~~~Edel's Advice~~~

The first person she thought to ask for help was the first person she saw after the realization. Her club president, Edel, noticed the first-year staring intently into space and asked what was wrong.

From the way she physically recoiled and her eyes popped open like a deer in a spotlight, it was clear she wasn't expecting the response to be "How do I tell a guy I like him?"

"Uh, well, uhm," said Edel, desperately trying to get her bearings. "Does he like you?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, well… You could try telling him you like him?" she asked, knowing that that wouldn't answer what was probably the real question the girl was clearly asking, but trying her hardest to buy time.

"...What if he doesn't like me back?" Fie asked in a slightly smaller voice than usual. "How do I…"

"How do you get him to like you?"

Fie nodded.

"Well… You flirt with him," said Edel.

Flirting. The woman had said something about that, but mostly in terms of how to gently reject people in case they mistook politeness for flirting. She had told her nothing of how to do it intentionally.

"How do I do that?" asked Fie.

"I have no idea," thought Edel. She was not exactly the most social person in the school. But she didn't want to let down her underclassman. She thought hard and thought fast. "Flowers?"

"Hmm?"

"Flowers!" she said more confidently, too confidently, to compensate for her unsure first time saying it. "People like to get flowers and people know that if you get flowers from someone, it's a good sign that they like you on some level. It might not get him all the way to liking you like you like him, but I'm sure it can at least start his mind on that track."

"I see," Fie said, thinking it over. A start is just a start, but on the other hand everything has to start somewhere. "Which flowers would work?"

"Ros- No, roses are too romantic for this stage," Edel muttered under her breath. "Uhm… Daffodils! Yes, daffodils are symbols of affection in the language of flowers, of asking for affection to be returned. It's unlikely that he knows that, but they should still on some level get it into his mind that you are interested and would like him to be interested! Oh, but not too many. Just maybe one or two."

Fie was silent for a while. When she was satisfied she had no questions to ask, she stood up and gave her club leader a nod. "Thank you. I'll go and get some for him."

"Good luck," said Edel, smiling as she waved her goodbye. When Fie turned a corner, Edel let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "I think I handled that well. Good job Edel," she thought, proud of herself as she got to work pruning.

Elliot woke up the next morning feeling something resting on his face. He reached up to wipe it away, figuring it to be perhaps an errant piece of blanket or something. Instead he found his fingers coming into contact with something of a decidedly not fabric texture.

His eyes opened up, and all he could see was yellow. His sleep-addled brain couldn't quite understand it until it finally managed to make the connection between what he had felt and what he was seeing.

He firmly grasped the unknown texture and lifted it off of himself. He didn't know what he had been expecting, but it wasn't what he saw.

Somehow, in the dead of night, someone had snuck into his room and left two daffodils covering his eyes.

Elliot spent the rest of the day wondering if he had somehow crossed a bizarre crime syndicate. He brought it up with Sara, but she had never heard of this type of thing being done. Sharon had responded in much the same way, saying that no criminal organization she had ever heard of would do such a thing, and the whole situation left Elliot so confused that he didn't even question why a maid would be so confident in her knowledge of the mafia.

The daffodils were put onto his desk, keeping them out of a sense of utter confusion. Perhaps the owner would come back for them? It wouldn't make any less sense.

One thing was certain, he didn't go to sleep easily that night. It took a double-long session out in the field to get him to calm down.

~~~Vivi's Advice~~~

Fie had left him flowers and been rewarded with a performance twice as long as normal that night. This had encouraged her. But, in the days to come, there was no other indication of her gift having any effect on him.

This was less than encouraging, leading to her seeking out the advice of her clubmate and recounting to her the entire situation.

"So wait," said the pinkette, not even trying to hold back her smile and giggles. "You broke into his room, good job by the way, and just left the flowers on top of him?"

Fie nodded. "I wanted to make sure he wouldn't miss them."

"Woooooooow. Well, I'm sure he didn't," said Vivi, alternating between laughing at Fie's mistakes and feeling proud of her for her assertiveness. "But you didn't leave a note or anything? How would he know they were from you?"

Fie tilted her head in confusion. "Who else would be leaving him flowers?"

"I don't know!" said Vivi, throwing her hands up comically with a massive smile on her face. "And he probably doesn't either! In fact, I would be surprised if he even knows that you would be leaving him flowers."

