SpainxReader Study Time

You were dumb.  God, you were so dumb; at least that's how you felt.  You were standing at the teacher's desk upon his request, after everyone else had left for lunch.

"______, you're failing.  You haven't turned in a single paper yet, and all of your test scores," the professor flipped through the thin stack of papers he'd collected through the months, shaking his head, "Terrible!  You know you can't gradutae if you don't get this credit, right?"
"Y-yeah, I know."  There was really no excuse for why you were failing except frustration.  You hated Spanish.  Not the actual language itself, but the class.  There was this jerk with white hair and super pale skin who'd always throw things at the back of your head during class.  If that wasn't annoying enough, Alfred, the school's number one jock, also had the priviledge of being in that class, and he liked to talk over the teacher in that obnoxious voice of his.  Everything in that class as just so distracting!  How were you supposed to learn anything?  The rare time you actually could pay attention, and you'd missed so much material that nothing made any sense.

And the homework?  You had done it, to the best of your ability, but according to this teacher, it as not grade-worthy.  You felt so sstupid standing there as he continued droning on about the importance of knowing a foreign language.  You just gulped and stared at your feet, sadly inspecting the scuffed up linolium flooring.
"So we'll see you here after school today for tutoring."
"What?"  maybe you'd zoned out too much.

"Tutoring. You will come after school every Tuesday and Thursday for tutoring.  It's actually quite convinient, really, since I'll finally have something for the student aid to do..."
"Student aid?"  The wooden door with a small, insignificant window opened and a feale teacher you didn't recognize poed her hed in.
"You ready for lunch? Oh, hello," she said cheerfully.
"I'll see you after school, okay ______?"  Your Spanish teacher gathered his papers into a brown leather messanger bag and began ushering you out of the door.
"Yeah, sure."  You weren't sure how you'd gotten suckered into this one.

~

You were spending as much time as possible rerouting yourself to avoid the Spanish room.  After the bell had rung, you'd taken your sweet time packing up from your last period class, taken the long way to your locker, found a book you'd had since the beginning of the year and meandered to the library to return it.  You grumbled about the ten dollar fine you'd had to pay as you trudged through the boring gray-painted walls.  You stopped in front of every bulletin board, which you normally would have just walked by, and examined every club advertisement and "buckle-up!" PSA.  You were turning a corner when you wre knocked off your feet.

"Oof!"  geez, that hurt!  You rubbed you butt, where the most of the pain hit you.  You grimaced.  'That's gonna be sore tomorrow,' you thought.
"Oh, geez! I'm so sorry!" You opened one eye to see a very large, awkward grin.  Wow.  You honestly didn't know what to say.  The boy you'd run into as tan with dark brown, slightly curly hair and shiny green eyes.  He sat in front of you for a second just looking past everything.

"Where's the fire?" you asked.  He shook his head and began laughing.
"Oh, well no where, I'm just really really late for something is all!"
"Yeah, me too," you said under your breath.
"Where are you headed?"  He began gathering his backpack and notebooks.  Then he offered his hand to you and pulled you up.
"Uh, Spanish."
"Me too!  But aren't you headed in the wrong direction?"
"Y-yeah."  He laughed at your obvious gloom. In truth, this was probably the most awkward conversation you'd ever had.  His eyes and face in general were just so pretty, you could feel the blood rush to your face when he talked to you.  You'd noticed that he was the same year as you by the color of his uniform's tie.

"Well, let's get going.  We're already super late, aren't we?"
Why was this guy so cheery about getting Spanish tutoring?  You didn't understand it.  When he saw you weren't following him at a quick pace, he grabbed your hand and pulled you closer and closer to the Spanish door.  It occured to you that you didn't even know thiskid's name and he was forcing you to go to the tutoring you'd been dreading the entire day.  What the hell?

He opened the door and dragged you in.  The teacher looked up from his grading.  You swallowed and tried to step backwards, but that grasp on your wrist wouldn't let you retreat.
"Oh, Antonio, I see you met _______."
"Huh? This is _______?"
"Yes, she's the one you'll be tutoring.  ________, this is Antonio; He will be teaching you Spanish twice a week."

You were torn between absolute bliss and abnormal amounts of "I do not want to."  He was so beautiful you definitly wouldn't mind seeing him for a few hours after school each week, but then again, he was teashing you Spanish.  Dreaded Spanish.
"You can call me Toni, if you want."  You were startled out of your inner turmoil by him sticking his hand out and grinning at you again.  He had such pretty white teeth.  You shook his hand, and for some reason, the teacher let out a low chuckle.  He handed Toni the red-inked papers that were otherwise known as your tests.

