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Sugar
Howard Link stood at the edge of the room, observing.
There, in the middle, was Allen Walker. He was surrounded by piles of food and he spoke with his mouth full. His gloves were white and stained, now, and beside him Bookman Jr. watched with mild amusement, knuckles propping his chin up. Lotto, hair neatly tied back in a green bow, wore the tired smile of a mother, content. Of them all, Walker stood out in stark contrast. He was noticeable even in a room filled with those begging for attention.
Walker dragged his thumb across his lower lip, uncouth, collecting what lingered there before grinning at whoever had spoken last. On his shoulder was Cross Marian’s strange golem, Timcanpy, mouth creased in a sharp toothed smile.
Link adjusted his grip on the pie in his hands, tongue curling around the back of his teeth. He could still taste the sugar in the filling, coating his teeth with the gritty sweetness. Nonplussed, Link approached Walker.
Bookman Jr. noticed him first, green eye solemn while he smiled, expression all at odds.
When Walker turned to look at him, the first thing Link noticed was the ghastly scar down his cheek.
Blood split his skin, bisecting a wide gray eye. Surrounded by all that white, Link couldn’t help but think of the bright smear of a blackberry punctured, ripped and dripping. It drew the eye at once, and Link missed his first impression.
By the time he focused, Walker’s lips were curved in a sweet smile, one Link knew was fake only because it had to be.
It was obscene, the way he swallowed Link’s offering.
Red
Link had his own rooms in headquarters.
He rarely visited them. He had packed everything he’d need when his new assignment had started, and sentimentality wasn’t allowed. Not that there was much in the first place. He visited his room only once when needed. Hanging in a closet devoid of any other clothes were his CROW uniforms.
Blood, like the papal mozzetta, was what the CROW wore. Sometimes adorned with gold, perhaps for glory, but always red.
Walker’s Innocence was red. That had been one of the first details Link had chronicled, nevermind that the Science Division already had an entire filing cabinet dedicated to Walker’s Innocence.
Curiously, Walker wore gloves, ostensibly to hide the distorted mess of his left hand, but he at times left the entire arm bare. Link had studied the differences shamelessly. He wondered how deep the bleed went, how far. All that was anatomically different was that his arm was a little longer, his hand a bit larger. It was enough to unsettle you when you first looked at him, eyes rapidly attempting to discern what exactly looked and felt so wrong.
Walker endured this study with that same smile, benevolent. His lips were rose pink around white teeth, and sometimes he smiled with a soft parting of his lips.
Hope
The first mission Link followed Walker into was more enlightening than the week spent with him prior. This was when Link first realized that Allen Walker was more than just a liar.
He’d heard it before, from Kanda Yuu. That Walker was demented, idiotic, naive, idealistic, a plethora of words all spat with contempt and derision. To hear Kanda tell it, Walker was one step away from wearing a dead man’s name. That, Link had attributed to mutual antagonism. Link had seen the way Walker went out of his way to fan the fires there, as if eager for destruction.
However on that first mission, Link saw in Allen what Kanda did, and saw, too, what the Akuma did.
It flared from Crown Clown in gleams of light like the sun, and it was delivered with a smile so sincere, Link frowned to see it. There was no reason to smile for the dead — they were gone, and nothing Allen did after would change a thing.
Still, Link saw it then.
It wrenched something inside of him, like the snapping of fragile ribs. It felt like freedom. Maybe this is what Walker meant when he said that souls could smile.
Dreams
Bookman Jr. could chat the world over and not say a single thing of worth. Link learned this the hard way, to Walker’s lingering amusement. Jr. insisted on accompanying Link and Walker when they filed paperwork. It had been hard to reject him, because he somehow ended up where they were anyways.
If Link didn’t know better, he’d say Jr. was worried.
Still, for all that every hundred words was only one kernel of something worth biting, through all the hours Jr. kept them company as Walker filed as much as he could, Link learned a great deal about Walker than he ever would have otherwise.
