A/N: Yup Yup, Chappie Five up!
Chapter Five: Awkward Conversations
Aelita POV
After the day restarted, not much was different. Faye, Yumi, and William still looked like a matched set everywhere they went, and I looked like the tiny pink outcast. I tried not to let it bother me, but it kind of hurt. I really liked Faye. She was open and accepting, and those were two qualities I sorely needed in friends. And the world sorely needed in general.
"Are you okay, Aelita?" Faye asked after dinner.
"Huh? Oh, yes, I'm okay. Sorry, just thinking," I said, smiling at her. Odd and Ulrich had left dinner early because Kiwi needed to be taken care of, and Jeremy hadn't reappeared from his room for dinner. Faye and I were alone.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked, waving at William, who grinned. I looked away.
"Nothing in particular," I lied, trying to ignore my previous thoughts.
"Are you sure? You seem upset." She held the door to the dorm building open for me and I walked inside.
"Yeah, I'm alright." She walked in behind me and I opened the door to our room for her. She walked in, and I followed, closing it behind us. "How was your first day?" I asked her.
"Apparently I'm good at chemistry. Yumi and William asked me to tutor them," she said, pulling her shoes off and then flopping down on the bed.
"You seem to really like them. You hung out with them all day," I said, sitting down on mine to do homework.
She shrugged. "I don't know them very well. They seem nice enough. I just worry a little about Yumi, if I were to go to her house," she said, looking up at the ceiling.
"Well, unless you go there for the Holidays, you probably won't," I said. I wasn't being mean, it was just fact. Boarders typically didn't spend the night off campus.
"Where do you go during the Holidays?" she asked me, looking over at me from her reclined position.
"I don't usually go anywhere. I stay here. I'm Odd's cousin, but distantly. Yumi adopts me over breaks," I said absently, working hard on a math problem.
"Why don't you see your parents?" she asked.
"They work a lot and live kind of far away. I just don't see them," I said flatly, closing the subject.
"Oh. I'm sorry," she said, looking away. "I didn't mean to pry. I was just making conversation."
"I know. It's okay." I finished the problem and smiled at her, done with my work.
"So apparently there's a dance tomorrow night. Do you usually go to those?" she asked.
"Yeah. Kadic usually has a dance about once a month, depending on other scheduled activities. This is the second one of the year. Yumi, Odd, Ulrich, and I usually all go. Jeremy sometimes does, when he can be torn from his computer," I said, smiling at that last part.
"Think I could go with you guys, in your group?" Faye asked, seeming almost nervous.
"Of course. Why couldn't you?" I asked slightly excited at the thought of going anywhere with Faye, even if it was in a group.
She shrugged. "I don't know… I just wouldn't want to impose if one of you didn't like me or something. Plus, I think William is going to ask either me or Yumi, and I don't want to go with just him." She seemed embarrassed by this admission.
"Why is that?" I asked curiously.
"Well, he's nice and all, but I don't know him very well, and, well, he seems to have a thing for Yumi, and I don't want to be the next best thing, you know?" she confided. "I mean, Yumi's really great, but we're so different. I don't want to be compared to her. It's like an apple to an orange."
I nodded. "Yeah, I understand."
"Are these dances formal?" she asked, seeming to want the subject changed.
"Not usually. They're semi-formal or dress-casual," I told her. "When is it?"
"Tomorrow. I told you that, remember? Why didn't you know about it? It's all over the school."
I shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I've just been really busy this week." We talked for a while longer before she got up and changed into her sleep shorts and top and climbed into bed. Soon after, she fell asleep. I watched her for a little bit, thinking over the day's events, over how nice she had been that morning, saving me from falling over in the shower, how well matched she was with Yumi and William, how Odd and I had talked about her, and her pained voice coming through the headset to me on Lyoko. Thinking about it, I felt a twang of guilt in my chest. I swore to myself I'd never let that happen again. I changed into my nightshirt quickly and then got into bed. I fell asleep to the sound of her breathing.
The Next Morning, Ulrich's POV
I woke up pressed hard against the wall with my back turned to a spread-eagled Odd. I pushed him over a little bit and sat up, looking down at him shocked. It hadn't been a dream.
