Fic: The Movement of Language (1)
Title: The Movement of Language
Characters/Pairings: USUK(/US), ensemble (side-pairings and past relationships mentioned)
Rating: T - language, strange/unconventional teaching methods, Francis and Arthur in the same room
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.
Chapter: 1/?
A/N: KM de-anon. The recent LJ style changes have made it incredibly awkward for me to try and post lengthy things whilst remaining anon (I don’t know why my internet seems to hate the new system so but it does), so it’s generally a lot easier for me to slowly de-anon with this fic/fill here as I go along writing it than no doubt screwing it up over there first and then bringing it over.
Original request was Science teacher!Alfred/English teacher!Arthur, and the romance slowly blossoming between them. I - er - rather failed in strictly keeping to the OP’s request of only certain side-pairings, and lots more sprung up in this little universe along the way.
…I hope you enjoy?
*****
i. a noise in the schools
Alfred F. Jones is awesome. The awesomest, even. This is, undoubtedly, a pure unshakeable fact (even if the crazy wannabe-albino guy from the History department keeps trying to re-enact World War Two over it, and even when they’d first downgraded it to a friendly wrestling match had gotten them both into trouble, a sharp rap on the head with the Headmaster’s clipboard and a half-hour lecture. (What on earth had the boss-guy been doing in the cafeteria at lunchtime, anyway? Heads were supposed to abuse their privileges, recline in icy superior solitude on high, elsewhere, somewhere where it would take a good ten minutes to get to for Alfred and Gilbert to be tattled on)), and Alfred is quite smug about it (shut up, Beilschmidt) even if it does take a little getting used to being called ‘sir.’
(He’d freaked a little the first time one of his students had called him that - he’s American! American and wild and free and doesn’t do class systems or any of that noble stuff and - and he’d been rapped around the head again - what is with these people and attacks to the head?! -, this time with a ruler, by his sharp-tongued Chinese co-worker, Wang Yao. Judging by some of the interesting things Alfred had seen Yao do in his Chem class for the wide-eyed first years (Yao could explode things even Alfred had never dreamed you could explode) Al had intelligently surmised that he’d gotten off lightly with just a ruler.)
But! Awesome is as awesome does - or something like that, anyway - and Alfred is nothing if not flexible, well into the fa-autumn (stupid Brits) term of his second year teaching Physics/General Science at the specialist Hetalia High School and Sixth Form College, and is generally regarded as an all-around great guy by students and staff alike. (Beilschmidt - and all related to him - has ceased to count.) He’s form tutor to the same pack as last year (year nines now, eights when he’d taken them on, because - apparently - no-one was mean (or smart) enough to give him stewardship of any of the first-years’ ‘impressionable minds’) and they’d greeted him with smiles, laughter, and a general inquiry as to how many hamburgers he’d eaten over the summer.
Teaching, too, is pretty much the same - the old year thirteens have gone on to pastures new and there’s a new bunch of quivering (he’s been forbidden from calling them ‘titchy’ - but. Seriously? Some of them don’t even reach Alfred’s knee) eleven year-olds to subvert to the Cause of Science, minds to encourage and nurture and other preppy governmental buzz-words that look very shiny in print but really don’t ever quite amount to what the bureaucrats think they should amount to and - and stuff. Other stuff. Alfred’s always been fond of a touch of bribery/blackmail (it can be nurturing; his brother Mattie can attest), and in that vein he’d promised some of his year twelve students a ‘fun’ lesson if they could all pass their last test. They all had, and so they’re all happily trekking outside with paper ‘rockets’ they’ve made to fire with the shiny air-valve-pump-thingy he’d ‘borrowed’ from the Cave of Wonders that is affectionately referred to by the school body as The Science Cupboard. (People have, apparently, been lost in there. Alfred can believe it.)
If anyone is to ask, the year twelves are all conditioned to say they’re doing a study on air resistance. This sounds sufficiently intelligent and worthwhile enough to pass even Ludwig’s standards (probably. Alfred isn’t going to ask the German teacher), and one of the students is even carrying a red clipboard to note down whose rocket goes furthest, another with a tape measure. There are Mars bars at stake for the three students whose projectiles fly furthest; the students themselves refuse to conduct this experiment with anything but the utmost gravity, rockets ‘TARDIS,’ ‘Millennium Falcon’ and ‘Titanic’ aside.
“Jones-!”
There are, of course, some problems to trotting sixteen chattering students outside to fire rockets in front of the main building in the school - but still. C’mon. Alfred has even remembered to point the valve away from the building and shiny breakable windows, and he’s still getting grief for it?