This was a possibility that Fie had not thought of. Of course, she knows how she feels about him and she knows how people who feel that way about someone might act towards that someone but Elliot didn't know how she felt about him, and so of course he wouldn't know who might be acting that way towards him.

Fie blushed lightly and looked down at the ground, amazed at her own lack of logic.

"Hey," Vivi said as she gently cupped her chin and made Fie look into her eyes. "It's okay. You were excited, everyone makes mistakes while they're excited. Nothing wrong with that."

Fie held eye contact as she took a deep breath and let it out. She was right. Learn from the past, don't live in it. More of the boss's wisdom.

"So, what? I should give flowers again, but leave a note this time? Tell him that I was the one who sent the first ones?"

Vivi shook her head. "No, now you've done them they won't be a romantic surprise anymore." "Plus you've probably scared the Aidios out of him,," she thought. "You need to do something else, something more personal, something that he knows is all you and that really gets his blood pumping and eager for you! Something that makes him want to pin you to the wall!"

Fie smiled softly at the thought of Elliot somehow lifting her up and pushing her against the wall. It was a funny mental image but, impossible as it was, also undeniably appealing. "What could do that?"

"Hmm…" Vivi thought as she looked over her clubmate. Then, it was like a lantern flicked on in her brain. "A-ha!" she said as she pointed at Fie. "You're a cat!"

Fie tilted her head sideways and waited for her to start making sense.

Vivi elaborated. "Guys go absolutely cuckoo for the whole cat girl thing!"

"Why?"

"I dunno!" Vivi said with a big shrug and a smile. "But you can totally pull that off! You move like a cat, you yawn like a cat, there, there, that!" she said, pointing at Fie's tilted face. "You even turn your head like a cat! You can totally do it!"

"So… Just act like a cat to him?" Fie asked with a raised eyebrow, prompting an enthusiastic nod from Vivi.

"Totally! I swear it!" she said with a hand over her heart.

"Okay, if you're sure." Fie had her doubts, but none of them reached her voice.

"Try it! It'll work!"

Fie nodded.

Elliot had been feeling jumpy for a while. He had technically been getting the same amount of sleep since he got those flowers as he had before then, but it was restless. It had been a few days since that time though, and he was slowly calming back down. It was just a freak occurrence. Someone probably just played a prank on him.

There was another explanation though, one he kept locked up in the back of his mind. He had only ever thought of it because of a joke from Crow.

When he was walking around, trying to find Sara in hopes she could explain what had happened, Crow saw him with the daffodils in his hand.

Even scared and confused, Elliot wasn't about to tell Crow Armbrust that he was looking for their attractive teacher while carrying flowers. So, while avoiding questions of where he was going, he let slip what had happened and how he had come into possession of these flowers.

"Whooooa~," said Crow with a smile and a wink. "A secret admirer, huh? Way to go, Elliot!"

Crow had left before Elliot could deny it, but there was no way it was true. Who could possibly be his admirer? He wasn't admirable. He was just… there. What could possibly make someone want to send him flowers? Nothing. Better to just see the joke for what it was and move on from the whole situation.

Elliot resolved to do just that and nodded to himself. In doing so, he saw a silverette sitting across from him, startling him hard enough his chair nearly fell backwards.

Catching himself on the table just in time to avoid potential harm, he shook himself free of the surprise. "Uhm, hi Fie. Sorry, I didn't see you there," he said with an embarrassed smile.

Fie said nothing. She just stared at him.

Elliot looked back. His smile slowly became more fake as the silence drew on. He tried to make it even bigger to compensate, but no effect. Fie just kept staring at him. Unmoving. Unblinking. Completely expressionless.

Just when Elliot thought he might explode from the tension, Fie spoke up.

"Meow."

All the neurons in Elliot's brain collectively went on strike until reality decided to resume. "Uuhh, what?" he said dumbly.

Fie broke eye contact and turned her nose up before standing from her seat and leaving the room.

"What?" Elliot repeated, with no one around to hear him. Slowly, his brain started working again and he tried to convince himself he had drifted off for a second. "More sleep," he muttered to himself. "Definitely more sleep."

