[Fic] Waiting For Your Call [2/4]
Title: Waiting for your Call
Characters/Pairings: (This part) USUK, Prussia, France.
Ratings/Warnings: PG, language
Summary: One day Arthur receives probably the strangest miscall of his life from an American named Alfred. He doesn't think much of it...until Alfred calls back the next day.
This Chapter: Gilbert gives his expert advice, Alfred gets sick, and Arthur totally doesn't care.
Part 1
It went on like that for about a month. Alfred called Arthur every weekday at 10 when he knew he’d be able to answer his phone while he was stuck in the student center between classes. Arthur would yell and tell him he didn’t have the time or patience to deal with him and that his behavior was bordering stalkerish. After that was out of his system, Arthur would calm down and the two of them would just talk about…well, everything and anything that came to mind. Last week they got caught up discussing real American football and the fake British-football-that’s-really-soccer so much that Alfred ended up late for class.
Today, Alfred was telling Arthur about his studies and his future plans to work for NASA. It’s not like he hadn’t tried getting Arthur to talk about himself - he had, several times - but Arthur always managed to move the conversation back to Alfred. Not that he had any problems with that, after all if there was one topic Alfred knew and loved more than anything, it was himself..
“You want to be an astronaut?”
“Not want to be, going to be,” Alfred corrected, “They need a lot of heroes in space.”
“You’d have to be a lot smarter than you let on to seriously consider that career path.”
“Of course I’m smart. They don’t let just anyone mess around with the time machine.”
“Time what now?”
“What you mean you don’t know?” Alfred grinned, picturing Arthur’s confused face in his head, or what he imagined Arthur’s confused face would be, since he still had no idea what the man looked like, “All physicists have a time machine. I thought that was common knowledge.”
“You’re not a real physicist yet. You’re still only a student!”
“Duh,” he glanced up at the clock that said he had about ten minutes until his class started, “That’s why the university lets me use theirs.”
A pause and the sound of some papers shuffling, then, “You’re just making things up.”
“No no, of course I’m not Artie! My time machine is just as real as your fairies are,” one of the few things he did manage to find out about Arthur was that he believed in childish things like fairies and unicorns. And he insisted Alfred was the childish one.
“J-just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there…”
“If you say so. I gotta go or I’m going to be late. I’ll call you tomorrow!”
“Don’t bother.”
“Talk to you then, bye!” Alfred flipped his phone shut and turned to gather up the homework he was working on before when he noticed Gilbert sitting across from him, sipping some coffee. “Gil! How long have you been there?”
Gilbert smirked, “Long enough to know that you’ve got it bad.”
Alfred’s cheeks turned pink, “N-no! Why would you even…?”
“It’s that Arthur guy from England, the one Matt told me about right?” he took another sip of coffee while Alfred nodded, “From my experience, if you’re talking to them on the phone for more than ten minutes, you’re trying to get into their pants.”
Alfred felt his face heat up even more, “I don’t even know what they guy looks like, let alone anything that would make me want to…you know…with him.”
“Oh Alfred,” Gilbert sighed, “I recall a time when I was that innocent.”
“Really?” he raised an eyebrow.
“No. Just get him to send a picture or something. Or just jump right into the phone sex and use your imagination.”
Alfred buried his face in his hands, “Why are we friends again?”
“Because my advice is awesome and has never steered you wrong.”
“What about that snake thing with Matt?”
“Hey look at the time aren’t you going to be late for class?”
Alfred looked up at the clock to find out Gilbert was absolutely right. “Shit!” He shoved his papers into his bag and ran out the door, ignoring Gilbert’s laughing, he’s own warmed cheeks, and the last five minutes of conversation.
~*~*~*~
Arthur stared at his phone, which hadn’t rung yet, before looking at the clock that now said it was 3:07. Alfred had, up until this point, always called him at 3:00 on the dot. This was strange.
Not a bad strange, certainly not. It wasn’t like Arthur was looking forward to Alfred’s call or anything. God no, the boy’s antics were a nuisance and slowed down his day. Just that this was the first weekday since the first miscall that Alfred hadn’t called him, and it was a little off-putting. That was all.