Grief with green eyes, blond hair and an ever-grumpy expression leaning out of the (open) window on the second floor that…leads to the English staffroom, if Alfred’s mental calculations are right. The infamous English teacher Arthur (never Artie, oh dear sweet Heavens, no) Kirkland, also in his second year of working at the school, He Who Must Not Be Disturbed.
Who is, apparently, disturbed. (Aw, dammit.)
“Jones,” Arthur calls down, and God, Alfred can actually see the man’s eyebrows even from ground level; they go kinda twitchy when Arthur’s annoyed and without tea (the man is an addict), “some people are trying to work here. What are you doing?”
“I’m teaching!” Alfred chirps back up at him, and all the year twelves around him try to look suitably studious with the tape-measure as they hide the daisy-chains they’d been making behind their backs. “We’re doing an experiment on the effects of air resistance on distance and velocity.”
Arthur looks suitably dubious at the paper rockets littered around the grass outside, spots of white on the autumn-green grass. (The eyebrows furrow in a different direction.)
Alfred is undaunted. “Wanna join us?” The sun is warm and the breeze is mild - it’s a nice day to procrastinate, and it’s a hero’s duty to save dull people from themselves.
“It’s do you want to,” he’s corrected, of course, “and,” and Arthur hesitates for just a millisecond, before sighing and shaking his head, the sunshine lure not quite beating his work ethic quite yet. “I’m working.”
Alfred pouts up at him - the poutiest puppy pout there ever is or was.
“No, Jones.”
Alright, so it’s time to break out the big guns.
“But soft!” Alfred begins, clutching one hand rather dramatically to his chest and revelling in the giggles it earns him from some of his more literate-minded students (traitors that they are), using their support as a bastion against the blank horror quickly descending over Arthur’s face. “What light through yonder window breaks? It’s the east, and Arthur’s the sun. Arise, fair sun -”
Arthur throws a scrunched-up newspaper at Alfred’s head and shuts his window with a definitive slam.
(Alfred considers it an improvement - the first time he’d attempted any Shakespeare Arthur had whacked him in the ribs with his Riverside Chaucer, and that had hurt a lot more.)
Later, Alfred gives Arthur his wrinkly newspaper back, and reminds the other man about the school’s no-littering rule. (Then, Arthur does whack him with his Chaucer.)
…
(It’s worth it.)
ii. you have the right to remain silent
Francis is insufferable and Arthur has no idea why he keeps him. This Arthur tells himself every day, but somehow it’s been two years and he’s still sharing a flat with the insufferable French twat and their two cats (his cat and the twat’s cat, and never the twain shall meet because the last time there’d been blood, fur and both had to be driven to the vet. Arthur had thumped his elder brother for the gift of a cat on more than one occasion - Morvyn’s statement that of course two cats would get along together simply did not hold up to the mutual hatred the two moggies had cultivated between themselves, even if the Scottish Fold kitten (Carabas, for the lucky master-turned-Marquis in Puss in Boots) had been almost too adorable for Arthur to pass up).
Francis flirts outrageously with anything on two legs, gropes without abandon, sheds almost as bad as his floofball of a feline and keeps bringing around his best friend without warning - who just so happens to be Arthur’s ex, Spanish, far too good at ducking projectiles and, on occasion, capable of loathing Arthur with perhaps even more hatred than Arthur directs back at him. (Other times the Spaniard just takes an impromptu siesta in the middle of the floor and gets used as a cat cushion by both cats of the household. It’s rather complicated, but Antonio makes good paella, and coffee too when Arthur (hungover and deep in denial) drinks it. Sometimes, it feels vaguely like friendship.)
Francis is…well, Francis is many things, most of them unfit for polite company but somehow he’s still there and Arthur hasn’t killed him or been killed by him so that works, sort of, in a ‘fun’ dysfunctional way that goes down dark and murky mental paths leading to inevitable migraines. And he makes some…relatively edible food (ignoring the fact that as an agreement to the eating of said food Arthur basically forfeits all rights to the kitchen save usage of the kettle and bits of the fridge).
“I’ll kill him,” Arthur announces to the kitchen table, at random, one evening, facedown and generally despairing of the world.
“Jones?” Francis idly queries from over by the stove, stirring something in a saucepan that smells a lot better than it ought to do since the frog’s making it.
Arthur lifts his forehead from its state of oneness with the table, and balefully eyes his flatmate. If Francis is developing psychic powers Arthur’s going to off himself here and now - the world does not need a psychic Francis Bonnefoy in it (and if it does, Arthur wants out. Now).
