(Not) Too Undesirable

Arthur Kirkland threw a hasty glance at this watch and sipped from the cup of water in front of him. It was ten minutes into his lunch break and the person who had asked him out was still not here. He had an hour and a half for his lunch-break, not including the time required to walk back to his office, and at the moment he was rather worried that if he did not order anytime soon, he would be late going back to work.

And Arthur Kirkland was never late (But everyone else was, almost always, and it didn't bode to well for his hypothetical relationship with this girl if she was always going to be tardy).

In fact, his brain was already considering the possibility of ordering first, just in case the food took too long to be prepared. It wasn't polite, obviously, and not acceptable for a gentleman like him, but a date that asked him out and kept him waiting was probably not worthy of such courtesy.

The rest of the restaurant was full of chatter, the waitresses were hovering around him, throwing sideway glances that spoke of their discomfort that a customer was not ordering immediately during a busy lunch hour like this. (And would he complain that it was their fault that his food was not on time?)

He took another sip of water.

Perhaps... Perhaps this had been a bad idea in the first place. He never thought much about dating after all, and to tell the truth never really cared about whether or not he had a significant other who would invade personal space and poke their nose into his business and produce illogical, emotional statements which he would apparently be expected to entertain due to the status of their relationship.

In fact, at several points in the past two weeks of being a user of Heartstrings, Arthur had taken the liberty of questioning himself regarding the situation he was currently in.

Maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe he just wasn't made out for dating. Maybe he didn't need to. Maybe the right person who would understand him and all the reasons why he found the idea of being in a relationship appalling wasn't going to come to him through a dating service like this. The right time would come, and then perhaps... And even if it didn't, well, what would be the loss?

And to tell the truth, at each of those several points in the past two weeks, Arthur had almost managed to convince himself. But he didn't, and every time he reminded himself why he couldn't afford to not give this a shot, he felt a migraine at the back of his head, sneakily waiting to happen.

It had been a Friday night, and he was having one of the worst migraines in his short life spanning 27 years. London was as usual grey, gloomy, with an incessant drizzle that most of the passers-by ignored with a conviction, stumbling on their way back home to a comforting cup of tea, or to several comforting cups of alcoholic beverages at a pub.

Arthur, to his own disdain, had been sitting at a table of four in a Chinese restaurant, glaring at said passers-by with a vengeance and trying very hard to will the three other people with him to disappear. Possibly to Scotland, where they could bother his other brother instead. (Or Wales, or Northern Ireland - he really couldn't be bothered which one of his brothers they chose to bother, so long as it wasn't him.)

"Arthur, could you be a dear and pass the soya sauce?~" Aunt Rose chirped, smiling innocently at Arthur. He frowned, cautiously reaching over with his right hand to bring the small bottle over to his aunt. Nothing good ever came out of Aunt Rose smiling innocently.

"Here, Aunt Rose-" He started, cut off by his aunt who, in a surprising show of speed and reflexes, grabbed his right hand while his Aunt Violet on his left, seized his other.

"W-WHAT ON EARTH ARE-"

"Shh, quiet Arthur," Rose frowned, over her glasses, examining his hand. Violet, clasping at his left elbow, gave it a cursory pat and did the same. Arthur looked over at his Aunt Daisy, shooting her a bewildered look. Daisy simply gave him a half shrug before peering of his arm to look at his hands as well.

"HAH!" Rose grinned, triumphantly shoving Arthur's right hand into Daisy's face. Aunt Violet, Arthur noted, seemed similarly pleased, but was a bit gentler, and simply let his left hand drop back down onto the table. "Violet and I were correct!"

Daisy frowned, examining Arthur's hand as well, until he snatched it back and folded both of them across his chest. "What the bloody hell are you three doing with my hand? You can't just-"

He was silenced by a smack to his head by Aunt Daisy. "Your aunts are having a discussion, Arthur, be quiet. And I'm very disappointed that you still have yet to get engaged or anything of the sort. Honestly Arthur, I placed my faith," she paused, reaching into her ancient leather clutch, and pulled out a two tenners, handing one each to Violet and Rose. "And my money on you. To have a ring of some sort on your hand by now."

Arthur felt like letting his head drop to the table. Perhaps the pain would overcome the sad realization that his aunts were placing bets on his love life.

"Aunt Daisy, how could you even- It is completely inappropriate to- To-"

"Now you listen here Arthur, at least I bet that you would have settled down. Your Aunts Violet and Rose had their money on you not doing so for the next two years or so, which by then, honestly, would be far too late." She frowned at him, giving his cheek a pat. "You're not getting any younger you know," Daisy added, before returning to her steamed dumplings.

