Disclaimer: I do not in any way own Hetalia: Axis Powers
Sorry for long time no update, haha! Hey, did you know I have a list of pretty much every name I use for Hetalia characters - canon versions, 2ps, nyos, and 2p nyo characters!
Yekaterina "Katyusha" - Ukraine
Elizaveta Héderváry - Hungary
Señor Fernandez-Carriedo - Spain
Caterina - Nyo Romano
Emil - Iceland
Madeline - Nyo Canada
Toris - Lithuania
Yekaterina was tired. She had stayed up late the night before studying for a bio quiz, and now it would seem that she was paying for it with the itchy almost-tears behind her eyes, the heaviness of her lids, and the cotton balls stuffed in her head.
Señor Fernandez Carriedo was a very nice Spanish teacher, all things considered, but he couldn't excuse anybody from their work on the premise of fatigue alone, otherwise all of them - students and teacher alike - would be sitting in a circle playing Cards Against Humanity. It didn't matter how much you had or hadn't slept, it simply couldn't be done, not fairly anyways.
That was how Yekaterina had found herself partnered up with one Elizaveta Hérderváry. Elizaveta was hardly Katyusha's first choice of partner, and she highly doubted that she was Elizaveta's, either. Everyone around them had moved a bit fast and they a bit slow and by the time the two of them had realized that everyone else had paired up, they were the only ones left.
Elizaveta and Yekaterina had belatedly moved to sit at the other's desk, and decided on Elizaveta's.
"So," she breathed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Let's get started."
God, she's gorgeous, Yekaterina thought to herself. That was the main reason she hadn't wanted to work with her - whenever she was around Elizaveta, Katyusha's brain got too mixed up to properly think.
"Hey, are you listening to me?" Elizaveta asked, flicking Katyusha's forearm with her finger and thumb. Katyusha blinked at her slowly, foggy brain trying to comprehend. "I asked if you wanted to go first?" Elizaveta prompted.
"Oh," she muttered, then turned her attention back to her textbook pages. There was a bunch of stock questions and their answers listed. "Sure."
"Okay!" the other girl smiled encouragingly at her, something Katyusha sorely needed as she listened to Caterina rip into whoever she had partnered with for not knowing Spanish - even though the class was the lowest level of Spanish offered to their grade.
Katyusha squinted at the textbook. "Um," they were supposed to be learning basic greetings and introductions. "Como te...ah, como te llama?" she asked nervously, voice rising dramatically in pitch at the end.
Elizaveta answered in Spanish, butchering the pronunciation, and they continued like that - one of them saying a greeting, or asking for their phone number, and the other responded in the role they were meant to be playing, wether that was a classmate, teacher, or group of people.
After about five minutes, they finished up. Katyusha laid her head down, using her arms as a pillow as she listened to Señor Fernandez Carriedo remind Catarina that she was repeating the class due to her poor work ethic and subsequent low grades last year, and so it was unfair for her to be rude to other students about their lack of mastery of the Spanish language.
Katyusha stared up at Elizaveta as if in a haze, looking at the way her hair fell down her back as if a waterfall of wavy brown.
She played with it a lot, almost as if unable to decide if she wanted it behind her back or down her front, behind her ears or pinned pack, or neither, or maybe both. Katyusha had never noticed that before, despite the countless times her tired eyes had drifted to Elizaveta.
"Your hair's really pretty, you know that right?" Katyusha said almost without thinking, immediately regretting it.
"Thank you!" Elizaveta beamed at her. "Yours too!"
People always said pale-faced people flushed easily. That was a lie, Katyusha determined - if it was true, she would have been redder than a tomato.
Katya drifted off again, head filled with fantasies about pretty-haired knights in shining armor until Señor Fernandez Carriedo clapped his hands and told them all to go back to their assigned seats. Caterina eyed her partner balefully and moved with a "humph".
Katyusha passed the rest of the class in a haze, robotically taking notes and only looking up when her seatmate Emil poked her in the side.
The bell rang. Katyusha went to her home ec class, where she was cooking with Madeline and Toris. The three of them were all decidedly talented chefs, but none of them had a clue as to how to make curry, which was likely the main factor behind their less-than-satisfactory dish.
