Author's Note

AU + Anemone + Dominic + adolescence = fluff, fluff, fluff.

Oh. And beware of some very crack family arrangements.

My Stats

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Dominic Novak was slumped over the cluttered desk in his room, utterly absorbed by the contents of the previous year's yearbook. He was supposed to work on his stats homework, which was due to be collected in the next day, but his attention was somewhere else entirely. Not that he was worried about his grades, though; statistics and school-related things in general, had never posed any problems for him, much to the chagrin of his older brother Holland who was considerably much cooler. And who had insisted to their parents that they should just rename Dominic 'Nerd Boy' ever since he placed first on the end of the year exams back in fifth grade. Anyway, judging by the overall level of difficulty of the problems on the first page of the maths packet he was supposed to complete, it wouldn't be too difficult to finish it up later, because right now, he was focusing on much more important things.

Like the beautiful girl with long, silky hair smiling up at him from the glossy page of his yearbook that lay open in front of him.

[Class 10E: Anemone Thurston]

He slowly read out loud the contents of the little box of text underneath her picture, savouring each syllable of her perfect name.

Now, if anyone had stomped into his room right there and then and commented on how fantastic she looked in that old picture, Dominic wouldn't have hesitated even for a second to inform the ignorant loser that it was nothing compared to how incredible she looked in real life, every single day at school:

Anemone Thurston, class 11B, the most perfect being Dominic had ever seen and the unrivalled queen of the junior class at Nirvash High.

In fact, she was so perfect that she was totally beyond the reach of someone like him: she was the vibrant, popular cheerleader captain with the whole school at her feet, while he was the quiet bookworm sitting in the corner and playing the clarinet in the marching band. And there was absolutely no way that someone like her could ever end up with someone like him, not until thirteen somehow ceased to be a prime number or Dominic got less than an A on any given academic trial.

In other words, the mere notion of it defied logic and would never, ever happen.

Despite having admired her from afar ever since their kindergarten days, he doubted that she knew his name or even who he was. So far, she had shown no signs whatsoever of being aware of either as she sashayed past him in the halls, courted by the usual crowd of cool guys, popular girls and wannabe friends.

Life could really be so darn unfair sometimes!

Suddenly a mighty guitar lick broke through the contemplative silence, causing Dominic to jerk up from his hunched-over state and nearly falling off his swivel chair. Then, only second later, a loud, familiar voice filled his ears and room.

'She's got a smile that it seems to me...'

While it was clear that his phone was ringing from somewhere, Dominic couldn't for the life of him remember where he had actually put it when he came home from school.

'...where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky...'

He followed the sound to his unmade bed, but it was still not a trace of his Sony Ericsson. Damn it, this was bad: if he didn't find his phone soon, Holland would probably kill him for causing a racket and Dominic didn't put it past his easily peeved older brother to then ask Eureka to clean up the mess for him. And to think that the smug bastard was only a year older than him and still managed to boss him around all the time like some—ah.

Bingo.

As he rummaged through his crumpled navy blue sheets, his left foot had hit something small and hard on the floor under his bed.

'...she takes me away to that special place—'

"Yeah, hello?" he said, holding up the sleek phone to his ear and hoping to God that it wouldn't turn out to be Gidget wanting to copy off his English homework again. He had regretfully helped her out once back in their freshman year and hadn't been left alone since.

"Um, hi there! This is Dominic's phone, right?" A high-pitched, cheerful voice met his ears, though much to his surprise, it sounded rather nervous. "...Dominic Novak's?"

"Yes. This is Dominic speaking," he replied a little too impatiently, reluctant to reveal his curiosity. While it definitely was a girl calling, he couldn't match the voice to any of his closer female friends. "I'm sorry, but who is this?"

"Oh. It's, eh, Anemone."

"...Anemone?" he repeated stupidly before the full implications of this particular name hit his brain with the speed of a freight train in rush hour. Oh. My. God, Anemone. Anemone Thurston, the Anemone Thurston, was there somewhere on the other end of the line, and for some inspired, inexplicable reason, she was calling him.

Dominic suddenly felt alarmingly lightheaded but extremely happy. Clearly, this was the singular moment that his entire life until now had been leading up to.

Breathe, he urged himself. Just breathe, act cool, don't babble and everything will turn out okay. Probably. Maybe.

"Um, so this is awkward. Maybe I should have introduced myself properly, huh." The voice sounded genuinely apologetic. "This is Anemone Thurston. We're in the same math class."