Arthur was a speechless, for a moment.

"AUNT ROSE!"

And yet it was Violet who rubbed Arthur's left arm soothingly. She had always been the more temperate of the three (Aunt Rose was simply cunning, while Aunt Daisy incredibly blunt), and had always been a little sweeter to Arthur than the rest of his brothers.

"Arthur," She began, dropping another fried wonton onto his plate. "Your Aunt Daisy is right. You're not getting much younger, and don't you want to have a family, dearest? Maybe you should really think about settling down with a nice girl, getting a little house and maybe a cat?"

"And children," Daisy cut in, over a mouthfull of bamboo shoots. "You will have children," she announced.

"And children," agreed Aunt Violet, not missing a beat and patting Arthur's hand more. "Doesn't that sound lovely, sweetums? Hmm?"

Arthur was a little close to exasperation at this point. There was honestly no reasoning with his three aunts, ever. They'd been the closest relatives to him and his brothers since their birth, and even now, when they were spread all over the UK, their aunts had made a sport of travelling around to bother them all in turn. Occasionally they would stay at their house up in Northen England, where he had grown up, but for the better parts of the year, they seemed to like moving about, visiting their "favourite little nephews", who really weren't all that little anymore.

"Also," Aunt Rose added, "Violet decided to bet against you after the outcome of our last little bet." Beside her, Aunt Daisy frowned at him again. "You lost, of course, but I'd thought better of you," she mused, waving her chopsticks around, punctuating the thought with a jab at another meat bun. "Which turned out to be sadly disappointing."

Arthur, giving up on the idea of keeping any amount of dignity when in the company of his family, decided to ask the question he was dreading. "What was the last bet on?"

Violet retracted her hands, notably not looking at him, face slightly flushed with embarrassment. "W-Well dear. It was uh, a little test of who... Whowasthemostattractive."

Arthur paused, his dumpling half-way to his mouth.

"What?"

"You see Arthur," Aunt Rose spoke, while contemplating another fried shrimp roll, "We brought around your pictures, along with your brothers, of course, to our friends, and we asked them who was the most attractive."

"And you lost," concluded Aunt Daisy, sipping delicately at her tea.

"... What?"

Daisy gave that same half shrug, putting her teacup down. "You lost. Scott came up top, of course," she smirked over at Violet at the last remark, who frowned, and turned to Arthur.

"It's not that you're undesirable, dearie, it's just that-"

"But he is!" Rose cut in, jabbing her chopsticks at Arthur's general direction. "Just look at him!" The three sets of eyes focused on him, mouths set in various degrees of scrutiny and displeasure.

"Alright, t-that's quite enough," Arthur mumbled, waving his hands about his face, trying to ward off their stares. As if he didn't have enough issues with his own eyebrows already, he didn't need three middle-aged women frowning in displeasure at them as well. "And Aunts, I understand that you all worry about me, but there really is nothing to-"

"EXCUSE ME!" Aunt Daisy cut in, as Aunt Daisy was often prone to doing, signalling to the waitress, who came over promptly.

"Yes madam?"

"Would you marry this man?" Daisy asked, quite matter-of-factly, gesturing towards Arthur, who was choking on his bamboo shoots.

"... Pardon me?"

"You, miss. Would you marry this man?" Daisy repeated, frowning, as if she thought the girl was a little slow in the head.

"What she means is," Violet hurriedly cut in, leaving Arthur to gratefully down some water at her intervention-

"Is that do you think that our nephew here is desirable? Attractive? Would you date him?"

- Only to leave Arthur choking on that as well.

The waitress, laughing awkwardly, came over to his side, and handed him a napkin. "Not while he's choking, for sure," she joked, patting his back a little, giving him a look of sympathy.

Arthur, this time, did let his head smack on the table ("Oh dear, is he suffering from mental issues as well? Well. That won't help him with the ladies.") with a satisfying thump.

He needed to get a girlfriend. Or new relatives.

Sadly, he had no idea which one was more likely.

It wasn't as if Arthur had never tried. At a few points in his life - that vaguely confusing phase people called adolescence, and the second year of university when things had settled down and it seemed like the thing to do - he had attempted to get into a relationship.

Attempted being the operative word there, because it didn't really work out. As much as Arthur had always been a capable young man, excelling in most things he wanted to put effort in (even the occasional sport like football) and breezing through academics without much difficulty, he seemed to have problems with Expressing Feelings, Mind Reading, and Being Cuddly.

