It was just for one night.

Arthur kept telling himself this over and over as he cleaned his room for Alfred to come over. It was just for one night, and his blog could survive without an update for a few days. Of course, when he returned, his ask box would be busier than usual, but nothing he couldn't handle.

In the meantime, he was dilemmas of where to hide things he didn't want Alfred seeing. Alfred was generally a very polite, if a loud, guest, but Arthur didn't want to take any chances. He definitely couldn't have his book of spells and incantations be seen, or his somewhat girly pajamas. His parents bought them for him and they were comfortable and warm, so he never complained, but the last thing he needed was for everyone to know he wore unicorn, bunny and rainbow print pajamas.

Those could go in the dresser of clothes, but it was already to the point of breaking he had so many clothes. Arthur prided himself in having a wide variety of clothes, from the ones he wore to school to the ones he wore out and about. School-Arthur and out-and-about-Arthur were two very different people.

He of course had to organize all of his school supplies, he couldn't have his pupil walk into his room and see that he was an unorganized slob. The next things on the list were any sort of movies that had definite good guys and definite bad guys, the moment Alfred saw a hero movie he would lose all focus.

Alfred, however, knew that Arthur had such movies, and their study session was bound to fall to chaos anyways despite how hard Arthur tried.

"It's just for one night," he repeated to himself over and over again. "Just for one night."

.

After an hour of cleaning, Arthur decided it was good enough, and stood back to examine the change. His room always suffered quite a transformation when he had people over, even his parents would comment on it sometimes. Today though, was not one of those days. His parents had decided that if Alfred was going to be in the house, they were not.

"It's not that we dislike your friend, Arthur," his father said, "just that he can be very loud sometimes. We'll go out and see a movie and get dinner somewhere, you two can stay here and study. We've left money for pizza if you want that."

Arthur only heard the first few words his father said, but nodded anyways. For the rest of the day 'friend' traveled with him and he grumbled about it until he started to repeat his grumblings. He wasn't friends with Alfred, Alfred was practically his student.

"At least it will all look good on college and scholarship applications," Arthur said. That much was true at least.

Still, though, Arthur had nothing better to do with what little time of his Saturday he had left. He could read, or work on schoolwork, but neither of those things sounded particularly enjoyable right at that moment. His mother had invited him to go shopping to take his mind off of it, but he needed to clean his room. That however, had only taken an hour and he still had two agonizingly slow hours before him.

A few minutes later of disgruntled consideration, Arthur pulled his phone out of his pocket and contacted his least favorite person in the world.

You could come over earlier if you wanted to, two hours is going to take forever.

He reread the message ten times, hoping it didn't sound too desperate or anything similar that would boost Alfred's ego even more. As he waited for a message he browsed through the cupboards in the kitchen, looking for something he could make or something to snack on.

arent your parents home tho was Alfred's very quick response.

Arthur cringed at the bad grammar, but forced himself to deal with it. Not everyone took more than five minutes to type a text like he did.

Yes, but as soon as they see you leave your house and head over they'll hurry out. Alfred, we're next door neighbors, my parents will hear you the instant you leave and they'll leave too.

Arthur could practically hear Alfred's laughter from the next hours over despite that being rather impossible. He found himself smiling just a little bit, his parents were practically afraid of Alfred's loud demeanor even though they claimed that they didn't mind him.

ill head over

Arthur felt an eyebrow twitch, and just had to correct the American.

*I'll. And you wonder why you're failing English class.

Just a few minutes later, Alfred had entered the door, and Arthur's parents left as though the blond had the plague or something other that was just as horrible. Arthur stood awkwardly for a few minutes as Alfred looked around the house, hands on his hips, a stance rather like Peter Pan, Arthur noted.

"It's been forever since I've been at your place!" Alfred announced. "We really need to hang out more, Arthur. We literally live right next to each other. But you're boring and you take the bus instead of letting me give you a ride, and you refuse to sit next to me during class."

"That's because I would rather focus, Alfred," Arthur chided, guiding Alfred to his room, even though Alfred had the house memorized from when they were little kids.

