Exception

By: Aviantei

62. Karma in More Ways Than One

With their date complete and her mood very much stabilized, Ivy had been ready to spend her next day getting back into the routine of things. After all, that history project wasn't going to do itself, and it would be nice to get ahead before her inevitable brushes with procrastination came back to bite her. And thus while Kanda was driving her back home, Ivy was already forming a no doubt over-ambitious plan for the list of things she wanted to get done the next day (an act that helped her feel even better than she already had), whenever Kanda said, "I wanna take you somewhere tomorrow."

As over-achievers tend to do, Ivy had a brief moment of reluctance—there was a plan, after all—but also the opportunity to spend more time with her boyfriend was just a little bit more than tempting, so she asked, "Where?"

"I'd like you to meet Alma."

Which then sent off a series of super concerned thoughts in her head. Kanda hadn't said much about Alma, other than how they'd met, but even those few conversations made it clear how important his friend was to him. Before, Ivy hadn't felt any concern over meeting people from her boyfriend's life—his social circle was pretty small, and hers happened to eclipse most of it, not to mention that without parents or highly-present guardians for either of them, it wasn't like there was that hurdle to overcome—but it was as if all of those thus far avoided feelings came back in full force.

Is it okay for me to meet someone who's that important to him? What if I act like a total dumbass? Oh, fuck, what if they don't like me—

"I'm pretty damn sure it's impossible for Alma to not like anyone, you know," Kanda said, reading Ivy's concern with perfect accuracy. That being said, he'd kind of just guessed, but the still distressed look she gave him seemed to indicate he'd hit the nail on the head. Still in the middle of driving, Kanda couldn't offer too much in the way of comfort (and even if it had been possible, he wouldn't have quite known where to start all things considered), so he continued, "I mean it. Alma just likes getting to know people. And they've been wanting to meet you since I mentioned you, so I figured now's a good a time as any. Unless tomorrow's a bad time?" Though it seemed unlikely, given their conversation earlier that day, there was every possibility that Ivy had made some sort of plans he didn't know about. She wasn't obligated to tell him everything, after all.

But that concern seemed to be an unnecessary one, since Ivy shook her head. "Tomorrow's fine." Yeah, she'd been making plans, but the fact that Kanda had been talking about her to other people kind of made her heart melt in an embarrassing fashion, so it was taking a lot of dedicated concentration to keep her cool. She'd be sure to melt into a puddle as soon as she made it inside her apartment, though. For the moment, she had a hand to be putting on Kanda's knee. "I'd love to go meet Alma."

"Alright, I'll pick you up at ten, then."

And in that moment, the small but subtle smile on Kanda's face had made the whole thing already seem more than worth it.

Of course, fast forward to the next day, and all that serenity had flown out the window. It had been a slow and gradual decline, with a little bit of rational nervousness slipping into Ivy's mind after she'd gotten home, a bit closer to anxiety whenever she went to bed that she rationalized that she could sleep off, and then a full-blown bout of Panic™ from the moment she woke up that just mounted in intensity long before Kanda had shown up at ten. Ivy liked to think that she was pretty damn good at hiding her emotions, which was true, but Kanda was sharp enough to pick up on them, and the process became all the easier whenever the two were in the close proximity of driver and passenger seat for half an hour.

The worst part of the matter was that, if pressed, Ivy wouldn't have had any explanation for just what she was worried about, just that she was worried. The level of freak out that she was experiencing made it rather difficult to form proper, understandable words for what was causing her worry, which in turn made it rather difficult to just rationalize the whole matter away. As such, her mind was on overdrive pumping out cortisol and other stress chemicals by the time the car arrived at its destination, and there was the slightest sick sensation in her stomach as she undid her seatbelt and prepared to get out of the car—

-just to be stopped by Kanda's hands catching onto her face. Though his hands were rough, his touch was gentle, a sensation Ivy was a bit beyond appreciating in her current state.

"Hey," Kanda said, "fucking breathe."

Oh, yeah, that was a thing that helped, didn't it? Slow and steady breaths, making the inhales and exhales match, she remembered that one; she just hadn't remembered that it applied to her and her current situation. She couldn't remember the theoretically right count to take, either, but Kanda fixed that by pressing his forehead to hers.

"Close your eyes and follow along with me."

While Kanda was brash, he was a practitioner of meditation, so he was used to such exercises. Whether they helped in calming his temper was another matter, and he might've taken a long time to be able to complete the process correctly, but he knew more than enough to help Ivy to a much better state and, for a couple minutes, there was no sound around them but that of their breaths intermingling.

"There we go," Kanda said, pulling back just the slightest amount. He didn't want to, but their height difference combined with the fact that they were sitting was starting to make his shoulders ache. Still, he could appreciate Ivy's eyes fluttering open from up close. "Feeling better?"

