All That Glitters

Summary: Allen was a professional figure skater, which, in Kanda's mind, made him gayer than a thank you basket filled with pansies and homemade scented soaps. Hell, he probably was the one who sent them.

A/N: I have been meaning to write an ice skating fic, and finally, here is one. Ta-da! Hope you enjoy. And am I right in guessing that when you read the title, you added, "is not gold"?

When Lenalee saw the costume, all she should do was shield her eyes. She wasn't the only one. A pair of ice dancers crashed into the barrier, the figure skaters leaning on the barrier whisper gossiped amongst themselves, hockey players stopped mid drill and, somewhere in the world, a conservative died. She didn't think she could begin to describe it and wondered when her eyesight would return, if ever.

"Do you like it, Lenalee?" he asked her in his breathless British accent.

The pigtailed girl felt a part of herself slowly dying. Once again, the pigtailed girl reaffirmed the reason why Allen Walker was the only boy her protective brother Komui allowed to date, talk to or come within a hundred yards of Lenalee Lee, who was under the age of sixty.

Allen was an effeminate young man, with long-ish white locks and a British accent, who was also saving his first kiss until he got married. Unfortunately, after they became Junior National Pairs Champions, Lenalee had found herself tied to the British boy for possibly the next ten years or so, and looking at the current costume, it was a chilling thought.

He was sweet and cute and all, but 'sweet and cute' was the descriptor for a two-year-old little brother or a puppy. He was also positively gay, and Lenalee wouldn't have minded if Allen had turned out a bit like Project Runway's Tim Gunn, but instead, he tended to be more weepy than anything else.

One of the hockey players saved the Chinese girl the moral dilemma, "Hey, Sparkly, get off the goddamn ice!"

Lenalee winced.

"What was that for?" Allen demanded, "Care to not be an ass?"

The hockey player merely charged, before he was pulled back by his teammate, "Hey," Allen's rescuer waved with his freehand, "Sorry about this, Yu's like a bull, except instead of red; pretty, glittery and cute piss him off."

"Well then why the hell would he try to attack me?" Allen glared, "I demand an apology."

Lenalee sighed and placed one hand Allen's shoulder, "You kind of do look like a walking disco ball, or Edward Cullen."

"Edward Cullen too, now he really pisses Kanda off," the rescuer remarked flippantly, digging his blades into the ice to continue holding the enraged Kanda back, "I'm Lavi by the way," he added extending his hand to Lenalee, "And you are beautiful, miss."

Lenalee blushed and giggled.

Allen was scandalized, "Lenalee!" he snapped. "He's a hockey player! Despite the debonair, I bet he's still a savage brute at heart."

"I'm hurt!" Lavi replies with a mournful expression bringing a hand dramatically to his chest. Kanda uses this as an opportunity to tear free from captivity and he barrels off to the other side of the rink before stopping, to glower at them from a distance.

"But seriously, you do know you look like a disco ball? Do you?" Lenalee sighed, Allen was like Johnny Weir, the moment he was sucked into the figure skating culture, he had embraced the overdone costume aspect of the sport with an enthusiasm for dress up that Ru Paul would envy. She thanked the gods daily that at least the Brit hadn't started slicking his hair back yet.

"I think it's artistic," Allen flicked his white curls.

"I think it's gay," Lavi responded cheerfully.

Allen glowered, "I spent a whole fifteen dollars on it!"

"Well, that explains it," Lenalee sighed, "Just so you know, I refuse to touch that thing you're wearing."

"What are you talking about?" Allen demanded, "Its in good shape, is made of quality material—

"And it's powder blue," Lenalee finished, "with rhinestones, sequins, bows and… are those seriously lace frills I see? No, I'm not touching it, it might be contagious."

The white haired boy's eyes filled with tears, he couldn't believe that Lenalee was siding with that brute of a hockey player, Kanda or whatever, "It's all your fault!" he yelled in Kanda's general direction and dashed off, biting back furious tears.

Lavi whistled, "So, how old is he?"

"Fifteen, apparently."

"Twenty bucks says he's ten."

The general relationship between hockey players and figure skaters is one where both sides consider the other side more suicidal than theirs. Basically, a figure skater may disparage a hockey player for the sport's brutal amount of contact and, watching a little hockey player recklessly charge forth and proceed to bounce off walls, this assumption does not seem to be off the mark. However, hockey players, watching those very figure skaters fling themselves into jumps whose point seems to only be having their skirts fly up rather awkwardly and then falling very hard on these jumps, all while not wearing any kind of protective armor, or at least appearing not to, they in turn appear to be partaking of an extremely pointless form of recreational suicide.

But, to the casual bystander, both sides must look equally insane.

And the most bizarre part of this equation? Many figure skaters have been known to get hitched to their hockey player counterparts, and vice versa, since, compared to the rest of the world out there, especially those people who keep tapping the clear partition as if the athletes in there are aquarium oddities instead of human beings, you can generally put aside your differences.

