Fic: The Movement of Language (5)
Title: The Movement of Language
Characters/Pairings: USUK(/US), ensemble (mentioned SuFin, NethCan, Frain, very mild GerIta, AusHun, DenNor, Romano->Belgium and past SpUK)
Rating: T - mild language
Summary: In a hypothetical experiment, a student takes reactant A (one grumpy English teacher) and mixes it with reactant B (one enthusiastic Physics teacher) in a glass beaker (life), stirring the mixture before adding substance C (updates and advice from strange friends, fed-up family, life, the universe and everything). The student witnesses a colourful reaction. Assuming all reactants are used up in the experiment, what would the end product be that is created from this reaction? (Answer: Two idiots, very slowly, very surely, just maybe realising that they might be falling in love.) Teacher!AU. KM de-anon.
Chapter: 5/?
i. - xiii.
xiv. - xxiii.
xxiv. - xxviii.
xxix.
*****
xxx. teenage dreams in a teenage circus
Alfred spends his Tuesday at Kiku’s. The guy has things pretty cool at his place, all neat furniture and arranged flowers and fancy sliding doors Alfred keeps trying to open the wrong way and suddenly wham! Best Home Entertainment System Alfred has ever seen. Ever. And it’s all piled up cushions around it and games consoles and speakers and they spend the better part of the day there playing games and munching cheese-its and these…bean-paste-thingies Alfred can never remember the name of but they taste pretty good so it’s fine. They go online to play Mario Kart on the Wii just to prove they can kick the butts of the whole wide world and take some names (even if there are a few deluded little miis out there called Voldemort and Jesus - seriously, ‘the fuck is with that?); Alfred swears he’s going to leave Kiku eating dust, but Kiku has to ‘respectfully disagree with that course of action,’ which is totally just his super-polite way of saying ‘bring it on.’
Alfred goes home after dinner - Kiku is awesome and feeds him; that’s true friendship, right there - and gets nagged into doing some ironing by his brother despite his protestations that the creases in their clothes are very au natural and isn’t that supposed to be fashionable right now? Matthew disagrees and just arranges a vase of yellow tulips - their house always seems to be filled with goddamn tulips. (Alfred knows exactly where Mattie’s getting them all from too - the Dutch bastard (whatshisface) who works for his twin at the café - but Matt only blushes and clams up when pressed so Alfred sulks in silence and makes sure to give the Dutch guy a pointed glare every time he meanders into Trillium. He thinks the glares have been noted, too; the food he’s ordered has shown up burned far too many times for it to be a coincidence.)
After ironing comes the great Arguing Over the Television Remote, but Alfred and Matthew finally settle for watching a documentary on dinosaurs and this weird film neither of them pay any attention to as they’re too busy tossing caramel-covered popcorn at each other’s heads. Mattie hits the sack after that and Alfred goes for his Xbox, shooting zombies and aliens and alien zombies and generally nasty icky things until he crawls to bed himself at around half-three in the morning.
And wakes up Wednesday morning at 10.56 (his digital clock cheerfully announcing the time in blue) to the doorbell going off.
Fuck.
The doorbell’s rung again before Alfred can toss his covers off and scramble out of bed, flinging himself to the window that overlooks the front of the house to see - yup, Arthur. Dusty-blond prissiness and the mini. (Someday - someday - Alfred’s gonna convince him that that thing’s a toy, not a car.) Alfred’s only in his boxers (Superman!) and his t-shirt of the day before which kinda sucks ‘cos Arthur’s gearing up to ring the doorbell again (stupid Mattie going to work already and expecting Alfred to actually wake up on time; of all the days to sleep in) so Alfred slams his window open and leans out -
“I’m taking a dump!”
And slams his window shut again to the sound of spluttering and ‘did you have to tell the whole sodding street?!’
Genius.
Alfred dresses in record time - jeans off the floor, new boxers so Arthur’s flat look won’t feel as half as condemning as it usually does, dog-tags jingling around his neck as he yanks his t-shirt off over his head and abandons it for a button-up he ironed the night before but forgot to dump in his closet. His teeth get brushed as he hops around the bathroom putting on his socks and sneakers (he has skills), and he even remembers to flush the toilet so the sound of the drains will echo down below and give credence to his (white) lie. He puts on his deodorant as he’s dashing down the stairs, tossing the can somewhere in the hallway behind him before he opens the front door, as presentable as he’s even going to get in six minutes thirty-four seconds. (Matthew will find the deodorant when he comes in later, stepping on it and skidding straight into the nearest wall. Alfred gets to apologise to his brother for a week.)
“The hero is here~!”
“About bloody time. What were you doing up there, writing your will?” Arthur’s complaints never change, apparently, inside or outside of school. Alfred just laughs as the other man rises from where he’d been slouching against the wall to the side of the door - and then he stops, abruptly, just looking at his visitor.
Arthur’s out of his usual white-collar shirt and tie ensemble for the day, wearing slim jeans and a black wool turtleneck that looks big and soft and warm, and Alfred has to take a few minutes to stop and stare at him just to understand this deeply profound difference, what it is that’s there.
Arthur frowns at the look, steps back a little, stares back. “What?”
