[USxUK] My Fair Lady [5/5]
Jun. 27th, 2011 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blood_wingedTitle: My Fair Lady
Genre: Romance
Characters/Pairing(s): USxUK
Rating/Warnings: PG. Genderswap. Cussing.
Summary: Yet another of Arthur's magical mishaps lands him in more trouble than he can handle, with a strange new body to (temporarily) deal with and as if that wasn't enough, he has Alfred hanging around.
“Wh… what?” Arthur’s skin was simultaneously burning and trying to crawl off his body and all he wanted to do was curl up in a corner and die for a while when he heard his name spoken so confidently into his ear. Alfred still had hold of him, his grip firm but not restrictive, and he let out a quiet laugh that the English nation felt against his back.
“You must think I’m really stupid,” the young man said, and although he wasn’t looking at him Arthur could hear his smile in his voice. There was a small ‘clink’ as the lid of the teapot was finally set down, and Arthur closed his eyes, shifting to turn, and Alfred let him, stepping back. It was with something of a guilty expression that he faced the American, feeling rather like a child caught stealing cookies, and Alfred was quite clearly amused. “Y’know, I never really believed in all that magic stuff you’re always going on about but you really did a number on yourself this time.”
“Oh, sod off!” Arthur snapped, his voice higher than he wanted it to be. “Do you think I did this deliberately? I don’t want to be… to… Augh.”
“You make a real pretty girl.”
“Ah, for fuck’s sake.” He tried to step around the boy but Alfred blocked him, and he let out a sound of irritation, glaring up at him. Alfred just grinned.
“Sorry, sorry, it’s just… hell, Arthur, what did you do?”
“That is none of your bloody business,” he began, but Alfred was moving away from him already, taking down two teacups and a strainer, motioning for him to sit at the table and Arthur found that there was little he could do but comply. The younger nation was being terribly disarming, and he didn’t have an appropriate reaction to this sudden, courteous side of the man. It was something he had always thought that he had failed to teach, but perhaps he had not been so unsuccessful after all. Arthur sat down, hunching his shoulders and clasping his hands on the table in front of him, watching while Alfred moved about the kitchen and poured them each a cup of tea, sitting down across from him and pushing the teacup and saucer carefully over the table towards him. Curling both hands around it, Arthur kept his eyes lowered to the amber-coloured liquid and let out a long, slow sigh, feeling the other’s eyes on him.
“So… what did you do?” Arthur looked up at him sharply and he raised one hand defensively. “I’m not going to make fun of you. My hand to God.”
Arthur shook his head. He didn’t really want to talk about it but god knew Alfred deserved an explanation after all of this. “It was an accident,” he said. “I was trying to do something else, and I wasn’t paying attention. I put too much of something into the potion, it blew up, knocked me out, and when I woke up I was like this.”
He could see that Alfred was trying rather valiantly not to laugh, his expression stuck somewhere between disbelief and confusion, then he got up and walked over to the basement door, tapping on it. “Down here, right?” he asked, and Arthur nodded.
“How did you-”
“Figure it out? Easy!” The American returned to him and sat, picking up his teacup and taking a sip, wrinkling his nose. “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
“You know that he never really said that, don’t you?”
“Psh, let a fan dream.” He made a vague hand gesture and smiled. “First of all, I know that you don’t have a sister. Come on. I wasn’t born yesterday. Besides, I’ve met David. It’s so weird that one of your brothers can cook.” Arthur spluttered indignantly but Alfred carried on speaking, drowning out the curse-words being thrown at him from the irritated English nation. “Second of all, you’re a really bad liar, Arthur! When did you get so bad at lying?” More spluttering. Alfred grinned roguishly. “You acted almost exactly the same. But still, I didn’t fully realise until I came into the kitchen just now. You have a mark on your ear, where you used to wear that earring until I uh…”
“…Until you started climbing on me to try to eat it at every opportunity. It was never going to taste any better, you know.”
