A/N: Admittedly, this is going to be a very fragmented, disjointed sort of story. It's also technically not a romantic story. I mean, there's past romance in it (USCan), and there may be side romance as well, but no, it's not a Cuba/America romance story (because yes, Cuba is going to be in it). There probably WILL be fluffy sort of friendship crap in there, because I love enemies-turned-disgruntled-friends situations, but other than that, no. Also, yes, there will be flashback sex scenes (again, USCan), and the Canada we're dealing with is definitely sexually confident/experienced/experimental. Um…what else? Oh yeah. This is AU. Clearly. Updates will be every Wednesday and Sunday. Mostly short chapters. I'm going for that quick snapshot feel. Okay, think that's everything. Hope you enjoy it. If not…eh. My bad, I guess.

If you're expecting one of those stories where the hero courts the shy damsel until she's so overwrought with emotions and adoration that she swoons and falls for him, all following a very cinematic sort of pursuit and struggle and plot arch, with plenty of sickeningly sweet love making that involves mewling and staring deeply into each other's eyes as the moonlight glistens over passion-spent bodies, you should probably get the fuck out of here right now.

For one, our damsel's not a damsel at all, but a man. Straight lines and masculine jawline, forearms sleek, but toned from many an hour spent bashing into other men on ice, chasing after a puck which symbolized more than any of those meatheads (except possibly our damsel himself) ever had the talents to decipher. Our damsel suffered through nocturnal emissions and a sexually confusing adolescence, waking up with the name of a leading actor on his lips, hunching over a sink while dealing with five o'clock shadow—or at least, the little wisps of hair teenage boys convince themselves signify five o'clock shadow. Our damsel spent his freshman year of high school becoming better acquainted with his left hand, and his freshman year of college becoming better acquainted with the feeling of digging his teeth into mother's best pillowcases as a careless lover drilled into his prostate, mumbling careful apologies and "how's that?"s and "you're so beautiful"s.

And our damsel's smart, the exact opposite of distressed. Smart and calm, a joint almost perpetually between his lips, blowing smoke rings and kissing the secrets of life in a trail from navel to the front of our hero's superman boxers. Our damsel's smarter and more capable than our hero, spending so much time saving him that he didn't even know it, didn't even realize it, saving him even after a two year hiatus. Our damsel is everything. So if you're looking for a story exemplifying our hero, you're shit out of luck.

And if the homophobia or the protagonist flip doesn't get you, the fact our dear, smart, very male damsel is decomposing, right at this very moment, probably will.

If you're looking for romance, you're out of luck. Our damsel's dead before the curtain even rises. You're not getting a portrait of Hollywood love, lust, need, passion. It's already dead. He's already dead. You're going to get the shattered psyche of the hero who didn't realize he was in love until he fished his damsel's body out of raw sewage, and you're going to be yanked around on a wild chase of the sort of false hope and heroism that's more likely to get you locked up than exemplified.

We have a hero who needs a cause.

And a damsel who didn't even have the grace of a poetic death.

And you don't even get a cute buddy cop story because our hero and his ill-fitting sidekick hate each other almost as much as our hero, without knowing it, loved his damsel.

You'll get sex, and you'll get the love in fragments, but it'll be clouded with the bias and pain that only the past is capable of. You'll get clumsy flashbacks and nervous breakdowns. You'll even get to see their relationship from the beginning, understand just why this damsel, and not that one, meant just so much to our hero.

But it's not going to feel good. In fact, it'll just make you feel dirty. And more alone. And regret ever repeating that old adage, because it's not better to have loved and lost. It's the worst feeling in the world.

But by all means, don't let all that spoil the disappointment for you.

~oOo~

It all depends on who asks how Alfred will answer you.

Maybe he'll give you a real name. Franklin. Freddy. Phil…which doesn't start with an F at all, but who's going to question him?

Maybe he'll be cutesy about it. Fuck, Fap, Fondle…frotteurism, because it gets him those strange looks, the "that's a big word, you sure you understand it?" looks. He always did enjoy those looks most of all.

