Rated as such because of mentions of sex and a few swear words. Please be warned. All relations to persons or events... blahblah...

"Hey, Liz!"

Gilbert Beillschmidt strutted over to the girl's desk, clapping her on the shoulder and stealing the notebook that lay balanced across her arm, like an offering. He flipped it open, beginning to read the pages and ignore the girl they belonged to.

Half-heartedly, Elizaveta reached out to smack Gilbert's arm. She was face-down on her desk, sprawled across it with eyes closed.

"Write more," Gilbert told her, tapping the book on the top of her head before setting it down again. Elizaveta reached up and smacked him again, harder this time. He whined.

"Geez, who pissed in your coffee this morning?" Gilbert complained, sitting on unoccupied the desk beside her. "You're never what I'd call pleasant, but today you just seem out of it."

Elizaveta finally raised her head from her desk, glaring weakly at him. "I'm going to kill Natalya. Like, actually kill her."

Gilbert snorted, looking unimpressed. "What is it this time?"

"She's following me again! Stalker status. Like she used to do to her brother, back in elementary school."

Gilbert shuddered, grimacing. "Man, tough luck. When Natalya decides she likes someone, she likes them."

"But I don't like her back!" Elizaveta complained. "She thinks just because I like girls that I'd date anyone and is determined that I – and I quote – 'Get married'." She made a face like Gilbert had only seen in emoticons, the first '-_-' that he'd seen in real-life. He couldn't hold back a cackle, startling the rest of the room. It was still half-empty, kids who had come into the Latin classroom early to wait for the bell to ring. But the only people who came in early – i.e. nerds – scared easily. Already Raivis, in the corner with his two other friends, was shaking like a leaf.

Gilbert was rather pleased by this.

Elizaveta was not.

"Don't laugh at me! She's really starting to get scary." Elizaveta shivered. "She was being really nice to me yesterday, and we were just talking like we usually do, and she kisses me, out of the blue." Elizaveta frowned. "I told her before, I don't like her like that."

Gilbert shrugged, grabbing her notebook again and flipping through the pages for a second time. He grinned at a particularly appealing passage, then dangled the book open in front of her. "Life oughta be like this," he said, pointing at some rather descriptive male on male oral sex – Elizaveta's specialty, in fact, and the reason he insisted on stealing her notebook every morning. "It's easy – you love, you fuck, it works out."

"Shaddup…" Elizaveta mumbled, pressing her forehead to the desk. "You're just being cocky because you and Roderich have been going at it for three months now."

She really liked making such a pale person blush so incredibly hard.

Gilbert tried to hide his face back in the notebook. "It's not like we've done it yet," he groused. "He goes to that stupid private boarding school and the most I hear from him is dirty text messages."

Elizaveta cackled happily. "I'd like to see those."

"In your dreams," Gilbert returned. "Private stash, baby."

Elizaveta stuck out her tongue, stealing her notebook back and sitting on it. "That's the last time I write you gay porn, then."

Gilbert had the decency to look crestfallen, at that.

It had never been hard for Gil and Lizzie to get along, although neither of them really remembered actually becoming friends. They'd just… fallen together, somehow, through shared classes and shared passions for creative writing – although, tell anyone Gilbert liked to write "creative shit and war novels and stuff" you were asking for a broken bone.

Elizaveta had been of the opinion, when they first met, that Gilbert was the single most annoying person she had ever met. Gilbert was of the opinion that Elizaveta had serious anger issues and needed to calm the fuck down. Preferably with weed.

Somehow, they made it work.

Eventually, before either of them realized it, it was Elizaveta they'd ask when Matthew and Alejandro couldn't find Gilbert for a history assignment, or Gilbert that Alfred would go whining to when Elizaveta had almost broken his pinky.

The question that the two would respond with had always been the same: "Why the hell are you talking to me?"

The answer: "Well, you're their best friend, right?"

And maybe, they were. After all, Elizaveta had been the first one that Gilbert had told when he "maybe-sorta-don't-fucking-tell-anyone" had a crush on Matthew Williams. Gilbert had been the looming, threatening presence on 'Chelle's doorstep when she cheated on Elizaveta sophomore year. They went out to Chinese food every Sunday and sat in Elizaveta's car talking about sex and past lives and where they would be in the future until one of their parents called them home.

It made sense, then, that Elizaveta got a text at 1 am on Sunday night telling her to sneak out and go to the park. She did, too, creeping out the back door with practiced ease, grabbing a thick blanket and two bottles of coke before dashing down the block and towards the neighborhood park.

Gilbert was there, of course, holed up on the gymnasium, hunched inside the plastic tunnel. The skin around his eyes was red and puffy, and though Elizaveta knew that he was more susceptible turning red, being albino, it was still a shock to see him show emotion much beyond cocky indignation/conceit/hunger/nonchalance.

She ignored the stairs, padding up the slope of the slide before sinking easily to the floor of the gymnasium. Gilbert was huddled into the curve of his hiding place, facing the west, so Elizaveta positioned herself opposite, facing east and setting one of the bottles of coke on Gilbert's lap, spreading the blanket over their legs.

"So," she demanded, trying to fight down a shiver of cold and anticipation. "Spill."

There was a brief pause of silence – because Gilbert had always known, instinctively, how to be dramatic – before he let out a deep and heavy sigh.

