-WANTED-
Male students with a range of voices for all-male a capella group
Auditions Tuesday
Francis woke up with a good feeling about the day. The sun streamed into his dorm room though his window, and directly fell onto his dormmate Gilbert's face. Francis knew that if he wasn't awake already, he was going to be after a few seconds in the blinding morning light. Francis loved a bit of slapstick comedy in the mornings.
"mm-gHHAAAAH WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK IS THAT GET IT OFF ME GET IT OFF ME!"
The pale German thrashed around in his sheets until he fell in a tangled mess on the floor with a screech. He tried to get up multiple times, but all was in vain, and, satisfied with the shade on the floor, settled for curling up in the mess next to his bed.
"Gilbert, cher, that's called the sun"
"ugh I hate it already" Came the muffled reply.
"It means you need to get up or you'll be late for class"
"What"
"It's Monday, Gil"
"WHAT"
Francis laughed and finished getting ready, pulling on his Academy blazer and straightening his tie. He really did have a good feeling about today.
The International Academy was an institution specifically for students around the world, whether they be sent there from the other side of the world for being a prodigy, if their parents had to move to the area for important work (the Academy was just outside New York), or they just happened to live near and could afford the fees. The school was surrounded by acres of parkland, and a small town with rail links to the city.
Francis walked out of his first class with Gilbert and his other best friend, Antonio, and strolled down the hallway towards his next class. He had Fine Art next, one of Francis' favourite lessons, and not only because he was the best at it, according to he and his friends.
After reaching the classroom, Francis said goodbye to his friends and made his way to his seat at the far corner of the class, where he had been working on a classical oil painting for his term project. He was painting a scenic French landscape, in the hopes that a certain classmate (who was yet to arrive) would finally see that the French are the masters of art, rather than whatever nonsensical 'modern art' artists he managed to hurl at him.
Speaking of which, that certain classmate had just swung around the doorframe into class and took his seat in the other far corner, opposite to Francis'.
"Arthur you're late" yawned the teacher from behind his magazine, feet up on his desk.
"I know sir, I purposefully arrived at class 10 seconds late after tripping on a strategically placed banana peel, falling into a bucket of tar and stumbling into a crate of feathers in a hilarious yet confusing turn of events, leaving me in such a state," Arthur gestured to his completely clean uniform over-exaggeratedly "All, just to spite you, sir"
"Leave your sarcasm out of the classroom and just get on with your work, Kirkland, whatever it is"
"You'll be pleased to know, sir, that I have decided to work on a classical sculpture"
"Wonderful, even though it will probably not be that"
The teacher was referring to Arthur's reluctance to create any art that fits into their classically styled curriculum, despite it being a 'Fine Arts' class. The work he made was good, but was blatantly not what was asked for. This time, of course, Arthur was actually planning to make an abstract sculpture of a fish with legs wearing a hat.
As the rest of the class got on with their work, Francis looked over at the beginnings of two lifesize, human legs over at Arthur's desk, scoffed and went back to his painting. Taking this as a signal to make his over there to 'get some more clay' and eye up Francis' work, Arthur got up from his table of precariously balanced legs and sauntered over, ready to ridicule whatever pompous out-of-date work was on his canvas.
He had to admit it was good, but in his opinion, there is barely any point in trying to imitate greats from the past because art changes over time, and this ridiculous attempt at mimcry was just another French landscape.
"Ah, I see you've painted the great fields of rural Somerset, a wise choice"
"It's Alsace you imbecile"
"What's the difference."
"Well, premierment, Alsace is a picturesque region in la belle France"
"Somerset is pretty good too, I'm not convinced."
"Alsace is a producer of wine, I really doubt th-"
"-Somerset has cider. Cider."
"It's not Somerset!"
"And how would anyone know, hmm?" Arthur smirked as he picked up his clay and returned to his desk
"At least I'm not as ugly as the abstract fish you're pretending not to sculpt" Francis called after him across the room.
The teacher raised an eyebrow, "Kirkland, you're not sculpting a classical piece, are you."
