shave you bald (and spray paint your head)
Hallo.
Here there is ridiculous DGM fic about shaving people bald.
DGM belongs to Hoshino, and not to me. I defy her by writing something happy. *defies!!!*
Thank you to zephy_magnum for the beta! :D
This one's for questofdreams (in case you're online and in need of distraction).
...*flees*
Unintended Consequences
Allen’s first clue that things haven’t gone entirely according to plan is Kanda’s posture.
Kanda is sitting on the couch in the library. No, Kanda’s draped across the couch with a self-satisfied little smirk. He doesn’t normally have a wide range of expression-it’s mostly limited to pissed off, murderous, or bitterly amused. Self-satisfied smirks are new and ominous.
Especially ominous in view of the fact that his head is as bald and shiny as Noise Marie’s, and he should be looking anything but self-satisfied.
“Allen Walker, what have you done!?”
And suddenly everything makes a horrible kind of sense.
“Oh, hello, Lenalee. Um, what do you mean, what have I done?”
Lenalee walks over to stand behind Kanda, her hands curling protectively over his bald head as if cradling an injured bird. “How could you?”
Kanda smirks harder.
“…I didn’t realize how much you liked Kanda’s hair. Sorry?”
“Sorry is not good enough!”
“Well, I can’t make it grow back. Do you want me to shave mine off too, would that make you feel better?”
“No! How can you even say that!?”
Kanda covers his mouth with a hand in an insincere effort to hide his snickering. Allen scowls at him. The whole idea of shaving people bald was Kanda’s in the first place, so he brought this on himself, didn’t he? He has no right to be laughing at Allen. It just isn’t fair.
Anyway, Allen shouldn’t have to be dealing with the head-shaving fallout on his own. This was at least half Lavi’s fault. Lavi should definitely be here getting yelled and smirked at, too. And yet where is he? Here they are, in a library, and the only one missing is the Bookman. One might be tempted to call that suspicious.
“Do you know how much time it takes to grow hair out that long!? Years! How could you? You might as well have destroyed a work of art!”
Allen sighs and slumps against the wall. This is clearly going to take a while; he may as well be comfortable. “You didn’t get this upset over your own hair, Lenalee.”
She waves a dismissive hand. “Of course not, it was mine. And I lost it in battle saving my friends, it was worth it. As opposed to this, which was no better than vandalism-”
She continues in that vein. At some length. If it had occurred to Allen even in passing that Lenalee might care about Kanda’s hair, he would never have touched it.
Which brings him back to Lavi, who almost certainly did know Lenalee would care, because he always seems to know things like that. And yet Lavi’s the one who drugged Kanda’s food. Allen would never have done something that shady.
…Allen would never have done something that shady if he thought he might get caught, anyway.
Lenalee hasn’t made it that far in her rant, though. She’s still on the hair, which definitely was all Allen. If she ever makes it past the hair, though, he’s shamelessly throwing Lavi to the wolves.
This hasn’t turned out remotely according to plan. There’s the whole unexpected Lenalee factor, for one thing. There’s Lavi’s mysterious absence. And then, of course, there’s Kanda. Just, Kanda, as a general topic. That comfortable sprawl. That smirking face. That gleaming bald head, which-honesty, Allen-somehow manages to look good on him. Bastard.
Allen and Lavi had been hoping for a kind of a shaved rat effect. But no. Of course not. The lack of hair just makes the sharp lines of his face and his high cheekbones and his stupid dark eyes stand out. The net effect is dramatic and scary and actually really, really…
…hot.
This was always a bad idea and it is all Lavi’s fault and Allen is sticking to that.
It doesn’t help that Kanda appears, for the first time in memory, happy to have Allen around. Logically, Allen knows that this is because Kanda gets true and honest delight out of watching him suffer. That’s logic, though. Logic is basically worthless in the face of Kanda smiling at him.
Timcampy flies over and lands on Kanda’s bald head. Kanda tries to bat him away. Tim likes shiny things and refuses to leave. The ongoing battle distracts them both from Allen for a while, which is a blessed relief.
Nothing has distracted Lenalee, though. She’s now giving Allen the rundown on hair strength and texture, etc., etc., in case he was laboring under the misapprehension that just anyone could have had hair as long and perfect as Kanda’s was before Allen hacked it off in an act of heartless cruelty that Lenalee would never have believed him capable of until she saw the evidence with her own horrified eyes.
