It'd been about, let's say, half a year. Six months of hell- I mean school, for Arthur. He was still stuck sitting behind that cheese-monkey, Francis. It'd been biting at him to learn what that idiot was saying, if it was an insult, and how to throw back harsher words. He had assumed that each garbled mess of foreign linguistics was indeed an insult, after all.
Francis sat quietly in class, smiling softly to himself. As far as he knew, the class loved him. They would laugh with him whenever he was around and tried to speak to them, either in the few words of English he knew, or in his own language of French. So he deemed them friends. Even though in reality, they were all mocking him or simply laughing at his differences.
Back behind him, Arthur had his nose buried in a little pocket dictionary, one that he stared at and studied, trying to pick out the things Francis said on a regular basis. One of them in particular made him breathless.
The bell sounded over their heads, and the class stood, making their way out through the room's door. Francis waited politely to be last out, quietly standing behind the crowd, the only one behind him being Arthur. The teacher herself shuffled back into the staff room. So all that were left here were the slowly moving line of students.
Francis stepped into the second-last slot in line, only stopped when Arthur tugged at the sleeve of his World U uniform. "Mm? Quoi, y at-il quelque chose que vous souhaiteriez?" He asked, still not fluent enough in English to speak it. Arthur understood not a word.
"I know you probably can't understand me, but I've been reading up on, er.. français." His pronunciation was awful, plagued by his thick English accent. Francis perked up a little as he recognised a few of these words. He nodded, a gesture for Arthur to continue. "I, erm, finally worked out some of the crap you've been saying."
Francis nodded again, muted a little in front of Arthur. "Oui?" He inquired, having turned to face the other boy. "One of them, je t'aime, right?" Arthur asked, voice growing gradually quieter with each word. "I'm sorry, I really am. Désolé. It was awful of me to laugh at you."
"I'm just speaking nonsense to you, aren't I?"
Francis cocked his head to the side, lips pursed a little. The only words he'd picked up were 'I love you', and 'sorry'.
"You can't understand a bloody word."
The silence he was giving off was terrible, Francis was kicking himself to say something, even if it would just be received as white noise to Arthur.
"You bloody toad. I guess I can say I.."
At the pause, Francis felt inclined to offer a word or two, but bit his tongue. He let Arthur say what he was going to.
"I.. Je t'aime, you big stinking frog."