Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune. - Carl Jung
Content advisory for: drug abuse (seriously, this is the crux of the entire plot), slight homophobia, dub-con and sexual situations, language, highschool AU, physiological instability, and slight unreliable narration.
There were three men at one point, though "men" may be overstating things slightly, and they had declared themselves the three most awesome people to grace the world with their being: Alfred F. Jones, Gilbert Beilschmidt, and Mathias Køhler. This so-called "Awesome Trio" was, if it wasn't clear enough from the name, a particularly dangerous amalgamation of stupidity, pride, audacity, and impatience, and the general lack of common sense they shared was helping nothing.
It shouldn't be surprising that this led to problems, though the three of them were in a fierce debate over just when the drugs started being an issue: Alfred thought it was when they got into so much debt that they had to go under-the-table to make their money; Mathias thought it was when they started taking the drugs outside of parties; Gilbert thought the issues started when they started branching out into different drugs. These were just opinions though, and it would in all honesty be a much more correct assessment to claim that it was the partying that started the problems, but ego can be just as dangerous as any drug.
It was the end of their Junior year of high school, 11th grade. Mathias would always throw parties at his house at times like these: after graduation, after exams, after his parents leave and he just couldn't stand how quiet everything was when there's no-one else there. He had sent out a message to just about everyone he knew, and just about everyone showed up at his house, because Mathias was widely regarded among their peers as being some sort of patron saint of drunken high school parties. When Alfred walked in, he wondered just how many people were there and just how they had changed the house so much.
Most of the lights in the house were off except in the living room and the kitchen. Loud music was blaring from some source, though it wasn't exactly clear what or where that source was, not that it was stopping anyone from making fools of themselves in the living room to the beat of a particularly grating dubstep song. All of the furniture had been pushed against the walls making room for these dancing fools, and a few girls just sat on the couches watching the show and judging them like it was a serious competition.
Alfred had no interest in this, at least not yet, and walked into the kitchen. The kitchen greeted him with an even more foolish sight. This is where Gilbert and Mathias had been, pouring beers into a large plastic tub with great fervor. Empty cans, kicked around by the party-goers lazily milling around the kitchen, littered the floor, as well as several bottles of vodka. The tub itself was one of the cheap red containers one could get at a store for maybe twenty dollars and would only hold a couple gallons, but when it came to wild-and-vaguely-illegal parties and containers which would hold a mixture of what was ostensibly alcohol, the shoddy little tub was second only to a plastic trash can as the container of choice.
Mathias looked up to see Alfred and smiled. "Eh, Al, you did come! I was worried you'd puss out like last time and leave me and Gil to do some hard drinking by ourselves."
"Dude, I just skipped out last time was because of football practice. You know, I actually want to stay on the team. Besides, I had to go get you guys a present." Alfred threw a brown plastic bag over to the Dane, who poured the contents out onto the table: twenty-or-so packets of lemonade powder mix.
"Alright!" The Dane cheered, "now we've got a real drink right here." He tore the packets open and dumped them into the alcoholic concoction a handful at a time.
Gilbert glared. "Why would you ruin perfectly good beer like that? Now it's going to taste like lemons and beer, do you even know how gross that is? You losers disgust me with this."
"Whatever dude," Alfred shrugged, "I just got what Mathias told me to get."
Gilbert rolled his eyes and muttered "whatever," clearly unimpressed with his 'loser' friends. He grabbed one of the few beers that hadn't been used in Mathias's lemony abomination, and cracked it open. He took a sip, and immediately did a spit take. "What? What is this Schieße?"
"What?" Mathias asked.
"This is the worst - literally the worst - beer I have ever had! Mein. Gott. What sort of beer is this? Is it American beer? I told you to go and get some German beer." Gilbert seemed to take the awful beer as a personal insult to his massive and incredibly German ego.
"Listen, that's expensive, and I'm just a broke little Danish boy trying to make his way in the world. I can't just go get your fancy German beer, princess." Mathias began stirring the drink, which was easily one of the worst looking things man had ever brewed.
"Man, don't pull that crap with me, we all know it's not like you're buying this crap at a regular store." Gilbert took another sip of the beer with great contempt. "If you get some damn beer, you better get some good beer or you just don't bother. I wouldn't even call this dishwater."