“You,” Alfred tells him seriously, watching Arthur’s eyebrows furrow further in confusion - and then Alfred grins, reaching out to ruffle his co-worker’s hair. “Man, you actually look human.”
He gets a smack for that - not like he expected anything else, really - but Arthur is quickly distracted with rummaging in the shoulder-bag he has resting on one hip, pulling something out and all but shoving it into Alfred’s arms. “Wha-?”
Arthur stubbornly refuses to look at him. “Don’t misunderstand - I want that back. But it was just lying around in the road at home and inconveniencing everyone - so you may have use of it, since you asked for some recommendations. Really, it was either that or damaging it trying to cram it onto my shelves, and even you are a better alternative than a damaged book.”
Alfred perks, ignoring pretty much everything Arthur says other than ‘recommendations.’ “You’re loaning me one of your books?” He’d thought Arthur had forgotten about the rec-thing, what with the shoe-thing, and the books-thing, and the…other things. Lots of other things. It’s…nice, that Arthur’s remembered, despite the whole ‘I was ignoring you on purpose hamburger-head’ thing he has going on. “Thanks!”
“I already said -”
“Goodnight Mister Tom?” Alfred flips the book in his grasp to read the title, brushes the image of a young boy carrying a battered suitcase on the cover with his thumb. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“…It’s actually aimed at children,” Arthur says and Alfred watches him out of the corner of his eye, wondering if this is yet another one of his co-worker’s digs at his intelligence - but Arthur’s expression is different from how it usually is when Alfred’s being insulted, neither smirking nor apathetic. Serious, then. “But it touches on some pretty important issues people of all ages ought to pay attention to.”
“I’ll start on it tonight,” Alfred promises, steps back into the hallway of his home for a few seconds to set the novel on the table near the door and snag his house keys, wallet shoved into his back pocket. Comes back out again to lock the door. “The kid on the front the main character?”
“William Beech, an evacuee during the Second World War. He’s one of the main characters, yes.”
“Pretty modern then?” Arthur nods, zips his bag up again as Alfred hums and shoves his keys in another pocket - yeah, he has lumps on his ass because of it, but his is a lumpy ass of style. “Almost expected you to toss me something older.” (Isn’t that what English teachers do?)
Arthur tilts his head - it kinda makes him look like a confused cat - and leads the way to his (wannabe) car on the curb. “Like what?”
Alfred just shrugs. “I dunno. Jane Eyre or War and Peace or something.”
Arthur makes a face. (Alfred doesn’t exactly see the face per say, distracted by the beep the mini makes as the locks open - but he can feel it almost, scrunchy-nosed and not-quite-grumpy but what-are-you-talking-about and kinda like a mixture between a hmph and a meh (if Arthur even knows what a meh is - the guy totally lives in the wrong century).)
“Whilst War and Peace is, undoubtedly, an…important text in the history of literature,” Arthur says, “I’d have to be a certain special kind of sadist to hand you a copy to go through as a bit of light reading.”
Alfred finds the sky particularly interesting all of a sudden.
“…Jones.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“That’s my point!”
xxxi. are we nearly there yet?
“…Why would I bother passing you one of the literary classics to read, anyway? They’re - Jones, I’ve warned you before. Leave the unicorn alone or I end you. They’re recommended by countless critics and writers elsewhere already.”
“Dude, I never touched your unicorn! It’s way too gir- Artie, you totally need to watch the road instead of glaring at me, because if we crash and die I am so making your afterlife a living hell. There’ll be bits of my awesome hero particles floating around poking bits of your old-man particles for eternity, even when you end up as a mushroom or something.”
“Why the hell would I be a bloody mush-”
“Anyway, the critic-guys and what they say - that’s different.”
“But a mushroom?”
“Sometimes, you’ve just gotta suck it up and be fungi.”
“And you’d know all about that, of course.”
“Eh, I grow on people.”
“Keep telling yourself that. And why, exactly, are the opinions of the many literary critics of the world irrelevant?”
“…You’re totally just trying to stop me calling you a mushroom again, aren’t you.”
“Jones.”
“Fine. So - yeah. Firstly, none of those guys are here to yell at me.”
“…It worries me somewhat that you feel you need someone to yell at you for you to read a book.”
“I read! And. And it’s a personal rec, isn’t it. From you. And I know you, and vice versa. Sorta.”
“…I said it was just lying around -”
“And none of those guys are my friend. Or a mushroom-to-be, prob- OW! Both hands on the wheel!”
xxxii. it takes one to know one
Matthew’s café sits just off one of the main roads leading into the town centre, tucked away down a side-street behind an Irish pub, with a hairdresser on one side and a music shop on the other - the kind selling staff-paper and instruments, wall-to-wall with beautiful noisy things. Alfred longingly eyes the guitars in the window every time he passes by, dragged away by the scruff of his shirt - if not by Matthew, then by Schylar (Skye), Fan, Anh or William, Matthew’s four employees who are all far too used to their boss’ twin randomly bursting into the café with some stupid idea or other and pleading with Matthew to let him make burgers.
