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It hits Allen quite a bit after they’ve sorted everything out. Allen says it’s because he had a lot of other things on his mind. Kanda says it’s because Allen is an idiot. They’re both right.
“Wait a minute!” Allen yells, prompted by nothing, pointing his spoon at Kanda. “You’re nine!”
Kanda glares up at him. Always did lack in the reactions department, did Kanda. “I’m ten now.”
Allen looks horrified, which is never good. Most things that horrify Allen signal the end of the human race. “You’re not twenty,” he says, more quietly, and sits down.
Kanda does not understand what the problem is, but then, he is ten and very dense.
Lenalee does, and so drags Allen off at the earliest opportunity to shout at him.
“What do you mean, you have a crush on Kanda?” she demands. Allen squawks and falls over.
“I do not!” he shouts, and then lowers his voice, hoping that no one overheard his meaningless exclamation. “I don’t have a crush on Kanda! I was just shocked he was that young.”
Lenalee glares. “I don’t believe you, Allen Walker. Put that helpless look away. Why did you look so horrified when you realised?”
Allen thinks about telling her that it was because Kanda had been fighting akuma since he was six months old, but then figures that it won’t stick. He’s been fighting them since he was nine, and Kanda was born age ten, so it’s not that big a deal.
“I don’t know,” he says mostly honestly. Less honestly than if Lenalee hadn’t told him he had a crush on Kanda though. “It’s just weird to think about.”
Lenalee doesn’t look mollified. “Kanda might be gruff and angry, but really he’s delicate, and it won’t do to have you playing with him!” she says. “No funny business!”
Allen looks like he might be sick. “I don’t want to do any funny business!” he insists. “I just thought it was weird!”
Lenalee glares at him, but lets him go. Really. Why did Lenalee have to take it upon herself to give him the shovel talk? And for something he wasn’t interested in to boot! Allen goes to hide in the kitchen. At least Jerry likes him.
The problem is, once Lenalee sticks the idea into Allen’s head, he can’t get rid of it. Because Kanda is pretty, sure, in a violent and angular way, and he’s also delicate and he’s ten.
Or not. He’s also kind of old. Maybe he’s really forty. Allen is suddenly unsure which of them would be the pervert if anything happened between them. Kanda Yuu, as is, was born ten years ago from a vat. The mind inside Kanda’s head? Allen isn’t sure how old his previous incarnation was when he died, but he had to have been at least twenty, right? Hopefully? Surely, the Order weren’t sending teenagers to die for them?
That line of thinking is very depressing, so Allen stops thinking about it.
Of course, he could ask Kanda, but then he’d have to, you know, talk to Kanda, and he’s not going to do that. He doubts Kanda has told even Lenalee what he remembers, so he does the next best thing.
He goes digging through the old files of the second exorcist project. Kanda would kill him if he knew.
The files were supposed to have been destroyed, because the second exorcist project was a terrible thing, but the third exorcist project was born from something and anyway, Bak owes him. For something. Allen’s sure there must be something.
He goes digging, digs and digs and digs, and eventually finds the files on the exorcists that died around the right time to be reincarnated as Kanda.
There are a lot of dead exorcists. Allen was sort of expecting that.
They range in age from nineteen to forty-six, which is a little better than Allen feared. Nineteen isn’t so young. Not compared to when they all started fighting. Lenalee had been eight and Lavi fourteen when they’d started, and they could have died at any given point.
But even if he’d been forty-six when he died, there was nothing saying that the memories had to come through. Kanda sure didn’t act like he was in his late fifties, but then, Kanda was horribly traumatised and how he acted didn’t really mean anything.
“It’s really bugging you, huh?” Lavi says one dinnertime, sat next to Allen and carefully guarding his plate. Allen sighs, dramatically. “I can ask Yuu if you’d like.”
Allen scowls. “I don’t want him to know I’m putting any effort at all into him,” he says without hesitation. “And he’ll never tell you anyway, especially not if he guesses I’m behind it.”
Lavi has to concede that point. “Why does it matter to you anyway? It’s not like you can change anything now.”
Lavi’s face chooses then to go through a long series of complicated and occasionally painful looking contortions. “Wait.”
Allen starts shovelling his food into his mouth as quickly as he can, because he recognises that face. He swallows the last of his lasagne and picks up his overloaded tray, praying that nothing falls and he can make a quick escape. “Allen Walker, wait a goddamned minute!” Lavi yells, but Allen is on the other side of the dining hall and cannot be stopped. He dumps his tray and books it.
