France looked down at his espresso and tried not to feel so much bitterness at the world in general. What he wanted, at the present moment in time, was to close his eyes, but then that would mean focusing on his headache, which was currently pounding away at his skull like an angry bull trying to break down the door of a china shop. He smoothed down a crease in his trousers - really, his laundress's standards were slipping, he would have to talk to her about that later - and tried to think. The previous night, he and a number of other countries had gathered at Spain's house after a meeting to talk, be merry, and… ah, become inebriated, firstly from some rather nice Italian wine that Romano had grudgingly brought along, trying to look as though he had been forced into doing so, and then when Poland turned up, an ungodly amount of vodka.

As much as France hated to admit it, even to himself, he wasn't as young as he used to be, and so the wine mixed with the vodka (not at once, obviously, that would be disastrous) - and had he really let Prussia persuade him to partake in some of his disgusting beer? How the mighty hadfallen - had caused a rather unforgiving hangover, the likes of which he hadn't known for many years.

"Bad hangover?" Belgium asked brightly, flashing him a smile that would have put toothpaste adverts to shame, had it not been for the tinge of wickedness around the edges. Her smile grew steadily wider as he took a few seconds to answer, something in his temple pulsing.

"I don't know what you mean." He brought his espresso up to his mouth to sip at whilst determinedly avoiding her gaze. She was laughing at him, he knew, but thankfully hid it very well by hiding behind her preferred drink, which was a large mug of sweet hot chocolate. France would like to pretend that he wasn't very fond of sweet things, but guilty thoughts of the amount of Nutella he consumed - 26% of all Nutella in the world, that was ridiculous - brought that little potential internal lie crashing back down to Earth, and - well. They were in a Viennoiserie, after all.

Belgium had assured him that it was a good one when she had arranged for them to meet here, and France had to reluctantly admit that it seemed she was right. The chouquettes that were brought out on spotless white plates did look rather appealing, although it was equally lovely to hear the pleased little sound Belgium made when she bit into hers, closing her eyes briefly as she savoured the taste. France leaned forward slightly to get a better look at her chest; it was concealed by a light green shirt, the buttons working manfully to remain done up, although they were straining a little. Her eyes opened lazily, and when she grinned, cat-like, he knew he'd been caught.

"My brother said he hoped you were well," she said, and France very sincerely doubted this, as Netherlands was, if not the poster child of overprotective brothers, then at least the runner up in the audition process. Probably only beaten by Switzerland. But, alright, point taken, and France leant back in his chair, picking up a chouquette and chewing it thoughtfully. They stayed like this for a few minutes, eating quietly as the noise of the gentle clinking of plates and cutlery of the other clientele washed over them. France even thought that perhaps his headache was starting to recede a little, but it came back full force when Belgium finished her chouquette, wiped her hands on a napkin, and said,

"Right! Let's talk business."

France shot her an injured look.

"Belgium, my dear, you've betrayed me. I thought we were just here to eat and make idle chatter, not talk of finance and other such dull matters."

"You know, as a leading member of the EU, you probably shouldn't be quite so relaxed about finance, and 'other such dull matters'," she said mildly, reaching down to pick her purse up off the ground.

"Probably," France agreed, "but then again, I think I am perfectly justified in being relaxed about finance when I have been stabbed in the back by a friend I thought merely wanted to have the pleasure of my company, not to bring up business, of all things." He watched her open up her purse with a sharp click. She paused for a moment, seemingly hesitant.

"Speaking of backstabbing," she said, "do you remember those coins I wanted to create? Back in March?"

"Were those the ones that… well, how do I put this - commemorated an extremely embarrassing battle I would rather lose all memory of to the sands of time?"

"Are you talking about the Battle of Waterloo?"

"How many other extremely embarrassing battles do you think I have for you to commemorate on your coinage?" France ground out, scowling. A passing waitress shot him a reproachful look, clearly thinking that he was being unkind towards Belgium, when it was in fact, thank you very much, quite the other way round. The boot was - as England so charmingly put it - on the other foot.

"Well…" Belgium coughed delicately, and the resulting noise sounded suspiciously like Agincourt. France decided to let that go, however, instead fixing his eyes on her purse, noting absent-mindedly that she had quite nice hands, really, all things considered. She reached inside her purse and brought out a small handful of coins and placed them on the table. France leaned forward to inspect them.

"Belgium," he said levelly, "what are these?" He already knew what they were, though, and his question did nothing to change the fact the famous lion statue and the word 'Waterloo' printed in neat capitals were staring up at him. Twinkling, almost.

"Coins commemorating the Battle of Waterloo?" she said, as though she too would prefer for them not to exist. France picked up on the little twitch of a smile hiding at the corners of her mouth, though, and knew that she was, in fact, very pleased with herself for doing something she had been told to please not do that, thank you very much.

"Belgium," he said, "I thought you had agreed to withdraw the c-"

"These aren't the same coins," she said hurriedly, as though rushing to explain. "They're different."

A pause.

"Different… how?" Belgium picked up one of the coins and passed it over to France.

"The last ones were €2,00 coins," she said, as though that explained it all.

"Yes."

"And these ones, these ones are €2,50 coins instead. Um. So they're different." France leant back and tried to bite back the bitter words that were threatening to spring free.

