11. them artsy old school beatniks

"So everything seems in order," said the counsellor, pushing her red glasses farther up her nose. She peered at him over the frames. "Except…"

Arthur folded his hands in his lap and waited patiently. He didn't know what was coming but what was the worst that could come out of this? Surely she wouldn't say anything, this little petite frame of a woman. She was a bit cute, too, in a school-girlish sort of way, with a high-necked blouse and hair swept into a braid. Arthur tried not to grin creepily. "Yes?"

"I think… it seems that you don't have an GCSE art class?" She looked up. "You were signed up for one but never received any credits for the first year?"

Arthur swallowed. "Oh, well, uh…"

The truth was he didn't have any good excuse for not going to art class. He was just ditching. They never did anything interesting in primary school art class, so it wasn't as if they were about to do so now. He didn't have time for it, anyway. It was an hour wasted and better spent working out a Hendrix riff or a Zombies classic. He hadn't even sat the exam last year. Hopefully it was all right…?

"Would you like for me to schedule it for you? There's the possibility that you'll have to do extra work to get your full credit but it's a good course to have, really."

Arthur hesitated. She was looking at him very expectantly, like if he said no, then that flash of judgement and disdain that always made his stomach twist was inevitable. God knew he'd had enough of that look so he nodded, regretting it immediately when she nodded with a somehow sickeningly satisfied smile.

"Now then," she said, after hitting several keys on the keyboard and swiping a piece of paper from the printer, handing it to him, "this is your schedule. I believe that the first hour begins in three minutes, so run along!"

Evidently he'd been underestimating the power of counsellor ladies because she then stood up and practically shoved him out into the hallway. Probably because of his lip ring or something. God, did everyone have to judge because of that stupid steel thing? Arthur gingerly took it out as he hurried to get to class on time, grumbling angrily in his head.

The hallways were fairly clear now, quiet except for the occasional lagging student running to get to class on time. Arthur quickened his own pace, climbed the stairs, and smiled vaguely as he passed the spot where last year Gilbert had graffitied "SEXY AND I KNOW IT" onto the wall. Arthur smirked slightly at the thought that they hadn't figured out how to remove the black letters yet and turned onto the second floor. He consulted his schedule again, just to be sure.

Room 2203… 2204… 2205…

At room 2206 he stopped and walked in. A crowd of students sat there already, their pencils and erasers assembled on the large wooden desks. They looked up with supercilious eyes, spinning their pencils sort of like how Mathias spun his own drumsticks. Arthur set his jaw and walked through. He found a seat comfortably near the window and settled down on the stool, dropping his bag on the linoleum floor, stowing his phone and iPod away.

"Well, fancy seeing you here," said a familiar voice, and Arthur nearly dropped his expensive Sony headphones. He knew who was talking, but even still he turned around to face the speaker.

Francis Bonnefoy, blazer buttoned, tie undone, shirt un-tucked, settled himself down on the adjacent stool and ran his hands through his blond hair. If it wasn't Arthur's imagination, everything about him seemed more obnoxious than usual—his French accent more pronounced than before; the way he slouched in his chair like he didn't give a damn about his spine, his slightly sleepy expression in profile. His blue eyes and blond hair looked a shade lighter, and his skin a shade darker.

Arthur realised he was staring.

"Yeah, well, I don't really want to be here," he muttered quickly, shifting his attention back onto putting his earphones in his bag.

Francis shrugged. "I'm not going to ask any questions about that. On another note, how was your summer?"

Arthur fiddled with his headphones, deciding whether or not to answer the question. He settled for "It was all right. You?"

"Pretty ordinary, actually," said Francis, smiling, and Arthur tried not to squirm. In disgust of course. "I went back to France to visit family and did summer homework. Painted a bit. You know."

"Whatever," said Arthur, fixing his eyes on the front of the room, because the teacher had walked in as the bell rang. She immediately began talking about projects and rules and GCSEs and suddenly Arthur began to be irritated with the fact that he was in GCSE year now. Everyone made such a big fuss over it, that and going to sixth-form college and then applying to uni and dammit, what with all these stupid exams and stupid projects. And there was the fact that he had to do two years' worth of coursework for a bloody stupid art class of all things, on top of everything else. Why did he take so many stupid courses this year?