It’s a sex thing, Allen tells himself very firmly. It’s a sex thing, because he didn’t have time to go through puberty like everyone else did and so it’s all hitting him now, a couple of years later when everything’s a little calmer, and Kanda is nice to look at and Allen wants to pull his hair and touch his neck and bite, so it makes sense that he’s thinking about Kanda a bit more than normal.
That’s all it is. He just wants to have sex with Kanda, nothing else.
Allen, thanks to long exposure to Cross during his more impressionable years, places very little value on sex. He’s not sure why he’s trying to dismiss this as something as trivial as sexual attraction, when obviously this is something far worse.
Thankfully, it’s perfectly usual for him to avoid Kanda like the plague for weeks and months at a time, so no one bats an eyelid when he does this time. Less fortunately, he’s had to take to avoiding Lenalee and Lavi, who haven’t clued each other in yet but are trying to figure out his intentions with a single-mindedness bordering on ruthlessness.
He begs Komui to be sent out on a long mission alone, with only the Finders for company. Komui, thinking he’s suffering from grief that he wants to parse through himself, allows it, and sends him off to Ecuador for three months.
Ecuador is – well, it’s hot and sticky and he kills a lot of akuma, and there is no Kanda and no one who looks like Kanda. He finds a bar and hides his strangeness behind makeup and has sex, with a woman at least twice his age and then with a man who’s maybe thirty.
He thinks this should be enough – he thinks that once he gets back to England, to the cold dark comfort of headquarters, he should be recovered enough to go back to normal.
He gets back to headquarters. He sees Lenalee and Lavi, takes the longer route around to avoid them, and runs straight into Kanda.
Three months away has done absolutely nothing except confirm his sneaking and horrified suspicion that Kanda is more than just attractive, he is also someone Allen is very much in love with.
Oh, great.
Kanda doesn’t even try and stab him straight off the bat either. He glares at him, but that’s it as far as physical attacks go.
“You’re acting weird, beansprout,” he grits out. “Get over yourself.”
Oh, no. Even Kanda has noticed he’s being weird. Kanda, the possibly-ten-year-old who Allen is definitely attracted to. Kanda, who wouldn’t know social graces if they bit him on the nose, has noticed that Allen is being weird.
The mortification.
Allen pushes all this down and pulls out his sickliest smile. “It’s Allen, you jerk.”
Sure, he’s in love with Kanda. Three months away was enough for him to admit to it. The question is why.
Kanda lunges. Allen gets out of the way and kicks, and then they’re off, fighting in the hallways like the good old days when Allen hadn’t yet been possessed by a Noah and Kanda was still barely more than an enemy, rather than whatever they are now.
Eventually, Allen shoves him into a wall and makes his escape, and reports to Komui. Several hundred dead akuma, fourteen casualties, twenty-seven level twos, four level threes. There had been a nest, or something, and it had taken Allen and the local Finders the full three months to track them all down and for Allen to purify their souls.
Komui adjusts his glasses. “I have to ask, Allen, for the sake of the others, but are you – are you and Kanda fighting?”
Allen blinks. He’s been out of the country for three months. He was on the other side of the world. “No,” he says carefully. “No more than usual.”
Komui’s lips twist unhappily. “It’s just, you see, Lenalee said that you had had a bit of a falling out with him, in a different fashion to the usual, but she wouldn’t say any more on account of the fact that it wasn’t her story to tell.”
Allen sighs. He probably shouldn’t avoid Lenalee forever, but it sounds very tempting. “I don’t suppose you have any more three month missions for me to take?” he asks hopefully. Komui shakes his head.
“Sort it out, Allen,” he says. “Or Lenalee will.”
Komui is irrationally and unreasonably devoted to Lenalee, unless you know their history, but he’s not exactly blind to how terrifying she is.
“Yes, Komui,” Allen says. Internally, he’s screaming.
Allen goes to see Lenalee later than evening, after he’s hidden from her all day and at dinner. She opens the door suspiciously when he knocks on it, and then drags him in and slams it shut behind him. Lavi wanders out of her bathroom. “Hi Allen!” he says cheerfully, entirely oblivious to Lenalee’s scowl.
“Hi Lavi,” Allen says. And then. Nothing.
He really hasn’t a clue what to say.
Lenalee does whatever the opposite of taking pity on someone is. “Are you here to tell us that you’re in love with Kanda?” she asks, and well, he supposes that gets the job done.
“Something like that,” Allen grits out. She sits next to Lavi on her bed, and Allen toes his shoes off and sits on the floor. “Things are weird.”