“Whatever, man, stop living in the past.” Another grin. Alfred was looking at him again, flicking his eyes over every inch and Arthur would have given the world for the floor to have opened up right there and then. “And then, there was the clincher. You gave yourself away knowing my middle name. No one knows my middle name except for me and you.”
He could have smacked himself, really, though he hadn’t expected Alfred to remember something like that. A long time ago, when the then-fledgling nation had been barely up to his knee, he had given Alfred that middle name and they had made a pact to never tell anyone about it. It had been silly, a child’s promise that made him feel as if he shared some great secret with Arthur, and it had also been one that Arthur had never broken. Alfred had been introducing himself as ‘Alfred F. Jones’ for his entire life, only laughing off any attempts to guess what the ‘F’ stood for, and Arthur had never realised how significant it had been to the man.
“Well, bugger,” he said, and Alfred smiled again, though this time the expression was warm and almost fond and it made Arthur’s heart flutter. He shook his head and lifted one thumb to his mouth to bite the nail. “Alfred, I don’t know how I’m going to fix this.”
He saw the pleased and cheerful expression drop from Alfred’s face in the moments after he spoke those words, and the American rested his arms on the table, leaning forwards with a worried look in his eyes. It was quite touching really to have someone show such care but it also brought a tight lump to Arthur’s throat that he had to swallow down before he could speak again.
“It isn’t… something that I planned. I don’t know what I did wrong and… I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Oh…” Alfred frowned, and looked down at the table, picking at a knot in the wood. Then, suddenly, he brightened and got up, grabbing Arthur’s arm and all but dragging him across to the basement door, through it, and down the stairs. He hesitated as they reached the bottom, and an anxious look flickered over his face, but he pushed it aside and walked with Arthur into the room. The young blonde let out a low whistle and his eyes were everywhere at once, long strides taking him to the table where Arthur had left a book open. “So, what were you trying to make when you blew yourself up?”
Arthur rolled his eyes. “Charming as ever, I see,” he muttered, folding his arms. “I don’t know, it was something to stop dust sticking to my television.” He heard Alfred snort, but when the man turned around there was no evidence of it on his face, he only looked thoughtful.
“If you could do it again, would it turn you back?”
“It might, if I knew what the hell I’d done wrong. I’d likely turn myself into a sodding teapot before I managed to fix this.” He sighed and rubbed his face, letting out a faint sound of distress that had Alfred immediately standing a little awkwardly by his side. There should have been something terribly odd about standing in his basement wearing pajamas, telling Alfred about his latest magical mishap, but there wasn’t. It felt strangely… normal, almost wanted. A hand fell on his shoulder and lightly squeezed, and he shook his head. It was so… frustrating.
Try as he might Alfred couldn’t convince Arthur to try and recreate his blunder. Whatever he’d done, he couldn’t remember what it was, and it could easily make the situation so much worse. They returned to the kitchen after around half an hour and sat down again, Arthur feeling more than a little drained for no real reason that he could put his finger on. He sank down as far as he could onto the chair without falling off it, and pressed his heels into the wooden floor, covering his face with both hands.
“It’s not… that bad,” Alfred said, and Arthur looked at him through a gap in his fingers. The American was looking at him again, a kind of close, appraising look that Arthur didn’t much like. “You don’t look that bad.”
“Oh god, just shut up,” he snapped, sitting up straight and smacking one hand against the table. “I don’t need you trying to make me feel better about this. I’m not going to bloody feel better about this, it’s a fucking disaster.”
“Sorry…”
“What are you even doing here, anyway?” Arthur went on. “Why the hell wouldn’t you just leave? Have you been getting some weird kind of thrill out of this?”
“What? No!” It was only Alfred’s tone that kept Arthur from continuing to shout at him – something desperate and slightly hoarse in it that made him fall silent. “Nothing like that! I wasn’t even sure it was you at first, I just knew it wasn’t Wales. I came here to see you. To… talk to you. I didn’t want to go home until I’d done that.”
