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It was not as if it were unusual for Francis to be drunk and amorous. He was pretty much perennially priapic and – being French – invariably had a glass of good wine in his hand. His other hand, Arthur thought, a little bitterly, one of them at least usually being needed for groping something. Tonight, in the spirit of nostalgia, the object of his gropification was Arthur.
Their relationship, of course, was complicated. Well, all of Arthur’s relationships were complicated, their histories being what they were. Spain and Portugal tended to see him as a pirate, still, even though it was literally centuries since he had put away his cutlasses. (Only to a convenient cupboard – he still liked to get them out and brandish them from time to time when no one was watching.) He and Germany had had those couple of little set-tos which were, even now, better not discussed. His relationship with Alfred was one of the simplest and yet the most painful, perhaps because it had never troubled Arthur overmuch to be estranged from Spain and Portugal (and, if he were honest, he had quite enjoyed being a pirate), whereas being estranged from Alfred had been like a bereavement coupled with an amputation. He had lost part of himself – the newest, most innocent, questioning, vital part – at the same time that he had discovered that it was indeed sharper than a serpent’s tooth to have a thankless child. Not to mention having a thankless child who had grown bigger, stronger, and so much more certain than one had ever been, and who had given one what aforementioned thankless child was wont to tactlessly describe as a ‘damned good spanking’ in a prolonged and agonising conflict. (Useless to pretend that there hadn’t been a certain amount of ‘Hah! Now see how it feels’ schadenfreude in the long distance observation of that child’s equally agonising civil war. An experience which should have been one of unalloyed satisfaction from a spectator’s point of view if only one could shake off that lingering, irrational inability not to find it unbearable to watch the aforementioned thankless child suffering.)
But he and Francis went back a long way. A long, long, long way. There had been those skirmishes, with honours even, and that really very unfortunate invasion. More unfortunate still was Francis’s tendency to reminisce when in his cups.
“My dear Arthur – what a lovely captive you made.”
“You’re drunk and maudlin. Shut up.” Arthur firmly removed Francis’s hand from where it was tenderly stroking his thigh.
“I miss those days. Do you miss those days…?”
“No.” Arthur bent back the fingers that were trying to cup his crotch and placed them firmly on the counter of the bar – to no avail; in a second they were stroking his wrist.
“I miss you being a spoil of war.” Francis sighed and took another gulp of a Sauvignon that deserved much better treatment.
“I was never a…!” Arthur looked around anxiously for Alfred. It was difficult to know exactly how Alfred would react to things. Half the time it was hard to know if he even understood them. He liked to cultivate an image of frat-boy over-confidence, bouncing around bumptiously, eating his inevitable hamburgers, apparently encased in the bubble of his own heroism with never a wearying doubt to disturb his peace of mind, and then turn on a sixpence when one least expected it. It might be that he had no idea what that past invasion had actually…involved, or even be aware that it had taken place; history, as far as Alfred was concerned, having started in 1492; nothing before that point having been of any real consequence.
“You were so pretty in chains,” Francis sighed. He leaned in close and murmured seductively, “I still keep them, you know. Would you like me to get them out for old times’ sake?”
“Go boil your head in some bouillabaisse, you stupid drunken frog,” Arthur hissed back.
“I’m inclined to take that as a ‘yes’,” said Francis fondly, sliding a hand up under Arthur’s shirt.
“Fuck off,” Arthur told him succinctly.
Francis nuzzled his ear. “I’m inclined to take that as a ‘yes’ as well….”
Arthur fell back on his old standby in this situation and slammed his knee hard into Francis’s crotch. Francis gasped, staggered back a pace, put his glass down on the counter of the bar, and took a few steadying breathes; his expression, however, remained one of dreamy reminiscence. “That takes me back,” he said happily. “The things you used to call me….”
“Unless you want me to call you Joan of Arc and set you on fire….” Arthur began savagely.
Francis hugged him to his bosom in an annoyingly Gallic fashion, octopus limbs entwining, and began to nibble his earlobe.