"I just came a good time, and I'm feeling so attacked right now," Mathias feigned insult from his friend's words, but this wasn't anything new for them. This was something that happened at more-or-less every party that they were together at. Mathias would get some beer from some shady dealer unscrupulous enough to sell to some hard partying teens, and Gilbert and Alfred would complain about how bad it was. The fact that they were far too young to be getting drunk wasn't an issue; it was more of a game to them than anything else. See how much they could get without getting caught, it was so terribly exciting of a game, and the risks were not a deterrent but rather the main attraction; I suppose I should reinforce that the Awesome Trio was not formed based on intellectual ability.
Alfred and Gilbert didn't know where their friend got the booze, with the fact that they got plastered first and asked questions later being largely at fault for this. All Mathias had thought was important enough to tell them was that he knew a guy who ran a store across town, and didn't have a problem with selling to anyone who could pay. They would later learn that 'payment' did not necessarily mean 'cash,' but this was long before that point.
Gilbert finished off the first of the cheapest beer that money could regret buying, and cracked open a second. The other two looked at him completely flummoxed. "What is your problem dude?" Alfred asked.
"What?" Gilbert couldn't see what the problem was.
"You're having another?" Alfred asked. "You just said it was literally the worst thing you had ever had."
"Listen Al, I'm a German, and if I'm partying, it's not a party without beer," the albino smiled, the effects of the drink starting to set in, "even if the beer tastes like liquid suffering." The last phrase was tinged with a bitterness and Gilbert glanced at Mathias.
The Dane rolled his eyes and said, "well, listen, I know this beer is piss, but my guy ran out of the good stuff so he just gave me this and threw in some other stuff for free. That's why we needed the lemonade, so it tastes less like death." Mathias dipped a cup into the mix and took a sip, trying with great effort not to gag. "Ugh, now it only tastes like lemon death."
"Let me try!" Alfred, annoyed with being left out of the hard drinking, grabbed his own cup and got some of the drink. 'Lemon death' was, in addition to sounding like the name of a band, a rather accurate description of the taste: sour, with a slightly metallic taste to it, a hint of noxious chemicals and an acidic aftertaste. It was clearly an offensively poor quality beer. Alfred looked at his drink with a blank face and said, "I think this made me die on the inside."
"Well yeah, American Dreamboy, we said that." Gilbert said as he finished off the second beer. "Why would you drink it when everyone was saying it wasn't awesome?"
Alfred shrugged. "If you dudes are partying hard, of course I'm going to party too. I'm some kind of hero, I'm not going to be the buzzkill of the Awesome Trio."
Gilbert grabbed yet another beer, looking like he was regretting every second of his life up until that point, when he looked like he had a sudden revelation and turned to Mathias. "Hold on, what 'other stuff' did you get from your guy? And why is it more important than my beer?" Gilbert demanded, being an unstable combination of annoyed, drunk, and German.
Mathias just laughed and said, "alright, listen, remind me later when the party starts to die and I'll show you guys. For now, who's going bet the you can't drink more of this stuff than me?"
The Awesome Trio spent the course of the next two hours getting wasted. They didn't drink for the entire two hours, because the drinks were so bad that they had to take short breaks. A group of party-goers amassed around them and started putting bets on who would win their contest, because listening to the drunken insults they were passing around was magnitudes more fun than actually getting any drinks.
Eventually, it became clear that Gilbert would be the winner; Alfred felt too sick to drink anything else, and Mathias only stopped when he was halfway to alcohol poisoning. This upset many of the betters, because Alfred, being the cute American football star, was a favorite to win, while the scary Albino German who looks like he would molest someone wasn't the top choice. Of course, the school's top gamblers managed to walk away richer, because anyone who attended enough of these parties knew that Gilbert was the only one who could even almost hold his liquor out of the trio.
"I laugh at your weak American beers!" Gilbert laughed the most unnatural laugh he could manage, clearly and intensely plastered from the drinks. "Mein Deutsch blood gives me the awesome advantage over you losers. So suck it losers, mein awesome ancestors in Preußen are smiling at me right now."
"Dude, isn't that place super dead or something now?" Alfred could barely sit up straight with how drunk he was when he asked.
