The game's afoot!

[godsavemy]

WHO: Arthur and Alfred
WHEN: Thursday Afternoon
WHERE: A random sidewalk in Liberty
WHAT: Arthur and Alfred's first encounter. Oh yes, this will go well.

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[godsavemy]

Arthur was face down in a puddle of rainwater on the pavement and didn't know why.

He was so sure that he had been upright only a moment ago, plodding along and stopping every so often to admire the store fronts. He promised himself to visit this quaint stretch of shops again once the weekend was upon them and indulge himself in a purchase or two. He felt he deserved a little reward after all.

Yes, he had still been vertical then and was only a couple blocks away from the library, when...when what?

Well, he couldn't quite remember what exactly happened next. Everything was a bit of a blur. That is, except for the sensation of his body still smarting from painfully embracing the rough cement and the sense of breathlessness he was experiencing now.

A few frozen moments later, Arthur realized he couldn't breathe. Because...because there was a weight on his back, practically crushing his lungs into dust and he couldn't--!

With all the strength he could muster, Arthur shoved off whatever was pinning him to the ground, only succeeding so much as to relieve his respiratory system, and drank in a breath of sweet air.

[13_foundations]

Alfred grunted unhappily as whatever he had landed on gave him a solid jostling. “Owowow… What the…?” He muttered, squirming, trying to find his footing. His books had spilled all over the ground from his slightly opened bag somewhere in the tussle, and his copy of “A Tale of Two Cities” now sat sadly in a dirty puddle just in front of his nose. Hopefully it was still legible, he had homework to do based on it. Finally scrambling to his feet and away from the entanglement, the 20-year-old ran a dirty hand through his hair and glanced back. It was only then that he fully registered that it had been a person he had just run into.

“Oh man... Sorry ‘bout that!” He said, eyes widening in honest surprise that he’d actually knocked someone to the ground. “I didn’t see you!”

They’d gathered a crowd with that little stunt. The child who had spurred Alfred into causing this whole messed looked rather unappreciative. In fact, the little boy’s mother was using their collision as an example of why he should stay away from crazy, rude strangers. The blonde resisted the small urge to insist his apology and then split. The clock was ticking on his chances of his boss forgiving him for being so late, but… While leaving now would allow him to get to work, it wasn’t something a hero would do. And Alfred always favored heroics.

“…You okay?” He asked tentatively, offering his hand politely.

[godsavemy]

Until now, Arthur hadn't realized how marvelous it was not to be crushed.

As soon as the pressure lifted and he didn't feel akin to a bug underneath a shoe, Arthur slowly pushed himself off of the ground, groaning when the scraped skin of his hands came into contact with the rough texture of the concrete.

Lovely. It's not as if he used his hands for anything useful, like being the tools he used to make a living.

"Fuck," he cursed quietly when he finally looked at the grim state of his hands. There wasn't too much blood, but the fact that there was any blood at all was a problem for him. He probably wouldn't be able to hold a pen properly for days without wincing in pain with every stroke.

Even better, his head was starting to smart something fierce and there was something hovering in front of his face like an annoying fly. He would smack it away, if it weren't for his throbbing hands.

Suddenly, a face popped into view, startling Arthur into scrambling backwards, and flopping back down to the ground once more.

[13_foundations]

He couldn’t help it. He sputtered, not even bothering to smother his burst of laughter. The look the other guy had given him!

Quickly trying to school his amusement into a grin, Alfred inched around to the other’s side, crouching on the balls of his feet and leaning his hands on his knees so they were once again close to eye level. This guy had… very prominent eyebrows. In fact, they were the first things he noticed despite them being partially covered by blonde hair. But below that were green eyes. And a rather unhappy looking expression.

Alfred scratched the back of his head, trying to counter the look with a sheepish grin. ‘Okay… I can’t really blame him for being pissed, I guess…’ The blonde thought to himself, nevertheless feeling a slight strain in his smile already.

“Hey, I’m really sorry. I’m late for work and I didn’t see where… Hey, maybe you should get a Band-Aid or something for your hands. They’re bleeding, you know?” He pointed out helpfully, noting the raw palms once they were upturned to the pair. The crowd around them had seemingly lost interest once the initial action was over, and now while he glanced around he could see where all his books and notes had ended up, although their appeared to me some more papers scattered here or there then he remembered carrying.

[godsavemy]

Arthur growled. He had heard that laughter, but failed to find any humour in the situation. Determined to find the source, Arthur looked up and found himself glaring at pair of framed blue eyes and an idiotic smile.

