A/N: Sorry for the wait everyone! I feel really bad, but, between dance, finishing up watching Full Metal Alchemist, and reading the latest DGM chapter (which has left me both very confused AND severely deprived of AllenxLenalee scenes), I haven't exactly had all the time I need to write! So GOMENASAI! *bows repetitively* But, I am finally pleased to present to you the third chapter! Thank Kami-sama...
ENJOY! Tanoshinde kudasai! *hides in corner with manga*
The world, it was no longer harnessed by the secure hands of gravity, no longer safely tucked within its jolly jumper of centrifugal force, no longer circumnavigating, hand in hand, with its guardian of gravitational supervision in a normal lucid fashion, but rather, in a drunken, psychotically inclined sprint of elliptically-challenged madness. Insanity, it would seem, had become an all new physical force, very much so capable of dismantling the earth from its axis of reason and toppling it into a black hole of hypnotizingly black, black, blackness.
That's all Lenalee's head was filled with, at least: blackness. Cold… bottomless… blackness; a blackness that consumed and coated your senses in stifling black saliva, forcing them to adopt an identity of crushing phobia and lose all recollection of their capabilities and roles as somatic poets till all you could feel, taste, hear, see, smell was black numbness. She had never felt so blaringly exposed in her life. Ever.
The fact that Allen looked like a bug-eyed bush baby having his eyes poked out from behind wasn't helping much either.
"Le… na… lee…" Allen blurted the words robotically, as if his mind had been completely taken over by the powers of heavily provoked testosterone and images of god knows what level erotica. He displayed the typical symptoms of a male suffering temporary brain dysfunction due to hotness overload, yet somehow, it failed to garner any sympathy from Lenalee.
Thoughtlessly, or perhaps more with thought that adamantly believed it was empty and thoughtless, her Dark Boots shot her directly towards Allen, whom she, with the vivacious speed any shockingly flustered woman is capable of generating, grabbed by the ear and shoved into the nearest source of confinement available to her: a closet. And thus, with a dramatic thrust capable of making bedrock shiver, the doors to Allen's 'temporary concentration camp' were blatantly slammed shut.
Lenalee's mind, now having semi-alleviated the male stressor, felt like a fried egg. A rubbery one, with one of those yolks that bleeds all over the whites and quite simply makes you feel like a toddler chew toy (in a weird, psychological way). Basically, her insides felt like a cold, scrambled mess.
The need to warm the icy awkwardness solidifying the atmosphere was rather pressing.
"Allen-kun… don't.. say.. anything."
"B-But, Lenale—"
"ANYTHING."
An acceptable air of silence emanated from the closet; this suggested that either a) Allen had passed out due to lack of usable oxygen in his tiny closet confinement, or b) the words had actually fully registered in his stupid little brain fast enough to stop him from slitting his own throat any further. As entertaining as the first option was, the second option seemed rather likely.
Eventually, Lenalee resuscitated enough of her logicality to grab hold of her maid uniform, her scarcely clad body becoming highly aware of its substantial nudity as she shook out her frilly moe dress, its apron and ribbons flapping giddily. Hesitantly (due to the fact that her muscles were still suffering from severe PSTD), she began slipping on her lace-choked bloomers.
"Hey… Lenalee?" Allen's voice had taken on a rather muffled gruffness due to the closet's confines. "Can I say something?"
An awkward hesitance clambered over Lenalee as she placed a foot through her uniform; she had no intentions of answering him. She couldn't be sure what taboo thoughts would leak from her mouth if she dared open it…
"I'm sorry."
She nearly face-planted as her foot caught on the edge of her skirt.
"I'm really, really sorry."
She prayed he'd stop talking. Before the inclination to snip his vocal cords in half became too unbearable.
"For everything."
Shut up…
"I, uh… I'm an idiot."
Just shut up…
"I know I'm an idiot, actually, when it comes to feelings a-and girls and—" his words trailed off, either due to the fact that he didn't know what he was even saying, or because he was about to say something he hadn't intended on making audibly public. Lenalee, despite convincing herself it was due to the former, was intuitively aware that it was probably the latter.
"Allen-kun…" his name fell from her mouth with a metallic flatness, as if every syllable bore an iron weight. She didn't know what she wanted to tell him. Just saying his name… she liked saying his name… it felt like speaking words of hot chocolate, always so soothingly warm and fuzzily sweet…
"If you're gonna say you hate me than I, uh, completely understand, I mean—"
"Allen-kun."