Lavi rolls his eyes. “You ran off to Ecuador for three months because ‘things are weird’?”
Allen glowers. “I didn’t know what to do!” he wails. “I kept wondering how old he was! And then I realised he was handsome!”
“You could have spoken to us about it,” Lenalee says diplomatically. “Really, running off the Ecuador was a bit of an overreaction.”
“I know,” Allen groans. “I thought it would go away.”
Lavi looks horrified. “You don’t think he’s actually ten do you? Allen, what if you’re crushing on a ten year old!”
“I know!” Allen yells. “I’ve thought about that.”
Lenalee frowns. “Kanda’s not ten. I mean, his body has been around for ten years, but physically he’s about twenty-two, and mentally he’s about the same.”
Allen wants to do a lot of things to Kanda’s ten year old body, and God help him, that sounds disgusting. But he’s in the right religion for that, he guesses. “I wouldn’t even have noticed if I hadn’t started wondering how old he was,” Allen mutters. “Can’t I just go back to not knowing?”
“No,” Lenalee says, utterly heartless. “You have to fix this like an adult, or Allen, I swear to you, I will fix it for you.”
Allen does not want to know what Lenalee’s idea of fixing it would be, especially not if she has Lavi on her side. Lenalee is a very sweet girl and she’s absolutely fixed on her friends finding happiness. It’s a shame she’s also a combat-trained maniac.
Well, they all are, so that mostly puts them on equal footing, but Allen has no idea where to even start with Kanda.
“What do you want me to do?” he asks her, verging on hysterical. “I can’t just tell him I want – never mind. He can’t stand me! And I can’t stand him! That’s why I hoped it would go away!”
Lenalee frowns. “I could ask brother to send you on a mission together. A long one. With no Finders.”
Lavi starts laughing. “Please do that anyway, that’d be hilarious,” he says. “You could just tell him, you know. He’d probably be too confused to do much but attack you, but at least he’d know.”
Allen sleeps on Lenalee’s floor that night, because by the time she and Lavi are through with him, he’s too tired to move. Lavi falls asleep on the end of her bed, and she barely manages to make it under the blankets before she passes out.
The next morning at breakfast, Allen thinks he might give up on everything and become a hermit somewhere deep in the mountains, far away from anyone else. Lenalee and Lavi have conspired to force Allen to sit next to Kanda and keep shooting him smirks that Kanda somehow does not notice, and even Allen’s appetite is suffering under the scrutiny.
Kanda turns to stare at his slowly diminishing pile of food. “Are you sick, beansprout?”
“It’s Allen,” Allen says, more habit than anything else, and hunches over his food. “No. Piss off, stupid Kanda.”
Kanda plucks a plate from somewhere in the pile and starts eating. Allen lets out a squawk of rage and leaps at him, grabbing at his stolen food. “Give that back! You shitty – you don’t even like shepherd’s pie!”
“I like it more than you do right now,” Kanda points out, fending off Allen with a fork. “Get over it, beansprout. You’re always stealing my food.”
Allen settles back to his pile of food with a scowl and demolishes it in minutes. He ignores Lenalee and Lavi’s snickering.
It’s going to be a long day.
It’s actually several long days, four sword fights, three fistfights, twelve threats to the appropriate head of hair, and six stolen plates of food, before Lenalee loses her temper.
“This is ridiculous!” Allen howls at the door. The door doesn’t answer, but Lenalee does.
“I warned you, Allen,” she says. Lavi snickers in the background, and Allen resolves to kick his goddamned face in. “I told you to sort it out, and you didn’t.”
Kanda looks both very annoyed and deeply unimpressed. “Sort what out?” he says, pausing from trying to punch through the door. “Beansprout, what’s she talking about?”
“It’s Allen!” Allen launches himself at Kanda, temper exhausted. The cupboard they’re in is a large one, but it’s still a cupboard. There’s not sufficient room to fight, but that’s not going to stop them.
Allen is distantly aware that Lenalee has left them, but grinding Kanda’s face into the dirty floor of the store cupboard seems a lot more appealing to him right now than following that thought up. He gives it a good go, but there really isn’t space for him to do it properly.
When they’re both satisfied, they lapse into silence sitting on the floor next to each other. Allen has a split lip and Kanda has bruised ribs, and both of them are pretty happy with how much damage they’ve done to the room whose only crime was trapping them here.
Kanda scowls at him. “What was Lenalee talking about?” he asks. Allen sighs.