"This is where she's at right now.  You'll probably need to start from scratch."  Ouch.  That really stung.  You glared at the teacher.  How dare he insult your intelligence like that!  Sure, your Spanish grade was awful, but he made it sound like you were a dunce.  Your other grades were fantastic.  In fact, if it weren't for this stupid class with the red-eyed piece of crap behind you, the annoying jock who believed that his presence was a grace from god, and the teacher's lack of enthusiasm, you'd probably be on honor role.  But no.  Now this gloriously handsome man in front of you probably thought you were dumb as a rock.  Antonio glanced at the papers, saw all the red and grimaced.

"Wow, that's, uh..."  You swallowed again as he said it.  Yeah, now he knew you were an idiot.  He made his way to a chair in the front row, so you followed and set you things down at the desk next to him.  Your teacher went back to grading, or whatever it was that he was doing.
"Um, so you don't...like Spanish, I take it?"
"Well, it's not so much the language, as it is the class.  I think Spanish is really pretty actually, but this class is just so frustrating.  I can't learn anything!" you whispered to Antonio.  You didn't want your teacher to hear you.  Antonio had that adorable grin spread over his face still.

"Piensas que es bonito?"
"W-what?"  He just laughed.
"I asked if you really think it's pretty."
"Oh."  You were really embarrassed.  The mental kicking that occured after had no parallel.
"Don't worry about it.  Did you bring your book?"
"Nope."  You had conviniently left it in your locker.  You wanted to make this as difficult as possible.
"Oh, well that's probably better anyways.  I looked at it the other day, and it's really confusing."
"Yeah, I know."  You'd spent hours at the beginning of the year pouring over it, hoping that the lessons would become clearer, but to no avail.  and after you failed the first quarter test, you'd just decided to leave it at school.
"So where do you want to start?"
"Huh?  What do you mean?  Don't you usually start with "hello, my name is..."?"  He laughed that silly laugh of his again.  God, you'd known this boy for like, maybe fifteen minutes and you just wanted to kiss him.  He seemed so perfect.  Beautiful, understanding, and foreign.

"Well, that's not really how fluent speakers learn.  That's not how I learned English."
"Well then how'd you do it?"
"By being spoken to.  You know how people teach little kids to speak by pointing to something and saying the word over and over?  That's how you're supposed to learn it."
"That makes a lot more sense than I think it should."  He chuckled again and began by pointing to the desk you were sitting at.
"Ese es un escritorio."
"Escritorio?"  you pointed to the desk too.  He nodded.  "What does that first part mean?"
"Ese es?"
"Yeah."
"That is.  But you can also use the word "hay" and it pretty much expresses the same thing."
"Hay es escritorio?"  He laughed again before explaining that the "es" was redundant.  You bit your lower lip and blushed a little.  You really liked him.  He made you feel like it was no big deal that you knew nothing.  He made it seem like Spanish was the easiest thing in the world to learn and that you'd be speaking in no time.

After an hour ad a half of tutoring, he decided that your brain was probably fried from all the things he'd taught you.  You now had a working vocabulary of all the things in the classroom.  Remembering it for tomorrow would be a completely different story.  You hadn't reaized that Toni was still beside you as you walked out of the classroom, so you were surprised when he picked up one of the books you dropped on your way out.  He smiled widely when he saw your questioning look.

"We're going the same way.  To the dorms, right?"
"Oh, yeah, I guess."  On the way, you realized that Toni was super talkative.  He got excited over little things like his room mate making food for him.
"Lovi makes the best pizza in the world!  It's because he's all Italian like that!"  Spain said.  It made sense, considering that your school was an international academy, but it reminded you of something.
"Oh, right, I've been meaning to ask. Where are you from?  Spain?"
"Yup! Born and raised there!  Ah how I miss it..."  he got a far off look before texting his room mate back.  After a few more minutes of talking, he turned off towards the boys dorms.
"Adios, _______!"
"Uh, Adios?" you said uncertainly.

~

So you two spent a good half of the year in the same routine.  Every Tuesday and Thursday for an hour and a half, speaking and writing in a language that made no sense to you.  Then he'd walk you home and you'd freak out with your friends afterwards.  You actually enjoyed learning from him.  You liked spending time with him.  He was so sunny and cheerful and always made you feel happy.  You'd always blush when he'd grab your hand so he could show you the tomatoes he and Lovi were growing together.  He loved showing you the progress they were making.

What you loved the most though were the days that the teacher left you alone for random amounts of time to go "copy things" in the teachers' lounge.  Antonio and you would always try and figure out what kind of scandalous things he was really up to.  Your theories included that he was actually flirting with some sexy young teacher, he was really a super hero and needed to save the town, and possibly, but very unlikely, that he was actually copying papers.

Your grades even imroved.  You could carry on a simple everyday conversation, and sometimes you'd even dream in Spanish.  By the end of the year, though, it was obvious that you probably wouldn't pass.  You were barely on the border between a C and a D.  Antonio upped your tutoring to every day for two hours during the last week of school to try and help you cram for the final.  If you didn't pass, you'd get held back to take that stupid credit over again.

