Hey, everyone! I'm back with a Julius X Alice oneshot. This pairing is a recent obsession of mine… Enjoy!

Coughing, Julius entered the house, drenched to the skin. It was pouring buckets outside, and he had refused to listen to Alice's suggestion to take an umbrella, shortly before the storm. Darn that girl. She's definitely going to come and gloat.

And as if she had read his mind, she appeared with a smug smile on her face and a towel in her hands. She handed it to him, with an expression that clearly stated "I told you so!"

"I told you to take an umbrella, but no, of course you won't listen to me" she said in an angry but amused tone of voice.

"Mmmhmm…" was his only reply.

"Anyway, Julius, please change your clothes and come to the living room. I have a tea- I mean coffee- party prepared for you."

"Coffee party? With who?"

"Oh, just the two of us. Remember that one time you gave me 97 points for a cup of coffee? I'm making it in the same way!"

Oh joy. A coffee party? Who in the world has one of those? That girl is always in the way of my work. Can't she just…Oh, what am I saying?

He went up the rickety staircase to his room and changed into clean and blissfully dry clothes. Running downstairs, he reminded himself of his birthdays back when he was a kid. His mother would tell him there was a surprise in the living room, and he would run down excitedly, similar to what he was doing now.

He stopped running, disgusted with himself, and entered the room solemnly, completely contrary to his actions a moment ago.

And there she was. Alice. I could look at her all day. He sighed out loud, but quickly passed it off as a sigh of boredom.

"Julius! There you are!" she exclaimed. "It's ready!" And it was. Elaborately set, the table was elegant-looking, made even more elegant by a certain someone sitting at it.

"Weird woman….You went to so much trouble" he mumbled, apparently to himself as Alice was too busy being excited. "Can I ask why you're so excited?" he said, a little louder and clearer than before.

"I'm not excited! This is the first time I'm trying my own coffee! I usually drink black tea!" she said, "but we ran out…so I thought I'd try coffee."

"No- No, I don't think you should" he said nervously.

"Why?"

"Don't" he said, dreading the entire situation.

"Whatever", she said, rolling her eyes. "Itadakimasu!" she said, and sipped her coffee.

And spit it out, spraying the floor.

"What is this? This is disgusting!" she said frantically.

Julius just sighed.

"Julius!" she shouted suddenly.

"Huh? Yes!" he said, a little more energetically than he meant to sound.

"Why didn't you tell me that it was disgusting?" she said, and added as an afterthought, "Why did THIS get 96-"

"97"

97 points?"

And just then, Julius took Alice's small hands into his large ones. He looked straight at her and said in a clear and surprisingly confident voice, "Are you sure you don't know why?" She shook her head, no. "Are you absolutely sure, Alice?" he asked once again. Another shaking of the head.

"Then forget it" he said simply, and left the room to get back to work.

"Okay… that was strange", Alice said to herself.

The rest of the day, Alice thought and thought over what Julius had said. Why would any sane person lie about the taste of coffee? It just wasn't right!

Mentally, she scolded herself for serving such horrible coffee to him all these days; she would have made it better, if she had only got back some constructive criticism.

Finally, when she was confused beyond her limits, she decided to approach the victim of the horrible coffee himself.

Julius looked up to see a small figure, looking like she had done a lot of thinking.

"Julius?" she asked timidly.

"Mmmhmm…?" he asked, feigning more indifference than he meant to do.

"I've been….umm… thinking about what you said."

No response.

"I don't understand why you'd lie about something as trivial as bad coffee."

No response.

"So… I was wondering…could you explain to me exactly what you meant?" she finished nervously.

"Explain? You want an explanation?" he asked. At that moment, something inside him snapped, and he grabbed for Alice's arm and pulled her close.

"Here's your explanation" he said abruptly, and stared at her with faraway eyes for a long moment.

And then kissed her. Julius had extreme self-control, and thus could keep his emotions with him, thereby making it a gentle, sweet kiss.

Alice, initially shocked, turned off her brain, which seemed to turn on its auto-pilot mode.

A bit later, he moved away, but Alice stepped with him. A surprised look crossed his face, especially when Alice said slowly, "I didn't quite catch that explanation. How about a little more explaining, Julius?"

Hooray! I'm done! That took me very less time to write! Review, please!