Arthur definitely wasn’t worried about Alfred either. The fact that he hadn’t called today just meant that he had finally realized how much he annoyed Arthur and that he was better off leaving him alone, which was good for Arthur, even if the thought made him feel sad and forgotten and -
No, no Arthur wasn’t sad, he was happy. He was happy he didn’t have to waste precious moments of his life trying to entertain Alfred anymore. This was a good thing, a very good thing, and that horrible feeling of disappoint at the pit of his stomach was his body’s way of telling him how overjoyed he was about Alfred leaving his life so suddenly.
The clock now said 3:08.
“What’s this?” Francis poked his head over the cubicle wall, “No call from Lover Boy today? Did you end up driving him away like all the others?”
Since it wasn’t going to ring, Arthur decided his phone could be put to better use injuring Francis’s head.
“And you wonder what drove him away,” Francis said as he dodged, “You should call him and apologize for whatever it is you did this time.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Arthur turned back to his computer to get some work done, “He was annoying, and Alfred not calling ever again is a good thing.”
“So you don’t care?”
“Not at all.” 3:09.
“Really?” Francis leaned over to see what Arthur was typing, “Then why did you just type his name in that report?”
Arthur stopped typing and read over the last few sentences. As it turned out, he had typed Alfred’s name not once, but three times in the past two sentences, along with the phrases ‘phone call’ and ‘selfish git.’
“It’s a different Alfred,” he said as he hit the backspace key.
“Of course,” Francis sat back down in his cubicle, “If you’re that worried about him, then just call him!”
“I’m not worried,” Arthur shouted back, “I’m perfectly content never speaking to Alfred Jones again.”
And he was somehow able to convince himself of such for another three hours.
~*~*~*~
Alfred groggily awoke to the sound of his phone ringing. He blindly felt for around his nightstand, grumbling about useless friends calling him when he already told them all he was sick. Eventually he found it, flipped it open, and put it to his ear, “Whaaat? I'm sleepinnnnng,” he whined into it.
“Well excuse me princess!” a very British voice shouted back, “I didn’t realize American’s got so cranky if they miss their afternoon nap!”
Wait, Alfred only knew one British person, “Arthur…?”
“Yes brilliant deduction Sherlock!”
“Arthur…” shit, “What time is it?” he sat up, ignoring the intense nausea that hit him as he did so, and looked around for his clock, not that he could see anything without his glasses.
“It’s about 6 here, so I assume it’s around 1 there." Even if he was simply telling the time, Arthur still sounded angry. Double shit.
“Sorry about missing our phone date…” Alfred yawned.
“W-what?!” Had he said that out loud? Triple shit. Ever since that conversation with Gilbert a few days ago he had been, well, it doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t work out anyway, “D-don’t misunderstand! I’m not calling because I’m upset that you didn’t call. It just completely messed up my schedule and you should know what a nuisance you are.”
“You set your schedule around me?” Even through Arthur’s rage and his own fever, Alfred couldn’t help but smile at that thought.
“N-no! I just meant that I had grown accustomed to you calling me, and you suddenly not threw me off!”
“…So you called me?” Alfred grinned and lied back down on the bed as he listened to Arthur try to stutter out a response. “Thanks for caring.”
“I don’t care,” Arthur insisted, “This call is to inform you that I don’t care.”
“I dunno,” he yawned, “Seems like if you really didn’t care, it would just be easier to not call?”
“I, well…” Arthur coughed, and Alfred imagined he was blushing somewhere, probably back at his house by now, sitting in some kind of giant, comfortable arm chair in the middle of a study, sipping tea. Yeah, totally sipping tea, and blushing. He probably looked really cute… “I might have, well, been a tad bit curious why you didn’t call so suddenly…”
“I’m sick, I caught a cold last night,” as if to prove it, he was overcome with a coughing fit, “S-sorry I missed-”
“That’s alright lad,” his voice was a hundred times calmer and a thousand times gentler then it had been before, “If you’re sick, you should be resting.”
“I was sleeping,” but he wasn’t now. What happened in between? Oh yes, “then you woke me up.”
“Sorry about that. I’ll go and-”
“No! I mean, uh…” he was disappointed when didn’t get to call Arthur before. Now that Arthur had actually called him he didn’t want him to just go away, “We can still, you know, talk and stuff.”