"I think I just got dumped," he murmured.

Elizaveta frowned, sighing as well. "Awww, poor dear," she murmured, patting his knee in a half-awkward way. Touching each other had always varied between completely natural knees-together-and-shoulder-to-shoulder and achingly odd is-this-allowed. Today, it was firmly in the realm of odd. But really, what else could be said except for – "How? What happened?"

"I don't even fucking know," Gilbert ground out. "We were texting like usual, then Roddy said he had to go and do a project and I told him that I didn't want him to go and then he actually called me and just said maybe we should take a break." He let out a low, humorless laugh. "Fucking priss couldn't even break up with me proper."

"Properly," Elizaveta pointed out, before putting a hand in front of her mouth and wincing. "Sorry. For everything. You know?"

"Yeah. I get it."

They sat in silence for a long time.

"Talk about something." Gilbert finally ordered.

"Natalya sent me a letter confessing her undying affection," Elizaveta said in a monotone.

"Wow."

"Yeah."

More silence, and the bipolar flashing of the single streetlight that half-illuminated the park. Elizaveta could just make out the miserable look on the German boy's face. She didn't like it.

"I could go and beat him up for you," she offered. "You know I'd do it."

She'd only been half-joking, but Gilbert looked up suddenly, eyes full of panic. "Don't, Lizzie, don't," he pleaded, more obsequious and requesting than Elizaveta was used to. He was actually asking, not ordering.

"I can't hate him," Gilbert continued. "I'm so fucking mad and what happened was beyond stupid but I can't hate him just for this so please –"

"I won't, I won't…" Elizaveta assured him quickly. She broke open the cap on her bottle, taking a drink. The coke was too sweet for so late, but it helped wake her up a little, so she didn't feel so much like she was walking underwater, or with cotton in her ears. Gilbert opened his, too, with a tiny hiss, before downing half of it in one go. It looked like he wanted to get drunk off it.

"I'm gay, you know," he muttered. "I'm really fucking gay but I like girls, too."

Elizaveta stayed quiet.

"One girl," Gilbert amended. "You're the only girl I'd ever do. You wanna do it with me? We could be friends with benefits, or something."

"No, Gilbert."

Gilbert shrugged and finished off the rest of his coke, belching loudly. It echoed in his plastic tunnel. There was a long quiet.

"I love you, you know."

"I love you, too."

More silence.

"But not the way that means I'll do you," Elizaveta finally said.

"Yeah, me neither."

Conversation petered out for a moment, and then Gilbert began to rant about how much homework they had been given that night and how little he cared about senior year and a million other constant complaints and both of them pretended like nothing had happened.

At two-thirty, Elizaveta stood, stretched, and bopped Gilbert on the head with her empty bottle. "Keep the blanket for now, if you want, but I need to get home."

Gilbert shrugged. Elizaveta paused, before patting his shoulder roughly.

"You gonna be okay?"

"Yeah," Gilbert said. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

"I'll see you at school, then?"

"Yeah."

Elizaveta stumbled home, slid open the back door, and tiptoed towards her bedroom. As soon as the door was shut, she closed her eyes to the darkness and sank easily to her knees, trying to marshal her thoughts.

That night, she reached between her legs and fingered herself, thinking about Gilbert's hands instead, Gilbert's cock. She didn't like the thought, and switched to a thin, buxom, middle-eastern girl.

Gilbert had offered to be "friends with benefits" because he wanted sex, not because he loved her, at least, not more than Roderich. She refused because she loved him deeply and unconditionally – but she did not find him sexually attractive at all.

The puzzle of that floated behind her eyes as she fell asleep.

The frustrating thing was that, in the morning, it was as if nothing had happened. Gilbert stole her notebook. She berated him about something stupid. People stared at them and wondered why they didn't just fuck and get all the tension out of the air. It was normal, and everything that had gone on the night before was simply non-existent, but for the shadows around Gilbert's eyes and the travel-mug of coffee Elizaveta was holding to her chest like a child.

"Oh, hurry up," Elizaveta said without fire as the bell rang. Same as every day. It was easier to be curt and dominant than say anything meaningful. They made stupid jokes in Geography and half-scared Natalya away by sheer closeness alone; it was as if there was no room in their conversation for another person. Elizaveta was grateful for that, despite the fact the Belorussian did little more retreating than to watch their exchange about phallic symbols from the sidelines of a nearby desk. Then the bell rang again and they walked off in separate directions and didn't talk again for the whole day.

Elizaveta felt it more acutely, somehow, now. Perhaps just because she was aware of it – the whole weekend, it seemed, revolved around Gilbert – planning to go for Chinese food, hanging out in her car, comforting him at one in the morning.

After school, walking home, she stared at her phone, wondering if she should text him, just for something to do. She never had before. She didn't now.

Love does not equal sexual attraction, she thought, and was content with that. It was different from the soul-consuming feeling she had experienced when going out with 'Chelle. She knew when the real thing hit. This was more of the slow-burn that Yekaterina brought out in her, the companionable easiness of real friendship.

Still, she couldn't help wanting the attention.

So wanna hang out latr? She texted finally.

The phone was on vibrate in her pocket. She didn't get a text back. It was okay, she decided, because she didn't like him like that, anyway.