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rex_sunTitle: Nothing in Yourself
Rating: PG
Fandom: Code Geass
Characters: Shirley-pov. Lelouch, Suzaku.
Summary: (Kinkmeme request.) Shirley tries to understand Lelouch. She really, really tries. But as Suzaku says: Lelouch doesn't want to be liked. He doesn't even want to like. And Shirley has to wonder if either of her friends hold any kind of hope in their hearts at all.
Status: Part one, ongoing, incomplete. Unedited.
Shirley does not like Lelouch Lamperouge. He's lazy, flippant. People who act like nothing matters to them really bother her.
"But he's so handsome," one of her friends squeals.
"So what!" Shirley say, trying not to be grumpy. "He's a genius, right? But he doesn't do anything with those brains, so he might as well be dumb. You wouldn't want to date a dumb person, would you?"
Her friends all look at her and at each other, trying to decide whether or not Shirley makes any sense.
"But, Shirley..." another friend says gently. "...he's hot."
Shirley groans and throws her hands up in the air. This, she thinks, is how Lelouch gets away with being a burden on society. She rounds on Milly for support. "Madam President! You know what I mean, right?"
Milly smiles a little bit and looks the other way.
"Is he your friend?" Shirley asks a little bit calmer, because she knows Milly deals with him a lot. If Milly likes him as a person, Shirley really doesn't want to press.
But Milly sighs, still smiling, and says, "No, not really. He isn't."
"I don't think he has any friends at all," Shirley concludes, vindicated.
"He does," Milly says. The other girls look at her, because they were with Shirley on the last one.
"Who?" they press, interested as never before. Shirley flushes. They're just looking for a weak point in Lelouch's 'cool guy' armor, a friend who they can befriend, and then they'll be the friend of Lelouch's friend. And, as they say, 'My friend's friend is my friend'.
"Rivalz," Shirley says immediately and watches the girls deflate.
"Him too," Milly says mysteriously. The bell rings at just that moment to dismiss lunch. Already moving away, Milly looks back only to give Shirley a healthy wink.
In biology, Shirley can hardly pay attention. She happens to glance back, and there he is. Texting on his cellphone, of all things. For some reason that really steams her up. She shouldn't care, people text in class all the time, but for some reason...
"Lamperouge?" the teacher says loudly, turning around. Mrs. Logan is a very easygoing lady, so she just tells Lelouch to put it away, which he does, before asking him a question.
He answers it correctly. The teacher turns around. He goes back to texting.
Lelouch Lamperouge, a freshman. His voice is already very deep, and that's maybe why the girls like him so much. That, and he cuts his own hair. Someone found that out after one of their male friends told her that Lamperouge always throws away his hair clippings in the big trashcan in the back of the dorms. Okay, maybe Shirley engages herself in a fantasy or two, one in which Lelouch is actually a decent guy who talks to people without that fake smile or sits in class without such a bored expression, and in these fantasies, Lelouch cuts her hair for her... and she feels his smooth, elegant hands running around the edges of her face, and wispy bits of soft hair tickling her neck, and...
--Milly hits her upside the head with a newspaper. "Oh, come on! Stop your daydreaming, we have work to do!"
But no, Shirley thinks as she is carrying a stack of books down the hallway, she doesn't like him at all. She's never disliked someone so much in her entire life, probably, because she can't get him out of her head and she's never spent this much time thinking about someone.
"Do you need some help?"
Shirley looks up quickly, surprised by a thin accent. An Eleven dressed in casual clothing holds out his hands. She stares at him for a minute, thinking-- an Eleven in casual clothes instead of a servant's uniform? Who could he be, then, and why is he here? A butler just about to get to work? A contractor who is lost while looking for the headmaster? Someone's secret lover...? Wait, contractor... an assassin?
--Shirley shakes her head to get the silly image free of her head, but the Eleven takes it as a 'no' and nods. (Oh, a bow, rather?) He turns and walks away, not looking lost at all. It would be too awkward to call him back now, so Shirley adjusts her grip on the pile of books and heads away, resolving to think he's just a butler that's late for work.
By the time Shirley returns, she's pretty sure the world has ended. Lelouch Lamperouge is standing in the student council room.
"What are you doing here...?"
The words slip from Shirley's mouth before she can catch herself. She blushes, because he hadn't even been looking at her, but-- oh lord --he is now, and so is Milly and so is the President, who shifts his glasses up his nose and clucks his tongue. Lamperouge's expression, however, doesn't move an inch; it seems as if he's made out of stone. Polite, noncommittal, lazy stone.
"I am speaking to Milly," he says, and dismisses her simply by turning his head the other way. Shirley doesn't really get angry until Milly titters behind one hand, but all she can do is sit down hard in her seat, because it's not a crime for Lamperouge to speak to Milly Ashford in the student council room.
"Actually, we were thinking about Lelouch joining the student council."
--and Shirley stands right back up, horrified.
"What, Vice Prez? Mr. President, do you...?" Shirley turns her head and looks imploringly at the president of the council, a bespectacled senior, but Shirley knows it's worthless. All Milly has to do is wink at the guy, and he blushes and melts into her hand. Just that does, in fact happen, complete with a Super-Sunny Ashford-style Smile, and the president can only nod in approval.
"Can I know why?" Shirley asks, a little defeated.
Milly shrugs. "Why not? Everyone's required to be in a club or student organization here at Ashford."
Shirley sighs and tries to at least be pleasant towards Lamperouge. "Weren't you part of the chess club?"
"Boring," he intones dryly. Just the single word, and that's it. Shirley can feel her nostrils flare and fights them down.
"Equestrian club?"
"No one but nobles ride horses."
Shirley blinks, because she thought for sure that this perfectly groomed, fine-boned, haughty boy with no apparent ambition was a nobleman.
"So you want to join the student council because...?"
Lamperouge finally looks at her again with his flat stare. "Because I have to be in a club or student organization. Those are Ashford rules." He says this slowly, as if to a child, except there isn't anything else at all offensive about it save for the pace. Not even his tone suggests he is insulting her, and certainly not his face.