Enslaved seconds lugged by. Brutally enslaved. It almost felt like they were waiting for Lenalee to finish off her thoughts, to publicize them so that they could return to normal time, but her voice shied away from the opportunity, the hazard of her self-volatility too great.
"Allen-kun…" again, her voice stopped itself, committed an act of instantaneous, intuitive suicide. Why couldn't she just fucking speak, like any other normal human being? It was like saying his name trapped her in some kind of bubble, a bubble that robbed her of all oxygen and made her vocal chords forget how to be vocal chords and caused her eyes to drown in their own stinging saliva—
"It's okay, Lenalee," even through the stupid sounding muffle of the closet, Lenalee could detect that comforting tone of gentle understanding, that tone dripping with genuine acceptance. It was always so subtle, yet, when comprehending his words at a more subconscious level, the potency of his intentions was incredibly overwhelming. Allen just had the ability to create that perfect sense of half-masked, half-recognizable reassurance, the kind that could verbally comfort you whenever you wanted to crucify yourself with words of poisonous self-mutilation. It was like an invisible embrace, one that you never ever wanted to end.
"It's okay."
"No," Lenalee breathed, her hands desperately trying to grip the zipper at the back of her dress. "No its not. Allen-kun, how can it be okay? You just had to be such an… an idiot, so how… ugh, fucking zipper…"
She felt as if she were talking to herself rather than a person stuffed in a closet. A person who, despite having heartlessly cheated people of their money in the most egotistical way possible and despite having walked in on her at an exceptionally undesirable time, was still yanking at her heart strings with excessive colonialism.
"Why did you have to do that? Why did you have to put me through all that shit and make me feel all sick and confused and… and… ugh, for Christ's sake… I just… I just…"
The words plopped from her mouth like thick globs of vomit; she could feel herself gagging on her own feelings, spitting and spluttering up clobs of emotions that had previously been slinking about secretively through her veins, clotting her thoughts into jumbled jungles of indefinable abyss. Why? Why did she continue to suffer this feeling of… of…
"Lenalee."
… A feeling that wasn't anger, but felt so god damn similar. Yet at the same time, completely dissimilar. It was simply a feeling of raw immaturity, a feeling that had been drawn out of her prematurely, had yet to fully develop into something grander and more tacitly tangible, but, despite all that, had still been brought into the world in one shocking bout of unexpectedly convulsive labour, making her mind a paroxysmal mess and her mouth a source of sick sick nonsense—
She was completely caught off guard as she felt her zipper magically fasten shut; whipping around, even despite knowing she'd be sick with regret for doing so, Lenalee felt her eyes snap into a far too comfortable position: staring into Allen Walker's pale, star shine eyes. She just stood there, blinking, staring, drinking up his milkshake gaze, freely letting him become intoxicated in her own ocular lilac potion for a period of time that felt both too long and not nearly long enough. But before she allowed herself to completely drown in his soft metal orbs, she pushed him away with a rough shove to the chest, her face a feverish flush.
"H-How did you…" her voice trembled terribly. "You're supposed to be in the closet, Allen-kun!"
A look of intense internal chastisement thundered across Allen's face before he quickly covered his eyes with his hands, a streak of pastel red emblazoning his cheeks. He was so incredibly easy to read; Lenalee could've closed her eyes and still perfectly sensed his feelings, an internal battle between consideration and culpability. Despite his considerate side winning, the culpable side was doing a fine job of whipping him guilty. But just seeing Allen writhing about in guilt, fighting off an invasion of feelings he couldn't quite handle all at once… the whole act was so stupid, so ridiculously hilarious… it was cute. Allen Walker was actually acting, quite admittedly, cute, in his own stupid, oblivious way, making his performance of hysterically acute trepidation almost enough to win Lenalee's forgiveness. Almost.
"I SWEAR I DIDN'T SEE A THING LENALEE I JUST HEARD YOU STRUGGLING WITH THE ZIPPER SO I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE OKAY TO JUST COME OUT AND QUICKLY HELP YOU—"
A strange wave of giggles came from Lenalee, giggles that were born from both the sight of a hysterically embarrassed Allen Walker and from the remnants of fury she still had yet to unleash at him. Somehow, when put altogether during a situation of ridiculous hilarity, the emotional combo made for some pretty lethal giggling.