"Belgium, I'm afraid €2,50 coins don't exist." And so Belgium explained to him, how, although technically she hadn't been allowed to commemorate his extremely embarrassing battle on €2,00 coins, she had been able to commemorate his extremely embarra-

"Alright, enough with the extremely embarrassing battle -"

-ssing battle on €2,50 coins instead, using an EU rule that allows countries to issue euro coins of their choice, provided they're in an irregular denomination.

Well. France was at loss for words.

Except, no, he wasn't, because he was France, and it very much turned out he had quite a few words to say about this.

"Belgium," he said, "I am Not Pleased about this." He spent slightly longer on the 'Not' and 'Pleased' so that she would definitely be aware of the intended capitalisation. "I have always thought of you as fairly reasonable, compared to some of the other imbecilic countries I have to put up with -" here Belgium made a face as though she was wondering who these other imbecilic countries were, because really, there were so many to choose from, "but I was under the impression that when you agreed to withdraw the original 180,000 commemorative coins that you'd created that you weren't going to then swan off and make the coins anyway using some silly EU loophole."

"Johan Van Overtveldt said 'the goal was not to revive old quarrels in a modern Europe'."

"Yes," France said, scowling, "but we can't all just listen to what Johan Van Overtveldt has to say, or we might end up commemorating the Battle of Waterloo on a €2,50 coin-"

"Johan Van Overtveldt said there's been no battle in recent history as important as Waterloo." France stared at Belgium in disbelief.

"Does Johan Van Overtveldt not remember the trivial little matters of World Wars One and Two?" But alas, France was never to find out if Johan Van Overtveldt recalled the World Wars or not, because he didn't wait for Belgium to reply and continued speaking. "Belgium," he said, "I will never use these coins. These coins will never enter France. These coins will never come anywhere near France." Belgium shrugged.

"They can only be used in Belgium anyway, so…"

And France felt indignant at that, not because he wanted to use any of her thrice-damned coins, but because he resented being told he wasn't allowed to. He had never done well with being told that he couldn't have something - just look at Hastings.

But then he was ripped out of that indignant feeling by the sudden realisation of wait till England hears about this and oh Lord above - Prussia.

He was so absorbed in the horror of that thought - because he would never hear the end of this from Prussia, would he? - that he hardly noticed he had nudged his little espresso cup off of the table, nor that the cup in question was fast dropping towards the floor. He did notice, however, when it hit the ground, because it smashed into lots of little pieces, bits of porcelain scattering far and wide.

"Fuck," said France, and Belgium looked torn between surprise and then amusement when her eyes travelled to something just behind France. France turned round to see the owner of the Viennoiserie standing there, eyes looking a little wary as they glanced down at the smashed cup and then back up at France… and then at France's expensive, well-cut suit, and then back to France again. Sighing inwardly, France nonetheless leapt to his feet and said how he was very sorry about causing such a mess and would they like to add the cost to his bill? The owner informed him that, yes, they would quite like that, which surprised France greatly, but he nonetheless looked gracious until the owner told him the cost.

"€12,50?" he spluttered. "For one tiny cup?" The owner (and Belgium, he suspected, although as he was turned away he couldn't see her) frowned disapprovingly, and then the owner told him that they would have to replace the set if cups kept on getting broken, so it was actually a reasonable price.

Well.

For want of anything better to do, he reached down to his trouser pocket where he kept his wallet - to be fair, he supposed he was a country and so could probably afford to splash out on a €12,50 cup - and found nothing. He tried another pocket, and then another and another, but try as he might, he could not will his wallet into existence.

"I've lost my wallet," he hissed at Belgium, and she raised one eyebrow, as if to say, what do you want me to do about it?

"Maybe you haven't lost it," she said, "maybe you've just left it somewhere."

"That is the definition of lost," France said under his breath, and then, louder, "could you perhaps…" He let his sentence trail off at the end.

"Lend you some money?" Belgium asked sweetly. "Well, I suppose I could do. For old times sake, you know." She let her eyes drift down meaningfully to the small pile of coins on the table.

"Oh no," France said, and Belgium grinned. "Do you - do you not have anything else I could borrow?" he tried. She said nothing, and when prompted by a tut from the waiting owner, he scowled at Belgium, thought as many rude things in his head about her as possible - he didn't say anything out loud, of course, he wasn't an animal - and snatched up a few of the €2,50 coins. Much to France's chagrin, he had been forced to pay using the coins that mere moments ago he had swore he would never even touch.

The Universe really was - as America would say - a bitch sometimes.

And when Belgium's phone rang a few minutes later, of course she'd changed her ringtone to ABBA's Waterloo. Of course she had.

France would have some Very Stern Words for Sweden later.

END

So, this is 100% true - Belgium did in fact, against France's wishes, use a little-known EU rule to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo on some €2,50 coins. The news probably wasn't broken in a Viennoiserie, though.

Johan Van Overtveldt is the Belgian finance minister and there's a cracking photo of him holding one of the coins on the article I used for this, which can be found here:
www . Nytimes .

Oh, and by the way, Europe type people use commas instead of full stops to separate decimals and whole numbers, just in case you weren't aware of this. It's weird, I know.