Francis was watching him out of the corner of his eye, smiling like he could hear Arthur's tirade against the British education system. Arthur flipped him off angrily under the desk, throwing in a scowl for good measure.

The French boy merely looked amused more than anything else, and picked up a pencil and wrote in thin, elegant handwriting:

Art isn't as bad as you make it out to be, lapin.

Arthur scowled again and scrawled back on his own paper.

Fuck off, frog. I don't do art.

Francis raised an eyebrow, writing another sentence underneath the first one.

Music is art. Don't be stupid.

The Brit threw a glower in the other boy's direction, but Francis had turned his attention back on the lecturing teacher. Arthur scoffed slightly, and scratched his head. It was getting a bit long; maybe he ought to get it cut or something.

Suddenly Francis got up and walked away, towards the back of the room where there was a counter of sinks.

"Where're you—" he began, then realised that everyone else was crowded around the counters too, so he hurried to follow suit. It seemed like the queue for lunch, a bit, with everyone holding white trays with indented rectangles in them, and bottles being passed around. Except the bottles were full of paint and no one was going to eat them.

"What's going on?" he muttered to Francis under his breath.

"We're getting paint. And canvas paper, too," Francis replied, pointing to another queue at the back table where the teacher was handing out ginormous pieces of heavy-looking paper.

"What for?"

"For our first painting project, lapin," Francis said teasingly, and Arthur scowled.

"Don't call me that!"

"And you have to paint someone who is important to you. You're welcome," he continued in that somehow obnoxious way of his, and Arthur crossed his arms.

"Why do we have a project already?" he demanded.

Francis shrugged. "It's GCSE year, I suppose."

The bell rang after they'd gotten paper and everyone went to gather up their things and began to leave. Some people stayed behind, though, like Francis, and made no move that they were going to leave. Arthur frowned as he put his pencil case away. "Don't you have another class next hour?" he asked.

"No, I've got a free period," said Francis, "but I'm going to work on this." He put in one earphone and tapped his iPod several times.

"Oh. Who're you going to paint?" asked Arthur, not knowing why he even bothered asking at all.

Francis only smiled mysteriously. "You'll see."

The Brit made a face. "Well, I'm off. See you around."

"You too." Francis raised his pencil, like a salute.

It was ten minutes after he left that Arthur realised he'd just let himself have a completely civilised conversation with the frog.

.

Oddly enough, Arthur was starting to enjoy his art class. And art. In general.

He wasn't sure why it was only beginning to emerge now, even after having taken classes in primary school, but he supposed maybe it was a bit like learning guitar? He didn't dwell on it too much, though. Instead he doodled in every free moment he could find, in every soporific lecture: eyes, faces, hands. The more he did it the better he got, though not so much for his marks, but at the end of the month he was able to draw a face fairly well with just a pencil.

For his project, the painting project, he painted Roma. Because he could. At the end he thought that it didn't turn out as well as he'd like. There were so many colours, it was browns and siennas and ochres and yellows and golds and pinks and peaches but with a trace of white and cool mint. The effect, to him, was a bit jarring and odd and a bit awkward, but lots of people seemed to really like it, including the teacher, including Francis.

Francis. Well, after the first day, Arthur still hated him dearly but he was unbelievably fun to fight with. They were good sparring partners, always trying to better the other, always coming up with better lines and bits of witticism that Arthur wrote down, for sake of really brilliant lines. Who knew, they might end up as brilliant lyrics one day.

They did more paintings after that. Some days Arthur would just sit in the classroom and paint because he could, because he liked to. Painting… the colours, the textures, te odd quiet calm that came when he was utterly and completely absorbed with his painting; if music was his drug that energised him, then painting was his tranquiliser that relaxed his mind and made him dream. And when he dreamt, he wrote music and it sounded amazing. They played shows better than before, and when they played Arthur would paint their posters: bold logos and dark silhouettes and huge letters FBN splashed across it.

