Boys Pull Pigtails, Men Pull Fire Alarms

Because this is more fun than writing timed essays. Pairing subject to interpretation. See end note.

"You! Get back here right now!" Alfred slid awesomely down the bannister of the empty staircase and hurtled along the language corridor.

"Alfred F. Jones! No running in the corridors!" Alfred slammed the door open so hard it reverberated off the wall and slammed back into the frame, blocking off his angry pursuer.

"Jones! Get your arse back here!" The voice was still ear-bleedingly loud, but it sounded further behind as he skipped down the steps of the sports entrance.

"S-stop running away!" The peevish Brit was obviously getting out of breath.

Alfred's jacket flared out behind him as he sprinted across the sports grounds and towards sweet, sweet freedom, the irate yells behind him getting breathier and breathier, and farther and farther away as he easily outstripped the student council president. The stuffy Brit should really get out from behind his desk more often – they'd only run down four staircases, through eight corridors, around six classrooms and across the football pitch, and he was already out of breath. Alfred, however, was just getting into his stride, darting past the confused football players with his usual agility and –

"Owowowwow!" Alfred fell with the grace and dignity of a stack of cans as a well-aimed football slammed into the back of his leg with extreme force, landing sprawled across the ground, his jacket falling over his head.

"Shit, that hurt," he groaned, and pulled his jacket down, getting to his feet and gingerly checking for injuries – no need to hurry, the Brit was still miles behind him. "Who kicked that?" He looked around indignantly to see a smirking Lovino a few metres away.

"What the hell, man?" He demanded in outrage.

"It was funny," Lovino shrugged, contriving to swagger where he stood. Alfred flipped him the bird. "Hey, Yank. You know what I'm doing right now?" Lovino asked mockingly.

"No? What?" Alfred asked, frowning. "Impersonating a garden gnome?" Lovino's face went red, and his fists clenched.

"Why you-" He sputtered, but Francis, the suave, annoying French boy, came up and slung his arm around Lovino's shoulders, cutting him off, although doing nothing for his temper.

"What our sweet little Lovino is doing," he addressed Alfred with a wink, "is distracting you whilst our dear student council president catches up with you. Correct, Arthur?"

Alfred turned around in horror, but not before a hand clapped down on his shoulder and a huffing, puffing Englishman drew level with him, face red with anger and exertion.

"Thanks, you bloody git," he directed at Francis. "I'd let go of Lovino if I were you, though."

"What? Wh- OW!" In a blur of fist and face, Francis was on the ground, clutching a bloody nose, whist Lovino fumed over him.

"Ouch, pwned," Alfred laughed, and exchanged a high-five with Antonio, a handsome Spaniard who had run up to see why he wasn't having to defend his goal anymore – and, of course, to watch Lovino Vargas hit Francis Bonnefoy.

"I wouldn't be too smug, you damned Yank," Arthur Kirkland, student council president, said sternly, tightening his grip on Alfred's shoulder. "You have a week's worth of detention to sit through – and my filing cabinet is just begging to be alphabetised."

"Not fair!" Alfred whined. "I have a home to get to, Arty."

"Don't call me Arty, you insufferable git!"

"Aw, c'mon," he wheedled. "Can't you let me go, just this once?" He turned on his famed puppy-eyes, but the Brit just smiled nastily.

"I might have let you go early, but now that you've made me run around half the bloody school after you, I think I just might keep you an extra few hours. You can catalogue the archaeology club's last find – eight hundred Roman coins. Oh, you might have to scrape all the mud off first, though."

Alfred didn't even have the words to protest as he was frogmarched back to Arthur's office. But that was fine, because Lovino was more than making up for his silence as Antonio helped Francis up from the ground.

"What are you doing, you traitor! His stupid garlic-breath was all over me!"

"But Lovi, he's my friend. Bros before hoes."

"I'm not a hoe!"

"Aw, Lovii~"

"Chigii!"

