Title: Frequency in Measures
Rated: R
Pairing: KandaxAllen
Comments: For theme set I at centi_porn.
–
Sweat
It’s how Allen never concedes (in arguments aboard trains with cracked leather seats; in alleys hunting akuma, boots clicking against cobblestones; in anything-but-friendly spars turned duels turned brawls). How Allen, when cornered, will sink his teeth into the fingers reaching for his neck and use that second’s advantage to sweep Kanda’s legs out from under him. How Allen knows desperation in the sweat he blinks out of his eyes and the way he sways when he stands.
It’s how others look at Allen like he’s their fucking savior. Kanda sneers at all of it and kisses Allen like the world is ending.
Tongue
Despite that it’s usually full to bursting with food, Allen Walker knows how to use his mouth for more than that infamous poker-faced smile.
He crawls into Kanda’s lap, legs braced at either side, and snatches Kanda’s hand mid-motion as Kanda is reaching for the light switch. He draws Kanda’s fingers between his lips, one at a time, tongue sliding over knuckles and smooth calluses. He pulls back, smiles sweetly, and drags his teeth over the tip of Kanda’s index finger.
Kanda’s breath grows thin, his eyes narrow, and he wonders where Allen learned to make a man’s pulse quicken.
Compromise
When Kanda slips away to steal a few moments of quiet meditation, he is less than pleased to find Allen waiting outside his room.
He takes exception that the idiot seems to think Kanda leaving the library and the others’ company is an invitation. He also takes exception to Allen’s hair and his eye and his obscene arm and the way Allen leans back against the wall, hips angled just so.
So instead of sending him away, Kanda opens his door. If the idiot is going to encroach on his meditation, then Kanda will find a different way to relax.
Gaze
Kanda feels stifled. Allen hovers over him, completely still, his side outlined in candlelight, fuzzy shades of gray like a photograph. Pale eyes trace the shadows nestled in the angles of Kanda’s skin. Kanda shifts his lower body, impatient.
He kicks at the blankets and they slide to the floor. Then he reaches out and grips the back of Allen’s neck to tug him down. Allen makes a sound against his mouth, thin and needy, and his fingers card through Kanda’s hair.
Kanda pulls back, catches Allen’s gaze again. He leans away and blows out the candle on the nightstand.
Button
As exorcists, they’ve learned to live in moments. Kanda’s, defined by each jagged line inked into his skin and the slow decay of a flower behind glass. He doesn’t know how Allen measures his life, whether by battles or scars or those stretches of morning lethargy when Allen’s mind is still caught between dreams and memories.
Kanda doesn’t much care.
Seconds and scenery converge in unsteady breaths, nails scoring uniform sleeves, Allen curled around him, body jerking, Kanda’s hands ripping at engraved buttons, which he quickly tosses aside. This is just another passing moment and he doesn’t need a souvenir.
Frenzy
There are moments like this one, when Kanda has to brace his hands against the wall to keep from being slammed into it; when Allen kneels behind him, open mouth against the curve of Kanda’s spine and all that softness in him lying scattered with their clothes across the floor; when he’s fucking Kanda so hard that Kanda’s jaw aches for how he has to clench it.
When Kanda has to turn his head and meet the clear gray of Allen’s eyes, the not quite sorry tilt of Allen’s mouth, and affirm that this frenzied need is in fact Allen and not some Noah who refuses to stay dead.
Hand
Kanda might not be a man of great faith, but he still wonders if it’s blasphemy when the fingers of Allen’s left hand slip between his legs and press into him. He should be revolted, but instead, he draws in a disgracefully thin breath and says, “Fuck.”
And later, when Allen extends a hand to assist Lenalee from a carriage, when he flexes his fingers against Lavi’s shoulder or reaches out to accept a new mission file, Kanda will recall the texture of that livid hand inside him, skin unnaturally smooth even along the ridges where it gathers at the knuckles.
Give
Kanda is observant as a rule, and he sees the way the idiot moves among the Order like a beacon, drawing everyone in with golden smiles and shining words. Allen gives and gives as if he is incapable of doing otherwise (as if to mask his despair, but even a burning candle has only so much wick), and few seem to realize Allen has trouble enough holding onto what’s left of him.
In quiet moments, when Allen settles between his legs and brushes his fingertips along Kanda’s tattoo (curse), Kanda scowls and thinks, ‘You have no right to look at me that way.’