“I’m in love with you,” he says, flatly. “Lenalee wants me to do something about it.”
Kanda looks at him, confused and mildly horrified. “That’s why she locked us in here?”
Allen only now realises that he could quite easily activate his innocence and rip the door off its hinges. Kanda doesn’t have Mugen, because Lenalee’s not quite that dumb, but she could hardly take Allen’s innocence off of him, could she?
He decides he’ll let Kanda figure that one out for himself. See how long it takes him.
“Well?” he asks. “Are you going to react to my heartfelt confession or not?”
Kanda scowls at him. Kanda’s going to give himself wrinkles. “I’m thinking about it,” he snaps. Allen settles back and curls up, resigned to spending an afternoon trapped with Kanda.
Lenalee comes to let them out two hours later. When she does, she’s greeted with Allen asleep on the floor and Kanda sat listlessly opposite him, staring blankly at the wall.
“Did you two sort yourselves out?” she asks sweetly. Kanda isn’t quite rude enough to shoulder past her, but he does knock Lavi over is his escape. Allen sits up and rubs his eyes.
“Ah, I feel refreshed,” he says cheerfully. “Decided to let us out, Lenalee? You know we’re not going to fall for that ever again, right?”
“Sure,” she says, clearly doubtful. “Well? Did you?”
Allen ponders. “We fought for a bit,” he says eventually. “And then I fell asleep.”
Lenalee slumps.
It’s two in the morning when Kanda breaks into his room. Allen glares at him, but only hisses at him instead of yelling. “What is it, you jerk?”
Kanda scowls, grabs his head, and kisses him.
It’s not a great kiss, but Allen is so relieved to finally know what’s going to happen with them that it doesn’t matter. Eventually he wrests control of it, and then it’s a bit better, but Kanda is still too tall so he drags him down onto the bed and carries on.
Kanda pulls back. “I’m not having sex with you tonight,” he says. “I’m tired.”
“So am I,” Allen hisses. “You’re the one who barged in here at two in the morning –”
“I was thinking,” Kanda says.
“What, for ten hours? And then you had to tell me right now?”
“Yes,” Kanda snarls. “I did. Now let go of me. I’m going to bed.”
Allen does not let go. “You can sleep here,” he says. “I waited a year for this. Go to sleep.”
Kanda shucks his uniform and gets into bed, and they fall asleep pretty quickly for people with such notoriously bad sleeping habits.
Kanda wakes up with an armful of idiot.
Sure, it’s his fault, and he was perfectly sober when he made the decision to agree to whatever the hell Allen wanted, but still. It’s going to take some getting used to.
Allen opens his eyes and scowls at him. “What are we going to tell Lenalee?” are the first words out of his mouth. “She’s going to be insufferable.”
“We have to tell her,” Kanda says. “But we can only tell her once.”
Allen’s eyes light up. This is why Kanda doesn’t see why everyone trusts Allen so easily – he’s clearly a master manipulator who’s only interested in causing as much mayhem as possible.
Then his eyes narrow again. “Wait,” he says, suspicious. “You’re not actually ten, are you?”
Kanda hits him over the head and leaves, and Allen laughs as he goes.
Lenalee actually does send them on a joint mission, to Greece, without any Finders. Komui seems unsure of why the two of them are being sent off alone, knowing what usually happens when they are, but he does what Lenalee says without arguing.
Kanda and Allen kill a lot of akuma, make out in the fancy hotel, and return to England with Lenalee none the wiser.
Next she tries asking Kanda about what he thinks about Allen, but it doesn’t really work, because Kanda is pretty good at insulting Allen and Lenalee leaves wondering if it’s a lost cause.
She tries everything she can think of, but eventually she admits defeat to Allen.
“I’m sorry, Allen. I don’t think Kanda has even realised what I’m trying to do,” she says tiredly. “I asked him if he liked you and he said you tried to stab him last week.”
“I did stab him last week!” Allen exclaims. “I didn’t try to stab him, I really stabbed him! He bled!”
Kanda sits down beside Lavi, who’s watching them and trying not to laugh. “You barely stabbed me. It was mostly accidental that that strike went through.”
“It was not!” Allen argues. “Anyway, Lenalee’s given up on trying to set us up.”
Kanda scowls at him. Really, Kanda is always so unimpressed with everything Allen says. It’s a good thing he’s got thick skin. “Good.”
Lenalee stares at him. “You mean you did know?” she asks. Kanda nods, eating his soba.
She turns to Allen. “You are a couple!” she yells, and hits him.
Lavi falls off his chair.