I've just realised - all this time and I have yet to add a disclaimer: allow me to remedy that.

I tried to ask Katsura Hoshino to give me D. Gray-man, but she set black Allen on me. Won't be making that mistake again.

Day four, prompt four: Addiction

Drugs were dangerous. Allen knew that, and he had never questioned it, not when he was almost drowning in painkillers to ease the ache in his empty chest, nor when he took so many sleeping pills that he began to wonder if he would ever wake up. He knew they were dangerous, and that was why, in part, he insisted on taking them. That sense of danger, of knowing that they might kill him if he wasn't careful; it was what he lived for. After the death of Mana, Allen felt as though he had died too. His heart curled up deep inside his chest, vehemently rejecting any and all attempts to reach it. It was as though it had stopped beating, and there were times when Allen couldn't feel it at all.

That was, in part, why he had agreed to become an Exorcist. When he fought the Akuma, his cursed eye throbbing and adrenaline pounding through his veins, Allen felt more alive than he could ever remember. Mana had taught him what it felt like to be alive, but to find and experience that feeling again; Allen was resorting to more and more desperate measures. It was all about the thrill, he told himself. It wasn't because he was addicted – he had something far more effective and reliable for that.

Kanda was so easily angered, so predictable in his reactions and biting retorts. The blood rushed through Allen's body at a thousand miles an hour, it seemed, and when the two finally came to blows, it was a high that Allen had never felt before – not when he was fleeing for his life from one of the many debt collectors, nor when he was battling the Akuma.

At first he had thought that it was simply his reaction to fighting another with Innocence – however, training with Lavi and Lenalee proved that theory to be incorrect, and eventually Allen realised that it had nothing to do with the fact that he was fighting an Exorcists, and more to do with the fact that he was fighting Kanda.

It was a habit, an addiction, something that he relied on more than the drugs, more than the smiles of his friends; he realised that that was probably extremely unhealthy, but he couldn't help it. He needed the fights, the arguments, the banter, if only to keep him reasonably sane when the entire world felt as though it was falling apart around him. It was the one indulgence he allowed himself to keep after Cross's revelation, and it seemed that even Link tolerated it – though that may have been because the two of them would likely tear apart the entire Order if they couldn't regularly take their frustrations out on one another.

It was quite simple, really. Allen relied on Kanda, on his presence and his solidarity.

He was addicted, and that was all there was to it.

Kanda wasn't sure how it had started – any of it – but start it had, and now he found that he just couldn't bring himself to let go. In general, Kanda didn't like to rely on anything other than himself –and even that was beginning to fail him at times – because to rely on something was to admit weakness and dependency. If there was one thing that Kanda was not, it was weak. So why was it that without the medicines prescribed by Komui, he couldn't sleep? Why was it that he needed more and more of those strange serums the scientists kept creating to make sure that his regenerative rate remained high?

Why was it that he went back to the moyashi time after time to satisfy his need for a decent fight?

Kanda didn't want to have to rely on others, especially not a weak little moyashi. However, after so many hours of training, he had come to realise that the moyashi wasn't as weak as he had first thought – and not just physically. There was an unusual steel in his eyes, a certain determination about him. He never failed a mission, yet he still had the time and the compassion to care for every Akuma, every human that he met. There was pain in his eyes, buried so deep that at first Kanda had convinced himself he was seeing only a reflection of himself in the boy.

However, as time went on, Kanda began to see the cracks in the moyashi's perfectly constructed mask. He saw the dark circles beneath silver eyes, the strained smiles – and, when he walked past the moyashi's room at night (not because he was worried, of course not. Kanda didn't worry about people) he could hear the screams that filtered from under the door.

The two of them were alike in many ways and different in even more. They handled themselves in different ways and reacted in different ways, but in the end they were both doing the same thing.

They were both running away.

At first, Allen had felt the effects of his sudden withdrawal with stunning clarity. All of a sudden, his mind was clear, free of the strange haze that had kept him sane for so long, and it both terrified and pained him. It was only the near-constant presence, oddly enough, of the Fourteenth's shadow that kept him in his right mind. It was the thought that, should he allow himself to become unaware once more, then the Fourteenth would take advantage of that.

Endless hours were spent shivering and sweating, with Link looking on impassively, or his friends huddled around him, unsure of how to react. For the most part, there was always one who would take him in their arms and shush him, stroking his hair with panicked fingers whilst they desperately questioned Link as to what was happening.

He never told them.

Yet, there was one instance that would always stand out to him, no matter how many times he suffered the same thing. In the training room, he had simply toppled from his sitting position by the sidelines, wrapping his arms around himself miserably. The shaking was not as bad as it was usually, but he no doubt looked to be a state. Link was off reporting to Leverrier, or whatever it was he liked to do on his rare days off, so Allen had been left on his own.

So, he was stunned when he felt arms wrap around him, soothing and warm. Even less expected was the rough voice that accompanied them, but then again, why should Allen be surprised. There was only one other person crazy enough to come and train and four in the morning.

"Baka." Kanda. It was always Kanda, wasn't it? "Why do you keep on like this? Get help from Komui or something. He'd be more than happy to, and you know it."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Allen managed through gritted teeth. "I'm probably just coming down with something, that's all." More violent shudders wracked his body and he felt Kanda's arms tighten for a brief moment. However, it was over so quickly that Allen was convinced he must have been imagining it. An after effect of the drugs he had been denying himself, perhaps.

"That's bullshit. You're suffering; I get that, but what happening to the naive, optimistic brat, huh? Grow up and get over yourself, because this isn't helping anything."

Allen managed a strained laugh, pausing only to give Kanda a pained and amused glance. "I suppose you would know, right?"

Kanda couldn't quite get the moyashi's words out of his head – days later and they were still troubling him. How much did he know, and how much of it was pure guesswork? Kanda knew what was going on with the moyashi; he recognised the signs and it didn't take a genius to put two and two together. The question was, did the moyashi see the same when he looked at Kanda?

He didn't know, and quite frankly, that scared him. Yet, after that, it seemed the moyashi was opening up, and not just to him. The smiles were a little less forced, the light in his eyes more real than Kanda had seen before.

In all fairness, Kanda knew that he was only part of the reason for that. He had noticed the way the moyashi would shrink away from mirrors, and yet he always seemed to be drawn back to them. He noticed how reluctant he was to sleep, though afterwards he would always look like a great weight had been lifted from his chest. He wondered what the Fourteenth was doing to the moyashi; if indeed he was doing anything at all.

Weeks later and a pattern had been forged, a routine of sorts. Those in the know turned a blind eye towards it, because if it kept the two top Exorcists from breaking, then it surely could not be a bad thing. No doubt Central would have them both executed should word ever get out, but who would ever tell them?

Through the long nights of tears and screams, they held one another, secure in the knowledge that they were the same, that even if they could not bring themselves to love one another (they were both far too broken for something like that) then at the very least they could trust each other with this.

Kanda glanced down at the head of white hair that rested against his chest, the moyashi's soft breath tickling his skin as the youngest of the pair slept on, oblivious. He smiled softly; an expression he had decided long ago would be seen by no one but the Exorcist who knew him without even trying.

It may not have been love, but it was a start.