Oh, she thinks, he's good.
There's absolutely nothing Shirley can do to stop it, and it would be rude beyond belief to tell Milly she didn't want it, so Lamperouge becomes a member of the student council just like that, no further questions asked. Thankfully it seems Milly is able to keep Lamperouge on task and in line, a skill which Shirley can't help but admire and she is sure the teachers all envy.
Lamperouge is the first to leave the council room at the end of the day. Shirley doesn't leave until five minutes later, but as she is exiting, Milly catches her and rubs her shoulder.
"He isn't too bad," Milly says.
Shirley doesn't want to insult her friend and so merely shrugs.
"He's like coffee," Milly says, but by her expression, Shirley can tell she just made it up on the spot. "Yes! In the world of beverages, Lelouch is coffee! And I am orange juice, but that's beside the point!"
"What am I?" Shirley asks.
"Er... apple juice. Probably."
"Why--?"
"That's beside the point!" Milly declares, finger in the air. "What was I saying? Oh yes. Coffee. It's sophisticated. Adult~. Not everyone likes it, but most people do. It's a taste you develop later in life. Right? And you do because... it's stimulating."
Shirley pouts at Milly, dubious. "Stimulating?"
Milly giggles again. "It sounded even naughtier in my head, I assure you."
---
The next day, Lamperouge doesn't even acknowledge her in class. No hello, not even a glance. But Shirley Fenette is not to be defeated by some moody, cold punk! (Handsomeness aside.)
“Hi, Lelouch,” she greets, sunny disposition in place. Rivalz, who is next to Lamperouge, looks up first, and he looks faintly startled. Lamperouge shuffles his notes-- no, the notes he borrowed from Rivalz --around on his desk for a second before looking up at her and giving his best fake, charming smile that melts the hearts of all girls around him, except for--
“Good morning, Shirley.”
Shirley is not impressed, but sits down in front of him, effectively moving her friend Sophie down a seat, starting a chain reaction of girls moving one seat over. Lelouch doesn’t say anything more than that, but Shirley can hear Rivalz whispering questions in his ear, and the heat coming from the glares of all of the other girls whips Shirley like fire until she can feel herself blushing.
The most frustrating part of being in close contact with Lelouch Lamperouge is that you are not allowed to know anything more than is strictly necessary to be cordially functioning. Unless you’re a dork like Rivalz, there’s no potential for any sort of friendship with Lamperouge. Milly tries, with her friendly smiles and her constant physical contact-- a hand on his shoulder there, a playful bump to his hips there --but even she gets little more than one of his tiny, flat smiles.
His face never ever changes. Shirley actively looks out for his face to change. Perhaps Lamperouge is an android, incapable of feeling. Maybe he can’t even program his face to make accurate attempts at expression. What’s an android doing at school? Monitoring the students to sniff out anyone not loyal to the empire? Is there some big conspiracy or...
--Milly hits her upside the head with a newspaper. “Cut it out! This daydreaming!”
“S-sorry, Vice Prez...” Shirley finally takes the time to look around the student council room. “Hey, where’s Lelouch?” She puffs up in anger. “Don’t tell me he’s skipping!”
“Who’s skipping?”
Shirley lets out a little ‘eep’, because that was Lelouch, smooth and deep as he walks through the door dressed in comfortable looking street clothes. Now that she thinks about it, he wasn’t in the last couple of class periods, though he showed up for the morning classes.
Shirley takes a deep breath and asks, “Where were you today? You disappeared after lunch! And when did you change out of uniform?”
Lelouch doesn’t smile at her, but rather, there’s a brief flicker of annoyance in his violet eyes. It’s the most emotion she’s ever seen from him, and yet his robot face still hasn’t twitched.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Shirley. I’ll work everything out with my teachers.”
Shirley blushes, aware that the rest of the council is looking at her, knowing that Lamperouge deliberately made it sound as if they were friends, and he knows full well that they aren’t. Milly is holding back snickers, she can tell. Shirley huffs and announces that she’s going to go get a snack, then scurries out of the room.
The clubhouse has a break room on the second floor, located two hallways away from the student council room, so Shirley ducks into there to take a breather. She stops short of the fridge, however, to notice an Eleven sitting at the table, dressed in a rich, luxurious robe, a bowl of soup half-empty before him.
“Oh, hello,” Shirley calls out after being puzzled for a minute. “I saw you before, didn’t I? A couple of days ago?”
The Eleven lifts his dark head to blink blearily at her. He looks tired, and now that Shirley gets a good look at him, he is hunched, his arms drawn to his body as if he is cold. Nevertheless, he gives her a smile, small, brief, but utterly genuine, and Shirley smiles back in sheer relief. He’s even Shirley’s age, though he has quite a bit of boyish baby fat around his cheeks.
She grabs an apple from the fruit drawer in the fridge and sits down across from the Eleven. “Are you alright?” she asks.
He shakes his curly mop of hair. “Sick,” he gets out.
“I’m sorry. Shouldn’t you be laying down somewhere? You look pretty bad. ...er, no offense!” Shirley hastily amends.
The Eleven shakes his head again. “...doing that all day.”
“Oh, I see,” Shirley says, understanding the need to walk around after being confined to a bed all day. “But did you have to come all the way to work?”
The Eleven coughs out something that might have been a chuckle. “Not far.”
Shirley frowns. He always speaks in small sentences, to his English must not be very good. She resists the urge to speak loudly, because he seems to understand her well enough. “Do you live close to Ashford?”
“I live here,” he responds, not meeting her eyes. He takes his bowl of soup in both hands and raises it to his mouth like a giant cup. Shirley can’t help a wince as he slurps it down.
“What, at Ashford?”
“Yes,” he says.
...Shirley goes back to her original assessment. He’s definitely an assassin. ---no, no, no, stupid Shirley! He must be a personal servant to the Ashford family, rather than a janitor hired to clean the school. In any case, she doesn’t feel awkward, sitting across from him and eating an apple, but she is a little grateful when he runs out of soup. Must be an Eleven thing, slurping. Shirley suppresses a shudder.