“Who else could it be?” Francis asks without even turning around to meet the suspicious look he’s being given. Arthur begins wondering whether he can make it to the knives before the frog notices or, failing that, the window. “’Tonio hasn’t been around for a few days,” Arthur makes a noise at the back of his throat that sounds more than a little like his pet hacking up a choice hairball, “you’ve said cher Gilbert’s been behaving himself since the last lecture his brother gave him, and you haven’t been to see any of your siblings just lately. Out of your top ten ‘people who must die’ list Jones is the only male left.”
Golden Alfred F. Jones and his goddamn sunshine.
“I don’t plan to kill Gilbert,” Arthur defends, a beat later than is appropriate. He doesn’t plan to kill Gilbert, really. (Much.) He goes drinking with Gilbert, and the git provides endless entertainment in school hours by making all his students squeak.
“You will just kill him by accident, then,” Francis says, and glances back over his shoulder (sodding bastard should be burning the food on the stove by now, why does it still smell edible?), “with all the alcohol you two consume on your nights out.”
A scoff. “Like you’re any better.”
Francis waves a spoon at him. “I, mon cher Arthur, don’t strip down to nought but an apron after a few drinks and start trying to pole-dance with a lamp-post.”
“No,” Arthur snarks back, and glances down at his feet when he feels something twining around his ankle - there’s copious amounts of floof, so it’s Louis-the-cat, Francis’ pet horror, “you strip down to a flower and do that as a hobby.” He nudges Louis away, not quite in a good enough mood to deal with cat hair on his trousers. “Anyway,” back to the important issues, “you’re public enemy no. one, you realise.”
“Rosbif, I’m honoured,” oh, how droll of him, “but I have diplomatic immunity.”
Arthur watches - suspiciously - as Francis lifts the saucepan from the stove, bringing it over to the table at which Arthur is sitting and stepping over Louis on the way. “Oh?”
“Mais oui,” one free hand ruffles Arthur’s hair - already a mess from general life and the tabletop -, and Arthur irritably swats it away and wishes Francis’ smirk would go with it. “If you killed me you’d die of malnutrition within a week from eating your own deplorable attempts at cooking.”
“Go die in a ditch.”
“I would, mon chou, but you and your eyebrows are usually busy clogging them all up during your hangovers.” Arthur snarls at that - the eyebrows always have and probably always will be a sore spot -, but Francis calmly ignores the teeth (bloody bastard that he is) and picks up the spoon in the saucepan he’d brought over, blithely shoving it in Arthur’s mouth and ignoring the indignant expression that follows. “It’s good?”
Rich sauce - mushroom, butter, cream, white wine - hits Arthur’s tongue, warm-hot and heavenly.
…
Naturally, Arthur scowls, snatches the spoon from Francis and says nothing at all. Like hell does the frog need a bigger head than the one he’s already got.
(Somehow, in the midst of this debate and subsequent denial, Arthur quite forgets about wanting to kill Alfred bloody F. Jones. Alas, this is a frequent occurrence.)
iii. what you lack is the capacity
When the fifth set of bombing sound effects begins in as many minutes Arthur gives up lamenting room-scheduling and just wanting to throttle Gilbert Beilschmidt and his infernal teaching methods, and happily stalks through to the classroom adjoining the one in which he’d been trying to convey the solemn work of A. Miller to see about turning his wonderfully vicious dreams into a reality.
Gilbert, world war whatever playing as a film on a screen behind his head, volume at its highest setting, waves at Arthur rather cheerfully when the English teacher glowers acid green at him from the doorway connecting their teaching rooms. Obnoxiously cheerfully. (Gilbert’s students slide further down under their desks. Self-preservation is strong with this lot.)
“Kirkland. What’s up?”
Arthur glares. Appropriately, another set of bombs go off to compliment him. “Do you know why the English kept the particular punishment of being hanged, drawn and quartered for so long?”
“Because you’re all sadistic bastards who like your bloodsports?” A pause, and the point is lost in the face of obfuscating stupidity. “Oi, Kirkland, don’t asphyxiate in the doorway to my class. Onkel and bruder’ll make me fill in the paperwork.”
iv. fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic
“Alfred,” the rather cute young French teacher thinks to ask Alfred one day at lunch when they’re together in the general staffroom, the lady carefully taking time out of glaring at Arthur (to put it mildly, the way Kiku puts it, they have ‘basic differences in opinion.’ The way Alfred puts it is that they’re ‘forever three seconds short of tossin’ each other outta the nearest window’) to tilt her be-ribboned head to one side, “where are your shoes?”
