Author's note:

So I failed my word and did not finish the last fic I was working on. It's still somewhere on my "gonna finish someday" pile, but I with the time I have, I don't think I'll get back into it anytime into it.

So why am I writing a new fic instead? Well, because I just watched Monsters University, loved it and, for the first time in a long time, let out my inner shipping fanboy all over two of its characters: Claire Wheeler and Brock Pearson. And I just couldn't resist myself.

And thus, it turned into this. Originally a one-shot, I believe it's gonna be a multi-chapter which I truly hope to finish now during my summer break.

Feedback is appreciate and HIGHLY encouraged, so please, if you're able to give me some useful critique, I'll be highly thankful.

Without further ado, hope you enjoy it.

Monsters University and all of its characters are property of Disney and Pixar Animation Studios.

-x-x-x-x-x-

The way he looks like when he sleeps

1.- First impressions

-x-x-x-x-x-

She tried her best not to be irritated, but being forced to wake up at five in the morning to take a bus was far from Claire's idea to start her first day at college. She avoided thinking about the reasons why she had to. It'd have been unfair to start misplacing her anger at her family, as irritating as they were sometimes. With little to do in an empty bus, though, with only her baggage, a boring-looking driver sitting under a "do not talk to the driver" sign and no one awake to text on the phone there wasn't much else she could do. Maybe she could try and get what little sleep she could get during the ride.

She sighed in annoyance. The last thing a girl like her liked was losing sleep for nothing. She closed her eyes and tried to lay the best she could in one not-so-comfortable seat of the bottom back seat of the bus.

Just a few minutes after she had finally succumbed to slumber she awoke harshly by the bothersome sound of a loud pencil scratch.

With a heavy frown on her face, she slowly opened her third from the left eye to peek at the source of the noise. Just one seat away from her, in the same bottom row, she saw the large figure of a purple-feathered monster, whose large body was covered only by a gray sweater, who likely hopped in the stop right after hers. She couldn't identify his full features yet, but she could identify in his hands a notepad being written over, energetically, by his short and nearly worn-out pencil.

Ugh, he couldn't pick a better spot to sit and write than here, could he?! She thought to herself. She tried closing her eyes once again and hoped her row mate would stop writing so loudly, but he didn't, and it only got worse when she heard him mumbling things to himself. She opened one of her eyes again. She looked at him with more attention this time and identified on him an old-fashion style dark purple mullet and a pair of thin vertical horns on his head. Most prominent, however, was the gleefully smiling orange serrated beak that he had instead of mouth; second to that, were his equally joyous eyes that looked down at the notepad so wide-open and with no signs of tiredness whatsoever.

She shut her eyes once more and turned her head away from the billed monster, getting even more uncomfortable as she laid on her side. The awful scratching noise of the pencil and his mumbling, that was starting to get louder, just wouldn't stop. She gritted her teeth as the noise got even louder.

Minutes continued to pass and her annoying companion continued his energetic ruckus. She grunted in anger. What is this guy's freakin' problem!?

She decided she wasn't going to have it. Eyes wide-open in anger, she turned around at the sleep-depraver to yell him to stop.

When the unexpected sight in front her put her in a halt. The beaked monster had fallen asleep.

Instead of finding him fully awake and energetic as he was moments ago, he was entirely asleep, his large body lying awkwardly on his back, eyes completely shut and his notepad and pencil lying dropped in the seat between them. He did not snore, thank goodness, but his heavy breathing sounded like a good indicator that he was indeed deep asleep…somehow, after looking very, very far from being so.

Claire stared in puzzlement. How does anyone go from that to this so suddenly was beyond her understanding, but at least he's finally quiet, she thought. She looked in curiosity at this peculiar monster, another freshman at Monsters University, she assumed, judging by the baggage lying on the seat near his window. Her suspicions were confirmed when she looked down at the notepad between them: the whole page was filled by a boldly-written check-lest: 'Wake up early.' Checked. 'Catch the 6:15 am bus." Checked. 'Did I meet anyone there?', followed by a blank space filled with 'sort of'. 'Start writing this check-list' Checked. 'Arriving at campus.' Unchecked, obviously. And all following items on the list also remained unchecked and the last one wasn't even complete.

Some people just don't know where to dump their excitement. She thought cynically. Truth was told, Claire wasn't excited for university at all. To her, it was going to be just another phase in life like all others, full of annoyances and frustrations filled with a mixed bag of unpleasant surprises and hopefully a few not-so-unpleasant ones. But it's not like she had any desires to not attend college and get some mid-rate job for the rest of her life, especially with a family of professionals putting heavy pressure on her: medics, accountants, monsterologists, choreographers, etc. All they needed now was to have a scarer to be up there in the Wheeler hall of fame and that little task had fallen upon her. Not like she cared, but she just didn't see anything in it to look forward to and just couldn't understand how monsters like the guy beside him could be so extremely eager about it.

Seeing him sleep so deeply like this now was a strange thing to see. The poor guy must have exhausted himself all of a sudden. …poor guy? She questioned her use of the adjective. But she had to admit, looking at him sleep instead of being wide-awake as he was earlier was actually a pleasing sight…mostly thanks to the fact he was no longer making noise. Claire had never seen a monster like him before. Sure, she's told herself the very same thing every time she met a new monster, but this guy here, for some reason, stood out for some reason. Hmph, maybe it's the beak? The serrated, funny-looking break of his, which showed a sleepy smile, that matched with his short and amusing pair of chicken-like legs. She was surprised at his lack of wings, having large arms instead, attached to an also large and well-built torso, like that of an athlete. Then that out-of-fashion mullet he sported and his pair of horns. Of all the weird mixed features she had seen in a monster before, somehow, his looked quite, how would she put it, interesting? And there was something in the way he looked like just now, asleep.

