(no subject)
Title: But He's Not Creepy
Author/Artist: kahlanaisling
Character(s) or Pairing(s): England/Prussia
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: It should not be this difficult to understand a classmate. Gakuen AU.
A/N Written during HetaChallenge for bobness1.
Arthur's never had to truly learn before. He's good at everything, at sports and at books and at common sense and sense that's slightly less common. He's good at knowing who's blindly loyal and who's going to stab him in the back. He's good at keeping out of their way if it's the latter case, which it usually is, and he's good at utilizing the blindly loyal so that they don't know how unfortunate they are.
But Gilbert. Gilbert is an anomaly.
Gilbert is the person Arthur stares at from across the room every day at lunch with a thinking expression on his face, trying to figure out the logic behind. He made a list of a few ways to go about it:
Literature was the first. The most human thing Arthur could think of, he approached Gilbert as he approached a book and observed his behavior, his friends, his reactions to certain situations. This painted a portrait of him that was easily understandable. In Arthur's head, he'd solved everything and no longer needed to concern himself with the shallow dregs of the school.
Then the library caught on fire and not only did delinquent Gilbert have nothing to do with it, he risked his own life going in to save the sleeping librarian. It was one thing not to have done it, Arthur decided. It was a completely different one to get involved anyway.
Maybe, then, Gilbert was a mathematics formula, something that made no sense upon first glance but became clear as the variables revealed themselves? It took longer to solve a math problem than to analyze a book, but Arthur didn't care about this. He began taking notes, all the notes he could, in order to get all the numbers and find the answer.
This didn't work either. Gilbert caught him following him home one day and Arthur was not prepared for a confrontation. If Lukas Bondevik had not been walking by at the time, Arthur might not have been able to talk his way out of it.
So Gilbert was neither book nor formula. A science project? Science was the most obvious way to go about studying, damn it, why hadn't Arthur thought of it before? But wait -- nevermind, Arthur had no way to study Gilbert.
It was beginning to drive him a little insane. All of his other friends made sense. There was an exception that proved every rule, but even that crazy Bulgarian kid down the street whom nobody understood made sense. Arthur made sense. Alfred made sense. Idiot bastard Francis Bonnefoy made sense. Gilbert's brother Ludwig made all the sense in the world. So why didn't Gilbert?
Alfred gave him the idea.
"Dude," he'd told him one day, a month or so later. "Just kiss him already."
Arthur had been nothing short of appalled.
"Why the hell would I do that?"
Alfred, who was ever the cheery idiot, acted as if he were an expert in social relations. Which, to be fair, he rather was. "You're obsessed with the guy. You go around stalking him for crying out loud. He's not picky, just go kiss him and then maybe you'll get over it."
Arthur was certainly not going to kiss him.
That was a ridiculous notion.
An appealing one, but nevertheless ridiculous.
He thought about it for a couple of days, just lying on his bed and wondering what it'd be like. Probably not good. Gilbert is not the most handsome man in the world; white skin, white hair, red eyes, not particularly tall and thin and wiry. But then again, Arthur tried not to discriminate via looks, which means he'd have to go by the only evidence he had -- Alfred's little brother, Matthew, the only one who'd dated Gilbert and managed to do it for months on end.
Matthew, when asked, gave him an odd look, but told him that Gilbert was not half bad.
"Not half bad" in Matthew's book meant "pretty damn great."
It was another couple of weeks with a complicated string of events involving missing projects, ancient curses on locker doors, an extremely irate Vash Zwingli, and candy corn, but Arthur finally managed to get he and Gilbert alone in the same area. This was where Arthur chose to make his move.
Gilbert stopped him. "The fuck are you doing?"
Arthur turned red and wished he hadn't. "Let me kiss you," he commanded.
"You're really creepy, you know that right?"
Creepy? How was Arthur creepy? That made absolutely no sense, all he was doing was trying to rationalize an obsession that he couldn't explain in the first place.
"What?"
"Creepy." Gilbert enunciated, his normal swagger replaced with a simple earnestness Arthur hadn't quite realized he had. "You keep following me around and taking notes and shit."
Arthur rolled his eyes. "That doesn't matter. Just let me kiss you."
"Why though?"
"Just do it."
"Reasons are awesome things, man."
"I need to prove that I'm not obsessed with you."
Gilbert laughed.
Oh, did Gilbert ever laugh.
"You want to prove you're not obsessed with me," he said, ignoring the mortified glare on Arthur's face, "by demanded I kiss you without reason? Seems like there's something wrong with your reasoning."
"There is nothing wrong with my reasoning--"
"Uh-huh. Sure."
That's when Gilbert walked away.
It's been a year since then, and Arthur realizes now how much of an idiot he truly was. He turns red as a cherry when he remembers it and Gilbert laughs again because he knows what Arthur's thinking about. Arthur will yell at him that it's not funny, Gilbert will sneer and retort that it so is, and Alfred will just smirk at both of them because he was totally right.
Arthur did eventually get that kiss, after all.