“So,” she fishes once she has finally finished her apple. “I’ll be seeing you around, I presume?”
“You can presume,” the Eleven says, which startles Shirley because she had just been chastising herself mentally for using above-basic vocabulary for someone so bad at English.
“Well then,” Shirley say, recovering quickly. “I’m Shirley! Nice to meet you!”
The Eleven looks at her, a little bit of suspicion in his eyes. Or maybe just caution, wariness, because he doesn’t pause too long before nodding and introducing himself in turn. “Suzaku Kururugi. You can call me Zack if Suzaku is too hard to remember.”
Shirley tries out the name Suzaku a few times, but she can’t make it like he does-- like a sharp knife cuts the ‘ku’ halfway through the sound, and she ends up saying ‘soo-zah-koo’. But she prefers that to Zack, because he obviously wasn’t born with the name Zack. “Suzaku,” she says with finality.
Suzaku beams at her, apparently preferring his Eleven name to Zack as well. Shirley waves goodbye and returns to the student council.
And poor Shirley doesn’t really know what she’s getting herself into, but she is Suzaku’s friend from then on. They run into each other and say hello in the halls of the clubhouse, in the break room, and sometimes she sees him tending the gardens. She even sort of finds him handsome, in an exotic kind of way. He’s got a very broad chest and large, rough hands. She tries not to blush and daydream when she sees them working on something or other around the clubhouse. He’s even really good at English, she learns, so she supposes that he was just tired that day and that’s why he spoke so shortly.
“So you live inside the clubhouse?” she asks one day when the sun is shining brightly through the open doors that lead to a balcony. A warm breeze swirls inside and ruffles his curls.
“Yes,” he says without looking at her. He is holding a conversation with her and patching a hole in the wall created by some less-than-careful students moving a large wooden science project. “There’s a small apartment in the back. I live there.”
“That’s pretty cool-- is it bigger than the dorms?”
Suzaku smiles up at her playfully. “It is, I guess. As a whole, anyway.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, honestly curious.
“Well, my bedroom by itself isn’t bigger than a dorm room. In fact it’s a little smaller. And my kitchen is much smaller than the cafeteria. My living room isn’t bigger than the commons area. But...” he pauses here, leaning back on his heels, his hands covered in drying white. “...I don’t have to share it with five hundred other kids, and also, at night, I have the entire clubhouse open to me. So, I suppose you could consider it bigger than living in the dorms.”
Shirley hums and swings her feet, managing to stay balanced on the stair rail she is sitting on.
“How old are you, Suzaku?”
He screws the lid back on to the sticky paste he’s been slathering on the hole. Then he squints up at her, pupils narrowing in the brightness. He smiles but it seems a little... not quite bitter, and Shirley doesn’t understand. It’s nasty, but not directed at her, and very mild.
“Same age as you,” he says. “I’m fifteen.”
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Shirley asks quietly. “I mean, I guess it’s tough, and you’ve got to make a living, but... I don’t ever see you in class or anything. There are schools for Elevens, aren’t there?”
Suzaku carelessly scratches his head and a leaves a bit of white clinging to a curl, weighing it down until it gets in his face and spots a bit of white on his cheek. “I have a tutor.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Shirley says. “I was a little worried.”
He stares at her in the eyes for a second, something he hardly ever does, and his eyes are green and a little sharper than usual. Then he blinks a few times and looks away again. With that same mildly nasty smile, he shrugs and picks up a bit of sandpaper.
Shirley has taken to telling Milly about Suzaku recently as well, thinking that she would be familiar with him since he serves the Ashfords and all. She doesn’t feel very comfortable talking about him to others, because only Milly calls him Suzaku and everyone else calls him Zack, if they know him at all though not many do. Some know his face but not his name, having never bothered to learn. And Milly is the only one who doesn’t say, “That uppity Eleven” or “He’s alright for a monkey” or “He’s pretty smart for an Eleven, you know, he can speak and generally they’re really dumb”. And the ones who don’t know Suzaku, which outweigh by far the ones that do, ask her, “Why are you making friends with Elevens? They’re primitive, Shirley.” “Yeah, they can get violent, I’ve heard. Please be careful, they’re no good.”
So Shirley talks to Milly about Suzaku, and to no one else. Milly seemed a little stunned at first, but she gets over it and starts teasing Shirley about having strange tastes. “I could have sworn you were hiding a crush on Lelouch, but I guess you like rice more than noodles? Hah!” But other than that and a few other ethnic jokes-- “What is your future husband going to think when he sees you doting on the hired help?” --she speaks about Suzaku well enough. She apparently has known Suzaku for a long time and has gotten very used to him.
“We’re friends,” Milly says with a sip of tea. “I could help you out.”
“I don’t have a crush on him, if that’s what you’re thinking!” Shirley splutters, slamming her own teacup down. But her face is beet red, because, well... because Suzaku has very nice hands...
“Sure,” Milly says lightly, looking serious for once in her life. “After all, a Britannian and an Eleven... It’s improper.”
Shirley opens her mouth but can’t think of what to say to that. She didn’t think Milly of all people would say such a thing. But soon her real friend returns with a wink and a snicker and says,
“But if it isn’t improper, what fun is it, am I right?”
Shirley gets redder, if possible, her face looking sick next to her hair. She imagines, admittedly not for the first time, she and Suzaku possibly meeting behind the clubhouse on a sunshiny day, in the gardens where she sometimes sees him as she passes a window. And he would hold out in his dirty hands a bouquet of flowers he grew himself, and....
--Milly taps her teacup on its saucer. “Shirley? I know that expression, dearest~.”
“No!” Shirley says suddenly. “I-It’s not like it’s a big deal to think of those things, right? I--”
“What things?” Milly asks with a grin.
“--it’s natural, I’m fifteen, we fifteen year olds think about boys, all kinds of boys, like-- like-- like--”
“Like trying them out in your head to see if you would want to date them?” Milly prompts slyly.