"Mn," Ivy said, which was as about as much as she could handle. She wasn't as calm as she would've liked to be, but it was a marked improvement from her previous state, that was for fucking sure. "You mean it, right? That they're gonna like me?"

"Literally what reason do I have to lie about that?" Sure, there were reasons that other people might lie in that circumstance, but doing it whenever Kanda had gone so out of the way to bring Ivy to meet Alma was a kind of ridiculous thought, all things considered—and even more so whenever Kanda was the one initiating things. Lying to get his way just wasn't something that he did. "You'll understand it when you meet them, okay? Now it's not gonna get any easier the longer we sit around, so let's get going."

Ivy had to agree, so she followed Kanda's lead and got out of the car, patting down her pockets for her phone and the rest of her valuables. They'd managed to get decent parking, so it wasn't all that long of a walk until they got to the hospital entrance, and Kanda didn't even need to ask the receptionist for directions. The countdown to arrival had begun, and at least there was a small sense of solace in the fact that things would be over soon enough.

Of course, I still gotta worry about fucking everything up, so there's that.

At least Kanda held Ivy's hand while they walked down the hall, and then they were at the room. Knowing that fussing too much wouldn't make things any easier, Kanda went for it and knocked before pulling open the door, not even needing to wait for a response.

"Yū, there you are! Oh, is this Ivy-chan? She's super cute."

Ivy blushed, but Kanda sighed, pulling her into the room while she was distracted. "Who else would it be?" Kanda asked, earning his friend's bright smile. "Introductions seem kinda pointless by now, but let's get to it. Ivy, this is Alma; Alma, Ivy."

"Nice to meet you," Ivy said, dipping her head in a bow in an attempt to seem polite.

Delighted, Alma giggled, clapping their hands together. "It's so good to meet you," they said, their smile managing to wash most of Ivy's concerns away in an instant. Though they were a little bit older than Kanda, there was none of the surliness in Alma's being. In fact, from their smile, thick eyebrows, and wide, bright blue eyes, Ivy couldn't help but feel that she was looking at a puppy in human form. Even the scar across their nose didn't do anything to ruin the impression. "I'd have come and visited, but you know." They gestured to the room around them, which had the extra benefit of showing the couple of IVs hooked into their arm. "I mean, Yū's been bragging about you for ages, you know, so I've been looking forward to this!"

Kanda, who'd already known that things were going to go this way, didn't even bother to try and stop it, instead flopping down in the nearby guest chair. "Of course I bragged; Ivy's worth bragging about," he said, and Ivy tried her best not to combust at the admission. "You've been keeping secrets, though. When the hell did you die your hair?"

"Oh, you like it?" Alma pinched a short, choppy lock between their fingers, which made the fade from dark blue to turquoise to deep violet almost shimmer under the lights. "I got it done yesterday! I figured it'd be a nice surprise, and one of the nurses knows someone who knows someone who's a hairdresser, so he arranged it for me! Isn't it cool?" Alma Karma was nothing if not impulsive.

"You look like an anime character."

"That's half the point!" Then, seamlessly as if she'd been part of the conversation the whole time, Alma said to Ivy, "It was a brown before. Maybe a bit darker than yours." Unsure of what else to do when faced with such a torrent of words, Ivy nodded. Maybe this was why Kanda wasn't super chatty—if the two knew each other growing up, then Alma might've just done half the talking for him.

Doesn't explain why he gets so fed up with Lavi, then. You'd think that he'd have built up a tolerance already.

But considering that Ivy herself was regularly fed up by said rabbit's antics, she didn't have any room to talk, not to mention that Alma had turned most of their attention on her, so responding was probs the polite thing to do, yeah? "Well I don't have a point of reference to compare to, but I think it looks good."

That small bit of praise alone was enough to make Alma almost sparkle, so it seemed like that had been the right thing to say. Kanda gave her a look as if to say, I told you there was nothing to worry about. "Thanks!" Alma said, almost chirping. "I thought it looked super cool, so I wanted to give it a try, and they were super great about it—oh! But I don't wanna prattle about me the whole time. I wanna hear all about how you met Yū and got together!"

"Oi," Kanda said, his tone blunt but not truly angry. "I already told you about all that. You don't need to bother her about that stuff."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, Yū." Alma even accentuated the sentence with a wagging finger. Kanda made a half-hearted swipe at the digit, which Alma was able to avoid from even their bedbound position. "Yes, you told me about it, but that's just your perspective! I wanna hear about how Ivy-chan saw things, when she fell for you—all that good stuff."

Kanda couldn't deny being interested in such a thing, and Alma knew they'd gotten his long-standing friend on their side without any issue at all. For Ivy's part, it wasn't like she minded talking about it—Alma had this innate aura around them that made existing rather comfortable, even though she hadn't quite known them for a full fifteen minutes even—though it would be a little embarrassing to say such things right in front of Kanda himself.