"Odd, it's time to wake up," I said, leaning over him and slamming my hand down on the alarm clock to shut it off.
"No, five more minutes," he whined, rolling over on his stomach and burying his face in the pillow.
"Odd, get up, we need to talk," I said, shaking his shoulder.
"Nooooooooo," he whined, swatting my hand away and pulling the pillow tighter around his head. I shook my head.
"Odd, get up!" I growled, pushing him off of the bed so that I could get out of it. He landed on his butt with a hard thump. He looked up at me, grumpily.
"Why'd you do that?" he asked irritably.
"Because we need to talk," I answered in the casual way I would usually answer him in the morning, but my heart rate was higher than normal. I was nervous. I wasn't entirely sure what the previous night had meant to him. I knew what it had meant to me, how it had affected me. But Odd, though more open, could sometimes be harder to read than I was.
"What about?" he asked, seeming to catch on. He stood up, but I could see the slightly nervous glint in his eye.
"Last night," I said, trying hard not to look as embarrassed as I felt.
"Oh," he said, for once not very talkative. "What about last night?" he asked finally.
"Where we stand, where we go from here, if we go from here…" I let my voice trail off, not wanting to sound like one of those annoying girls that wanted to know if it was okay to start calling you her boyfriend two minutes after you asked her out. I didn't want to be a Sissi. No pun intended.
"Oh," he said again, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "Well, I think that kind of depends on you, doesn't it?" he asked, looking at the floor between us.
"How? I'm the one that kind of… freaked out at you and then told you I loved you," I said, looking at the floor as well, forcing my face not to blush.
"Well, I've loved you for a long time, so I do think it depends on you. I already know I want to be with you," he said, blushing a bit as he looked up at me.
"You… okay," I said startled by the earnest look in his eyes. That had answered a lot of questions. "Well, I'm not sure if I'm ready to come out yet… you understand, right?" I asked, looking away again.
He nodded, sighing slightly. "Yeah. I get that," he said.
"But I do want to be with you," I said quickly. "Just… I'm not sure I'm ready for everyone to know yet. Not that I'm ashamed of loving you or anything. I just know what kind of trouble it could cause us," I said trying to explain quickly before it could hurt or offend him.
"No, I get it," he said, giving me a small smile. "So, um, you want to be with me, but not in public. Not yet, anyway," he added.
"Right."
"So we're together in private?" he asked, seeming to need the clarification.
"If you're alright with that," I said, smiling a little at how well this had turned out, at how well he understood me, even when I was pretty sure I sounded like I was speaking Latin backwards.
"Well, there's just one thing to do then, isn't there?" he asked, looking at me mischievously.
"What's that?" I asked confused.
He closed the distance between us and cupped my face in his hand, then kissed my cheek. My skin burned where his lips touched it, and my body sort of tingled deep inside. "Good morning," he said, grinning, then started getting his stuff ready to go to the showers.
Yumi POV
I met up with everyone after they had breakfast, and smiled first at Ulrich, then everyone else. Odd was ranting about some zombie-based video game, and Ulrich was teasing him about how much time he spent playing the games.
"Hey Yumi," Faye said, smiling. "How are you today?"
"Fine. You guys ready for the dance tonight?" I asked her and Aelita, knowing the boys weren't into this kind of talk.
"There's a dance tonight?" Odd asked, interrupting himself.
"Yeah, it's all over the school. William hasn't quit talking about it," Faye answered him.
"Oh no! Who do I take?" he said, sounding as though this was probably the most horrendous tragedy that had ever occurred in the history of the world.
"If you grow your ego a little more, Odd, you could take yourself," Ulrich said, causing all of us to laugh.
"We should probably get to class," Jeremy said, looking at his watch.
"Yeah, it is about that time," Aelita said, seeming sad to go.
"You guys go ahead. Yumi, can I talk to you for a second?" Ulrich asked me. I nodded as the others walked away.
Faye POV
Yumi came and sat down in class next to me looking quite distraught. "Are you alright, Yumi?" I asked her, worried.
"I'm fine," she said, seeming angry.
