Delayed 12th Day: Gift for midori_lover
Title: The Breakfast Club
Author: counterheist
Recipient: midori_lover
Character(s) or Pairing(s): Romano/Spain, Prussia, England, Japan, Veneziano, peripheral China, Rome
Word Count: 3,038
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Gakuen AU, Romano’s filthy vocabulary, so much awkward, food
Summary: Breakfast may be the best way to start the day, but love confessions aren’t bad either.
Note to Recipient: Happy January! This fic doesn’t have anything to do with the movie of the same name; I was just thinking about food a lot when I wrote it. It follows your second prompt.
Toast.
Antonio’s days always started with toast, and jam, and that last little minute of sleep he could hold tightly behind his eyelids. That last precious drop of slumber he could feel when awake, but not really awake, but more awake than he would have liked. Antonio’s days always started with rolling out of bed and maybe even with the sound of happy little songbirds trilling merrily outside his window.
Toast was a good way to start the day. Toast wasn’t complicated, it went well with jam, and Antonio could carry it in his mouth while he ran to school.
Running to school was also a good way to start the day… it got the blood pumping and it made sure that Antonio wasn’t late. Getting to the gates at the stroke of the bell counted as being on time, right? Antonio thought so. And Gilbert must have thought so too.
“Tonio, you need to stop doing this!”
“Mhmmf?”
Panting, Gilbert propped himself up against the school gates while pretending not to need to, “not that I, in my amazing coolest-guy-at-school-ness, needs someone to walk with, but when you promise to walk to school with someone you need to actually walk to school with him!” Once recovered, Gilbert began to stroll nonchalantly towards the doors. He stopped short, though, just beyond where Antonio stood, to stare at something near the other edge of the courtyard. What he saw remained a mystery after the warning bell rang.
Nobody missed homeroom, not even Antonio and Gilbert. Mr. Wang made sure of that.
But Antonio did try and see who or what had caught Gilbert’s attention. The weird look on Gil’s face, as though he’d seen a cockroach the size of a grown man, was too compelling not to follow.
But nobody was there.
Huh.
Muesli.
Gilbert’s days never started with muesli no matter how many times his little brother knocked on his bedroom door, upsetting the caution tape and the signs not to enter. Gilbert didn’t sleep in, he wasn’t a lazyass like Antonio, but he needed at least a solid hour to cultivate his look. A man’s look was really, really important, and as the coolest guy at school, Gilbert couldn’t slack on his appearance. Every morning he would shower, like a boss, and towel off, like a boss, and feed his pet chick, like a boss, and talk to himself in the mirror about how great he was. The last one was really important, and therefore took the most time.
Until Gilbert heard his kid brother leave for school.
And then Gilbert’s morning routine tended to speed up.
Lunch. He’d grab the lunch Lud left out for him.
Lud’s really crappy art projects that he’d always bring home to work on and then be too embarrassed to bring to school without Gilbert’s help. Gilbert would grab those, and ask cute Feli Vargas’s opinions about them later.
Muesli. He’d grab that too.
On the way towards Antonio’s house, because Gilbert had been running to school with Antonio for the past three years, Gilbert would think about Feli Vargas. The kid was fucking cuter than bunnies, really. Gilbert would think about asking Feli to the next dance, maybe, or out on a date. All on the behalf of Lud, of course, because the kid was so sad and not even close to how cool his older brother was.
Around the time Gilbert saw Antonio speeding by he would unfortunately start thinking about that other Vargas kid. Feli had a brother, which would have been the best thing in the world, except Lovino Vargas was a total creep. He just.
He did this thing.
Where he stared.
And stared.
And sometimes he breathed, and it was so fucking creepy Gilbert sometimes had to leave the room, but usually only in his head. They were in the same homeroom, which sucked, and Mr. Wang already didn’t like Gilbert, which also sucked. Gilbert didn’t know how Antonio stood being creeped on like that. Because, as everybody who was anybody knew, Lovino Vargas had an angry, creepy, really uncool fixation with Antonio even though Antonio obviously never did anything to deserve it.
How could he?