Christ, it was just a damn brat. A brat who obviously thought Arthur was daft or had suffered some brain damage to not notice the blood on his palms.

"Thank you so much for telling me," Arthur growled out. "I would have never noticed otherwise."

[13_foundations]

“Your welcome!” Alfred replied, although it was not quite clear if he was ignoring the sarcasm in Arthur’s words or honestly hadn’t noticed it. “Things like that can get infected, so be sure to cover it up!” From the tone of his voice, the spectacled young man sounded almost like he deserved a medal for being so considerate [despite the fact he’d been the cause of the injury in the first place].

He gently but firmly wrapped his hand around Arthur’s wrist, minding the cuts pointedly, and tugged them both to their feet with ease. Brushing himself off, Alfred threw the older man another grin, noting absentmindedly that the other was just slightly shorter then himself.

“I used to get scrapes like that all the time when I was a kid. Also when I played baseball when we were in DC. It’s worse when there’s sand from the ball diamond in them, believe me!” He chattered, bending over and beginning to collect his books. He shook “A Tale of Two Cities” with a disgusted sound matching the horrable “flop” of the wet pages sticking together. “Then my dad had to use that stinging disinfectant stuff. Anyways, just make sure those cuts are clean and wrapped for a while!”

[godsavemy]

Arthur was too busy marveling how such obvious sarcasm could be missed to even think about resisting the youth's help.

Now Arthur knew he wasn't the largest bloke on the block, but he wasn't the smallest either. Yet that kid had picked him up and set him back on his feet like he was a fucking feather. And now he was being talked down to (both literally and idiomatically, he noted with some disgust) and treated like some petulant child who didn't know how to deal with a cut and needed his mum to kiss the boo-boo better.

Arthur was never one to suffer fools for long and he knew his temper was just barely being kept in check. And if he didn't want to make a further scene by blowing up at the twat, Arthur needed to leave now.

Arthur tore his eyes away from the site of the youth fishing a book out of a puddle and turned back to the pavement to his things. He didn't have time to mess about with rambling brats, anyway. He needed to get to the library, scout out some old ledges and continue to work on his--

"Oh. Oh god."

[13_foundations]

Alfred, meanwhile, had already tallied up the damage to his belongings; his notebook was ruined, but he’d only used a few pages so far and he could probably bum notes off someone else in his class. “A Take of Two Cities” would probably smell weird and be warped beyond being recognizable as a paperback, but the words were okay. And his textbooks were wicked old, they’d most likely survived worse.

“What’s up?” Alfred asked when he heard the mournful mutter, glancing over his shoulder at the stranger while dumping his scavenged items back into his backpack unceremoniously and ignoring the crinkles of protest. Then he noticed the scattered paper along the damp and dirty ground. There was a lot of it too. Had the shorter man dropped them when they’d collided? Alfred felt his stomach drop a little. “Erm… that yours?”

[godsavemy]

Arthur felt sick.

After all that. Months of writing and rewriting, then scrapping it altogether - again and again in a vicious cycle he couldn’t see to break, but seemed to be breaking him. He had thought the words had abandoned him, had thought he was through as author. But then for one brief, shining moment he had thought that everything thing would be just fine and his life could finally move from this suffocating standstill.

And then this happened.

Arthur abruptly dropped to the ground, unmindful of the pain that shot through his knees and frantically tried to salvage anything and everything.

But it was no use.

A good six pages had escaped a watery death, but the rest had fallen into the puddle that Arthur himself had landed in. The once crisp, pristine ink that Arthur had so painstakingly used ran and blended together, resembling more of psychologist’s inkblot test than a historical novel.

Arthur stared at his wasted effort and brutally clutched the parchment with his torn palms, wanting to feel the burn, wanting to distract himself from this horrible feeling that was close to swallowing him whole.

[13_foundations]

“Oh man,” Alfred muttered sympathetically, standing on the edge of the wide circle of soaked through pages. “They’re totally trashed.” That was probably an understatement, considering how the shorter guy was reacting. Alfred carefully picked up a sopping sheet. When the ink began to run over his fingers and down his wrist, he moved his grip to an upper corner. The words were fading, though he could see a line or two still clinging to life as the rest of the page melted away around it.

