Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop...
He pleads silently with himself as he clenches his jaw and tugs the knitted cap further down over his eyes. He feels the tips of Francis's fingers just millimeters from his shoulder and jerks away before he can come into full contact and soil himself in touching something so thoroughly horrible.
He's mumbling something not even he can understand, probably an apology, and can't bring himself to stop shaking. At the laughter, his demeanor had completely crumbled. He had been unpleasantly jolted back into himself, cornered and terrified. The nervous happiness of his confession drained to nothing.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
xxx
"Matthieu?" Francis asked, reaching for him again. His smile had faded and was replaced with deep concern. He had thought the boy to be joking as he approached him with a timid declaration of love and so he had laughed. Matthew was so innocent that it was adorable. But an unpleasant change had come over the boy in an instant. He had begun trembling and cringing and had pulled the wool cap down over his blanked expression.
"Sssss...sorry." It was a drawn out shiver of a hiss and Matthew pushed past him to escape into the snowfall.
xxx
Still, it won't stop. Noises catch and echo in his head as he plods through the heavy snow, head down and expressionless. A dog barks somewhere and it clangs into place with France's laughter. It warps into a sneering jeer and his own voice hisses behind everything. Of course, of course. What had he expected after all? He was Canada. No one listened and no one remembered him and no one cared.
xxx
He sank into a swing heavily filled with snow and ignored the automatic shivering and quaking at the frigid air and choice of seat. He remained there for a few hours, his lids sinking with weariness. His breath became lighter and lighter until he acknowledged a crunching in the snow covered sandpit. He looked up into his brother's sad eyes, a reflection of his own pain, and took his hand up to go home.