Smooth
When he has a motive, Allen can be something of a smooth talker. But while that silver tongue might know its way around weaving lies, no one has the affinity to deliver fabrication as truth as convincingly as Bookmen.
“C-come on, baby, give it to me harder.”
Kanda stops mid-thrust and stares.
Allen, face flaming, tries for a meek, “Sorry? I-I thought maybe you’d like…” And before Kanda can maim him, Allen covers his face with his hands and makes a sound like a dying donkey. “I knew he was lying, I just knew it.”
Kanda quickly connects the dots. “Why the hell would you take that imbecile’s advice?!”
Lavi is conspicuously absent the rest of the week.
Without
Allen is always too close. He hovers at dinner with his disruptively massive appetite, brushes their shoulders in Komui’s office, shoves a thigh between Kanda’s legs and buries his nose in Kanda’s hair when sleeping.
Then Allen is sent with Lenalee to Egypt. Kanda drinks in the relief for a week until he grows restless again, as if in anticipation of something. He wonders at the feeling, at the empty space around him, lacking only in the absence of someone to fill it.
When Allen returns, Kanda ignores him until Allen crawls into his bed and fits their hips together. Then Kanda sighs, wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him closer.
Shiver
Allen is suited for winter, when the snow falls in drifts and Allen wanders down the wooded paths and disappears between the bleached trees. It is his perfect camouflage.
Kanda pulls on his coat and follows the fading footprints. Around the bend, where the trees stand close and the snow spins in icy whorls around their bases, Kanda pauses.
Allen is draped against the trunk of an old willow (like a golden fleece, a grail, a fabled fountain to flush the fetor of death that weight their shoulders). His legs are parted, an open invitation, and he has one hand shoved beneath the waist of his pants.
“Insane,” Kanda says, and ignores the shiver that rides his spine.
Melt
He steps quietly around raised roots, hidden beneath their winter coats that glitter like stardust in the moonlight. Allen regards him, eyes unreadable beneath pale lashes and the snowflakes that collect at their tips.
Allen slips his hand free of his pants and pushes away from the tree, ducking beneath its creeping branches that glisten like icicles.
“Such an idiot,” Kanda says, before drawing Allen against him, arms circling Allen’s shoulders and melting the snow that has gathered there.
He sneers, despite his thumb that sweeps gently at the dusting of ice crystals across Allen’s cheekbone. Allen tilts his head expectantly, and Kanda pulls him closer until their breaths fog the air between their mouths and Allen’s lips flush pink and warm.
Blossom
Hopeless. He examines the word with practiced indifference, turning it again in his mind like worn pages in a book kept bound with little more than adhesive and string. With eyes closed and Allen sprawled across his chest (unintentionally encompassing even in sleep), he can almost pretend that he doesn’t believe everything they do is an exercise in futility.
Allen stirs against him, lips moving without sound against Kanda’s shoulder and thigh slipping across Kanda’s lap. A warm finger brushes the pinched skin between his brows.
“Stop that,” Allen says, voice sluggish.
With a sigh, Kanda flips them over. He rolls his hips, watches Allen’s body arch off the bend, and ignores the taunt of petals that creep into his periphery.
Sweet
“I don’t like sweets.”
“But I do,” Allen says, and places the small square of candy at the center of Kanda’s chest so that it appears perched atop the ink that stretches over his otherwise unblemished skin.
Kanda scowls at it. “It’s melting on me.”
“I spent all morning making these with Jerry.” Allen trails the chocolate across his chest, tracing the black lines of his tattoo. Kanda makes a strangled sound. “Are you going to eat them or not?”
“No.” He eyes the mess on him with a curl of his lip.
“Fine, I’ll eat them then,” Allen says and drags his tongue across a stained nipple.
Deep
“If you slow me down,” he had said once, “don’t think I won’t leave you behind.”
Allen slumps against his side, his stumbling feet hindering more than helping. Kanda growls something that sounds like a curse and a prayer and hauls Allen upright again.
“Just a few more miles,” he says. Allen’s fingers claw into Kanda’s back and shoulder with the strength absent in his legs, his nails biting even through Kanda’s clothes, as if to demonstrate how deeply entwined they are—like an akuma, sliding into his skin and making himself at home in the spaces between his ribs.
Kanda hates it, but drags Allen along all the same, gripping him like a lifeline instead of the other way around, a compass, a guiding star. (A trail of breadcrumbs, a string of yarn—all paths lead to—)
The End
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