"Whatever, they're with me in my soul. That's why I won, you know. A toast, to the awesome Prussians." Gilbert tried to toast the ghost of a dead country, which amused the remaining crowd in the kitchen.
"Dude, these guys are the best." "Man this party was so hype!" "Yeah, I'm seriously coming to the next one." "I have to go, my mom will yell at me if I break curfew. Again." "I can't believe they actually drank all that crap! Did you see how gross it looked?" "I just lost so much money but it was totally worth it." "I told you man, bet on the Germans. They're crazy."
The party goers started filling out of the house. They didn't see much reason to stay after the contest was over and the main partiers could barely stand. As everyone started leaving, the clock in the kitchen read 11:28 PM. Mathias looked a little disappointed by this. "Damn, I really wanted to party until Midnight."
"Weren't you going to show us something great after everyone left? Or... something?" Alfred asked, getting up while leaning heavily against the table.
"Yeah, yeah, something better than mein Deutsch beer, or whatever you said. I don't believe you, so you better go and show us!" Gilbert said, words slurring together as he spoke.
Mathias waved it off. "Right, right, I'll show you. Come on, to the viking cave."
By this, he was referring to his room. Three incredibly drunk idiots, started racing each other upstairs, tripping over their own feet as well as each other and leaning heavily on anything they could. It would of been an amusing sight to see if what would follow wasn't so dire. At the apex of the stairs, however their path was barricaded; blocked off by an annoyed blonde man with a curl that stuck out in an odd way, his arms folded across his chest.
"Are you idiots done partying? Mathias, you know I hate these kinds of things. I'm just here to kick everyone out before the cops show up and arrest you." His words had a heavy Norwegian accent to them, and his glare was focused on Mathias in particular.
"Oh, Lukas, hey. I didn't know you were even here." Mathias, oblivious as ever, completely ignored the icy glared being leveled at him. Lukas was always mad at him for something or another thing, so it's not like the glare meant all that much anymore. Despite this, Lukas would never leave Mathias alone, probably because he did stupid things whenever he wasn't under direct supervision.
The Norwegian's eye twitched a little, and replied, "I was upstairs, because it was away from people, and it was quiet. I really hate that song you had playing in the living room." Lukas shoved his way past the trio and started walking down the stairs before he turned and asked, "how much did you guys drink? It smells like alcohol in the whole house now. I'm leaving, so you drunks better not do anything stupid. And don't call me when you wake up in the morning with a hangover. I'm sick of dealing with that crap, so I'm not going to pick up the phone."
"Alright, later Lukas." Mathias said, ignoring every word his friend had told him. Which was fairly normal, meaning that Mathias would call him in the morning about his hangover, and Lukas would respond by not picking up the phone. It was a little routine they had worked out. Maybe if Lukas hadn't of left the three of them alone them that night, they wouldn't of gotten as ensnared in trouble as they had. The drunk three continued to Mathias's room as the front door was opened and then violently slammed shut.
Gilbert laughed. "Wow Mathias, you really made your little wife mad tonight."
"You know he's just my really angry friend." Mathias defended, as he got down and began groping around under his bed for something.
"Psh, yeah right. " Gilbert waved his protests off with a haphazard hand gesture. "We all know that I'm the only one of us who's straight."
"What?" Alfred turned and there was a dull thud from under the bed as Mathias hit his head.
Gilbert scoffed. "Yeah, you guys are all super gay, getting all the boys. Not me though, I'm straight."
Alfred gave his friend little look of confusion. "Hey, I get why you'd call Mathias gay, but what did I ever do? Dude, I have a girlfriend, and you don't," Alfred protested, referring to the girl, a cheerleader named Katyusha, whom he had been dating for a few months now.
"Yeah, right," Gilbert said disbelievingly, throwing himself onto Mathias's bed dramatically, to the dismay of the Dane, "she's just your cover. Everyone knows that guys are always chasing after you, remember freshman year? I heard that one guy was so sad that you went with a girl to prom, that he left the country! And I bet that you're the one out of the three of us who'd be the most likely to take it from the back. Besides, I don't need a girlfriend, I have too much fun being alone to have to deal with some whiny bitch all the time." He claimed, lying bitterly.