Back To Table
Author/Artist: kahlanaisling
Character(s) or Pairing(s): England/Prussia
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: It should not be this difficult to understand a classmate. Gakuen AU.
A/N Written during HetaChallenge for bobness1.
Arthur's never had to truly learn before. He's good at everything, at sports and at books and at common sense and sense that's slightly less common. He's good at knowing who's blindly loyal and who's going to stab him in the back. He's good at keeping out of their way if it's the latter case, which it usually is, and he's good at utilizing the blindly loyal so that they don't know how unfortunate they are.
But Gilbert. Gilbert is an anomaly.
Gilbert is the person Arthur stares at from across the room every day at lunch with a thinking expression on his face, trying to figure out the logic behind. He made a list of a few ways to go about it:
Literature was the first. The most human thing Arthur could think of, he approached Gilbert as he approached a book and observed his behavior, his friends, his reactions to certain situations. This painted a portrait of him that was easily understandable. In Arthur's head, he'd solved everything and no longer needed to concern himself with the shallow dregs of the school.
Then the library caught on fire and not only did delinquent Gilbert have nothing to do with it, he risked his own life going in to save the sleeping librarian. It was one thing not to have done it, Arthur decided. It was a completely different one to get involved anyway.
Maybe, then, Gilbert was a mathematics formula, something that made no sense upon first glance but became clear as the variables revealed themselves? It took longer to solve a math problem than to analyze a book, but Arthur didn't care about this. He began taking notes, all the notes he could, in order to get all the numbers and find the answer.
This didn't work either. Gilbert caught him following him home one day and Arthur was not prepared for a confrontation. If Lukas Bondevik had not been walking by at the time, Arthur might not have been able to talk his way out of it.
So Gilbert was neither book nor formula. A science project? Science was the most obvious way to go about studying, damn it, why hadn't Arthur thought of it before? But wait -- nevermind, Arthur had no way to study Gilbert.
It was beginning to drive him a little insane. All of his other friends made sense. There was an exception that proved every rule, but even that crazy Bulgarian kid down the street whom nobody understood made sense. Arthur made sense. Alfred made sense. Idiot bastard Francis Bonnefoy made sense. Gilbert's brother Ludwig made all the sense in the world. So why didn't Gilbert?
Alfred gave him the idea.
"Dude," he'd told him one day, a month or so later. "Just kiss him already."
Arthur had been nothing short of appalled.
"Why the hell would I do that?"
Alfred, who was ever the cheery idiot, acted as if he were an expert in social relations. Which, to be fair, he rather was. "You're obsessed with the guy. You go around stalking him for crying out loud. He's not picky, just go kiss him and then maybe you'll get over it."
Arthur was certainly not going to kiss him.
That was a ridiculous notion.
An appealing one, but nevertheless ridiculous.
He thought about it for a couple of days, just lying on his bed and wondering what it'd be like. Probably not good. Gilbert is not the most handsome man in the world; white skin, white hair, red eyes, not particularly tall and thin and wiry. But then again, Arthur tried not to discriminate via looks, which means he'd have to go by the only evidence he had -- Alfred's little brother, Matthew, the only one who'd dated Gilbert and managed to do it for months on end.
Matthew, when asked, gave him an odd look, but told him that Gilbert was not half bad.
"Not half bad" in Matthew's book meant "pretty damn great."
It was another couple of weeks with a complicated string of events involving missing projects, ancient curses on locker doors, an extremely irate Vash Zwingli, and candy corn, but Arthur finally managed to get he and Gilbert alone in the same area. This was where Arthur chose to make his move.
Gilbert stopped him. "The fuck are you doing?"
Arthur turned red and wished he hadn't. "Let me kiss you," he commanded.
"You're really creepy, you know that right?"
Creepy? How was Arthur creepy? That made absolutely no sense, all he was doing was trying to rationalize an obsession that he couldn't explain in the first place.
"What?"
"Creepy." Gilbert enunciated, his normal swagger replaced with a simple earnestness Arthur hadn't quite realized he had. "You keep following me around and taking notes and shit."
Arthur rolled his eyes. "That doesn't matter. Just let me kiss you."
"Why though?"
"Just do it."
"Reasons are awesome things, man."
"I need to prove that I'm not obsessed with you."
Gilbert laughed.
Oh, did Gilbert ever laugh.
"You want to prove you're not obsessed with me," he said, ignoring the mortified glare on Arthur's face, "by demanded I kiss you without reason? Seems like there's something wrong with your reasoning."
"There is nothing wrong with my reasoning--"
"Uh-huh. Sure."
That's when Gilbert walked away.
It's been a year since then, and Arthur realizes now how much of an idiot he truly was. He turns red as a cherry when he remembers it and Gilbert laughs again because he knows what Arthur's thinking about. Arthur will yell at him that it's not funny, Gilbert will sneer and retort that it so is, and Alfred will just smirk at both of them because he was totally right.
Arthur did eventually get that kiss, after all.
Back To Table