Lovino was the opposite of Feli, and that meant he was the opposite of cute, and Antonio deserved cute things almost as much as Gilbert did. And even when Lovino wasn’t glaring at Antonio or whispering threats, Lovino had a mean streak that could reach to the moon and back. His only redeeming qualities were possibly that, on a dark and foggy day, he sort of looked like Feli. It had to be a really foggy day. Maybe a really foggy night.
“Gil, what are you looking at?”
Yeah, Gilbert had no idea how Antonio handled it, but he had a big suspicion that it had a lot to do with Antonio never noticing anything at all. Lovino the Creeper had been standing by the bike racks, unblinking, ever since Gilbert and Antonio had run up, and Antonio had only noticed Gilbert noticing Lovino’s noticing five minutes after the fact.
“Nothing. Let’s get to homeroom before Mr. Wang sends Eyebrows to get us,” Gilbert shuddered.
Antonio shuddered too.
Across the path, underneath the trees near the bike rack, Gilbert thought he saw Lovino the Creeper give a little shake as well. What a freak.
Tea.
Arthur’s days always started with tea, as any proper young man’s day should. While sipping his Earl Grey he would read the newspaper, printed and delivered to his front door, naturally, and once finished he would eat a well-rounded breakfast. Then he would gather his things. Arthur would fold up his knitting, set his very expensive camera into his briefcase, and then trudge to school before the sun had ever risen: such was the life of a very dedicated school newspaper photographer.
Once Arthur had dreamed, perhaps, of rising to the coveted position of Editor-in-Chief of The Very Respectable School Paper. That dream had died its quiet death when Kiku had transferred in to their school and Kiku’s relentless ability to stay up through the middle of the night scanning through every single minute detail of the next week’s edition transferred with him. Not that Arthur was bitter to be stuck with a job that mostly involved watching people from the other side of the lens.
He always got the best seats at school sports events. Who could complain?
Although.
Although.
If Arthur had to bear witness to any more of Lovino Vargas’s red-faced, awkward mutterings interrupting the best parts of the games there would be hell to pay. How someone like Vargas, whom nobody liked, and whom Arthur was very sure had no business attending social events as though he belonged there, managed to always get front-row seats, Arthur would never know. He bet the Creeper, as Gilbert the Moron had taken to calling Lovino, camped out the night before just so he could get the spot right behind Antonio.
And as much as Arthur thought Antonio was Also A Moron, and stupid besides, nobody deserved a stalker who went through his trash and who followed him home. Nobody, not even Antonio, deserved that. Not that Arthur had any proof that Lovino had ever done the former, but he had seen the nasty Creeper skulking around by the dumpsters once or twice, talking to himself. Arthur had wondered if those were signs that Lovino often had psychotic breaks and needed to be removed from school for his own safety and for the safety of others. (Mostly Antonio.)
But Kiku always refused to publish those pictures, so Arthur’s observations had never made it to print. Being ever a gentleman, Arthur would then delete the files from his camera’s memory, and not sell them to Gilbert. He knew Gilbert would pay top dollar, too, because he hoped physical proof of Lo-the Creeper always standing around the edges of Antonio’s life would convince Antonio that maybe he should take steps to defend himself in the event the Creeper finally snapped.
But Arthur was a gentleman, so he didn’t.
Instant miso.
Kiku’s days generally started with instant miso, and powdered tea, because he spent half his nights in the newspaper editor’s office, reading and re-reading and making changes until dawn. The hours were insane, especially for a high school weekly newspaper that mostly reported gossip and sports scores. Kiku knew this. That didn’t matter enough to stop him from devoting his all towards making each edition perfect, but at least he knew.
He had an entire cupboard of instant miso next to his desk, and a pillow tucked behind his chair. If only the news would be kind enough to walk into his office as well, and wait in a quiet line for Kiku to write it all down, life would be perfect. Unfortunately, life was not perfect. The view from the office’s tiny window was sometimes, though. It looked onto the courtyard in front of the school, and if Kiku finished his miso quickly enough he could watch every other student and teacher arrive for school.