On the upside, the daffodils were now the furthest possible things from his mind.

~~~Alisa's Advice~~~

Alisa climbed the stairs, her feet heavy from a hard day of lacrosse practice. She was eager to get into the shower and pamper herself for a little while. Out the corner of her eye, she saw Fie sitting on the couch in the common area of their floor. "Hey, Fie. What's up?" she asked in that way that made it clear she expected no real answer.

"Waiting for Elliot to come and pin me to the wall."

"That's nice," Alisa said as she walked past. She was mid-stride when she decided to turn around and head to the bathroom. Moments later she emerged, her face and hair much wetter and her teeth lightly chattering. She walked past Fie again. "Hey, Fie. What's up?"

"I'm waiting for Elliot to come and pin me to the wall. What are you doing?"

"I'm waking myself up," she said through teeth gritted from pain. Alisa had grabbed her trapezius muscles with the thumb and forefinger of both hands and was pinching herself as hard as she could. "I fell asleep on the lacrosse field after practice and need to wake up and get back to the dorm before I catch a cold or worse, Sharon finds me. Ow!" Alisa let go of herself when the pain became too much and the dream refused to end. "Okay, I guess I'm not dreaming. What?!"

"Why are you looking at me like I'm the crazy one in this conversation?" asked Fie.

Alisa laughed a hopeless laugh. She buried her face into her hands and took several deep breaths as she tried to understand this reality.

"Could you explain?" she asked, somewhat muffled by her palms.

"I acted like a cat to Elliot so that he would get horny and come pin me against the wall."

"...More details? Please?" Alisa sounded desperate.

Fie explained to her her crush on Elliot, and the pair of things she had done in hopes of kindling similar feelings in him.

Alisa's face was still firmly buried in her palms, but at least the world made sense now. "Fie…" she said, her voice dripping with secondhand embarrassment. "That's not what she meant."

"Oh? What did she mean?"

"She meant, like, like, you know…," Alisa blushed as her mind raced with what she knew Vivi meant.

"No, I don't know. I thought I knew, but I guess I don't," Fie said flatly.

"Well it's like- you know- like- like- look, it doesn't matter what she actually meant," Alisa said in a fast burst of vocabulary, lifting her face from her hands as her cheeks provided heating to the third, second, and first floors. "Look Fie, having a guy feel like… that for you is not the same thing as getting him to like you, at least not in the same way you say you like Elliot."

"I felt like that for him before I felt the rest of it for him though," said Fie.

Alisa's cheeks somehow got even brighter and she buried them once more. "Aidios, Fie; too much information!"

Fie shrugged. "You asked for more details."

"Yeah, yeah I did didn't I?" Alisa said in resignation. She sighed heavily and took more deep breaths. "Do you want my advice Fie?"

Fie shrugged again. "Couldn't hurt."

"Guys like feeling useful. Ask him for help with something. Just make sure it's something you actually need help with, because if it's clear you know how to handle it better than he does he'll feel useless and it will have the opposite effect," said Alisa. "And if you do it enough times, he'll start to associate you with the good feeling of feeling useful, and being around you will start to make him feel good."

Fie nodded slowly. "Is that why you, Towa, and Laura ask Rean for help all the time?"

Alisa jumped to her feet so fast she nearly backflipped to the other side of the couch. "What!?" she said, hoping her volume would cover up her blush. "It is- I do not!"

Fie didn't press the matter. Alisa had given her some good advice, teasing her in response wouldn't be nice.

Alisa put her hand over her own chest and tried to force her heart to slow down. She focused on her breathing as she sat back down across from Fie. Fie, for her part, just relaxed into her seat and accepted that her cat plan had failed. Time to start formulating a new one.

Planning was halted when Alisa spoke up once more.

"So, what exactly are Laura and Towa having Rean do?"

"Oh, I get in now. Thanks Emma," said Elliot, sitting to one side of Emma in the library while Fie sat on the other.

Elliot was feeling great. After going through that thing that was clearly a hallucination, he asked Sharon for some tea to help him sleep better. Granted, he was a little worried about the bottle of pills she had apparently pulled from thin air and pressed into his palm before he specified tea, but that was water under the bridge.

As she was showing him how to brew the tea, she asked him about what hallucinations he was having and he told her, as embarrassing as it was. She just smiled and said it was understandable in that comforting, unsettling, enigmatic way of hers.

The tea worked though, Elliot had spent the last night out like a lightbulb. He was feeling so good throughout the day that, when Fie asked him for help with her homework, his response was an immediate yes even though he was, at best, shaky in his knowledge of the material. There was even a brief moment, between him telling her yes and her actually showing her the things she had issues with, where he wondered if this was how Rean felt all the time and this was why he did all the things he did.

That feeling quickly faded though, when he saw the questions she was struggling with and realized he also had no idea how to answer them. After going to the library and spending some quality time together with a textbook, they had only managed to answer about a third of them, and they were uncertain of their answers to at least a fourth of that third.

It had been his idea to give Emma a call on the ARCUS, so that she could help them both out. She was more than happy to oblige, insisting she come down right away to the library and help them both. She was so eager to do so that she forgot to turn off her ARCUS right away and Elliot and Fie got to listen to her make her excuses to someone named Dorothy about how she wouldn't be able to help her edit a log cabin scene or a rainforest scene or something called an 'airtight mutual sausage party blowout' before Elliot decided to end the call and spare all three of them.

Elliot had never seen Emma as winded as she was when she entered the library, looking like she had run all the way from the second floor of the student union to the second floor of the library in a dead sprint.

If she was as tired as she looked though, it didn't show in her tutoring skills. With surgical precision she had managed to get to the root of each of their points of confusion and explain them away ease.

It had taken Elliot and Fie an hour to struggle through a third of the homework. With the help of Emma, they got through the remainder in just fifteen minutes.

"That was incredible," said Elliot. "I don't know how you do it, Emma." He gave her a big smile. Suddenly, his ARCUS began to vibrate. "Oh, that's my alarm. I've gotta go get to practice! Thanks again, Emma!" he said as he started to pack up. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Fie looking… he didn't know how. Blank but deliberately blank, like she was hiding something. She must be disappointed. I bet she didn't want to have to bother her friend with all this.

Elliot bowed his head to Fie. "I'm sorry I couldn't have been more help Fie."

"'s okay," she said.

He felt bad just leaving after that. But what could he do? He had already screwed this up. Better to leave now and avoid making things get any worse. So he did, and he hated himself for it.

"Nothing admirable about me at all."