He couldn’t really grasp what the scattered pages were supposed to be, but for something that big to be handwritten either meant it was a super important document or that this guy obviously needed to upgrade to a computer. Was there a way for something hand written to have another hard copy available? It probably was pretty hard to save a document like it though.

“What was this, some sort of report or something?” He asked, holding out the paper to the man on his knees. “’Cause you can probably get a deadline extension or something like that.”

[godsavemy]

The inane chatter in front of him reminded Arthur precisely how he had gotten into this mess. Yes, this was no fault of his own. He had been knocked over by a fucking brat who had singlehandedly destroyed what felt like a chunk of Arthur's soul.

Arthur set aside his despair and let his simmering temper finally erupt.

"Do you have any idea what you've done? What you've ruined, you clumsy oaf," Arthur practically screeched as he violently threw the waterlogged papers at the boy.

"Or do you just not care?"

[13_foundations]

One of the tossed mass of drenched paper landed in his face, and Alfred scrambled to scrape it off, sputtering at both the act and the insults.

“Jeez, what’s your problem?” He yelled back, scrubbing his face with the back of his hand and glaring through smeared glasses.

He had felt bad before; knowing that the destruction of whatever the guy had been holding was partially his fault, no matter how unintentional. But now he was beginning to get an inkling of strong dislike towards the shorter man. After Alfred had taken the time to make sure he was okay he was being yelled at for something he hadn’t meant to do! Talk about being ungrateful!

The tall blonde clenched his fists in frustration.“It was a mistake!”

[godsavemy]

"My problem? Do you have any clue how much work I've put into this," Arthur shook the remaining pages in his hand in front of that moronic face. "How much time and dedication--" Arthur cut himself off, too choked up with fury to continue.

He breathed heavily through his nose and finally released the deathgrip he had on those last few pages, watching them flutter back down to the damp pavement. It didn't matter, they were nothing better than debris now.

Arthur took a deep breathe once, twice and composed himself enough to start yelling again. "And yes, it was a mistake. An imbecilic one that could've been avoided had you been paying attention to where you were walking!"

[13_foundations]

“I was avoiding a kid, jerk.” Alfred bit, clutching at his backpack straps and grinding his teeth together. “You call that ‘imbecilic’?”

“Or…!” He stumbled, quickly wanted to gain the upper hand in their argument. It was a bit surprising how quickly their conversation had gone sour, but he was not one to take insults without a fight. And something about the way the other blonde looked at him… the demeaning attitude, that tone of voice… Alfred didn’t just want to one-up this guy, he needed to. So he straightened pointedly, making their height difference more obvious.

“Or maybe, just maybe, you were the one being a moron; walking around with something seemingly that important!” Alfred said, gesturing at the stranger’s now empty hands before jabbing a finger at his face. At his gigantic eyebrows. “It’s called modern technology. Maybe if you had typed it, you’d have a copy safe on your hard drive back home!”

[godsavemy]

Arthur ground his teeth, not far enough in his rage to be blinded to the logic of the argument. Yes, he could have used a computer. No doubt it was easier and more efficient - and not to mention would have saved him the trouble he was in now.

Yet, Arthur found after much trial and error that a clinical keyboard and screen simply didn't inspire him like good, old-fashioned pen and paper. The smell of fresh ink on parchment, the sound of his pen scratching against a page - all made him feel like he was a true author.

Arthur didn't expect the other man to understand his methods and suspected that trying to explain himself would be an exercise in pointlessness.

"Don't you dare try to turn this back on me! And how bloody hard is it to avoid a child? Or, oh! Did he purposely try to trip you up? You poor, pathetic thing, you."

[13_foundations]

Alfred bristled. “’Pathetic’?” He was way too awesome to even be considered pathetic! He hated the idea of someone, even this jerk, thinking of him that way.

Shaking his head, as if shaking the very labeling off, Alfred continued. “I’ll have you know I’m hero material. Heroes are never pathetic!” He waved one arm, placing the other hand on his chest and insisting with his eyes and his expression.

“And I’ll have you know kids are very hard to avoid! They shoot out of nowhere! And they’re short so you can’t notice them easily! Well, you must know how that feels. Plus, if you do knock into them, they could get sent flying and get badly hurt and then their moms scream at you and you feel like a total jackass.” It was easy to fall into a babbling rant, even though he could tell it pissed the other guy off. In fact, that’s what encouraged him so much. He let a smirk begin to tug at the corner of his lips, challenging and going well with his narrowing eyes.

“I thought a grown man could take a hit better then a kid, but I guess not.”