Title: Words Words Words

Pairing: Netherlands x Canada

Rating: K+ I guess

Tim and I sat next to each other at lunch. It wasn't because we were friends or anything, it was just because we didn't have any friends to sit by.

I suppose I could have sat by my twin brother, Alfred, but… Well, he was popular, and he had a ton of friends. All the girls were in love with him, and all the boys wanted to be him- well, all the boys and girls who weren't gay, anyway. He was pretty much the most popular kid in the whole junior year, and I didn't want to hang around him and all those popular people. Their gazes would slide right off of me as if I was invisible.

So because of that, Tim and I sat together during lunch. He was a newly arrived transfer student from the Netherlands, and he didn't really talk much, which was good because I didn't either.

I'm not exactly sure how our lunch arrangements came about. Maybe he recognized me from the three classes we shared together (French, Chemistry, and Art) and sat next to me on my bench that was barely inside the lunchroom, or maybe I walked over to my bench and he was sitting there, unpacking his homemade lunch. Either way, we sat next to each other every day in complete silence, he eating his homemade sandwich and me picking at whatever hot lunch I had gotten. We never talked, and we barely looked at each other, but soon I began to think of him as one of my closest friends.

The first day Tim and I ever spoke to each other was him simply saying "Hi," as I sat down next to him. I instantly blushed and said "Hi," back. That was all. That was the end of it.

The next day when I sat down next to him he said "Hi," again, and I said, "How're you?" and he said, "Good. How 'bout you?" and I said "Good, thanks."

That made the exact number of words we had shared with each other eleven, which was pretty much more than I had said to anyone else about something other than school in the whole entire year. Not that we'd been in school very long, only a couple of months, but still.

The day after that, we shared even more words- making the total around thirty words or so, I lost count -and the day after that we had a full-blown conversation. I learned that he liked to bake little Dutch pastries and he worked at his family's small cafe, which was hidden down a little alley in a small niche of downtown.

I told him that Alfred was my twin and that everybody said that we looked alike, and he took one look at me and glanced over at Alfred and said, "Nah, you look way different than he does. He looks kind of stuck-up."

I blushed. "He's not stuck-up," I protested, but I kind of agreed with him a little. Alfred was always in the spotlight, and he liked it, and he was good at it, and sometimes he could be a little stuck-up.

Slowly, a friendship began to blossom between the two of us, Tim and I. We still didn't get together outside of school but we met up before school and we rode the same bus and we sat next to each other during lunch, and soon enough I realized that I was completely in love with him.

It was a stunning realization. I had never been in love with anyone before, and I didn't exactly know what that entailed. Was I supposed to wander around the school after him? Was I supposed to doodle his name on my math notes instead of listening to the teacher? For some reason that seemed like something that Alfred would do with that weird Italian girl he was strangely in love with, the one who was in love with someone else.

Instead of doing what I thought Alfred would do, I did the opposite; I basically pretended that I didn't love him at all. I pretended like we were just friends. I pretended like I didn't want to kiss him hard on the mouth every time I saw him. I pretended like I could live without him.

One day he didn't come to lunch. I waited for a long time and even got up and looked around a little, but he didn't come. I had seen him during French, so I knew that he was at school, but he... just wasn't at lunch.

I sat on that bench and tried to eat my mushy pizza, but I wasn't hungry anymore. I was never hungry at lunch- at least for hot lunch -and usually Tim shared whatever side he had brought with him, like carrots or an orange.

He didn't come to lunch the next day either, or the day after that, so in Art that day I sat beside him and asked him where he had been.

"Sorry. My girlfriend made me eat lunch with her. You can eat with us if you want."

It felt like the world had just slid out from under me. I felt unsteady, like I might fall over. I had never expected him to get a girlfriend. I hadn't expected us to be together, but I hadn't expected him to be with someone else.

"That's nice," I told him faintly. "Cool. Girlfriend."

"You okay?" he asked, peering at me. "You look kinda sick."

"Oh, I'm good," I said, but my voice sounded far away.

Throughout the next week, I kept feeling like that, faint and awkward and dizzy sometimes. Everything seemed like just a dream and not real life. My dreams seemed more real than anything else, and I only ever dreamed of him.

More weeks passed, and then months. Alfred confessed his love to the Italian girl. She told him to go fuck himself with a bagpipe, a strange and unnerving concept that made him vow to stay away from her from then on.

Tim never broke up with his girlfriend, and I never saw her. Sometimes, when I would see him walking with a group of people, I would duck down into a doorway and hide there, and he never noticed me, so I guess I hid well.

Suddenly the Winter Formal was rolling in. People all around me were getting dates and buying tuxedos and doing their best to get their date to say yes.

One day as I was sitting on my usual bench, drinking my chocolate milk- the only thing I had bothered to buy -Tim sat down next to me for the first time in what seemed like ever.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," I said back, softly, dully.

"I have a question for you," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"Will you go the Winter Formal with me?"

I paused, looking down at the floor. "Don't you have a girlfriend to go with?"

He shook his head. "No. We broke up a long time ago. We were only together for about a week."

I looked up. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"Then how come…?" I stopped and tried to figure out my sentence. "How come you never came to sit by me again?"

He shrugged. "I didn't think that you wanted me to."

"Oh," I say. Then, "Winter Formal?"

"Winter Formal," he repeats, gazing out over the crowded cafeteria.

"On one condition," I say, turning to look at him. He looks back at me, curious. "Will you go out with me if I go to the dance with you?"

Almost immediately he grins. "That's what I was going to ask you." He leans over and suddenly kisses me very lightly on the cheek. "Stupid boy," he says.

"You're one to talk," I say, and I try to pout but I can't through the smile on my face.

Stupid Tim. Stupid, wonderful Tim.

Viva: GAH! WHY ARE THEY SO STUPID AND ADORABLE? WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME LIKE NEDCAN, EPIC? WHYYYY?

A/N Oh Viva, I make EVERYONE ship EVERYTHING. Except Germano. *shivers*

Anyway, first person! I remember when this used to be my go-to POV and now I'm like THIRD PERSON. YUSH.

This was requested by Tak Dragon! Love ya! X3