“Right!” Shirley agrees with a nod. “Like trying to see if dating Suzaku wouldn’t be so bad...”
Milly stares at her gleefully as she takes another sip.
“...I mean!” Shirley starts up again, but calms down just as quickly. She had thought of something romantic with Suzaku, but only because it had been romantic, not because it was Suzaku. She hadn’t really considered it, but now... “Well, it’s not like I think it’s impossible, but, you know, he really is an--”
The door to the council room swings open at that moment and Lamperouge walks in, dressed down; his blazer is missing and his shirt is untucked and if she didn’t know better, that would be the slight glaze of sweat on his forehead. Shirley cuts off.
Lamperouge is the last person who would ever be kind to a guy like Suzaku.
After her conversation with Milly, Shirley can't help but to blush whenever she sees Suzaku. He just looks at her like a puppy, cocking his head and gazing at her with gentle, wide eyes.
To be honest, she still doesn't consider him datable material. He's handsome, she thinks while knowing not many Britannians would agree-- do other Elevens find him handsome? And he's nice, too, very, always offering to carry heavy things and always opening doors, like a gentleman as much as a servant.
But despite everything good he has going for him, he's still an Eleven. It wouldn't matter so much to Shirley except there would simply be too many problems. For one, her parents would never let her and her friends would never let her hear the end of it. Also, he is a fifteen year old groundskeeper. For all she knows, he has no desire to be anything but a groundskeeper. For all she knows, he probably isn't able to be anything more than a groundskeeper.
And, well, the thought doesn't bother her too much-- after all, his people lost.
But no one can blame her for being a fifteen year old girl, so she thinks This, then, is what forbidden love would be. Then she indulges in the fantasy where he brings her flowers and gently takes her hand as he draws closer, both of their hearts pounding because they can hear people chattering in the front lawn, coming around, and they could be caught and separated at any point...
--Shirley squeals out loud and her friends all look at her, startled, with sandwiches halfway to their mouths.
"Shirley, Rivalz, and Lelouch. You three are a group."
In biology class, Shirley's happy little bubble pops and she hits Earth with a painful thud.
"With him?" she asks Mrs. Logan, trying to send pleading eyes her way. Mrs. Logan just smiles in that way that says she is utterly amused with how silly her students can sometimes be and shakes her head.
Lelouch reacts only to look Rivalz in the eye and glance at Shirley as Shirley looks back at them. After the teacher dismisses them to exchange numbers with their groups, Shirley gathers herself and turns to them both with a cheery smile.
"So! I think I have an idea--"
Lelouch is looking out the window, not paying attention. Rivalz, at least, is looking at her with a hopeful expression, because he isn't much of an idea man.
"We could draw the skeleton on a white shirt and pants and have someone be a life-size model. That'd be cool--"
Lelouch looks like he's in the process of turning his head, like he's trying to pay attention, but something outside is pulling him like a magnet.
Shirley clears her throat while Rivalz responds enthusiastically. "Oh, yeah, I'll be the model! You guys can draw on me--"
Shirley stands and leans over the desk, into Lelouch's space. He backs up very quickly, giving her an offended quirk of his eyebrows, and she would totally consider that a triumph except... Lelouch was looking at Suzaku. Shirley had only leaned so she could get the same or close angle of Lelouch's sight, and when she looked to see what had attracted his attention so, she saw Suzaku.
The Eleven boy is down on the grounds, dressed in a shirt and jeans that look far too tight for him, glaring up at the buildings around him. Or is that just a squint?
...can he possibly be looking for her? She feels her heart start to pound, because she had a fantasy about this, too, and no no no Suzaku, it's so romantic but no one will approve! There can only be trouble between us...
--"Could you please back away? This is very uncomfortable," Lamperouge says.
"S-sorry," Shirley says and sits down. But as soon as her bottom hits the seat, the bell rings and everyone is out to the next class. Lamperouge is already moving away, phone in hand, but Shirley hasn't given him her number. Rather, it looks like he is texting instead, so Shirley huffs and punches Rivalz's number to her own phone.
Shirley has the next class with Lelouch as well, but she can't find him anywhere. She asks the boys as they mill about in their PE clothes, but they all look at each other and shrug. Shirley has a nasty suspicion and goes to search for him.
Half-expecting to find Lelouch and Rivalz climbing over the wall, Shirley is surprised to see Suzaku behind the gym building instead, alone. If she didn't know better, she would place his expression as... guilty?
"Suzaku?" she calls, but his eyes are already on her. "What are you doing here?"
"Just... surveying the grounds," he says nervously.
She doesn't want to call him a liar, and so says, "Those, uh, aren't your normal clothes, are they? They're a little small."
Suzaku looks somewhere in the direction of her left ear, face turning red. "N-no. I borrowed these. It's laundry day, and my last set of clothes, er, got messed up at lunch."
"Oh, I see," Shirley says sympathetically. "I had one of those days in middle school--" --with her period, stupid! She shuts herself up. "Oh, uh, who loaned you the clothes?"
She wonders who it was, a student or another Eleven, that showed him kindness, but he isn't forthcoming. His mouth is open like he wants to answer immediately, but his eyes are downcast and she can practically see him thinking for the answer.
"You don't have to--" lie, she is about to say, until a head and shoulders pops over the wall above them. Suzaku's head snaps up and Shirley follows his gaze.
"Lelouch!" she shrieks. He really did go over the wall to skip PE!
Lelouch presses a finger to his lips, then looks at Suzaku. "Are you coming or what?"
"Shirley," Suzaku starts, and she looks back at him, astonished by the frank way he is looking into her eyes. "Please don't tell."
Shirley shakes her head. Suzaku smiles. Then Suzaku faces the wall, backs up, and charges at the stone. He doesn't stop; he practically runs up the wall and catches the ledge, pulling himself up to straddle the barrier between Ashford and the outside world with great ease.
"See ya," he says, and both he and Lelouch disappear. Together.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Code Geass
Characters: Shirley-pov. Lelouch, Suzaku.