“Left ‘em in the science staffroom,” Alfred tells her - Michelle’s her name, Madame Michelle Fontaine - and neglects to tell her that he’s not going back there until he has to because Ivan has somehow found a pickled rabbit’s remains from somewhere and it’s kinda gross to look at. Honestly, the dead things (or just bits of them) are off-putting for a guy trying to eat his burgers.
“You’ve had them off all morning?” Michelle looks surprised at this, her voice rising a little and drawing the attention of some of the other teachers in the room with them. “But what if there’s glass on the floor of the labs you’re working in?”
“You should be careful, Alfred,” and there’s Elizabeta chiming in, the female PE teacher, frowning slightly as she looks away from where she’d been talking with Tino about their co-ed classes. “Cuts to the foot can be pretty nasty.”
“Not to mention the blatant disregard for general health and safety.” And there, right on cue and ready to butt in, is Arthur, scowling scowl number 264 (‘Alfred is an immature American idiot who’ll get people hurt, version 2’). He’s been nagging about the shoe-thing since the second week of their first meeting. “What sort of example are you setting to your students?”
“I was free third period,” Alfred complains. And he’d been in the science staffroom; right up until Ivan had brought in the dead rabbit. (It was worse than the time he’d brought in the jar of eyeballs - Alfred still has nightmares about those eyeballs.)
“You should still be wearing your shoes!”
“Fine,” Alfred says, if only to get them all off his back, and Arthur subsides once more into huffing into his mug of tea, smacking Beilschmidt’s hand when the History teacher reaches out to try and steal one of his Jaffa Cakes. Elizabeta resumes talking to Tino about…whatever, and Michelle rises from her seat to go make a drink for herself. Kiku, ever-awesome, takes her place, and he and Alfred spend the rest of lunch discussing the various merits and demerits of giant robots as violence-deterrents.
v. eye see you
Alfred will forever deny that he screams like a little girl when he walks into his afternoon lab and is unexpectedly confronted with the thing right in front of his face. Ivan’s pickled rabbit thing. Looking at him.
Wang Li, younger brother to Yao and a student of the school, busy finishing up the dreaded potato experiment he’d missed due to being off sick (weigh potatoes, put potatoes in water, leave for hour, take potatoes out of water, dry potatoes, weigh potatoes, note weight difference and try to restrain awe), thankfully sells him the footage from the camera he has - for some reason - on-hand.
(Alfred makes a note to use less blackmail and bribery tactics around the kid. This one absorbs the stuff.)
vi. sucks to be the sidekick
Arthur and Alfred had met - sort-of properly - at the staff party thrown for the opening of the school year (their first year working at Hetalia High) - although the (loud) Assistant Head and RE teacher, something-Vargas, had, rather worryingly, ignored all the death-glares and facepalms the Headteacher Mr. L. Beilschmidt had thrown his way and called it a wake for the souls and sanity of the freshbloods. Alfred had somehow inferred ‘ghosts’ from this and, slightly drunk, had had to be coaxed down from his shivering perch on top of a shelf.
Vargas had found the whole thing hilarious; the Head had been too busy detailing that that idiot would be paying for the new shelf if Alfred broke it, others had been laughing, others had been too drunk to notice Alfred up on the shelf in the first place (or just found him a rather interesting new decoration) and Arthur -
Arthur, somehow, had ended up being clung to after the combined efforts of the Home Economics teachers talked the new Physics teacher down (something about pasta and exorcism and it was safest not to ask) and being used as some sort of anti-evil device for the rest of the evening which...kept Arthur away from the sanity-saving alcohol himself.
In his favour - Alfred had thought to drunkenly introduce himself before announcing Arthur was a cute ghostbuster person. Nice eyes.
In his peril - Alfred had then promptly followed up the ‘nice eyes’ comment with a query about just how Arthur had managed to get the bugs stuck to his face.
About that point Vargas had started sliding down the wall he’d been leaning on to support him in his laughter and Alfred, somewhat confused, had found himself abruptly dumped on the laughing teacher as his saviour and ghostbuster of the night stalked off into the night, bristling like an angry cat.
vii. and again
“Jones, where are your shoes?!”
viii. fair is foul and foul is fair
One of the glorious things about teaching dramatic literature to the younger years is that, from time to time, as a way to ‘engage the students more fully with the texts,’ Arthur gets to hand over his class of (rowdy) year eights to Feliks Łukasiewicz of the Drama department for one glorious hour. (This year of students already has a reputation for being pains in the arse, and the opportunity to leave them to some other teacher’s tender mercies is never one to be overlooked.) His co-worker Angeline, too, usually revels in the same freedom, since both hers and Arthur’s English classes scheduled for that period are temporarily combined for the drama workshop - but, as luck would have it, they’d flipped a coin; Arthur had won; Angeline had lost, and she is the one stuck supervising forty-seven hyperactive students with Feliks and trying to instil some idea of the great tragedy that is Macbeth into their charmingly obtuse little heads.