“Why? Why not? What was so bloody important that you couldn’t just wait for a while? Or at least send me a sodding email telling me that you’re coming.”
“I sent five,” Alfred said in a flat voice, pursing his lips and looking over at the other with a kind of steadiness in his gaze that Arthur only ever really saw when he was watching the American nation deal with something particularly serious. “You never answered so I came over here before I could… lose my nerve.”
“Lose your- Alfred, why did you come here? Is something wrong?” He leaned forwards, but Alfred just laughed, reaching up and scuffing one hand through the back of his hair. His smile turned awkward and he shook his head in a way that didn’t say ‘no’ but rather that he didn’t want to talk about it. Arthur frowned and folded his arms on the table in front of him. “Well, if you’re not going to tell me, you might as well go home.” He was looking away but he saw the way that Alfred’s frame stiffened. The younger nation stood up, paced away a few steps, then turned around and sat down again. He kicked his feet out in front of himself and made a huffing sound, and Arthur glanced up.
Alfred’s face was red.
“It’s been… nice. Having you here, I mean.”
“Yeah…” If he didn’t know any better he would have sworn that Alfred was sulking. His lower lip was slightly puffed out, and his eyes were lowered. “You… really don’t think you’ll be able to fix this?”
“It doesn’t look very good.” He hated saying it but he had to face the truth at this point.
“It’s… kind of like a curse, right?” Alfred’s tone was tentative, as if he was trying very hard not to make a fool out of himself by talking about something that he didn’t have any knowledge of. As he said it, however, Arthur nodded. He hadn’t thought of it that way until now but in a way, he supposed that it was a curse. It reminded him of some Greek myth that he’d read once, a long time ago now it seemed. Leaving Alfred to what looked to be a very complicated thought process he got up and began to wash the cups that they had used, rinsing out the teapot. He heard Alfred stand up behind him and begin pacing, only able to take a few minutes of that before he turned with every intention of telling the man to sit down or get out. Instead, he flinched at finding the man barely a foot away from him, tipping his head up to look at him.
“If it’s like a curse, then I have an idea.”
“You what?”
“I’m gonna kiss you.”
“… What?” Arthur’s heart was in his throat, pounding in his ears and he was sure that he’d heard the man incorrectly. The large blue eyes focused on his were wide and painfully sincere, and Alfred took hold of his hands even though they were still damp and a little soapy and he wouldn’t let go even when Arthur tried to pull out of his grip. “Al-”
“The reason I came here was to tell you… to… to tell you…” He was red to the tips of his ears and Arthur was beginning to feel his own face heat. “I-I… Ikindasortoflikeyou. A bit. A lot. A whole bunch. Arthur, I like you. Not as in, you know, I like you ‘cause you’re cool or something because you… Not to say you’re not cool or anything, but… I like you like you. You know?”
“I…” The English nation’s head was in a complete spin. Alfred had hold of his upper arms and was hanging on like he thought Arthur might disappear, his face cherry red and his eyes fixed on the green ones in front of him. He didn’t know what to say, though he didn’t need to wait for Alfred to fill the silence.
“I mean I didn’t… It wasn’t always… You know but it’s been lately and… And that’s why I came here and why I wouldn’t leave because I knew if I left I’d just talk myself out of it again and Arthur… Arthur I really… I like you.”
He might have spoken more but Arthur put one finger to his lips, trying to straighten out his thoughts in such a way that when he attempted to reply it wouldn’t simply come out in garbled Anglo-Saxon. Alfred was staring at him, not even moving his head away from the finger pressed to his lips, and Arthur drew in a slow breath, saying the only thing that had made complete sense in his mind. “… You want… to kiss me?”
“Well…” Alfred blushed, if it was possible, darker than he already was and slowly let go of Arthur’s arms. “It works in the movies.”
