DGM: All I Want for Xmas Ch.4

The final chapter everyone!!! Please enjoy~







"L-L-Lavi, it's beeping! It's beeping! I don't—"

"It means they're done, Miranda."

"Oh… right… I'll just, um…"

"Grab some oven mitts, Miranda."

"Yes, Lavi."

Allen could've told Miranda her cookies were done. Way over done. A black snaking mist wafting past his face provided a wonderful preview for what the cookies were sure to look like. Splendid.

For about an hour now Allen had been hiding out under a table near Miranda and Lavi's baking station, sucking on his tenth candy cane (Finders seemed to be freely giving them away every tinsel-covered corner you turned) and pondering various thoughts surrounding food and…. and Lenalee. Why was he thinking of Lenalee?

"I'M SO SORRY LAVI!!!!"

Miranda's signature composition of vocal-cord snapping, cacophonous wailing had begun harmonizing the dining hall with silence-murdering audacity, successfully alerting everyone that she had yet again failed with distinction at making a slightly edible pan of cookies.

"They're not… that bad, Miranda," Lavi was trying his best to sound encouraging. "I mean look, you can actually see a brown spot on this cookie! That's one hell of an accomplishment I'd say!"

Allen couldn't help but snicker; seeing Lavi pull words of kindly therapy out of his ass that did absolutely nothing to convince Miranda of the unconvincable was just too priceless.

"Here, now all we need is a little icing sugar…" the young Bookman-to-be was now drenching Miranda's cookies in powdery-white sugar dust, effectively giving them a sort of off-putting, untantalizing cow-hide appearance. "Voila! Now they look like little balls of heaven!"

They looked more like angel droppings to Allen, but who was he to talk, taking refuge under the cutting board table like this?

"Miranda, I'll bet you they look so damn good, even Yuu would eat em!"

"NO! NO HE'LL MURDER ME!"

"Okay you're right…. then, uhh.... Allen! Allen will eat em!"

A lethal hiss scraped past Allen's teeth, his mind filling with a depraved orchestration of curses and insults dedicated specially to Lavi; he backed himself further into the table's shadow canopy.

"Come on Allen, I know you want some!" Lavi was now bending over grinning at him, the cookies skating to an unceremonious halt at the bottom edge of the pan as he swung it before Allen's steely gray gaze.

"I'm not supposed to be here, idiot!"

"I'm sorry, you said you wanted the whole tray?" Lavi's voice had adopted an adorably annoying sing-song tone, "By all means Walker—"

It could've been a hot rock massage for the crotch, if it hadn't been for the dust winds of sugar whipping him in the face as the tray of cookies were dumped right over top his lap. They ambushed both him and the floor with clumsy ferociousness, bathing them in crumbs of over-baked blackness that gave a meek prick every time you lay a bit of pressure on them. Good god, Miranda had really outdone herself in creating identity-confused cookies this time...

Hauling himself from out under the table Allen stood before Lavi's awaiting figure, a typical look of try hard, manly intimidation etched across his face as he eyed the red-headed exorcist coldly. A cookie was still huddled within the crook of his hand; suddenly, Miranda's failed pastries had become the perfect weapons for smashing the future Bookman's face in with.

"Is there a problem Moyashi-kun?!"

"Why don't you try one, huh Lavi?" his voice seemed to be mocking Lenalee's earlier tones of malice. "You did help in making them after all—"

"Piss off Allen—"

"Oh no, I insist—"

Just as Allen shoved one of the edible paperweights into Lavi's protesting mouth, a voice, one that mimicked the chastising delicacy of an angel yet could simultaneously seduce the devil, echoed about the room: Lenalee's.

"Allen-kun?"

"Crap—"

Allen launched himself back beneath the table's obscuring depths, the thoughts of wrapping paper and insanely shimmery ribbon wrapping his brain up in one mushy pile of neurotic anxiety; Lenalee had come for him. She had come to drag him to his deathbed, its depressing features concealed in cheery Christmas wrapping and dotted with sickeningly bright bows and ribbons, but he wasn't fooled. His only chance of being saved from the enslaving whips of gift wrapping duty was to futilely take shelter beneath the cutting table, a terrifyingly unreliable, low-success rate final resort that he had no choice but to take.

