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Kanda is a reasonable man. He sharpens his swords every other weekend, pays his bills on time, does his work in a controlled, timely manner, and very much does not have a crush on Allen Walker, thank-you-very-much.
Which is, understandably, why he finds himself in the lobby of said not-crush's apartment building at 1pm on a Saturday; the time he usually reserves for sharpening his swords in the comfort of his own apartment while he wears as little clothing as possible.
You see, Kanda is reasonable, but Allen Walker is a disaster of a man on a good day and Kanda is only trying to keep the kid alive. The couch Allen ordered would've crushed him if he wasn't here to help, really, so he considers it a Good Samaritan act of kindness that he (and soon, Lenalee) can help him with this.
When the delivery comes nearly as soon as he sits down on the stairs to wait and signs it under Allen's name (which he learned how to forge three years ago when they were still in college), going about trying to nudge it in the general direction of up seems like a decent enough idea before Lenalee arrives, nearly ten minutes later.
She looks as put-together as always, despite the painting sweatshirt and hole-y leggings she's donned to help him move the couch. Her short, dyed-green hair is up in a neat ponytail.
(Kanda wonders idly how long they have before someone gets fed up and calls Lavi down to help them.)
"Hello, Lena," he greets, wrapping one arm around her shoulders for a side-hug. She pats his waist and leans into him, smiling.
"Hey, Kanda. I didn't think you'd actually come."
"Why?" He asks, already moving to one end of the couch. He half wonders when Allen will come down and grace them with his presence considering it's nearing 1PM, but also doesn't want to think too much about why he wants that so much. "Allen asked for help after Lavi told him he might not be able to."
"You're right," Lena says. "But you also have a schedule you like to keep that's stricter than your diet."
She has him there. Instead of answering (and pushing down a stubborn little blush in the process), he leans down to lift his end of the couch, which forces Lena to scramble for her end.
"Asshole," she mutters, barely under her breath. Kanda pretends not to hear in favor of taking backwards steps up the stairs and to the first platform.
It goes well. It does. It goes so well, in fact, that Lena and Kanda are halfway up the stairs before Allen makes himself known to the land of the living.
Shirtless.
Without his prosthetic.
Scarred and sleepy and very, very shirtless.
Kanda slips, drops his end of the couch, and watches in horror as Lena drops hers as well before the couch goes sailing off the railing, thudding onto the floor behind them with enough force that Kanda would be surprised if it didn't break.
"Good afternoon," Allen greets, confused and looking far too sleep deprived for this. His accent is thicker, as if he quite literally just woke up, and Kanda is so horribly gay it's ridiculous.
They call Lavi down to help within the half-hour, and he puts his books and pens and computer away to make time for them when he learns Allen and Lena are already there.
When he gets to the lobby, he greets them in Russian, pats Allen's head while giving him a compliment in Spanish, tells Lena he loves her smile in German, and informs Kanda he's still a prick in what sounds like Japanese with a smile on his face.
Kanda truly, honestly hates Lavi Bookman's multilingual ass with all of his cold, rational, gay little heart.
It takes two more hours before they finally get Allen's old, lumpy couch out and the new one in, with more scratches and bruises than originally planned and all of them several degrees of ticked off.
Allen gets most of the ordeal on snapchat, including but not limited to Kanda yelling "pivot" four times in a row and Lavi, clearly fed up, yelling back, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"
In the end, Kanda's hair is messy and unkempt, Lavi is somehow more of an asshole in his eyes, Lena goes home to drink probably-spiked coffee, and Allen uses his available arm to cover up his mouth to keep from laughing at all of them.
In the end, Lavi goes home with a hug from Allen and a thrown middle finger to Kanda, and Kanda is left alone in Allen's apartment with his not-crush.
In the end, Kanda is still very, very gay.
"Well," Allen says cheerfully when everyone has left but Kanda. "At least we got this baby in!"
Kanda needs tea. Lots of tea. And possibly to reconsider why he didn't leave earlier, maybe.
"I wasted two and a half hours on this damn thing. What is this heap of furniture going to do for me?" He asks, grumpy, but there's not much heat in it. Allen sits down by the arm of it and pats the seat next to him. Kanda looks at the couch, then at Allen's hand, then back at the couch, and sits both far too close and too far away from Allen for comfort.
