Within Temptation

Chapter 3

Mr. Rick was a good man, he was the one that worked on the lockers room and distributed the material they would use in gym classes.

As soon as he got close to Mr. Rick, he could swear he saw a flash of brown hair running down the hallway and turning around the corner at the end, but when he looked at the hallway it was empty.

"What's the matter, Alfred? Teacher asked for something?" Mr. Rick asked him with a smile that gave Alfred bad vibes, as if the man knew something he didn't. And maybe he did. He was getting suspicious of everything now. Who knows what the BTT might be doing...

Alfred adjusted his glasses, "No... I haven't gone to class yet... One of my friends lost their shorts, so I came here to get a spare... If you have one?..."

"Ah! I see..." The man checked the watch on his wrist and frowned, "You're going to be late, Alfred."

"Yeah, I know..."

Rick shook his head before smiling once again, that smile that gave Alfred the creeps, he shivered, "I'm sorry, but yesterday some kids used the shorts I had in spare and now they're in the laundry. I've got none."

'Bullshit,' Was what the American thought but before he could actually say something, Rick waved his hand, his brown eyes twinkling mischievously.

"But, I've got a spare of the girls' gym shorts." Oh, shit. So, that was it! Those freaking guys stole Arthur's shorts so that he would use a girl's shorts.

Wait. Why the hell would they do that?

He gulped, "I guess I'll take one of those..." The girls' shorts were shorter than the boys for some reason that Alfred couldn't nor would fathom. The school had more boys than girls, and, somehow, most boys were gay. Alfred only knew a few boys that dated girls; the one that he knew better was Gilbert Beilschmidt.

Gilbert (part of the BTT) dated the fiery Hungarian girl named Elizabeta Héderváry. She was one hell of a girl, Alfred had to admit. The Hungarian must have been an Empress in her past life or something; she was an intelligent, powerful and beautiful independent girl that knew what she wanted. If Alfred wasn't already head over heels with Arthur, someone like her could probably be his type.

As it was, he would go for the grumpy, smart, bossy, forgetful, tsundere (as Kiku liked to call him), stubborn, doesn't-know-how-to-cook Brit... The list was endless and there was more to Arthur that he didn't know of course... The Brit had an unlimited personality, and he didn't know if he should consider him a serious person or not, because there were always those times when Arthur got drunk and there was also that one time that he saw him talking animatedly with a bunch of kids, all smiles and everything.

That scene had made his heart melt and his mouth break into a love-struck smile for the rest of the day, (his family had teased him till he went to bed for it when he got home).

Alfred grabbed the shorts and after a hurried thanks, goodbye and a wave to Mr. Rick, he was gone, back to the lockers room in which Arthur was still seated on the bench like he owned it.

"Erm... Sorry, Mr. Rick only had girls' shorts." He extended his hand with the shorts in the Brit's direction while embarrassingly looking away from the other.

"It's quite all right, thank you, Alfred." The Brit took the shorts and Alfred turned around, biting his bottom lip hard and trying to contain his hands from ripping his hair off or doing other things... "Let's go, then?"

It was kind of weird how Arthur didn't protest to wearing girls' shorts, but Alfred wasn't going to complain.

Alfred nodded but dared not look back to the Brit or else, he might not even go to class.