“I don’t know where your head’s at, America, but we’re not in the bloody movies, you can’t just kiss someone and expect it to break the ‘wicked curse’. Magic doesn’t work like that and you just-”
Arthur was interrupted mid-rant by a hand on his arm jerking him close to the American and a warm mouth pressed to his. His eyes were wide open and looking at the other’s closed lids, a rushing, tingling running through him that was focused rather intently upon where their lips touched. He shut his eyes and placed his hands at Alfred’s hips, pressing up against him and feeling something in the back of his mind shouting out that this was very… very right.
Then Alfred pulled back, and a slow grin crept over his face. “… Cool,” he said, taking Arthur’s hands in his again and lifting them up between them.
The first thing that Arthur noticed was how thick his fingers suddenly were, the backs of his hands broader and the bones on the sides of his wrists slightly more prominent than before. The next thing he noticed was that he was now almost eye-to-eye with the man in front of him. He drew in a sharp breath, and dared to look down.
“… I do not sodding believe this.”
“Ha! I told you! Disney power!” Alfred crowed, wrapping both arms tight around the man and swinging him in a circle in the middle of the kitchen. One of Arthur’s feet hit the handle of a cabinet but he didn’t care, he suddenly felt so giddy that he wanted to laugh and cry all at once. He all but dragged his pajama shirt off, tossing it onto the kitchen table so he could get a better look at himself, then he laughed again and Alfred hugged him some more and it was almost as if things had never been any different. Then, realisation hit him like a slap in the face.
“You kissed me,” he muttered.
“… Yeah,” Alfred replied, tilting his head to one side in a way that suggested he didn’t see anything particularly wrong with this.
“You said that you ‘like’ me.”
“… I do.” He was turning red again. “I do like you. I wasn’t lying.”
It was a new situation to be faced with, that was for sure. Arthur had dealt with confessions of love before but never from someone so young as Alfred, never from someone he’d raised from a child, and never from someone that… he felt the same for. Even when he looked away he knew that Alfred was watching him, waiting for his answer, and he didn’t have to think for very long to give it.
“I like you too,” he said, softly. Alfred’s eyes widened to comical proportions.
“Really?!”
“Really.” Arthur held out one hand, and Alfred took it, a goofy grin on his face as the distance between them closed.
“You know, Arthur,” he murmured, glancing off to the side and back. “I really think that I should make sure that you won’t turn back if I kiss you again.”
“I think…” said Arthur, lifting a hand to cup one side of the young man’s face. “That it will require a little testing to make sure that it worked properly.” He shifted, and Alfred giggled quietly.
“Hehe, yeah, man can you imagine if you switched every time someone kissed you ‘cause that would just be-”
“Shut up, Alfred.”
Alfred did shut up, and the next kiss did not turn Arthur back into a girl. Nor the next, nor the one after that. It was several of these experiments later that they moved into the living room and sat on the sofa, glancing at one another rather awkwardly, and Arthur shifted his legs up. Moments later, Alfred had taken hold of them and pulled them over his lap, sliding one arm around the Englishman and grinning at him again.
“So,” he began, then faltered.
“I had been wondering…” Arthur almost stammered to a halt when one of the American’s heavy, lightly calloused hands came to rest on his thigh. “If you know so much about London, why are you always letting me drag you about and tell you the same things over and over?”
“I just… like spending time with you.” Alfred admitted, looking down as Arthur laid his hand over the one on his leg. “You get a really bright look in your eyes when you talk about London… even when you think I’m not listening. It’s like you’re so proud of it… and… sometimes you’d look at me in the middle of telling me about how in 1945 a flock of starlings put Big Ben’s time back by five minutes by landing on the minute hand or whatever and… I could pretend that look was for me.”
“Oh… Alfred…” The older nation shifted, scooting as close as the position would allow and wrapping his arms around the other man. Alfred still had his eyes averted, but he looked up reluctantly when Arthur coaxed him to do so. He bit his lip, and Arthur ran his thumb over it, working it out from under his teeth. “I’ve always been proud of you.”
“Yeah..?” His blush was softer this time, a light dusting of pink across his cheeks as he looked at his one-time guardian. “Hey… Arthur…?”
“Mm?”
“You really did look cute in that dress.”