"What did your parents leave for us to eat? They don't expect you to cook, right?"

"Alfred you shut up, I can cook just fine, thank you," Arthur snapped, turning his nose up haughtily. "They left us money for two pizzas."

"Awesome!" Alfred cheered, instantly diving onto Arthur's bed as they entered his room.

"Please refrain from making a mess right after I've cleaned," Arthur chided, settling himself on the floor by his pile of schoolbooks. "And if you wanted to study you'd better get over here now or I'll kick you out."

"Aw, Artie, c'mon," Alfred whined, stretching out on Arthur's bed. "I haven't been over since like, eighth grade, can't we do something fun first? You could kick my ass at monopoly or scrabble, I won't even complain when you use fake words."

"Excuse you," Arthur growled, furrowing his massive eyebrows at Alfred, "I have never once used a fake word when we played scrabble."

"You so did," Alfred teased, his features breaking into a wide grin.

Arthur frowned, already knowing where this conversation was going, but still not wanting to lose to the childish other boy. "I did not, you're the one who tried to use terms from superhero comics and movies."

"They're still real words!"

"They are not!"

"Yes they are!"

"Alfred, no they are not!"

"Yeah, well, neither is flibbygobbler or whatever the heck it was," Alfred said. "That's definitely not a real word."

"It's flibbertigibbet, Alfred, and it is a real word," Arthur said coldly. So much for studying. They were only fighting over the validity of words.

Alfred gave a rather unattractive snort of disbelief, and sat up on Arthur's bed. "Then what's it mean?"

"It means a person like you, far too frivolous and talkative."

Alfred just laughed it off, and Arthur, despite trying to stay in a bad mood, smiled just a little bit. Alfred's stupid laugh had always been contagious.

.

Two hours into the afternoon and the two had actually been working the whole time. Arthur was fairly impressed with how well Alfred had been doing so far, but also suspicious. Alfred always had trouble focusing, but recently he'd been acting as though not being a completely over the top human being was normal for him. Arthur wasn't complaining about the quiet, but it was still strange to him.

Alfred was seated across from him, staring up at the ceiling in concentration as he tried to recite the poem he was meant to perform the moment they returned to that class, and Arthur was mildly proud that he'd helped him at least memorize one stanza. He hadn't even expected that of Alfred.

"How about I go order the pizza?" Arthur suggested, standing up and stretching as he did so, his muscles sore from being still for so long.

Alfred snickered, his concentration breaking at the mention of food. "Poor old man's gotta stretch every time he stands up."

Arthur, on his way to the door of his room, hit Alfred on the backside of his head. All of the way in the kitchen Arthur could hear his obnoxious laughter. He ordered the two pizzas, a plain cheese one for him and a meat-lover's one for Alfred, and then got out the plates and other such things. Alfred would complain that he didn't need a plate and could just eat straight from the box, Arthur would scold him for even risking a mess, and the argument would continue in circles until finally one of them(usually Arthur) gave in.

The Englishman curled his nose, slightly upset with himself that he knew Alfred's pizza order by heart and could predict exactly how their bickering would go.

"We're like an old married couple," he muttered, looking through the fridge for some sort of carbonated drink for Alfred.

"That's funny, I was thinking the same thing a couple days ago!" Alfred announced. Arthur's heart leapt out of his chest, and he nearly collapsed from shock. "Oh, shit, Artie, I didn't mean to startle you...!" Alfred said, rushing forward to Arthur's side.

Arthur clung to Alfred's shoulder, glaring at him the whole while with an impressive frown on his face. "Alfred F. Jones your loud voice is not exactly the best way to break a silence."

Alfred laughed, and Arthur found himself, once again, smiling along. He finally detached himself from the school's star football player, and then righted himself. "You're lucky I don't kick you out of my house right now," Arthur said.

"C'mon, Arthur, we both know you wouldn't do that or else you'd have to go to my house on your own to give me my pizza," Alfred said, a shit-eating grin plastered onto his face. "Besides, we haven't even watched a single movie yet!"