"Huh? I thought I just saw Allen-kun with you…" the innocence dripping from her voice was one hell of a weapon, almost brainwashing Allen into surrendering to her presence right then and there; but he stood strong, pinching Lavi in the back of the leg as a reminder that he was "not" there.

"Uh, haha, what are you talking about, Lenalee?" Lavi's voice was losing its masculine edge.

"Your lying skills need a little work, Lavi—"

With ridiculously intense caution Allen began crawling his way away from Lenalee and Lavi, swerving around burnt cookie blockades that resembled terribly cracked chunks of magma throughout the process. A rather odd pang of guilt was making his movements feel rather heavy, a feeling he had not anticipated would start attacking him as he fled for a new haven of derisory safety.

And then, he found it; it was only three feet away, the safety of a new table, one that was out of earshot and completely out of range from where Lenalee now stood. The little sanctuary of heaven seemed to be calling out to Allen, welcoming him into its protective shadows with pleasant, reassuring gestures that made him certain he was going delusional. He pounced with jungle-animal swiftness, soaring through the air and landing heavily on his shoulder as he nearly tumbled out of hiding; but the pain, the aches of escape he had suffered— they were all worth it. He was officially safe from Wrapping Duty!

"Allen-kun."

With a less than masculine shriek Allen jumped from his position of relieved thankfulness, ramming his head against the top of the table with a sickening bang; his eyes began spontaneously reproducing newborn tears. "Owww…"

"Allen-kun, I can see you."

He followed the voice (and the giggle that accompanied it) to its place of origin: behind him. With a gulp, he locked eyes with an upside down Lenalee, who was now hanging over the table and smiling at him with a look that suggested his demise was close at hand.

"Le… L-Lenalee! I, uh…"

"You can come out now," the sugar-coated suggestion was tempting… way too tempting. Allen found himself succumbing to feminine indulgence with shameful eagerness.

"Lenalee, I swear I wasn't—"

She placed a finger to his lips, a gesture that managed to both successfully murder every word coming from his mouth and conjure a brilliant stain of bright red across his cheeks. "Finish the wrapping, and I might consider giving you some of my Christmas cookies… kay?"

Lenalee's... Christmas cookies? Allen was officially, blindly intrigued.

"Lead the way!"



                                                                    *       ~       *


The hallways were kidnapped by strands of tinsel in every possible color and shimmer intensity, making Lenalee's back the only thing safe for the eyes to rest on without them falling victim to explosions of fuzzy dots. She had apparently managed to remove the red ribbon from her pigtail, and her hair was shimmering with the mysterious beauty of seasick silk. And the way her skirt winked and frolicked about her thighs… well, nothing had changed about that satisfying eye indulgence.

"Hey, Allen-kun?"

The way she had softly uttered his name… it seemed more entrancing than usual.

"Yeah?"

There was a moment of silence, crisply broken up by the sound of Lenalee's sharp heeled footsteps and Allen's clunkier ones. "Oh… never mind."

"Oh, okay." He felt like maybe, just maybe, he had been tested. He had been tested on his emotional perception and skills at picking up implicit female cues. His mind fumbled around in the hopes of devising some sort of acceptable comment, but after five minutes of opening and closing his mouth with a look of indecisive stupidity, Allen figured he had failed the test.

And then, a thought struck him.

"Hey, Lenalee—"

The fleeting thought, however, was heinously skewered by an auditory earthquake of heavily depressed, tear-laden, snot-snivelling chanting, amplified to a head-bursting level by the powers of a megaphone. Some kind of progression was going on, one that appeared to consist of a parade of losers devoted to trudging about in depressed grievance as they injected themselves with painful memories of deceased individuals. An uncomfortable, instinctive sensation in the pit of Allen's stomach was telling him danger was fast approaching.

A voice began crying into the megaphone, a voice that was so thickly steeped in overdramatized grief one couldn't not distinguish it as belonging to a highly unstable, highly dangerous Komui.

