If I owned DGM, Lenalee would never have gotten her hair cut off.

Bruise

Chapter 11: Eyes

The breath is knocked out of me for the fifteenth time as Kanda pins me to the hard floor of the training room, and I cough, muttering, "Can't you let me win once?"

"No, you should get better, Moyashi."

"I'm sorry, who?"

Rolling his eyes, he stands and waits for me to do the same, "No, you should get better, Allen."

A smile spreads over my lips, because it was fun for him to be beat by his own deal. I didn't cut for a week, so he has to call me Allen all day, and I'm making sure to spend as much time as possible with him to hear it. Brushing myself off a bit and rubbing the sore spot on my stomach, I grumble, "You're going to reopen my wounds, you know. Just because they're healed doesn't mean that it wouldn't hurt for you to be a little gentler."

"Tell that to an akuma," Kanda says, getting in his fighting stance again. Shaking my head, I hold up my hands in surrender, "Yu, I'm exhausted! Give me a break."

Nodding, he walks to the wall, taking his water bottle and throwing me mine, and I hastily down half of it, resurfacing for air a moment later. Drinking much more slowly, the bluenette smirks, "I'd like to see what you look like after sex. You have no stamina whatsoever."

"How would you know that? I have stamina, just not when you drop me to my back continuously," I protest, leaning against the wall after I set down my water bottle. The heat was getting to me since Kanda was only wearing his athletic pants, shirtless, and I was wearing a turtleneck. Did I mention he was shirtless? Just making sure, because I think that it felt hotter in here than normal.

"You know," Kanda said, massaging his shoulder indifferently, "no one ever comes to this room, because I train in here, and it's the last room down the hall. You can take off your shirt."

I look down, unconsciously biting on my lip as a form of containment. The idea was extremely appealing, and I think I'd be able to train better, but even so, I don't like anyone seeing me with my shirt off, especially Kanda. I mean, I hated what my body looked like and―

"Stop it."

"What?" I ask, my mental condescending ceasing. Moving in front of me so I was against the wall without a way out, Kanda puts each of his hands on the wall on either side of my head and he stares into my eyes, "Stop degrading yourself."

"You don't know that I was doing that," I mutter, looking away just to be pulled back by his hand on my cheek. Moving closer so our chests were nearly touching, Kanda says, "When you're thinking about yourself badly, you look at the floor and bite your lip, and you never speak until someone snaps you out of it."

He moved away from me, and I say, "You make me feel like an open book."

"Only to those who pay attention," he replies, surprising me slightly. Did Kanda just admit that he pays attention to me? I mean, I never really thought about that, even if he does like for me to call him by his first name.

Silently, I remove my shirt, laying it next to his, and walk towards the middle where we were training, trying to resist the urge to cover myself. Kanda was about to attack me when I say, "Wait!"

Raising an eyebrow, he asks, "What?"

"I…um…" I trail off, trying to find my words. It was true that I hold back on him in hand-to-hand combat, but right now, I really didn't want my back to hurt all night. Should I ask him? No, I'll just fight better. Smiling innocently, I say, "Nothing. Just making sure you were ready!"

He scoffs and mutters something about me being like my rabbit boyfriend, though when he says stuff like that, all I can picture is a human-sized rabbit humping my leg….

Not giving me any warning, Kanda tries to sweep my feet from under me, but I back flip out of it. My mind whirls slightly from the movement I hadn't done in several years, and the bluenette's face was openly surprised, but he quickly recovered, determination setting in deep in his cobalt pools. He throws several punches, only one hitting my shoulder, but it didn't hurt that bad, and as he continues his attacks, he says, "You've been holding back on me."

"And I'm not doing that again," I reply, jumping back when he aims a kick to the side of my head.

This is about to get interesting, I thought, noticing how close I was to the wall of the training room. Turning around, I run up the wall as far as I can before launching myself off of it, turning in mid air, and I was very happy that I was at the exact level I needed to be as I hooked my knees on Kanda's shoulders. The samurai obviously was not expecting this and began walking backwards as I straightened my body, my head near his hip, before I push into the back of his knees, causing him to crumple.

"What did you say about clowns in Rhone?" I ask playfully as I sit on his stomach, the small of my back slightly aching, because when we fell, something stabbed me. Oh well, guess I'll never know!

"Shut up," he growled, panting hard. Smiling, I put my hands on his chest and ask teasingly, "Aw, what's wrong, Yu? Upset that you got beat by a moyashi?"

"And said Moyashi admits it," he mutters. "Get off me, so I can wipe that smile off your face."

Pouting, I say, "B-But I thought you liked it when I smile!"

"Not when you're trying to eat away at my pride. Off."

"Nope, you make a very comfortable…uh…what is it that people lay on in Japan?"

