirled like veins suspended in a transparent fluid, how they created intricate spirographs that shivered in place for a few seconds before skating away like clouds unsure of where they were going. The world had become a chrome-coated, cacophonous mess… a place of foreign familiarity…
Is it love, Allen?
The phrase resonated through his head, cracking his skull with fading monotony and freakish strength till Allen was forced to clasp his head in sheer pain. He toppled across the floor, flinging himself violently from side to side as he tried to remove the voice from inside his head.
Do you really love that cute, adorable friend of yours, Allen?
"Shut up…." His skin began to feel foreign, corrosive. In fact his entire body felt like it had been invaded, overtaken, disconnected from his soul and controlled by a source of power completely inaccessible to him. It was… it was happening again…
Lenalee Lee… right?
"Shut up…"
She's cute.
"Shut up…"
I might just have to introduce myself sometime…
"SHUT UP!"
With a jolt reality came crashing back, soaking Allen in its realism and authenticity, choking him in a rush of oxygen and the auditory presence of tile and mirror and bathroom stalls...
So he had made it to the bathroom after all. Its features surrounded him, enclosed him in its tangible security as he shakily got to his feet. He felt as if he was wearing something that didn't quite fit right, as if the inside of his skin had been fingered by grimy hands; his body only felt vaguely familiar.
Slowly, carefully, he hobbled towards the exit, the need to see real faces and hear real voices propelling him to move faster than his body was allowing at that moment. His senses were just beginning to awaken from their coma, just starting to get readjusted to their familiar environment that had so abruptly been turned unfamiliar and alien. As he pushed open the door, the world he had grown accustomed to greeted him with a colourful burst.
The comforting sight of his friends—Lavi, Krory, and Chaoji – alive and breathing, speaking and emoting, conversing and cognizing… it provided Allen with the stability he so desperately needed right then, to ground him and remind him of the world's realness.
That 'stability', however, was quickly replaced with annoyance as Lavi greeted Allen with a completely unconcerned, incredibly devious grin.
"What's your problem now?" Allen asked dryly, his eyes turning into slits of uncertainty.
"Nothing at all, my wonderful little Moyashi!" Apparently his former level of fury had died down considerably. "Just deciding on some final details for our plan…"
"What plan?" Allen hadn't a clue what he was raving about. Nor did he particularly want to know.
"Oh, just a little plan Chaoji, Kro-chan and I discussed earlier. Involving you. And our stolen money."
"It wasn't stolen!"
"Wait, we're actually gonna use that plan?" Chaoji's voice had suddenly turned quite alarmed at the prospect of being involved in a dodgy plan he had yet to fully agree on.
"Indeed we are, Chaoji," Lavi's expression was far too smug. "By tomorrow at this time, Allen'll be working his buns off at Toxically Moe, all for the sake of regaining the money he so selfishly lost for his beloved team."
Mental barricades blocked the words from registering in Allen's head. "What?"
"You're gonna be a maid!"
"Wait, you can't just decide this—"
"I've already discussed it with Lou Fa, she's all for it!" His smile couldn't have been a better symbol of sabotage. "You start first thing tomorrow!"
"LAVI!" Anger had become an inaccurate way of describing Allen's feelings towards the man he had thought was his best friend. Apparently Bookmen were well trained in the area of super sneaky, super bitch-ass sabotage too…
"Have fun being a maid, Allen-chan! Or should I be calling you Allena…"
Lavi's shirt collar was snatched up into Allen's clutch within two livid seconds. "I am not working at that… that murder shack, if my life depended on it!" Thoughts of frilly pink were already threatening to overtake his mind, rob him poor of all masculinity till he could barely remember what it was like to be masculine at all. Holy fuck…
"Well unfortunately, your life does depend on it, because," Lavi gave him a 'friendly' flick on the nose. "We'll make your life a living hell if you don't get us back our hard earned cash. Got it?"
"BUT I WAS THE ONE WHO WON IT ALL!"
Lavi placed a mocking finger gently atop his lips, shushing him silent. "It'll all be okay Moyashi! I pinky promise!"
