geek | armin arlert

blue heart

"so this is your room."

nothing like expected, in fact, it was rather normal.

the room was tidy and clean, minus the jam packed book shelves with a wide range of different genres and a cluttered desk which consisted of a decked out pc set up and countless sticky notes.

the walls that were expected to be covered in weird naked anime girls was instead covered in sticky notes with random word sequences. a 21 jump street poster and a few pictures of him and friends or family hung beside his bed, decorating a cork board.

speaking of the bed, the blue sheets were neatly done with a medium sized whale plush sitting atop. armin was totally the type to do his bed a certain way every morning, a good habit.

"okay, not gonna lie, i expected a star wars spaceship bed and piles of funko pop boxes."

armin's sitting on the spinny-desk chair, not at all fazed but instead smirking, "disappointed?"

"totally, i mean, what kinda nerd are you?"

it was totally normal for a teenage boy undergoing a nerd phase, like weirdly normal. the geek stuff had to have been hiding somewhere, perhaps under the bed, maybe in his closet. you'd do him the pleasure of not looking particularly hard.

still, a bit mindlessly and perhaps rudely, you'd been strolling around his room eyeing all the fidgets and gadgets. there were a few ocean knickknacks here and there, some action figures, video games and a whole lot of movie cd's. it seemed he collected those.

there was definitely a large amount of manga ranging from shonen to seinen, eyes scanning all the spines, mostly normal content. it wasn't until one in particular caught your eye, something least expected.

your hand immediately lands on the worn paperback, an old edition, slowly pulling it out. only you would know about this edition being special, and it was a little embarrassing to admit that.

"no way!"

armin turns, noticing and immediately springing to a standing position, hand awkwardly scratching his neck knowing there was no saving this now. upcoming awkward conversation in 3...2...1...

"i used to love this book, like, did a whole presentation on it in the fifth grade love. dressed up as the main protagonist and everything."

skimming a finger through the pages like it was muscle memory, the art and chapter names bringing back memories of the good ol days. years ago of course, when this town didn't seem so irrevocably boring to a couple young children.

it was a bit surprising. armin seemed the type to be interested strictly in shonen manga or some boyish genre like sci-fi. not that men couldn't have interest in girly books, but it was just a rare case.

armin doesn't respond to that for a while, causing your eyes to wander back to the desk, a sheepish smile, "i uh...i know."

your eyebrows furrow in confusion, though, this was armin stalker alert after all. even so, you could barely remember the presentation, and you had studied the details for a few days in preparation. it was like, in the third grade after all.

"you read the last scene out loud to the class, then cried at the end."

just like that first night, you're silently glued in place, the book almost falling out of your grasp. you gulp, mouth opening in slow motion, "you remember that?"

you hadn't striked him as the reader type, honestly believing all you read was text messages and magazines. this was not a dig at any lack of intelligence, but it kind of was.