Trillium does good business: it’s closed on Tuesdays and Sundays; Saturdays is mostly all teenagers or adults with younger children and bags of shopping; lunchtime on weekdays is young working adults and the afternoons are the older generation, people catching up with friends. They open at eight-thirty am for snacks and tea/coffee to take out and ten am for food, closing at six pm (half-six on Thursdays for late shopping in town). A lot of the menu is sweet - ice-cream, waffles, cakes and pastries, crêpes and (North American-style) pancakes - but they serve both hot and cold sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs and baked/jacket potatoes (Matthew’s timid suggestion to his staff once that maybe they try poutine had been met with looks of sheer horror, and he’d never suggested it again), and on Mondays, when Skye isn’t working and the kitchen he usually rules with an iron fist has been handed into Fan’s capable hands, there are vegetable spring rolls.
“Your brother is outside,” Anh announces when she saunters back from clearing a table near the café front, setting the plates and cutlery she’s carrying down on the counter Matthew’s manning for a moment to tie back her black hair where it’s coming loose from its ponytail. (She must be in a good mood - she usually refers to Al as ‘that idiot.’) “He is drooling over the guitars next door again with some other guy.”
Matthew nods, smiling a little unsurely at his employee’s solemn expression. Anh doesn’t smile terribly often, but she’d managed to have a screaming row with Alfred a good while back when he’d dropped by to see Matthew on her third day at work and, upon asking where Anh was from and hearing ‘Vietnam,’ had inquired whereabouts in China that was again? (They still don’t get along terribly well, though not - to Al’s credit, even though he really should work on his geography - for lack of sincere apologies.) “He mentioned he’d be coming over today for lunch with his friend from work.”
“Should I child-proof everything now, or do you wish to leave it until he comes in so you can gauge his behaviour and work from that?”
“E-eh-”
“I have masking tape,” Anh says and Matthew strongly resists the urge to ask why the woman has it, because Anh sometimes does have strange things she does that only Fan seems to understand, nodding sagely along on the days when they’re both in. (Maybe it comes with their tolerance for Anh’s father’s home-brewed sake.)
“It should be fine,” Matthew tells her, and Anh nods, picking up her load of plates once more to carry them through to the kitchen - where she will, no doubt, warn Skye and William of the impending noise approaching Trillium’s doors.
It’s maybe five minutes later Alfred finally pulls away from the guitars and crashes into the café - dragging a protesting Arthur along by the wrist (Al seems to have established a pattern) - the front door swinging wide open on its hinges and almost smacking into the wall behind. (Arthur, calls ‘idiot!’ (he and Anh should get along well) and catches the handle before it wrecks the wallpaper.)
“Mattie~!”
Matthew refuses to be impressed. (At one of the tables, one of the regulars to the café recognises Alfred, hastily putting a pair of headphones in her ears so she can continue drinking her hot chocolate and reading her book unbothered. Others, less acquainted with Alfred’s presence, just stare.) “You finally decided to come in?”
“His stomach growled,” Arthur provides rather dryly, closing the door before Alfred drags him over to the counter, already insisting to all and sundry that everything Arthur’s coming out with is a grievous lie intended to blemish Alfred’s impeccable honour. (Alright, so Al doesn’t actually use the word ‘impeccable,’ but that’s clearly the effect he’s going for and is a lot easier to express than the random indignation he chooses to utter in its stead.) “Good afternoon, Matthew.”
“Maaatt,” Alfred says, cutting in before Matthew can reply with a ‘good afternoon’ of his own, “did’ja know Artie here can play guitar?”
Matthew opens his mouth again to eloquently query how on earth he’s supposed to know Arthur plays guitar when he’s only met and talked to the man once before, but Alfred’s still going.
“’Cos he does - dude,” and here Alfred pauses with the light of true inspiration in his eyes, awe and wonder and distilled genius that makes some deep, intrinsic part of Matthew want to groan and hide under his duvet at home before Alfred can open his mouth (Arthur’s expression shows a similar feeling) - such expressions herald either great change, or great stupidity. Sometimes both. “He’s totally like that guy out of School of Rock. Only less old. Probably. Or fat. Or stoned.”
“…So,” Matthew says, “that’s…nothing much like him at all?”
Alfred stares at him. “He plays the guitar.”
Matthew restrains himself from pointing out that quite a few people in the world play guitar. (Arthur has just buried his face in his only free hand, and is trying to look like he has absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of the loud man who’s kidnapped his other limb and is clinging to it rather possessively.) “…Why don’t you go take a seat? Give me a few minutes, and I’ll come take your order.”
Anything to get Al away from the counter and to stop him traumatising customers.
“Right away,” Alfred beams - and then drags Arthur off to a table near the windows, where the autumn sunlight streaks in. (Arthur doesn’t complain as much this time - though he does, when they get to the table and sit down, rather politely offer to beat Alfred with a chair if Alfred doesn’t let go of his hand at once.
Alfred lets go of his hands and starts laughing awkwardly. Because he’d never noticed what he’d been doing at all before Arthur had pointed it out, nope.