"Um, Lenalee, are you…"
Tear droplets crystallizing the points of her eyes, Lenalee heaved for air, the sudden rush of it making her light-headed and unsophisticatedly giddy. "Allen-kun, why can't I ever just stay mad at you?"
Hands still barricading his eyes from any form of unrighteous peeping, his mouth twisted into an expression that suggested he had taken the rhetorical question quite literally. "Uhh…"
"Don't even think about answering that," Lenalee breathed, her voice still weak from the giggling attack. "But I mean, for God's sake, you saw me in my underwear and…" her eyes adopted a sweet sparkle. "And here I am laughing at you!" She placed her hands atop Allen's, carefully relieving them of their guard job and offering him a shy smile. "Why?"
That's right… why was she acting like this? Here stood a teenage man who had unfairly racked people of their money and walked in on her while she was changing, yet she stood here fighting the urge to hug him. Rather tightly. Passionately, even. All she really wanted to do was enwrap her arms around his chest, envelope herself atop him till their skin melded into a soft, tender kiss, melt lusciously atop his firm, wonderfully toned body…
Wait, why was she thinking of… of his… in such a physical… detailed…. manner….
Dear God.
"Um, excuse… me… s-second…" Lenalee could barely form the words amidst the estrogenic hurricane now ripping apart her insides and terrorizing her mind into a swooning, petrified havoc. A delighted state of chaos, one that felt forbidden and terrifyingly unknown and was full of a lusty desire so strong, it produced its own category of nausea was encapsulating her senses, spanking her into a childish mode of femininity she hadn't ever experienced, that she had thought she had developmentally skipped over and absently graduated from long, long ago. The only thing she could do was run from the unrunnable, and she did so with wild panic.
Desperately, with a squeamish, alien sort of alarm, Lenalee darted from out of the room, her Dark Boots instinctively helping direct her away from the alleged 'source' of her unfathomable problems and towards a place of temporary relief from said Source's obscuring presence. However, once beyond the door her dissent was quickly blocked by Alice, who was chattering away with Link as she French-braided the inspector's hair, completely oblivious to her surroundings (and the fact that she was supposed to be working).
Manoeuvring herself strategically around the pair, Lenalee was able to avoid the trap of eternal gossip exchange with swift accuracy, her Dark Boots doing a superior job of guiding her away from the trouble before they had even realized she'd zoomed by. With hasty force she went crashing through the nearest bathroom door, her hair flailing across her face as she came to a skidding halt atop the smooth tile floor.
Chest convulsing in airless ecstasy, Lenalee locked the door behind her, leaned against the door's frame, and let her back slide feebly down its exterior; she had made it to safety.
"Allen Walker…" she huffed, her poofy maid skirt parachuting around her as her butt touched the floor. "Allen… Walker…"
Her hands slid atop her face, cowering her vision into a state of dim blackness. All these feelings of self-identity, self-confidence, self-perception, self-appearance, self… self anything… they were all curdling deep within her stomach, diffusing throughout her body and filling her with a type of doubt that left her breathless and enthralled in a game of scrupulous 'what-if' roleplay. All Lenalee could feel was a numbing colloid of developmentally delayed feelings, overtaking her and transporting her to an area far beyond her personal comfort zone, to a place that tampered with the very furnishings of fantasy and replaced them with something far more intriguing yet just as horrifying. Her entire body felt like a juxtaposing psychosocial tug-of-war match, on the verge of turning violently engaging.
She considered, ever so briefly, going to Komui for advice. She might not have even known what kind of advice she was searching for, or even how exactly to ask for it, but whenever she had faced a problem in the past, it had always been Komui who had guided her, reacquainted her with the light in life. Yet somehow, the thought of informing Komui of these… these garish feelings, so choked in uncertainty and ambiguity and newfound awareness of things girls don't usually like to be explicitly slapped in the face with…
Somehow, the thought of informing Komui that she had been viewed by Allen Walker in nothing but bra and panties, and that she, on top of this groundbreaking fact, wasn't even furiously enraged at him for acting so idiotically impulsive, seemed like a bad idea. A really, really bad idea.
Loneliness had never seemed so helplessly secluded.
"Allen Walker…" just the mentioning of his name made her freeze up and melt into a gooey ball of musing ludicrousness. "Why are you such a god damn pain in the ass?"