Hmph, kinda cute, I guess.

She slapped herself hard. What did I JUST think now?! Somehow she wished she could pour bleach inside her brain to wash away that thought. Did she forget how annoying this guy was moments ago?

Well, to be fair, he didn't mean it. She rationalized. …but he still was freaking annoying.

She let out a turned away from the sleepy fellow freshman. Well, hope I can get some effin' rest now. She closed her eyes once again and hoped there'd be no disturbances this time.

And then she heard the bus come to a halt. "Monsters University" said the monotone voice of the driver.

Followed instantly by a loud yell of excitement right beside her.

"WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOO!"

Claire's felt her eardrums vibrate in pain, her eyes opening wide and her entire self in shock.

"Awwwright! I finally made it!" She heard another strong pencil scratch. "Check! Now, Monsters University, hope you're ready, because Brock Pearson is here! Woo!" The large monster walked to the door as if somehow his entire energy had been instantly recharged. His loud steps were like a hammer slamming against her cracking wall of tolerance.

Only after he had left the bus did Claire stand up. The sun wasn't even still up yet. She didn't even want to imagine how the rest of her morning would be like. So much for an effin' good start.

She grabbed her suitcases and headed to the door. Not a few stops from her seat though did she catch from the back of her eye that something was still at the seat row. When she turned back, she found more suitcases. His suitcases.

Claire half-sighed, half-grunted. Am I reaaally going to do what I think I'm gonna do? Of the thousands things that bothered her, seeing dumb monsters leaving their stuff behind was one of the most aggravating. The biggest reason why, however, is that for some reason she always made herself take their stuff back to them.

Dammit, Claire, when are you going to get rid of your conscience? She dragged the other, much heavier pair of suitcases with her already busy hands all the way to down from the bus. A headache was starting to grow on her from this entire bothersome ordeal. After getting off the bus, she stopped for a second to catch her breath and then looked up to find the clumsy monster. There was thankfully not a lot of monsters around this hour in the morning, how I envy every single one of them, so finding the large, purple-feathered and antlered guy, who was already well past the entrance gate, was no hard task at all.

"HEY!" She yelled out. "HEY YOU…" Now how was she going to grab her attention? "…HEY, YOU BIRDHEAD!"

It worked. The beaked freshman responded to the call and turned around, apparently not minding, or maybe not even noticing, that he had just been called by an insult. "Huh?"

Claire waved her hand to grab his attention and once she knew he was looking at her she pointed down to his suitcases. "Forgot your stuff!"

He chuckled sheepishly at his own mistake and hurried back to the gate to where she waited with his stuff. "Aw man, can't believe I did that again!" He said in a surprisingly jovial manner. "I feel so dumb!"

She rolled her eyes. You don't say.

The large freshman grabbed his suitcases. "Thanks a lot! I appreciate it!" And then turned around.

"Whatever." She just said, turning her sight away. She grabbed her stuff and intended to walk off right away to registration.

"Oh, by the way!"

She halted her tracks. She wasn't going to get him off her so easily it seemed. She grunted in desperation before turning back to him. "Yes?" She hadn't fully turned around when she felt the strong grasp of his large hand shaking hers.

"Sorry I didn't introduce myself. I'm Brock Pearson! Always pleased to meet some new fellow freshmen! What's your name?" He stopped his energetic shake for a moment to let her speak. Even though she was clearly upset and growing out of patience, he continued to be incredibly jovial and enthusiastic with her.

She didn't want to look at him. She was in no mood to see anyone right now, let alone this guy, and had absolutely no desire to give him her name. Unfortunately, Claire assumed, he didn't seem to be kind of guy who would leave her be so easily until he got an answer.

She sighed. "Claire." She only gave her name. No more, no less.

"Alright. Nice to meet you, Claire!" He shook hands again intensely. Claire nearly lost her balance from the motion. After that, he finally let go and picked up his suitcases again.

"You have a good one, okay? University is a whole new adventure waiting for us, and it's just beginning!" He turned around and, finally, walked off. "See you around!"

Thanks for reminding me about that. She thought sarcastically. Another second of him and she might have lost it for good. Now she just had a whole day to put up with errands, settlement and who knows what else that she didn't want to think of. But thankfully, that Brock guy was off from her at last and hopefully she'd not have to end up seeing him again anytime soon.

Right now all she wanted was getting done with registration. Then she'd head straight to her dorm and plummet down in her bed, hoping that she didn't have to deal with any roommate introductions yet. She was absolutely in no mood for anyone right now. Great, another monster to deal with.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Once she got through the whole process and got her student ID, she headed straight to her room. Luckily, her roommate was nowhere to be seen, possibly not even there yet. So without disturbance, she dropped her body into her bed and closed her eyes for what she hoped would be a good and long enough rest.

But it just happened that the moment she closed her eyes, the mental image of that purple-feathered monster sleeping next to her in the bus popped up in her mind.

Oh, crud…why do I get the feeling this is far from over?

And it definitely was.