Matthew goes to grab William to man the till, and asks Anh to check how many bandages they’ve got left in their first aid kit. (Just in case.))
xxxiii. coffee and a kick in the pants
They order pancakes with maple syrup (Arthur had tried to ask for golden with his but Jones had made frantic ‘no’ motions across the table - Matthew’s face looking steadily more and more disapproving with every passing second had convinced Arthur to change his mind), a pot of English Breakfast tea with milk for Arthur and a mug of coffee (quickly drowned in so much cream and sugar it’s almost solid) for Jones, Matthew bringing over their drinks with a smile before disappearing into the kitchen.
“Y’know,” Alfred starts without preamble, looking over his mug to where Arthur’s carefully pouring his tea through the strainer Matthew has so graciously provided him with the teapot and small milk-jug, “tea has next to no calories until you put other stuff in it?”
Arthur continues pouring his tea - and then adds some milk, regardless of the conversational matter. His drink is still better for him then the horrendously caffeinated crap Jones is downing. “I’m aware. I never knew, however, that you were the type to be counting calories, Jones.”
Alfred colours pink. “…Energy Transfer and Transformation. It’s part of the curriculum; Braginski does more on the food bit with his Bio stuff, but I teach the lower years too.”
“And leave half of them starry-eyed and reeling.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, Mr. Jones,” Arthur says, pitching his voice half an octave higher, softer and girlier to match the breathless flutterings of the thirteen year-olds he has to scold on an almost regular basis for gossiping about their (younger) teachers in class instead of working. “He’s sooooo handsome; I met his eyes over the desk today when he was helping Marissa adjust her microscope and he has the cutest smile - I swear. My heart just stopped. I could listen to him go on about renewable energy sources forever, even if he is making dolphin noises -”
Jones just stares at him.
Arthur stops his impersonation and frowns back. “…You can’t tell me you’ve never once noticed them talking about you? They’re like a gaggle of geese.”
“Well, yeah. I have.” So there’s hope for Jones yet. “The fact your impersonation of a teenage girl is so good scares me a helluva lot more tho’, to be honest.”
Arthur kicks him.
Jones sulks about it of course, elbows on the table between them as he hunches over his coffee like it’s the answer to all life’s problems. His pendant swings out of his shirt and forward with the movement, jingling - and Arthur notices for the first time it’s not a pendant at all, but silver dog-tags that would otherwise rest just below the hollow of Jones’ throat, apparently inscribed with the prat’s name. (His address would probably be more useful - ‘if lost, please return to such-and-such; we wouldn’t inflict any other village with this idiot.’) Interesting.
“’Going to the bathroom,” Jones announces suddenly, standing up so abruptly his chair legs screech on the floor.
Arthur just shrugs - it’s women who hit the toilets in droves - sipping his tea and pretending not to notice when Alfred (supposedly) discreetly slaps something on Arthur’s back as he passes by on the way to the men’s. If they’re back to that again -
Well. Even teachers need to be taught lessons sometimes.
xxxiv. if we’re keeping score
Alright, so ‘kick me’ isn’t the Most Inventive Idea Ever, but there’s something timeless about the classics and Alfred had had the sign in the pocket of his jeans for a few days, after he’d tried slapping it on Mattie one morning. (Mattie had slapped him in the head; the tulips are really screwing with his sense of humour.) Finding it upon sitting down and then slapping it on Arthur’s back as he’d passed had been an act of pure genius, if Alfred does say so himself, especially since, when he saunters back from the toilets, Arthur’s still wearing the thing, utterly oblivious.
Man, it feels good to get away with these things.
“Something funny?” Arthur asks him when he sits down again, green gaze mildly curious - and Alfred realises he’s still grinning about getting one-up on Sir Grumpalot, hastily wiping the expression from his face.
“Nah, just,” attempting to come up with an excuse, “figured out how I’m gonna beat one of the bosses in my new game at home. S’been botherin’ me for a while.”
“Well,” Arthur says, and smiles tranquilly as Alfred picks up his abandoned mug of coffee to take a deep swallow, “good luck with that.”
Alfred spits his drink all over the table.
“The hell did you put in my drink?!”
Arthur says something - no doubt protesting his innocence - but Alfred’s far too busy grabbing the napkins provided on the table and using them to try and scrub his tongue, to rid himself of the horrible - horrible saltyickyew flavour in his mouth. (It doesn’t work.) Tries not to feel sick.
“You,” Alfred says, pauses to scrub at his tongue a bit more. Grimaces.
“Is there something wrong with your coffee?” Arthur inquires, ignoring the wadded ball of used-napkin Alfred tries to chuck at him in disgust, Alfred’s blue glare along with it.
Alfred glares at Arthur some more - evil sneaky jerk. “That was good coffee.”
“And yet you spat it out all over the table.”
“You put something in it while I was away!” Salt - sauce? Salt and sauce? Something. It tastes foul.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Arthur says, smooth-faced and demure. (Internally, Alfred adds Arthur to the list of People Never to Play Cards for Money Against, shortly after Kiku.) “Would you like something to mop up the tablecloth, since you appear to have used up all the napkins?”
Alfred nods, sulking - and then stares in disbelief as Arthur goes, not for his bag to produce some Kleenex or…whatever like Alfred had been expecting, but for his back, casually plucking off the ‘kick me’ sign Alfred had placed there and extending it out for him to take.
…Some days Alfred really doesn’t like Arthur Kirkland.