"Fuck off Lavi!"
"Better get a good night sleep before your big maid debut!"
"GO TO HELL!"
"Oyasumi, Allena-chan!"
"Dammit Lavi, SHUT UP!"
After throwing the nearest object he could secure his hands on at the betraying ass of an exorcist, Allen bade the rest of his "team" good night and stalked out the door, fully pissed off and in severe need of some deep-fried, greasy food.
"Link, I highly suggest you don't follow me," Allen muttered with monotone misery. He was standing glumly outside of Toxically Moe, the inspector rapidly swerving his pen about his notepad in the annoying way that pens so fascinatingly scratch paper with their static ink rivers; however, the scratching was managing to put Allen's nerves on the cliff tops of insanity. It wasn't that he was afraid of working at the maid café, oh no. It was merely the thought of being overtaken, even minutely, by feminine charm and influence that was absolutely drop-dead terrifying to him.
"Walker, I'm about as happy about this unfortunate predicament as you are," Link stated, his pen clicking to sleep. "But as one matures in life they must learn to compensate for their poor actions, regardless of whether the ego appreciates it or not."
"What the hell does that have to do with you watching me?"
"You are now five minutes late, Walker."
Sometimes, the urge to stab Link with his stupid little pen and watch him turn purple from lead poisoning was almost too tempting to withstand.
Nonetheless, Allen made a grandiose entrance into the lively maid café, somehow discovering an all new reserve of manly confidence deep within him as he braced himself for everything pink and sparkly.
His charade was welcomed by a massively gawking Bak, who just happened to be seated in a fuzzy pink chair to the right of the entrance.
"WALKER?"
"BAK-SAN?"
A procession of blubbering inquiries were ricocheted between the two much like a drunken ping-pong match, until finally, a moment went by where both men had suddenly comprehended the gravity of their situation; being caught in a maid café wasn't exactly an 'acceptable' predicament to place one's reputation in. Bak's face was turning every shade of red known to mankind as he digested this societal fact.
"I am here purely for business reasons," Bak flippantly remarked, a sturdy matter-of-fact look spread across his face as he nodded non-stop. Allen couldn't help but notice his hand anxiously swirling his drinking straw around until a full-on hot pink maelstrom had generated deep within his mysterious pink drink's depths.
"Right…" He knew all too well that he was obviously there to try and see Lenalee in a maid outfit. After all, it didn't take a genius to piece together Bak's easy-to-read looks of jumpy embarrassment and the coincidental fact that Lenalee worked there to figure out that that was his genuine intention. What Allen really couldn't wrap his head around was the whole 'stigma' associated with the male entering a maid café thing.
It seemed as if every man that stepped foot into the café was overcome with a sort of stuttering, stupefying illness, one that left him low on wit and high on horniness. God, even Link appeared to become more outwardly flustered once inside Toxically Moe's interior. Maybe it was infused with some kind of highly toxic gas that slowly but effectively fucked male brains into stuttering balls of neurologic goop. That would explain the nauseatingly putrid smell of flowers and rainbows the workers deemed 'aromatherapy'…
"Yoohoo, Walker-sama!"
Oh fuck… now he was hearing female voices talking to him. Wonderful.
"Walker-sama, over here over here!"
With an unreasonably hard jab from Link, Allen was redirected towards Alice, the waitress who had served them just the other day. A strange feeling that was neither joy nor panic took hold of his body, making him feel mildly bi-polar and rather on edge.
"Walker-sama, its so supertastically great to see you again!" Alice was beaming with supermodel acuity. "You as well Link-sama! Are you working with us too now?"
"No."
"Awww, but that would've been so perfectly sparkletastic!" Link was being mercilessly shot down by the female pout weapon. "Then we could've done each other's hair!"
"You can do Walker's hair instead."
"Oh sweetness!" Allen's ribs were effectively crushed into a fine powder of calcium as Alice embraced him with overly ecstatic fangirl strength. "Your snow white hair is just so super cutesy!"
Allen was quite positive the world was about to end. Very quickly.
