Fic: Think We Are
Genre: humor, angst of the teenage variety, pining, the usual High School Tropes
Pairings: USUK, Prussia/Hungary, Japan/Taiwan (brief)
Rating: M
Warnings:Language to the max, sex/crude language, potentially offensive POVs and nicknames, past character deaths (noncanon), bullying, brief 'slut shaming,' passing mentions of drug abuse, and teenagers(because they need their own warning).
Summary: We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did *was* wrong. But we think you're crazy to make an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us...Note: The Hetalia/Breakfast Club fusion everyone wanted apparently! Enjoy, and drop a line if you care to let me know what you thought. The obligatory sex chapter. Without any actual sex--sorry bout that.
Think We Are
Scene Four
“Doesn't it bother you to sleep around without being in love. I mean, don't you want any respect?” - Claire , The Breakfast Club (1985)
A Snippet of Alfred
Alfred’s not entirely sure what’s led him up to this point, but he knew that a lot of it had to do with cowardice. Which he hated being, a coward.
Call him stupid, but he still believed in the heroes from his comic books, the ones that no matter how messed up their lives were, always knew what was wrong and right and fought for the right, even if people hated them for it. Alfred liked to fancy himself something of a hero, nothing as awesome as Captain America or Batman or Storm, but enough of one for high school. He was the star quarterback, the one who was going to lead his team to the championship this year and his senior year to boot. He was the one who was going to go and make something of himself in college when he made some awesome discovery in physics that would change the world. He was the one who stopped Ivan Braginski from hazing the newbies and who showed being a decent person was actually pretty cool.
But…he was also the guy who caved to Braginski’s taunts and had humiliated Feliciano Vargas to prove he wasn’t a pussy for liking guys.
That guy, well, he wasn’t very heroic.
The shitty part was that even after he’d done what he’d done, Feliciano had forgiven him when their parents had a joint conference in the headmistress’s office. His forgiveness had been quiet and sounded genuine, but Alfred could tell he was only doing it because he didn’t want to risk having to add Alfred to his list of tormentors. And, he had never felt so low in all his life. The headmistress wanted a championship football team, his parents wanted Alfred to learn a lesson, the Vargas family just wanted to put the whole mess behind them as they clearly had been through the routine before, so Alfred was sentenced to detention. Like that made everything better.
Problem was, every time Alfred met Arthur’s eyes, eyes that didn’t even know what he’d done but knew it couldn’t have been good and just weren’t even surprised…
Alfred didn’t know when it had happened, but he had become the same kind of guy he had once promised himself he wouldn’t be. And he didn’t want to be that guy anymore.
*******
Lunch passed without event (save for the utter bizarre share-time he found himself stuck in with Alfred as he shared his truly disgusting amount of food), which of course meant that the peace they’d all found themselves in was about to come crashing down around them. And it did, almost immediately after all their desks were clean and leftover food (only in Elizaveta’s case) was packed away. And, unsurprisingly, it was Gilbert who started it.
“So, what’s everyone’s fuck-count so far this year?” Arthur rolled his eyes heavenward and resisted the urge to punch Gilbert in the dick. Hard. Possibly hard enough that he could never spawn and create new, unholy terrors in his image. The last thing he wanted to discuss was his sex life, especially with Alfred sitting right next to him, making his skin itch with the desire to touch him. He glared at Gilbert, who looked completely unremorseful (even a little bit gleeful, he’d wager) at the sudden, thick cloud of tension that seemed to fill the room.
“I am so not discussing any of my private life to total strangers!”
“I really don’t think that sort of talk is very appropriate…”
“Fuck off, Gilbert, we’re not talking about that shit.”
“Why, don’t have much to talk about, you three?” Gilbert sat cross-legged on top of his desk and smiled at all of them in satisfaction. “Are you going to wait for the ‘One’? I hear that’s supposed to be the cool thing to do nowadays. Oh! Do you have promise rings and bracelets?”
Elizaveta glared hotly and aimed her frostiest look at Gilbert. “Just because we’re not all whores like you doesn’t mean you get to pretend like you’re better than us. So, you’ve had a lot of ‘so-called’ sex and maybe some of the rest of us haven’t; big deal. The only thing that means to any of us is that you lack respect for yourself even worse than any of the rest of us.”
Arthur could almost feel the temperature in the room drop as Gilbert’s lip curled at Elizaveta’s words. “Fucking and respecting yourself don’t have anything to do with each other in the real world, princess. You’re dreaming if you think they do.”
“Am I? I think that you, and people like you, like to tell yourselves that little lie so you when you’re doing whatever version of the walk of shame you get the next morning, you can pretend you’re better than all the rest of us and that you’re not lonely assholes no one even likes well enough to keep you around outside of your hook-ups.” Elizaveta flounced her hair and crossed her arms over her chest. It pressed her breasts up and even though Arthur generally didn’t go for tits, he could see the appeal of hers (and so could Alfred and Kiku as well, if the furtive staring was anything to go by). Gilbert was up and heading towards her then, which prompted Alfred to stand up and place himself between the pair of them.