Arthur would sit by the fountain and knit for half an hour every Tuesday and Thursday and he was certain no one was the wiser.
Mr. Wang would sometimes dance his way in from the teachers’ parking lot.
And Gilbert and Antonio were always amusing to watch, and always late, and, if Kiku needed to fill space, very useful photo-fodder for the gossip section. At least, Antonio was. Sometimes Kiku had to obey his determined and precise Editor’s Heart and edit out Gilbert sweating and collapsing in the background of the photos. He doubted his readership really minded.
He was certain one of his readership never minded at all.
On most days Kiku watched Lovino Vargas arrive with little fanfare. The Vargas brothers would lock up their bicycles and Feli Vargas would run to join his friends. Lovino would linger by the racks. And linger. And remain.
Lovino would stand there for an indecent amount of time, and Kiku would invariably turn his attention to more interesting arrivals. He knew Lovino wouldn’t go anywhere; not until Antonio arrived. Kiku wasn’t sure whether Lovino was aloof on the outside and crazy on the inside, or angry on the outside and heart-burstingly in love with Antonio at his core.
If Kiku had to place money on his conjectures he wouldn’t, but in his own mind he always profiled Lovino as more of the second type, which made his strange behavior towards Antonio very interesting indeed. That, however, was speculation. And while speculation sold newspapers, high school newspapers were free anyway. Kiku kept his opinions to his window and to himself, and knew that if necessary he could run a story about Lovino’s shocking attack on poor sunny Antonio or a story about Lovino finally confessing his Love-Love to poor sunny Antonio in under a day.
All he needed was for Lovino to act.
A little bit of espresso, and a little bit of heartache.
Lovino’s mornings always started with both, ever since he’d looked up in art class one afternoon and noticed a smile pointed right at him. During the years after that afternoon, Lovino learned that Antonio smiled at anything and everything, and most of all at nothing. During the years after that afternoon, Lovino learned that love really fucking sucked, but he didn’t learn shit about what to do about that.
His Nonno told him every evening that Vargases get what they want, my boy, even when that’s the sweet ass of another man, so chase it Lovi, like a wolf! Hunt it down! Every evening Lovino died a little more inside, but maybe that was all part of being a teenager. Probably not. It was probably only part of having to be around Nonno so much.
School wasn’t much better, for Lovino. He hated the rest of the fuckers there, sure, but that didn’t mean the rest of them had to hate him back. He’d never done anything to them! Lovino kept to himself because life was better that way. When Lovino kept to himself no one could see him make a complete fool of himself whenever he tried to talk to Antonio.
Nobody could see him escape behind the school and pace by the dumpsters, running through strategies for asking Antonio out.
Nobody could see him keep exactly one block behind Antonio when they walked home, because Antonio lived exactly four houses away from Lovino but if he realized Lovino was always going his way then Antonio would probably do something about it, or even worse, not do anything at all about it, and Lovino couldn’t handle that.
Except he could.
But he couldn’t.
Lovino couldn’t look at Antonio.
But his eyes followed Antonio everywhere Antonio went and it was so fucking aggravating that it was all Lovino could do not to scream in the middle of homeroom. In the middle of homeroom, where he sat two seats behind Antonio and one to the left, which was the perfect spot for watching Antonio’s shirt ride up whenever he reached down to pick up a pen.
Lovino was never going to survive high school at this rate.
Oh, he tried. He went to football games; he went to every single one, even though he’d tried out for the team but the captain hadn’t even let him past the first tryout which was fucking ridiculous because Lovino was a natural. But that didn’t matter. He hated the dick who had been captain Lovino’s first year. He didn’t hate the dick who was captain now at all, because that dick was Antonio, and Lovino would rather cheer Antonio on by shouting obscenities at him.
Well.
Lovino would rather cheer Antonio on by cheering, and then by telling Antonio how much Lovino liked him, but those things never came out right. And if Lovino didn’t know any better he would swear Eyebrows spent half of the games taking pictures of Lovino’s really embarrassing worried faces whenever the ball got down near Antonio’s end of the field. He had every confidence in Antonio’s abilities, okay, but he would be better off if somebody had just fucking let Lovino be Antonio’s defender.
