A/N: There are some ideas which simply won't leave ye alone until you write them. This is unapologetic fluff and I apologise for nothing. ;) People really don't write enough (meaning: anything) about these two and they should. Because they're adorable together.
Arika was crying when Mashiro came upon her; curled into a miserable ball on the far side of the playground, wracked with great hiccoughing sobs. Mashiro had been looking for her for most of recess and now she'd found her she was almost wishing she hadn't. Arika crying was a disturbing, distracting sight and more than that, Mashiro knew she'd end up dealing with what - or more likely, who - ever had made the other girl cry. And Mashiro wasn't sure if she could get away with getting in another fight that semester. Still, it was her duty as 'best friend' - reluctant as she may have been originally, she took a certain pride in the title these days - and so she took a seat on the bench beside the other girl, rapping her smartly on the side of the head to get her attention. When Arika turned her tearful face and wide, mournful gaze on her she crossed her arms and huffed a little in irritation. Arika had a face for smiling, as much as that annoyed her too. She should have been smiling.
"What's got your panties inna bunch then?" She asked shortly. She really wasn't supposed to say things like that, but she did because they made her mother mad and made Arika laugh.
Usually.
Today though Arika just turned her gaze to inspect her shoes, while her lower lip wobbled ominously. "I had a fight with Sergay." She began to explain, sniffling. "And he lost. And after, Nagi said it didn't matter anyway, because I'm just stupid and ugly and a girl and Sergay laughed and said 'Yeah!'." She paused then and Mashiro was afraid she was going to start bawling again, steeling herself in anticipation, but Arika just took a deep, deep breath and went on. "And then they left because they said they 'had better things to be doing than hanging out with me'."
Mashiro, meanwhile, had turned incandescent. "What!?" She bellowed, inasmuch as her slight frame would allow her to bellow (this was a surprising amount, incidentally.) and hopped down off the bench, swollen with righteous indignation on her friend's behalf. "Why I oughta-"
"*You* don't think I'm stupid or ugly, do you Mashiro?" Mashiro froze mid-rant and turned slowly to face Arika. While quoting the boys her voice had taken on that careful, deliberate tone of one trying to repeat something ad verbatim, but now she sounded inconsolable and looked utterly vulnerable. Mashiro felt her stomach drop to her toes.
"Uh, n-no, of course not." She stammered. "I mean, I, uh, might reserve judgement on the stupid part of that statement for now..." She said quietly to herself. "But you're definitely not ugly! I mean, what was Sergay even thinking? You're, like, the prettiest girl in our grade!" She burst out impassionedly and then punctuated her statement by sitting down again. Sitting down *decisively*. She then took a moment to process exactly what she'd just said and then she froze, again. It was entirely possible she'd just said entirely too much. She risked a glance at Arika, feeling her face fill with colour. That, too, was a mistake, as Arika looked awestruck. If Mashiro didn't know better, she'd even go so far as to say there were sparkles in the other girl's eyes (This had actually happened once, after an unfortunate incident involving a container of glitter. It hadn't been nearly as pretty as it sounds.).
"You really think I'm the prettiest girl in the whole grade?" Arika asked shyly, shuffling a little closer.
"Uh, no. I just said you were 'like' the prettiest girl in the grade." Mashiro replied, trying to back-pedal furiously.
It would be a disaster if Arika got the idea that she liked her or anything. She'd expect her to be nice to her or something then, and that just wasn't happening. She shuffled a little further away on the bench.
"That still means you think I'm pretty!" Arika replied happily. There was a little more shuffling.
"Well, yeah, okay," Mashiro agreed sullenly. "You're kinda pretty. I guess." She shuffled a little further away, eying the end of the bench nervously as she approached it. "But you're still nowhere near as pretty as like, Viola." Shizuru Viola was a grade above them and it was a well-known fact that she was the prettiest, smartest girl in their entire school and everyone wanted to be her friend, including Arika, who had blushed and fidgeted more than ever in class all day the day Shizuru had asked her to do an errand for her, because this meant that Shizuru had remembered her name and knew who she was. Mashiro thought she was stuck up and lazy and vastly over-rated - she'd only asked Arika to do that errand because she couldn't be bothered going round all the classes by herself - and was, of course, by no means jealous. She was worth two of Viola, even if she barely came up to her chin.
It galled her like nothing else to admit she was pretty. Except to admit to Arika that she was too. She continued to shuffle slowly away from Arika's encroaching presence.
"Well, no one is really." Arika said ruefully with a sigh. Mashiro didn't like that sigh. It was the kind of sigh that was accompanied by Arika looking awestruck again. And fidgeting. Mashiro gritted her teeth. The only upside was that Arika stopped in her tracks. It was only a momentary reprieve however, as she soon shook herself free from her stupor. "But that's not actually important. Because, what really matters is that you like me!" She finished with some sort of joyful yelp, but Mashiro was too busy shuffling off the bench in shock to say anything derisive.
After a moment of blessed, stunned silence, Arika's face popped into view. "Are you alright?" She was frowning a little, her mouth a perfect rosebud pout.
"Fine." Mashiro replied distractedly, frowning herself.
"Oh. Okay. Good then." She grinned widely and then scrabbled down off the bench to lie on the ground beside her, taking her hand. Mashiro half-heartedly tried to shake her off, to no avail.
"I still think you're stupid." She added sullenly, in hopes of her driving her off. She felt Arika shrug beside her.
"S'alright. You like me anyway, right?"
"Yeah." Mashiro sighed, defeated. Maybe they just weren't meant to not be friends.