"Alfred, you came here to study, not to watch movies," Arthur chastised, pulling an old bottle of sprite out of the fridge and handing it to Alfred. "You can have all of that, by the way, no one here drinks it."

Alfred grinned, and snatched the soda from Arthur. "Awesome. But seriously, Arthur, we need to watch a movie. What if we watched a James Bond movie?"

Arthur considered it for a moment, and then shook his head. "No, Alfred, there will be no movie watching while we're meant to be studying.

.

Four hours later, though, both Arthur and Alfred were on their last slices of pizza, and Arthur's parents were safely tucked away in their room, far from obnoxious teenagers on their second movie. They'd watched a James Bond movie first, and then Alfred begged and begged to watch The Avengers, so that's what they were watching now. They were almost at the end of it, and both boys were having a dilemma.

"You said we would watch James Bond movies," Arthur said.

"I said we would watch a James Bond movie, and you're so great at English class, you should know that only means one," Alfred retorted.

Arthur grumbled to himself, sitting up from his relaxed position and raising an eyebrow at Alfred. "Let's just trade the movies every other time."

"That's boring, Arthur," Alfred whined. Arthur curled his nose, Alfred was being more childish than usual. "Why don't we play rock, paper, scissors?"

"Alfred, why in the world would I play rock, paper, scissors over a movie?"

"Because that's how we always used to do things when we were little!"

"And you always won and got me into trouble!"

Alfred laughed, putting his hands together in a begging motion. "Pleeeeeaaase, Artie! When was the last time we acted like little kids? Besides, trouble or not you always enjoyed yourself!"

Eventually, Arthur had to give in, or deal with Alfred being a whiny brat for the rest of the night. And in the end, they watched another Avengers-themed movie.

.

Alfred, completely invested in the movie the whole time, hadn't noticed Arthur had fallen asleep until there was a quiet part in the movie. He glanced over at the Brit to talk, but stayed silent when he noticed his friends' forest green eyes were peacefully closed. His chest was shallowly rising and falling, and he was very softly snoring. If it hadn't been such a cute sight, Alfred would have lost his shit.

Since the beginning of high school, Arthur had unexpectedly, and for no reason at all, become an aggressive porcupine. Alfred wasn't really sure if it was his fault or just the stress from school, but he really wished they could be better friends like when they were younger. He'd been so interested in the British boy who had just moved to America he could hardly cope with his curiosity.

Sure, Arthur liked to read books and stay inside all day long, but that didn't stop them from being best friends the moment they had met. In over five years, Arthur still hadn't changed much, aside from being bossier than he was when he was little. But Alfred didn't mind all that much, those were things that made Arthur who he was.

As quietly as he could, Alfred stood and walked to Arthur's room. He grabbed the older boy's blanket and returned to the living room shortly after, covering Arthur with the blanket. He immediately snuggled into it just like a little kid, and Alfred grinned. The American flopped back onto he couch he had claimed for himself, and resumed watching the movie.

.

Arthur woke up to the smell of his mother making breakfast for everyone, and slowly sat up. He'd completely forgotten about Alfred until he heard his stupid snickering, and Arthur shot him a glare. Alfred had obviously been awake for a while, his hair and teeth were brushed, and he was already in a clean change of clothes.

"Morning, sleeping beauty," Alfred said, very clearly holding back hysterical laughter. Arthur had no idea what was so funny, but it was really starting to get on his nerves.

He stood, stretched, and ignored an 'old man' comment from Alfred, knowing if he paid it any mind he would just be fanning the flames. Arthur stumbled to his bathroom, and went to grab his toothbrush and toothpaste. That is, until he saw himself in the mirror. His eyes widened to impossible sizes and his jaw dropped.

"Alfred!" he hollered. "I'm going to fucking kill you!"

Alfred, by then, was already out of the front door and tearing across the lawns back to the safety of his house. Sure, Arthur had been cute when he'd fallen asleep, but he'd still been the first to fall asleep. And with a sharpie sitting so innocently on the coffee table, Alfred just hadn't been able to resist.