D.Grayman, Kanda/Cloud Nine
Title: Lessons Author/Artist: shiegra Fandom: D.Grayman Pairing/characters: Kanda/Cloud Nine Rating: PG13/R Prompt/challenge you're answering: * Kanda needs help that only Cloud Nine can provide. A/N: I had some wierd little backstory in my head that she helped him devise the attack we see early in the manga but that's not terribly relevant.
“You are too angry.” She said coolly, and the muscles in his shoulders went tense. “I will not waste my time aiding a student who will not take everything that can be taken from the lesson.”
She watched his shoulders tense, muscles moving under sleek skin. Desire laced briefly through her, easily controlled; she was surprised to be so effected, but she was also well known for her self-containment. To be honest, the only reason that she had not already given him an ultimatum was the marvel that his lack in the lesson was not due to a disrespect for her femininity but to a fault all his own.
But she had not lied. Such lack of regard for the lesson itself was unacceptable.
She landed beside him, and those slanted black eyes fixed on her, cold with roiling fury. “You are reckless.” She intoned, and caught the sword between two fingers. “You do not understand the value of an attack from afar. And as a result—” She barely smiled, wintry and contained. “I do not even have to activate my Innocence.”
The black whip whispered at their feet, snaking across the ground before she coiled it again. “Kneel.”
He looked at her for a long moment, measuring the request with hard eyes, and then dropped to one knee. It was a respect that she always felt some small measure of pride in being accorded, and she walked in a slow circle around him. “Your defense is also less than impeccable.” She said, and her hand darted out, the fingers freezing a hairsbreadth from his neck.
Cool steel touched her ribs, cutting through her shirt, and she looked down to see Mugen sliding under his arm. Genuine pleasure curved her lips into a smile. “Your speed is commendable.” She said, and then gave a throaty, wry laugh. “Unless you have simply been expecting it.”
He managed a short, perfectly contained bow even kneeling. “I suspect everything, General. As an Exorcist.”
This time her smile was more wistful; she was surprised herself at its appearance. “A fine policy.” She said finally, “but trust is inherent in the concept of comrades.”
“Then I will have none.”
“That is a weakness.” She told him evenly. “But I cannot criticize it, for I too work alone.” As he knew. She resumed pacing around him, and came to his front once more.
Something had calmed in his black eyes. There was still the sense of impending threat, a wild cat crouched at her feet and poised to lash out, but a new, measured consideration.
Mugen was sheathed with a whisper, and he kept looking at her with those sharp black eyes. Lau Jimin chattered softly on her shoulder, tail twining through her hair.
She snaked out the whip wordlessly, either an invitation to battle or a challenge of a different kind, even she could not tell. Heat coiled in her belly and she met his eyes. He was a student, a man seeking vengeance at the iron-cold cost of his own life, and this was beyond foolishness.
One hand, hard and callused with long fingers, closed around the back of her thigh. No submission in his eyes but when she took a step closer, placing her feet with delicacy between and outside of his thighs, he pressed his mouth to her hip and his eyes were dark and feral, pupil indistinguishable from iris.