The answer to her hidden question poked rather intrusively at the borders of her subconscious; the yolk to her perfectly cracked world… had finally broken.
Today was a landmark in Allen Walker's history. Because today, with unprecedented vigour, Allen had discovered that Cross' training hadn't been as cruel and heartless and incredibly degrading as he had always thought it to be.
In fact, his training now seemed like one of those pleasant cups of afternoon tea, served with those dainty little tea cookies that make you feel all snootishly refined and pompously classy. The ones with pretty little sugar crystals all over them too.
Because, back in the day, Allen Walker had never… EVER… been trained to say…
… with just the right inflection of the voice…
… and with just the right accent of arousing sympathy…
"Ok-kaerinasaim-mase, g-g-goshujin… s-sama."
The room around him was muggy with disapproval.
"Allen-sama," Alice began, her voice taking on an all-new, mega freaky tone of malice, "Try… it… again."
Training to become an exorcist was nothing compared to training to become a maid of exceptional moe moe qualities. He had learned that the minute Alice had violently clasped his face, freakish wand of black gunk in hand, and attempted to plaster his eyelashes in what she had called 'mascara'. And after that, fascinating tubes and jars of items named lip gloss, eye shadow, and blush had also been aimed at his face with prickly brushes and sponges of all sizes and textures. During that time, Allen had actually started to miss Cross Marian, proving that the world must have been flipped over and turned inside out for him to even possibly experience such impossibly plausible feelings; he was scared fucking shitless.
"Okaerin-nasaim-ma… se, uhh…"
"STOP."
Sparkly pink notebook thrown to the ground, Alice was suddenly on a storming rampage towards Link, who, for reasons Allen could not in the slightest bit hope to one day fathom, had become Alice's 'go-to guy' when it came to judging Allen's performance in becoming an acceptable maid. Actually, Alice had been clinging rather creepily to Link ever since Allen had stumbled out of the 'Changing Room of Doom' (named for the events that had taken place in it), in a way that the inspector had even more creepily seemed to become not only accustomed to, but, quite frankly, comfortable with. He forced himself to stop thinking about it, for the sake of keeping his sanity ever so slightly intact. Link just wasn't the kind of guy youever pictured having a girlfriend…
Allen came crashing back to reality with the help of an electric-pink feather pen assaulting him in the face.
"How do you expect to ever earn back your money," Alice hissed, her eyes like chocolatey needles ready to inject sugary inoculations of death. "When you can't even welcome the god damn GUESTS?"
Unable to comprehend an answer of semi-decency, Allen decidedly kept his mouth shut. Or rather, hanging open in a dumbfounded O shape that he believed looked shut.
"WELL?"
"Uhh…"
"LINKY-KINS!"
Before Allen could even protect his eyes from the corrosive sight he just knew was coming, Alice had jumped on top of Link's lap, a glossy pout making her lips look like heavily lacquered tubes of bubblegum as she submerged herself into the role of spoiled-rotten drama queen. "Linky-kins, Allen-sama's being SO uncooperative!"
What was really being uncooperative was Allen's body, which was currently partaking in a spastic rampage of uncontrollable turmoil upon hearing the name 'Linky-kins' uttered one too many times…
"He's acting like a bratty little toddler, and you know how much I hate bratty little toddlers Linky-kins…"
Allen's last spec of sanity evaporated. "STOP BLOODY TORTURING ME!" He was gasping atop his knees in a matter of seconds, banging his head against the floor in an incredibly hopeless attempt to try and physical purge the image now branded in his memory before it dubbed itself as 'long-term'. The sickening display of sugary-sweet, lovey-dovey chitchat had now gone far beyond the definition of 'innocent'; now, it had simply turned into a method of highly effective torture. "JUST STOP!"
"Oh please," Alice's voice sounded rather distant after all the head-banging. "This is the easy part of your training."
"I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THAT DAMMIT!" He couldn't even bare to look.
"Stop being a baby and go change already! It'll help you get into character."
"NO! YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!"
"Now now Allen-sama, we can be cooperative about this—"
"WHERE THE FUCK IS LAVI?"
"—or we can be difficult—"
"I WANT TO STRANGLE HIM!"