School let out after home ec, so Katyusha grabbed her bag and left the building, weaving in between the groups of two or three that clumped together. The sky was grey and the air was chill, so she pulled a sweater on and fervently wished for no rain.
Unfortunately it would seem that today was simply not Yekaterina's lucky day, as the heavens split open right as she stepped under a shop awning. All around her umbrellas popped open, until the world became a world of bobbing fabric and metal and plastic, awash in black and grey.
Katyusha shivered. With the rain had come a sudden cold, permeating even her thick sweater. She eyed the torrential rain warrily - she didn't have an umbrella, and by the time she made it home she would be soaked to the bone. Yekaterina chewed her lip nervously, looking from the sky to the ground and then to the sky again. She could try to wait it out, but the weather had been rather unpredictably and unusually wet as of late, so the rain could end up lasting two minutes or two hours.
A hand tapped her shoulder, and Yekaterina jumped. Behind her was Elizaveta, holding her trademark pink umbrella.
"Um. I noticed you didn't have an umbrella," Elizaveta said. She lifted hers by the strap. "And I do have one."
Yekaterina stayed silent, unsure of the point she was making.
"I was thinking we could share? You live across from Oakwood, right? That's near my place, so it wouldn't be any trouble," Elizaveta offered.
"Oh! Yes, that would be wonderful, thank you very much!" Yekaterina smiled and clasped her hands together, and Elizaveta laughed just a little bit.
They walked side-by-side through the rain under Elizaveta's umbrella, occasionally getting a little wet when they stepped too far to the side. Luckily the rain had slowed from the torrential downpour of earlier, but it was not yet a storm you would want to enter without an umbrella or raincoat.
There was not a exactly a silence between the two girls because the noise of life - the rain, the wind, the cars, the people, the magnitude of living - drowned out any silence, but they weren't speaking either and that created a sort of void.
It wasn't a void that could be described as awkward by any means, but it still felt a bit empty, like they were supposed to be talking. They both wanted to, to be sure.
"Um," Yekaterina started.
"So," Elizaveta began.
They looked at each other. Looked away.
"You go," Elizaveta said.
Yekaterina looked at the ground. She'd already been looking at the ground, but now she was looking at it with more intent.
"Okay. So, um, well the thing is. I've been thinking about you a lot recently," Katyusha said, breathing out shakily.
"Not in like, a creepy way or anything!" she added hastily. "Just like...you're very um. Pretty and nice and hard to not think about."
Elizaveta fidgeted with her hair. "No, no, that doesn't sound creepy. Truth be told...that's also sort of what I was going to say. But about you. Obviously."
Yekaterina's head was swimming. What did that mean? Did...did Elizaveta feel the same way that she did? No, that was nearly impossible, she didn't dare to hope for that. Elizaveta probably meant that in a friendly way, like she wanted them to become closer platonically!
Yeah, that made sense. It was much more likely, anyways, Yekaterina decided.
They were quiet for a bit more, splish-splashing through the puddles of rainwater.
"I...should probably elaborate on that, huh," Elizaveta sighed, startling Yekaterina. "It's just, you're very kind, and you make an effort to help other people, or at the very least show them that you care about them, even when others wouldn't. You're cute and pretty and smart, and you always jump at the chance to help others academically, but you don't do it like you just wanna look smart, because you actually want to help people. You're never rude to the teachers, and you actually treat them with respect, and just…"
They had come to a stop in front of Yekaterina's house, and the rain had slowed down to a drizzle, creating a fine mist around them.
Elizaveta sighed frustratedly and squeezed her eyes shut, turning to face Yekaterina, who was extremely confused as to what she was saying and doing.
Her questions were quickly answered by Elizaveta's lips sealing around her own.
(The umbrella must have been lowered at some point, not that either of them noticed the rain now that it had slowed and they were distracted.)
Elizaveta pulled away quickly, looking more than a bit mortified. "I'm sorry -"
"Don't be," Yekaterina said quietly, silencing her with a kiss.