Mattie brings their pancakes out on a tray a few minutes later, smiling until he sees the mess made of the table. Alfred gets a slap upside-the-head for his part in it - the justice system in Britain clearly sucks - and Matt changes the tablecloth, starting on a list of Alfred’s many faults right there in the café as Alfred tries to protest at the injustice of it all and Arthur - well, Arthur smirks, but he gets up to order Alfred another coffee (Mattie takes the other cup away to get dumped) and comes back with it by the time the table’s laid out again so Alfred refrains from stealing any of his pancakes. (Eyes them longingly, but doesn’t steal any of them, busy pouring syrup over his own.)
They eat - relatively peacefully, too, Alfred accidentally knocking Arthur’s leg under the table partway through but Arthur only shifting his own limb out of the way with a distracted ‘hm,’ busy laying waste to Mattie’s pancakes as quickly as they deserve to be laid waste to. Arthur still manages to make it look posh tho’, all delicate little squares on his fork, cutlery set down when he goes to take a sip of his tea.
Alfred catches his eye. “Hey, ‘bout Halloween -”
Arthur sets down his drink again, his cup chinking against the saucer quietly. “Yes? What about it?”
“Are you still mad at me?” Arthur looks blank. “Tino’s party. Thing. He invited me.”
“…And…?”
Alfred suddenly, and rather inexplicably, feels like fidgeting in his seat. Arthur has his default teacher face on, unreadable, set like stone, and, just like that, Alfred feels like he’s about fifteen years younger and staring blankly at a Shakespearian sonnet with no fucking clue what he’s supposed to tell the teacher asking him to explain its meaning to the class. “I thought you didn’t want me to go? I mean you were.” Grumpy. Irritable. Annoyed at being disturbed. Flustered. Sharp-tongued and glaring. (Cute.) The same as usual. “You didn’t look very happy when I was being invited, is all.”
“I didn’t look happy when you were being invited, Jones,” Arthur says, and Alfred dearly wishes Arthur would lose the teacher-face and go back to the little amused half-smile he does now and then or his usual pissiness, because both of those are easier to understand than stoicism, “because you were using me as a bloody armrest.” Ah. “Do I look like I have ‘sofa’ written on my forehead?”
“Er.” Alfred looks at his colleague’s face, tousled blond hair over darker brows and green-grass eyes. Maybe Arthur looks so grumpy (nearly) all the time because he looks so young. He probably gets ID’d a lot at bars and stuff. “Well, you could maybe fit it under your fringe-” Arthur scowls, and Alfred hastily amends the rest of his statement. “No, no sofa. Totally sofa-less. Not even beanbag.”
A beat.
Alfred coughs, looking down at his plate again and beginning to cut up what’s left of his pancakes. No eye-contact. (Don’t provoke the beast.) “…So would you give me a ride to the party on Saturday, then?”
“No.”
“Aw, but you said you weren’t mad about that-!”
Arthur shakes his head. “I’m not driving there myself; I’ll be drinking, so I’m bussing it.”
“And getting back?”
“Taxi.”
“Is your boyfr-” Arthur glares again, “flatmate-person coming too? Frankie.”
“Francis.”
“Him,” Alfred says, waving off the correction with one hand. He’s used to it. “’Cos if you’re bringing him I’ll ask Mattie if he wants to come along.” And split his own taxi cost with his bro.
Arthur shrugs. “The frog’s perfectly capable of bringing himself if he wants to come along; he’s big enough, daft enough, and all that. I think he’s working this Saturday, though - he’s saving everything for Halloween itself; one of his friends is throwing a costume party. He keeps parading his sodding costume in my face and going on about the elaborate frills.”
“You should stick it in the freezer,” Alfred tells him seriously, and is rewarded with half a grin. Alright - progress!
“And contaminate the food?”
Possibly a problem. “Are you going too?”
Arthur is, it turns out - because he’s acquainted enough with Francis, and with ‘that other idiot,’ (Alfred doesn’t quite dare to ask who the other guy is; Arthur looks like thunder even using the epithet) and the invitation had been extended to him as par for the course - and as an aristocratic vampire, apparently, all cape, waistcoat, top-hat and cane with sharp sharp teeth.
“Photos,” Alfred insists, their ankles knocking again under the table. Both of them just leave their feet there, “or it never happened.”
Arthur just looks at him flatly. “It hasn’t happened yet, Jones.”
“You know what I mean,” Alfred points his fork at Arthur, sticking to his point. “There has to be photos after.”
“Fine-”
“And,” Alfred says, cuts across Arthur and gets a raised eyebrow to compliment the flip-flop his stomach suddenly makes. “And you can call me Alfred, y’know.”
Arthur frowns at him.
“You never do,” Alfred goes on, watches the wheels turn in Arthur’s head. “’Cept when you yell at me, but then you yell out my full name and make everybody jump so it doesn’t count. You always call me ‘Jones.’”
“But-” Arthur starts, but Alfred cuts him off again.
“Dude, aren’t we friends?”
Arthur stares at him - and goes pink. It seems to start in Arthur’s cheeks and at the back of his neck at the same time, a hot flush across the sharp bones of his face, down the line of his throat and to the tips of his ears that just keeps spreading and spreading as Alfred watches, ink in water, Arthur’s pale skin a perfect conductor for all the darkening pink.