An overly worn-out sigh emanated from where he imagined Alice sat. On Link. She sounded somewhat annoyed, like the way you just know that a babysitter hates kids when they yap at you in that cheerily fake façade of absolute kiddy adoration. "Allen-sama, I am like seriously this close to losing it with you."
She was close to losing it?
"So, while me and Linky-kins cool down for a moment, we'd like you to go try on your maid uniform, kaykay?"
Every muscle and every tendon and every ligament that aided every tendon were telling Allen, screaming at him, to run. Run the fuck away while he still had a chance of escaping. The fighter mode within him, that tough display put on by males during times of testosterone-threatening circumstances, was instantly awakened as he summoned up all his strength, all his bravery, every freaking ounce of—
"Okay that's it, where the hell is Lola-chan?"
"Eh?" Allen had never known a 'Lola-chan' to walk the face of the earth before. Until, with rather dumb sluggishness, it hit him, and it hit him with a terrifying jolt that left the psyche with an aching case of whiplash; Lola-chan had to be… couldn't be…
"Lou Fa, you mean?"
"Yeah, Lola-chan. She'll be more than willing to help you change—"
That was all Allen needed to hear to get him zooming into the Change Room of Doom for the second time that day, for his second attempt at changing into his 'mystery uniform of unknown moe proportions'. Simply the thought of Lou Fa… in a full on, super frilly, super… super push-uppy, super low-dipping criss-crossed high-cut maid outfit… was enough to give Allen a mild seizure. The bad kind of seizures, that caused irreversible brain damage. Ever since he had appeared at Asian branch, Lou Fa had been hovering around him like a lost puppy, offering to make his room up for him and to do every teensy little task that required even the most minuscule amount of feminine capability (AKA laundry and cleaning), not to mention sending him numerous deliveries of food and freshly baked goods on a 24/7 basis. Not that he minded the latter. It's just that, put all together, the entire act was starting to seem rather creepy. Actually, it seemed more like a strategic way of stalking people, without looking like one was actually stalking. Those damn Asian branchers…
Chaining all thoughts and images of Lou Fa to the walls of cerebral oblivion, Allen scanned the room for any signs of life, ready at any moment to jump into a tight little ball and hide his face from the world till the coast was clear. But, upon finding no breathing femme fatales lurking within the vicinity, he was free to locate the package containing his uniform.
It sat just a little ways away, festering on the ground like a smoke bomb that, once activated, would blow-up and release noxious fumes of estrogenic poison, fumes that, when inhaled, would immediately begin their job of remodelling the male ego into a helplessly androgynous being. Allen was suddenly very tempted to exorcise the damn package, allowing the pitiful female evil oozing inside of it to be cleansed of all its wretchedness in one serene stab. Luckily, the stupidity of such an action actually registered in his brain before he had a chance to activate his Innocence.
"Mana," Allen sighed, a melodramatic frown shivering across his face. "Forgive me."
With ridiculous caution, he unravelled the bundle, his fingers numbly dissecting the pieces from within the wrap like cheap plastic utensils incapable of picking up food. He pulled out a pair of frilly bloomers, stretching them out a few times for rather unnecessary effect. Two circular bands suddenly plopped to the ground, strange metallic clamps attached to them courtesy of another strip of elastic fabric. What the bloody fuck…
Smashing his forehead against the floor, Allen let loose a pitiable, self-mourning cry of anguish. For he knew… oh, he knew… that his life as a man, internally speaking… was coming to a god awful, untimely end.
The mirror… it was lying. Lenalee knew it was lying. It was showing her this image… an image of her face, one that was hardly recognizable yet all at once far too familiar. Her cheeks were laced in tears, thickly crusted in their shiny icing, heavily scarred by their stiff ghost trails that bound the face in a sort of invisible, cakey mask. They just kept coiling and slithering down, down, down her face, down, down, down, unravelling and twirling further and further down, further and further… down… down…
Down.
Almost like long strands of hair. Salty, shape shifting, liquid hair.
