#3：Any Other Woman On Earth
Title: Any Other Woman On Earth
Pairing: Ami/Zoi
Word Count: 1184
Summary: Five reasons for why going out with Ami would be a very Bad Idea. Not that he's actually thinking of doing so, of course. Right?
Author's Note: This is AU. These five reasons are sort of a continuation of the first five, except from Zach's point of view. A few incidents from the first chapter are mentioned.
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He catches her in a heated conversation with their editor-in-chief about The Brothers Karamazov, adamantly insisting that the oldest son is a manifestation of the worst kind of evil existent. He sees her gesticulating wildly, moving her arms up and down to emphasize her points, and he glimpses the titles of the books in her arms--there is the June edition of Businessweek, Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the AP Calculus textbook.
As a rule, he does not date girls who use four-syllable words often, much less ones who use five-syllable (and often obscure) words on a daily basis. He does not date girls who take advanced math classes two years before they're supposed to. The girls he does date do not read Russian literature a second before they have to, and they most certainly do not spend any of their free time arguing about it.
So there's that.
"So what do you think?" She catches up with him quickly, tilting her head up to meet his eyes.
He snorts softly, "I, like most normal people, do not spend my free time reading college material years before I need to and arguing about it. I have better things to do, Infallible."
He can tell she doesn't buy a word of it from the suspicious glint in her eyes, "I know you finished 'The Brothers Karamazov' and wrote your term paper on it." She smiles triumphantly at the horrified look on his face.
The horrified look is quick to change into a scowl as he grumbles, "How did you know about the term paper?" He doesn't like the smug look on her face at all.
"Why, from dear Ms. Hamish, of course! She was so thrilled with your book report that she showcased it to her entire advisor group."
He groans, "That woman is going to ruin my reputation someday."
But she ignores his further mumblings and pries around for more information, "So what do you think?"
"Well..." And they launch into a heated, academic debate.
Which is exactly why he doesn't date really smart girls interested in Literature and Economics and way too many other things to count, like Ami Mizuno-Anderson is. The way he sees it, if he really does date girls like that, then dates would soon become academia-infested tomes of boredom. Even if he did enjoy that little debate with her quite a lot.
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The girl has a very, very warped fashion sense. Seriously. He really doesn't mean to sound like some blase New Yorker (even though he was born and raised in the Upper East Side), but everyone at least knows that the school uniform is only mandatory on weekdays. And everyone abides by the unwritten rule that says no one is to wear school uniforms on weekends, except one Ami Mizuno-Anderson, who just happens to wear her school uniform every single day of the week, every single week of the month.
Sometimes he suspects her idea of high fashion is black Armani pantsuits. He knows she's never read a fashion magazine in her entire life, even though Mina has a huge stack of them in their dorm. In fact, he's pretty sure that she heard about Armani from Mina, instead of checking herself. It seems like she just doesn't pay any attention to how she looks.
It's not as if she doesn't have potential--she's already got this nymph-like prettiness in her delicate features, but she just doesn't make the effort. She doesn't wear any makeup on weekdays or on weekends, she practically never wears any jewelry, and she doesn't seem to care that she could be quite pretty if only she made just a little bit of effort. But she obviously doesn't make any effort or even a vestige of trying to make any effort. He suspects that she probably wouldn't get dressed up even for a date.
So there. That makes strike two.
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So maybe he is being more than a little categorical when he thinks of her as a teacher's pet at times, but he knows he's right. When he went through her file as an administrative assistant back in sophomore year, he saw more than just a fair share of compliments from teachers. There simply were no bad words from the teachers about her--from her first grade teacher's glowing report of "Ami is a wonderful angel--quiet, studious and kind" to her current adviser Ms. Hamish's (who he still resents over the "Brothers Karamazov" book report leak) gushing raves of "an all-around outstanding student with strong and meaningful extracurricular activities and a even stronger academic record", the teachers all adored her.
He supposed that it wasn't altogether that fair of him to hold something like teacher-adoration over her, but... Honestly, the recommendations were nothing less than full-blown raves, and he personally penciled in the handy little rule saying "No dating teacher's pets" in the dating handbook last year.
He will be a little more lax with this one, because it was him who invented the rule in the first place--
Strike two and a half, then.
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She has the weirdest obsessions.
The last time he saw her, she was balancing three monolithic tomes from the library (that probably haven't been checked-out in a millennium and then some), a sketch of Einstein and a digital camera, which just serves to show her plethora of obsessions and hobbies. Her many, many interests never fail to befuddle him, especially when he knows that the first three on her list are Einstein, monolithic tomes and...chesecake. Right.
He doesn't really mean to trash a dead guy's fashion sense, but as a self-declared grooming guru, he feels the necessity of the task. Honestly, not even one poor fashion-retarded soul can really deny that Albert Einstein's hair seriously needed some grooming. Not to even mention those eyebrows and that decidedly unflattering portrait sketch of him. But, fashion issues aside, it really is just plain weird for a teenage girl, albeit an already quirky girl-genius in a prep school, to be obsessed with someone who has already joined those not on the side of the living.
Most girls admire models, or actors or at least people still alive.
But he won't count this one against her, because well, even he, Zachary Atwood, was known to have had an odd crush or two back in the day.
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The most inexplicably odd thing is, in spite of her over-enthusiasm over academia, her warped fashion sense, her goody-two-shoes tendencies, and even her eccentric obsessions--yes, in spite of all of that, he finds Ami Mizuno-Anderson oddly...interesting. If he had to be really honest with himself (which he never was, thank God), he might even admit that he found the girl to be quite fascinating.
The wheels of her academia-powered mind turning was a joy to witness and an undeniable challenge.
Her lack of fashion sense somehow let her natural delicate prettiness shine through.
But most of all, all of these odd factors combined together, made up a whip-smart, quirky nymph, to whom he felt more and more drawn every day.
That made strike three.