Arthur looked up above his pile of clay at the teacher. "Well obviously, sir", he replied, and returned to shaping the toenails of his monster sculpture.
On the way out of lesson, a poster caught the eyes of both boys, stapled to the arts department message board.
Arthur made his way to the common room, to the table where he and his friends meet. The common room was a large room with armchairs and tables where the students are supposed to study, but everyone uses it for talking amongst eachother and messing around, in the understanding that anyone who wants to study should go to the library, obviously.
Kiku noticed Arthur coming and smiled up at him. Alfred was busy munching on a bar of chocolate to notice.
"How was Art, Arthur?" Kiku asked.
"I sink you will find zat eet is fine art, sank you very much!" Arthur replied, poorly imitating a French accent.
"Oh come on Artie you can do a better accent than that, limey"
"Limey? Have we really regressed to that, Yank?"
"Anyway, yadda yadda yadda I have BIG NEWS" Alfred gesticulated wildly.
"They've blown up the moon big or you got new shoelaces big?"
"uhm, they've blown up the moon but it's ok cos we have an inflatable one stored in Area 51 big?"
"I suppose that's big enough news, go on"
"I'm gonna audition for that singing thing tomorrow!"
Arthur and Kiku both raised their eyebrows.
"Oh really?" Arthur exclaimed
"I didn't know you could sing?" Kiku gently offered.
"Hah, well I think I can, and, even better, it's in a range where I could get some leading parts or something, right?"
"I suppose you could, but why are you signing up to that?"
"I dunno, looks fun- HEY Arthur you should audition too!"
"I don't know-"
"Aw come oonn"
Arthur sighed and shook his head. "Alright fine, but I'm not going to enjoy it."
Francis joined Antonio and Gilbert in their secluded part of the library they met up in everyday. The undefined rule was that the library was the place to go to study, but the three of them quickly figured out that nobody bothered to study in the library, or study at all, therefore they could hang around the deepest recesses without anyone bothering them.
Francis swung his satchel to the floor and effortlessly vaulted himself up to the windowsill overlooking the courtyard.
"Did you guys happen to see that a capella thing on the wall? Just curious, of course"
Gilbert instantly snapped his head up from his phone to met Francis' gaze. "The what now?"
"Yeah, I saw that! I saw that!" Antonio waved excitedly.
"So what do you think? Is it worth me auditioning?"
"Yeah sure man you just do what you want, I might too, you know, it looks cool!"
Gilbert raised his eyebrow questioningly. "If it's an a capella thingy, does that mean they'll want a beat-boxer?"
"Gil, unless you can actually beat-box, I don't think you should audition." Francis cautioned.
"Nah man, I can beat-box, like, so well"
Francis laughed. "So well that it's unbelievable?"
Antonio perked up again, "No way, I heard it, it's good!"
"Good isn't exactly how I would describe it, Toni, I prefer the term 'the best'" Gilbert responded.
Francis sensed the conversation needed steering away before it became another one of Gilbert's boasting fiascos
"Anyway, I think I will audition, it'll probably flounder without characters as well-known as us!"
It was true, Francis, Antonio and Gilbert were three of most infamous if not popular students in their year, probably even the school, and a collective decision to get involved with something so trivial and serious-sounding was so rare for them that they felt like they were doing the group a favour. It was pretty much just another hilarious shenanigan in the sit-com of their lives to them. Little did they know that this was all part of a romance story, and that this was going to last longer than one 'episode'.
TUESDAY
After a long day of unexciting lessons, Francis was exhausted. Gilbert and Antonio were still at soccer practice, and had already had their auditions for that a capella group, while Francis hadn't caught a break all day- well, of course there were the regular breaks between lessons but was he really going to sacrifice those?- and could only wander down to the music department after the relentless boredom of Mathematics at the end of his school day. He took his time strolling there as the bustling crowds dissipated, leaving the hallways clear and lit with the late afternoon sun. Francis doubted it, but wondered if perhaps there would be many people waiting to audition when he got there. Maybe it could actually be a success- at that thought, Francis' stomach dropped a little. He hadn't thought about actually singing in front of people. He hadn't thought about whether he could actually sing or if it was his ego playing tricks on him. He had just assumed that as he and his friends were doing this as a joke, that he would breeze through it with confidence, but his friends weren't here now. Francis never thought he'd have a problem with nerves, but here he was.