For one thing, as it was public knowledge, Jr. easily supplied him with grand tales of the battles Walker fought. Of the Noah of Pleasure and the Noah of Dreams, and the kiss shared.
That had startled Link. Kissing a Noah? Walker hadn’t blushed and barely even rolled his eyes — nonplussed as he poked Lavi’s cheek with a pencil. You give others the wrong idea.
No sweet dreams? Lavi had teased.
None.
Captive
The first time Link baked for Walker, it was when he’d been plagued by insomnia again. It happened frequently, and though it rarely affected him too badly, it was unnerving to sit in a silent room for hours.
It wasn’t right to stare outside a window a like that.
Setting his pen aside, Link had hesitated, glanced aside, and then at Walker. The offer was made in clear steady words, betraying none of the nerves Link felt at breaking routine like this.
It was accepted with what Link thought was another fake smile, but not meant for him.
Allen laughed as they walked downstairs, childlike, and when he sat on the kitchen counter and swung his feet he smiled like this was a secret. It wasn’t. It would be carefully written, like every other encounter. Once Allen fell asleep, soothed as a child is, Link would finish the day’s report.
For then, under the guise of midnight, Link watched Allen lick a bare finger clean of strawberry juice, one plucked from the many of a tarte Link had no intentions of eating.
It was that grin, then, that Link succumbed to.
(In the long record there was no mention of any midnight escapades, from then or from ever.)
Dying
Allen was dramatic.
Link should’ve known better. No one with an Innocence called Crown Clown wouldn’t be anything less. Link kept his steady litany of scolding up as Allen dropped his head in Link’s lap with a lazy smile. He looked satisfied, no doubt because all the Akuma perished by his hand and Lenalee’s Innocence.
From above, Link could see the fine flicker of Allen’s lashes as he glanced to where Lenalee called, worried about his injuries. It was nothing, a few scratches, a bleeding gash where a sharp cut had gotten him, but nothing Link couldn’t fix himself.
He ran his bare hands down Allen’s side, seeking the wound, breath hitching when the skin there rose from the unexpected caress. In between his words, Allen gave a soft kind of sigh, eyes steady on Lenalee. Link could count Allen’s ribs.
It was only when Allen’s hand jerked up to grip Link’s wrist tightly did Link realize he’d gone on to feather his fingertips along Allen’s chest. It must’ve been instinctual, a knee-jerk reaction to stop whatever was tickling him.
Link swallowed, mouth dry. He said nothing as he finally taped the bandages, avoiding Allen’s curious gaze.
His hands burned where he had touched Allen, his heart beating a staccato rhythm in his fingertips.
Hands
Link first noticed when he and Allen were sitting beside each other on the train.
The ark can’t take them where Allen hasn’t been, and while there are scant few places they still exist. Accordingly, Allen’s had no reason to visit the Vatican city-state (Link uncharitably suspects Cross went out of his way to avoid it) and so there they travel now. It was just the two of them, no mission, and Allen was bored.
The closer they grew— no, the more at ease Walker became, the more sides of him Link was permitted to see. This boredom was one he hid before. He fidgeted, something remarkably out of character for what he attempted to show (Link knew now that it is just a show, but for who he isn’t sure of yet). He was staring out of the window again, but at what Link couldn’t tell. There was nothing but trees for the stretch between Florence and Rome that the train took them through.
Without thinking, Link covered Allen’s hands with his, startling Allen into a minute jump. He turned, gray eyes indecipherable. The morning sun caught on his eyelashes, framing his hair, catching in the corners of his eyes and illuminating them into a glorious light. Link pulled his journal — personal, filled with tiny details, nothing of importance, really — and laid it Allen’s lap. A pen followed.
Practice your writing.
Grinning, Allen pulled the glove off his left hand and shoved it carelessly into a pocket, gripping the pen strangely. His writing was odd, a little crooked, a little sloppy, but leagues better since Krory began tutoring him.
Phantom like, Link could still feel Allen’s hand under his, fingers slender and knuckles pronounced, the divets between them gently sloping. Link wondered, then, what it might be like to lace his fingers between Allen’s, to feel the strength laying there, elegant to match to rest of Allen’s ethereal appearance.
