My first fanfiction, featuring my OTP: KidxCrona. It's a terribly cliché teacher and student high school AU, but it's been buzzing around in my brain for a while now, so, enjoy! I'll hopefully have the next chapter up within a week.
Growing up, Crona had never really learned what the different emotions were, and what they meant. He knew the basics, but nothing beyond that. Happy, sad, scared; those were all emotions that he understood. He didn't, however, understand any other emotions. He couldn't grasp the concept of loyalty, gratitude, jealously, and most of all, love.
His first exposure to any emotion he had ever experienced that was directed towards him other than hate and disappointment came when he was taken from his abusive mother and brought to an orphanage. There, two years ago, at the age of 16, he witnessed pity and kindness for the first time. It took some work, but he eventually learned the difference between the two. Some people were only nice to him because they knew what he went through, but others were nice to him because they were kind people.
The first time he felt that someone loved him was after he had been with his new adopted parents, a man called Stein and his wife Marie, for a few months. He had started to cry one day after he burnt the bread he was trying to make into toast. He had never used a toaster before, but had seen others use it, and wanted to try on his own. He felt so guilty for burning the bread and creating a foul smell in the kitchen that he didn't know what to do, so he did the only thing he knew how to do; curl up in the corner and cry. Marie had found him minutes later, and immediately took him into her arms and held him until he had calmed. She wasn't mad at him, or disappointed, or hostile at all. In that moment, Crona realized what it was to have someone love and care for him. He learned other feelings and emotions quickly after that, with the help of Marie and his favorite teacher, Mr. Death.
The one emotion he couldn't figure out, though, was the other kind of love.
This confusion was what brought him to his favorite teacher's classroom after school ended one Friday afternoon. He had been feeling things he never had before, and thought what he was feeling might be love. To Crona, though, love seemed like an emotion that didn't quite describe what he was feeling. Maybe a weaker kind of the love he had seen between Stein and Marie? Or maybe it was a stronger kind of the love he felt for his adopted mother. The love he felt when he looked at Marie was a warm gratitude and admiration, but the feeling he got when he looked at that one person was so different. His heart pounded and his tummy felt odd. His mind would go hazy and his palms would sweat. This was the reason he was standing outside of classroom number eight instead of walking home, or talking to Marie about these feelings. For some reason, these feelings seemed much too personal and taboo to be talking to his adopted mother about. So, he came to the only other adult he trusted for answers.
He walked through the halls of his high school slowly and nervously. His fear of how Mr. Death would react to his questions was keeping him from walking with the flow of the other students, who were eager to leave the school. Finally, he made it to the classroom door. After standing outside until the rest of the students cleared out of the school, Crona fought his anxiety and took a deep breath. He then raised his hand and knocked lightly on the door.
As soon as class ended every day, Kid would go around his classroom and make sure all the desks were symmetrically aligned. Eight in the front left, front right, back left, and back right. His desk was in the exact center of the front of the room, with everything on top arranged in perfect symmetry. Kid sighed and relaxed back into his desk chair once he had fixed the room to his liking. He took a moment to admire the perfect symmetry of the room before his thoughts drifted to his job. He had so many papers to grade. Sighing and rubbing his temples to try to rid himself of a headache, Kid leaned over his desk and got to work.
The young teacher had only been at work for maybe five minutes before he came across the paper of one particular student that invaded his mind in sometimes inappropriate ways. He sighed as he looked at the name casually scrawled atop the paper. Crona Gorgon it read. He felt his face soften into a smile as he thought about the shy student. Crona had only begun attending his class a few months ago, but Kid already knew him better than any of his other students. The young boy with the pink hair had caught his attention quickly; partially due to his symmetrical dress but asymmetrical hair. The combination annoyed Kid to no end, but also intrigued him. He had decided quickly that he liked the boy, and for some reason, the boy liked him too. Maybe it was because he was one of the youngest teachers at the age of 22, or because Kid had always been exceptionally kind to him due to the teacher's strange attraction to the boy.
Kid smiled as memories of their talks together drifted through Kid's mind as he sat at his desk. Crona came to him often with questions about how school, and life in general, worked. Sometimes their conversations were serious and sometimes they were casual, but no matter how much interaction they had one day or the other, Kid would always dream of the boy at night. A sigh of frustration come from the English teacher, I can't think about him like this. It's wrong, not to mention illegal, but I just can't seem to get him out of my head. In the midst of his inner conflict, a knock at his classroom door sounded. Sighing once more, Kid called out a, "Come in," as he looked back down at the papers he was to grade. Whoever was at the door didn't concern him much. If Crona had wanted to come by and talk, he would have already, so there was no one left for Kid to be excited about getting a visit from.
"M-Mr. Death?" A small, nervous voice called out to him from the doorway, causing his head to snap up. The sight of the timid pink-haired boy standing in his classroom made him smile as he stood and beckoned the student over to his desk.
"What can I help you with, Crona?" He asked as he pulled over a stool so Crona could sit next to his desk.
Crona gave a shy smile and shuffled down the steps of the classroom to the large black desk at the front. He sat down on the stool, like he always did, while Kid sat in his desk chair, but turned to look at Crona. The boy fiddled with the long sleeves of his shirt and bit his lip nervously. Though it had always been hard for him to talk to the older man, this time was even more difficult.
Kid leaned forward and rested both elbows on his knees. "What is it, Crona?" He asked again, sending the shy boy a kind smile.
"It's just…" Crona trailed off and sighed before lowering his head to his hands and knotting his fingers in pink hair. "I've just been having these weird feelings about someone and they make my heart race and my tummy feels weird when I talk to them and I think about them a lot and I don't understand why and I don't know what it means and it's so frustrating!" Crona ranted as he squeezed his eyes shut and trembled slightly.
Kid's face softened at Crona disposition and confession. His heart clenched as he realized what the boy was most likely talking about. Though he knew he could never in his wildest dreams be with this boy, his student, it still hurt. Despite his own emotional pain, he knew he was going to try to help Crona any way he possibly could. After realizing this, Kid sat up and smiled softly at the boy who was now peaking at him from between his fingers. "Well, Crona, from what you're describing, it sounds like you have a crush."
"A-a what?" Crona asked, lifting his face from his hands to reveal his confused expression.
Kid smiled at the innocent boy in front of him, "a crush. It's when you want to be more than friends with someone. You want to be near them, hug them, hold their hand, kiss them, and just… be with them. Does that make sense?"
Crona nodded and thought about what his teacher had told him. "S-so… what do I do about it?"
The feeling of his heart sinking came back at Crona's question. He was about to tell the only person he ever liked romantically to go after someone else. "Well, you could try to forget about those feelings and move on," yeah, 'cause that really works, Kid thought to himself sarcastically, "or you could tell her how you feel and hope she feels the same way."
Pausing for a moment, Crona considered what the older man had just told him. It was good advice, but was he only allowed to feel this way about a girl? He didn't understand why his teacher had assumed he felt this way about a girl. He saw nothing wrong with being with another boy. "Okay, but it's a him," Crona clarified for the man innocently.
A string of curses ran through Kid's mind at Crona's confession. Now he knew for a fact that there was only one thing keeping him from making a move on the boy. Kid cleared his throat awkwardly, trying to keep his raging emotions from showing on his face. "Well, then, you could tell him and hope he feels the same way," he advised with a forced smile.
"I-I can't do that," Crona protested and blushed deeply. No way could he ever get up the courage to tell Mr. Death that it was actually him Crona had a 'crush' on. No, that would be mortifying. He would never be able to step foot in the man's classroom again!