for clarity: Romania = Danut/Dani; Norway = Niels
Introduction
Alfred F. Jones is a normal teenager.
He's fifteen years old (sixteen in four months!), lives with his parents on a small farm, has two horses named Freedom and Liberty, and likes football and horseback riding and hamburgers and astronomy.
His best friend's name is Matthew, and he's positive that they're actually brothers. Both of them were adopted and they're both the same age and practically born on the same day. Someone probably just got the numbers mixed up for Matt's birthday on the adoption forms.
He hates politics and vegetables and winter and French class. Alfred likes swimming in the lake with Matthew, playing video games with his other friend Kiku, and horseback riding with Arthur, who he has a little baby tiny mostly non-existent okay actually completely existent crush on.
Alfred is just a normal teenager, with normal teenage problems.
Complicated
Arthur Kirkland is complicated.
He's complicated in the worst way. Meaning his layers have layers and he's absolutely unpredictable and can go from bitching at Alfred about littering to walking around with huge purple-green bruises he refuses to explain. He's a good student but everyone's sure he's in a gang. He's polite to everyone in the town but rude to all the members of his own family. His best friends are the weird Romanian orphan with the arm tattoos and the creepy Norwegian orphan who doesn't talk, and no one can figure any of them out. He wears two iron rings, a silver bracelet, a stone amulet, and a loop through the shell of his ear. He used to dress like a total punk but nowadays he's fond of sweatervests and buttonups, even though the jewelry stays. Two years ago everyone was sure he was on drugs, despite the town doctor swearing he wasn't, and no one thinks that whatever he and his friends get up to in the woods at night is either legal or wholesome.
Arthur has a short temper, but he's really nice. Especially to animals. Alfred likes the afternoons he and Arthur spend with Liberty and Freedom because Arthur is like 90% less prickly and also it's funny how he holds complete conversations with the horses. Like they understand. Arthur doesn't talk much to people anymore, but he chats freely with Al's horses, with Heracles's cats, with Ludwig's dogs, with Gilbert's bird. And with himself. He has a really weird habit of muttering to himself. But he's been doing that for years.
Arthur doesn't have a lot of friends, but he has some. He's friends with Yao, Kiku's adoptive older brother, and he's friends with Rajni, the town doctor. He's friends with Francis, Matthew's guardian, and he's friends with Gilbert, the police chief's eldest son. The only friends he has who are his own age are Dani, Niels, and Alfred. But he doesn't seem to mind.
Arthur spends a lot of times in the forest. Like, a lot of time. Alfred knows because the only time Arthur turns his cellphone off is when he's in the forest, and his cellphone is like, always off. For someone who gets so fussy about dirt and looking presentable, he spends an awful lot of time running through the grass with his shoes off.
Arthur has like, a billion secrets. And even though they've been friends for over a year now, Alfred doesn't think he knows half of them. He knows Arthur can't swim. He knows Arthur has trouble sleeping indoors (which is weird as hell but hey Alfred can dig the whole 'one with nature' thing). He knows Arthur considers Danut and Niels to be his brothers more than he considers his actual biological brothers to be his brothers. He knows Arthur and Kiku meditate and drink tea together some days (Alfred pouted for like a week straight when they wouldn't let him join. He can so totally sit still for more than five seconds). He knows that Arthur isn't like the rest of the senior class who are desperate to leave and is seriously considering waiting a year before applying to a college. He knows that Arthur has two tattoos shaped like wings on his shoulder blades, and that they look suspiciously similar to the curling tattoos on Dani's arms. But literally no one knows about those, and Alfred promised he wouldn't tell.
Arthur is turning seventeen years old at the end of the month, and he's not going to have a party, no matter how much Alfred badgers him. Arthur says he and Dani and Niels are going to watch a movie in Dani's living room like they do for all of their birthdays every year, and that if Alfred tries to throw him a party he will regret it sorely and might wake up the next morning missing a toe or two
But Alfred can't stop himself from planning one out anyways. He sits in his room and muses over who he might invite and decides that, hell, he'll just invite everyone. It's a small town, everyone knows everyone anyways, and he doesn't think there's anyone that actively dislikes Arthur except for his own family. But he reconsiders because Arthur might not hate anyone but he does have a short fuse and the list of people who don't usually set him off is quite short. So maybe he won't invite everyone.
Obviously he has to invite Dani and Niels, because they're Arthur's best friends and they do everything together anyways. And Niels has that huge brother complex so maybe he'll invite Emil too, even though he's only twelve. And if he invites Emil then he should probably invite Xiang, and then Xiang's twin sister Mei will probably come, and then their older brother Lei will come, and if the three youngest Wang siblings are coming then Linh and Tai will come to supervise. Alfred was going to invite Yong Soo and Kiku anyways. And Kiku gets nervous with crowds so he'll have to invite Heracles to keep him calm. And he'll invite Feliciano and Ludwig too! Because they're his friends and also Kiku's friends and though they're not Arthur's friends Ludwig's older brother Gilbert is. And both Gilbert and Linh are nineteen so if they're there then the party won't have to have any adult supervision. Score!
He could also invite Francis and Antonio, though he thinks Matthew would feel awkward if his guardian was there and no one really considers Antonio to be a credible adult anyways. Especially since he still has a tenuous hold on English and lives by himself in a renovated barn on the outskirts of town. Which is kind of supremely sketchy no matter which way you look at it. The only one who doesn't seem to find it sketchy is Lovino, who spends like, every waking hour at the barn with Antonio. Worse kept secret ever.
Alfred spends like, four hours planning out the party before he leaves his room to get a snack and comes back to see Arthur sitting on his desk holding up his planning sheet with one eyebrow raised.
That's another thing about Arthur. He uses windows, not doors. He also walks like a cat, the motherfucker. And he has this thing where he always knows when Alfred is doing something that displeases him. And Alfred has no clue how.
Arthur has like, a million secrets. He's weird and confusing and complicated.
(and Alfred has the biggest fucking crush on him like holy god have you seen his eyes they're so green they're like emeralds and jade and grass and trees and-)
alright, I discovered I'm really horrible at slice of life and the only way I could write this is in drabble format. so basically, the main timeline starts in March 2013, and the chapters will alternate between moments then and backstory moments in the past. I have some backstory prewritten already.
Also (this is important) you can request to see something. if you want to see what exactly character A's life in town is like, I'll do a chapter on them. If you want a chapter on Arthur chatting with Alfred's horses, I'll do a chapter on that. As long as I can fit it in without giving too much away, I'll do it. Occasionally, I might have to wait until the appropriate backstory has been posted, but I'm pretty good at being vague.
xoxo, natcat5 ;p