Through lowered lashes, Link watched Allen’s profile. He was beautiful. Beautiful enough to be at odds with the life he lived. It wasn’t the first time Link had felt it — that Allen didn’t suit where he came from.
Link’s hands were rough, brutish. His fingers were broken and though set straight they still showed the fractures and crooked lines. His fingertips were rough, calloused, and the ring finger on his right hand had a pronounced burl from how frequently he wrote. They were nothing like the elegance and beauty Allen’s hands had.
There was a ghost sliding his hand against Link’s, fingers up his palm, between Link’s, hands aligning, intimacy in the heat curling there between them.
Friendship
Lenalee Lee was raised with men and so it showed. Link found it unbearable to sit with Allen in the baths as he poured water over Timcanpy for the third time, water glistening on his arms, his neck, his back, tantalizing.
He was in the changing room, chest bare as he dried his fair fully, when Lenalee bust in.
You. We should talk.
Scandalized, Link scrambled for a shirt and scowled at her. Lenalee Lee! This is inappropriate.
Oh? Excuse me, I didn’t realize. Allen’s going to be in there for a while longer. Why don’t you join me for some tea?
I’m not to leave Walker’s side.
We’ll be just down the hall, Link. Besides, it’s a little weird to sit here where others change.
It’s much worse for you to be here at all!
So will you join me? It didn’t sound like an option.
...only for one cup.
He left his coat and followed Lenalee after properly adjusting his shirt. His tie, similarly, stayed with his other clothes. Lenalee kept true to her word. Not even several feet down the hall was another room, door propped open for propriety’s sake. Inside was an old study, one of the many littering the new headquarters’ halls. On a table with four chairs was a tea set and a basket of scones.
Lenalee sat demurely, one leg crossed over the other, bent over the table to pour Link’s cup full of a tea colored like roses. When he sat and grabbed a scone, he caught a whiff of it. Black, brewed lightly. Assam, not darjeeling. He glanced at her but she was staring at her own cup, lips curved with a smile that spoke as many words as her silence did.
She inquired after his health and he replied in kind and then, with her voice soft and melodic, lulling with the clinks of her spoon along her teacup, she said, You know, he considers you his friend.
Link remained silent, but even then he’d said too much, too little, all too honest.
But Lenalee saw more, somehow. There was something in her eyes, and Link realized too late that just as Komui had bled to climb every rank he could no matter the obstacles, Lenalee, too, had endured more and worse. There was steel in her eyes, a kindness that Link would never have, no matter how he bowed.
It’s a shame that he does.
Light
Allen’s hands slid through his hair, restless, breath hot on his temple, mouth full of his name. Skin on skin, palms like fire on his chest, the small of his back bared for his touch.
Link, Link, Link, Lin—
Link woke with a gasp, heart shuddering, eyes snapping to the side where the fire still burned. Allen was curled against Link, nose buried in his chest, and on the other side of the fire was Lavi.
He was awake, sitting with one leg bent and an arm crossed on it, bright green eye carefully watching.
Link sat up, careful not to wake Allen, and hoped the night would hide whatever blush he may have. He felt feverish.
He almost asked. Almost. But Allen stretched, moving against Link, and he lost his voice.
The firelight was warm on Allen’s cheeks and his hair turned golden. His scar was hidden by his cheek resting against his pallet, and he had a hand curled by his face. Allen liked to sleep like this, curled up, covers tucked tight around him. When they first met Allen had slept on his back.
Link looked up and under Lavi’s gaze he felt horribly bare. But Lavi said nothing, simply smiled and laid down to sleep.
Link watched the fire the rest of the night, listening to the night sounds of the forest and the way Allen breathed. Unbidden, he heard, again and again, Link, Link, Link I—
He didn’t dare listen to the rest.