“… Sod off.”
----------------
<| Chapter Four |
Genre: Romance
Characters/Pairing(s): USxUK
Rating/Warnings: PG. Genderswap. Cussing.
Summary: Yet another of Arthur's magical mishaps lands him in more trouble than he can handle, with a strange new body to (temporarily) deal with and as if that wasn't enough, he has Alfred hanging around.
*****
“Wh… what?” Arthur’s skin was simultaneously burning and trying to crawl off his body and all he wanted to do was curl up in a corner and die for a while when he heard his name spoken so confidently into his ear. Alfred still had hold of him, his grip firm but not restrictive, and he let out a quiet laugh that the English nation felt against his back.
“You must think I’m really stupid,” the young man said, and although he wasn’t looking at him Arthur could hear his smile in his voice. There was a small ‘clink’ as the lid of the teapot was finally set down, and Arthur closed his eyes, shifting to turn, and Alfred let him, stepping back. It was with something of a guilty expression that he faced the American, feeling rather like a child caught stealing cookies, and Alfred was quite clearly amused. “Y’know, I never really believed in all that magic stuff you’re always going on about but you really did a number on yourself this time.”
“Oh, sod off!” Arthur snapped, his voice higher than he wanted it to be. “Do you think I did this deliberately? I don’t want to be… to… Augh.”
“You make a real pretty girl.”
“Ah, for fuck’s sake.” He tried to step around the boy but Alfred blocked him, and he let out a sound of irritation, glaring up at him. Alfred just grinned.
“Sorry, sorry, it’s just… hell, Arthur, what did you do?”
“That is none of your bloody business,” he began, but Alfred was moving away from him already, taking down two teacups and a strainer, motioning for him to sit at the table and Arthur found that there was little he could do but comply. The younger nation was being terribly disarming, and he didn’t have an appropriate reaction to this sudden, courteous side of the man. It was something he had always thought that he had failed to teach, but perhaps he had not been so unsuccessful after all. Arthur sat down, hunching his shoulders and clasping his hands on the table in front of him, watching while Alfred moved about the kitchen and poured them each a cup of tea, sitting down across from him and pushing the teacup and saucer carefully over the table towards him. Curling both hands around it, Arthur kept his eyes lowered to the amber-coloured liquid and let out a long, slow sigh, feeling the other’s eyes on him.
“So… what did you do?” Arthur looked up at him sharply and he raised one hand defensively. “I’m not going to make fun of you. My hand to God.”
Arthur shook his head. He didn’t really want to talk about it but god knew Alfred deserved an explanation after all of this. “It was an accident,” he said. “I was trying to do something else, and I wasn’t paying attention. I put too much of something into the potion, it blew up, knocked me out, and when I woke up I was like this.”
He could see that Alfred was trying rather valiantly not to laugh, his expression stuck somewhere between disbelief and confusion, then he got up and walked over to the basement door, tapping on it. “Down here, right?” he asked, and Arthur nodded.
“How did you-”
“Figure it out? Easy!” The American returned to him and sat, picking up his teacup and taking a sip, wrinkling his nose. “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
“You know that he never really said that, don’t you?”
“Psh, let a fan dream.” He made a vague hand gesture and smiled. “First of all, I know that you don’t have a sister. Come on. I wasn’t born yesterday. Besides, I’ve met David. It’s so weird that one of your brothers can cook.” Arthur spluttered indignantly but Alfred carried on speaking, drowning out the curse-words being thrown at him from the irritated English nation. “Second of all, you’re a really bad liar, Arthur! When did you get so bad at lying?” More spluttering. Alfred grinned roguishly. “You acted almost exactly the same. But still, I didn’t fully realise until I came into the kitchen just now. You have a mark on your ear, where you used to wear that earring until I uh…”
“…Until you started climbing on me to try to eat it at every opportunity. It was never going to taste any better, you know.”