Summary: (Kinkmeme request.) Shirley tries to understand Lelouch. She really, really tries. But as Suzaku says: Lelouch doesn't want to be liked. He doesn't even want to like. And Shirley has to wonder if either of her friends hold any kind of hope in their hearts at all.
Status: Part one, ongoing, incomplete. Unedited.
Shirley does not like Lelouch Lamperouge. He's lazy, flippant. People who act like nothing matters to them really bother her.
"But he's so handsome," one of her friends squeals.
"So what!" Shirley say, trying not to be grumpy. "He's a genius, right? But he doesn't do anything with those brains, so he might as well be dumb. You wouldn't want to date a dumb person, would you?"
Her friends all look at her and at each other, trying to decide whether or not Shirley makes any sense.
"But, Shirley..." another friend says gently. "...he's hot."
Shirley groans and throws her hands up in the air. This, she thinks, is how Lelouch gets away with being a burden on society. She rounds on Milly for support. "Madam President! You know what I mean, right?"
Milly smiles a little bit and looks the other way.
"Is he your friend?" Shirley asks a little bit calmer, because she knows Milly deals with him a lot. If Milly likes him as a person, Shirley really doesn't want to press.
But Milly sighs, still smiling, and says, "No, not really. He isn't."
"I don't think he has any friends at all," Shirley concludes, vindicated.
"He does," Milly says. The other girls look at her, because they were with Shirley on the last one.
"Who?" they press, interested as never before. Shirley flushes. They're just looking for a weak point in Lelouch's 'cool guy' armor, a friend who they can befriend, and then they'll be the friend of Lelouch's friend. And, as they say, 'My friend's friend is my friend'.
"Rivalz," Shirley says immediately and watches the girls deflate.
"Him too," Milly says mysteriously. The bell rings at just that moment to dismiss lunch. Already moving away, Milly looks back only to give Shirley a healthy wink.
In biology, Shirley can hardly pay attention. She happens to glance back, and there he is. Texting on his cellphone, of all things. For some reason that really steams her up. She shouldn't care, people text in class all the time, but for some reason...
"Lamperouge?" the teacher says loudly, turning around. Mrs. Logan is a very easygoing lady, so she just tells Lelouch to put it away, which he does, before asking him a question.
He answers it correctly. The teacher turns around. He goes back to texting.
Lelouch Lamperouge, a freshman. His voice is already very deep, and that's maybe why the girls like him so much. That, and he cuts his own hair. Someone found that out after one of their male friends told her that Lamperouge always throws away his hair clippings in the big trashcan in the back of the dorms. Okay, maybe Shirley engages herself in a fantasy or two, one in which Lelouch is actually a decent guy who talks to people without that fake smile or sits in class without such a bored expression, and in these fantasies, Lelouch cuts her hair for her... and she feels his smooth, elegant hands running around the edges of her face, and wispy bits of soft hair tickling her neck, and...
--Milly hits her upside the head with a newspaper. "Oh, come on! Stop your daydreaming, we have work to do!"
But no, Shirley thinks as she is carrying a stack of books down the hallway, she doesn't like him at all. She's never disliked someone so much in her entire life, probably, because she can't get him out of her head and she's never spent this much time thinking about someone.
"Do you need some help?"
Shirley looks up quickly, surprised by a thin accent. An Eleven dressed in casual clothing holds out his hands. She stares at him for a minute, thinking-- an Eleven in casual clothes instead of a servant's uniform? Who could he be, then, and why is he here? A butler just about to get to work? A contractor who is lost while looking for the headmaster? Someone's secret lover...? Wait, contractor... an assassin?
--Shirley shakes her head to get the silly image free of her head, but the Eleven takes it as a 'no' and nods. (Oh, a bow, rather?) He turns and walks away, not looking lost at all. It would be too awkward to call him back now, so Shirley adjusts her grip on the pile of books and heads away, resolving to think he's just a butler that's late for work.
By the time Shirley returns, she's pretty sure the world has ended. Lelouch Lamperouge is standing in the student council room.
"What are you doing here...?"
The words slip from Shirley's mouth before she can catch herself. She blushes, because he hadn't even been looking at her, but-- oh lord --he is now, and so is Milly and so is the President, who shifts his glasses up his nose and clucks his tongue. Lamperouge's expression, however, doesn't move an inch; it seems as if he's made out of stone. Polite, noncommittal, lazy stone.
"I am speaking to Milly," he says, and dismisses her simply by turning his head the other way. Shirley doesn't really get angry until Milly titters behind one hand, but all she can do is sit down hard in her seat, because it's not a crime for Lamperouge to speak to Milly Ashford in the student council room.
"Actually, we were thinking about Lelouch joining the student council."
--and Shirley stands right back up, horrified.
"What, Vice Prez? Mr. President, do you...?" Shirley turns her head and looks imploringly at the president of the council, a bespectacled senior, but Shirley knows it's worthless. All Milly has to do is wink at the guy, and he blushes and melts into her hand. Just that does, in fact happen, complete with a Super-Sunny Ashford-style Smile, and the president can only nod in approval.
"Can I know why?" Shirley asks, a little defeated.
Milly shrugs. "Why not? Everyone's required to be in a club or student organization here at Ashford."
Shirley sighs and tries to at least be pleasant towards Lamperouge. "Weren't you part of the chess club?"
"Boring," he intones dryly. Just the single word, and that's it. Shirley can feel her nostrils flare and fights them down.
"Equestrian club?"
"No one but nobles ride horses."
Shirley blinks, because she thought for sure that this perfectly groomed, fine-boned, haughty boy with no apparent ambition was a nobleman.
"So you want to join the student council because...?"
Lamperouge finally looks at her again with his flat stare. "Because I have to be in a club or student organization. Those are Ashford rules." He says this slowly, as if to a child, except there isn't anything else at all offensive about it save for the pace. Not even his tone suggests he is insulting her, and certainly not his face.
Oh, she thinks, he's good.