"It'll give you a more comfortable place to sit when you, Lena and Lavi come over every Tuesday. And it'll give you a place to sleep when you come over and drink too much to drive home," Allen offers back. He sinks lower into his new couch, like Kanda isn't sitting ram-rod straight (the straightest he's ever been, probably) on the couch and slowly getting grumpier by the second.
He huffs at the implication of his so-called drinking problem.
Whenever he 'drinks too much to drive home,' it's both an excuse and torture to himself to stay. Allen wakes him up every morning with food and coffee and expects Kanda to be hungover every time, but Kanda never actually drinks too much to have any of his reasons for staying be validated.
Allen probably knows this. Kanda is at least 90% aware of how much Allen knows this, and yet Allen lets him stay anyway. Kanda is grateful that Allen is willing to keep his liar of a friend in his apartment for a night or two every other week, even if he's sure Allen is smart enough to figure out why.
"Yeah," Kanda says lamely. He's never been one for light conversation, not really, but somehow around Allen he gets worse with articulation and better at acting like a stuck-up snob.
(Allen probably knows this too.)
"That's okay, though. You know you always have a place to sleep here," Allen adds, very much not looking at Kanda and focusing his vision down at the fingers he has wrapped around the material of his sweatpants. He still hasn't put a shirt on. Kanda is very much okay with that, really, but he's trying not to look at the dark lines of Allen's tattoo or the scars from his previous job.
"Yeah, I know."
"And you know you have clothes here, too."
"In the bottom drawer."
"Yeah. The next step would be bringing a toothbrush."
Kanda coughs and feels the stubborn rise of a blush on his cheeks.
"Don't say that. People would think we're a couple." He turns away to try and hide his face. It's better than looking at Allen, which looks far too knowing for Kanda's comfort and general morale.
Kanda does not want to deal with this right now. Allen looks like he very much does want to deal with this right now, and Kanda really heavily reconsiders why he didn't leave earlier.
"Why don't you stay for dinner?"
(Mulan is in the back of his head, her grandmother yelling "Why don't you stay forever?" off-screen in the dark recesses of his mind. Kanda contemplates suicide via well-polished sword.)
"Alright," Kanda says. "But I'm cooking. Last time you didn't wear your prosthetic and we let you in the kitchen, you nearly set yourself on fire."
"That was one time-"
"And I'd be happy not to repeat it."
Allen huffs, turns away, and absently rubs at where the skin has healed over the bone the doctors cut off.
"Where is your prosthetic, by the way?" Kanda asks. He stands up from the new and not-yet-lumpy couch, heading to the kitchen to see what Allen has in his fridge. It's a welcome change from looking at Allen's face and acting like he's got a schoolyard crush, at least.
"It's with Komui. He wanted to see if he could fix it, the elbow joint started creaking again."
Kanda clicks his tongue in acknowledgment. Allen has four eggs in his fridge, some milk, three Chinese take-out boxes and what smells like pad Thai in there.
"Careful. If you leave it with him for too long, you might end up with a Bucky Barnes arm when you get it back."
"Don't make Marvel jokes at me, you know I'm a DC fan," Allen says. There's laughter in his voice, though, so Kanda counts it a win and starts taking out the leftovers.
It's a good night that started off with a shaky afternoon, all in all. Kanda and Allen eat mostly-okay food on the new couch, Allen falls asleep on Kanda's shoulder at eleven-something PM, and Kanda can't help but pressing a soft kiss to his temple before laying him down and going home for the rest of the night.
He sharpens and cleans his swords extra-well when he gets home to avoid thinking about how Allen smiled when Kanda's lips touched his skin.
Kanda, because he's first and foremost a useless gay disaster, trips up when Lavi and him go get coffee Monday morning.
He should've seen this coming, really. Lavi, the bastard, is keen with one eye and a brain full of the histories (and fallacies) of the world, and wheedles it out of Kanda with three questions, a comment, and a raised eyebrow.
Allen knows about it by the end of the coffee outing, despite Kanda not seeing when and how Lavi grabbed his phone to tell him about it.