Lovino wanted nothing more than to be Antonio’s defender.
Love. And pastries.
Feliciano’s mornings always started with both. Afterwards his mornings would include a race for the bathroom; with Nonno, not with Lovino, because Lovino slept too long for that to matter and because Nonno spent forever fussing with his hair. Then Feliciano’s mornings would turn to picking out food for lunch, and heading to school. Feliciano’s mornings were pretty simple.
Feliciano didn’t like his mornings simple.
“Ve, Lovino…”
“What? And stop swerving into my path! You’re swerving!”
Lovino had been twelve before Nonno had felt safe taking the training wheels off his bike. It showed. “You should tell him today.”
“I-I-wh-what?”
Feliciano didn’t like his mornings simple, which was why he always spent the ride to school pestering Lovino about the crush Lovino refused to accept Feliciano knew about. Feli didn’t really get that denial part, but Lovino had always been a little weird. And love made you stupid. Everybody knew that.
“If you don’t ever tell him you’ll regret it.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Antonio!”
“I-I don’t know who you’re talking about!”
Love made you really, really stupid, apparently, and usually Feliciano left well enough alone because sometimes Lovino got scary when he shouted. But there must have been a little more love than pastry in his breakfast, must have been enough love to set the skies on fire, because Feliciano did something he’d never done any previous morning after he’d left Lovino to skulk by the bike racks. Feliciano waited by the doors for two familiar figures to come running through the schoolyard gates.
“Tonio you need to stop doing this!”
“Mhmmf?”
“Not that I, in my amazing coolest-guy-at-school-ness, needs someone to walk with, but when you promise to walk to school with someone you need to actually walk to school with him!”
“Gil, what are you looking at?”
“Nothing. Let’s get to homeroom before Mr. Wang sends Eyebrows to get us.”
Before they could take another step, Feliciano cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.
“Antonio!”
Under the trees, Lovino froze. In the center of the courtyard, Antonio did too. “Eh? Feli? What is it? Why are you yelling? Are we late?”
“Ve… my brother has something he wants to tell you!”
And Feliciano ran for his life. But not before pointing directly at Lovino’s gaping face.
“Oh, you’re Feli’s brother? I’m Antonio!”
“I-i-y-I know that much, shitface, we have three classes together.”
“…We do?”
“Who the fuck do you thinks sits across from you in art?! And behind you in history?! And next to you in math?!”
“…you?”
“Mary, mother of God, why do I even like you so much…?”
Antonio paused.
Lovino choked.
From the safety of the back of Mr. Wang’s homeroom, Feliciano bit his lip. From the first floor window, half-open and partially obscured by the trees, Kiku forgot to breathe. From around the corner, by the dumpsters, Arthur raised his camera and hovered his finger over the shutter release. From the gates, Gilbert tripped.
“I don’t know… why do you like me?”
“Why the fuck wouldn’t I?”
The late bell rang.
And Antonio ran. “Shit, we’re late! Lovino, hurry up! Mr. Wang won’t like it if you’re late again!”
That was true. That was really true, because Lovino had already been late six times that month, mostly because he couldn’t be bothered to roll out of bed on time but once or twice because he’d needed to recover from another failed attempt at spilling his pathetic feelings at Antonio’s stupid face. Mr. Wang hated it when people were late even once. Seven times wouldn’t do Lovino any good.
But Mr. Wang would have to deal with it.
Because it was going to take Lovino a good fucking hour or two to process the wink Antonio had given him before disappearing through the doors.
Prompt: Gakuen!AU where Lovino has this huge crush on Antonio but is too embarrassed to tell him how he feels. He resorts to creeping around Antonio while Antonio remains oblivious to him. Cue everyone else thinking Lovino is a creepy stalker/voyeur when in fact he's just socially awkward :'D. Happy ending please!
I cheated a little bit with the ending, because now you get to doubt just how oblivious Antonio really was. But I imagine he was mostly oblivious to who Lovino was, and definitely oblivious to all the awkward watching. So.