There's absolutely nothing Shirley can do to stop it, and it would be rude beyond belief to tell Milly she didn't want it, so Lamperouge becomes a member of the student council just like that, no further questions asked. Thankfully it seems Milly is able to keep Lamperouge on task and in line, a skill which Shirley can't help but admire and she is sure the teachers all envy.
Lamperouge is the first to leave the council room at the end of the day. Shirley doesn't leave until five minutes later, but as she is exiting, Milly catches her and rubs her shoulder.
"He isn't too bad," Milly says.
Shirley doesn't want to insult her friend and so merely shrugs.
"He's like coffee," Milly says, but by her expression, Shirley can tell she just made it up on the spot. "Yes! In the world of beverages, Lelouch is coffee! And I am orange juice, but that's beside the point!"
"What am I?" Shirley asks.
"Er... apple juice. Probably."
"Why--?"
"That's beside the point!" Milly declares, finger in the air. "What was I saying? Oh yes. Coffee. It's sophisticated. Adult~. Not everyone likes it, but most people do. It's a taste you develop later in life. Right? And you do because... it's stimulating."
Shirley pouts at Milly, dubious. "Stimulating?"
Milly giggles again. "It sounded even naughtier in my head, I assure you."
---
The next day, Lamperouge doesn't even acknowledge her in class. No hello, not even a glance. But Shirley Fenette is not to be defeated by some moody, cold punk! (Handsomeness aside.)
“Hi, Lelouch,” she greets, sunny disposition in place. Rivalz, who is next to Lamperouge, looks up first, and he looks faintly startled. Lamperouge shuffles his notes-- no, the notes he borrowed from Rivalz --around on his desk for a second before looking up at her and giving his best fake, charming smile that melts the hearts of all girls around him, except for--
“Good morning, Shirley.”
Shirley is not impressed, but sits down in front of him, effectively moving her friend Sophie down a seat, starting a chain reaction of girls moving one seat over. Lelouch doesn’t say anything more than that, but Shirley can hear Rivalz whispering questions in his ear, and the heat coming from the glares of all of the other girls whips Shirley like fire until she can feel herself blushing.
The most frustrating part of being in close contact with Lelouch Lamperouge is that you are not allowed to know anything more than is strictly necessary to be cordially functioning. Unless you’re a dork like Rivalz, there’s no potential for any sort of friendship with Lamperouge. Milly tries, with her friendly smiles and her constant physical contact-- a hand on his shoulder there, a playful bump to his hips there --but even she gets little more than one of his tiny, flat smiles.
His face never ever changes. Shirley actively looks out for his face to change. Perhaps Lamperouge is an android, incapable of feeling. Maybe he can’t even program his face to make accurate attempts at expression. What’s an android doing at school? Monitoring the students to sniff out anyone not loyal to the empire? Is there some big conspiracy or...
--Milly hits her upside the head with a newspaper. “Cut it out! This daydreaming!”
“S-sorry, Vice Prez...” Shirley finally takes the time to look around the student council room. “Hey, where’s Lelouch?” She puffs up in anger. “Don’t tell me he’s skipping!”
“Who’s skipping?”
Shirley lets out a little ‘eep’, because that was Lelouch, smooth and deep as he walks through the door dressed in comfortable looking street clothes. Now that she thinks about it, he wasn’t in the last couple of class periods, though he showed up for the morning classes.
Shirley takes a deep breath and asks, “Where were you today? You disappeared after lunch! And when did you change out of uniform?”
Lelouch doesn’t smile at her, but rather, there’s a brief flicker of annoyance in his violet eyes. It’s the most emotion she’s ever seen from him, and yet his robot face still hasn’t twitched.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Shirley. I’ll work everything out with my teachers.”
Shirley blushes, aware that the rest of the council is looking at her, knowing that Lamperouge deliberately made it sound as if they were friends, and he knows full well that they aren’t. Milly is holding back snickers, she can tell. Shirley huffs and announces that she’s going to go get a snack, then scurries out of the room.
The clubhouse has a break room on the second floor, located two hallways away from the student council room, so Shirley ducks into there to take a breather. She stops short of the fridge, however, to notice an Eleven sitting at the table, dressed in a rich, luxurious robe, a bowl of soup half-empty before him.
“Oh, hello,” Shirley calls out after being puzzled for a minute. “I saw you before, didn’t I? A couple of days ago?”
The Eleven lifts his dark head to blink blearily at her. He looks tired, and now that Shirley gets a good look at him, he is hunched, his arms drawn to his body as if he is cold. Nevertheless, he gives her a smile, small, brief, but utterly genuine, and Shirley smiles back in sheer relief. He’s even Shirley’s age, though he has quite a bit of boyish baby fat around his cheeks.
She grabs an apple from the fruit drawer in the fridge and sits down across from the Eleven. “Are you alright?” she asks.
He shakes his curly mop of hair. “Sick,” he gets out.
“I’m sorry. Shouldn’t you be laying down somewhere? You look pretty bad. ...er, no offense!” Shirley hastily amends.
The Eleven shakes his head again. “...doing that all day.”
“Oh, I see,” Shirley says, understanding the need to walk around after being confined to a bed all day. “But did you have to come all the way to work?”
The Eleven coughs out something that might have been a chuckle. “Not far.”
Shirley frowns. He always speaks in small sentences, to his English must not be very good. She resists the urge to speak loudly, because he seems to understand her well enough. “Do you live close to Ashford?”
“I live here,” he responds, not meeting her eyes. He takes his bowl of soup in both hands and raises it to his mouth like a giant cup. Shirley can’t help a wince as he slurps it down.
“What, at Ashford?”
“Yes,” he says.
...Shirley goes back to her original assessment. He’s definitely an assassin. ---no, no, no, stupid Shirley! He must be a personal servant to the Ashford family, rather than a janitor hired to clean the school. In any case, she doesn’t feel awkward, sitting across from him and eating an apple, but she is a little grateful when he runs out of soup. Must be an Eleven thing, slurping. Shirley suppresses a shudder.
“So,” she fishes once she has finally finished her apple. “I’ll be seeing you around, I presume?”