Rolling his eyes, Kanda replies, "It's called tatami."

"Yeah, that! You make very comfortable tatami!" I say, getting comfortable on his chest.

"And what happens if Lavi walks in to find us both shirtless and you asleep on top of me?" the bluenette asks, but he doesn't make any move to push me off of him.

"I blame it on you. Easy enough. Besides, he's on a mission in Brazil," I mumble, finding that this was really nice, and my eyelids fell.

Oo_oO_Oo_oO

When I wake up, my shirt is draped over me and something warm is beside and around me. Opening my eyes, I realize that my cheek is on Kanda's shoulder, my face nuzzled into his neck, and the rest of me was in his arms. A pounding on the roof was echoing through the training room, and I quietly ask, "What time is it?"

"About five, but it looks like midnight outside," Kanda answered. "Have you been sleeping at all the last few days? Six hours is a long time to sleep, even for you."

"It's hard to sleep when you're terrified of nightmares," I mumble, not wanting to move, but I couldn't help but be drawn outside. I love playing in the rain.

"You definitely don't worry about those when you're with me."

"Again I say that I feel safe with you," I repeat for the fourth time in the last month. Reluctantly, I sit up, pulling on my shirt, and I ask, "Do you like the rain?"

Kanda raises an eyebrow at me, not moving from his position on his back, and he replies, "I guess. I'm more or less indifferent about it."

"Like everything else," I tease, tossing him his shirt before standing up. This gets the bluenette's attention, and he follows behind me quickly as I make my way to the door that leads outside from the training area. Once I opened the door, there was a small overhang, followed by an open area where the sky was pouring rain, and lastly a patch of forest not too far away. No thunder. No lightning. Just lots and lots of rain. The sky did look like it was night, but the rain wasn't coming down astronomically hard. It was like a moderate April shower. My favorite.

"Allen? You aren't really going out in that, right?" Kanda asks, his shirt now on.

"Of course! It's fun!" I say, stepping out under the overhang, and a fine spray mists over my face as I breathe in the humid air. Turning back to Kanda, I ask, "Haven't you ever played in the rain before?"

He raises an eyebrow, "You really think I would do something like that? It's stupid, and you'll get a cold."

"So? What's more fun than doing what you're not supposed to? Besides, I haven't gotten sick from it, and you never get sick anyways."

"And I'm not starting now," he muttered, still inside the doorframe. Pouting like a baby, I grab his hand and begin to gently pull him outside, "Please?"

He doesn't make any movement, standing like a stone as I try to force him out, and I whimper, "Please, Yu? Just once?"

The samurai's stoic features soften slightly before he sighed in defeat, slowly following me, but he stopped when he got to the edge of the overhang, leaving me to thoroughly soak in the rain. I don't mind the tiny streams of liquid flowing down my face, or the fact that I could fill a bathtub with the amount of moisture in my clothes if I were to wring them out, and I patiently wait for him to move. Kanda grunts, "You're a moron."

My smile doesn't slack for long as he quickly takes a step forward, a gross squishing sound coming from his boot as it mashes the grass under it, and in less than five seconds, he's as wet as I am. Pulling him farther out into the open space near the woods, I ask over the pounding of the precipitation, "Having fun yet?"

"Not really. What's so fun about being wet? I could have done that in my bathtub without clothes on," he mutters, and I hope that he doesn't see the blush that dusts my cheeks when I imagine him naked. Stop! Allen, don't think about how sexy he would be! Help!

"Then do something you wouldn't normally do," I say, brushing away my bangs, but the sopping wet things just flop back down on my forehead. "I'm the only one here."

"Moron, I realize that, but why would I do something stupid? You do enough idiotic things to make up for half the Order," he says. I ignore the stupidity comment and decide that if he wouldn't let loose, I would do it for him. Smirking evilly, I quickly dart behind him and pull out his hair tie, the long tresses immediately falling with a wet flop onto his back, and Kanda spins around to glare at me, "Give that back."

Spinning the drenched fabric around my index finger, I stick my tongue out at him, "Nope. Looks like you'll have to take it from me."

With that, I hastily begin running toward the trees, the stomping of a supposedly murderous bluenette following me, and as I near the towering plants, I pick up my speed. If there's one thing I've noticed about Kanda, it's that he doesn't like to climb things, the opposite of me, so when I hop up onto a relatively low branch, he doesn't pursue the chase any longer, just glowers at me. Playfully, I lie like a bear on the branch, an arm and leg dangling from each side of the limb, but the hair band was safely tucked into my back pocket.

"What's wrong? Why don't you come up here with me?" I ask, hooking my arms and legs to their counterparts and falling off the branch, and I look at him upside down, hanging like a sloth while water steadily runs out of my hair.