"That stupid, stuffy, boring, stuck-up British asshole," Alfred fumed to his table at lunch the next day. Kiku raised one eyebrow a fraction of a millimetre as he ate his rice; Matthew was busy shrinking into his seat as a white-haired sixth-former leered at him from across the room, Herakles was – unsurprisingly – asleep, and paying no attention, and Ivan was busy pulling Yao's ponytail. "Hey, are you guys listening? I'm telling you, that guy's the worst tyrant in the universe."

"Oh? I heard you were in his office for four hours last night." Ivan stopped tormenting the Chinese exchange student for a moment and shot Alfred a malicious smile. "It must have been fun, da?"

"Shove off, Ivan," Alfred scowled. "He made me re-categorise every single one of the student records for like the last century. Is that what he does for fun?"

"I think the fun part is not the paperwork, Alfred," Kiku remarked mildly.

"What do you mean? I think he must get off on it or something," Alfred glowered, shooting a glance over at Arthur's table, where the devil incarnate was signing forms with an expression of deep irritation on his face as the deputy president, the same French traitor who had sold him out yesterday, blew in his ear around the widest smirk Alfred had ever seen. As he watched, Arthur finally snapped and hit Francis over the head with a paperweight.

"Ah, those two are still fighting," Kiku said, his tone expressing neither disapproval nor pleasure. It was just a statement.

"Who wouldn't fight with someone as boring and stuffy as that Brit?" Alfred muttered. "Seriously, he gave me a detention for having my shirt untucked! How picky can you get?"

"Alfred-san, you had your shirt unbuttoned to the waist," Kiku explained patiently. "In the middle of assembly. You came in whilst Arthur-san was speaking."

"I apologised!"

"Yes, but your apology interrupted his speech about the importance of punctuality and correct attire. I think he might have been justified, aru," Yao pointed out.

"Yeah, but still," Alfred whined." He was so boring. Someone had to lighten it up. And it was a coincidence! Mostly."

"It is unwise to deliberately antagonise somebody in a position of power," Kiku ventured.

"Hmph." Alfred folded his arms and pouted.

"Are you going to eat that?" Matthew, his twin, spoke up, indicating the untouched burger on Alfred's plate. Alfred stared at it.

"Yeah," he said churlishly, and stuffed it into his mouth, spilling sauce down his blazer. Matthew rolled his eyes. Alfred's sulking fits were usually pretty dramatic, but they could never stem his appetite for junk food.

"I jush wish he woshn't sho borinfh an' schtuffy," Alfred mumbled, spraying bits of burger onto the table – Kiku discreetly moved his bento slightly away from the line of fire. "How can anyone live like that? Whilst I was sorting his stupid files, he was doing embroidery!"

"He is not the council president for nothing," Yao remarked, glowering at Ivan as if daring the gently smiling Russian to touch his silky hair again. "It is hard work, aru. I was president at my school in China."

"Hey, how old are you, Yao?" Alfred frowned. The Asian boy smiled mysteriously. It was the only answer anyone ever received when they asked the slender youth that question. The rumour was that he already had a degree, but had transferred to an English-speaking high school for the 'cultural experience'. Alfred liked to think that he had been exiled from his homeland for some exciting crime, and had adopted this new identity as cover.

"For a boring person, Arthur has dominated the conversation for the last hour," Ivan remarked with a sly smile. Actually, his smile was ever-present, slightly sleepy and very innocent-looking. His tone, likewise, was light and innocuous. But Alfred somehow knew the comment was more pointed than it appeared. Ivan loved to torment people whilst appearing all sunflowers and smiles.

"Hmph," Alfred said in response. "Like I care about that boring guy."

But somehow, all day, all he could think about was Arthur. He glared at Arthur's back as Arthur stood up to read his essay out in English – the privilege of the highest-scoring student every week, although so far it had only ever been Arthur's voice sending the class into a stupor time after time. He glared at Arthur's back as his slender shoulders dipped through the sea of students and stopped by his locker to take out a book, even though Alfred's own locker was on the other side of the building and he was late for class. He glared at the back of Arthur's head as he doodled on his notes in maths; his hair was actually not neat at all, but stuck up in funny places, not in a bedhead way, but just as if it grew that way naturally. And he glared at Arthur as Arthur watched him when they were both seated in his office at the end of the school day.