“If you’re sick you should get some sleep. It’s the only way you’re going to feel better. I’ll call you tomorrow and we can talk then.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, I promise.”
“Kay, but, um, Arthur…”
“Yes lad?”
Alfred decided he liked it when Arthur called him lad all British like that, “Uh…I can’t sleep.”
“Just close your eyes and try.”
“I did…s’not working.”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
“Since you woke me up, it’s only fair you put me back to sleep.”
“You want a lullaby then?”
“Yes please.”
A pause and another cough before, “Go to sleep…go to sleep…go to sleep within the cradles of hell!” the creepiest song Alfred had ever heard.
“Wh-what the hell was that!?” he shrieked, in a manly way, and even if it wasn’t it was completely justified.
“I’m trying to put you to sleep and you’re complaining?!”
“Who’s going to go to sleep with you trying to summon a demon over there or something? My god if that’s what you sing to your kids at night-”
“I don’t have any kids!”
“You don’t?”
“It’s not like I’m married…how old do you think I am?”
Alfred shrugged before he realized Arthur couldn’t see it, “Dunno. 42?”
“What the…I’m 23!”
“42’s always a good guess when you don’t know,” So Arthur was 23. That wasn’t too much older than Alfred, “You single?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with the conversation?”
Alfred thought about it for a bit. “Nothing. I’m single too, but, uh, yeah. Sleeping.”
“Y-yes about that…” Arthur was probably blushing again. Blushing and sipping his tea and surrounded by sheep somewhere. Now there was an idea…
“Hey, since you suck at lullabies, why don’t you count me some sheep?”
“What?”
“Yeah, your voice is kinda relaxing when it’s not trying to summon demons, so you can just count me some sheep,” Alfred yawned again, “Please?”
“Y-you think my voice is relaxing?”
“S’probably the accent. About those sheep?”
“Oh, yes, right.”
He was right; Arthur’s voice did relax him enough to put him to sleep in no time. Or it might have been the fever and the medication, but either way, soon after he found himself dreaming about British sheep wearing top hats at a tea party.
Alfred was pretty sure he only dreamed the “Sweet dreams, love,” that floated into his ear as he drifted off.
Characters/Pairings: (This part) USUK, Prussia, France.
Ratings/Warnings: PG, language
Summary: One day Arthur receives probably the strangest miscall of his life from an American named Alfred. He doesn't think much of it...until Alfred calls back the next day.
This Chapter: Gilbert gives his expert advice, Alfred gets sick, and Arthur totally doesn't care.
Part 1
It went on like that for about a month. Alfred called Arthur every weekday at 10 when he knew he’d be able to answer his phone while he was stuck in the student center between classes. Arthur would yell and tell him he didn’t have the time or patience to deal with him and that his behavior was bordering stalkerish. After that was out of his system, Arthur would calm down and the two of them would just talk about…well, everything and anything that came to mind. Last week they got caught up discussing real American football and the fake British-football-that’s-really-soccer so much that Alfred ended up late for class.
Today, Alfred was telling Arthur about his studies and his future plans to work for NASA. It’s not like he hadn’t tried getting Arthur to talk about himself - he had, several times - but Arthur always managed to move the conversation back to Alfred. Not that he had any problems with that, after all if there was one topic Alfred knew and loved more than anything, it was himself..
“You want to be an astronaut?”
“Not want to be, going to be,” Alfred corrected, “They need a lot of heroes in space.”
“You’d have to be a lot smarter than you let on to seriously consider that career path.”
“Of course I’m smart. They don’t let just anyone mess around with the time machine.”
“Time what now?”
“What you mean you don’t know?” Alfred grinned, picturing Arthur’s confused face in his head, or what he imagined Arthur’s confused face would be, since he still had no idea what the man looked like, “All physicists have a time machine. I thought that was common knowledge.”
“You’re not a real physicist yet. You’re still only a student!”
“Duh,” he glanced up at the clock that said he had about ten minutes until his class started, “That’s why the university lets me use theirs.”
A pause and the sound of some papers shuffling, then, “You’re just making things up.”
“No no, of course I’m not Artie! My time machine is just as real as your fairies are,” one of the few things he did manage to find out about Arthur was that he believed in childish things like fairies and unicorns. And he insisted Alfred was the childish one.