"Don't worry, I won't tell," I say when he doesn't answer. His glare becoming more baleful, he growls, "Tell what?"

Rolling my eyes, I reply, "That you're afraid of climbing things. Heights, maybe?"

"I'm not scared of anything," he mutters.

"Then why don't you come up here?" I ask, disconnecting my arms from the limb and suspending from my legs so that I was at eyelevel with the aggravated swordsman. Looking away, he says, "I don't have a problem with heights, just…I don't like being in trees."

"Sounds like fear to me."

"Shut up."

Smiling sympathetically, I say, "You wouldn't have made it in the circus."

"What did you do?"

"Well," I glance at my position, "obviously, I was an acrobat. And a tightrope performer. Sometimes a magician."

"Magician?"

"Hey, I had to learn to work with cards somewhere! Though, I was much better at reading what people were feeling."

"Body language again?"

Flipping to my feet, I shake my head, "No, it was more about people's faces. If you practice enough, you can read a person's life story through their eyes."

"Then read me," he says, snatching his hair tie from my pocket lightning fast, but doesn't put his hair up, stuffing the fabric into his own pocket. I smile at the glint in his eye, and I say, "You don't think I can do it, do you?"

"Not really. There's no such thing as magic," he deadpans, and I accept the challenge gladly, but I notice that he wasn't making direct eye contact. Patiently, I move his head to look down at me and say, "I can prove you wrong, but only if you look directly back at me. No blinking."

He does this, liquid chromium and clear midnight swirling together to make a beautiful sky blue of harmony, and I notice that even with my rusty skills and practice, Kanda was extremely hard to read. Most people don't try to block out their emotions, and I found it difficult to decode the maze of walls and barriers, trying to find the small flicker of feeling in the endless trenches.

Emotionless. Indifferent. Nominal. Nuance. Repudiate. Umbrage. Truculent. Boorish. Defamatory.

Fake.

I don't think that Kanda realizes that he can't hide behind a mask like I do without it being undetected. True, I let it slide until now, but if I take it down, I'm not sure what I'll find. Will I find a person that actually has a heart somewhere deep inside their souls? Or will I find a clone of myself, dead and wandering around, searching for a purpose for living? Do I really know Yu Kanda at all?

It doesn't take long for me to decide that I wanted to know who it was that I consider my best friend now. As I began wandering through the labyrinth of emotions, I felt like every time I thought that the tiniest radiance was revealed, another fabricated feeling jumped in the way to protect it. A myriad of lies were piling up to block out the offensive force trying to break through, and I think, Wow, he has better resistance than I thought. How intriguing.

The false emotions kept attacking me, trying to ward me away from their kingdom where the truth lies, but I kept pushing through, desperate to find out what Kanda was so desperately trying to hide. Desultory. Incorporeal. Penumbra. Arcane. Callous. Enmity. Furtive. Haughty. Hypocrisy.

I caught the microscopic glimmer in the raging ocean that was assaulting me, and I smirk. Gotcha.

As if Kanda could feel that I had broken through, he stiffened noticeably, but I wasn't letting go as I flipped through his real feelings. Concern. Demure. Worry. Conflicted. Hesitation. Empathy. Amatory.

Love.

Once I had crumbled the walls that protected his feelings, I was shocked by how much it was so unlike Kanda. I wanted to look away from the rhapsodic pools, but I kept getting reeled back in like he had chained me. A sensation that I had never experienced in this way before clutched me, tears mixing with the rain water that flowed down my face.

I was trapped.

Internally, I was pulling away, running away from the intensity that was upsetting me so unbelievably much, but I couldn't, ropes cast around my neck and wrists, and I was just being dragged right back into the ocean that was drowning me. The emotional pain that was tearing at me wasn't even my own, but I still wanted to curl up with my razor in order to escape the chaos, and I felt the clutches around my neck clamping down harder. And harder.

Gasps barely were able to pass my lips as I saw my own fear reflected back at me, but I couldn't flee the emotions that were pouring in from the cobalt orbs into mine as I desperately tried to block it out with my own barriers to no avail. The walls around me shattered like the most fragile glass under the force of the waves crashing into me from Kanda's eyes.

Pain. Sorrow. Inadequate. Inferior. Catastrophic. Mediocre.

Why aren't I enough?

"Allen!"

Author Note: Did anyone else slightly tear up? I nearly cried writing this. Sorry about the big words if you don't know them, but I'm trying really hard to expand my vocabulary, and each time I use a word, it's integrated into my mind. Basically, I get bonus points on essays and such. Stupid things. I love big words, so if you like a word a lot that you want me to use, I can! And as always, please, Please, PLEASE R/R!