~~~Emma's Advice~~~

Elliot had smiled at Emma and Emma felt a chill go up her neck. Not from the smile, but from the girl behind her. When she was sure Elliot was out of the building, Emma turned to face the closest thing to a human best friend she had.

"Is something wrong, Fie?" Emma asked, concerned. Fie fixed her with a stare. This was nothing new, but Fie being the one to break it, with a heavy sigh no less, was unprecedented.

"Nothing is working," she said.

"Fie, I'm sure you'll understand the material no problem going forward, you're picking everything up so much faster than at the start of the yea-"

"Not that," Fie said. "He smiled at you. You made him feel good."

To her credit, Emma immediately understood who Fie was referring to. It just took a moment for it to click in Emma's head what it meant that Fie was referring to him in that way. "Oh, Fie," she said sympathetically.

"I don't think I've made him feel good. I took Edel's advice, Vivi's advice-"

"She took Vivi's advice?!" Emma blanched for a moment, horrified at what that might have been.

"And Alisa's advice. I keep getting it wrong."

Emma sighed and scooched closer to her friend. "I'm sure you're doing fine Fie. I'm sure you got them all right." "Except for Vivi's. Oh please dear Aidios, please let her have gotten that one wrong."

"You really think so?" Fie asked hopefully.

"I'm positive," said Emma with a smile. "You're a great person, Fie."

"...Emma, I've killed a lot of people."

"Well…" Emma said, stretching out the syllable, her smile becoming painted on as she scrambled to find an answer. "Look, so have most of our instructors. So has Elliot's dad for that matter. Aren't they great people?"

"Most of them."

"Exactly, and so are you! And I'm sure Elliot can see that too."

Fie nodded. "Thank you. I don't just want him to think I'm great, I want him to like him."

"Hmm." Emma crossed her arms under her chest and thought hard. What was it Vita had always told her? Oh right. Bribery. "Elliot must want something, right?"

Fie got a thoughtful look on her face that sent shivers down Emma's spine. "No!" Emma said, maybe a bit too loudly for a library. "No no no, not like that, not, not yet at least," she mumbled and blushed. "Save that for when you're actually dating. I meant something physical- no, wait, let me think of how to word this."