“You can presume,” the Eleven says, which startles Shirley because she had just been chastising herself mentally for using above-basic vocabulary for someone so bad at English.
“Well then,” Shirley say, recovering quickly. “I’m Shirley! Nice to meet you!”
The Eleven looks at her, a little bit of suspicion in his eyes. Or maybe just caution, wariness, because he doesn’t pause too long before nodding and introducing himself in turn. “Suzaku Kururugi. You can call me Zack if Suzaku is too hard to remember.”
Shirley tries out the name Suzaku a few times, but she can’t make it like he does-- like a sharp knife cuts the ‘ku’ halfway through the sound, and she ends up saying ‘soo-zah-koo’. But she prefers that to Zack, because he obviously wasn’t born with the name Zack. “Suzaku,” she says with finality.
Suzaku beams at her, apparently preferring his Eleven name to Zack as well. Shirley waves goodbye and returns to the student council.
And poor Shirley doesn’t really know what she’s getting herself into, but she is Suzaku’s friend from then on. They run into each other and say hello in the halls of the clubhouse, in the break room, and sometimes she sees him tending the gardens. She even sort of finds him handsome, in an exotic kind of way. He’s got a very broad chest and large, rough hands. She tries not to blush and daydream when she sees them working on something or other around the clubhouse. He’s even really good at English, she learns, so she supposes that he was just tired that day and that’s why he spoke so shortly.
“So you live inside the clubhouse?” she asks one day when the sun is shining brightly through the open doors that lead to a balcony. A warm breeze swirls inside and ruffles his curls.
“Yes,” he says without looking at her. He is holding a conversation with her and patching a hole in the wall created by some less-than-careful students moving a large wooden science project. “There’s a small apartment in the back. I live there.”
“That’s pretty cool-- is it bigger than the dorms?”
Suzaku smiles up at her playfully. “It is, I guess. As a whole, anyway.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, honestly curious.
“Well, my bedroom by itself isn’t bigger than a dorm room. In fact it’s a little smaller. And my kitchen is much smaller than the cafeteria. My living room isn’t bigger than the commons area. But...” he pauses here, leaning back on his heels, his hands covered in drying white. “...I don’t have to share it with five hundred other kids, and also, at night, I have the entire clubhouse open to me. So, I suppose you could consider it bigger than living in the dorms.”
Shirley hums and swings her feet, managing to stay balanced on the stair rail she is sitting on.
“How old are you, Suzaku?”
He screws the lid back on to the sticky paste he’s been slathering on the hole. Then he squints up at her, pupils narrowing in the brightness. He smiles but it seems a little... not quite bitter, and Shirley doesn’t understand. It’s nasty, but not directed at her, and very mild.
“Same age as you,” he says. “I’m fifteen.”
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Shirley asks quietly. “I mean, I guess it’s tough, and you’ve got to make a living, but... I don’t ever see you in class or anything. There are schools for Elevens, aren’t there?”
Suzaku carelessly scratches his head and a leaves a bit of white clinging to a curl, weighing it down until it gets in his face and spots a bit of white on his cheek. “I have a tutor.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Shirley says. “I was a little worried.”
He stares at her in the eyes for a second, something he hardly ever does, and his eyes are green and a little sharper than usual. Then he blinks a few times and looks away again. With that same mildly nasty smile, he shrugs and picks up a bit of sandpaper.
Shirley has taken to telling Milly about Suzaku recently as well, thinking that she would be familiar with him since he serves the Ashfords and all. She doesn’t feel very comfortable talking about him to others, because only Milly calls him Suzaku and everyone else calls him Zack, if they know him at all though not many do. Some know his face but not his name, having never bothered to learn. And Milly is the only one who doesn’t say, “That uppity Eleven” or “He’s alright for a monkey” or “He’s pretty smart for an Eleven, you know, he can speak and generally they’re really dumb”. And the ones who don’t know Suzaku, which outweigh by far the ones that do, ask her, “Why are you making friends with Elevens? They’re primitive, Shirley.” “Yeah, they can get violent, I’ve heard. Please be careful, they’re no good.”
So Shirley talks to Milly about Suzaku, and to no one else. Milly seemed a little stunned at first, but she gets over it and starts teasing Shirley about having strange tastes. “I could have sworn you were hiding a crush on Lelouch, but I guess you like rice more than noodles? Hah!” But other than that and a few other ethnic jokes-- “What is your future husband going to think when he sees you doting on the hired help?” --she speaks about Suzaku well enough. She apparently has known Suzaku for a long time and has gotten very used to him.
“We’re friends,” Milly says with a sip of tea. “I could help you out.”
“I don’t have a crush on him, if that’s what you’re thinking!” Shirley splutters, slamming her own teacup down. But her face is beet red, because, well... because Suzaku has very nice hands...
“Sure,” Milly says lightly, looking serious for once in her life. “After all, a Britannian and an Eleven... It’s improper.”
Shirley opens her mouth but can’t think of what to say to that. She didn’t think Milly of all people would say such a thing. But soon her real friend returns with a wink and a snicker and says,
“But if it isn’t improper, what fun is it, am I right?”
Shirley gets redder, if possible, her face looking sick next to her hair. She imagines, admittedly not for the first time, she and Suzaku possibly meeting behind the clubhouse on a sunshiny day, in the gardens where she sometimes sees him as she passes a window. And he would hold out in his dirty hands a bouquet of flowers he grew himself, and....
--Milly taps her teacup on its saucer. “Shirley? I know that expression, dearest~.”
“No!” Shirley says suddenly. “I-It’s not like it’s a big deal to think of those things, right? I--”
“What things?” Milly asks with a grin.
“--it’s natural, I’m fifteen, we fifteen year olds think about boys, all kinds of boys, like-- like-- like--”
“Like trying them out in your head to see if you would want to date them?” Milly prompts slyly.
“Right!” Shirley agrees with a nod. “Like trying to see if dating Suzaku wouldn’t be so bad...”
Milly stares at her gleefully as she takes another sip.