Hope you liked this! And happy belated holidays!
Author: counterheist
Recipient: midori_lover
Character(s) or Pairing(s): Romano/Spain, Prussia, England, Japan, Veneziano, peripheral China, Rome
Word Count: 3,038
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Gakuen AU, Romano’s filthy vocabulary, so much awkward, food
Summary: Breakfast may be the best way to start the day, but love confessions aren’t bad either.
Note to Recipient: Happy January! This fic doesn’t have anything to do with the movie of the same name; I was just thinking about food a lot when I wrote it. It follows your second prompt.
Toast.
Antonio’s days always started with toast, and jam, and that last little minute of sleep he could hold tightly behind his eyelids. That last precious drop of slumber he could feel when awake, but not really awake, but more awake than he would have liked. Antonio’s days always started with rolling out of bed and maybe even with the sound of happy little songbirds trilling merrily outside his window.
Toast was a good way to start the day. Toast wasn’t complicated, it went well with jam, and Antonio could carry it in his mouth while he ran to school.
Running to school was also a good way to start the day… it got the blood pumping and it made sure that Antonio wasn’t late. Getting to the gates at the stroke of the bell counted as being on time, right? Antonio thought so. And Gilbert must have thought so too.
“Tonio, you need to stop doing this!”
“Mhmmf?”
Panting, Gilbert propped himself up against the school gates while pretending not to need to, “not that I, in my amazing coolest-guy-at-school-ness, needs someone to walk with, but when you promise to walk to school with someone you need to actually walk to school with him!” Once recovered, Gilbert began to stroll nonchalantly towards the doors. He stopped short, though, just beyond where Antonio stood, to stare at something near the other edge of the courtyard. What he saw remained a mystery after the warning bell rang.
Nobody missed homeroom, not even Antonio and Gilbert. Mr. Wang made sure of that.
But Antonio did try and see who or what had caught Gilbert’s attention. The weird look on Gil’s face, as though he’d seen a cockroach the size of a grown man, was too compelling not to follow.
But nobody was there.
Huh.
Muesli.
Gilbert’s days never started with muesli no matter how many times his little brother knocked on his bedroom door, upsetting the caution tape and the signs not to enter. Gilbert didn’t sleep in, he wasn’t a lazyass like Antonio, but he needed at least a solid hour to cultivate his look. A man’s look was really, really important, and as the coolest guy at school, Gilbert couldn’t slack on his appearance. Every morning he would shower, like a boss, and towel off, like a boss, and feed his pet chick, like a boss, and talk to himself in the mirror about how great he was. The last one was really important, and therefore took the most time.
Until Gilbert heard his kid brother leave for school.
And then Gilbert’s morning routine tended to speed up.
Lunch. He’d grab the lunch Lud left out for him.
Lud’s really crappy art projects that he’d always bring home to work on and then be too embarrassed to bring to school without Gilbert’s help. Gilbert would grab those, and ask cute Feli Vargas’s opinions about them later.
Muesli. He’d grab that too.
On the way towards Antonio’s house, because Gilbert had been running to school with Antonio for the past three years, Gilbert would think about Feli Vargas. The kid was fucking cuter than bunnies, really. Gilbert would think about asking Feli to the next dance, maybe, or out on a date. All on the behalf of Lud, of course, because the kid was so sad and not even close to how cool his older brother was.
Around the time Gilbert saw Antonio speeding by he would unfortunately start thinking about that other Vargas kid. Feli had a brother, which would have been the best thing in the world, except Lovino Vargas was a total creep. He just.
He did this thing.
Where he stared.
And stared.
And sometimes he breathed, and it was so fucking creepy Gilbert sometimes had to leave the room, but usually only in his head. They were in the same homeroom, which sucked, and Mr. Wang already didn’t like Gilbert, which also sucked. Gilbert didn’t know how Antonio stood being creeped on like that. Because, as everybody who was anybody knew, Lovino Vargas had an angry, creepy, really uncool fixation with Antonio even though Antonio obviously never did anything to deserve it.
How could he?