Lenalee missed her hair. She missed how it would pet her back, and how it would snuggle up into a silky mess all around her as she slept the night away. She missed how it would so gracefully glide through the fingers of the wind, how it would perform a spectacular contortionist show as she somersaulted midair during Innocence invocation, and how it would so naively try and imitate a mirror by brilliantly reflecting light from off its smooth, smooth surface. She missed it. She suddenly looked very empty without it, as she stared back at the girl in the mirror. She looked strange. She looked…
Incomplete. A part of her was completely, undeniably missing. With the death of her long, beloved hair had also come the death of her emotional barrier, the intangible, invisible camouflage that had concealed her true emotions, had barricaded them from rearing their heads and going on a psychotic, uncontrollable rampage in the midst of real-world chaos. It was like her hair had acted as a physical, metaphorical symbol of that psychological shield, keeping all her emotions intact and away from the unrestricted view of the criticizing public eye. It allowed her to smile during those times when she physically couldn't, to laugh when her friends were around and to save them from being burdened by things completely unrelated to them. It helped her to imprison her lingering feelings of helplessness, inferiority, and pain in a way that subconsciously isolated them from the rest of her feelings, like a deserted little island floating about in the depths of internal somatic hell; solitary and alone. So long as her hair swished by her side, her emotions would forever be imprisoned inside her, her hair capturing them like nightmares tangled in a dream catcher.
It had always been blessed with riveting beauty, her hair. In fact, Lenalee had always thought it to be her personal veil of beauty, something that would always ensure her own beauty so long as she always covered her face in its silky screen. This belief of hers formed at such a young age, she couldn't even recall when she had first completely forgotten how to care about her looks, having left it all up to her hair for so long. Sure, she had been told she shared her hair's exquisite beauty, but to her, her own physical beauty was an empty sort of beauty, like a sunset missing its color. Her hair's beauty, on the other hand, had been described as being mesmerizingly painful to the eye, as if aesthetically flaunting the ominous prediction that the artificial peace could not last forever, that sooner or later, it would crash and burn and eat away at the flesh in ways that weren't visibly noticeable until it was too late. Her hair, it would seem, had acted as her sole connection to the world of femininity.
But now… Lenalee's hair was gone. It had died, gone to Heaven. Sure, it was growing back, but that growth couldn't replace her hair, even if it was bred from the direct code of her genes and came right out of her scalp. It still didn't replace that forever missing fragment of her identity, forever lost to the hands of dissociation. It was like losing her one and only female friend.
The definition of friend was becoming distorted now too. What was a friend? Wasn't Allen supposed to be her friend? So was Lavi, and so was Kanda, and Miranda, and Krory. So was everyone at the Order, really. They were her indisputable family, the people that she fought for and that provided her with a reason to develop reasons. Yet why… why, ever, ever so suddenly… was her family becoming this malformed definition? Why was the family portrait, so carefully framed and hung in her head, just a big, blurry blob of splatters and rips and gashes? Why, when she smiled up at her big family portrait, did she suddenly feel a different sort of sympathy towards Allen than she did for Lavi or for Kanda? Why did she feel her eyes linger, ever so subtly, on Allen's face longer than on anyone else's?
It was happening all the time now, this distortion in feeling and familiar perception. The very definition of familiarity was becoming unfamiliar. When Lenalee got mad at Lavi, for instance, it would be a fleeting anger, one that tried its absolute hardest to be serious yet always ended up turning into a sort of trivial thing soon after. Basically, her anger seemed to develop into a causeless, pointless escapade, which made it unnecessary to continue on with. But when it came to Allen…
Getting mad at Allen was different. It was like, when she got mad at him, somewhere inside her body would be this searing, slicing pang, as if her anger recoiled back and began to cannibalistically eat away at her own flesh and feelings. Getting mad at Allen was like getting mad at herself, yet, as much as she wanted to stop being mad at him, she couldn't stop, because something deeper would always hold onto the reminiscing feeling that had elicited the anger in the first place, causing her to constantly live in this void of never-ending rewind, replaying it over and over and over. Getting mad at Allen drained her of all sense and composure. She fucking hated it. She hated it. But…
All he had to do was smile. Shoot her with that stupid, stupid smile, that one that was so genuine, so overflowing with sympathy, it was actually unsympathetic, a facial lie. It killed Lenalee every time. Every fucking time.