And speaking of here he was, he had arrived at the hall outside the audition room which was, as he expected and secretly hoped, empty, save for one bored looking boy slumped in his chair, peering out the window across from him mindlessly. Francis recognised him to be the loud American jock, Alfred, from his Literature class that hung around with Arthur and the Japanese guy whose name had slipped his mind.
Francis walked over to sit down in the chair next to him and coughed.
The American snapped out of the daze he had fell into and looked over to him.
"Oh hey! Are you here for the audition?"
Francis raised an eyebrow. "No, I just walked down here to the music department after hours just to sit next to you and chat" he dead-panned.
"You know despite you two not getting along you and Arthur are pretty similar humour-wise"
"Amazing."
"Anyway, I'm only here waiting for someone, are you really auditioning?" Alfred asked.
"Yes? Is it that hard to believe?"
"Well, yeah, kind of! You, Antonio and Gilbert have a reputation for not following rules, you know, so signing up for a school club is a little weird, after some of the things I heard you guys did." Alfred explained.
Francis scoffed "I'm sure that half of those rumours are false, though- and anyway, Gil just wants to show off his beatboxing so we all got in on it"
"Huh, I was kind of hoping you guys were serious about singing"
"Well I cannot say I'm adverse to the idea"
Alfred tilted his head in confusion "Ok, since you've started using fancy words I'm going to listen to music while I'm waiting" and then popped his headphones into his ears and resumed staring out the window.
Francis shrugged and resolved to look out the window too, when suddenly he could pick out a clear, tuneful voice coming from behind the door, singing the first recognisable lines of Somewhere Only We Know by Keane to a piano.
Francis now learnt two things:
1. The music department needs better soundproofing
2. Whoever was in that room had a beautiful singing voice
And that made him nervous
But also a little entranced
He leaned backwards in his chair to listen and his mind wandered to imagining what the owner of that voice was like, whether they were sweet, charming or even handsome- before reminding himself that being slightly in love with a voice was ridiculous, and he shouldn't get carried away. However, the voice behind the door suddenly jumped to a heavenly falsetto in just the right place and he went back to daydreaming.
When the song reached it's climax Francis thought that such a wonderful voice would strain unless it went to falsetto again, but it surprised him again by belting out the powerful chorus without faltering and then softly bringing the song to a close. Francis braced himself to see to whom the voice belonged to walk out of the door, almost forgetting he still had to audition afterwards. He could hear some lively murmuring from inside, all seeming positive, and then footsteps growing in loudness, at which point Francis shifted in his seat to get ready to get up when the door opened and he spun his head around to come face to face with someone he did not expect to see, but you, as a reader, should have seen coming.
There stood Arthur, with a face as horrified and shocked to match Francis' own.
So there it is, the reason why I haven't been writing for months and months- I have always had this idea of an a capella AU, around the same time as the boyband AU, but I just filled out the boyband idea first so I wrote 11 chapters of that for ages before I managed to write this one, and it kind of was abandoned as well as the boyband fic because of my laziness and school, but I'm working on chapter 12 now, and I found more 'reference songs' for this AU and I got a little inspired
It turns out most of my ideas for hetalia AUs are singing related, so I must have a thing for that I guess haha
also a good 'reference song' for this chapter would be this version of Somewhere Only We Know- watch?v=J_DqbJO4sd8 - just imagine all the other voices are replaced with the piano or something
Anyway, I originally intended this fic to only be around three chapters, but I just keep finding a capella songs that are amazing (particularly by Oxford Out of the Blue- their songs will probably come up a lot), so it could be as long as the boyband fic is intended to be so I'll be juggling the two I guess
I hope that even though not much has happened yet, you can see the potential of the next chapters and keep reading! :)