“J-just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there…”
“If you say so. I gotta go or I’m going to be late. I’ll call you tomorrow!”
“Don’t bother.”
“Talk to you then, bye!” Alfred flipped his phone shut and turned to gather up the homework he was working on before when he noticed Gilbert sitting across from him, sipping some coffee. “Gil! How long have you been there?”
Gilbert smirked, “Long enough to know that you’ve got it bad.”
Alfred’s cheeks turned pink, “N-no! Why would you even…?”
“It’s that Arthur guy from England, the one Matt told me about right?” he took another sip of coffee while Alfred nodded, “From my experience, if you’re talking to them on the phone for more than ten minutes, you’re trying to get into their pants.”
Alfred felt his face heat up even more, “I don’t even know what they guy looks like, let alone anything that would make me want to…you know…with him.”
“Oh Alfred,” Gilbert sighed, “I recall a time when I was that innocent.”
“Really?” he raised an eyebrow.
“No. Just get him to send a picture or something. Or just jump right into the phone sex and use your imagination.”
Alfred buried his face in his hands, “Why are we friends again?”
“Because my advice is awesome and has never steered you wrong.”
“What about that snake thing with Matt?”
“Hey look at the time aren’t you going to be late for class?”
Alfred looked up at the clock to find out Gilbert was absolutely right. “Shit!” He shoved his papers into his bag and ran out the door, ignoring Gilbert’s laughing, he’s own warmed cheeks, and the last five minutes of conversation.
~*~*~*~
Arthur stared at his phone, which hadn’t rung yet, before looking at the clock that now said it was 3:07. Alfred had, up until this point, always called him at 3:00 on the dot. This was strange.
Not a bad strange, certainly not. It wasn’t like Arthur was looking forward to Alfred’s call or anything. God no, the boy’s antics were a nuisance and slowed down his day. Just that this was the first weekday since the first miscall that Alfred hadn’t called him, and it was a little off-putting. That was all.
Arthur definitely wasn’t worried about Alfred either. The fact that he hadn’t called today just meant that he had finally realized how much he annoyed Arthur and that he was better off leaving him alone, which was good for Arthur, even if the thought made him feel sad and forgotten and -
No, no Arthur wasn’t sad, he was happy. He was happy he didn’t have to waste precious moments of his life trying to entertain Alfred anymore. This was a good thing, a very good thing, and that horrible feeling of disappoint at the pit of his stomach was his body’s way of telling him how overjoyed he was about Alfred leaving his life so suddenly.
The clock now said 3:08.
“What’s this?” Francis poked his head over the cubicle wall, “No call from Lover Boy today? Did you end up driving him away like all the others?”
Since it wasn’t going to ring, Arthur decided his phone could be put to better use injuring Francis’s head.
“And you wonder what drove him away,” Francis said as he dodged, “You should call him and apologize for whatever it is you did this time.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Arthur turned back to his computer to get some work done, “He was annoying, and Alfred not calling ever again is a good thing.”
“So you don’t care?”
“Not at all.” 3:09.
“Really?” Francis leaned over to see what Arthur was typing, “Then why did you just type his name in that report?”
Arthur stopped typing and read over the last few sentences. As it turned out, he had typed Alfred’s name not once, but three times in the past two sentences, along with the phrases ‘phone call’ and ‘selfish git.’
“It’s a different Alfred,” he said as he hit the backspace key.
“Of course,” Francis sat back down in his cubicle, “If you’re that worried about him, then just call him!”
“I’m not worried,” Arthur shouted back, “I’m perfectly content never speaking to Alfred Jones again.”
And he was somehow able to convince himself of such for another three hours.
~*~*~*~
Alfred groggily awoke to the sound of his phone ringing. He blindly felt for around his nightstand, grumbling about useless friends calling him when he already told them all he was sick. Eventually he found it, flipped it open, and put it to his ear, “Whaaat? I'm sleepinnnnng,” he whined into it.
“Well excuse me princess!” a very British voice shouted back, “I didn’t realize American’s got so cranky if they miss their afternoon nap!”
Wait, Alfred only knew one British person, “Arthur…?”
“Yes brilliant deduction Sherlock!”