Since one of those forty-seven is Arthur’s (estranged - Arthur’s family is the only thing more complicated than the people he has, at one point or another in his life, dubiously called ‘friends’) little (brat of a) brother, Peter, he feels absolutely no remorse whatsoever about abandoning the other two teachers to their fate, heading back to the English office to read through some of his sixth-formers’ essays and have a nice cup of tea.
(He does, however, make sure Angeline has a fresh cup of coffee and biscuits waiting for her when she gets back from the workshop later, though. Arthur is many things, but (excessively) suicidal is not one of them.)
ix. your princess is in another castle
The computer labs are some of the coolest buildings in the school. Ish. If you discount the whole governmental safety-lock/filter on ‘distracting’ websites thing and how at least three computers in each room always seem to be broken and the fact that the school technician guy - whatshisface with the glasses, serious look and laptop under his arm 99.999% of the time - can and does quite often stalk through the rooms like some sentinel zombie of hell and tells off anyone abusing the technology and/or furniture -
If you discount all that, the computer labs can be really, really cool.
For one - they have Kiku Honda, ICT teacher extraordinaire. (Honda Kiku. Whatever.)
For two - they have wheelie chairs.
(There’s also the large number of computers to play with thing to contemplate, but Alfred himself will freely admit his fascination for the rooms stems mostly from the first two points alone - though he can never tell you which of those two points has the greater appeal. Chairs - Kiku - Chairs - Kiku - the two are at their most ultimate cool when combined.)
“Alfred-san -”
Kiku’s kinda awesome. He always knows about the latest games and technology (wants to actually talk about them too, unlike the technician guy - God, what a way to waste absolute genius (although Alfred is absolutely never allowed to say that because if his computer breaks only the technician’s allowed t’sort it out otherwise Alfred’s gonna have health and safety on his ass like that - so it’s best not to piss-off the guy that fixes your very-much-needed technology stuff, nope)) and brings in some of his games, too, lets Alfred borrow them for the weekend now and then. He prefers tactical games to shoot-em-ups, but he’s beaten Alfred enough times on the latter to keep their scores about 50:50 across the board and -
“Alfred-san.”
A pale, slim (deceptively strong) hand grabs at the back of the chair Alfred’s been contemplatively spinning on for a good ten minutes, jerking both the chair and Alfred into an abrupt halt and back to the present moment.
“Alfred-san,” Kiku says politely, when blue eyes finally blink up at brown-black, so perfectly neutral Alfred can never tell what the guy’s thinking. (Kiku’d be scary at poker, if he knew how to play.) “My deepest apologies for troubling you when you are so clearly deep in thought, Alfred-san, but I feel it is prudent to inquire as to whether you are aware that the chair you are seated upon seems to be in the midst of its death throes and in imminent danger of immediate collapse?”
Alfred blinks again. “…Huh?”
Kiku deliberately shoves at the chair in his grasp a little way, moving Alfred with it. The seat creaks horrendously under the Physics teacher, a horrible shudder moving through its body. It sounds, rather woefully, as if it’s about to abruptly fall apart.
Alfred, rather intelligently, hastily stands, leaving the newly-dubbed Chair of Death to be promptly wheeled into the corner by Kiku. (It lurks there, waiting for another unfortunate soul to chance upon it so it can die on them spectacularly and take them with it in a kamikaze of wheels and knobs and whatever other twiddly metal bits it’s made out of, but Alfred knows its number now, is wary of it and -)
Alfred takes a new seat while he’s waiting for Kiku to come back to him, sitting on it back-to-front with his arms folded on the backrest and the support between his legs. Kiku doesn’t say anything as Alfred begins to slightly swing to and fro again on the new chair, shoeless feet pushing the Physics teacher around in a long, lazy circle to see the room.
Alfred likes visiting Kiku during their free periods, especially in the computer labs.
(The wheelie chairs in the labs, however, very much wish he’d stay away. Alfred breaks at least three chairs a month.)
Kiku smiles, perfectly polite, and works in the background.
x. too many cooks
“You’re going to have to roll me to my first class if you feed me any more.”
“Better than being blown away like a leaf in the wind, meu amigo.”