Yearn
Link understood need. Need was food when he’d gone without for days. Need was the acrid drought spreading like wildfire inside him when he’d gone without clean water. Need was the fervor that drove him in his training, desperate to excel and be wanted. Need was the way his heart wrenched when a rough hand clasped his shoulder in camaraderie. Need was when he ingratiated himself beside Walker for his mission but accompanied him for want.
Need, Link knew, was this.
In his journal, twenty three pages from the back, was an entire sheet filled with writing. Link traced the words, clumsily made, but neater the further down you went. It was nonsensical, words that meant nothing, but they were Allen’s thoughts.
Poplar, ash, redwood, elm, pine—
The town was very gray. Always gray. There is a hill if you go far enough past the baker who swats your hands and the priest who doesn’t smile. There is a grave there and there are poppies blooming there and they are red—
I know one thing that I know nothing. I dont remmber who said this but I think of it often. When I asked Master laughed. He said somethings your bettr off not knowing.
Link traced the words, again, again, once more, lips parting and meeting on the p ’s and hollow on the o ’s.
It felt immeasurable, this piece of Allen. It felt like Link’s alone. Childish, he kept it secret, hidden where no one would see. There was nothing of value here, nothing for them to see.
There is a grave there and there are poppies blooming there and they are red. I dont remmber well but I know I was alone for a very long time before Master found me. The poppies were there one day and when I touched them they were warm. I asked Master did you leave these and he said no I didnt. I think that was the first time I saw him look sad but Im not sure.
Link when you read this can you give this to me? I know a torn page will look unseamly in your book but I would love to have it. Thank you Link.
Link could hear it, the pauses in his voice, the inflection in his words, the hesitance, the smile shaping his name. What did Allen feel, holding Link’s leather bound journal in his lap, his pen between his fingers, his hands caressing these pages, what did Allen feel?
Did he feel like Link did now? Uncertain, nervous, frivolous? Hands drifting across the sheets, down those written words, fingertips hovering there as if above Allen’s lips, the full swell of his top lip brushing against Link’s skin as he mouthed words there.
Thank you, Link.
Need, Link knew, was this.
Breathtaking
Link heard Allen laugh, once.
The sound of it alone was strange, different, distant, unfamiliar. He looked up from his book and found Allen flushed pink and eyes quicksilver against it, laughter boyish and sweet and hesitant, unsure of its own sound.
Lavi grinned up at Allen, wide enough to crease his eye, too close, too near, arms folded under his chest as he rested along the table Allen sat at.
Lenalee who sat beside Allen was laughing, too, but sweeter and softer, accustomed to itself. On the other side of the table Kanda was steadily eating his food, sensuous through the part of his lips.
Allen’s laughter was short lived but rang bright, airy, echoing in Link’s ears. Lenalee caught his gaze and smiled, tucking her hair behind her ear.
Allen was saying something to Lavi, laughter gone to wherever he jealously caged it, but his smile was there and the ghost of his voice lingered.
Link sighed, and turned the page he hadn’t read. He felt himself trembling but his hands were steady, mind turning itself over and over, trying to remember what it was that had made Allen laugh.
A moment passed before he realized he was blushing, unbearably warm.
Stars
In Jordan the weather was temperate. Dry, but chilled at night. Allen shivered, tugging his coat closer and avoiding the fire, knowing full-well the Finders wouldn’t appreciate him there.
Instead, he sat outside their tent, head tilted back and eyes on the stars. He liked to observe nature sometimes. Or perhaps he was thinking, eyes lost somewhere acceptable. Link opened his mouth to ask but the words held back.
You know, Allen said without prompting, dragging Link’s attention from his book. Allen’s hands were on either side of him, propping him up as he leaned back, and Link had one hand resting there, inches from Allen’s. When we would camp Mana would tell me about the constellations. There was a lot of stories to them but he couldn’t remember any of them, so he’d make up his own. You know what it’s like to be a kid and hear a story about yourself in the stars?
No, Link didn’t, but he could imagine it. Allen, smaller, cheeks pink and eyes wide, maybe rougher than he was now. Less manners, surely, more impulsive. Reddish brown hair, as it said in Allen’s file, and no scar to match.