“You don’t know a damn thing about me or people like me, princess, so why don’t you shut your stupid, pristine mouth and go back to your little castle in the clouds where you can flaunt how much better you are than everyone else.” Elizaveta’s faced burned and even though it amused Arthur to see her so flustered, Gilbert was getting a little too worked up. “I’ll tell you a little something too, princess. Telling yourself that we’re the lonely fuck-ups doesn’t change the fact that no one apparently wants to be with you either, unless it’s to nuzzle their faces in between your huge boobs and then toss you aside like a used up doll the next morning.”
“Shut up!”
“Hey, man, don’t talk to her like that! You’re the one who started this stupid fight with your dumb sex record thing!” Alfred looked good when he was protective, Arthur decided. All strong jaw and arms-a part of him wondered what it would feel like if those were defending him instead of Elizaveta. Silly thought because Arthur sure as fuck didn’t need any bloody protection, but still. He made quite the picture.
“Please, everyone, I really don’t think that we should be arguing like this.”
“Oh, pipe down, Honda. Do what you’re so good at doing and shut up like a good dog and let the real people talk.” Kiku recoiled back into his seat like he’d been slapped. Arthur didn’t know why that bothered him, because he and Kiku had never been especially close, but it did. He got up from his seat and grabbed Gilbert by his collar, yanking him away from everyone else and tossing him into his desk; Gilbert looked like he was going to do something stupid, so Arthur grabbed his wrist, pinned it to the table, and pressed the heel of his palm into the more sensitive bones.
“Ah, fuck man! Get off me!”
“I think you need to take a stock of your current behavior and calm the fuck down, Gil.” He stared Gilbert down, not as unnerved by the red eyes as he’d been when they’d first met, and pressed his knee into the fleshy part of Gilbert’s knee when he tried to buck Arthur off. Gilbert groaned and stopped fidgeting. “Now, I agree with you in that it’s shit to act like having casual sex is some sort of crime and automatically makes you a lonely, miserable person, but you keep acting like a wanker and I’ll make sure you don’t bother them for the rest of detention. I’m stuck here enough of my Saturdays as it is, I’m not about to get stuck here more because you’ve got your delicate sensibilities in knots because the kiddies don’t want to play along with your own little shame-game.”
“Arthur-maybe you shouldn’t-”
“If I can handle a drunken oaf of a brother on a bad night of football-and not that American shit, the real kind-I can handle one tantrum-throwing teenager, thank you very much, Alfred.” Arthur didn’t break eye contact with Gilbert. He watched as Gilbert’s face faded back to its normal, pale hue and his eyes started to clear again. “So, if I let go, will you stop threatening the others? Especially Elizaveta, because mate, I don’t think I like your chances against her as it is.”
Gilbert rolled his eyes, but there was a small nod of his head there too, so Arthur released him and stepped back; Gilbert was going to bruise where Arthur had held him down. He nodded and turned back to the others, who were watching him with a mixture of awe and terror; he raised his brow at them before he focused on Elizaveta, who didn’t look shaken at being subjected to Gilbert’s anger, but did look a little ruffled. “Now, to answer Gilbert’s question, because as crudely as he spoke, it certainly wasn’t as horrible a topic as you all made it out to be, I’ve been with two people this year and neither of them lasted especially long with me. There, not so bad now, was it?”
“Maybe it’s easy for you to talk about your conquests, but for some people it means more than that! For some people, we value our private lives and what we do in them.” Arthur crossed his arms and leaned back against Kiku’s desk as he studied Elizaveta.
“It must be hard to breathe so high up on your horse, Hedevary.”
“Arthur, don’t-” Alfred started. Arthur stared at him hard and talked over him.
“No, Alfred, I don’t think I will. Now, I may not be as cultured as you, Hedevary, but believe it or not I have my own moral and ethical compass and I do value what I do in my private life. Just because it’s not what you value in yours, doesn’t make me easy or give you the right to treat me like I am. You have no idea what I felt for any of the people I’ve been with, if it was casual or serious, if it was experimentation or something deeper, and what’s more, it doesn’t matter. Intimacy, in whatever form it takes, is not something you have the right to make me feel ashamed over.”
Elizaveta was upset now. He could see it in the tremble of her lip, the way her nails dug into her arms, the glossiness of her eyes, and while Arthur didn’t feel exactly proud that he’d done that, he felt accomplished that he’d at least given her food for thought and a different perspective that exposed ugly bits of her. She sniffed and looked away, down at her purse, and Arthur heard Gilbert give a victorious huff; Arthur glared at him and dared him to mock her because he was punching him hard enough to leave a dent if he ruined the moment.