“Whatever, man, stop living in the past.” Another grin. Alfred was looking at him again, flicking his eyes over every inch and Arthur would have given the world for the floor to have opened up right there and then. “And then, there was the clincher. You gave yourself away knowing my middle name. No one knows my middle name except for me and you.”
He could have smacked himself, really, though he hadn’t expected Alfred to remember something like that. A long time ago, when the then-fledgling nation had been barely up to his knee, he had given Alfred that middle name and they had made a pact to never tell anyone about it. It had been silly, a child’s promise that made him feel as if he shared some great secret with Arthur, and it had also been one that Arthur had never broken. Alfred had been introducing himself as ‘Alfred F. Jones’ for his entire life, only laughing off any attempts to guess what the ‘F’ stood for, and Arthur had never realised how significant it had been to the man.
“Well, bugger,” he said, and Alfred smiled again, though this time the expression was warm and almost fond and it made Arthur’s heart flutter. He shook his head and lifted one thumb to his mouth to bite the nail. “Alfred, I don’t know how I’m going to fix this.”
He saw the pleased and cheerful expression drop from Alfred’s face in the moments after he spoke those words, and the American rested his arms on the table, leaning forwards with a worried look in his eyes. It was quite touching really to have someone show such care but it also brought a tight lump to Arthur’s throat that he had to swallow down before he could speak again.
“It isn’t… something that I planned. I don’t know what I did wrong and… I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Oh…” Alfred frowned, and looked down at the table, picking at a knot in the wood. Then, suddenly, he brightened and got up, grabbing Arthur’s arm and all but dragging him across to the basement door, through it, and down the stairs. He hesitated as they reached the bottom, and an anxious look flickered over his face, but he pushed it aside and walked with Arthur into the room. The young blonde let out a low whistle and his eyes were everywhere at once, long strides taking him to the table where Arthur had left a book open. “So, what were you trying to make when you blew yourself up?”
Arthur rolled his eyes. “Charming as ever, I see,” he muttered, folding his arms. “I don’t know, it was something to stop dust sticking to my television.” He heard Alfred snort, but when the man turned around there was no evidence of it on his face, he only looked thoughtful.
“If you could do it again, would it turn you back?”
“It might, if I knew what the hell I’d done wrong. I’d likely turn myself into a sodding teapot before I managed to fix this.” He sighed and rubbed his face, letting out a faint sound of distress that had Alfred immediately standing a little awkwardly by his side. There should have been something terribly odd about standing in his basement wearing pajamas, telling Alfred about his latest magical mishap, but there wasn’t. It felt strangely… normal, almost wanted. A hand fell on his shoulder and lightly squeezed, and he shook his head. It was so… frustrating.
Try as he might Alfred couldn’t convince Arthur to try and recreate his blunder. Whatever he’d done, he couldn’t remember what it was, and it could easily make the situation so much worse. They returned to the kitchen after around half an hour and sat down again, Arthur feeling more than a little drained for no real reason that he could put his finger on. He sank down as far as he could onto the chair without falling off it, and pressed his heels into the wooden floor, covering his face with both hands.
“It’s not… that bad,” Alfred said, and Arthur looked at him through a gap in his fingers. The American was looking at him again, a kind of close, appraising look that Arthur didn’t much like. “You don’t look that bad.”
“Oh god, just shut up,” he snapped, sitting up straight and smacking one hand against the table. “I don’t need you trying to make me feel better about this. I’m not going to bloody feel better about this, it’s a fucking disaster.”
“Sorry…”
“What are you even doing here, anyway?” Arthur went on. “Why the hell wouldn’t you just leave? Have you been getting some weird kind of thrill out of this?”
“What? No!” It was only Alfred’s tone that kept Arthur from continuing to shout at him – something desperate and slightly hoarse in it that made him fall silent. “Nothing like that! I wasn’t even sure it was you at first, I just knew it wasn’t Wales. I came here to see you. To… talk to you. I didn’t want to go home until I’d done that.”
“Why? Why not? What was so bloody important that you couldn’t just wait for a while? Or at least send me a sodding email telling me that you’re coming.”