He didn't see or understand why two people needed to be with each other for the whole day, stuck together like siamese twins. Neither did he see the point in whispering cheesy Hollywood movie lines to each other. He wanted his personal space, and in return gave his girlfriend an equal dose of it. It wasn't as if he was incapable of love - or at least, Arthur hoped back then that he wasn't - but rather that he seemed to have problems accommodating and understanding that most people in the world were not happy to settle on that unheard of and rarely demonstrated "I love you".

Most of his relationships averaged at a month, before the girl ran away crying after she proclaimed that he was inhuman, and a robot, and such an insensitive bastard, and did he even really love her? And each time Arthur would stand there, listen, nod, and accept the verdict. If it didn't work for her then so be it. Perhaps it just wasn't meant to be.

At some point, possibly after he left school and found himself a job in a publishing company and began working up the ranks, Arthur came to realise that a human being didn't really need to be in a relationship to be healthy, accomplished, and satisfied with life.

Arthur Kirkland simply stopped trying. And hell, life wasn't all so bad either.

He was now the branch manager and head editor of Albion Publishing, enjoying a stable income, living in a comfortable home on the outskirts of Central London, respected (at a distance) by his subordinates and was most certainly not undesirable. He had been busy, caught up with his other priorities in life (that were so much more important) and simply did not bother to try to initiate a relationship.

But as Arthur waved his aunts goodbye (all of them insisting on giving him a hug, complete with hearty pats on the back, encouraging squeezes and affectionate condolences whispered into his ear) and headed his way home picking up the pieces of his tattered and broken pride, he decided that perhaps it was a good time to try. After all, it wasn't as if he couldn't get a decent girlfriend.

Right?

Right.

Each step away from the restaurant became a step towards a determined, burning conviction that he would get a girlfriend - and not just any random girl off the street, a capable, intelligent, independent woman that he could respect and appreciate, and vice versa.

By the time he reached his apartment, the conviction had cooled to a calm, steely resolution, in which he began to plan out the various possible ways of finding himself a girlfriend.

There were a few options to him, he realized. He could chat up someone in his company, try those speed dating events, or perhaps try a club or bar or some other social event or function. There always seemed to be an excess of the last, so why not make good use of it? He weighed his options. Someone in the company might be more terrified than pleased if he actually attempted to initiate a conversation with them, and relationships between colleagues were always messy (or so he heard). Speed dating events were... awkward, to say the least, especially when Arthur didn't enjoy being amongst a crowd and talking to strangers after a hectic ice breaker. The same would apply to the club-bar-social-event option. Too many people, too many options, too many social obligations which needed to be efficiently handled.

He found himself mulling over a cup of tea, staring out of the window to his study (his reflection was a half-transparent, glaring thing, which he knew, had a habit of chasing friendly company away). He was busy. He didn't have time for something as silly and trivial as dating. And he was beginning to suspect that his attempt to prove something to his three aunts was rather silly and trivial too.

Well, perhaps there was a solution. Some... form of dating that would somehow fit into his schedule, take away the awkwardness of a social situation, and not make people think that he was going to fire them.

Was there such a thing?

Arthur paused for a moment, then turned to his computer.

Maybe there was.

It was Google that introduced him to Heartstrings. The concept of the online dating service had been rather attractive; slotting in the time to date someone into a short lunch break between office hours was definitely time-efficient and fit nicely into his schedule.

He had hastily created a profile just to try it out, filling in only the required fields, and the next day he had received an invitation to lunch. It was hassle free, and even though his date never contacted him again it didn't bother him - he didn't think much of her either.

The next few dates, unfortunately, were of no improvement. A few seemed truly impressed by his career achievements, but he lost them the moment they talked about things other than jobs. Then there was that particularly disturbing girl who kept giggling and fluttering her eyelashes at him, running her manicured fingers up and down his arm... Arthur politely excused himself after lunch and rejected her next invite.

It still wasn't working out, but in the past two weeks he had dated more than he ever had in the past twenty seven years of his life.

It had to be an improvement - at least the odds were increasing now weren't they?

Now, so long as this girl didn't come too late today...

"Hey! Arthur Kirkland right? Sorry I'm late!"

Arthur looked at his watch on reflex. Twenty minutes late. This could be a problem. He decided that he would have to order a sandwich today instead of having anything hot.

His date pulled out the chair opposite him and plopped down. And that was when Arthur looked up and something suddenly clicked-

His date was male.