Lovino was the opposite of Feli, and that meant he was the opposite of cute, and Antonio deserved cute things almost as much as Gilbert did. And even when Lovino wasn’t glaring at Antonio or whispering threats, Lovino had a mean streak that could reach to the moon and back. His only redeeming qualities were possibly that, on a dark and foggy day, he sort of looked like Feli. It had to be a really foggy day. Maybe a really foggy night.
“Gil, what are you looking at?”
Yeah, Gilbert had no idea how Antonio handled it, but he had a big suspicion that it had a lot to do with Antonio never noticing anything at all. Lovino the Creeper had been standing by the bike racks, unblinking, ever since Gilbert and Antonio had run up, and Antonio had only noticed Gilbert noticing Lovino’s noticing five minutes after the fact.
“Nothing. Let’s get to homeroom before Mr. Wang sends Eyebrows to get us,” Gilbert shuddered.
Antonio shuddered too.
Across the path, underneath the trees near the bike rack, Gilbert thought he saw Lovino the Creeper give a little shake as well. What a freak.
Tea.
Arthur’s days always started with tea, as any proper young man’s day should. While sipping his Earl Grey he would read the newspaper, printed and delivered to his front door, naturally, and once finished he would eat a well-rounded breakfast. Then he would gather his things. Arthur would fold up his knitting, set his very expensive camera into his briefcase, and then trudge to school before the sun had ever risen: such was the life of a very dedicated school newspaper photographer.
Once Arthur had dreamed, perhaps, of rising to the coveted position of Editor-in-Chief of The Very Respectable School Paper. That dream had died its quiet death when Kiku had transferred in to their school and Kiku’s relentless ability to stay up through the middle of the night scanning through every single minute detail of the next week’s edition transferred with him. Not that Arthur was bitter to be stuck with a job that mostly involved watching people from the other side of the lens.
He always got the best seats at school sports events. Who could complain?
Although.
Although.
If Arthur had to bear witness to any more of Lovino Vargas’s red-faced, awkward mutterings interrupting the best parts of the games there would be hell to pay. How someone like Vargas, whom nobody liked, and whom Arthur was very sure had no business attending social events as though he belonged there, managed to always get front-row seats, Arthur would never know. He bet the Creeper, as Gilbert the Moron had taken to calling Lovino, camped out the night before just so he could get the spot right behind Antonio.
And as much as Arthur thought Antonio was Also A Moron, and stupid besides, nobody deserved a stalker who went through his trash and who followed him home. Nobody, not even Antonio, deserved that. Not that Arthur had any proof that Lovino had ever done the former, but he had seen the nasty Creeper skulking around by the dumpsters once or twice, talking to himself. Arthur had wondered if those were signs that Lovino often had psychotic breaks and needed to be removed from school for his own safety and for the safety of others. (Mostly Antonio.)
But Kiku always refused to publish those pictures, so Arthur’s observations had never made it to print. Being ever a gentleman, Arthur would then delete the files from his camera’s memory, and not sell them to Gilbert. He knew Gilbert would pay top dollar, too, because he hoped physical proof of Lo-the Creeper always standing around the edges of Antonio’s life would convince Antonio that maybe he should take steps to defend himself in the event the Creeper finally snapped.
But Arthur was a gentleman, so he didn’t.
Instant miso.
Kiku’s days generally started with instant miso, and powdered tea, because he spent half his nights in the newspaper editor’s office, reading and re-reading and making changes until dawn. The hours were insane, especially for a high school weekly newspaper that mostly reported gossip and sports scores. Kiku knew this. That didn’t matter enough to stop him from devoting his all towards making each edition perfect, but at least he knew.
He had an entire cupboard of instant miso next to his desk, and a pillow tucked behind his chair. If only the news would be kind enough to walk into his office as well, and wait in a quiet line for Kiku to write it all down, life would be perfect. Unfortunately, life was not perfect. The view from the office’s tiny window was sometimes, though. It looked onto the courtyard in front of the school, and if Kiku finished his miso quickly enough he could watch every other student and teacher arrive for school.
Arthur would sit by the fountain and knit for half an hour every Tuesday and Thursday and he was certain no one was the wiser.