They had a sort of intensifying effect on each other, music painting. When he painted, music made it better, and when he played music, he could close his eyes and visualise colours and lights and angles and form and it was fantastic. He saw colour everywhere now, not just when he painted. He dressed with more attention—these colours couldn't go together, he couldn't wear these earrings with that, he couldn't wear the same skinny jeans for every weekend out.

Then there was the matter of his hair. Which had started to bother him again, because it was blond and boring again.

"Gilbert," he said one day, trying to sound casual. "D'you think I should dye my hair again?"

The German looked up from his physics textbook, rubbing his neck and rolling his head back—Arthur wasn't surprised he did this; he'd been bent over in the same position for nearly half an hour. "Dye your hair?" he echoed.

"Yeah."

Gilbert flicked his eyes up to the ceiling. "I dunno. Why not?"

Arthur tugged his fringe. "You know what, I will. What time is it?"

"Uhh…" Gilbert checked his watch. "Just after noon."

"Good." Arthur slid off his bed. "Let's go."

"Where?" asked his dorm mate, looking alarmed.

"London. To get hair dye."

"Really?"

"Yeah. What, d'you think it'd just appear out of nowhere?"

Gilbert cocked his head. "Hm… should I dye my hair?"

"Would your mum… be all right with that?" asked Arthur, raising an eyebrow.

"As long as it washes out, she won't have to know."

"True enough," Arthur said agreeably, and made for the door.

They stopped by Mathias's dorm to invite the Dane on their outing, and he gladly went along with them, expressing rather vociferously his annoyance at the maths teacher for assigning so much homework, and Arthur thought suddenly of his ten-page essay for literature, several long and difficult trigonometry problems to work out, twenty pages on the WWII air raids to read for history, and a lab report in chemistry and biology, of all things. What an awful load of homework to get through for the weekend.

They managed to find a drugstore after saying hi to Jager and Sadik (as usual) and walked in.

"What colour should I go for this time?" mused Arthur.

"Red."

"Mathias, I was red last time."

"Yes, but it suits you."

"Please don't tell me it's because of the whole Liverpool thing."

"It's not."

"Yes it is."

"Nuh-uh."

"Uh-huh."

"You should do black," said Gilbert, rubbing his hands together. "It'd look really cool."

Arthur, with another playful glare at Mathias, who was still pointing to the red box, snatched the black one. "Black it is. What're you going to get, Gilbo?"

The German had a nasty sort of smirk on his face. "Pink."

"Like 'A Study In Pink'!" Mathias joked. Arthur didn't understand it, but Gilbert's mouth dropped wide open.

"NO WAY," he gasped. "YOU WATCH SHERLOCK?"

"Er, yeah." Mathias shrugged. "Yeah, it's pretty good."

"OH MY BLOODY GOD LET ME LOVE YOU FOR-BLOODY-EVER—" Gilbert proceeded to then hug (or was 'assault' the right word?) Mathias extremely tightly with such a force that nearly knocked the Dane over. Mathias squirmed.

"Gerroff me!" he protested but Gilbert didn't let go.

"I'M NOT EVEN JOKING RIGHT NOW," Gilbert yelled. "OH MY GOD WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME YOU WATCHED IT EARLIER?"

"I—uh—"

"Gilbert!" Arthur said loudly. "For God's sake, calm down!"

"NOOOOOOO I WON'T!" screamed the German.

"It's just a bloody TV show…"

"IT'S NOT A JUST A BLOODY TV SHOW, MATHIAS, IT'S A WAY OF LIFE—"

"Gilbert," Arthur said, his head starting to hurt a little bit. "We're leaving."

"FUCK YOU, I WON A BAFTA—"

"What is he going on about?" Arthur asked Mathias under his breath.

"Haven't got a clue," the Dane muttered back.

"MARTIN FREEMAN IS MADE OF JAM AND KITTENS AND RAGE—"

.

"God, god, god, should I do it or not?" Gilbert said, agonisingly turning the box over and over in his hands. "Pink hair… pink hair."

"You've already bought the box, lad," said Mathias, spinning his drumsticks between his fingers (why he brought them along, Arthur had no idea). "Go dye your hair already."