"Yeah, I know..." he replied, rather too breathlessly. Of course. Everyone knew who Anemone Thurston was and what classes she took. This, however, did in no way explain why they were currently talking or how on earth she had managed to get hold of his number. "But how—?"

"Oh, that. I got your number from Renton, my little brother. He knows your sister Eureka, nothing creepy." She paused for a moment. "I think they're in the same homeroom or something."

"And they also have chemistry, physics and history together."

He had already corrected her when he realized how weird it must sound for him to know his sister's and her brother's coinciding schedules so well. "...or, eh, something like that," he added in a lame attempt to make his slip-up less apparent.

Though that was not to say that Dominic Novak didn't have good reason to keep close tabs on Renton Thurston, because Anemone Thurston's brother or not, the freshman boy was a truly pesky little kid who was polluting Dominic's life by insisting on running after his sister. Naturally, Holland was being totally unhelpful and un-big-brother-like about it as usual and just laughed at the obvious crush; Dominic had even caught him whispering something about 'being careful' and 'using protection' to a horrified Eureka once, whereas he, on the other hand, felt rather concerned about the development of their deceivingly innocent relationship. After all, who knew what kids their age got up to nowadays and there really was no way that someone with Dominic's principles would just sit back and relax while Renton Thurston did who-knew-what to his innocent little sister.

"Uh-huh. Well, I'm sorry for calling like this, but I sort of have a statistics question and you're really good at maths. So, uh, you know..."

"Oh."

He couldn't help but to sound a little bit disappointed, which was nothing compared to how disappointed he felt on the inside. But, really, what else could he have expected her to call him for, if not to pick his brain about some homework or another? Oh well. At least she had called him, and not Jobs or Woz. So he would just have to start counting his blessings a little bit more carefully, that was all.

"I usually do fine on my own, you know." The voice on the other end of the line had assumed a slightly defensive tone, as if she somehow had guessed the thoughts that were running through his mind. "But Miss Mischa gave us pretty tough work this time and I've been really busy with cheerleading practises lately. There's a big competition coming up."

Clearly, he had made Anemone Thurston uncomfortable and he was fervently thinking about something to compensate for that fatal mistake, but the best he could think of was a stupid and direct, "Eh, yeah, I heard. So, uh, what problems do you need help with?"

"I've done most of it already, on my own, but number eighty-five is really hard."

Dominic exhaled a shallow, quiet sigh of relief. The immediate crisis seemed to have been averted, and now to the stat problem at hand... He quickly ripped out the thick maths packet from somewhere underneath the yearbook with little concern over tearing any of its pages (which, thankfully, didn't happen). Hmm, even though it wasn't as obviously straightforward as the preceding problems, number eighty-five really wasn't too bad at all.

"This isn't very difficult if you think about it as a normal distribution," he said, trying very hard not to let it slip just how smug he was feeling at that precise moment. Oh man, what was he even trying to do? Impress her with his amazing math skills?

"Normal distribution, huh..." He could almost hear the wheels inside her head turning as the dead line told him that she was thinking about it. "Ohhh. Wait, get it! You're right, Dominic, it really wasn't that hard at all!"

"Most things are when you know what to do," he said in an attempt to undermine his own efforts a bit and not make a big deal of his her inability to find the answer herself in the first place, though not too much. A bit of glory and attention once in a while was nice. This was nice. Actually, everything was nice right now. So screw the phone bill: he wanted this conversation to last forever and ever, even if it was about something as impersonal as math homework. "So, eh, any other problem you want to ask about?"

"Mm..." She sounded hesitant and he could hear her flip through some papers. "Not really. I mean, yeah, there is. But they're really similar to eighty-five and you helped me with that already."

"Oh. Alright." He prepared himself for a quick goodbye and a long night of analysing everything she had said to death for possible hidden meanings. "Then I guess—"

"Um, actually, sorry, there's one more thing."

"...yeah?" Dominic nearly cringed. His definitely sounded way too hopeful to be normal. "Eh, what is it?"

"Listen, I don't want you to think I called you just because I wanted your help with my homework." She paused then added, "Got that?"

He had never heard THE Anemone Thurston sound even marginally bothered before, but if he was to make a wild guess on what a marginally bothered Anemone Thurston might sound like, this was pretty damn close. Still, if you didn't want my help, then why did you call me? was what he wanted to ask but naturally didn't. Instead, he kept quiet, hoping that she would elaborate on her own.

"I mean, yeah, I needed your help and all, but..." She sounded positively bothered now, but something prevented him from coming to her aid. He wanted to hear whatever it was that she wanted to say come from her own mouth without any interference. "I mean, it's not like, you know... Hey! Are you still there?"