Allen thunks his head back against the wall and firmly thinks about card tricks. This tactic got him through many long, drunken conversations with Cross.
Well, this tactic and also the one that involved daydreaming about pushing Cross down several flights of stairs and pretending it had been an accident. He doesn’t have enough antipathy toward Lenalee for that second trick to work. Too bad.
“…I offered to have my brother make up more of that hair-growing tonic, but Kanda won’t have anything to do with it, which. Well. I can understand his point…”
Allen is visualizing a poker table. It’s a table he’d never sit down to in real life, because it’s filled with suspicious, canny people who won’t let him deal. Interesting mental exercise, though. He’s not dealing and the deck’s not marked, so mucking is about his only option. The guy on the left has an eye on him, but the lady on his right isn’t watching, so-
“Allen!”
“Hm?” Ah. She’s annoyed. More annoyed. “Oh. I’m sorry, Lenalee. I was…” ignoring you as hard as I could? Haha, no. “I was distracted.”
“I said you and Kanda will have to fight.”
He must have heard that wrong. “…Fight?”
Lenalee nods seriously. “It’s only fair.”
Allen wonders helplessly how this counts as fair. He has a clear understanding of fairness, unfairness, and the ins and outs of both, and this is definitely not fair. He shaved Kanda’s head, he didn’t beat him to a pulp. And yes, under normal circumstances, he and Kanda are a pretty even match, but just at the moment…
He glances over at Kanda’s distracting shiny head and distracting dark eyes and the distracting way he’s stroking Mugen, and oh God, Allen is going to lose.
“It’s not to the death or anything, is it?”
“Of course not!” Lenalee is shocked, shocked. “Only to first blood.”
Allen rubs his eyes. Exorcists are crazy. He knows this, he is an exorcist, but sometimes it’s more horrifyingly obvious than others. “What will this prove?” he mumbles, not under any foolish impression that he can talk his way out of it. Just curious.
“It’s to restore Kanda’s dignity,” Lenalee says. Meaning everyone in the room thinks Kanda’s going to kick Allen’s ass. How comforting.
“But it won’t make his hair grow back.”
“I know that. This is the best we can do.”
Hah, the best we can do. This has nothing to do with restoring Kanda’s dignity, not really. Kanda has all kinds of dignity even bald, he’s a dick that way. This is to give Lenalee the satisfaction of watching someone pound the hell out of Allen for the crime of taking Kanda’s hair away from her.
Allen refuses to suffer this alone.
“Can Lavi be my second?”
“It’s only first blood, Allen. You shouldn’t need a second.”
“I would like the moral support of a second.”
“Wait. What did that stupid rabbit do?” Kanda’s always quick on the uptake when it comes to people plotting against him.
“Oh,” Lenalee says thoughtfully. Then, “Oh,” her eyes flying wide. “I wondered how you’d managed to shave Kanda’s head without waking him up. I’ll go find Lavi.”
“So he can be my second?” Allen asks.
“So he can fight me,” she snaps, marching out the door.
Allen tries to feel a little bit bad about what he just did there. He fails pretty comprehensively.
“That was dirty, beansprout,” Kanda says, still sprawled on the couch, Mugen in one hand and Timcampy pinned down under the other. “But you always play dirty, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry,” Allen replies, outraged. “Which one of us went to Lenalee? Are you telling yourself that wasn’t dirty!?”
“The funny thing, beansprout, is that when I woke up with no hair, I could suddenly see the appeal of playing by your rules. And you drugged me, so shut the fuck up.”
“I didn’t drug you. Lavi drugged you.”
“Sure. But it was your idea.”
“I hate you,” Allen announces, stalking over to the couch, throwing himself down next to Kanda, and prying Timcampy out of his hand. “You had it coming.” Actually, Allen doesn’t even remember what they’d been fighting about, but Kanda’d definitely had it coming, he always has it coming. “And if I’d gotten shaved bald, I wouldn’t have gone running to Lenalee. You’re a jerk.”
“Quiet. I’m picturing kicking your ass all over the practice ring, it’s soothing. Don’t interrupt.”
“We’ll see whose ass gets kicked, idiot Kanda.”
Kanda’s smiling at him again. Distractingly. Allen hates his life.
ETA: Now with AMAZING FANART by a1y_puff . :D
ETA2: Also a Russian translation by jayazz ! *twirls*