It was easier to ask now what those stories had been. Allen smiled and gave a soft huff of embarrassment, drawing his knees up to wrap his arms around. Link urged him on, curious.
There was one, about a boy who found a whole family. He’d been alone for ages with only a ghost for a companion. He found this family and his friend disappeared. He searched and searched. I can’t remember the ending though. Maybe there wasn’t one. Mana was funny like that.
Link’s fingers twitched, hand rising up in spite of himself. He wanted to touch Allen then, to cup his cheek and tell him that he could make his own ending. He wanted to hold Allen close and tell him that hearts don’t always stay broken. He wanted to somehow ease the pain he saw, but he brought his hand back to his book and turned the page.
Allen laughed, humorless. Isn’t it too dark to read?
Believe
God was a liar to Link.
God gave and took that which he’d given.
God was an empty thing.
God was a name, meaningless to one who doesn’t hold it.
God was a person, who gave everything.
God was a man, who demanded it all.
God was a boy, coltish and bright.
God was someone, who’d asked only for faith.
God was no one.
Allen was human, unerringly and beautifully so, and Link had failed him.
I’m sorry were words he’d never tell.
In his dreams, he heard God cry.
I wanted you to believe in me, Link.
Heartache
Link hadn’t slept alone in months.
He sat on Allen’s bed, the mattress bowing under the pressure. He could almost hear the sleepy way Allen would say good morning, Link, mouth thick with cotton and dreams.
When Link first woke up, mind slow and lethargic, his control would be wrestled from him and he would think, then, what it might be like. To reach across that gap and to bring Allen close, to kiss the words from his mouth and the gasp that would follow.
He’d think, that Allen would grab at his shoulder, startled, but follow the curve up to his nape, fingers drenched in his hair. That he’d laugh, like he once had, breathless and airy and unfamiliar but beautiful, beautiful still. Laugh, because of Link, startled into it.
He’d had this senseless dream, over and over, and then he would fully wake up and in measured words return Allen’s greeting, perfunctory and polite. Allen would smile, too sleepy to be fake, and Link’s heart would jump circles, stomach twisting in knots, his thoughts repeating stupid, nameless things.
It was dark now, and he was alone.
He tried to bring that image up, of Allen smiling at him with endearing sleepiness, but all he saw was Allen’s bowed figure, tears in his voice as he begged Link to do that which he couldn’t.
Rain
Link saw Allen again when it became too much to bear.
He couldn’t stand their room ( theirs, not his, never his, never Allen’s, always theirs—) anymore. An itch would start, in his fingertips, crawling across his palms, up his arms, down his spine, gathering at his nape. It made him frantic, and no matter how many times he made Allen’s bed the memories of him remained. He couldn’t scratch or rub it away.
In the dining room he saw him, surrounded as always by food and friends and laughter that was never his, but a smile there, a smile Link saw more and more as time passed.
In the library he was there, brows scrunched together and playfully begging Link to let him off, just this once, please, I won’t ask again—
At the beginning, when Link’s questions had only ever been for business and never for simple curiosity, Allen had said he didn’t have a favorite season or weather. Maybe the cold, but only because others won’t look at you strangely when you wear a hood.
Then, Link had understood with this detached simplicity. Of course he’d want to hide his hair, that’s natural, he’d thought then. Now, it felt deeper, complicated, layered. Everything did. He felt mired in it, lost in snow in an avalanche he hadn’t seen coming with no sense of up or down or which way was out.
This was insanity.
Still, storms reminded Link of Allen. Most things did, really. Birdsong, freshly baked bread, laughter, fingers tapping on wood, sunlight. But storms did, because of everything you could say about Allen, a storm resembled him best. Deceiving from afar, but up close you could see just how tumultuous, how wild, he really was.
When it began to pour like the heavens were revolting, fierce and frightening, Link felt the last thread of his patience break like the skies. He stormed down to find Allen with his face upturned to the tiny window in the wall that showed him the glimpse of a sky — to remind him it was still there. At Link’s entrance Allen’s eyes fluttered to his and away just as easily, and something in Link’s heart stuttered and hesitated, suddenly so unsure.