"..."

"Okay, I think I've got it. If you give him an object," Emma paused for a second to make sure they were on the same page. Good. "Something he needs and can use, something specific to his needs, then you will make him feel good. Not just generally good either, but good in your direction. It shows that you have been paying attention to him, that you notice his issues, and it will make him appreciate you. So, what does Elliot need?"

Fie nodded and smiled her most cat-like smile. "I have no idea. But I can find out."

Elliot was laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling as he restrung his violin. There was a cup of his special tea steaming on his desk, but he couldn't drink it. Not yet. He had some things to deal with first.

"What's the worst that could happen?"

Instructor Artheim had said the same thing. She had noticed how down he was during practice and requested him to stay behind. She asked him what was wrong and it all just sort of poured out. The joke by Crow had just brought to the front and made him give words to a lot of feelings he had been fighting for a long time.

"You really feel you have nothing to offer someone?" she asked him.

"Nothing they couldn't get better somewhere else," had been his response.

Instructor Mary had just leaned against the piano and sighed. "I feel like that sometimes too, Elliot."

Her words had thrown him for a loop. "What? How? You're amazing!"

She just smiled and shook her head. "Am I? Sara, Neidhart, Beatrix, and Principle Vandyke are all decorated in combat. Makarov is a genius. Even Thomas, eccentric as he is, is easily one of the foremost authorities in his field. I'm just…" She trailed off and sighed. "When I first received a job offer here at Thors, I was convinced it was a mistake. When the second letter came, I wrote back telling them they had gotten the wrong person. I'm no one special. Principle Vandyke personally wrote me the third. He asked me if I thought so little of him that I would question his judgement on such a matter. If I knew the needs of Thors and who could best fit those needs better than he could. If I intended to insult him like that." She laughed into her fist, seeming to still be in disbelief over the whole situation. "I got a train to start working here the next morning. I still have the letter."

Elliot nodded, but was not sure why she told him about this.

"Elliot, do you think so little of others that you would try to dictate to them what they do and don't see in you?" she asked.

The question made Elliot look down at his shoes and swallow hard before he replied with a soft, "No."

"You never know what others will see in you, and this is the best time in your life to find out. Take risks. Ask someone you admire out. Maybe they'll surprise you, maybe they won't. You can't truly know their answer until you ask, and what's the worst that can happen? A failure resulting from an effort is just a failure. A failure from not even trying is a regret."

Elliot nodded and she stood up. He thanked her for her advice and left the building, heading straight here. He knew she was right. He knew it. But knowledge can only go so far in terms of eliminating fear.

Even if he was willing to admit that there was a chance other people found him desirable, there was also the equal if not bigger chance that someone specific would find him undesirable. But if they did, then so what? They reject him? Was that really so bad?

His first response was yes, an emphatic yes. But he forced himself to go deeper than that. Why was it so bad? Because it would make him hurt for a little while? He had been hurt before. Physically and emotionally. He couldn't let fear of temporary pain keep himself from experiencing life. After all, he had gotten over that fear in order to fight. Was this really so different?

"After all," he thought as a wry smile crossed his lips. "Being shot down can't hurt more than being knocked out three times in the same fight."

Okay. He was going to do it. He was going to ask someone out. But who? Who was most likely to say yes?

No.

No, he wouldn't choose that way. That wasn't fair to them and it wasn't fair to him. This shouldn't be just about chances of success, it should be about which success would make him and the other person happiest. And being with someone just because you figured they were least likely to reject you is hardly the happiest of foundations.

So, thinking about it differently. Who would he most like to get to know better? Who did he want to spend more time with?

Put in those terms, the answer was clear.

Elliot balled his hand into a fist and pushed it into the bed, making manifest his decision while also standing up to put away his violin. As he did so, he saw the tatters that remained of his primary bow. He tossed it into the little trashcan near his desk and replaced it with the backup bow.

"Ugh, I need to get a new bow," he muttered.

Out the corner of his eye he could swear he saw a shadow cross past his window. Time for the sleepy tea.