Alfred doesn’t get what’s so embarrassing, but hell, if it’s not an interesting reaction to get. “…Arthur?”
Arthur coughs, and deliberately looks aside, out of the window beside them at the few people passing by. “As if I’d be friends with an idiot like you.”
Oh. Oh. Well then. (Way to kick someone when they’re down.) Alfred droops, setting down his fork. His pancakes are all gone.
“…I do, however,” Arthur says hesitatingly, and Alfred finds himself glancing up again, suddenly hopeful again and fascinated by how Arthur is still red (isn’t that bad for the brain?), still looking out of the window at the autumn afternoon, “find myself more amenable to tolerating you than I used to be. Whether that’s a sign of your infuriating persistence or of the declining state of my sanity is anyone’s guess, really, but I - I don’t dislike spending time with you so much, idiotic as you are; God knows you need a babysitter - I dread to think of what you get up to unsupervised -, and you seem to have lumped me with the job. Really, I’m doing a service to the community-”
…For an English teacher, Arthur sure branches out of speaking English rather quickly and into Arthur-speak.
Alfred deliberately bumps his knee under the table, regarding Arthur thoughtfully with his chin propped up on one hand, trying not to grin when the other man jumps and shoots him a quick, startled glance from under his lashes. “I’m totally saying we’re friends for short, y’know. Your thing’s way too long.”
“Yes, well. For convenience’s sake -”
“Convenience’s sake, yup.” Alfred can work with that, no prob. (Old man logic; Alfred’s met advanced astrophysics that makes more sense than Arthur sometimes.)
“…Alright then,” says Arthur, pauses and studies the bottom of his cup like he’s trying to read his fortune from it. (…Thinking about it, he probably can tell his fortune from it, an’ all.) Quieter - “That should work, Alfred.”
Alfred beams like he’s swallowed the sun, golden-bright warmth flaring from the drowsy embers that have been inside of him most of the afternoon and spilling out through his smile, a giddy swoop in-over and out-over and all over and it’s amazing and awesome and. And suddenly everything and Arthur’s gone red again, hasn’t he.
Victory! Or. Something.
Yup.
xxxv. subtle as a brick
“He likes him,” says Anh, and Matthew only just restrains himself from jumping (too high) in surprise, pivoting about on his heel and ramming the woman who has apparently decided to sneak up behind him out of nowhere and speak in his ear. Guerrilla-tactics. (Having just finished with a customer behind the till and having seen the display, William snickers - Matthew internally resolves to make him do clean-up duty. For Skye, because Skye can spot a speck a dirt a mile away, especially if it’s in (his) the kitchen.)
Matthew twitches instead. Manfully. “Who?”
Anh just looks at him, and then past him to where Matthew had been looking so curiously only seconds before - at his brother, Al, and Arthur, over by the window, sunlit and gold. Alfred with a brilliant smile on his face, utterly absorbed. (It’s nice to see him happy.)
“They’re good friends,” Matthew tells Anh (doubtfully) - but his employee only scoffs, moving around the counter to clear a recently-departed table of its plates, murmuring what sounds like ‘and you think Schylar is just giving you tulips to be friendly’ as she goes.
Matthew pinks, and turns tail to assist Skye in the kitchen with the orders for a while. (If the world ends or Alfred gets slapped in the face for something, one of his members of staff will let him know about it.)
xxxvi. for my heart is a child
Alfred gets lost on his way to Tino Väinämöinen’s on Saturday night. He stops to ask directions from a harassed-looking mom carting around two kids trick-or-treating a night early (he slips the kids some candy as thanks - one does not just venture out on Halloween weekend without supplies and anyway, Alfred usually carries around a least half a dozen treats in the depths of his pockets regardless of the season) and arrives (only) an hour and a half late to find the place teeming with orange and black streamers, plastic spiders and people he doesn’t know. Bad music and possible bad company, if the noisy blond who flings wide the front door and latches onto Al - or more importantly, the pack of beer Alfred has brought along with him - is any indication.
“Christ,” said blond states, examining the six-pack with the sort of expression Alfred usually only sees reserved for particularly grimy bubblegum stuck to the bottom of your favourite sneakers, “you brought cat’s piss.”
“Hey-” Alfred starts, fully prepared to defend his choice of alcohol (it’s American; it’s the drink of heroes), but his companion has already switched his attention elsewhere, snatching up a short familiar figure wandering past in the crowd by one arm and hauling him in.
“Oi, Fridrik,” says the guy Alfred’s rapidly beginning to classify in his head as ‘The Pain,’ totally ignoring the fact that the - the kid he’d grabbed is trying vainly to pull the older guy’s hand from off of his arm before giving up a few seconds in, fixing baleful eyes on Alfred instead. (Do something about it.)
Pale-haired, light-eyed and clad in a dark t-shirt with some rainbow-beaked bird on it Al can place the kid pretty quickly - Fridrik Bi- Fridrik Bo - Fridrik Somebody-with-a-surname-too-hard-to-spell, one of Alfred’s brighter - if quieter - year elevens.
“Thought you were laser-tagging with the brat?” The Pain asks the kid.
