"You don't have to go," Kanda says, too loudly. "It's fine."

Allen opens and closes his hands. Today is the first time Allen has gone to watch Kanda with the horse openly; it's taken him a week to build himself up to this point, telling himself that it is, after all, his property, and his horse, and all of his avoidance is absurd.

"Thank you," Allen says finally.

He'd apologized anyway, as soon as Kanda looked up and saw him, and felt like an idiot after the words slipped out, fixed in the curious snow of anxiety that Kanda so often incites in him. Kanda's next words startle him, and he takes a sharp breath of warm air.

"Would you like to ride?" Kanda asks.

"I don't think that—"

"It should be fine. It will be fine. The horse—" Kanda says, "is fine. You know how to ride."

"He's never, um, really liked me." When Kanda's eyebrows start to draw together, Allen adds hurriedly, "But you're right."

He ends up seated across Bishamon's broad back, legs dangling uselessly in the stirrups. Under Kanda's watchful eye, he taps his heels against Bishamon's sides and doesn't go anywhere.

"Well," Allen says, "it's an improvement."

Kanda scowls.

"I mean—" Allen's jaws clamp shut when Kanda slaps Bishamon's rump, hard, and Bishamon takes a single step forward. Stiffly, he uncurls his fingers from around the reins when it becomes clear that the single step is as far as Bishamon is going to go. "This time my skull isn't broken?"

"For fuck's sake," Kanda says. "Take your feet out of the stirrups."

"What?"

"And lean forward."

"I—" Allen find himself doing what Kanda says automatically, allowing Kanda to get one foot in the stirrup behind Allen's dangling leg and somehow swing himself up into the saddle. His body settles in snug against Allen's back.

"Where." Kanda clears his throat. He sounds almost embarrassed. "Would you like to go?"

"Um," Allen says. He can feel the expansion and contraction of Kanda's ribs against his spine. Even in this weather, they are hot enough to feel through his clothing. He squints in the sunlight. "The forest is—shaded. It will be cooler there."

Kanda takes the reins from Allen and turns Bishamon around without actually seeming to use them; Allen doesn't know what to do with his own hands so he just rests them on the pommel and hunches his shoulders in.

"Your skull?" Kanda asks a few minutes later. The smell of sun-baked grass has given way to the richer scent of the forest, damp earth and decaying leaves. Allen can smell Kanda, too, concentrating on keeping his breathing even as flickers of a half-forgotten dream slide along the edges of his consciousness. Kanda, he thinks, is terrible at this.

"Yes, um. When Cross was still alive. I got thrown off and fractured my skull, and didn't wake up until the next evening." When the silence grows too long, Allen stammers, "How do you know so much about horses?"

"My father raised them." For another excruciatingly long moment, that is all Kanda says, and Allen girds himself to ask another question. But before he can open his mouth, Kanda inhales deeply and his nose slides through the hair on the back of Allen's head. Allen clamps his teeth together and closes his eyes.

"There was an American, who worked for him," Kanda adds finally. "He came on a ship. One of those . . . cowboys. He liked to spit."

Allen suppresses a burst of hysterical laughter.

"Horses aren't complicated," Kanda continues, "people are just stupid. You—most people, when they have a problem horse, think they should isolate it."

"For safety," Allen says. Kanda grunts.

"Horses are herd animals. You can't isolate a problem horse because it will just get worse. You have to be willing to be the herd, so it knows that someone is in charge and everything is secure."

"Ah," Allen says.

"The only time you'll ever see a horse isolating itself is when it knows it's going to die."

"Ah," Allen says, fainter this time. Kanda seems to have finished explaining himself, and Allen isn't going to push it. Instead, he looks at the sunlight dappling the ground underneath the trees and thinks about horses dying, gray and exhausted and alone. Not wanting to be any trouble.

The rest of the trip is spent in silence and Allen even manages to relax a little, despite how bizarre the whole thing is. Kanda's body shifts behind him and Kanda's breathing is quiet and comfortable. Eventually, they circle back around and reach the edge of the forest, where Allen straightens and makes to get off. Kanda slides down first and offers Allen a hand.

"This was very um, nice of you," Allen tells Kanda once he's safely on the ground. He smiles, like it's a joke, and pushes his bangs out of his eyes. "Kanda—"

But Kanda's expression has shuttered closed, his mouth a hard line. Allen realizes that he has said the wrong thing; he has, again, somehow misunderstood.