"It doesn't hurt," joked Arthur, who was without a shirt and working blackish goo through his hair. Goopy black strands stuck out in various directions, and the whole bathroom smelled of hair dye, which wasn't all that pleasant. Gilbert had pulled his t-shirt over his nose, making his voice sound very muffled.

"Yeah, okay, but pink," said Gilbert, putting one hand over his hair, like he was afraid the colour was going to jump out of the box and attack his head. "I like my blond hair."

"It's not blond; it's white," remarked Mathias.

"Yeah, it was always an unnatural colour to begin with," added Arthur. "Pink's really not much further."

Gilbert stole one last look at the box then thrust it away from him. "All right," he said, slapping a palm over his eyes. "Have at it. Dye my hair."

"My hands are full, lad," said Arthur, laughing.

"I was talking to Mathias," Gilbert said, eyes still hidden behind his hand.

The drummer got up and took the box. "All right. First, you might want to take off your shirt, just so you don't get pink stains on it…"

Gilbert hesitated for a minute, then did as Mathias said.

Arthur watched as Gilbert self-consciously crossed his arms, but not before he caught a glimpse of a web of dark marks on the German's pale skin.

"Gilbert?" he asked quietly. "What's… what's that on your arms?"

Gilbert's face was a carefully composed mask of calm. "Nothing."

His voice shook slightly.

There was a silent moment in the bathroom. Mathias slowly took Gilbert's wrist and pried his arm away so they could see.

A series of dark lines ran all along Gilbert's forearm, creating a ghastly bar code of sorts all the way to his shoulders, where it ended with a crudely drawn X. They were blotchy and swollen and ranged from brownish to white, twisting and creeping in jagged patterns over his skin. Gilbert didn't meet either of his bandmates' eyes.

"Gilbert," Arthur said softly, trying to say something, anything. He wanted desperately to ask why. How. But the look in Gilbert's face was so raw and vulnerable that the words stuck in his throat. The German was shaking on his perch on the stool, his still-outstretched hands trembling in the air. His eyes were closed again, but this time there was no playfulness in it. Just pain.

"You know, forget it," he said to Mathias and Arthur, snatching away the box. "I'll just—dye my hair another weekend."

He grabbed his shirt and ran out the door.

.

The next following days in the dorm were spent in intense silence. Gilbert would only speak or look at him when he requested something, and they knew each other so well that they rarely ever did it anymore. So in all it really wasn't much of anything in terms of communication. Instead the German opted to study and do homework by himself, or in Francis's and Antonio's dorm, which was in a different building altogether. The only times he was really ever in their dorm was when he was practising his bass or sleeping.

In turn, Arthur went to Alfred's dorm more often, usually to talk and do homework and have a good laugh—he couldn't stand any more tense atmosphere, not after all the years in the Kirkland flat. Alfred was a brilliant change from that, making faces and cracking jokes and generally making himself look stupid, but he was charming and funny and brought a smile to Arthur's face.

Then he'd return to his dorm and see Gilbert just fingering bass lines all by himself. And one day the words just sort of flew out of Arthur's mouth without him thinking.

"Do Francis and Antonio know?"

Gilbert looked up; his eyes had been trained on the fingerboard.

"Yeah," he managed finally. "I don't… I forgot. That they were there… the scars."

He had, it seemed to Arthur, to force himself to say the word. Scars.

Arthur sat patiently.

"After my dad died… I don't know, I just…" Gilbert looked out the window. "It just happened."

He put down his bass. "I'm sorry for not telling you before," said Gilbert, meeting Arthur's gaze. "I mean, I don't do it anymore, I don't!"

"I know you don't," said Arthur. You're far too happily insane to do it still.

"It's just… I dunno." Gilbert shrugged.

"I understand that you'd want to keep it a secret, really," Arthur insisted. "It's not something I'd want to blurt out to the world either."

"That, and…" Gilbert scrutinized his English friend with squinted eyes. "You look a bit freaky with black hair."

"Ah, yes," Arthur said, cracking half a smile. "Speaking of hair."

.

The issue of Gilbert's cutting all but vanished when the pink dye was applied on his head, sticking to it in messy pink clumps. Arthur was playing with it, making weird little cowlicks and spelling out random words with bits of hair.

