Phew! Finished it in time!

Aright, bunnies! Here's my final submission for Yullen week 2012!

Title: Un Bel Di

Pairing: Yullen

Day: 7

Theme: Coming home

Rating: T

Words: 2,143

'Hi, Lenalee. It's Allen.' The cursor flickers on an otherwise blank page, and the young, silver-haired man in the desk chair lets out the breath he has been holding, deleting the entire sentence so that the perfectly blank page stares right back at him.

"Why?" He mouths, brows knitting into a tight v. "Why can't you just write yourself for once?" Naturally, the screen does not reply, so—not without a guilty conscience—Allen pulls up the Facebook homepage, logs in, and begins scrolling through pictures of cats. Yes, cats. Cats in sweaters and cats eating 'cheezburgerz' and cats rolling in Styrofoam packaging and cats on the counter and sitting on the head of some blonde lady who looks a lot like a female version of Lavi…if that makes any sense. And then, deciding it makes no sense and that he has wasted quite enough time, the man closes the tab and resumes his perpetual staring contest with the blank text box.

'Hi, Lenalee. It's Allen.' Oh, you are a brilliant man, Allen Walker.

And then something most likely very large and definitely very breakable collides with floor in the room adjacent to him and Allen is fairly sure he knows why that something fell and what that something was and exactly how long that something is going to take to clean up…

In the theatre of Allen's mind: "I'm sorry, Allen. I accidentally bumped into the bookcase and broke your flower pot. Please, let me help you replant your African Violets in another pot and sweep up this mess before I return to my sleep," his raven-haired lover offers, gently brushing the broken glass from the flowers' roots and tenderly scooping the organism into his callused hands.

Allen smiles weakly. "That's alright, Kanda. I'm just glad you're okay," the younger returns, placing a kiss on his lover's silken lips.

A very tired, very murderous voice rips poor Allen away from his delusional fantasy. "Moyashi. I fucking told you to put the damn plant on the floor."

Allen groans, "why now," just as a lot of very dark, very wet hair appears in his view. If it was just hair—just a floating head of hair—African Violets—forget it. Forget it. Forget it. Please go away. Not now. Not ever—okay, come back. In like… an hour. Maybe?

Allen flashes Kanda a very distressed, very pathetic look, before returning to the—really impossible—task of asking his boss for the day off; Kanda is sick, and Allen doesn't want to leave the man alone in the house...especially given the way the last five minutes has played out.

"What the hell are you doing," the man's dark-haired lover mutters, skulking out into the sitting-room-turned-massive-secret-agent-style-office.

"Emailing Lenalee to see if I can use one of my sick days to take care—"

"Go to work."

"But you're—"

"Not going to die within the next fucking hour. Have a fabulous day," the swordsman grumbles, shoving Allen out the door and tossing the younger his keys and wallet. It's then that Allen remembers the broken flower pot, but, seeing as he is already thirty seconds late (locked out of the house), he takes the elevator down to the first floor and heads off to work.

The traffic this morning is ridiculously heavy, and Allen finds himself finally dashing into the lab thirty minutes late. He pulls open the department door slowly, peeking one eye around the steel door and scanning the room for any sign of human life. When he finds none, the white-haired man slips in carefully, closing the door behind him with all manner of anxiety-induced care.

"You're late," Lenalee deadpans, crossing her slender arms over her chest. This is exactly what Allen had been meaning to avoid.

"Ah, sorry," the man mumbles, running his fingers through his messy hair and smiling sheepishly. Lenalee is almost like a sister to him, so she'll probably understand if he explains the situation. "Kanda got really sick yesterday, so I was going to email you to see if I could take the day off, but he shoved me out the door and threw the car keys into my face." Exaggerating a little for the sake of humor never hurt… Thankfully, the story accomplishes its purpose; the Chinese woman breaks into laughter, lips stretched into a wide smile.

"Alright, alright. Don't get your panties in a wad; I won't tell my brother. Just get the analysis in fast. We're short-staffed because Reever and Johnny are out. Probably the same thing Kanda's got." Allen retrieves his lab coat from the closet and slips on a pair of disposable, blue, latex gloves.

"What've we got today?" Allen sighs, entering the lab.

"Old guy. Nothing suspicious. Just dead in his own home. Daughter found him this morning."

"Diabetic?"

"Nope." The man looks approximately eighty years old.

"History of heart failure?"

"Not that we know of."

The autopsy is the easy part. A major blood vessel near the man's heart is clearly obstructed by plaque.

More time consuming is the write up, which is going to take Allen the rest of the work day. Yes. Six hours. In a desk chair. Writing about an old guy, whose cause of death is nothing short of banal—cardiac arrest—plain and boring.

Lavi waltzes in, clearly exited.
"Got another one, probably murdered!"

"I don't understand how you can sound so happy saying that," Allen mumbles, saving his progress and grabbing another pair of gloves from bottom drawer of his desk. Allen doesn't particularly enjoy working with dead bodies, not like Lavi does; he just likes being able to give people honest answers about their loved ones' deaths… Since he never really got one himself…

"Do we have an identity on the victim?" Allen asks, following Lavi back into the lab.

"Actually, we got that one pretty easy. Killer left her face pristine, and the girl's been missing since yesterday," Lavi explains. "Her name's Claire Everstine. Born in Sicily on July third nineteen ninty-six. Sixteen, junior in high school. No boyfriend, according to her parents, and none of her friends were with her when she went out."

"Have we identified the weapon yet?"The white-haired man inquires. Lavi's emerald eye meets his as the redhead shrugs.