“Well, perhaps she-perhaps it’s fear that made us pause. Not all of us can be as open as you, Arthur, and sometimes the fear of being labeled as easy is nothing compared to hearing others talk about sex and wondering if it will happen for us and if it does, if it will live up to the expectations we’ve made in our heads.” Arthur turned and looked at Kiku as he spoke in his quiet, measured voice. He spoke like he was still puzzling out his own words as they left him. “I have been with only one person, and sometimes I wonder if I was only with her because we both just wanted to not be virgins anymore or if I had honestly wanted to be with her. It’s hard to live with.”
“Who was she?” Alfred leaned forward on his desk and Elizaveta was peeking back up at them from underneath her bangs. Kiku smiled a little wanly at Alfred.
“Her name’s Mei. She was a member of my study group in calculus last semester.”
“Nice, little man,” Gilbert piped up. Kiku blushed and pointedly did not look over at Gilbert.
“Hey, I know her-that’s cool.” Alfred cupped the back of his neck and he gave everyone shy looks. “I uh-I actually you know, haven’t. With anyone. I guess I-I’ve gotten some shit about it from the team but I just-I haven’t been interested. I mean, not that I’m not interested in sex! Because I am, very interested, I just-I guess I am kind of waiting. For the right per-time. The right time.”
Alfred looked over and met Arthur’s eyes for a second before looking away quickly and Arthur felt heat lick up his spine because that had to have been deliberate. Alfred, for all his bumbling and thick-headedness wasn’t that oblivious. The problem that was facing Arthur now was how did he feel about it. Because Arthur-he was not staying when he graduated. He wanted to stretch his legs out in the big, wide world and see where they could take him, find out if he could be more than just the too-smart, fuck-up orphan and be someone his parents wouldn’t mind telling everyone who could hear that he was their son. And Alfred-he still had another year and then who knew where he’d go. The idiot was a mechanical genius and understood physics in a way that made Arthur’s head spin (he was smart, but he could honestly say he didn’t get physics the way that Alfred did), and could go anywhere he wanted.
Arthur liked casual sex, but he didn’t do it often. And, he wouldn’t want Alfred casually, that much he knew, which was part of why it was so much easier to not think about the possibility of a ‘them’ and slot Alfred into the ignorant jock category in his mind. Being stuck here with him, having to watch him up close, stripped bare, and smiling-it was hard to keep up the pretense of him being the ignorant jerk when he so clearly wasn’t. It would be easier on both of them if they didn’t rekindle anything that could’ve been between them; hadn’t Arthur already reconciled with the fact that his life hardly ever went the way he wanted it to? He swallowed and looked down at his knees, not knowing what he was looking for there but at least it kept him from looking at Alfred.
“I-I haven’t either, Alfred.” Elizaveta’s voice was softer than Arthur had ever heard it before and she moved cautiously from her chair to sit on the edge of the desk, like everyone else was. Her eyes looked red, but it didn’t look like she’d been crying. She was looking at Alfred when she spoke, but if she didn’t want the rest of them to hear, she wouldn’t have said anything. “I-this year, I almost did, once. Right before Roderich and I broke up we almost did. But I-it didn’t feel right to me and I told him I didn’t want to. And as considerate as he was, he dumped me and called me a teasing whore who had wasted his time. I thought we were in love and he just wanted to fuck me-is that the story you all wanted to hear?”
She glared at him as she spat out her story, but before he could say anything, Gilbert chimed in. “Just because he was a dick about sex doesn’t mean that it’s all bad, and it sure as fuck doesn’t mean that you’re a whore any more than anyone else is. Consensual sex is the only way to hang, and if he dumped you for exercising you’re right to say hold the fuck up, then I think you dodged a bullet and should just be thankful that his lame ass won’t ever get to touch those glorious tits again, princess.”
Elizaveta blinked at him and Arthur couldn’t blame her bafflement. Arthur had grown to know Gilbert very well throughout the years they’d been stuck in detention with each other, and if there was one thing Arthur had never heard Gilbert give, it was comfort of any kind. And yet, here he was, basically telling Elizaveta that she was worth more than some bugger who only thought about himself (something that Arthur fully agreed with and would’ve said so a little less crudely had he been given a chance) in his own way. Arthur glanced over and took in Gilbert’s face, the way his eyes were burning with belief in what he’d said and focused solely on her. As a connoisseur of pining, Arthur recognized the faint threads of longing in those eyes and he would have outright laughed if they air wasn’t so volatile between all of them still.
“I-thank you, Gilbert. I think.” She tilted her head and gave him a small, private smile that looked real. “I honestly wouldn’t have expected you to be so-well, to be honest, I thought you’d be an asshole if you found out I was a virgin, much less Alfred.”