"LEST WE FORGET—"

All Allen could see was blackness. A huge, sluggishly advancing mob of miserable, pupil-enlarging blackness that transformed the hallways into a massive black hole.

"—THE DAYS WHEN LENALEE LEE—"

Komui's face, half concealed under a black hooded cloak, became visible, as well as the faces of various other miserable looking science department workers, all of which were holding tiny white candles that cast their faces into an eerie mask of illuminated shadow.

"—LIVED A LIFE OF PURITY AND CHASTITY—"

The monotone, skin-paling chanting was growing progressively louder, the depression mob fast approaching.

"—UNTOUCHED BY THE DEVILISH HANDS—"

Allen's nervous system had officially entered a state of emergency, dispatching every soldier of conscriptable epinephrine to immediately assist in preparing him for a death dash.

"—OF ALLEN WALKER!"

Fiery hot panic. That was all Allen could feel as his feet rocketed towards the gift wrapping room, the closest area of semi-safety his bulging eyes could target in the midst of his escape. His body was moving on its own now, slamming shut the door, barricading the room with every piece of sturdy looking item possible; he had entered refugee hideout mode, a situation that couldn't even be described by the adjectival phrase "scared shitless".  His body was so fucking terrified, it didn't even know what terror was anymore.

"Pull yourself… together…" heavy breathing interrupted his spoken thoughts, as Allen crumpled to the floor with a gelatinous flail. It was only now poking at his brain, the facts of survival he would eventually have to come to terms with. What was he going to eat? To drink? And, and bathing, what about that? And good god, FOOD! He wouldn't have any food!

Life was no longer worth living.

But, as a line-up of worthless, pointless thoughts slid through his head, thoughts that oozed about like mutant slime ready to eat his brains right out, Lenalee came into his head. Lenalee. Lenalee and her… her eyes… a-and her smile… her ass… he was gonna miss seeing those beautiful sights on a daily basis. Really miss them. Oh, how he had taken them for granted…

His soul screamed bloody murder when he felt an object fall atop his foot: it was a box. A wrapped box. A really nicely wrapped box. With a bow. And oh fuck… it had his name on it. Allen Walker. That was his name, right? He didn't even know anymore.

Allen lifted himself up with a stiff grunt of self-pity, eyeing the gift at his feet with the expression of an old, superstitious philosopher who feared he had been given a pristinely wrapped bomb. Nonetheless, his childish side commanded him to grab the box and open it up with gleeful, needlessly hyper euphoria, an order Allen performed with lavish exceptionality as he hobbled mindlessly to his feet.

The wrapping was ripped off with carnivorous ferocity, the lid hurled into oblivion, the tissue paper dissected from the gift's innards all in one breathless, elatedly immature second, until the nucleus of the present, the heart of the entire thoughtfully wrapped gift, was staring him right in the face.

He

Had

Officially

Gone to heaven.

There, ever so carefully arranged in the palm-sized gift box, was an abacus of perfectly skewered, perfectly shaped dango. And not just any plain old, savoury-flavored dango. It was… it was chocolate dango. With chocolate glaze smothered delectably overtop each little ball of deliciousness. Allen's mouth had morphed into a slimy waterfall of glistening, frothing saliva at the sight; he had to be dreaming.

"Sweet goodness in a box…" his brain was no longer a functioning organ. He began petting the dango obsessively, a look of crystallized mesmerisation illuminating his eyes. Perhaps being confined to the wrapping room wouldn't be so harsh after all—

"ALLEN-KUN!"

His soul snapped back into his body with a jerky, reality-slapping crack. He turned around, although every fibre of every muscle had advised otherwise, until he was facing a trembling-mouthed, glossy-eyed Lenalee. She had apparently broken into his hideout with disturbing ease, and, standing tall and unnervingly still, Allen watched as her upper body began to rumble, shivering under the icy castigate of upset that lashed with apathetic wretchedness at her previously calm state of mind. The single tear that slipped past her eyelashes and slid to a snugly halt at the corner of her mouth was all he needed to inform him that he had officially broken some kind of sacred rule, one that he had no idea even existed.

"How… how could you?" the words slid from her mouth, bombing the air with their hidden, barely audible toxicity.