"I. Can explain," Kanda starts, out of breath from running up the stairs and wondering when he let himself get even slightly out of shape. Or maybe that’s the anxiety?
Allen has his phone in his hand, and nearly jumps out of his skin when Kanda comes crashing into his apartment at 10AM on a Monday, when he should still be out with Lavi.
"Explain?" Allen asks. He looks confused. Kanda knows for a fact that Allen understands exactly what he's talking about.
"Lavi. Coffee. Feelings?"
"Those are words, yes."
"Shut up, beansprout."
Allen puts his hand up in an innocent-looking gesture, and Kanda sees the bump of his other arm rise up, too.
"Right. Lavi. What did he say?" He's still breathing heavily. That's definitely the anxiety.
"I know nothing."
"Liar. What did he say?"
Allen hesitates, making a small movement with his finger that locks his phone. Kanda's eyes narrow.
"Allen Walker. What did that multilingual, sneaky little asshole say?"
"Nothing I didn't already know," Allen answers calmly, shoving his phone into the pocket of his jeans.
Kanda flinches, and for a few seconds he is horribly aware of every single article he's read on gay people falling for someone straight and getting killed for it. He knows Allen isn't straight, not at all, but the anxiety rises until he can feel his heartbeat in his throat despite the fact that he hasn't had a panic attack in years. Allen wouldn't hurt him, but dammit, Kanda is a minority both in sexuality and in race, and can't get the thought of Allen Walker saying something to the wrong person and inadvertently getting Kanda impaled. Or shot. Or something.
"Right. Amazing. That's. That's definitely something. I'm leaving now," he says, his speech only slightly choppy.
(English isn't his first language. He's blaming it on that.)
He twists on his heels and walks right back out the way he came, and doesn't stop until he gets in his car and drives the three miles to his own apartment in heavy Manchester traffic.
He doesn't remember any of the drive, and calls into work sick for the rest of the day to wallow in his own self-pity and have his panic attacks by his damn self.
He doesn't go to the weekly dinner on Tuesday, and finds out from Lenalee the night he skipped that Allen had cancelled anyway.
Kanda only sorta feels bad for making his friends worry about him, but he got along just fine without them before, so he figures they can do the same.
He carries on with this for a week and a half more, and doesn’t go with Lavi to get coffee the next Monday or go to dinner with all of them two Tuesday's in a row, despite Lena's increasingly aggressive messages he's been irgnoring.
The only reason it stops is because there's a heavy knock on his door on Wednesday, a knock that could only come from a prosthetic limb.
"Fuck," Kanda says, then gets up to come face to face with his probable demise. He'd just gotten home from work within the hour, and is very comfy in his pj's, thank you very much, but he swings the door open anyway and looks down the two-ish inches to lay eyes on Allen Walkers beautiful, scarred, very angry face.
"You got your prosthetic back. Do you have super strength now?"
"You're going to find out if you don't let me in."
"Good talk," Kanda nods. He opens the door wider.
Kanda only gets yelled at for ignoring them for an hour, and then proceeds to almost get his ass kicked into last week by the time Allen is done being angrily sentimental.
Allen also, disappointingly, does not have super strength.
He says as much, directly after Allen tells Kanda how much he's liked him despite their (very) rough start into friendship, and realizes a second too late that sometimes his humor doesn't exactly get translated well in high-stress situations.
"Wait-" Kanda says, only a second too late when Allen decks him in the bicep with the hard metal of his newly-attached left arm. "Ow, fuck, wait, I didn't mean to say that, hold on don't punch me again-"
They clear it up. It takes another hour and a half for Kanda to figure out both how to articulate his feelings and how to push back every single internalized Asian stereotype about not showing said feelings, but they do it, and Allen rewards him with a soft kiss and an offer to make him a very late dinner.
Kanda declines the offer and suggests going out to eat instead, his treat.
Allen smiles something wide and pretty that distorts the scar on his face and lets Kanda change into something slightly nicer than his sweats and t-shirt.
They make it work, and somehow, when Lavi finds out, Kanda doesn't quite hate him as much despite the amount of shit he's given for being the disaster he already knew he was.