"Well? You'd best get started on the rest of those papers," Arthur said with a grim smirk, his eyes – green, very, very green – shifting to one side as he broke their unspoken contest. "They're not going to organise themselves."

"Say, Arty, do you shuffle them up every night just so you can re-order them the next day?" Alfred demanded, waiting for the rant, and the trademark 'Don't call me Arty!'. Arthur just smirked and brought a novel out of his bag.

Alfred frowned a little, then looked down at the work in front of him. He shuffled a few sheets of paper, then looked up again. He glared at Arthur's fringe as it obscured his view of the rest of his face.

"Whatcha reading?" he asked. Arthur pointedly turned another page. Alfred leaned forwards and plucked the book out of his hands.

"Hey, give that back you bloody git!"

"A Tale of Two Cities?" Alfred read. "Sounds dull!"

"Then give it back," Arthur demanded, making a grab for it.

"Why? Is it more interesting than me?" He smiled winningly at Arthur, who scowled at him. "Maybe I should read it, huh?" His grin widened as Arthur's eyes popped a little, but fell when Arthur sighed slightly, and pulled a textbook towards him instead.

"Hey, don't you want it back?" he asked.

"When you're ready," Arthur said calmly, not looking up.

"Whatever," Alfred said, pouting and tossing the book back to its owner, who caught it deftly. Alfred missed the slight grin which ghosted across the other boy's face. "I'm so bored! Can't I at least do my homework or something if I have to be stuck here?"

"If you like," Arthur said airily, finding his page again, "but you'll still have to finish the filing afterwards."

"What? But I'm not learning anything sorting this junk!"

"You're learning to finish changing in the changing rooms, and not to burst into the room in the middle of assembly," Arthur said primly. "Not everyone wants to see your naked chest first thing in the morning."

"But you do, huh, Arty?"

"Of course not."

"Yes you do!"

"No I don't!"

"Yes you do~"

"Do your work!"

And it went like that for a week. Alfred would glare at Arthur whenever he was in a two-hundred metre radius of the other boy. Arthur would sit and read, or sit and sew, or sit and smirk, whilst Alfred sorted file after file for hours on end. And, every lunch, his friends would sit and pretend to listen to his rants and raves about the English boy.

"The same thing, every day. Can you imagine what that's like?" Alfred grumbled, stabbing his fork into his pasta and twisting violently.

"I think I might have some idea, Alfred-san," Kiku remarked idly as he nibbled on the edge of a rice-ball. The sarcasm, hardly inflected, was lost on Alfred. Ivan just smiled.

What was the most annoying, though, was that Arthur was getting harder and harder to bait. Whatever Alfred tried - humming under his breath, whistling through his teeth, tapping a pencil against the table, rocking back and forth on his chair, Arthur seemed to develop an immunity for. His only response was to look up and mildly remark:

"If you keep that up, you'll have to stay until midnight." How he managed it, Alfred had no idea. Heck, he was getting on his own nerves! But nothing annoyed him as much as Arthur's lack of response.

On Friday, Alfred still hadn't finished sorting the files. It was almost six before Arthur finally looked up from a stack of files and told him he could leave.

"That's it now, right? I'm done with detention?" he demanded of Arthur.

"Unless you particularly wish to finish the job, I suppose you are free to go," the British boy shrugged.

"Really? That's it?" Alfred asked.

"Naturally, unless you land yourself in detention again," Arthur said simply.

Alfred just stood there. Arthur ignored him, head down, signing forms.

"Hey," Alfred said. Arthur looked up expectantly. "Er," Alfred said.

"Is there a problem?" Arthur asked.

"Er," Alfred said again. "Bye, then."

"Goodbye," Arthur said, and went back to the forms. Feeling stupid, Alfred left the room and walked along the corridor. He let out a long breath. He was finally done! It was the weekend, no more detentions, and he could go home and play video games until his hands seized up. But somehow it was anticlimactic. He wasn't sure why, it was just… less than he had expected.