“I sent five,” Alfred said in a flat voice, pursing his lips and looking over at the other with a kind of steadiness in his gaze that Arthur only ever really saw when he was watching the American nation deal with something particularly serious. “You never answered so I came over here before I could… lose my nerve.”
“Lose your- Alfred, why did you come here? Is something wrong?” He leaned forwards, but Alfred just laughed, reaching up and scuffing one hand through the back of his hair. His smile turned awkward and he shook his head in a way that didn’t say ‘no’ but rather that he didn’t want to talk about it. Arthur frowned and folded his arms on the table in front of him. “Well, if you’re not going to tell me, you might as well go home.” He was looking away but he saw the way that Alfred’s frame stiffened. The younger nation stood up, paced away a few steps, then turned around and sat down again. He kicked his feet out in front of himself and made a huffing sound, and Arthur glanced up.
Alfred’s face was red.
“It’s been… nice. Having you here, I mean.”
“Yeah…” If he didn’t know any better he would have sworn that Alfred was sulking. His lower lip was slightly puffed out, and his eyes were lowered. “You… really don’t think you’ll be able to fix this?”
“It doesn’t look very good.” He hated saying it but he had to face the truth at this point.
“It’s… kind of like a curse, right?” Alfred’s tone was tentative, as if he was trying very hard not to make a fool out of himself by talking about something that he didn’t have any knowledge of. As he said it, however, Arthur nodded. He hadn’t thought of it that way until now but in a way, he supposed that it was a curse. It reminded him of some Greek myth that he’d read once, a long time ago now it seemed. Leaving Alfred to what looked to be a very complicated thought process he got up and began to wash the cups that they had used, rinsing out the teapot. He heard Alfred stand up behind him and begin pacing, only able to take a few minutes of that before he turned with every intention of telling the man to sit down or get out. Instead, he flinched at finding the man barely a foot away from him, tipping his head up to look at him.
“If it’s like a curse, then I have an idea.”
“You what?”
“I’m gonna kiss you.”
“… What?” Arthur’s heart was in his throat, pounding in his ears and he was sure that he’d heard the man incorrectly. The large blue eyes focused on his were wide and painfully sincere, and Alfred took hold of his hands even though they were still damp and a little soapy and he wouldn’t let go even when Arthur tried to pull out of his grip. “Al-”
“The reason I came here was to tell you… to… to tell you…” He was red to the tips of his ears and Arthur was beginning to feel his own face heat. “I-I… Ikindasortoflikeyou. A bit. A lot. A whole bunch. Arthur, I like you. Not as in, you know, I like you ‘cause you’re cool or something because you… Not to say you’re not cool or anything, but… I like you like you. You know?”
“I…” The English nation’s head was in a complete spin. Alfred had hold of his upper arms and was hanging on like he thought Arthur might disappear, his face cherry red and his eyes fixed on the green ones in front of him. He didn’t know what to say, though he didn’t need to wait for Alfred to fill the silence.
“I mean I didn’t… It wasn’t always… You know but it’s been lately and… And that’s why I came here and why I wouldn’t leave because I knew if I left I’d just talk myself out of it again and Arthur… Arthur I really… I like you.”
He might have spoken more but Arthur put one finger to his lips, trying to straighten out his thoughts in such a way that when he attempted to reply it wouldn’t simply come out in garbled Anglo-Saxon. Alfred was staring at him, not even moving his head away from the finger pressed to his lips, and Arthur drew in a slow breath, saying the only thing that had made complete sense in his mind. “… You want… to kiss me?”
“Well…” Alfred blushed, if it was possible, darker than he already was and slowly let go of Arthur’s arms. “It works in the movies.”
“I don’t know where your head’s at, America, but we’re not in the bloody movies, you can’t just kiss someone and expect it to break the ‘wicked curse’. Magic doesn’t work like that and you just-”
Arthur was interrupted mid-rant by a hand on his arm jerking him close to the American and a warm mouth pressed to his. His eyes were wide open and looking at the other’s closed lids, a rushing, tingling running through him that was focused rather intently upon where their lips touched. He shut his eyes and placed his hands at Alfred’s hips, pressing up against him and feeling something in the back of his mind shouting out that this was very… very right.