A shaky horizon of tears lined each eye as Lenalee wiped her cheeks with the back of her wrists. She found it rather funny how, despite sopping up all the tears tightening atop her skin, her eyes continued to produce more, like some kind of stupid, ironic, over-used joke that nobody found funny anymore but still laughed at anyways. She didn't like her hair anymore. In fact, she hated it. And she was almost completely positive that, no matter what people said, they didn't like it either. She could just tell, the way people would react with that natural, uncontrollably automatic gawk upon first seeing her, and then, as they gained power over their own explicit reactions, would settle into a fake façade of ignorant approval. Lenalee was far too perceptive of others people's emotions to not notice this kind of shit. Hell, for almost her entire childhood she'd just sat and observed, motionless and invisible, in a whirling, vibrantly tangible world, a world where the senses could actually sense and emotions could actually be read like a manual, personalized to every single individual depending on their temperament and reactions. Lenalee was good at that, yet…
Yet she couldn't even decipher her own right now. The manual to her emotions was currently written in some foreign language, some unknown code, as if they didn't want her to unveil them all by herself.
By herself... for how long had she kept all those feelings, all that emotional awareness, all that strife and all that internal warring to her…
"Allen-kun."
She didn't know why she'd just said that. She didn't even know why her body had automatically, involuntarily told her to whisper his name. It had provided such a fleeting sensation of calmness, enunciating each and every syllable with the gentle potency of verbal medication, yet almost instantly she'd broken out into a fit of insatiable calamity at the act, unintentionally activating her Dark Boots and kicking full-force at the bathroom stall door immediately behind her. She breathed deeply, the squeaky, pained cries of the stall-door fading into eventual audio oblivion.
She had put a dent in it. Just a tiny one. But really, it wasn't her fault. It was Allen's. It was Allen's fault, for being so god damn… so god damn…
With a tremulous sigh, Lenalee pivoted around and exited the bathroom, the door swinging wildly behind her as she reacquainted herself with the bustling world outside.
"Allen-sama, I'll count to three!"
"NOOOO!" Allen squealed as he threw his entire body against the door, hoping desperately, futilely that his weight would be enough to stop female desire from flinging it open. A pandemic of sweat began sprouting atop his back.
"One…"
"Alice stop!"
"Two…"
"I'm begging you, don't!" He could not be seen like this. It was so beyond wrong it made the very definition of the word question its own meaning. Allen had become the definition of wrong. And all he could think about was how extremely uncomfortable it was to have bloomers wedged up his ass…
"THREE!"
"ALICE NO—"
With an unexpected jolt the door exploded open, its hinges screaming bloody murder as Allen's weight was thrown from its frame; with a less than manly shriek, he plopped to the ground in an unceremonious display of frill and lace.
This would make the fourth time he'd fallen like an idiot that day. He'd fallen on his face while trying to get on a god damn pair of fishnet stockings. He'd fallen on his shoulder while trying to zip up the back to his lacy maid uniform. And, lastly, he'd fallen square on his ass while attempting to fasten the frilly headband across his head (at approximately try 34 out of 50 in getting it to stay), due to his genius idea of walking backwards and trying to tie hair accessories at the same time (resulting in crashing against a wall). Basically, Allen had never felt like such a klutzy freak in all his life. And, to top it off, he was now trapped within an insanely uncomfortable maid dress. He could already see the world rolling in laughter.
Finally sensing the uncanny silence, Allen peeked up from his disgraceful position, blush searing his face in medium rare embarrassment.
Alice was staring at him. Actually no, more like gaping at him. Her eyes were like a baby deer that had just seen its first wolf pack. No, that wasn't it either; like a baby deer that had just seen its first massive patch of luscious green grass. Mouth hanging open, face glazed over in an expression of creepy female infatuation forming faster than a pre-pubescent crush, Alice appeared to be experiencing an out-of-body experience without actually leaving her body. And, to top it all off… she was… she was twitching. In a way that suggested she might blow-up if the sight of mind-blowing girly fantasy was not disposed of within five seconds.
All Allen could do was cower into a ball, bracing himself for Hurricane Fangirl.
"EEEEEWHHHHHHHHHA YOU LOOK SO INCREDIBLY CUTE LIKE OH MY GOD ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE NOT REALLY A GIRL EYAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I JUST WANNA GLOMP YOU TILL YOU DIE KYAHHHHH CAN I ADOPT YOU PLEASE LIKE OH MY GOD!"
It was official. Alice had begun speaking in complete Fangirl.
She skipped up to Allen with a sort of sugar-fuelled, high-pitched shriek, as if she was afraid to touch him yet at the same time wanted nothing more than to huggle his guts out. "OH MY GOD LINKY-KINS! LINKY-KINS! YOU HAVE GOT TO SEE THIS!" She had now securely gripped his arm and pulled him to his feet with surprising ease, making Allen feel queasy and on the verge of self-piteous tears.