"Yeah, I still am," he admitted at last, feeling just a tad disappointed by the sheer inexactness of her statement.

"Oh! I know!" From the sudden burst of enthusiasm in the tone of her voice, she could easily have fooled him into believing that she had just discovered a way for humans to fly or something. "Let's do lunch tomorrow!"

"...lunch?" he repeated, again, utterly dumbfounded. Of all things, he had not seen food coming and he could feel his brain go into shock as it struggled to process this new piece of information. "T-Tomorrow?"

"It'll be my treat, okay?" Dominic was now afraid of a complete meltdown. "Yeah!" the voice continued with infectious cheer. "Think of it as a thank-you for totally saving my math grade – as repayment, you know? I don't like owing people."

Dominic really didn't know what to say: Anemone Thurston eating lunch with a Nobody like him? Wasn't she afraid to damage her reputation and stuff? But then he remembered that Anemone was just about as unpredictable as a loose cannon, and that she had never seemed bothered about what other people thought. Maybe it was all that confidence and self-assuredness, which seemed to come so naturally to her, which made her so freaking amazing. It always had, even when they were younger.

"But you don't have to if you don't want to," she snapped when he didn't reply as readily as she expected.

Oh no. She sounded really pissed off now and Dominic hurried to rectify the situation. "No! I mean, no, that's not what I meant at all. Eh, I mean, lunch would be great. Thanks."

"Good. Then it's decided," she chirped and he let out another silent sigh of relief. "I have to go now, but I'll see you in class tomorrow morning, okay? Let's hope Miss Mischa is in a good mood when she grades our homework."

"Yeah. Eh, night, Anemone," he said at last, immediately regretting adding on the last part. Had the 'night, Anemone' been too much? Too daring? Too personal, somehow? Just because he had helped her out once, it didn't mean that they knew each other or anything.

He had no way of knowing how she would react to that sudden familiarity, and it terrified him, though he really needn't have worried. His awkward sentence was followed by an easier, much softer version:

"Night, Dominic."

And that short but oh-so-so-sweet farewell rendered him absolutely speechless. How could those simple words sound so perfect when they came out of her mouth?

But never mind that when Anemone Thurston knew his name and would be eating lunch with him the next day. He had to be the luckiest damn person alive.

It was only two hours after that fated phone call that Dominic finally snapped out of his glorious daze and realized that it was almost midnight... and that he still hadn't started on his own homework.

End note: Oh dear, high school really is a difficult time and place, isn't it? Anyway, first of all, forgive the bizarre family arrangements, but writing Holland, Dominic and Eureka as a dysfunctional trio and having Renton be Anemone's little brother... Need I say more? It's just a shame that I couldn't fit Dewey in there somewhere, but I thought it might be a bit too crazy if I did. I might play around with it some more in the future, though. Everything goes under artistic licence, right?

I also changed everyone's ages by quite a bit: Holland is, of course, the oldest of the merry bunch, but only a senior in high school so he could have noticed the development between freshman twosome Eureka and Renton with his own eyes; Anemone and Dominic are, as you probably deduced for yourself, juniors; and Gidget, Woz, Jobs and (Miss) Mischa as fellow students and their mathematics teacher respectively.

And as for the MAJOR OOCness going on just about everywhere, it's completely intentional and I hope it was funny, because – oh, boy, let me tell you! – it was absolutely hilarious to write Dominic as a jumpy, melodramatic teenager being pissed off at Holland's 'un-big-brother-like' ways (personally, I think Holland in fact would be a pretty cool older brother, albeit fully capable of the 'be careful and use protection' line) and worrying about Eureka and Renton's first tentative attempts at a relationship when he's just a kid himself AND harbouring similar feelings for Anemone. So I didn't want to ruin the good mood by making Anemone too selfish and manipulative and using my rights as the author, she's just your average brat with a good heart. I hope you liked her.

On an entirely different note, I don't want anyone leaving this one-shot feeling like I've clamped down on any of the (stereotypical) social groups typically found in any given high school. I mean, I like math, am probably a bit dorky and have proudly done my bit for several bands. I also have lots of so-called 'popular' friends that all are lovely, lovely people. So there, I've said it: I'm only playing off the usual generalizations for the comical effect, nothing more and nothing less. Cool, I'm glad we've cleared that up.

Disclaimer: I don't own Eureka Seven or Guns 'N Roses' Sweet Child of Mine.