It was both pleasurable and irritating in equal measures and Arthur decided, with the knowledge born of long experience, to ignore the pleasure and just go with the irritation, otherwise, they would be getting all entente way too cordiale and Francis would be insufferable for weeks. “Fuck,” he said clearly. “The. Fuck. Off.”
Francis could get someone naked in the time that most men needed for a reasonably hearty handshake, and Arthur hauled his hand out of his underpants only with difficulty. The tongue was now inside his ear and Francis was purring disgustingly seductive French things at him in low, breathy tones, while his other hand burrowed towards Arthur’s backside. Francis was now talking about 1066 and how much they had both enjoyed it. (Arthur had been ragged from battle after battle and hardly able to stand up, as he recalled. Typical of Francis to have bathed his wounds, plied him with wine, and encouraged him to just let go of all that futile resistance and enjoy not having to be the one in charge for a while. An honest ravishment Arthur could have forgiven, but that damned dinner-wine-candles-dessert-and-seduction routine had been as cheesy as an over-ripe piece of Camembert. Unfortunately, to a youngish country, worn out with warfare, and unused to having Gallic nothings whispered in his ear, it had been embarrassingly effective.)
It was unfortunate that just as Francis was getting particularly eloquent on the subject of that past invasion, that Alfred and Matthew should have walked into the bar. There were ways in which one wished to appear in front of one’s old colonies and ways that one did not, and being half-undressed by a sneaky Frog while he licked inside one’s ear and reminisced about the things he had done to one when one was naked and wearing handcuffs definitely came under the ‘not’ category.
“Shut the fuck up,” Arthur told him savagely and tried to remove the many hands with which Francis was stroking him and return them to their owner.
“What was that about the Norman Conquest?” Alfred demanded in worryingly icy tones.
“Just boring old history,” said Matthew – kind lad – quickly.
“It is very interesting history,” said Francis, still trying to grope Arthur, but more out of habit now, like a country gentleman patting a spaniel. “One day, when you are older and not so bourgeois in your outlook, I will tell you all about it.”
“No, you will not,” Arthur told him hastily, darting Alfred a wary look. He really had no idea how Alfred felt about him. On occasion the boy seemed to live to belittle him but he couldn’t forget that whenever he had been most hard-pressed Alfred tended to stroll up and help him out, all the while pretending not to show concern. He was often very difficult to read. At the moment his eyes were blandly blue behind their spectacles. He looked large and handsome and unflurried, but when he put his head on one side and looked Francis over there was something in his gaze reminiscent of the dissection table.
“You know I’m fond of you, don’t you, good old Uncle Francis?” Alfred said gently. “And I’m grateful for the things you’ve given me in the past. There’s that Statue of Liberty, for one.”
Francis nodded, tossing back another glass of wine. “Vive la Revolution,” he said, not without a grimace at the memory of that darkest of his own dark times. Matthew and Arthur gave him a look of sympathy but Alfred went on, still gently, “Which is why, it’s important to remember the past, but never ever to repeat it. Ever,” he added again with a steely emphasis that no one could have mistaken – not even a drunken, horny Francis.
“I comprehend you perfectly,” said Francis with the over-precise diction of a nation who had taken too much good wine.
“I think,” said Alfred sweetly, “that if you had comprehended me fully your hands would be somewhere else right now.”
It was a little embarrassing that even Arthur – having grown used to the sensation over the centuries of Francis pawing him around in moments of sentiment – had forgotten that Francis was still caressing his crotch.
Francis hastily removed his hands. “I think I go in search of Frère Italy,” he said.
“You do that,” Alfred said. “Talk about old times. The good old Holy Roman Empire and all that. Somewhere else.”
They all watched Francis take his dignified yet unsteady leave. Alfred was wearing a fixed smile at odds with the whiteness around his mouth. He finished Francis’s drink even though it wasn’t beer and said crisply, “You know, Arthur – all that history you bored me with in the past and I don’t remember that coming up.”
