For a friend. I adore you and hope our friendship can only grow from here. 3~

"Everything was perfect, until you decided that I wasn't."

It was simple: detachment. A lack of bonds or otherwise lingering ties with others. Raised to use and disappear before any other such inkling arose, Francis was the epitome of teen rogue mixed with Romeo's allure. He could entice even the most disinterested of eyes to look at him twice. A skill, perhaps. An art? Most definitely. But there was one such individual that eluded his wiles. The one that he longed to capture the most. His constant friend and his heart's greatest foe: Antonio.

Where Francis was suave and mysterious, Antonio had the smile of a god, the eyes and temperament of a child, and skin kissed from the sun. Even his ridiculous laughter could leave one breathless on impact. What made him especially dangerous was his lack of awareness. He could silence a room with the wink of an eye and stand in wonder as to what he had missed.

The Spaniard was dangerous. And Francis was completely bewitched.

Their first encounter had been brief, in accordance to Francis' memory. The tow-head had barely reached the age of nine and just as knobby-kneed as the rest of them. His blond hair and feather light eyelashes set him apart, however. He had many followers, but not for these traits alone. His personality was electric. Francis was all that a young gentleman ought to be, equipped with a quick tongue and an ornery but knowing smile to tie it all together. But it was his hands that had caught the young Antonio's attention. Feminine and curious.

Francis jerked to awareness when a hand, only slightly larger than his own, slipped inside his palm and squeezed lightly; testing.

He peered down at the hand before ever thinking to check the offender's face. The extension was a bit dirty and tanned, the nails clipped short and free of debris.

"Oye, sus manos, your hands, they looked lonely."

With that, their eyes connected and instantly friendship was granted.

Nearly eight years later, they remained tight knit. Constant companions encompassed by school walls and excess knowledge from books that would be forgotten long before the year's end.

To their duo they had added a few choice friends. But only one they commonly agreed upon. And even then, some days they wondered about the sanity of their decision to befriend the albino boy with a voice nearly as unbearable as his ego.

But with this added ally, their times grew more lively and less secluded.

It was rare that Francis found Antonio alone. And even though most of their classes and lunches were spent alongside one another, most conversations involved at least one other person; much to Antonio's delight and Bonnefoy's chagrin.

So all that was allotted was quick glances and brief physical contact in the form of friendly hugs and wide, amused smiles.

…It was torture.

On one day, a Thursday to be exact, Francis' world broke.

"Psst."

Without as much as a bat of his eyes, the Frenchman ignored the third counterpart of their now famous trio. He was far too involved inside his own fantasies of Spanish lips and scorching hot touches to gives such recompense.

"PSSSST!" This time it was louder, droplets of spit littering his scarcely touched notes.

Immediately Bonnefoy's expression darkened in disgust, a quick retort hot on his tongue, pushing forth through his stagnant quiet.

"Connard! I should cut out that useless tongue of yours-"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Listen, here."

And with that, he thrust a folded piece of paper onto his desk.

It was plain. No eye catching design or label to speak of. So with a shrug, the blond peeled open the mystery mail.

Inside was something simple. Something that was as eternal as time and just as grand. It had been rushed, that much he could decipher from the choppy script and scribbles. But it was there. As obvious as day and the sun that warmed the Earth.

'I love you.'

He gawked at the words, stomach instantly somersaulting and heart pounding so hard against his ribs that he was terribly certain that they'd break into splinters and kill him from the inside-out. The writing was familiar. It was his writing. This was the sign he'd so longed for.

Glancing upwards to make for certain, he spotted Antonio turned around in his seat one hundred and eighty degrees. He was waving with that same hand that had stolen Francis' heart so long ago. And that smile, there it was, on his face, splitting him in half.

Immediately the blond's mind raced, blue eyes meeting green.

And for that brief moment, Francis was truly and indefinably happy.

…How fleeting happiness is.

"Tch, Francis, are you always so slow?" Grumbled the albino Gilbert, "Toni wants you to pass it on to that grumpy-ass Italian kid behind you."

Slowly Francis looked back up to Antonio, who in turn was nodding and giving him a satisfied thumbs up before turning back around to the front as to not draw the teacher's attention.