"Stop it, I look like Sonic the Hedgehog," Gilbert whined, slapping away Arthur's hands.

The Brit checked the timer. "Well, I'll start the timer now. Thirty minutes. Want to get started on that history project?"

"Oh, god," Gilbert groaned, but he opened his textbook and his notes. "I don't see why we have to care about"—he glanced at his scribbling—"Henry VIII and all his bloody wives. I mean, everyone's dead anyway."

"It's important to know the heritage of the British nation in order to plough a path to the future,'" Arthur said in his best BBC accent, mocking their uptight history teacher, and Gilbert fell over laughing. Well, as much as he could, really, without getting hair dye everywhere, but he did bury his face in his hands. When he sat up straight again, pink dye stained his fingertips and forehead.

"Gilbert, you've got pink all over you," remarked Arthur, and Gilbert looked into the wall of mirrors.

"Dammit, why does this always happen to me?" Gilbert said, heaving a slight sigh. "Oh well… this stuff washes out, right?"

"Yeah, it does," Arthur said, brushing back his black hair to the side. He focused back on the textbook. "How do you want to start this?"

Somewhere between the talk of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment the timer went off. Gilbert let out a yell, and stripped off his trousers (Arthur averted his eyes with a groan) and ran into the showers, pumping the handle. The soft hiss of water was overpowered by a loud shouted stream of profanities and curses on cold water.

"VERDAMMT—SCHEISSE, SCHEISSE—"

Arthur only shook his head, but he was grinning like mad.

.

It took Gilbert nearly twenty minutes and a ruined towel to rinse the dye off of his head, but it worked. His whitish-blond hair was now the colour of bubble gum. The effect was extremely disconcerting to Arthur with the German's pale face and reddish eyes but he seemed awfully pleased with his new look, strutting around with a stupid grin on his face and flipping whatever flippable pink hair he could. Arthur decided then not to say anything and kept his laughter in.

The people around them had mixed reactions about Gilbert's new 'do. Some teachers, like their extremely awkward geography teacher, had turned a blind eye and pointedly not looked at Gilbert's atrociously pink head. Others had sent him off to the headmaster's office with flaring nostrils and coloured cheeks—Arthur didn't think he'd ever forget the sight of their mathematics teacher with her ginger hair and ruddy face, breathing fire as her chubby finger pointed Gilbert out of her classroom.

"I will burn you," she'd hissed at him. "Ssssskin you and make you into—shoes!"

For some reason this made Gilbert double over in laughter, echoing his teacher's words while choking on snorts. It earned him a month's worth of detention, at which he promptly shut up.

No matter how people reacted to it; it turned heads, all across campus and Gilbert enjoyed it. He liked it when the spotlight was on him, which admittedly made him an amazing vocalist but also an object of worry for Arthur. It was harmless enough now, and it certainly gave him an edge when they played in the city at night, Gilbert tossing his pink head everywhere.

But later on… later on…

Ahh, hell, it doesn't matter does it?

As for Arthur's new black hair, not everyone noticed it like they did with Gilbert's, although an Asian boy with a band-aid on his nose did tap on his shoulder, frantically spouting a stream of Japanese until Arthur turned around and the Japanese stopped.

"Oh, I'm very sorry," the boy said quickly, casting his eyes downward. "I thought you were someone else, sorry, sorry…"

Arthur assured the boy that it was all right and continued on to the library, where he sat down and began studying for biology. Not that he tried to. It was more like he sat there while his eyes glazed over in front of the detailed diagrams of the Krebs cycle. He didn't even notice Alfred had sat down next to him until the American poked him very sharply in the side.

"What—" Arthur yelped and then caught his breath. "Oh, it's you."

"Yeah, it is," Alfred said, grinning. "What's up?"

"Just, you know," mumbled, gesturing vaguely to his notes. "Trying to get through this year. I hate biology."

"Gosh, same," agreed Alfred. "They weren't lying about GSCE year. Someone in upper sixth told me it was hell."

"Who?"

"Oh, damn, who was it?" Arthur snapped his fingers. "That girl with the huge tits. What's her name?"

"Katya?"