Or he might just throw in strange words. Freedom usually being the old standby. Because he's American, and he was born on the Fourth of July, and wouldn't it have been clever and nifty of his parents to come up with something like that?

Matthew had just smiled at him, and said, "It doesn't stand for anything at all, does it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your middle initial. It's superfluous."

Alfred doesn't say he doesn't know what superfluous means. Because it's not a big word that starts with an F, and he can tell it has nothing to do with rubbing genitals on anyone, so he feels no need to figure it out. He also doesn't say it's a little bit sexy that Matthew apparently knows what such words mean. He'd never confess to a fetish for intellect, but both of them know it, because otherwise neither of them would be here, naked and curled on a twin size bed under dinosaur sheets.

"Well, does anything really stand for anything?" It's not really philosophical—a word that sounds like F, but isn't. But the way Matthew smiles is almost hotter than the way his fingers knot into his hair, grinning even as they kiss, more tongue and teeth than lips, more need than want, more Matthew than Alfred, because that's really how it usually is—funny how easy it is for our hero to be overpowered whenever it comes to his damsel.

Funny that he'd even think about such things now, because he's not with Matthew, not really. Hasn't been since…who knows the exact date, because to be quite honest, he hasn't even thought about his not-boyfriend for at least a year, so absorbed in his career—because that was his first lesson in school, the difference between a job and a career—and in singularity, that sometimes he didn't even remember what it was like to be a plural.

It's not even a sexy memory, because it stripped away the sex and presents the post-coital ponderings, the fingers against heartbeats and the mussed hair which catches the glint of glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. Sex in his childhood home, with a boy he hadn't brought home to meet the parents, but to help him prepare his parents' double funeral. Alfred didn't see at is wrong to have sex there—if anything, it was the only right thing that happened that weekend. And who cares about staining sheets which were going in the trash the next day anyway?

As it were, Alfred hadn't thought about Matthew in a year, hadn't touched him in two, and maybe he would have dropped all those memories and that longing completely. Because that's what growing up is made for. Because that's the way the cookie crumbles. Because hey, why not? Everyone else is being callous with memories and people, so why not jump on that bandwagon?

And then he fished out what remained of our damsel Matthew Williams, pulled him to the surface, ripping off his own diving mask and his gloves, the bacteria in his stomach swimming around like eager little puppies waiting at the door as he looks at the way the murky white hoodie shrinkwrapped to skin Alfred is sure he's licked and kissed and bitten every square inch of.

Matthew's more purple than peach. Or he is a peach, and he's bruised. Or, no, he's just Alfred's dead ex not-boyfriend, fished out of the sewer courtesy of your tax dollars and the police dive team, and this isn't just some sack of meat Alfred's paid to resurface, but a sack of meat he's been intimate with in ways that would border on unprofessionalism, were Matthew alive enough for it to make any difference.

But Alfred just gets the bodies. He doesn't do the investigations. He cares too much for that, and he's too reckless for a desk job. And who cares about a dead faggot with blunt object puncture wounds, unless it's the dead faggot that stole your gay virginity? Who cares about anyone's purple-blue-black lips unless they're lips you've already kissed, and kissed, and kissed, and swore you could taste a hint of maple each and every time? And who cares about anyone's hollow eyes unless they're eyes that redefine everything you've ever considered about eternity and commitment and need?

Who cares about love unless you're the one in love?

And it's only now, Alfred dripping the filthy city water he's practically made his home onto the trampled pollution-retardant grass, and looking at this sack of skin which is held together by wet jeans and a hockey-logo sweatshirt, at hair which used to amaze him with how soft and warm and safe it felt, running his fingers through it after having the whip marks on his back treated and mock-kissed, his ass aching from whatever sadistic dildo fucking Matthew decided absolutely needed to be administered, or Matthew's ass aching from ordering Alfred to ram him until his ancestors could feel it, only then did he realize it.

He was in love.

And Matthew was too dead to ever feel it back.

Someone could say something about timing, or perhaps irony, but neither are accurate, because really, how much different from this is any other scenario?

Aren't we all just fishing the fragments of our secret lovers from sewage?

Hallmark should print that on a greeting card.