"As of right now, we've got no idea. Wound's all jagged and weird, not to mention awkward. Looks like it was done pretty fast, but someone cut all the way around her leg."

"Brilliant." These are the cases Allen hates the most, the ones where the victims are young, beautiful, and mangled.

When the cadaver comes into view, Allen nearly has a heart attack. Long, blue-black hair spills over the edge of the examining table, running all the way up to frame a pale face. Her build is long, lean, and angular. Altogether, the body on the table looks terrifyingly similar to someone he knows very, very well.

Finally drawing close enough to get a good view of her face, Allen releases the breath he's been holding, and Lavi claps him on the table, chuckling a little.

"Sorry about that," the red-haired man simpers. "I couldn't resist."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever," Allen sighs, releasing the tension in his forehead. At least the girl's face looks nothing like Kanda's. Her features are obviously European. Light green eyes, fair skin, an upturned nose, a rounded jaw, and full lips.

Sometimes Allen wishes he could hit Lavi upside the head with a heavy book, but the boy figures his day is going to be long enough as is and taking out another working body probably won't help his situation any.

Despite their obvious differences in temperament, Lavi and Allen actually make quite an efficient team. By four pm, they've made good headway in the Everstine case, and, his portion done, Allen returns to the cardiac arrest.

Tossing his gloves unceremoniously into the waste basket, the man plops back into his desk chair and begins typing furiously.

Allen's office has no windows, and he won't permit himself to look at the clock when he's working, fearing that despair shall ensue if he does. In all honesty, Allen's internal clock is alarmingly accurate, and right now, it's telling him that it'll be eleven o'clock pm in t minus twelve minutes.

At long last, after writing and editing and jumping through all the hoops and entering all the data, Allen prints the document, listening intently to the blessed song of the printer as it sucks the paper up and spits the finished report back out. He then slips out of the office and into the darkened lab, tosses his lab coat in the hamper—bless the people who launder them—slides his write-up into Komui's drop-box, tugs on his leather jacket, and steps out into the chilly parking lot.

As he reaches his car, Allen begins fishing through his pockets for his keys, only to remember that he had left them in the pocket of his lab coat. Which is now in the locked building. And his key to the office? Attached to the car keys, where else?

Pulling out his wallet, the white-haired man wishes with all his might that it contains enough bills for a cab. Oh, right. Kanda had raided his wallet the previous night and mooched all his boyfriend's cash off him. Groaning in frustration, Allen closes the wallet and swaps it out for his smart phone.

Sharing a building with the investigation force had many advantages, one of them being that the detectives and researchers usually stayed very late and could most likely let the boy back into the building if he gave them a ring.

So, Allen dials the number to the front office of the department, only to have the call disconnect on the first ring. Allen pulls the phone back to inspect it, and, after pressing a few buttons, determines that the device has died. Oh, that's right. When he'd come home last night, Allen found Kanda sick and, amid trying to help the man in any way he could, forgot to plug in his cellphone.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Komui'll have his keys in the morning, Allen figures.

Thankfully, Allen's wallet does contain a bus pass…

So, at one twenty-three in the morning, Allen finally stumbles to the off-white door of apartment 714, starving, exhausted, and freezing, and reaches for his keys. Oh, wait. That's right…no keys.

Dreading what he is about to do and praying to any god that will listen that his life will not end now—he's only twenty-three for heaven's sake!—Allen raises his fist to the door and knocks once—just once! And lightly! Oh, so lightly; Kanda isn't a heavy sleeper. Not at all.

The door swings open.

"You just gonna stand there like an idiot while I wait?"

"Sorry," Allen mumbles, entering their apartment and heading straight for the fridge. He opens the door and discovers several cartons of Chinese take-out on the fourth shelf…several cartons that were not there this morning.

"Kanda, did you order take-out?" Kanda isn't particularly fond of Chinese food, nor does he have a terribly large appetite.

"Fo brought some over this afternoon," the swordsman replies, collapsing onto the couch. More than a little confused that his own body is not already on one of the tables in the autopsy lab, Allen raises an eyebrow at the dark-haired man, who has already gone back to sleep.

The white-haired man doesn't bother heating the food up, and he really doesn't want to chance his luck with the noisy microwave. That might be pushing it… He grabs a pair of bamboo chopsticks from the drawer next to the fridge, balances all six cartons in one arm, and makes to sit down at the table, but stops halfway there.

There, on the table, in the center of a piece of newspaper, surrounded by empty bottles of crazy glue, is the flowerpot. It was an ugly container to begin with and it certainly doesn't look any better now, but the pot had been his fathers—Mana's—and it is once again whole. Beside it, the African Violets smile up at him from their makeshift-zip-lock-baggie-home.

After finishing his dinner, Allen takes a peek into the bedroom. Yep, there's still potting soil all over the floor. Oh well, it doesn't really matter.

Quietly, Allen tiptoes back into the living room, lifts the sleeping swordsman into his arms, carries him back to bed, and turns out the lights. He climbs into bed.

"Thank you, Yuu," Allen whispers.

"God damn it, go to sleep already," an angry voice replies. Laughing silently, Allen leans down to place a sweet, gentle kiss on Kanda's lips.

"I love you, BaKanda."

"Love you too, damn sprout. Now go to sleep." Allen lies down, sinking into a beautiful dream where Kanda actually cleans up the potting soil as well.

Happy New Years, minna-sama!

Love you all! XOXOXOXOXOX

~Sophia