Finally, Mathias emerged from under the bed holding a crumpled-up paper bag. "Alright guys," he smiled, "I talked to my guy, and he got me something a bit harder than just booze." He reached into the bag and pulled out three white tablets.
"Dude, is that what I think it is?" Alfred looked at the tablets in disbelief, to which Mathias responded with a nod. Ecstasy; one of the most infamous party drugs. "I'm not sure this is a good idea, man; that stuff is supposed to be pretty strong."
"I don't know, if your guy's Molly is as weak as his liquor, then I'm out. The party was super not awesome, so this better as Hell make up for it." Gilbert said skeptically.
Mathias looked almost offended with his friends' comments. "The party was great, because I don't do lame parties. Listen, I just got these as a sort of 'free sample' with the beer, so I thought I would be nice, but I can just-"
"Wait," Gilbert interrupted, "if it was free, then I want some. Come on, come on!" He started grabbing drunkenly at his friend.
Alfred looked them for a moment and then shrugged. Maybe if the three of them hadn't of been so wasted at the time, then maybe they wouldn't have made such poor choices that night. "Sure, why the Hell not? I mean, it is a party..."
FrauWolf - The lesson of this is to drink responsibly, kids. This lesson occurs throughout the entire story. Only replace 'drink' with 'do various illegal drugs' and 'responsibly' with 'preferably never.' If the fact the authors note and the account this is posted under weren't a tip-off, this is a collaborative work between me, FrauWolf, and the publisher, Lmaolevi. I actually got upgraded from editor to co-writer for this one, so the prologue and some of the chapter will be written by me, while others will be written by Lmaolevi. We'll probably tell you who wrote what at the end of the chapter, but it gets a little obvious with the vastly different writings styles between the two of us; Lmaolevi is notable for her lovely descriptive writing, and I'm more notable for my use of a dictionary to find the biggest words I can think of and mountains of snark. The title of this story, 'Requiem,' is a reference to a movie titled,'Requiem for a dream,' and the titles of the upcoming chapters will also be references to various things. Now for an explanation of some things I mentioned in this chapter: the mention of the 'plastic trash can' for brewing drinks is based on what an acquaintance told me they did at parties when she was in college, so that isn't exactly made up; the lemonade-beer-vodka drink they made is something called 'skippy' that I heard about and put it in because I figured that the characters would actually make it; the reason Gilbert talks so much crap about the American beer is because I actually looked up the worst beer and it was apparently an American beer, but ironically a German friend of mine said that the worst beer she had ever tried was British so /shot; also, I put a lot of foreshadowing in this prologue and will put more in later chapters, so this story is probably going to be one of those that you read it and go, 'alright, my life is ruined now' and then you reread it and go, 'wow, this is way worse now.' Also, despite my sarcasm and constant insults in the narration, I'm the nice one of us two, and Lmaolevi is actually a really mean person, so sorry, try not to take too much offence to her.
Lmaolevi - Firstly, welcome to our story 'Requiem', where we hope to have your feelings crushed yet learn a good lesson. This fanfic, we do hope, is unlike many out there; this actually has a completely written out plot-line that complies to not only one or two characters, but most that are mentioned. FrauWolf and I have both discussed the things we dislike in fanfics; most of our complaints pertaining to it having a basic plotline, mostly being shipping based, and every character being homosexual just to please their 'otps'. (This isn't only our issue, we researched things that bothered other readers and wanted to fit their needs into the story.) Mind you, we've thought our story through; we have a complete notebook used for the sole purpose of this story, and we're trying to get a point across. We believe that stories should have their own 'complex simplicity' in their own way, and I do hope that'll come across throughout the story. This story isn't just based on England and America and their own issues; we wanted to include the others and show what's happening with them. ^^ There'll be a few ships sort of 'implied', but a-lot of popular Hetalia ships won't be included, so, yeah. So, there really isn't going to be a regularly scheduled time for us uploading and updating new chapters; we have personal lives and we upload whenever we feel like because that's just how we roll, dudes. It's a hobby and we don't get paid, because we really don't have any obligation to. Anyway, enjoy... or not, it's not like it's my issue to serve the sole purpose of pleasing you.