He tried his best to reassure Allen, and meeting his eyes he felt the guilt he’d staunchly ignored crawl back up his throat.
What was it that made him want to confess? To say, I did this and I’m sorry. It was unfamiliar, but, Link imagined, similar to telling God your worst sins in hopes of finding absolution.
Instead of what Link wanted to tell him most, he picked something a little less worse, a little less heartrending.
It was just like Allen to forgive that which he had no right to.
White
What Link had earned was confidence and even as he felt his chest give way and blood hot as life soak his clothes, dripping down his chest, he felt no remorse.
Confidence, that his death would not be in vain, and joy, that he’d done something at last. Something to be proud of. Link had forgotten what shame tasted like until Allen had bowed before him with grief etched into every line of his back and he wanted nothing more than to smother it til he could bury it under something new, forgotten.
Blindness wasn’t darkness but excruciating sunlight, too bright to hide from, too searing to stay free of. It scoured every inch of him and uncovered all that he’d hidden, and he heard a voice like death or like God, sickly and devout, whisper Fear that which you do not understand.
And yet, when Link thought of Innocence, he thought of Allen. In every meaning of the word, from purity to blessings to exaltation. Allen was nothing more than human, but somehow, to Link, he embodied all that and more.
Glorious.
Trust
Allen Walker was a liar and the lie he told best was that he was anything he said at all.
Link saw it as the days turned to weeks, months, a blur of time of dodging demons and saviors alike. Everything Allen had ever built began to crumble, and all Link did was watch it happen.
Link had never seen a man break from the inside out this way.
The most powerful test of his newfound loyalty was to not do anything at all.
Link had never understood before what it meant to do nothing in the face of the overwhelming want to run forward and tell Allen no you’re not alone.
It felt worse, somehow, than the nights spent alone in their room, staring at an empty bed and thinking of empty hands. Regret came to him then, when he watched Allen clown to make others laugh. How easy it would have been to reach across and grasp Allen’s hand in the dark of the night, to whisper, softly, I’m here for you.
It would’ve been easy, heartbreakingly so, to make Allen smile.
He watched as Allen performed an act built on lies, and did nothing.
Forgiveness
In the darkness, he remembered.
The glide of his palms along Allen’s skin, the warmth of his presence at Link’s side, the sound of his name in Allen’s mouth, the weight of Allen’s gaze on him, the taste of blackberries, bittersweet, acrid, shocking his sense when he first bit.
In the darkness, when Allen feigned sleep and Link kept watch, he wondered if one day he’d ever have that again. If he’d spoiled what had once been in his grasp, like a fruit overripe, gone, wasted, scorned.
In the darkness, Link dreamt of Allen seeing him, and gray eyes at last filling with hate and disgust and betrayal, everything he’d kept hidden before and lost during and gained now.
In the darkness, Link let himself go to maybe, if I had done this—
In the darkness, Link heard, over and over, like a phantom, Thank you, Link.
And, finally, what he’d never allowed himself before, Link, I love—
Love
This journal was less Link’s and more Allen’s, just like everything else was.
It was easy to see now that which he’d denied before. Everything was easier now, truly, since he’d stopped lying to himself.
It was there, in Allen’s smile, in his touch, in the way he held himself back, in the hesitance of his laughter, in his feelings shown slowly, in his stories he told haltingly, in his way he touched others, like one ready for the burn of fire.
How could he not be? How could Link ever hold himself back, even when he tried?
It felt as if Allen’s very being had been fabricated just for this, to pull at every single one of Link’s heartstrings, to tie the ends of themselves round Allen’s little finger, to belong all at once to one person.
Link understood now how people could throw their whole life away for this, how they could bow before a God whose face they didn’t know. When he closed his eyes he could see him, hear him, the delusion of his touch on Link’s heart;
Link.
This was a memoir for Allen Walker, titled—