*Written for a Secret Santa prompt: Cannibalism; Finland/Latvia/Finland. Dedicated to a friend over at Lolocracy- you know who you are.
Sometimes, all that was left was a shard.
A tiny sliver of off-colored shrapnel laying dull and lonely on the birch-wood panels of Finland's home. He would sweep, now and then, but there it remained- a fragment- under the kitchen table or by the door, at the foot of the stairs or the side of his bed. Not because he could not seem to be rid of it (like a plague of ants come crawling back) but for his own morbid amusement he let it stay. Sweden never noticed, Hana Tamago would give it a routine sniff, lick, disinterested stare and Finland would watch with a bemused smile, pouring coffee for two as the dog flounced away to investigate more stimulating sites.
He admired Hana Tamago. A canine's senses were strikingly keen, yet its life so serenely simple. Sleep, bathe, play, fight, fuck, eat. To a certain degree, all of his citizens lived to the same doctrine. So too did Sweden's, Norway's, Denmark's. The entire world's peoples stripped of all their complexities followed the most basic natural impulses which governed creatures great and insignificant in their shared struggle for survival.
What was a physical manifestation of a country's spirit but a prolonged perpetrator of those very modest motives. Hana did not have to suppress her urges with centuries of tradition and borrowed humanity. She bore no regrets if her playful leap upon a field mouse snapped its neck. If she felt the need to rest, she curled in on herself over the warmth of Finland's lap, despite the hour, and dreamed. No comforting words needed speaking copulating with a passing stray. She required no excuses for sex or hunger.
Neither did he.
The issue with immortality was, one did not have the opportunity to experience the intensity a scant few decades provided. Nor did infamy provide privacy enough to try righting it. Boredom settled over unchanging routine and Finland would forget he didn't always have to be proper or predictable. In the deepest nights, Sweden's arms his blanket, he would lament for the white noise their lives had become until a quiet voice from the darker recesses of his mind called to him on the verge of sleep, 'Patience'.
So subconsciously he waited and salvation came after a particularly grueling meeting with a jostling of elbows, an exchange of glances.
That became its own repetition but one Finland rejoiced at. He could, would, did wait, reclined with his mug between his hands and a compact grin as he stared at the little piece of debris in the corner by the stove. Before the first ring of his doorbell chimed he stood, summoned from his reveries like a clockwork cuckoo not by the sound but by the presence of a nation at his doorstep, trembling. Always trembling, always-
"You're early, Latvia! Come in, come in."
Right on time. The boy never said much in the beginning. He offered a typically quiet, stuttered 'hello' in nicely accented Finnish, asked after Sweden, flushed when he was offered his own mug of brew and glowed brightly when the topic deferred to Sealand.
"H-he's not coming today, is he?"
The usual question given the usual answer. A smile, a large palm over the small, a laugh and a pleasant, 'No.'
Latvia's thin fingers shifted beneath his, clutching ever tighter to the ceramic. White knuckles on white glaze. His head was bowed, his lips were parted and the stream of apologies and grievances that had begun to pour from them were silenced by Finland's kindly chuckle. By knuckles brushing delicately against a pale, pretty cheek. "Go on, let it out. You're not intruding, you never are. This was your home once and you know you're always welcome."
Down slipped his guest from the wicker chair, down to his knees with a broken sob that again was hushed with soothing touches through tangled hair. "I'm here, aren't I? I help you as well, don't I?"
Latvia nodded or else his head rattled from a tremor.
"I always look forward to your visits. Come, come."
They rose as one, arms around shoulders, camaraderie through tears and awkward unmatched stumbling toward the back yard and the chill of below Celsius snapping its jaws at expanses of uncovered skin. "Makes this sort of existence bearable doesn't it?"
The boy offered nothing.
Finland squeezed the narrow shoulders he leaned on, rummaging with his free hand through a pocket under Latvia's silent, agonized stare. As subdued as the woods oppressed in thick, cloying white. Even the snow giving way to their boots beneath their cautious steps was too powdered for more than weak, muffled crunches. "Dinner wouldn't be the same without- I'm sorry, it's usually right-"
A weight dropped into the hand seized by a shaking grasp but as the contact broke Latvia merely blinked up into an expression of surprise. His tears had dried. Ice had collected at the corners of his eyes. Frozen. He was frozen. Expectant.
"Use m-mine."
"Thank you."
Finland leaned in, Latvia met him with mouth angled and open. Latvia heaved another ragged sob then Finland swallowed it. Back and forth, give and take. 'Diplomacy' was, after all, at times no more than base, carnal comforts where mortals and their laws did nothing to distract. The being his tongue dipped into would not shrivel unto dust in less than a century nor did he demand of Finland any more than could be willingly given. The winter could not kill them thus they remained as they were, conjoined amidst the trees while the sun and temperature descended. They understood cold. They reveled in it.
