Title: First Meetings
Character(s)/Pairing(s): fem!Germany/North Italy with very brief mentions of Rome, Denmark and Prussia.
Rating/Genre: PG-13 / Gakuen-Human-AU, Fluff, Humour
Summary: In which Monika Beilschmidt chances upon a certain Mr. Vargas in her lecture. Awkwardness ensues.
Warnings: Genderbending and Veneziano's fail!choice of certain adjectives.
A/N: Written for tinywhitekitty, the lovely unofficial beta for most of my fics and also my tl;dr- fandom-rambling-sekrut-confession-bro. I honestly wouldn't be here writing fics if it wasn't for all her encouragement and help.

This is set in Sternbild City, the same Gakuen-verse as Falling Away with You. You don't have to read the first fic to understand it though (unless you want to!) All you need to know is that fem!Germany is the chemistry professor, and North Italy is the part-time school canteen chef.

~.*.~

It was the snoring that got to her first.

Usually she would ignore such distractions, shrugging it away as a student who burnt midnight the oil the night before, cramming their heads with last-minute studying. Or very likely, just a student who spent the whole night partying irresponsibly.

She would usually ignore such distractions, because the minute she'd finished writing out the steps for a Hess' law calculation on the board and spun around to face the class again, the perpetrator of said distractions would very likely have an elbow shoved into their ribs by a panicking classmate, stirred awake and then started paying full attention. Because if they didn't, it was also very likely she'd march up to them to deliver her own personal wake-up call via a hard thump on the head with a textbook.

The snoring didn't stop this time however. Monika frowned, finishing off the last bits of the calculation on the board and spinning around to face the class once more, swept her gaze over her students, scanning for the culprit. When she finally caught sight of him, she could only click her tongue softly in mildly-suppressed annoyance.

Feliciano Vargas, the school canteen chef: 1 part sunshine-y brightness, 1 part perpetual smiles and a generous amount of sheer ridiculousness with just a dash of stupid.

Lately, Monika had noticed Mr. Vargas' presence at the back of the lecture hall whenever she was teaching a class. It didn't bother her much at first – well, at least until he started falling asleep midway and started snoring very loudly. If he were a student, she would've kicked him out several weeks ago. But no, he was staff too and she decided the best way to handle the situation was to speak to him about it, like responsible working adults.

"Mr. Vargas," Monika began slowly as she approached him once she had dismissed the class. "I noticed you've started attending some of my lectures lately. Is there any particular reason for you to do so?"

"Aaahh, hello Professor Beilschmidt!" Mr. Vargas said, waving one arm excitedly. "Well, I thought it might be interesting to sit in one of your classes, because veeee, chemistry is kinda like cooking, right? Except that it's really boring and it all smells very not-tasty!"

Monika tilted her head slightly, uncertain as to how to respond to that. "Is… that really all?"

"Weeeelll," Mr. Vargas gave a sheepish smile, raising a hand to rub his nape nervously. "I overheard one of your lectures and I kind of mistook it for a lecture on baking. I was really scared at first, because you always looked so fierce and angry. But I noticed them afterwards, how beautiful they are, even though they initially came across as too... ve, what's the word? Too... rigid. And sometimes they get really perky too, especially when you're really enthusiastic about a topic!"

Monika felt the vein underneath her left eye twitching slightly. P-perky?

"But then," The man continued, still wearing that silly grin. "Then I noticed there was a softer edge to them too, and that's when I realized maybe it'd be nice to get to know you more..."

Monika sighed, resigned. She had heard this excuse dozens of times, and really, is that all men think about?

"Mr. Vargas," she finally spoke up, unable to contain herself any longer. "While I appreciate your... honesty, though not so much your sentiment, it is however not the first time men have tried this as a strategy of sorts."

She thought about the Danish bartender from several days back, who she had to politely tell off (with a punch, no less) because he had problems taking her orders, simply because he was too busy staring down at her front.

Monika gave Mr. Vargas a small nod, her brows knitted into a frown. "So you'll have to accept my apologies if I'd rather not be-friend someone solely because my breasts caught their brief attention."

"Eeeehh? Your what... breasts...?" Here, Mr. Vargas glanced over her–

She flushed traitorously, but held her gaze steady.

"Well yes, they are very nice too. Grandpapa would approve, and possibly Mamma too..."

Monika wondered if she had to end up punching this man too, which would make it five men she'd had to show the fury of her fist this week. If this continued every week or so, she might even consider plotting a graph for those statistics, just so she could show her annoying elder brother that the graph could possibly be applied to reflect his overall stupidity too.

"I was talking about your eyes though."

Monika blinked, shaken out of her thoughts. "M-My eyes?"

"Mm-hmm~!" Mr. Vargas's smile grew wider as he nodded enthusiastically. "Your eyes are a very pretty colour, like jewels. They remind me of the pendant Grandpapa bought for Mamma for her twenty-first birthday."

Monika stared at the man, her mouth still hanging open before she realized how ridiculous she must have looked like that.

"I-I see... well, then I... that is to say... I..." she babbled, her tongue suddenly feeling very heavy as she felt her cheeks colouring again, this time from embarrassment.

"So, ve, would you like to have tea with me?" Mr. Vargas asked hopefully.

Normally, Monika would decline with the excuse of having to catch up with work. But Mr. Vargas was smiling brightly at her, he had this stray lock of hair curling rebelliously to one side of his head and it looked rather cu – she cleared her throat – and he seemed like a decent enough fellow...

"… I suppose tea would be nice." She lifted her gaze to meet his, a tiny smile now tugging on her lips. "As well as some company to go along with it."

"So that's a yes?"

"…Yes."

-Ende-

:::

Notes:

I don't quite know what happened here. But half of this was written after I rolled out of bed from a night of half-arsed-insomniac not-sleep and got inspired in the shower. And the other half was written at 4a.m. after two rounds of red wine... so... yeah. And I don't know if this qualifies as a drabble anymore? It's almost 1000 words! Hence why I decided to post this as a oneshot, rather than under the Drabbles series, lol.

That said, I hope you still got some kick reading my attempts at genderbent-GerIta!

Also, Feliciano speaks rather funny here because I imagine him being not too fluent in English (in this verse), hence why he used funny adjectives when describing stuff. It's my attempt at experimenting with dialogues and trying to make the characters' dialogues a bit more them and distinctive from each other. Not sure if it worked, but hey, it's good practice for future fics! And yes, apparently "perky" can be used to describe eyes too. Not too sure about "rigid" though but... er, yeah. ^^;

Also also, I had this song playing while writing this! Accordions always remind me of Italy:
http:(doubleslash)www(dot)onmvoice(dot)com(slash)play(dot)php?a=57510

Hope you'll enjoy this! Critiques/comments are always welcomed 3