Allen Walker squeaked his pushcart down the linoleum aisles of the local supermarket, drooling. Pork ($6.25/lb), apples (40 cents), chocolate cake ($12.95), pears (26 cents), frozen pizzas ($9.99), he paused in front of the tender sirloin steak ($14.89). For a moment, Allen swore he could see the tender juices leaking out of sizzling meat, despite the fact that it was merely a frozen solid block of protein. The Brit licked his lips nervously, if he didn't get some decent food into his system soon, and ramen (50 cents) did not count as decent food, he would go rabidly crazy right in this supermarket aisle or suffer a coronary. Neither option seemed palatable.

Unfortunately, his legal guardian Marian Cross was a connoisseur and an alcoholic, not to mention a bum. The majority of Allen's paycheck was funneled straight into that expensive drinking habit of his. The consequence of this being, that Allen had become a little over obsessed with money, anorexics might count calories when they eat, but Allen saw dollar signs.

The white haired boy had broken down into tears of unadulterated joy when he and Lenalee had gotten corporate sponsors, never had he been so happy to see the Allstate logo. But then, the last time the Brit had seen it, Cross was taking him to max out a certain Allen Walker's life insurance. The alcoholic had then told Allen to go lie down in front of some train tracks. Needless to say, he hadn't felt that he was in good hands at the time. Of course, the sponsorship money went quite a ways, enough that he wouldn't trail silent tears whenever he paid admission for his ice time ($11) or had a lesson with Link ($40), but the majority of it was funneled into his sport, and the little leftover was rapidly consumed by Cross.

Allen sighed, story of his life, he skated long hours, worked long hours at the local fast food joint and studied long hours. Life tended to drag.

He spied the rack of bouquets. Now generally, he didn't make a habit of buying flowers, since they seemed to be an awful waste of his precious money, but it was Lenalee's birthday today, so he supposed he was supposed to make some kind of gesture. He reached out for a passable looking bouquet of lilies ($7.25). At the same time, another hand shot out and grabbed the same flowers, long white fingers touching his gloved hand. Allen felt his heart begin to palpitate.

Was this fate?

"Hey, beansprout, get your fucking hand off the goddamn flowers!" said the unmistakable voice of one Yu Kanda.

Allen paled. Never mind, it was just the devil.

One long held rule of figure skating is that "it's the hockey players' fault". Always. The ice is bad? Blame the hockey players. The stench from the locker rooms is floating by on the wind? Hockey players, natch. The looming apocalypse? You got it.

There they were, two supposedly mature human beings, having a heated argument over a bouquet of flowers. Flowers. And sounding like preschoolers in the process, "I saw them first!" Dear god, now Lenalee will really think Allen Walker is gay. But, Allen had a principle, that, once he began a gesture, it was fatal to back down, which is why, he was having a row with the biggest pain in the ass on the face of this planet over flowers.

Or would be, if the latter hadn't stalked off, flowers and all, leaving him to squawk indignantly, "Goddamn hockey player!" he huffed, yanking another bouquet of flowers from the rack, it's still wet stems dripping all over the linoleum floor.

Allen was about to squeak to the checkout line, when long thin fingers wound themselves around his throat, "What the hell is wrong with being a hockey player, you gay little figure skater?"

The Brit briefly wondered if the life insurance was still in place, and then choked out, "This."

The fingers spasmed tighter, "What of?"

"What kind of freaking hockey player are you anyway?" Allen asked flippantly, his imminent death making him bolder, "I mean, whose the gay one when you're buying flowers for yourself, since I doubt that any girl would willingly deal with your Prima Donna bitch attitude and girly face long enough for you to bring her flowers. Anyway, I doubt you'd be considerate enough to do that anyway."

Kanda's throat seemed to be trying to work past his indignation, his grip loosened.

"So you won't be needing those then," Allen smoothly pulling the lilies from where they were clutched under the Japanese man's arm, and then calmly proceeded to the checkout aisle, leaving his shopping cart behind for the maximum smooth exit. It wasn't until he had gotten safely onto the bus (50 cents) did he hear the distant rumble of thunder that was Kanda letting out all his righteous fury.

A/N2: All credit is due where credit is due, namely to Iluvbleach, my best friend and fellow skater, who has a figure skating fic of her own (check it out, it's called "Cold Passion"). Also, she gets dibs on originating Lenalee's Johnny Weir comment.

Oh and this was supposed to be a 'oneshot' (oh wow, look how marvelously that turned out) but kind of dragged on and on and I decided to continue it since I'm having so much fun. So anyway, I'll run off to update one of my other projects (namely Yeah!) and you will get your own update in due time.

Drop a review if you love me (or want me to update quickly), 2M.