Arthur looks a little put-out by the statement but his companion, one of the Home Economics teachers, Gabriel Fernandes de A…Gabriel Fernandes - God, the man has a lot of names, so he’s Gabriel dos Anjos, or Mr. Anjos to most -, only smiles, nudging the plate of pastéis de nata they’d been eating towards the other man with his free hand again, the other palm propping up his chin, elbow on the counter beside the two men and fingertips touching his cheek.
“Gabriel…” Arthur tries again, a little more weakly, but the pastries are right there and his friend is smiling and those pastries really are to die for and Arthur hadn’t eaten breakfast before leaving the flat that morning because he’d thought he’d slept in. (He hadn’t - and he’d arrived at the school complex early, disgruntled, and scowling at the clouds. Gabriel, also in early that day, had taken one look at him and abducted him to the Art building (where the kitchens were located), sitting Arthur down and providing pastries and tea. Quite serious, Arthur had offered to adopt him.)
Gabriel just patiently waits, all gold-brown eyes and curly hair, and Arthur caves in to the look and helps himself to another one of the pastries. (Stupid look. Not that it was the look, no; it would be a shame to waste good food, after all, and quite rude after Gabriel had offered it (knowing smile aside).)
“Arthur,” the cookery teacher ventures, seeing the other swallow his mouthful, “do you eat at home? You must eat at home, and yet you’re still so thin. You’ll melt away into the cold fog.”
Arthur blushes, defying the pronouncement - nothing so pink could melt away so easily. “It’s not cold this morning - I actually think the weather’s quite mild today; the weather report said it would get warmer later this afternoon.”
“You’re adorable when you deliberately miss the point.”
Arthur’s blush skyrockets up his face - but he’s saved from replying by the door to the room being pushed open, the sound of bright chattering Italian coming immediately inside with bouncing steps.
…Partly, anyway.
“Feliciano, good morning,” Gabriel greets his bubbly co-worker with a smile - and nods, too, at the somewhat more surly companion the youngest Vargas has dragged in by the hand: his elder brother, a long, long way away from the History office. (And his colleague, Gilbert, but that’s probably a good thing for everyone and their eardrums.) Arthur just takes the opportunity to drink his tea, hiding his pink cheeks behind his mug. “Lovino, good morning to you as well.”
“Good morning!” Feliciano’s cheer more than makes up for the half-heard mutter Lovino passes off a greeting, releasing his brother to bound over to Arthur and Gabriel. “What are we doing?”
“Breakfast,” Gabriel replies and offers the plate on the counter to the newcomers - and now there’s someone else to eat the pastéis de nata, Arthur reluctantly notes, he’s quite sad to see them go, both Vargas men helping themselves and Feliciano depositing a kiss on Gabriel’s cheek in thanks.
Feliciano switches his disarming smile on Arthur. (Arthur privately thinks that he really must be rather pink for Feliciano to be able to talk to him. Or he’s losing his edge. Both are horrible to consider.) “Did you help make these?”
(When Lovino fails to hide his immediate horrified expression at the very thought of Arthur being involved with any sort of cookery Arthur glares at him. Intensely. Lovino quickly occupies himself by studying the displays on the wall.)
“No,” Arthur tells the two easily enough (though the innate urge to kick Lovino is still there), draining the last of the tea and setting his mug down beside the now empty plate on the counter, “it’s all Gabriel.”
(When Lovino mutters what sounds suspiciously like the Italian version of ‘thank God for that’ Gabriel lays his hand on Arthur’s arm, and they quickly change the subject.)
xi. between a rock and a hard place
“Trade me.”
“Aiyaa… Mr. Jones this is the third time you’ve asked me that today -”
“Trade,” Alfred repeats stubbornly again, blocking the science staffroom’s exit from Yao - who sighs at him, arms folded across his chest and one foot tapping the floor. “Please?”
“And that’s the fourth…” the dry comment comes from their colleague, Manaar Hussain, sitting flicking through a Biology textbook at his desk. When both Yao and Alfred glare at him he just smiles peaceably and raises his hands in the eternal gesture of ‘don’t shoot,’ returning to his work.
“Please trade me,” Alfred tries again, putting all his pleading into his doleful expression and fixing it on Yao. (They both ignore Manaar’s murmured ‘fifth’ in the background.) “Yao, you know I don’t do the Biology thing, even for the younger kids.”
“It’s General Science, aru.”
“It’s the biology part of General Science.”
Yao scowls at him. “I’m a chemist. Why don’t you ask one of our Biology teachers to take your class, aru?”
Manaar glances up. “I have an A Level class that period.” Which would be a pain to reschedule.
Yao keeps looking at Alfred. “And Doctor Braginski?”