"Um, excuse me Alice," Link interrupted the moment of one-sided bliss. "What exactly will Walker be doing at Toxically Moe?"
"Oh, he'll be serving with all of us of course!"
Link's pen cackled atop his notepad.
"Oh right, I almost forgot…" Alice whipped around frantically, ink black hair spraying Allen in the face. She skipped back almost immediately with a carefully wrapped, carefully sealed package. "This is for you!"
Words of gratitude had no intentions of escaping Allen's mouth.
"You can go put it on in that room over there!" She pointed to a door just behind them. Allen felt a nerve snap.
"Uh, thanks… Alice…"the words came habitually as Allen shuffled himself around, random blurbs of Alice interrogating Link in her "super-fantastical" language slowly growing fainter and fainter as he tensely approached the door. It glowered before him rather intimidatingly.
"Right, okay." He took a deep, calming breath (although he quickly regretted it as his nose became invaded with the sourly off-putting smell of everything pink and moe); bravely, or perhaps with idiotic composure, he twisted open the door handle and welcomed himself right inside the room, immediately swerving around and closing the door shut before anyone could question him otherwise. He clicked the lock down for extra security.
He faced the door's dreary wooden complexion with a glazed expression, his body unwilling to unwrap the package in his hands and put on what Allen deep down inside knew was something that would forever scar his identity as an androgynously functioning man. Yet somehow he managed to peel his gaze away from the imaginary safety of the door, expecting to set eyes upon a fantastically pink room showered in revolting shimmer and cute fluffy objects of varying shapes and sizes.
What he found was not the image of a room. In fact, it wasn't even pink. Or sparkly. Or inanimate.
Staring back at Allen Walker, with extremely uncomfortable proximity, was a completely uncovered, exceptionally nude, perfectly pale female ass. Complete. With. Thong. A thong shoved way way way up the crack, to the point where it made Allen feel uncomfortable on top of his already indefinably off-the-charts discomfort. And oh, the thong even had cute little pearls at the top, forming a sort of triangle shape that led the eyes quite nicely on their tour down the divide. How nice.
Wait, what?
Allen was officially paralyzed to the spot, all the crazy glue in the world unable to hold him in place better than the sight before him; it was like black magic at its dirty finest. Despite every ounce of self-dignity and every deeply ingrained speck of well-honed etiquette screaming at him, whipping him with his very veins and arteries to stop bloody staring and turn the fuck around and RUN… Allen remained staring, fully fixated, enchanted by the sight of something so off-limits and socially prohibited bent right before him. The blood was gushing to his head, filling him with fantastical dizziness and eddies of psychotic pleasure that left him pulsing in very private places. He felt his mouth uncontrollably lull open.
The temporary dissociation, however, was brought to a careening standstill as the female straightened up, nothing but a baby-pink lace bra covering her chest and a pair of matching lace garters twined around her thighs, their buckles limply waving across her smooth silky skin, as if welcoming Allen to take a good, long look. His gaze was then drawn, with what seemed like magnetic instinct, towards a pair of blinking lilac eyes, eyes so consumed in corroded innocence, so prolifically petrified at the prospect of having been invaded, so inertly locked in a snapshot of eternal, inerasable horror… Allen felt incredibly empty of any dignity at all.
He knew those eyes… that hair… that quivering set of lips.
He knew them way to well. Better than he ever wished he did at that moment.
The lingerie-clad female before him was none other than Lenalee Lee.
A/N: Wow, ya, I wasn't planning on leaving off there, but thats just how things worked out. And I gotta say, I thoroughly enjoyed writing about Allen's struggle with Neah being in his head, that always has fascinated me so I'm really glad I got the opportunity to play around with it in my writing. But, as always, I hope you were able to enjoy this chapter, and I thank you in advance for reading it! Reads/faves/reviews/watches are always welcome and greatly loved!
and honestly, if I messed up the poker game... I'M REALLY SORRY! I'm still learning...
Quick special thanks to the following indvidiuals: EdwardElricAllenWalker, TheRiverAlchemist, klawnella, comet77, and all those who were kind enough to fave and/or watch this story. I love you all! *glomps*