"I don't get it," he said to Mattie over dinner (their parents were in Boston for the weekend). "It's great. I'm finally finished wasting my evenings with the most boring person on the planet. But I'm not as over the moon as I thought I'd be."

"Hmm," Matt said, taking another bite of his macaroni cheese.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Alfred demanded.

"Nothing. I just noticed that all you ever talk about is Arthur," he said.

"Yeah! Cos he's so unreasonable!"

"But he let you go. He just gave you detention, like everyone else who breaks the rules, eh. Nothing special."

"Yeah, but the bastard chased me around half the school. He yelled at me after the assembly for a solid hour! He made me stay until it was practically dark every night to file pointless papers! And then he just ignored me!"

"Hmm," Matt said again.

"I don't get it!" Alfred yelled out in frustration. Matt just ate his dinner. Sometimes his brother could be very dense.

"Hey! Arty!" Alfred yelled out at the other boy as he hurtled through the school gates on Monday morning after a very unsatisfying weekend. Arthur looked around, his face perfectly blank.

"Alfred?" He raised one thick eyebrow.

"Just making sure you're not going to stick me in detention for no reason again."

"No." Arthur turned away again, about to go into the building.

"Good," Alfred said loudly. He watched Arthur walk up the steps; the back of his collar was sticking up. "Hey, Arty, you're violating the dress code!" Arthur turned around, and Alfred smirked at him. He indicated his collar. Arthur felt it, and smoothed it down without comment, then carried on into the building. Alfred pouted. He had no idea why, but for some reason, he felt put out. Stupid, stuffy Brit.

He wasn't glaring at Arthur across the lunch room. He wasn't mad, he told himself as he poked a piece of tomato around his place with a chip. It wasn't getting on his last nerve the way Arthur was blushing and fuming as Francis' long fingers stroked through his short hair. He was batting the Frenchie's hands away. Why would it bug him? Why would it even bug him if he wasn't? Why did he care? He stabbed the chip into the plate until it was nothing more than potato pulp, and did not watch at all as Arthur got up abruptly and left the room. And he didn't watch as the Frog followed him, grinning widely.

He was not fidgeting or glancing at the door.

"I've gotta use the bathroom," he said loudly, and ran from the room. Ivan gave a single chuckle. Matthew looked at the untouched burger on Alfred's plate. Kiku gave a tiny, tiny smile. Herakles slept on.

Alfred made his way unthinkingly to the student council office – it was empty. He wasn't sure why that bothered him. All he was there for was to check he hadn't left anything behind on Friday. Yeah. He peered through classroom windows, but saw nothing but empty benches. Not that he was looking for anyone. He was just – just – looking. Yeah. Sighing in frustration, he made his way up to the roof. Not because he wanted a vantage point of the school grounds. Maybe he just felt like some fresh air. And if he slowed down because he heard voices, it was only because – oh, who cared why?

"Mon cheri, those are bad for your health," a very French accent scolded, and Alfred caught a whiff of cigarette smoke in the air. He peeped his head around the corner, and saw Francis and Arthur leaning side by side against the railings, Arthur smoking a cigarette, the first few buttons of his shirt undone. His mouth fell open unattractively. As he watched, the Brit offered the cigarette to Francis, who accepted and took a drag. Arthur chuckled.

"Hypocrite," he teased. Francis shrugged.

"I just wanted the indirect kiss," he grinned lecherously. Arthur blushed, and snatched the cigarette back, stamping it out underfoot.

"Don't say such perverted things," he scolded.

"Non?" Francis sent a flirtatious look at Arthur. "But you know I want to kiss you, Arthur." He moved forward and wrapped a hand around Arthur's waist, leaning in so that his lips brushed Arthur's ear. He whispered something that Alfred couldn't hear, and Arthur blushed deep red, pushing him half-heartedly away. Alfred held his breath as Francis leaned in, getting closer and closer to Arthur's lips. And Arthur hadn't moved! But then at the last second, Francis dodged to the side and stole another cigarette from the pack loosely gripped in Arthur's hand. Alfred let out a whoosh of breath as Francis lit up, smirking. Arthur scowled.