"Yeah, her." Alfred nodded thoughtfully. "Essays and tests and coursework everywhere."

"You're not kidding." Arthur ran a hand through his hair. "You don't happen to know the difference between amino acids and proteins would you?"

The bell rang and Alfred cursed. "I gotta go, but I think amino acids make up proteins." He started gathering up his things and just when he was about to leave, he paused. "Oh, by the way," he said. "I like your hair."

Arthur couldn't resist a grin the rest of the day.

.

"All right then—the difference between the strength of an acid and the concentration of an acid." Gilbert looked at Arthur expectantly.

"Hell if I know," the Brit answered with a dry laugh. "Isn't concentration how much acid is in the solution? And… I don't know strength."

"That's how much it ionises," Gilbert said, consulting his notes.

"Ionises?" Arthur squinted at his own messy handwriting. "Separates into… ions."

"Yeah, like hydrochloric acid ionises into hydrogen plus one and chlorine minus one." Gilbert raised and eyebrow. "Don't you know this? I thought you actually paid attention in chem."

"I do," protested Arthur. "It's just we played a show the night before the day we learned that, and I was tired."

"Sure," said Gilbert. "All right… pH measures…?"

"Concentration of hydromium in a solution," said Arthur automatically. "You know where Mathias is? I thought he was coming."

"To our bust of a study party?" Gilbert snorted. "Right."

"That, and practice is in five minutes," said Arthur, looking at his watch. "We could cram then."

"Stop by Mattie's dorm first then?"

"Sure." Arthur tucked his notebook and textbook under his arm. "Let's go."

Mathias's dorm was on the first floor of Eckland Hall, so they stopped and walked down the stairs and through the corridor to Mathias's dorm, where, oddly enough, the door was closed.

"Odd," Gilbert remarked in an undertone. "It's usually open."

Way to state the obvious, thought Arthur, but he didn't say anything because he noticed something else.

The smell.

The smell was kind of musty, kind of thick, and one that Arthur would know anywhere. He'd spent half—no, nearly all—of his primary school years holding his breath to avoid that smell, to avoid the churning inside when he smelt it. He grew up with that smell. He would go home and open the door of their flat to have that smell hit his nostrils. Even now he found himself clenching his teeth, curling his fingers into fists, the emotions shaking inside him, emotions he'd kept under wraps after meeting Roma, after moving in with him.

"Arthur, are you all right?" Gilbert's voice came from very far away, so his ears heard, and Arthur inhaled quickly and exhaled slowly, trying to compose himself.

"Fine," he said shortly. "I'm fine."

Gilbert didn't seem entirely convinced, but he still turned to open the door. "Mathias?" he called out uncertainly.

He was answered by laughter. Mathias's laughter.

The German opened the door wider.

Inside Mathias was sitting on the floor cross-legged, wearing an old Liverpool FC shirt and jeans, his nerdy glasses on, but upside down. He was rocking back and forth, and he had music on. Something indie and different with a plethora of soft piano chords, upbeat drums, electronic synth, and a chorus of smooth voices. Arthur recognised the song vaguely from somewhere, but for the first time in his life, the music was the least of his worries. If it could be anything else, that is.

It was nothing when he saw the roll of paper from Mathias's hand, one end lit up orange and smoking with the smell of burning pot.

The floor tilted underneath his feet. Arthur thought he might vomit in disgust and rage and so many other conflicting emotions. He barely heard Mathias laughing at Gilbert's ridiculously pink hair (though it was true), or Gilbert repeating his attempts to see if Arthur was okay (which he wasn't).

Instead, Arthur turned…

…and ran.

author's note: I AM STILL ALIVE and my only excuses were Sherlock and exams. So I was running around amok with feelings and shtuff everywhere and I AM BACK NOW so hopefully there will be more regular weekly updates. Hopefully. I mean, I'm in the process of writing chapter 12 right now so DON'T LOSE HOPE

* the song Mathias is listening to in the last scene is "Call It What You Want" by Foster the People. :3

* The Asian kid that talked to Arthur in Japanese is NOT Japan, but I think it's one of his prefectures.

and also

* Sherlock references.

ftw.