Armin stares. A lot. Sometimes he's just staring off into space, avoiding whatever subject the teacher is spouting on about but other times it's at her. He doesn't look at anyone else like that. In class, he'll pester whoever sits next to him or whisper across the room to Alexy but he never stares at anyone else.
If Violette's drawing he'll stare right over her shoulder at her doodles, but she doesn't need to be doing anything for him to look at her, he just does. He says nice things about her art when she catches him looking but it's hard to take him at his word. How can she trust he's being sincere? It's impolite to stare, and he obviously must have an issue with her to be doing it so much.
She's not good at confrontation or at expressing any sort of negative emotion, really. So she doesn't say anything, she simply lets it fester.
She's at lunch alone, sketching yet again when he takes a seat behind her. Like a sixth sense, she can feel him behind her, craning his neck to get a look at what she's doing and her cheeks burn at knowing he's looking at her.
She hears a chair squeak on the linoleum floors behind her and, assuming its Armin peering even closer, she whips around to face him.
"What are you doing?" She asks him, her voice coming out softer than she'd like, only for to see and hear the chair squeak again and realises it's just Amber scooting her chair in closer to the table.
What little courage to act she had quickly fades and she turns back around in her seat, near shaking with the adrenaline.
Armin, seeming not to notice anything out of the ordinary, leaves his seat and takes one next to her. "Sorry, I was just looking at your drawing. It's really good. Is that the pond down at the park?"
There he goes again, acting all normal when everything isn't. Violette grabs at the end of her dress nervously, not able to face him. "Why are you always looking at me? Not just at my drawings. You're always staring and what did I do to-"
"No Violette, Christ," Armin says, cutting her off at rapid speed, "I think I'm in love with you."
"What?" She asks in a whisper, more dumbfounded than questioning.
"I'm sorry," Armin begins, his eyes are wide and staring into hers as he tries to come across as genuine, "If I was staring, it was only because I think you're beautiful. And your art is almost as beautiful as you are."
Violette's eyes begin to well with tears, neither touched nor unhappy with his confession. Rather it's the realisation that she was so used to being ignored that any attention Armin gave her was so alien to her that she couldn't recognise it as anything but negative.
