-1-

"Crap." Ninten muttered, erasing the pencil mark on the corner of his paper. He often drew on the bus despite the bumpy quality, pretending that it gave his art some sort of unique quality, but mostly he did it to give himself something to do besides talking to strangers. He often used fellow bus riders for reference, especially the girls since otherwise the female anatomy would look like a bit question mark in the sky [I 'm talking to you Michelangelo.]

The bus pulled over to let on a very particular passenger. He was tall and confident, often flirting casually with the bus driver or humming songs to himself in his seat whilst staring out the was the third day in a row the ginger boy sat in front of him during his daily bus ride home. Ninten flipped open to a fresh page in his sketchbook and went to work. 16 stops to go.

The boy had an interesting feature that intrigued Ninten, one of his irises was a bright carmine. It looked like a robin peaking out between the shadowy branches of his eyelashes, and oh god was it beautiful. Ninten wrote out a small list of possible explanations for the pigmentation in the corner of his sketchbook:

-A battle related injury

-Fight club

-Pink eye?

-Lost his other contact

-Popped blood vessels

-Hererochromia irdium

-? ? ? ?

He then returned to sketching a profile of the boy, trying to prefect his slightly upturned nose without making it look piggish. It took him 5 tries until he deemed the bridge to be satisfactory. 9 stops to go.

The redheaded boy leaned back in his seat casually and slid one hand into his pocket to change the song. Ninten focused on his jawline, attempting to translate it to paper. His eyebrows furrowed slightly in frustration as he focused on the curve of his lips. 5 stops to go.

Ninten was finishing off the ear when he looked up and noticed the bus was nearing the end of the line. He sighed heavily and closed his sketchbook, then slowly stood up in an attempt to stabilize himself. Unfortunately a short boy with a small build such as Ninten was no match for the jolting bus, and the abrupt stop knocked Ninten to the floor and his sketchbook In the air.

The redhead started laughing and stood up to offer his hand. Ninten, who was immensely embarrassed, grabbed his hand weakly in response. He was blushing profusely.

"You alright kid?" The boy towered over him, and suddenly Ninten felt very intimidated and small. Nonetheless he crossed his arms over his chest defensively.

"I'm not a kid." He mumbled.

"Whatever you say kid." The tall boy ran his hands through his hair, then bent down to pick up Ninten's sketchbook off the ground. To Ninten's horror it had flipped open to a page with the ginger's profile drawn on it. In this moment Ninten wanted nothing more but to disappear.

"Woah is that me? I look pretty hot huh." He laughed, flipping through the pages of Ninten's sketckbook.

"Please give that back it's private." Ninten reached to grab the book but the boy lifted it out of his reach and proceeded to walk off the bus—Ninten trailing him close behind "I said give it back now." He made an effort to look intimidating by standing more on the balls of his feel and lifting his heels slightly. His arms were balled into fists as he gave Claus the harshest glare he could.

"How the fuck does someone get a red eye from fight club?" The tall boy pointed to list with the newest drawing on it, "and what the hell is Heterochromia iridium?" He was laughing to the point of tears, keeping the book well out of Ninten's reach.

"It's a genetic thing where your eyes are naturally two different colors. Could you please just give me that back and leave me alone?" He was flustered and anxious, jumping as high as he could to reach the book. He lost his balance again and collided into the ginger's chest. The taller boy caught him with his free arm. Ninten awkwardly pushed back against the boy's chest and looked up at the red-head.

"Okay fine, I was just trying to have a little fun. Here you go kid. My name's Claus by the way." He grinned, flashing beautifuly even teeth. His smile caught Ninten up for a minute. Was this guy even real?

"Ninten." He wheezed, trying to breath without pulling out his inhaler in a short sighted attempt to seem cool.

"Are you okay kid?"

"Stop calling... Me kid..." He wheezed again, this time giving in to his body's needs. He pulled out his red inhaler feeling like a complete dork and gave it a few puffs, breathing in the medicated air.

"You have asthma? That's so cute." Claus smirked, giving Ninten a slight pinch on the cheek.

'This asshole,' Ninten thought 'this fucking asshole'. "Shut up." Ninten turned away from him and began walking down the street towards his house.

"See you tomorrow kid! I'll let you draw my good side!"

This cute asshole.

AN: (oh god these are so fucking annoying I know.) I basically wrote this after seeing a lack of (good) fanfiction for Clausten. (Sorry for any spelling/grammatical errors I tried to read the chapter out loud to catch as many as I could.) I'm really only publishing for my friend so I can share my story with her. Feed back is nice, but please be aware that I have a lot of headcanons in here (ex: Ninten is short as hell, Ness can't cook well, Ninten looking everything up on the internet all the time, ect.) that may or may not apply to these characters for you. Accept/reject them if you want, but I honestly won't care if you comment "Claus isn't like that- blah blah blah". I wrote their personalities as I see fit, and again I wrote this for myself mostly. (On final note my chapters are really short because this story wasn't supposed to be more than 3 chapters originally.)

thanks for reading!

-C.A.T.