Hello to anyone who's reading this! Okay, first off, you all have permission to kill me. I'm a horrible updater. I'm soooooooooo sorry you had to wait for this update. My only excuse is the fact that I'm taking all honors classes and I generally have a shitload of homework and I'm also kinda lazy. But this chapter is done so yay! Not a super exciting chapter…. but it has importance in the story, so it needs to be here. Anyway, thank you to everyone who's reading this and anyone who's reviewed! I love you guys!

Note: Kiku and the gang live in the US, so he signs in ASL.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my computer and a Sealand cosplay. Neither of which are Hetalia.

Talking on Paper

By IdiotFromOsaka

"A smile is a language that even a baby understands" ~Unknown

oOoOo

Chalky drawing charcoal covered the tips of Kiku's fingers as he tapped them furiously against what used to be a solid white table. After a day of use, it was now merely a dusty grey. He felt his fingers jitter slightly as they touched the smooth surface of the desk.

For a moment, he stilled.

Why was he so shaky in the first place? He shouldn't be nervous. No- nervous wasn't the word. Could it be he was… excited?

Kiku shook his head, flyaway strands of hair brushing his cheeks. There was nothing to be excited about. It was just another day of art class.

His gaze shifted to the table in front of him. Piled on it, two notebooks. One, a shining dark green, was filled with ruled paper, a cheap paperback that you could find in any grocery store. The second was a hardcover sketchpad, only half the size of the first, with aqua-colored binding hiding thick sheets of drawing paper.

Kiku reached for the sketchbook, running the pads of his fingers over the slight ridge of the cover. He opened it, turning to the first page. He slipped a mechanical pencil out of his pocket, pressing the tip to the parchment. Dragging the graphite across the paper, he formed the outline of a head, clearly male, with a strong chin. Kiku marked the eye sockets with two dark smudges, before drawing the contour of a slightly crooked nose.

The table wobbled slightly beneath Kiku's sketchbook. Looking up, he found Herakles, slumped into a paint-speckled plastic chair. His eyes were half-open- Oh, it was three-quarters now- and for a moment, Kiku noticed how long his eyelashes were. Herakles' lips pulled into a sleepy smile as his gaze fell on Kiku.

Kiku watched as the other boy's hand moved up to his ear and then fell away. He recognized that motion.

'Hello.'

Kiku's lips twitched into a smile, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. With his face feeling slightly warmer than earlier, Kiku mimicked Herakles' motion. Herakles' eyes got a little wider.

With his thumbs still standing up, Herakles curled both hands into fists and brought them up to his chest. He pressed the sides of his fingers from each fist against each other, and turned each hand in the opposite direction of the other. Then, he pointed at Kiku. 'How are you?'

The signs were incredibly basic. Kiku guessed that Herakles probably didn't know much more than what he had just signed. But he had taken the time to learn it, hadn't he? Internally, Kiku smiled at the thought. He began to sign back.

Bringing his hand up to his face, he let the tips of his fingers touch his chin, before pulling his arm away. 'Good.' Then, he copied Herakles' motion from earlier, signing out 'How are you?'

Tentatively, Herakles signed back. 'Good.'

For some reason, the small gesture made Kiku feel like he wanted to smile the biggest smile of his life. Instead, he let his face slowly get warmer.

Remembering what the purpose of the cheaper notebook was, Kiku rested his sketchbook on the table and reached for green notebook near the front edge of the table. He turned to the first page.

Your sign language is very good, Kiku wrote neatly on the top line.

Herakles took his own pencil in hand, a dull wooden one unlike Kiku's mechanical, and scribbled out: Really?

Yes.

Good. I was worried, because all the stuff was just from videos on the internet.

Well, it was very good.

Thanks.

For a moment, the paper was filled with silence, neither making move to write. Kiku's thumb pressed a little tighter against his pencil, and his eyes momentarily flicked towards Herakles. Wavy strands of hair brushed the Greek boy's cheek as his head dipped down, his hand moving to write.

So, do you have a favorite animal? Herakles wrote, his large lettering strikingly different from Kiku's. The thick characters slipped past the light blue boundaries of the ruled paper, messy compared to the small, thin writing above his. Still legible though, and that was what mattered.

I like cats, but I used to have a dog. Each line was meticulous, almost computer like. Kiku had been told once that his handwriting looked like a girls', "But the lines aren't as curvy!"

What kind?

Kiku tapped his pencil against his chin before writing again. I don't remember actually. I remember he was small and fluffy though. Do you have any pets?

I have three c- Herakles' letters trailed off as he lifted his head.

Kiku surveyed the room, finding that everyone had begun to settle into their seats. He knew by now that this was because class had probably started.

He felt a light tap on his shoulder.

Kiku turned back to face Herakles, who pointed to the notebook between the two of them. A couple lines below their conversation, Herakles wrote: Class is starting. Talk to you later?

Kiku set his pencil on the table. With the smallest of smiles worn on his face he nodded to the boy beside him. And Herakles nodded back, eyes fluttering shut.

oOoOo

Despite how much he loved it, Kiku had always found art class the hardest to follow.

Mrs. Tanner stood at the front of the room, with a pencil in her hand and an easel behind her, while Mrs. Lacy sat at the edge, closer to the doorway. Today, they were reviewing the basics of drawing faces (something that had been taught the year before) and Mrs. Tanner, in her haste to make sure the students had time to practice it themselves, was moving her mouth faster than usual.

Mrs. Lacy was doing her best keeping up, and Kiku found his eyes constantly flicking back and forth between the two. Now he was dizzy.

