Tears [{Ryan Sullivan x Allen Coldwell}]

Attachment Issues

A/N: This is basically an explanation for why Allen was crying. Also, we don't get enough Bella/Allen interactions and I just thought they would make great friends. So here we are.

Allen thought about that one comment he had read on a fanfiction. About a fear of attachment. 

The fact that he didn't want to get attached to the people surrounding him, the fact that he didn't want to make the same mistakes as he had made with Ryan and Calia, apparently it was all termed under attachment issues.

Let's rewind a bit. Allen had stayed up late the previous night, reading one of the hundred books in his fanfiction library. He had been reading about a character and finding it very relatable, then he had opened the comments section to find...people sympathizing with the character's fear of attachment. 

Some comments later, Allen had realized that if having attachment issues applied to a character with similar experiences with him, it probably also applied to himself. 

This led to him thinking. And that brings us to where we are currently. Sitting on a school bench, contemplating life.

"Yo! Duncehead!" A familiar voice piped up from behind him. Allen turned around to find Bella staring at him. Seeing as how she called him a duncehead, this was probably her fighter personality. "Why so gloomy?" she asked him.

Allen sighed. "And is there any reason why I should confide in you?"

"Hm...not specifically, but I hear it helps to get things off your chest sometimes. Besides, if you tell me, I might be able to help," Bella said.

Allen stared at her. Should he tell her? Bella seemed trustworthy, after all.

"So...the thing is, I came to a...realization, you can say. And it's been bugging me a lot," he started.

"What sort of realization?" Bella asked.

"Well...I think I'm having...well...attachment issues?" Allen said unsurely.

"Woah, buddy, that's a big deal!" Bella exclaimed. "Does it mean that you don't want to get attached to people?" she asked. Allen nodded.

Bella held her chin and went into deep thought. Then she asked, "Is there any specific reason you feel like this?"

Allen thought about whether or not he should tell her about Ryan and Calia. In the end, he decided to give her a half-truth, "Well the thing is, I had a few friends who turned out to be fake. I actually...trusted them. And, um, I guess I just don't want to make a mistake of trusting the wrong person again?" Allen looked at Bella's face and found her...infuriated? Like, genuinely angry? 

"Which asshole pretended to be your fake friend?! Do you need me to go kill them?!" She asked him, clenching her fists.

"Woah there. Calm down. You don't need to kill anyone." Allen said quickly, panicking a little. Bella closed her eyes, took a deep breath in, and exhaled it out. When she felt that she had relaxed, she looked at Allen again.

"Right. We don't need to kill anyone," she said. Allen nodded in agreement. "Well, I don't have much to say except that the people you're around now, like Az, Ryan, Felix, those servants of yours who gave Felix the shovel talk, and me, we all care about you. Like, really. The few dunderheads who pretended to be your friends don't deserve the satisfaction of knowing that they caused you to get scared of attachment, so don't give it to them." Bella stated.

Allen didn't have the heart to tell her that one of the names overlapped both the lists. He just nodded along to what Bella was saying.

"However," he flinched at Bella's sudden change of tone, "if any of them bothers you again, you can tell me and they better sleep with their eyes open," Bella said darkly.

Allen silently added her to his mental list of people never to get on the bad side of. She was scary.

"Will do," he told her. Bella nodded and left Allen to do something else.

Meanwhile, Allen just felt more conflicted than ever. He still didn't think getting attached was worth it. He still thought that everyone could be fake. He still didn't know what to do. And Bella telling him that he could trust Ryan, of all people, made him even more confused. 

He was scared. He didn't know. And he hated not knowing.

Allen felt the tears about to fall and decided to go somewhere no one would see him. Under the same table he had hidden the very first time he had become self-aware. In the library.