“Arthur…” shit, “What time is it?” he sat up, ignoring the intense nausea that hit him as he did so, and looked around for his clock, not that he could see anything without his glasses.
“It’s about 6 here, so I assume it’s around 1 there." Even if he was simply telling the time, Arthur still sounded angry. Double shit.
“Sorry about missing our phone date…” Alfred yawned.
“W-what?!” Had he said that out loud? Triple shit. Ever since that conversation with Gilbert a few days ago he had been, well, it doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t work out anyway, “D-don’t misunderstand! I’m not calling because I’m upset that you didn’t call. It just completely messed up my schedule and you should know what a nuisance you are.”
“You set your schedule around me?” Even through Arthur’s rage and his own fever, Alfred couldn’t help but smile at that thought.
“N-no! I just meant that I had grown accustomed to you calling me, and you suddenly not threw me off!”
“…So you called me?” Alfred grinned and lied back down on the bed as he listened to Arthur try to stutter out a response. “Thanks for caring.”
“I don’t care,” Arthur insisted, “This call is to inform you that I don’t care.”
“I dunno,” he yawned, “Seems like if you really didn’t care, it would just be easier to not call?”
“I, well…” Arthur coughed, and Alfred imagined he was blushing somewhere, probably back at his house by now, sitting in some kind of giant, comfortable arm chair in the middle of a study, sipping tea. Yeah, totally sipping tea, and blushing. He probably looked really cute… “I might have, well, been a tad bit curious why you didn’t call so suddenly…”
“I’m sick, I caught a cold last night,” as if to prove it, he was overcome with a coughing fit, “S-sorry I missed-”
“That’s alright lad,” his voice was a hundred times calmer and a thousand times gentler then it had been before, “If you’re sick, you should be resting.”
“I was sleeping,” but he wasn’t now. What happened in between? Oh yes, “then you woke me up.”
“Sorry about that. I’ll go and-”
“No! I mean, uh…” he was disappointed when didn’t get to call Arthur before. Now that Arthur had actually called him he didn’t want him to just go away, “We can still, you know, talk and stuff.”
“If you’re sick you should get some sleep. It’s the only way you’re going to feel better. I’ll call you tomorrow and we can talk then.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, I promise.”
“Kay, but, um, Arthur…”
“Yes lad?”
Alfred decided he liked it when Arthur called him lad all British like that, “Uh…I can’t sleep.”
“Just close your eyes and try.”
“I did…s’not working.”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
“Since you woke me up, it’s only fair you put me back to sleep.”
“You want a lullaby then?”
“Yes please.”
A pause and another cough before, “Go to sleep…go to sleep…go to sleep within the cradles of hell!” the creepiest song Alfred had ever heard.
“Wh-what the hell was that!?” he shrieked, in a manly way, and even if it wasn’t it was completely justified.
“I’m trying to put you to sleep and you’re complaining?!”
“Who’s going to go to sleep with you trying to summon a demon over there or something? My god if that’s what you sing to your kids at night-”
“I don’t have any kids!”
“You don’t?”
“It’s not like I’m married…how old do you think I am?”
Alfred shrugged before he realized Arthur couldn’t see it, “Dunno. 42?”
“What the…I’m 23!”
“42’s always a good guess when you don’t know,” So Arthur was 23. That wasn’t too much older than Alfred, “You single?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with the conversation?”
Alfred thought about it for a bit. “Nothing. I’m single too, but, uh, yeah. Sleeping.”
“Y-yes about that…” Arthur was probably blushing again. Blushing and sipping his tea and surrounded by sheep somewhere. Now there was an idea…
“Hey, since you suck at lullabies, why don’t you count me some sheep?”
“What?”
“Yeah, your voice is kinda relaxing when it’s not trying to summon demons, so you can just count me some sheep,” Alfred yawned again, “Please?”
“Y-you think my voice is relaxing?”
“S’probably the accent. About those sheep?”
“Oh, yes, right.”
He was right; Arthur’s voice did relax him enough to put him to sleep in no time. Or it might have been the fever and the medication, but either way, soon after he found himself dreaming about British sheep wearing top hats at a tea party.
Alfred was pretty sure he only dreamed the “Sweet dreams, love,” that floated into his ear as he drifted off.