He wished for a second he could just sleep away like Herakles, who at the moment had his head nuzzled in his arms beside him. Kiku glanced over, letting his eyes trace the face of the sleeping boy.

Herakles was a softer kind of handsome. He didn't have a face that particularly stood out- no super-strong jaw or bright blond hair that separated him from the crowd- but instead a slightly rounded face that just radiated pure calm, awake or asleep. And even though his eyes were closed, Kiku could remember how grassy green they were, and how they always held the impression that the boy was wiser than his years.

Just as he was about to look away, Kiku noticed two twin curls on the top of Herakles' head. He laughed on the inside, for no other reason than just how odd they looked.

When Kiku's eyes found their way back to the board, he found he had missed almost nothing.

Mrs. Tanner had only gone though a single page of paper, and was now drawing what looked like a sideways venn-diagram, except that the circle on the bottom was smaller than the one on top. He looked back to Mrs. Lacy and hoped he wouldn't get dizzy again.

'… And you can use this as a guide to help you find the basic proportions of a head,' She signed. 'It's basically a simplified version of your skull.'

Kiku remembered this from last year. Looking behind Mrs. Tanner to examine the diagrams she had just pasted on the whiteboard, it seemed that she hadn't done anything so far except review. Somewhat bored and not in the mood to make his head spin again, he pulled his sketchbook from the edge of his desk and opened to the page he'd used earlier.

The graphite had smeared just a little, but the outline was definitely still there. Picking up his pencil, he darkened what he had already drawn, before moving the tip of his pencil right under the drawing's nose. He sketched in a few light, rounded lines to serve as lips for the man before moving onto his eyes. Kiku drew them round, and slightly sleepy, with the drawing's eyes only half-open.

The end of a pencil suddenly landed on the edge of the paper sending a dull tap through the sketchbook. As he looked to his left, Kiku found that the pencil was connected to hand, connected to an arm, connected to a body, a body that happened to belong to Herakles Karpusi. It seemed he had woken up.

Herakles pressed his lips together- not that Kiku was looking at his lips or anything- and tapped the sketchpad again. But instead of stopping there, he brought the same hand that held the pencil to his chin, and signed the word 'good'.

Kiku wasn't quite sure, but he thought he'd gotten the gist of the motions. He was trying to say 'That is good.'

The corners of Kiku's lips pulled up slightly as he dipped his head in thanks, and turned back to his drawing. For a few moments he began to add more detail to the nose, but stopped as he could begin to feel a set of eyes staring at him. He looked up. Herakles had leaned in a little closer, craning his neck so that he could see the drawing.

Kiku shifted in his seat. Could you please not look over my shoulder? he wrote in the notebook.

Herakles glanced down at the message. He nodded, and leaned in the opposite direction. Sorry, he scribbled below. For a second, Herakles paused, with his hand hovering above the paper, before he wrote again. You're really good though. Probly better than everyone here.

Kiku figured he was just being polite, but the look in his eyes said otherwise. Thank you… he wrote, but you really shouldn't say such things. I'm sure everyone here is very good at art.

Yeah, but I've been in class with most of them. Most of them need models to draw people well.

That's normal.

But you didn't use one, did you?

Kiku looked up from the paper, and his eyes met Herakles'. Herakles's expression made it clear that he already knew the answer. But it wasn't mean, the way he looked. Not calm either…. Sincere. That was it. He looked sincere.

…You still shouldn't say things like that, he told him. Also, you spelled probably wrong. Kiku drew an arrow pointing to a few lines above the one he was writing on.

Beside him, Herakles' lips formed a small curve as he shrugged. Looking down, he scribbled two simple words. Oh well.

oOoOo

After their small exchange, Herakles had gone back to sleeping and did so for the rest of class. Kiku continued to work on his drawing, which was almost done. And no, he didn't take any more glances at the sleeping boy. Not at all.

As he stepped out of the class room, Herakles walked up behind him and tapped his shoulder. He waved goodbye as he walked in the opposite direction that Kiku was headed. Kiku did the same.

Weaving through the crowd, Kiku felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. The vibration didn't last long though, telling Kiku that it was a text message as opposed to a phone call (which were almost always from telemarketers, as all of his friends knew that it was absolutely useless to call him.) He pulled the phone out of his pocket. A message flashed on the screen:

NEW MESSAGE

FROM: FELICIANO

hi kiku! how was school? i know you really like school even though i dont but ludwigs there so i dont really care alot but anyway ludwig and gilbert and lovino and mee are going to this new cafe thats neer ur school! u should come too! its called mia's and they have cake and coffee and stufff!

Kiku sighed. The grammar (well, the lack of it actually) almost gave him a headache. But otherwise, the offer sounded nice. He hadn't seen his friends in several weeks, and he didn't have a lot of homework to do anyway.

He texted back:

TO: FELICIANO

That sounds nice. Where is it?

A few moments later, he received an answer.

NEW MESSAGE

FROM: FELICIANO

its on robinson st by that lawndromat and the grocery store!

Kiku nodded to himself, slipping his phone back in his pocket. He reached his locker and gathered a few things before heading for the schools main entrance. The sun was bright in the sky, and Kiku could feel just a hint of a breeze. As he was about to begin walking, Kiku realized that he hadn't responded to Feliciano.

He slipped his phone out of his pocket, and typed his response.

TO: FELICIANO

Okay, I'll be there.

CLIFFHANGER!

Just kidding. But yes, Kiku is a total grammar nazi. It's okay Kiku, writing Feli's part gave me a headache too….. Anyway, thank you for reading this! I hope you liked it!

Reviewers get free internet-hugs!