Then again, we're dating, so it's not like a secret that I like him or anything.

"Alright," Ivy said, feeling a smile slip onto her lips. "I can do that, but I wanna know what you were thinking at the time, too, Yū-kun."

And with both Ivy and Alma looking at him like that, there was no way that Kanda Yū ever had a chance of saying no.

The following conversation for the most part covered things that the audience already knows, so we'll just skip on over all of that. What's most important is that Alma cooed in all the right places, Ivy and Kanda ended up getting their respective levels of flustered, and eventually Kanda complained of a sore throat from talking so much and went off in search of picking up himself a drink.

If it had been earlier in the day, Ivy might've insisted on going with him out of fear of being left alone with a stranger, but now Alma Karma didn't feel like a stranger at all, so she didn't quite mind. Their presence was just peaceful, and to a surprising amount, too, considering how much energy they brought to the table. If Ivy had to put it in specific words, Alma just happened to give off the impression that everything was going to be okay.

So as Kanda retreated into the hall, Alma's smile was a little bit infectious. "He's so adorable. He says he's getting something for himself, but I guarantee he'll come back with something for all of us."

Having been predicting the same thing, Ivy nodded. "He'll end up getting us our favorites, too." Kanda was rather attentive like that, even if he refused to show it most of the time. Still, after knowing him for so long, Ivy and Alma knew better.

And Alma was grateful to find someone else who understood that as well as they did. "See? You get Yū, Ivy-chan. He's so good at putting on that super grumpy exterior that people mistake him for an asshole all the time." (Please note that this was Alma's interpretation, and Kanda still qualified as an asshole; there were just the very, very few exceptions that happened to align with the two people in the room at the moment.) "But if you get to know him, he's not all that bad. I'm super glad he was able to find someone else that he's willing to let down his walls around besides me…"

For a moment there, Alma's cheerful tone had faded away, instead replaced with an almost lonely sort of wistfulness. Ivy was sharp enough to notice it, but, as comfortable as she now felt around Alma, she didn't know them quite well enough to have the right thing to say. Even if she had, however, Alma realized that they'd slipped up a bit and pressed on, "Sorry, you don't need to worry. It's just that…for a long time, the only person that Yū ever opened up to was me, and even that took forever whenever we were kids. If we'd both gotten better and were able to leave the hospital, live like normal kids, I could've helped him make more friends.

"But he got better, and I didn't, and he didn't really have anyone else for a while. Sure, he met Lenalee-chan, but even around her, he was guarded for ages. And I mean, I may want hundreds of friends, but I know Yū isn't like that. He just wants a few close people nearby, and that's great. But I was def worried for a while, because what if I was the only one he had, and then I didn't make it?"

That thought had clung to Alma for a long time, especially during their pre-teen to early teen years whenever their prognosis was especially bleak. They'd managed to pull through, but it had been touch and go for a while. Hell, the doctors still thought it was a miracle that Alma had survived at all, and it was too easy for them to imagine a world where they just—didn't.

"Lucky for all of us and the world at large, I did make it," Alma continued, cracking a joke to keep Ivy from becoming too worried. "It's not in the best of shape, but I'm still here, and Yū's not alone, either, so everything's good. But with you around, I know things are at least a little better than okay—like, it's good to be satisfied with your day to day life and stuff, but it's way better to be happy with it, and I want that for Yū. It's just that I can't be there for them to make sure he's okay, so I'm glad he has you."

Ivy, for all the areas where she was smart, tended to falter whenever other people were vulnerable with her, not knowing what to say. Still, she at least nodded, because she had been listening. And overall, she was happy, too, that she was there at Kanda's side and that he'd let her in, and closer than other people at that.

Thus, after a pause much longer than necessary, Ivy managed to say, "You two care about each other a lot." Alma might've made it obvious, but with how different Kanda's attitude was toward Alma, Ivy could tell the feeling was mutual. It was almost enough to make someone a little bit jealous.

And so Alma Karma, with all good intentions and a smile that could've lit up every last corner in an otherwise pitch black room said, "Yup! That's because I love Yū after all!"

[Author's Notes]

Alma has become one of my favorite characters in dgm, so of course I had to bring them into things. Of course, this being a silly high school AU, I didn't go as hard on the angst, because I want good vibes, so this is what we're working with. Also enby Alma, because I said so.

Kanda/Alma is pretty much canon, so yeah, I'm tossing those hats into the ring because I think its fun. Rest in peace, Ivy, and godspeed.

Next time: "63. I Swear There's Thematic Resonance Here." Please look forward to it!

-Avi

[20 January 2024]