“Yeah, well, I am but an onion and have many a layer, even if you just usually see the fucked up ones.” He didn’t return the smile, but he did smirk a little kinder. “Well, my turn, is it? I have had the pleasure of having…no carnal relationships this year.”
They all stared at him before Elizaveta started to laugh a little hysterically. “So-so you made that huge deal all about sex and having and you haven’t even-” She started to hiccup she was laughing so hard, and soon, Alfred, Kiku, and Gilbert were laughing along with her. Arthur chuckled a little and felt like hitting Gilbert again. Honestly, he was surprised that he was still surprised by Gilbert’s antics; he got into a huge fight with everyone (mostly Elizaveta) over an issue that was apparently just a theory for him. Christ.
“Went a bit buck wild last year-haven’t really found anyone I liked this year. The problem with casual sex is that, eventually, you start to get picky, which is a pain in the ass. You want a challenge, and I don’t mean that as like a game. I mean someone who challenges you as a person. It’s way more interesting that way.” Arthur rolled his eyes as he and Elizaveta stared at each other-they looked like they were about to pounce and Arthur truly did not want to witness that in any capacity.
“So, really, what we’ve come up is that sex is really fucking complicated. Did I read that right?” Alfred grinned at all of them, still chuckling a little to himself over the words. “Because that’s what I got. No matter whether you have lots of sex with different people, sex with just one person, or no sex at all, it’s always a fucking mess.”
“It’s supposed to be; otherwise I’d imagine it’d get boring.” Alfred met his eyes and his smile softened again. Arthur didn’t want to look away.
*******
A Snippet of Gilbert
Fuck. I am getting attached to these fuckers and all their problems. Makes me seem almost normal. Let’s do a roll call, shall we?
First up, we have our enigmatic Kiku Honda who actually isn’t as big of a dweeb as I thought. Perfect is as perfect does, so naturally he’s fucked six ways to Sunday. Treatment is as follows: need to get him shitfaced because guy needs to let loose and then need to get him to man-up about his study-buddy fuck-buddy. Reason for problems? Parents, like always.
Second, Alfred Jones, resident all-star athlete who looks like he stepped out of a fucking Tommy Hilfiger ad, and is here for mysterious reasons that aren’t really that mysterious. Doesn’t this jackass know that Feli is my baby brother’s best friend? Whatever, he probably doesn’t. Anyway, the guy has everything but confidence in himself and depends on what others think of him, probably the way a zombie relies on brains. Reason for his problems? Fucking parents and his solution is sitting across from him because I could seriously cut the sexual tension between those fuckers with a knife.
Third, Arthur Kirkland, our charming delinquent smarty-pants who’s got way too many issues to even list. Surprisingly though, he just might be the least fucked up one here. He definitely is the only one I know doesn’t deserve to be here and yet always is, in the great Circle of Detention. Man has got a fucking Vulcan death grip and has a dangerous knowledge of hand-to-hand combat skills. Reason for his problems? His parents, though not in the same vein as everyone else. He’s got two solutions, one is getting the fuck outta dodge the minute he can and the other is sitting across from him because again with the tension and the knife cutting.
Fourth, we have Elizaveta Hedevary, seriously smoking hot, greatest tits known to man, and possibly the most repressed bitch to walk this earth. I can’t even begin with her-Mommy and Daddy Issues, Rich Girl Issues, Mean Girl vs. Who I Really Am Issues, I Just Wanna Be Loved Issues, the list goes fucking on. She’s not a moron, which both helps and hurts her because it probably kills her brain to have to act the way she does, but she still chooses to be the Head Bitch in Charge so brain cells may have started to die out. Reason for her problems? A little bit of society and a lot of her, ding ding ding! Parents strike again. I’d say the solution to her problem is my dick…no, actually, I’m sticking with that. Well, and probably a good look in the mirror that doesn’t involve reapplying lip gloss. But mostly, I think my dick would work out a lot of her stress.
And last but never least, we’ve got me, Gilbert Beilschmidt, all around nut-case and grade-A example of parental failure. I know my own problems so fuck listing them and I know the reasons too-Poor Little Rich Boy Syndrome and Unloved Son Problems which are both brought on from a bad case of ‘what is parental compassion’ parents. I have no fucking idea what my own solution would be, but I suspect it will probably involve drugs and massive amounts of therapy in my future. Or, you know, a decent lawyer.
*******
Vernon Germania hated Saturday detentions. With a fiery passion.
Part of him knew he should check in on the hellions (God only knew what the Gilbert had gotten up to in his absence), but the larger part of him, the part that resented the headmistress for having these foolish weekend detentions, just didn’t care enough. He had a good book, some fresh fruit to snack on, and he wasn’t looking at Arthur Kirkland and his smug, know-it-all smirk (made worse by the fact that he probably really did know it all). He was happier this way.
And if the school caught on fire, he’d know who to blame.
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