Mr. Wang would sometimes dance his way in from the teachers’ parking lot.
And Gilbert and Antonio were always amusing to watch, and always late, and, if Kiku needed to fill space, very useful photo-fodder for the gossip section. At least, Antonio was. Sometimes Kiku had to obey his determined and precise Editor’s Heart and edit out Gilbert sweating and collapsing in the background of the photos. He doubted his readership really minded.
He was certain one of his readership never minded at all.
On most days Kiku watched Lovino Vargas arrive with little fanfare. The Vargas brothers would lock up their bicycles and Feli Vargas would run to join his friends. Lovino would linger by the racks. And linger. And remain.
Lovino would stand there for an indecent amount of time, and Kiku would invariably turn his attention to more interesting arrivals. He knew Lovino wouldn’t go anywhere; not until Antonio arrived. Kiku wasn’t sure whether Lovino was aloof on the outside and crazy on the inside, or angry on the outside and heart-burstingly in love with Antonio at his core.
If Kiku had to place money on his conjectures he wouldn’t, but in his own mind he always profiled Lovino as more of the second type, which made his strange behavior towards Antonio very interesting indeed. That, however, was speculation. And while speculation sold newspapers, high school newspapers were free anyway. Kiku kept his opinions to his window and to himself, and knew that if necessary he could run a story about Lovino’s shocking attack on poor sunny Antonio or a story about Lovino finally confessing his Love-Love to poor sunny Antonio in under a day.
All he needed was for Lovino to act.
A little bit of espresso, and a little bit of heartache.
Lovino’s mornings always started with both, ever since he’d looked up in art class one afternoon and noticed a smile pointed right at him. During the years after that afternoon, Lovino learned that Antonio smiled at anything and everything, and most of all at nothing. During the years after that afternoon, Lovino learned that love really fucking sucked, but he didn’t learn shit about what to do about that.
His Nonno told him every evening that Vargases get what they want, my boy, even when that’s the sweet ass of another man, so chase it Lovi, like a wolf! Hunt it down! Every evening Lovino died a little more inside, but maybe that was all part of being a teenager. Probably not. It was probably only part of having to be around Nonno so much.
School wasn’t much better, for Lovino. He hated the rest of the fuckers there, sure, but that didn’t mean the rest of them had to hate him back. He’d never done anything to them! Lovino kept to himself because life was better that way. When Lovino kept to himself no one could see him make a complete fool of himself whenever he tried to talk to Antonio.
Nobody could see him escape behind the school and pace by the dumpsters, running through strategies for asking Antonio out.
Nobody could see him keep exactly one block behind Antonio when they walked home, because Antonio lived exactly four houses away from Lovino but if he realized Lovino was always going his way then Antonio would probably do something about it, or even worse, not do anything at all about it, and Lovino couldn’t handle that.
Except he could.
But he couldn’t.
Lovino couldn’t look at Antonio.
But his eyes followed Antonio everywhere Antonio went and it was so fucking aggravating that it was all Lovino could do not to scream in the middle of homeroom. In the middle of homeroom, where he sat two seats behind Antonio and one to the left, which was the perfect spot for watching Antonio’s shirt ride up whenever he reached down to pick up a pen.
Lovino was never going to survive high school at this rate.
Oh, he tried. He went to football games; he went to every single one, even though he’d tried out for the team but the captain hadn’t even let him past the first tryout which was fucking ridiculous because Lovino was a natural. But that didn’t matter. He hated the dick who had been captain Lovino’s first year. He didn’t hate the dick who was captain now at all, because that dick was Antonio, and Lovino would rather cheer Antonio on by shouting obscenities at him.
Well.
Lovino would rather cheer Antonio on by cheering, and then by telling Antonio how much Lovino liked him, but those things never came out right. And if Lovino didn’t know any better he would swear Eyebrows spent half of the games taking pictures of Lovino’s really embarrassing worried faces whenever the ball got down near Antonio’s end of the field. He had every confidence in Antonio’s abilities, okay, but he would be better off if somebody had just fucking let Lovino be Antonio’s defender.