You had to pass that final.

~

You turned your exam into the teacher.  He looked at you over his glasses, as if to say, "are you sure?"  You clenched your jaw and held the bubbled paper out.  He took it, and as it was the last to be collected, walked out of the room to get them graded.  You sat back in your desk and twiddled your thumbs, waiting for him to return.  That kid behind you poked you.

"What do you want?"  he had barely talked to you the entire year, but everytime he had, you'd been that much happier that you didn't talk.  He was concieted and just rude a lot of the time.
"You're the one Antonio's teaching, right?"
"what?!"  How did he know that?  You'd only told your friends about the tutoring.  This was not alright.  "How did you-"
"Clam your tits, girl.  Toni told me and Francis."  you groaned.  You knew Francis.  Scratch that.  Everyone knew Francis.  He was the most infamous guy in school.  He'd slept with half the girls and probably more than half the guys, but no one really seemed to care that much.  He also had a bad habit of bragging about it.
"Okay, yeah, so?"  The stupid German kid just lauhged really creepily.
"Kesesesese~!"  You turned around.  He was impossible.

You cradled your head on the desk with your hands.  The professor should be coming back soon, right?  You needed to know how you'd done.  You just needed to know.  Antonio would just be heart-broken if all his hard work had gone to waste. Sighing, you let your thoughts wander into all the hours you'd spent with him.  There was the time when he was teaching you how to say the parts of the body and taken your hand to explain that it had a funny article.  He'd held your hand after he'd made the point, and then blushed and apologized coyly when he realized it.  The time he taught you all the curse words, just because he could.  The time you'd almost gotten up enough courage to tell him how you felt, only to find that he was teaching you how to say romantic words that day.  You'd gotten really bashful about it and chickened out in the end of course.

And then the teacher returned.

"You may come and see your score, but you may not take the papers back to your seats.  Gilbert Beilscmidt?"  The rude child behind you stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets and strutted up to the front of the class.  He looked at his paper nonchalantly before returning to his seat.  He raised an eyebrow at you and smirked as the professor at the front of the class yelled at him to tuck in his shirt and have some pride in himself.  You rolled your eyes at him and waited for your name to be called.

When it was, you walked quickly up to the desk.  And there it sat.  You took the paper with trembling hands.
"Good job.  I'm quite impressed with your improvement."
Sir.  that was an understatement.  You had killed that test.  A bright pink "95%" in digital printing popped off the green paper.  You could have jumped and squealed, but decided to contain your excitement for later.  You took a deep breath, set the paper down and returned to your seat.

"So are you passing or what?"  You turned around to face Gilbert.
"Excuse me?"
"Did you pass?"
"Yeah?"
"Me too."
"Good job."  Why was he so talkative today?
"Do you want  me to tell Toni that you passed?"  he flicked out a black and silver phone and began punching in numbers boredly.
"No, I'll do it myself, thank you."

"Gilbert!" he stiffened as the teacher yelled at him.  "I don't care how close we are to the end of the year; put the phone away!"  Gilbert grunted and crammed it back into his pocket.  He pulled the sweatshirt he was wearing over his head and huddled himself up on his desk, apperantly deciding to go to sleep.  You were just so estatic that you passed that you couldn't do anything but imagine Toni's face when you told him.

~

"Toni!"  You called down the hall.  You'd found out quite early on that his locker was only about twenty meters down the hall from yours.  He jumped at hearing his name and dropped all the books he was pulling out of the silver painted box.  When he realized it was you, he suddenly became very aware of things.
"How did you do?" he asked urgently.

"Well...95%!"
"That's great!" he hugged you and you prayed that he couldn't feel your heart beating.  When he let go, you noticed he was staring at you.  You felt that familiar heat rising in your cheeks.
"I really want to thank you Toni, I mean I'm just so happy I could kiss you!" Why had you said that?  You immediately felt your blush worsen and began looking anywhere but at him.  "I'm sorry, I don-"
"Do you mean that?"  He said smiling.
"What?"
"Quieres darme un beso?"  you understood perfectly what he was asking.  He leaned towards you and you leaed in towards him.  Your lips barely touched when Toni got hit in the back by a certain white haired German.

"Am I interupting something?"
"W-well, yeah," Toni said rubbing the back of his head.
"No, not at all Gilbert.  See you later Toni." You started quickly walking towards the door leading out to the schol's courtyard where you were sure your frfiends would be waiting to hear how you'd done.  Just as you hopped of the last step down, you heard the door behind you fling open.  You were surprised to see Toni there with a very determined look on his face.

"_______!  Uh, do you wanna, I don't know, maybe go out sometime?"  Your heart just about burst as you responded.
"Me encantaría."