“Going later,” Fridrik tells The Pain, and goes back to attempting to pry The Pain from off of him. With a half-respectful nod to Alfred. “Sir.”
“I could walk you over if you’d like-”
“No,” says Fridrik, point-blank, and gets pouted at.
“Man, you could be a bit kinder to your cousin-”
“Should I tell you if brother’s standing behind you and about to hit you with an umbrella?”
“Yeah,” says The Pain - before promptly turning white, releasing Fridrik and dropping to the floor as a metal umbrella whistles through the air where his head had been only milliseconds beforehand.
Fridrik appears unmoved by the display before him - ignoring The Pain whining what sounds pathetically like ‘Luuuuu’ on the floor and looking at the other pale young man standing above him casually inspecting the umbrella for potential damage. “You actually gave him time to duck.”
“I didn’t want to break the umbrella,” says the newcomer, and rams his fist down on the top of The Pain’s head when the blond tries to clutch at his leg. Yelping ensues. (Somewhere in the house, someone turns up the music they’re playing in response.) “It’s Tino’s.”
Alfred, sensing long-held personal grudges at work, quietly abandons his beer to the forces of fate and heads for the nearest door out of the hallway and away from umbrella-wielding madmen.
He hits the living-room, the corners full of groups talking around drinks, the couches and area in front of the TV taken up by people playing with their wii remotes or watching the players strike ridiculous poses. A familiar head of dun hair lurks behind a plastic skeleton on one of the room’s armchairs so Alfred sneaks up on it, announcing his presence by leaning over the back of the chair and suddenly swinging into his victim’s face, upside-down.
“Artie~!”
Blue - young - eyes stare back at him.
Er.
“…Did you shrink for Halloween?” Alfred ventures after a few seconds of shared silence, staring back at the unfamiliarly familiar face staring at him. “Because that’s cool. Even if your eyebrows sort of give you away.”
Ar- Not-Arthur scowls. “I’m Peter!”
“Also cool,” Alfred says agreeably, and resists pointing out just how stunningly alike Peter looks to Arthur through sheer force of will. Aside from the eyes and their age difference (Peter’s what? Thirteen, fourteen at the most? Probably younger) he’s Arthur all over, from the fierce scowl and pale skin down to the slant of his mouth and jaw. “D’y’know Arthur Kirkland, by any chance? Taller than you, shorter than me, grumpier than both of us. He drinks tea a lot.”
“Mr. Jones, you’re blocking my view of the TV,” says Peter, so Alfred casually shifts himself, taking a seat on the arm of the chair beside the - well, the boy, elbowing a skeleton’s ribcage out of his way in the process and looking down at Peter expectantly. Peter just frowns up at him, wearing Arthur’s I-am-actually-disgruntled-and-not-making-shit-up-for-a-change face (number 12). “You know, most kids my age that I know go to family parties to get away from school and their teachers. Why do all you jerks have to follow me home as well?”
“I teach you?” Alfred doesn’t recognise Peter as being one of his students, and he has a good memory for faces. (Names…not so much.)
Peter shakes his head. “Doctor Braginski and Mr. Yao teach me Science, but they’re not here. Miss. Héderváry and Mr. Edelstein are in the other room though, and Tino and Berwald are upstairs talking with my jerk of a brother.”
“Arthur?” Alfred guesses, just as the gamers beside them complete whatever level they’re playing and send up a cheer. Peter purses his lips but nods - man, he and Artie are so alike it’s scary. “Artie brought you h-?”
“Peter?” A call from the room’s doorway cuts Alfred off, Peter leaning forward in his seat to wave over whoever’s calling for him - Tino, as it turns out to be, who smiles and hurries forward at the sight of the boy. Alfred distracts himself by staring at the plastic smiley-pumpkin-hairband Tino’s wearing on his head. It has googly eyes, and Alfred wants one. “Peter, could you come upstairs for a little while? There’s something we’d like to discuss with you.”
“Now?” Peter asks, with all the world-weariness of a child who knows they’re due a serious discussion.
“Now,” says Tino, and Peter sighs, but slides off of the armchair and heads for the doorway, weaving between the guests. Tino turns to Alfred. “Mr. J- Alfred, we’re glad you made it. We thought you might’ve gotten lost finding the house.”
Alfred had. “Nah,” says Alfred. “Just lost track of time.”
“Sorry - I can’t talk right now, but there’s food in the next room over and drinks in the kitchen if you want to grab anything…”
“Gotcha.” Alfred salutes and Tino disappears back the way he’d come in, following Peter’s footsteps out of the room and, no doubt, upstairs for whatever ‘discussion’ it is the kid is due to be part of. Sucks to be Peter.
There is, indeed, food in the other room when Alfred pokes his head around the door to investigate - this is the room where the music’s playing, loud and energetic and in some language Alfred doesn’t understand (s’gotta be a mix-CD that’s playing; Alfred can swear he’d heard ABBA when he’d first arrived at the house), the back doors open to the garden and night outside. There’s a marquee out there and the area is stringed with lights, seats, drinks (a mini fridge) and people, some of whom appear to be trying to play a game of twister and falling flat on their faces.