"Alright," I said, turning away and looking up toward the board, not wanting to upset her further. Only later that day when she sat with William at lunch did I find out that Ulrich had basically told her that he was no longer interested in the on-again, off-again relationship they had that had apparently plagued the group for some time. "Is she going to be alright?" I asked, not wanting to take Yumi's place among Yumi's friends.
"Yeah, she'll be fine. It's just wounded pride. She's like this a lot," Odd said. I looked at him, a little shocked at his bluntness.
"He's not being rude or anything. Honestly, it's just part of Yumi's temperament. She gets like this a lot," Aelita said. The others agreed. "She'll be fine in two days or less."
I looked at Yumi, who was smiling at William, and then turned back to them. They knew her better than me; they were probably right. Odd said something about his dog, and Ulrich agreed to go with him. I looked back up at them just in time to see a look pass between them that went unnoticed by the others. It wasn't a weird like seductive look, but it was intimate, and I felt guilty having intruded on it. The two got up and left, walking in step out of the cafeteria. Jeremy went on and on about some computer program to Aelita, who seemed to understand everything he was saying. I caught bits and pieces, but that was mostly only when he said 'keyboard' or 'screens.' The rest of it was lost on me. Not long after Ulrich and Odd left, Sissi showed up, standing over me, flanked by her two nerdy henchmen, Herb and Nicolas.
"Well hello, Ishiyama," she said, her irritating, high-pitched voice like nails on a chalkboard to my ears. "How does it feel being the third wheel for Mr. and Mrs. Einstein?" she asked.
I rolled my eyes. "Hey Nicholas, how does it feel being the third wheel for Desperate and Brain-Dead?" I asked Nicholas, gesturing to Herb and Sissi in turn. My irritation was beginning to give me a headache.
"Well, actually, it's—" Nicholas started, but Sissi cut him off.
"Shut up, you!" She flipped her hair over her shoulder, then turned back to look at me. "At least boys want me. You're so fat it's amazing you don't attract elephants!"
Aelita stood, looking ready to hit her. "Stop calling her that!" Aelita yelled. The lunch room had quieted, and I looked around, blushing a bit as they all stared at us. Quiet, steady, sweet Aelita looking like she was prepared to start punching obnoxious, irritating, loud Sissi, and I was in the middle of it. The new girl. The fat girl, as Sissi had so eloquently pointed out. I looked back to Aelita and Sissi.
"Why don't you make me, Ms. Einstein?" Sissi asked tauntingly. "Or can your fat friend not fight back?"
"What is going on here?" Jim asked loudly, further disrupting the room and making me the center of attention.
"Nothing, Jim, we were just…" Aelita started, but then Sissi cut her off.
"They were making fun of me, Jim," she said plaintively.
"Only because she stated making fun of Faye first!" Aelita protested quickly. "Ask Faye and Jeremy, they'll tell you."
"Ask Herb and Nicholas," Sissi countered. "They'll tell you."
"Quiet! This is a cafeteria, not a boxing ring! You young ladies should be ashamed of yourselves. All of you: two hours detention in the library after classes!" Jim yelled.
"Yes, Jim," Aelita and Sissi both grumbled.
I stood up. "Yes, Sir. May I leave now?" I asked respectfully. He consented that I could, and then I quickly tossed the remaining food on my tray and left the lunch room, eyes following me as I went. As soon as I was out of sight of the cafeteria, I ran for it. There were woods near campus. I ran headfirst into them, not caring whatsoever about getting lost. I kept hearing Sissi's voice in my head, calling me fat. I kept hearing voices from my past, calling me other things as well. More painful things. I finally realized I was running in a circle, so I collapsed at the base of a big tree trunk belonging to a huge, centuries-old maple tree. I sat, my shoulder and cheek and entire left side pressing against the rough bark as I curled in a ball and wept, the memories flooding back fully now.
That was how she found me.
That was how it all started.
A/N: OOH DRAMATIC CLIFFIE CUZ I'M A TERRIBLE HUMAN BEING! Actually, it was because I didn't want to explode anyone's brains with a super long chapter like I did for chapter 3. So there you go. :)