Alfred just shudders in response - like hell is he asking Ivan for a favour. (He has no idea where Ivan’s hidden the pickled rabbit.) The Russian guy takes roughly a third of the General Science classes for the years sevens and eights anyway, teaching them the more biological aspects of the curriculum and terrifying most of the students (and staff) witless. (Manaar, also a biologist, tends to stick to teaching the older classes.) Ivan gets one class a week with the younger years - but Alfred (or one of his other associates) gets two or three depending on which week it is in the timetable, teaching the kids basic physics and chemistry, showing them how to work the microscopes and the Bunsen burners and how to not get killed in the science lab. (Although, for some reason, Yao always insists on sitting in on the lessons on basic health and safety and refuses to go away however much Alfred pouts at him.)
Normally the 1:2/3 ratio works out brilliantly. Normally. Now and then some of the topics Ivan should really cover spill out over into the stuff Alfred has to teach - but Alfred can usually deal with that, as it’s usually just some bits of onion peel under the microscope and a nice diagram of plant cells on the board. (He can even, at a push, restrain himself from drawing a smiley face on said diagram.) Usually.
But when it comes to teaching the topic of animal - and very specifically, human - reproduction -
No. Nope, nil, no way, nada, Alfred does not want to be near that subject with six barge poles strung end to end and kept in place with extra industrial strength adhesive and duct tape. Ever. Sure, there’s a…video….but…class. Eleven year-olds. Co-ed. Irritating music, patronising voiceovers, childbirth, grunting, horror and general trauma for all involved. And then talking about it afterwards. (There is a Hell.)
Yao looks frustrated. “Why should I teach your class, aru?”
Alfred’s short answer is ‘’Cuz I don’t wanna,’ and has a footnote about possibly having to sue the school for his psychologist’s bills if he’s made to teach squicky stuff under duress. His shorter answer is even better, even as he grabs Yao’s hands - ignoring the Asian man’s squawk - to pour all his earnestness into this last-ditch attempt. “I’ll owe you, ‘kay? Anything. Anytime. Ever. Yao, just please teach this class.”
“….Anything.”
“Anything,” Alfred promises fervently, and tries to repress the quick shiver that rolls down his spine when Yao’s eyes gleam. Better Yao than Ivan, right? Right?
“…Alright, aru,” Yao finally agrees, and Alfred breathes out a relieved sigh. Crisis solved. “But you owe me.”
xii. ain’t afraid of no ghost
Sometime after that fateful first staff party Alfred had tried getting to know Arthur again - this time with both of them completely sober, both feet firmly on the ground, and something (‘Roma, Jones. His name is Roma’) Vargas and his tales of pessimism and woe nowhere in sight.
“So,” Arthur had said, leaning against the (closed) doorway to the English office. It was their third day teaching at Hetalia High School (and the door had been open until Angeline’s hissed ‘just invite him in’s had annoyed Arthur enough to put a barrier between them). “You don’t like ghosts.”
“Ah,” Alfred had replied, nervously rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and trying vainly not to notice the stack of A Christmas Carol novels sitting on the table on his immediate left. Stupid English Office had to be behind the English storeroom… “Hah. Uh, I guess that’s kinda obvious now, huh?”
“Somewhat.”
“Not that I believe in ghosts or anything like that,” Alfred babbled on, ignoring the disbelieving look he was being faced with. “I mean, ghosts - really, you can totally beat ‘em with a hoover and nobody would wanna be a bad guy that you can beat with a hoover because that’s just kinda depressing and would make an incredibly fail final boss, am’a’right?”
“…A hoover.”
Alfred nodded. “Yeah, one of those vacuum thingies?”
A twitch. “I know what a hoover is, Jones.” (Right, so, uh, it was best not to explain British slang to Arthur again, then. Even though Alfred had learned the word - Mattie had taught it to him somehow and it was sort of weird and sort of cool and he was getting off track -)
“Right. So.” That was useful. “Imagine getting sucked up into one. It’d totally wreck your afterlife because they’re probably kinda cramped in there, dontcha’ think? And it’s not as if you can have guests or anything round because there’s only so much compression you can do in an enclosed space even if you’re a gassy ghost blob thing. Not that they exist or anything, ‘cause they’re ghosts, but the point still works.”
Arthur had looked at him like he was mad. “…Jones.”
Alfred beamed at him, and Arthur had looked kinda - well, in hindsight, Arthur had looked a lot like some of Alfred’s old university tutors right after Alfred had announced one of his stranger theories to them and right before they’d buried their faces in their hands.