With fingers that felt much too big and clumsy as to do much of anything, Bonnefoy folded the note, face concealed behind a wall of blond locks. With the motions of a rusting robot, he dumped the note onto Romano's desk with a quick utterance of: "From Antonio".

Class passed at a grueling rate. Much too slow in fact. With each tick of the clock's counting of seconds, Francis shuddered down another round of pain.

Head hung low, as if in the greatest of shame, he listened over and over again to the sound of…nothing. The heartbeat he had grown so accustomed to hearing simply wasn't there anymore. He was alive, to be sure. The anguish with each breath that he sucked into his lungs was proof enough for it. But with that note, which had brought him a sense of elation that had been the most ephemeral notion ever to pass through him, took with it his heart.

Murmuring quickly his thanks in French when the bell rang, he gathered his things with an utmost urgency that was so unknown to his character that many classmates wondered whether or not something had happened. Well, something had happened. In the silent of class, unbeknownst to all minus himself, his passion had been ruthlessly murdered.

As Antonio made his way to Romano's desk after class, and Francis nearly out the door, he was privileged enough to hear a snippet of their conversation as he tried desperately to wipe the dampness from his cheeks.

"Romano, mi tomate, did you get my note?"

"I got it, asshole. W-why was it wet, though?"

"…qué ?"

From that day forward, Francis spent most of his time pestering a blond tyrant named Arthur and the object of his discreet affection, Alfred.

It hut less when he was with them. Because as much as Arthur denied it, they liked having him around. And it was so much easier to avoid Antonio and Romano this way. In fact, he never directly encountered them even once.

And thus, they graduated.

-Twelve Years Later-

Francis stood in the center of a room filled in white and red. That loud-mouthed albino had surprisingly married. If he had not known the woman better, he would have felt sorry for her. But where Gilbert's mouth was loud, her fist was strong. Elizabeta was his perfect match, no doubt.

So in this room of white, red, matrimony, and elation, Francis melted into the scenery, keeping his dark-haired date close at hand.

"Michelle, do keep close, ma belle. Who knows how many beers away Gilbert is from attacking that poor Roderich fellow."

She nodded that dutiful head of hers in acknowledgment as she continued her wide-eyed conversation with that blonde girl a few years younger than he. Emma was her name, he believed. The one with the brother knee-deep in his love for marijuana as his was affection for hair gel.

Finding an opportunity to go partake in the punch bowl, he slinked away to fetch two glasses for he and his date. Thus he was mildly assault and pushed down onto his haunches.

Holding his slightly dizzied head, Francis tried to see the cause of his tumble.

"Dios mio, Franny, lo siento!"

Suddenly his hand was taken and once again he was upright on his own two feet.

Like a fly to the zapper, déjà vu took him. He gazed down at the hand still holding his. It was tanned and warm, much as his nightmares would never let him forget. And what was worse, it still fit. Like pieces to the puzzle, air to the lungs.

Roving his eyes from their joined fingers and palms up to his face, Francis was immediately enraptured inside forest green eyes and smiles of sunlight once more.

And for the second and final time in his life, he was undeniably happy. For there, in those concise seconds they were connected, he heard it again. One last time -his heartbeat. There it was, as the day he had become aware of it, inside Antonio's hand.

Far too quickly the lapse between present and forever ended between them, hands releasing slowly. To fill the silence, to drown out the thundering of his heart inside his ears, Francis spoke of his life and asked of the Spaniard's. And thus they departed, just as quickly as they had been reunited.

As Antonio walked away, the Frenchman remembered something seemingly peculiar and bittersweet. The taste left inside his mouth favoring that of sourness.

"Franny," asked the pre-teen Fernandez, fingers playing with the pale Bonnefoy's absentmindedly, "Do you think we'll always be friends?'

"What a ridiculous question to ask, Antony. Of course we will be."

"How can you be sure?"

"Friendship is born through smiles and live on through the 'eart, non? We'll always be friends because you'll always 'ave my 'eart, de rien," Francis muttered, giving a curt nod of his head, perfectly certain that his answer had been the most obvious of facts.

Antonio merely laughed and made a comment about how Francis sounded like an old man at times.

At present, Francis watched him go, little Italian latched onto his arm. And with each step, his heartbeat grew quieter.

Tha-dum. Tha-dum. Tha-dum. Tha-

Antonio was out of sight and once more silence was Francis' favorite lullaby.

End.