Arthur said, “I distinctly remember showing you and Matthew the Bayeaux Tapestry.”
He might as well not have spoken, Alfred continuing still-crisply, “Even though Francis apparently came up rather a lot, several times….”
“You know how Francis exaggerates,” Matthew said quickly.
“He’d better be making the whole damned thing up, not just exaggerating!” Alfred said in a sudden savage roar that made even Arthur jump. He had sounded for a moment almost uncannily like his own Harley-Davidson.
As Alfred stomped off towards the exit, Arthur said, “Don’t do anything impetuous or just plain stupid….” trying to keep his voice steady and aloof.
Alfred gave him a furious look over his shoulder. “Oh I think you already have impetuous and stupid acts covered, don’t you?”
As he stamped out of the room, Arthur looked at Matthew. “What do you think he’s going to do?”
“Something probably quite petty and pointless,” Matthew reassured him. “Spray-paint the Statue of Liberty or change the name of everything with ‘French’ in it. He is quite fond of Francis, really. He just hadn’t realized until now what…you know…what history is.”
“That’s because he doesn’t have any of his own,” said Arthur with a pettishness that suggested whom Alfred had learned it from in the first place. “Stupid little born yesterday country.”
Matthew gave him an affectionate look. “You don’t get it, even now, do you?”
“Get what?”
“How he really feels about you? Why he wants to punch Francis on the nose right now?”
“Of course he wants to punch Francis on the nose – he’s met him.”
Matthew smiled in his unfailingly polite Canadian fashion. “I’m sure that one day you two will work it out.”
It was unfortunate that alcohol (or possibly Italy, who may have been bored) had urged Francis to seek out Alfred and assure him with drunken sincerity that the invasion of Arthur had taken place many, many centuries ago and that his successful seductions of him in the intervening aeons had never been anything like as frequent, varied, or vigorous as he would have wished….
Which was when Alfred gave way to the promptings of his lesser self and punched Francis hard on the nose.
Arthur had almost got off to sleep when he was roused from his bed by a thunderous knocking on his bedroom door. Opening the door, he was faced with a furious-looking Alfred.
“What?” Arthur demanded, irritably.
“We need to talk,” Alfred said, barging past him.
“No we don’t. I need to sleep and you need to learn to exercise a little self-control. You also need to read more Kipling and consume fewer e numbers….”
Alfred grabbed Arthur by the front of his pyjamas and slammed him against the wall with a guttural sound not unlike that reputedly made by a she-bear robbed of its whelps. Under no torture whatsoever, however fiendish, would Arthur have admitted that action and noise caused him a bat-squeak of desire.
“Let me go,” he snarled in a tone that would have had Spain or Portugal running for the exit and throwing him their valuables as they did so.
Alfred put his face so close to Arthur’s that a lesser country would have been forced to squint. “You are never ever to sleep with Francis again. Do you hear me?”
“I’ll do what I like, and do whom I like, and imbibe as much tea afterwards as I please, you arrogant adolescent little twerp.”
“No you won’t because…because I’m bigger than you, I won the war between us, and I say so.”
“The day I do what some oversized wet-behind-the-ears country tells me to do is the day Francis takes a vow of celibacy and enters a monastery –” It occurred to Arthur as the words left his mouth that Francis might not mind entering a monastery if he could then enter a lot of monks soon afterwards but he had no time to voice that thought as Alfred took dynamic action.
Expecting a punch in the face, Arthur was unprepared for a response consisting of a demanding tongue, skilful lips, some clashing of teeth and some extremely dexterous fingers.
“What the…?” he stuttered as he came up for breath. Alfred had his fingers clenched in his hair and was breathing quickly, pupils so dilated that his eyes looked more black than blue.
“If you’re anyone’s spoil of war you’re mine,” Alfred snarled. “I’m better than Francis and he can’t have you!” He shook Arthur angrily, but it was the bewilderment and misery in his eyes that pierced Arthur’s defences. He could see the boy he had loved who had never fully understood why the world couldn’t bend itself to his wishes; all that naïve maddening – adorable – youthful incomprehension as to why things couldn’t just be easier and better and less complicated. The little boy who had loved his brother but needed to know that he was Arthur’s favourite; who would share a toy generously but couldn’t bear to have one taken from him.