“Jones,” Arthur had said, and to his credit had avoided the whole face-meet-hand thing, “you’ve just spent the past five minutes detailing to me why you, personally, wouldn’t want to be a ghost, not why you don’t like them so much.”
“…Oh.”
Yes, oh.
“Well,” Alfred had said, and Arthur had looked patiently…like he was listening, if not actually interested. “They eat your brains.”
Arthur’s face met Arthur’s hand. (It was to be the first facepalm of many.)
xiii. all things fair, we find, are cold
At lunchtime one day Alfred discovers his shoes are missing. It’s no big deal at first, of course - his socks that day have the American stars n’ stripes on them and they’re awesome - but after a good quarter-hour searching in the science office where he’s sure he left them and still no shoes forthcoming Alfred’s stomach gives a loud disconsolate grumble, so he pads along and down to the general staffroom for lunch (remembering along the way that he is, indeed, an amazing and responsible adult and therefore cannot slide along the smooth linoleum floor in the corridor because there are students watching and that German teacher too (poor guy’s on dinner-duty, sucks to be him) who can and will tell him off and probably tell Arthur somewhere along the way too, damn it, and the nagging is so not worth it).
Alfred finds his shoes in the ice-compartment of the staffroom fridge when he reaches in for the bottle of coke he’d put there that morning, both shoes full to the brim with a solid chunk of ice. Since Alfred doubts any of his - amused - watching co-workers would appreciate it if he tried to microwave his footwear, he drops both shoes in the nearby sink to begin defrosting and turns to pout at the rest of the room.
“Guys -”
His co-workers all give him their various best ‘who me?’ expressions and hastily return to their lunch.
“One of you’s gotta know who did it.”
Alfred sweeps his gaze accusingly around the room - but he’s met with only innocence and smiles, and a resigned headshake from the music teacher who clearly thinks the whole thing’s quite beneath him. Stupid Beilschmidt’s snickering - Alfred’s saved from glowering at him by virtue of Elizabeta being at-hand to ram her heel down on the guy’s foot (the woman is never to be allowed into a pair of stilettos) -, Tino looks mildly worried, that…other guy is…being really tall beside him, the hot chick who teaches English with Arthur’s come over to inspect the shoe-damage, Arthur and Kiku are sitting drinking tea together and discussing poetry - oh God, they’re discussing poetry. Alfred can never look at Kiku the same way again - and Manaar comes in the door, still in his lab-coat, sees Alfred looking back at him, and raises one eyebrow in the universal inquiry of ‘what?’
Alfred just pouts some more, and looks back at the room at large. “I’ll get my revenge!”
The room at large fails to care. So not cool.
Alfred spends the rest of lunchtime sulking in the corner.
(His shoes spend the rest of the afternoon dripping in the sink.)
Notes:
Wang Li = Hong Kong
Michelle Fontaine = Seychelles
Morvyn (Kirkland) = OC Scotland
Angeline (no surname as of yet) = Belgium
Roma Vargas = Ancient Rome
Manaar Hussain = India (apologies if you catch female pronouns being used for him in the narrative; when this was first written India hadn’t been introduced in the webcomic yet, and I wrote the character as being a woman)
Gabriel Fernandes…dos Anjos (henceforth just Gabriel [dos] Anjos) = OC Portugal - who is now, due to the intensive work of hellzabeth and candesceres, but ‘Gabi’ in my head.
- The Headteacher armed with a clipboard is Germania. (He doesn’t have a name yet, aside from the mysterious initial of ‘L’ it totally stands for Legolas.) And yes, he, Ludwig and Gilbert are all employed in the same place. Nepotism is rife in this establishment, and they’re not the only culprits.
- Notes on the school timetable/British education system are here. (Yes, they’re long enough to get their own post.)
- ‘But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?’ Alfred is an offence to Romeo and Juliet - which is an offence enough as it is - and abbreviates his words where they shouldn’t be abbreviated. Also, he made Arthur the girl. He deserves whacking.
- The Riverside Chaucer is a hideous doorstop of a text that will break unsuspecting bones if it gets dropped on them. In High School one of my teachers joked she used her text as a way to prop up her exceedingly wobbly table. I didn’t believe her, and promptly gaped at the (beautifully verbose) wedge that met me for my forays into the joys of Chaucerian Middle English at university. It’s a love-hate thing.
- In the UK ‘hoover’ has evolved from just a brand to a generic name for any vacuum cleaner.
- ICT - Information Communications Technology. Otherwise known as IT, or sometimes Computing.
And - right, I think that’s everything. *breathes sigh of relief* Not all the notes are this long, I promise.