"Whu—"

"THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT!"

Even with the primary cause of her brewing fit spanking him directly in the face, Allen was unable to comprehend the gravity of his grave error. "Lenalee, I—"

"I worked so hard, Allen-kun," Lenalee's voice was almost invisible, just barely grabbing hold of the most malnourished of sound waves before it dissipated into unheard abyss. "I wanted it to be… to be perfect."

To speak, or not to speak? That was the question Allen decided to distract himself with as he tried to ignore Lenalee's magnetic look of dejection. He rather fearfully chose to go with the former option.    

"I'm sorry."

Silence.

"I'm so sorry."

Silence colder than death.

"Lenalee, I—"

"Just forget it."

With a snivel that sliced Allen's soul into pieces, Lenalee whipped herself around and was raging for the door, although not fast enough for Allen to miss the glaze of tears that was now marinating her face in salty despair. He went to grab her wrist, but she flung it away with a fierce shrug.

"Merry Christmas, Allen-kun."

"Lenalee!"

The door slammed shut, and Allen could almost see his lost expression in its non-existent reflection, staring back at him with a look of twisted, soul-euthanizing disgust. He knew there was only one way to fix this problem. It was a solution he had no experience in whatsoever, a solution that would take every ounce of his bravery and force him to shine in ways he had always shied away from in the past. But if it was for Lenalee's sake… he'd suck it up.

"Lenalee..." flinging open the door Allen reacquainting himself with the outside world of the Order, his feet adopting a speed perfectly suited for catching up with raging, pissed off women. His mind was a chaotic whirl, one that was both a confusing concoction of foreign emotions and a determined mindset of fortitude. But no matter what, he was not going to screw this up. He might've screwed up Lenalee's cookies. He might've screwed up in wrapping. He might've even royally screwed up in complimenting her hair. But this time, Allen Walker was determined not to screw up. Just once, he was going to get things right.

"Lenalee, wait!" Allen hollered her name desperately, her silhouette quite a ways ahead of him now; the sight somehow supplied him with an extra bit of push. "Lenalee—"

"Oi, Allen!" Lavi had appeared magically in front of him, a tray of actually identifiable, sweet-smelling cookies propped in his hands. "You gotta try these, Miranda actually didn't burn em—"

"Get outta my way dammit!"

The pan of cookies marking Miranda's first successful baking endeavour were ripped out of Lavi's secure grasp and smattered to the floor, filling the hall with a metallic screeching sound that echoed on endlessly.

"Lenalee!" her pink-ruffled skirt, her pigtails swinging with such attitude, they were getting closer and closer, almost within sprinting reach—

"YOU GOD DAMN MOYASHI!"

Allen shrieked pathetically as he just barely ducked the blade of Mugen, which had arrogantly cut off his trail with a majestic glint starved for murder. Apparently Kanda had scheduled now as the perfect time to try and dice him into tiny bits of squealing moyashi flesh.

"Holy God—" the world was starting to blur around him as Allen continued to race towards the angered Lenalee, a few darkly cloaked 'Lenalee Lee Purity' mourners being yanked viciously out of the way as he flew past at energy-sapping speed. "Lenalee, please wait!"

"ALLEN WALKER, WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED!" a loudspeaker was screaming threateningly behind him, the voice of Komui filling the halls with sinister death sentences that were surely going to become reality if he dared stop his sprint.

"Dammit dammit dammit!" Allen clenched his teeth firmly, the perfectly shaped figure of Lenalee only a few meters away from him now. He was not going to screw this up. He was going to prove to Lenalee that he did have the ability to do at least one thing right. Even if he'd be killed immediately after.

"Lenalee!" he came to an abrupt, blood-purging stop, breathing laboriously before a red-eyed, frowning Lenalee. Even in such a state, Allen couldn't help but marvel at her undeliberate cuteness. "Lenalee, I—"

"WALKER!"

"I—"

"MOYASHI!!!"

"I—"

"ALLEN YOU ASSHOLE!"