Gently, Arthur said, “Alfred, you know that, fond as I am of that stupid Frog, I am much fonder of you, you revolting little upstart.”
Alfred shoved Arthur hard in the direction of the bed. “I’ll prove to you that I’m better,” he said pettishly. “And without boring you with stupid French love poems and stupid French food….”
Arthur had his mouth open to protest when it occurred to him that Alfred setting out to wow him with his mind-blowing better-than-Francis bedroom technique was not a particularly unpleasant prospect. “There’s really no need,” he said without much conviction. “I’m happy to take your word for it.”
“No!” Alfred tore open his pyjama jacket dramatically. “I need you to realize that Francis has nothing to offer you! I’m the one you want….”
Later, Arthur thought that Alfred might have made rather a good lawyer. He knew exactly how to underline every point he made with clear and vivid examples; when to repeat what was most effective and when to move on to a new subject when the last argument had been proven. Only the fear that giving the verdict sought might end the trial prematurely had given Arthur the ability to mention that comparisons were odious and besides, he was a gentleman.
Alfred had slammed out of the room with such vigour that some of the plaster had fallen off the ceiling. Only then had Arthur flopped back on the bed, boneless and thrumming with pleasurable aftershocks, and dug around for a furtive cigarette.
It had taken all of the stiff upper lip skills that he possessed to prevent himself from spending the rest of the day wandering around in a happy haze, idly pulling the petals from daisies, humming vapid love songs, and grinning stupidly for no apparent reason.
By the evening he had managed to pull himself together enough to convene in the bar with the rest of the nations. Francis was sporting a black eye and looked hungover, and Alfred was nowhere to be seen.
It was then that the television over the bar was switched on for the world news and it was revealed that someone had vandalized the Statue of Liberty by spray-painting ‘Frogs Go Home!’ all over her frontage and that for a reason no one seemed very sure about deep fried lengths of potato in America were now to be known as ‘Freedom Fries’.
“Now, that’s just petty,” Francis said irritably, nursing his eye, his hangover, and a very large glass of cognac.
“He’s young,” Arthur said indulgently. “When he’s as old as we are he’ll be able to come up with something much more spiteful.”
He turned to find Matthew glaring at him; he was not sure if it was his imagination or not but his bear seemed to be glaring at him, too. It was so unlike Matthew to glare at all that Arthur took a step backwards.
“You didn’t tell him, did you?” Matthew demanded.
“Tell him what?”
“That you love him. That he’s the best sex you ever had – ”
Arthur hastily clamped a hand over Matthew’s mouth and pulled him away from the other nations. “What are you talking about?”
“I was sleeping in the next room, remember? I heard everything…including all the sappy love songs you were singing in the shower after he left. You tell him or I will.”
Arthur sulked as only an older nation could, with a finesse born of practice, but he also knew when he was beaten. Sighing, he flipped open his phone and texted clearly: Stop defacing national monuments, idiot boy, and come back home. Here, home, I mean. Not there, home. Your country is too big and has skunks. I never really liked it anyway. P.S. You win.
The response was heart-warmingly eager if not very grammatical:
U mean Arthur 4 Alfred 4eva??
Arthur turned to Matthew in appeal. “Seriously? I am of the nation that gave the world Shakespeare and I’m supposed to take that as an actual plighting of troth…?”
Matthew folded his arms. “Yes.”
Sighing, but having to turn his head to hide a silly grin, Arthur texted carefully: Yes, OK. Arthur 4 Alfred 4eva.
Matthew’s phone rang a millisecond later. Canada smiled. “He’s on his way home,” he explained. He turned to Francis. “Oh, and, Francis...? He says that the Statue of Liberty was just a warning. You touch what’s his again and he’s taking out The Louvre….”