A new bow! Of course! It had taken a while for him to say something out loud since he got home, but she was patient and when he did it was exactly what she needed. Fie smiled to herself. She had been clinging to the wall next to Elliot's window on the outside of the dorm for nearly an hour now, and it was finally time to get down and get to work.

"So, what are we doing?" asked Sharon, who had somehow gotten onto the wall right next to her without Fie noticing. Of course. There always had to be complications.

"Fresh air."

"Fresh air?"

"Yes." With that, Fie let go of the wall and let herself drop down, using her climbing hook to slow herself as she reached the ground. Sharon needed no such contraptions, merely letting go and hitting the dirt, a perfect landing, looking like she had just done a little hop and not dropped thirty feet.

Fie, for her part, tried to act like she was ignoring Sharon and turned to leave. The clearly-not-just-a maid unsettled her in ways she knew better than to test.

"He likes round bows, made of pernambuco," Sharon said as Fie walked away. Fie raised a hand as an acknowledgement of having heard her. Sharon smiled. "Good luck," she said with a polite wave goodbye.

The mid-day lunch break was starting soon and today the class had a free period right after that, Elliot knew he likely couldn't ask for a more ideal situation. He re-triple-double checked that he had his wallet, and that it had mira inside. Yes, the money had not disappeared in the last fifteen seconds. He took a deep breath. He was going to have to do this quickly, before Emma could start talking and make things potential awkward for him to interrupt.

"...and that is a good place to end for the day," said Instructor Lysander. "Enjoy your lunch, everyone!"

As soon as he had the permission to move, Elliot went over to the desk he had been planning a route to for the entire day. Emma noticed this and deliberately slowed down putting her things away.

Elliot had drank plenty of water, so his throat and lips weren't dry. But not too much, so he didn't have to pee. He looked Fie in the eyes and spoke just like he practiced. "Do you wanna go get lunch together at Kirsche's? My treat."

Fie looked at him with her usual expression and he braced for a rejection. For her part, Fie was frozen. She hadn't actually been expecting it to happen, she thought if anything she would be the one to ask him out first. It took Emma covertly jamming a pencil into her back for her to respond.

"That sounds fun," said Fie, rising from her seat.

As a musician Elliot knew the importance of rehearsing, even when you had everything memorized. It was a skill he was currently very happy had as his mind was a total blank, so his body just reacted as it had learned to do from hours spent in front of a mirror. "I can carry your bag if you want?" he said with a smile.

"Nah, I'll just leave it here," Fie said as she put her stuff away into it. As she did so, she saw a box wrapped in blue paper with a gold bow. She had been planning to give it to him during their next nighttime meeting, but it seemed like it was a good idea to accelerate plans a little. She tucked it under her left arm and they left the room together, Elliot holding the door open for her.

It wasn't until they were out of the schoolhouse that Elliot had regained enough of his mental abilities to even notice the box. "What's that?" he asked her as he finally saw the thing she was carrying on the side of her body next to him, breaking a silence that had hung since they exited the classroom.

Fie didn't respond, but her body language got across just how flustered she was. The tapping of her fingers against the box might as well have been a string of "uh"s and "well"s from anyone else.

"It's a present," she said. "For you." She held the box out to him and stared straight at the ground.

Elliot opened it up and saw a brand new round pernambuco bow. "I thought you might need a new one, so I went into a shop and tried to find one as close to the ones I've seen you use as I could," she said. Well, she mumbled. But Elliot heard it all.

"Thank you, Fie," he said, smiling as he looked into the box. The smile remained as he looked at her. She was still looking at the floor, a light pink mottling her cheeks. It struck Elliot just how cute she really was. Getting a present from her, a present she had clearly been planning to give him even before he asked her out, boosted his confidence levels.

"Hey, Fie?" he asked as he closed the box and tucked it under his arm.

"Mmm?"

"Can I hold your hand?"

Fie didn't respond. She just reached out. The pink became deeper and a small smile crossed her face as she felt Elliot's hand take hers.

Her gaze never lifted from the ground, but if it had she could have seen a similar blush and similar smile adorning him as they exited the school grounds and entered town hand in hand.

A/N: Yeah, this is the story I mentioned having not yet written in my notes for Overprotective. If you liked this story but haven't read that one, feel free to check it out. If you want to know how the crush developed, check out Desire and Fantasy. If you liked this story, please drop a review/comment, they make me happy.