“...I mean!” Shirley starts up again, but calms down just as quickly. She had thought of something romantic with Suzaku, but only because it had been romantic, not because it was Suzaku. She hadn’t really considered it, but now... “Well, it’s not like I think it’s impossible, but, you know, he really is an--”
The door to the council room swings open at that moment and Lamperouge walks in, dressed down; his blazer is missing and his shirt is untucked and if she didn’t know better, that would be the slight glaze of sweat on his forehead. Shirley cuts off.
Lamperouge is the last person who would ever be kind to a guy like Suzaku.
After her conversation with Milly, Shirley can't help but to blush whenever she sees Suzaku. He just looks at her like a puppy, cocking his head and gazing at her with gentle, wide eyes.
To be honest, she still doesn't consider him datable material. He's handsome, she thinks while knowing not many Britannians would agree-- do other Elevens find him handsome? And he's nice, too, very, always offering to carry heavy things and always opening doors, like a gentleman as much as a servant.
But despite everything good he has going for him, he's still an Eleven. It wouldn't matter so much to Shirley except there would simply be too many problems. For one, her parents would never let her and her friends would never let her hear the end of it. Also, he is a fifteen year old groundskeeper. For all she knows, he has no desire to be anything but a groundskeeper. For all she knows, he probably isn't able to be anything more than a groundskeeper.
And, well, the thought doesn't bother her too much-- after all, his people lost.
But no one can blame her for being a fifteen year old girl, so she thinks This, then, is what forbidden love would be. Then she indulges in the fantasy where he brings her flowers and gently takes her hand as he draws closer, both of their hearts pounding because they can hear people chattering in the front lawn, coming around, and they could be caught and separated at any point...
--Shirley squeals out loud and her friends all look at her, startled, with sandwiches halfway to their mouths.
"Shirley, Rivalz, and Lelouch. You three are a group."
In biology class, Shirley's happy little bubble pops and she hits Earth with a painful thud.
"With him?" she asks Mrs. Logan, trying to send pleading eyes her way. Mrs. Logan just smiles in that way that says she is utterly amused with how silly her students can sometimes be and shakes her head.
Lelouch reacts only to look Rivalz in the eye and glance at Shirley as Shirley looks back at them. After the teacher dismisses them to exchange numbers with their groups, Shirley gathers herself and turns to them both with a cheery smile.
"So! I think I have an idea--"
Lelouch is looking out the window, not paying attention. Rivalz, at least, is looking at her with a hopeful expression, because he isn't much of an idea man.
"We could draw the skeleton on a white shirt and pants and have someone be a life-size model. That'd be cool--"
Lelouch looks like he's in the process of turning his head, like he's trying to pay attention, but something outside is pulling him like a magnet.
Shirley clears her throat while Rivalz responds enthusiastically. "Oh, yeah, I'll be the model! You guys can draw on me--"
Shirley stands and leans over the desk, into Lelouch's space. He backs up very quickly, giving her an offended quirk of his eyebrows, and she would totally consider that a triumph except... Lelouch was looking at Suzaku. Shirley had only leaned so she could get the same or close angle of Lelouch's sight, and when she looked to see what had attracted his attention so, she saw Suzaku.
The Eleven boy is down on the grounds, dressed in a shirt and jeans that look far too tight for him, glaring up at the buildings around him. Or is that just a squint?
...can he possibly be looking for her? She feels her heart start to pound, because she had a fantasy about this, too, and no no no Suzaku, it's so romantic but no one will approve! There can only be trouble between us...
--"Could you please back away? This is very uncomfortable," Lamperouge says.
"S-sorry," Shirley says and sits down. But as soon as her bottom hits the seat, the bell rings and everyone is out to the next class. Lamperouge is already moving away, phone in hand, but Shirley hasn't given him her number. Rather, it looks like he is texting instead, so Shirley huffs and punches Rivalz's number to her own phone.
Shirley has the next class with Lelouch as well, but she can't find him anywhere. She asks the boys as they mill about in their PE clothes, but they all look at each other and shrug. Shirley has a nasty suspicion and goes to search for him.
Half-expecting to find Lelouch and Rivalz climbing over the wall, Shirley is surprised to see Suzaku behind the gym building instead, alone. If she didn't know better, she would place his expression as... guilty?
"Suzaku?" she calls, but his eyes are already on her. "What are you doing here?"
"Just... surveying the grounds," he says nervously.
She doesn't want to call him a liar, and so says, "Those, uh, aren't your normal clothes, are they? They're a little small."
Suzaku looks somewhere in the direction of her left ear, face turning red. "N-no. I borrowed these. It's laundry day, and my last set of clothes, er, got messed up at lunch."
"Oh, I see," Shirley says sympathetically. "I had one of those days in middle school--" --with her period, stupid! She shuts herself up. "Oh, uh, who loaned you the clothes?"
She wonders who it was, a student or another Eleven, that showed him kindness, but he isn't forthcoming. His mouth is open like he wants to answer immediately, but his eyes are downcast and she can practically see him thinking for the answer.
"You don't have to--" lie, she is about to say, until a head and shoulders pops over the wall above them. Suzaku's head snaps up and Shirley follows his gaze.
"Lelouch!" she shrieks. He really did go over the wall to skip PE!
Lelouch presses a finger to his lips, then looks at Suzaku. "Are you coming or what?"
"Shirley," Suzaku starts, and she looks back at him, astonished by the frank way he is looking into her eyes. "Please don't tell."
Shirley shakes her head. Suzaku smiles. Then Suzaku faces the wall, backs up, and charges at the stone. He doesn't stop; he practically runs up the wall and catches the ledge, pulling himself up to straddle the barrier between Ashford and the outside world with great ease.
"See ya," he says, and both he and Lelouch disappear. Together.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 08:06 pm (UTC)Just wanted to say how impressed I am by your fanfics. You're really good at keeping everyone really IC (which is something I struggle with--a lot), and your writing style is very nice and easy to read.
I'll keep on reading this on the kink meme.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-21 03:44 am (UTC)I'll do my best~ Thanks for the support!