Then Alfred pulled back, and a slow grin crept over his face. “… Cool,” he said, taking Arthur’s hands in his again and lifting them up between them.
The first thing that Arthur noticed was how thick his fingers suddenly were, the backs of his hands broader and the bones on the sides of his wrists slightly more prominent than before. The next thing he noticed was that he was now almost eye-to-eye with the man in front of him. He drew in a sharp breath, and dared to look down.
“… I do not sodding believe this.”
“Ha! I told you! Disney power!” Alfred crowed, wrapping both arms tight around the man and swinging him in a circle in the middle of the kitchen. One of Arthur’s feet hit the handle of a cabinet but he didn’t care, he suddenly felt so giddy that he wanted to laugh and cry all at once. He all but dragged his pajama shirt off, tossing it onto the kitchen table so he could get a better look at himself, then he laughed again and Alfred hugged him some more and it was almost as if things had never been any different. Then, realisation hit him like a slap in the face.
“You kissed me,” he muttered.
“… Yeah,” Alfred replied, tilting his head to one side in a way that suggested he didn’t see anything particularly wrong with this.
“You said that you ‘like’ me.”
“… I do.” He was turning red again. “I do like you. I wasn’t lying.”
It was a new situation to be faced with, that was for sure. Arthur had dealt with confessions of love before but never from someone so young as Alfred, never from someone he’d raised from a child, and never from someone that… he felt the same for. Even when he looked away he knew that Alfred was watching him, waiting for his answer, and he didn’t have to think for very long to give it.
“I like you too,” he said, softly. Alfred’s eyes widened to comical proportions.
“Really?!”
“Really.” Arthur held out one hand, and Alfred took it, a goofy grin on his face as the distance between them closed.
“You know, Arthur,” he murmured, glancing off to the side and back. “I really think that I should make sure that you won’t turn back if I kiss you again.”
“I think…” said Arthur, lifting a hand to cup one side of the young man’s face. “That it will require a little testing to make sure that it worked properly.” He shifted, and Alfred giggled quietly.
“Hehe, yeah, man can you imagine if you switched every time someone kissed you ‘cause that would just be-”
“Shut up, Alfred.”
Alfred did shut up, and the next kiss did not turn Arthur back into a girl. Nor the next, nor the one after that. It was several of these experiments later that they moved into the living room and sat on the sofa, glancing at one another rather awkwardly, and Arthur shifted his legs up. Moments later, Alfred had taken hold of them and pulled them over his lap, sliding one arm around the Englishman and grinning at him again.
“So,” he began, then faltered.
“I had been wondering…” Arthur almost stammered to a halt when one of the American’s heavy, lightly calloused hands came to rest on his thigh. “If you know so much about London, why are you always letting me drag you about and tell you the same things over and over?”
“I just… like spending time with you.” Alfred admitted, looking down as Arthur laid his hand over the one on his leg. “You get a really bright look in your eyes when you talk about London… even when you think I’m not listening. It’s like you’re so proud of it… and… sometimes you’d look at me in the middle of telling me about how in 1945 a flock of starlings put Big Ben’s time back by five minutes by landing on the minute hand or whatever and… I could pretend that look was for me.”
“Oh… Alfred…” The older nation shifted, scooting as close as the position would allow and wrapping his arms around the other man. Alfred still had his eyes averted, but he looked up reluctantly when Arthur coaxed him to do so. He bit his lip, and Arthur ran his thumb over it, working it out from under his teeth. “I’ve always been proud of you.”
“Yeah..?” His blush was softer this time, a light dusting of pink across his cheeks as he looked at his one-time guardian. “Hey… Arthur…?”
“Mm?”
“You really did look cute in that dress.”
“… Sod off.”
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<| Chapter Four |