"Stupid bloody frog," he grumbled, and snatched the cigarette when it was offered to him, meeting Francis' eyes and inhaling deeply, wrapping his lips around the smoke in a way which made Alfred's mouth go dry.

"You tease," Francis chuckled.

"Says you," Arthur accused, blowing smoke out in a thin stream. They both caught each other's eyes again and grinned, then simultaneously leaned towards each other, kissing easily this time, as if they had done this routine a hundred times before. Alfred turned away abruptly as Francis' hands pulled the Brit closer. He felt suddenly sick, hot and cold and guilty and angry, and it was confusing. He ran down the stairs, sliding down the bannisters without thinking about it, and then leaned against the wall, breathing hard even though he was not at all out of breath.

Ok, he didn't get it at all. Maybe breaking it down would help.

He had followed Arthur.

He had seen Arthur smoking a cigarette on the roof.

That was against the school rules.

Arthur was the student council president.

Arthur's shirt buttons had been undone.

He had followed Arthur.

Arthur and Francis had kissed.

Arthur and Francis had kissed.

He wasn't sure why that made him feel so uneasy inside. Sort of like his heart was on fire, or maybe being poked by a very sharp stick.

"Shit, this is so uncool," he said aloud.

"Alfred?"

Alfred spun around as he heard a very British voice calling him. Arthur was standing at the end of the corridor, a few metres away. His shirt was buttoned all the way, but his cheeks were a little flushed, his hair a bit mussed up. Alfred felt his face heat up like a hot-plate.

"Alfred, what are you doing? It's against the rules to be wandering the halls at lunch."

Alfred looked at Arthur's lips. He couldn't help it, they were moving so much. He remembered how they had been wrapped around the cigarette. He remembered how they had been wrapped around Francis' less than a minute before.

"Listen here, you git, I want my lunch, so either scoot off back to the canteen or stay here and get detention again," Arthur said, his tone irritated. It made Alfred's heart leap. "What'll it be, hmm?" Arthur asked, smirking slightly. And it was then that Alfred realised something horrible. He realised what Mattie might potentially have meant when he said 'hmm'. It was the non-committal sound he made whenever he knew something but he didn't want to tell his brother in case he got laughed at, or yelled at, or both. And he realised that the frustration he had been feeling all week was suddenly gone as he watched Arthur's annoyed, ruffled gaze. Directed at him. Aw, shit.

"Alfred, are you ok?" Arthur took a step closer. Alfred panicked. He was still far too confused to do anything right now. And Arthur had just kissed Francis. He looked around for an escape. His eyes caught something red. It was a fire alarm. His eyes darted to it. Then to Arthur. Then to it.

Arthur caught his gaze and frowned. Then he caught sight of the alarm and his eyes – green, very, very green – widened as he put two and two together.

"Alfred, if you even think about it, you git, I'll give you detention every night for the rest of the year," he warned. Alfred's grin magically hitched itself into place at the tone in his voice.

"No smoking in school, Arty," he said.

"Why y-"

Alfred laughed as he ran, his jacket slung across his back like a cape, his feet pounding across the empty football pitch as the sound of the fire bell rang out across the grounds.

"Come back, you bloody git! You're going to be in so much trouble!"

He laughed some more, and called over his shoulder.

"You'll have to catch me first, Arty!"

"Don't call me Arty!"

Right, anyone who caught a plot in there - congratulations, you must have a really vivid imagination. If you are severely confused (I'm not sure how clear that was) then basically I think Alfred's a bit tsundere and likes the thrill of the chase, and being the centre of attention, whereas Arthur is a smart boy, and knows exactly how to play people. So maybe he was just keeping Francis sweet to get him to do his share of the work, or maybe they're more than friends. Who knows? And maybe he just likes teasing Alfred, maybe he's not interested, maybe he is. Again, subject to interpretation. I hope Arthur doesn't seem OOC - I slipped a bit of cool pirate personality in there, and I like to think he's a little bit manipulative and rebellious. And we all know he was driven crazy on the inside by Alfred's antics in detention, he just didn't show it. And Alfred? He must just be a bit of a masochist :D Let me know what you thought in a review!