Before all that, however, there is (as Peter said), Elizabeta, who is far too quick to seize Alfred’s arm when she spots him and haul him into a game of spin the bottle which seems to be mostly comprised of men. Her er- partner? The music teacher from school whose name Alfred can never recall wearily meets Alfred’s eyes when Elizabeta all but shoves Al down into the circle with the others (ignoring all protests of ‘but I only came to see if there were gummi bears!’) and just. Sighs.
That’s not a good sign, is it.
Elizabeta just smiles sweetly and seats herself between them, casually adjusting the witch’s hat she’s donned for the night so that the brim doesn’t obscure her eyes, and leans forward to spin the empty wine bottle in the circle’s heart. Alfred tries not to stare at her boobs as she does so. And then tries not to gulp too audibly when the bottle stops spinning on a resigned-looking stranger (had he been there a while?) and Elizabeta announces the rules.
Three pecks on the cheek (received), one casual make-out (given) and far too much of a gleam in Elizabeta’s eye for Alfred to ever feel comfortable in front of her again Alfred manages to escape, taking the window of opportunity presented by a hyperactive white dog skidding into the circle tailed sharply by The Pain (now beer-less, but freedom is an acceptable exchange). Alfred hastily grabs a bowl of assorted candy from the food table in the corner of the room while Elizabeta’s attention is elsewhere, diving for the kitchen before he can be dragged back into the semi-human equivalent of the One freakin’ Ring.
The kitchen has alcohol. Bottles and bottles all over one long counter and they’re all very shiny and it’s beautiful. Really, it’s a mystery that there aren’t more people sampling the wares when Alfred walks in (ducking a row of plastic bats dangling from the door’s upper lintel) - there are two women he doesn’t know, but they finish pouring some bright orange concoction in a jug barely a few seconds after he comes in and saunter out with their prize.
Alfred comforts himself by biting into a…wafer-type piece of candy that looks like a UFO from his bowl, getting the sweet powder inside the thing all down his shirt. He washes it off at the sink and watches another bunch of people fall into a giggling heap on the twister mat in the garden through the window, absently humming along when the house music switches yet again, before just giving in and hitting the lyrics.
“That’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it~ Uh-huh, uh-huh.” Swaying along in time is almost a given with the tune for Alfred, butt-wiggles, head-nodding and all. “That’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh. Doo-bee-doo, be-doo-be-doo, bee-doo~ Uh-huh!” Powder off of his shirt Alfred goes in hunt of a glass to pour himself something to drink, strutting across the kitchen tiles with all the power of awesome, thoroughly involved in himself and the song. He forgets his bowl of candy by the sink though, so turns back to get it. (Liberated from the witch’s lair, that bowl is rightfully his.) “Doo-bee-doo, be-doo-be-doo, bee-” and spots a rather recognisable form draped watching him in the kitchen doorway, arms folded across his chest. Alfred stops dead. “Doo?”
“Please,” Arthur drawls, unfolding one hand to wave it in the eternal gesture of ‘carry on’ and making no effort whatsoever to hide the amused smirk on his face, “don’t stop on my account.”
Aw. Shit.
Notes:
Fridrik and Lukas Bondevik = Iceland and Norway, respectively
Mikkel Densen = Denmark (here seen as ‘The Pain’)
Anh = Vietnam
Fan = Mongolia
Schylar/Skye = Netherlands, based on the lovely work by ArchangelUnmei (http://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchangelUnmei/pseuds/ArchangelUnmei), whose beautiful work you should all go read now. Seriously, go.
William = Luxembourg
…The terribly odd thing, aside from Matthew and all his Canadian-ness, Trillium is basically representative of all my neighbours. *noticed this after she’d assigned them in the café* Maybe they just go together naturally in my head…
(Also - from personal experience, and someone with a relatively decent alcohol tolerance, (home-brewed) Vietnamese-style sake is lethal.)
Goodnight Mister Tom - by Michelle Magorian, set during WW2 and following a young evacuee called William Beech and how he settles in with the one he’s assigned to, the ‘Mister Tom’ of the title. There’ll be more on this later in the fill so I’m not going to go into detail here, but I’d really recommend the book to anyone of any age. Or the film, which I think stays pretty true to the text. Warning - you will cry at it.
War and Peace - by Leo Tolstoy, first written in Russian and French, and well known for being a long novel. (Although it is not, in fact, the longest novel written in a Latin/Cyrillic language. The French novel Artamène (or Cyrus the Great) takes that award, with a staggering 2,100,000 words. War and Peace is…something like a quarter of that? So. Yeah.)
Jane Eyre - by Charlotte Brontë
…I need more science stuff in these notes, I really do. Just pretend I said something riveting about mushrooms here, ok? *bows out*
One of the very few things a great majority of Europeans (and, I have been informed, a great deal of the former larger colonies of European countries) seem to agree upon is that American beer is crap. Amongst other similar adjectives, but I chose one of the nicer ones.
Very little of the rest of their alcohol seems to pass the bar, with maybe an exception for some of their wines. (Which, although they might taste better, have yet to attain some of the prestige they apparently ought to.)
Alfred’s questionable choice of sing-a-long song is the notorious That’s the Way I Like It by KC & The Sunshine Band.