Talking had apparently become an unattainable option, now that Allen had become the most popular topic for everyone's bitchy yelling. And, on top of that, the glare Lenalee was lasering him with wasn't helping to reduce his rapidly intensifying feeling of nausea either. It was, however, powerful enough to completely vaporize every neuron capable of logical thought in Allen's brain at that moment, making his mind turn utterly blank.

"Uh…"

A brilliant flash of gold streaked past Allen's nose, zooming up to hover just above his and Lenalee's heads within a nanosecond's time.

"Timcanpy!"

The golden golem was clutching something deviously within his jaws, something that made Allen's entire body reverse its actions in one nauseating, skin-tightening, drop-dead mind-erasing second: mistletoe.

"Timcanpy you get that out of your mouth right—"

The blood-chilling 'sling' of Mugen being drawn led to instantaneous silence from Allen; his assassins were obviously ready to kill him, and he didn't imagine they'd be patient about the process either. He looked Lenalee directly in the eyes, her orbs of lilac crystal dancing with all the emotions of the psychological rainbow, and that's when he knew… if he was gonna die, right then and there, what the hell did it even matter?

Hands twisting with rapid awkwardness around her waist, Allen lifted Lenalee right off her feet, dipping her to a gravity-mocking level as he delved into the sweet nectar of her eyes. He had no idea what he was doing, not a clue in hell as he smashed his lips atop hers with heart-murdering, blood-stunting swiftness, their softness colliding with his in one sparkly, internal firework flare. He could feel the tenseness of her mouth melt into his, taste the teardrops of rage and anger and sadness coating her lips, invigorating them to move in ways he was sure felt somewhat enjoyable. He figured this was the case, at least, once Lenalee began kissing him back rather forcefully.

However, almost as soon as their lips had developed an intensifying pattern of lip fondling, Lenalee had pulled away from his face, her cheeks burning with the color of shocked pleasure. Allen let his eyes smile for a moment, before his own signature smile spread intuitively across his face.

"Allen Walker…" Lenalee breathed, an almost breathless accent to her voice.

"Yes?"

An ardent slap on the cheek sent Allen into a spiralling mindset of mystification, introducing him to a make-believe world most sinful in nature. This heavenly place, filled with the searing wraths of feminine bloodlust, would irresistibly seduce the mind into a lecherous coma, leaving all men in an idiotic state of maddening inanity. Such a place could only be accessed, of course, with the assistance of wonderfully attractive women, and only when they blatantly showcased their loving dissatisfaction with you, both physically and emotionally, in a way that was both terrifying and down-right sexy. However, despite being introduced to such a blood-rushing environment, Allen decided to think of the slap as being an ironic reward for him finally making the right choice, a choice in itself that represented his newfound ability to inconsistently make good decisions. Cross would've been so proud…

"Hey, Allen-kun?"

He shot her a questioning look, his mind now a puddle of mushy, uselessly disabled neuron goop.

Lenalee wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling his ear just next to the delicate warmth of her lips. "Run."

"Eh?"

Before he could even piece together the severity of his situation, Allen Walker was being escorted through the traffic of the Black Order hallways at the hand of Lenalee Lee, the girl who had stolen his lip virginity, stolen his heart, and, on top of it all, had saved him from a most certain, most grizzly death. Just in time for Christmas, too.

"What would you do without me, Allen-kun?" Lenalee giggled the words back at him, her face dancing with the movement of sweet laughter.

All Allen could do was blush; he really was a raging idiot without Lenalee by his side. He was beyond thankful to her for saving him from the pit of murderers now yelling his name rather violently behind them, and… well, for accepting his inexperienced lip service beneath Tim's kindly display of mistletoe. He was thankful to her for making him realize, although rather harshly at times, how much of an idiot he really was, proving to him just how much maturity he still had yet to envelop before he could consider himself a respectable man. And of course, he was eternally grateful to Lenalee for her endless offerings of love and affection, actions that always seemed to insert newfound meaning into everything Allen said and did, making his duty as an exorcist that much more meaningful and the purpose of his life that much more crucial in complexity. God, he was thankful for a lot of things of Lenalee's…

And that's when he realized…

How could he not be madly in love with Lenalee Lee?