Before he knew it, he was being presented to Link as if he were a life-sized doll.
"Isn't he just ADORABLE?"
Allen never thought he'd see the day when Link giggled, but it happened. Right then. A part of his soul had died along with it.
"The color scheme works quite nicely with your hair color, Walker."
Allen created a mental note to beat the shit out of Link later. It would be top priority. Right after he finished killing Lavi.
"Okay okay okay, everyone, it's time for…" Alice began making a ridiculous drumming sound against the wall. "… Alice's Hardcore Crash Course in Moe Moe Maidness!"
Allen's muscles transmuted to jelly. "What?"
"Training silly!" She giggled the words as if he were ten years younger than her, beeping his nose in the process. "But it'll have to be quick, 'cause your first customers are already waiting!"
"C-C-Customers?"
"Now, repeat after me!" Alice shouted loudly above his cracking voice. "Okaerinasaimase, goshujin-sama!"
He watched, completely helpless, as his soul hovered right out of his body, baggage and all; even his soul had decided to disown him. "O-Okaerinasai… mase… g-goshujin… sama."
"Now, copy my movements."
Allen could literally see a stampede of pink glitter flock towards Alice as she pirouetted into a tight-legged bend, hands on her knees and squeezing against her chest in a way that made it bulge rather liberally from out of her bra (which was also in plain sight). He was quite sure the training would murder him before he even got to serving the customers. Thank God.
"Well don't just gawk, DO IT!"
"B-B-But…" his mind scrambled to remember any words of English. "I don't have anything to squeeze!"
"Oh, well that's a good point," the bubbly waitress actually entered a state of calm thoughtfulness for a moment before madly flouncing off to another room, leaving Allen all alone with Link, who was trying way too hard to try and look like he wasn't about to burst out laughing. He felt his eyebrow begin to twitch, ever so slightly.
"TA-DA!" Alice returned much too quickly, a flurry of toilet paper cradled in her arms. "Don't you worry, I'm a pro at this!"
Allen had lost his ability to worry quite a long time ago.
"Just leave it to me…"
"Wait, what are you… GAHHH!" Allen yelped hysterically as Alice's hands, along with a healthy serving of toilet paper, went snaking down his top. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?"
"I'm turning you into an A."
No matter how violently he struggled and flipped and flailed, the woman would not let go. She had firmly stuck her hand down his top, and was just as harshly arranging the toilet paper atop his chest in a way that made him look…
He shot Link, his pathetic last-resort of saving grace, an incredibly distressed, abused look for help, even managing to make his lip tremble and his eyes swim in tears. But all Link did was frenetically jot something down on his notepad. Heartless bastard…
"There, that's better!" Alice beamed with a grin that suggested she believed herself to be the female incarnation of Picasso. "Now you'll be able to seduce the customers!"
"I will do no such thing."
"Now, despite you failing every aspect of my crash course," she gave his butt a sharp smack. "It's time to intoxicate your customers with some moe moe!"
He didn't have the voice to speak. All he could think about was diving into a pit of Level 1 akumas and never coming back out.
"Go get em, Allena-chan!"
"Allena…?"
With a wink, Alice shoved Allen out into the restaurant portion of the café, where he came to a stumbling halt in front of a table filled with four painfully familiar faces.
A/N: As always, all reviews/faves/watches are always welcome and greatly appreciated!
But lol, I gotta admit, I really do enjoy poking fun at Link. IT'S JUST TOO MUCH FUN! *evil grin plz* And I ended up writing the part with Lenalee looking at herself in the mirror in the bathroom when I was having a really hard time with my anxiety... and... stuff... so ya, that part's really deeply connected to me. But pssh, it baffles me how I continue to make my chapters longer and longer...
And I have some sugary sweet Valentine plans for this series coming up! Because I couldn't just let Valentine's Day slip past without paying my respects to my all time FAVE couple of all time, ne? ;) Stay tuned!
Additional thanks goes out to: shinigamitales, TriforceandSheikahArts, comet77, EdwardElricAllenWalker, BootsOfDespair, and TheRiverAlchemist. Plus all those wonderful individuals who continue to read, fave, watch, and support this series in any other way! You guys are what keep me writing! *heart*