Lovino wanted nothing more than to be Antonio’s defender.
Love. And pastries.
Feliciano’s mornings always started with both. Afterwards his mornings would include a race for the bathroom; with Nonno, not with Lovino, because Lovino slept too long for that to matter and because Nonno spent forever fussing with his hair. Then Feliciano’s mornings would turn to picking out food for lunch, and heading to school. Feliciano’s mornings were pretty simple.
Feliciano didn’t like his mornings simple.
“Ve, Lovino…”
“What? And stop swerving into my path! You’re swerving!”
Lovino had been twelve before Nonno had felt safe taking the training wheels off his bike. It showed. “You should tell him today.”
“I-I-wh-what?”
Feliciano didn’t like his mornings simple, which was why he always spent the ride to school pestering Lovino about the crush Lovino refused to accept Feliciano knew about. Feli didn’t really get that denial part, but Lovino had always been a little weird. And love made you stupid. Everybody knew that.
“If you don’t ever tell him you’ll regret it.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Antonio!”
“I-I don’t know who you’re talking about!”
Love made you really, really stupid, apparently, and usually Feliciano left well enough alone because sometimes Lovino got scary when he shouted. But there must have been a little more love than pastry in his breakfast, must have been enough love to set the skies on fire, because Feliciano did something he’d never done any previous morning after he’d left Lovino to skulk by the bike racks. Feliciano waited by the doors for two familiar figures to come running through the schoolyard gates.
“Tonio you need to stop doing this!”
“Mhmmf?”
“Not that I, in my amazing coolest-guy-at-school-ness, needs someone to walk with, but when you promise to walk to school with someone you need to actually walk to school with him!”
“Gil, what are you looking at?”
“Nothing. Let’s get to homeroom before Mr. Wang sends Eyebrows to get us.”
Before they could take another step, Feliciano cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.
“Antonio!”
Under the trees, Lovino froze. In the center of the courtyard, Antonio did too. “Eh? Feli? What is it? Why are you yelling? Are we late?”
“Ve… my brother has something he wants to tell you!”
And Feliciano ran for his life. But not before pointing directly at Lovino’s gaping face.
“Oh, you’re Feli’s brother? I’m Antonio!”
“I-i-y-I know that much, shitface, we have three classes together.”
“…We do?”
“Who the fuck do you thinks sits across from you in art?! And behind you in history?! And next to you in math?!”
“…you?”
“Mary, mother of God, why do I even like you so much…?”
Antonio paused.
Lovino choked.
From the safety of the back of Mr. Wang’s homeroom, Feliciano bit his lip. From the first floor window, half-open and partially obscured by the trees, Kiku forgot to breathe. From around the corner, by the dumpsters, Arthur raised his camera and hovered his finger over the shutter release. From the gates, Gilbert tripped.
“I don’t know… why do you like me?”
“Why the fuck wouldn’t I?”
The late bell rang.
And Antonio ran. “Shit, we’re late! Lovino, hurry up! Mr. Wang won’t like it if you’re late again!”
That was true. That was really true, because Lovino had already been late six times that month, mostly because he couldn’t be bothered to roll out of bed on time but once or twice because he’d needed to recover from another failed attempt at spilling his pathetic feelings at Antonio’s stupid face. Mr. Wang hated it when people were late even once. Seven times wouldn’t do Lovino any good.
But Mr. Wang would have to deal with it.
Because it was going to take Lovino a good fucking hour or two to process the wink Antonio had given him before disappearing through the doors.
Prompt: Gakuen!AU where Lovino has this huge crush on Antonio but is too embarrassed to tell him how he feels. He resorts to creeping around Antonio while Antonio remains oblivious to him. Cue everyone else thinking Lovino is a creepy stalker/voyeur when in fact he's just socially awkward :'D. Happy ending please!
I cheated a little bit with the ending, because now you get to doubt just how oblivious Antonio really was. But I imagine he was mostly oblivious to who Lovino was, and definitely oblivious to all the awkward watching. So.
Hope you liked this! And happy belated holidays!