From the boy he held close came a sharp, sucking gasp that Finland stole with a strong inhale; watching the excess tendrils of breath bloom crystalline between them. Rising and falling warmth. Hot air above, the slow pall of droplets below.
As lethargic as the drag of the blade in Latvia's gut. It was admittedly a lovely pocket knife, decorated with monochromatic white-tailed magpies and daisies made more vibrant by a thickening sheen of red. When fists curled vice-like in his coat, color poured quicker, gushing from the wound he parted with fluttering fingertips, teased apart by metal and nail to the accompaniment of fluting cries.
Beautiful notes piercing the lull as he pierced through cloth and flesh, careful, precise. Stab, rend, bite. Still affectionately devouring all of Latvia's stuttered, whispered woes punctuated by his pain. There was a slick panic flush on the tilted neck his teeth grazed, worsened as they sunk beneath subcutaneous levels to tear and both men sunk to the frosted earth a heap of bloodied motion. He braced against the seizures in the form he carved, uttering coos into the wispy curls tickling his chin. Wheat blond. Lashes fainter than the light of daybreak.
'Your body is my bread'
Latvia's lips twitched into a smile.
His limbs thrashed and kicked up snow.
'Your blood-'
Finland bent over, put his lips to the pink of an organ peeking out.
He sucked.
'Is my wine.'
Whines, shrill and pitched rang for every nip, each lick along the moist tissues his tender, exaggerated cuts revealed. Some kisses could not drown the mewls welling out of Latvia's bruised, bleeding throat. As a flailing limb lay pinned, another would rise and the boy screamed 'Piedodiet' over and over for the physical rebuttals he could not control. It was a sweet voice struggling through the burst of spiderweb vessels and the cut, cut, sawing into the exposure of his lower abdomen, singing songs of agony in the low timber of creeping death.
"Raivis-" A human name, a name that stirred Latvia to arch toward the arm plunged inside him stroking and pulling intestines out onto the white snow. Pink snow now. Knife point at his thigh, the seam of his clothing. "Close your eyes."
He complied.
Convulsing while howling because the peeling of his uniform away with his skin had not prepared him for the sting of digits more frigid than Russia's entering one cavity where steel entered another. Stretching, peeling him open. The blade at his ribs made gentle dives between each ridge he no longer felt but only saw. In, out, in tandem with the penetration that kept his legs spread wide. It was the butcher fucking his calf with his cleaver still sheathed in its flank and the calf reaching out to touch and grope and claw as it died. An artful composing of a latticework of punctures and lines while pain became pleasure became pain became both became nothing.
Became pure again. Blankness. Potential.
The masterpiece, the final strike swung at the crescendo of their conjoined orgasms. One slice, horizontal across the throat while Latvian bleed out then faded, sputtered, gone. 'Paldies'.
'Ole hyvä.'
The thereafter was habitual, mechanical. Finland withdrew, buckled his belt, carried his lifeless friend into the underbrush. Sometimes, he would take a limb or two because the idea of wasted meat seemed tragic. Sometimes, he simply let him be, march as he did now back into the heat of his home.
Several days later, fresh snow having long since covered the sullied, he knew he would wake early morning to humming in his kitchen and Latvia pouring a shot of vodka, clothing in tatters but body pristine. They would jostle elbows, exchange glances just as they had before, laugh nervously and talk over coffee at the table until it came time for Latvia to don suitable attire and leave.
"F-f-finland."
He found himself in his living room after seventy-two hours of peace glancing up from a novel to the sight of a disheveled nation coming down the stairs, damp from a shower, tired and world weary and entirely intact.
"You're up early."
They laughed, Finland gaily, the other, anxious. "I was w-wondering."
"Ah?"
"How would the others... What would they think of this? O-of what we do?"
"Everyone has secrets, rakas ystävä, I wouldn't worry about it. You're curious, I'm hungry. There's nothing wrong here." He plucked a small, hard shard from the near empty plate at his side, used it to pick his teeth as Latvia stooped to slip a foot into his boot, scratch Hana Tamago behind an ear before straightening.
"Does Sweden-?"
"No."
"S-seala-"
"No one knows."
The hollow little phrase only one of them wanted to hear. Latvia pulled him into a kiss then Finland tucked his book away as farewells were made. He watched him close the door with a tremble and vanish into the furies of a December storm. When he'd return, there was no certainty other than that he would. There had been found a break from tradition that ran deeper than the thrills of war or political debate.
Next time would be his turn under the knife.
He pinched the minuscule fragment held between his fingers and put it up to the light, turned it this way then that then tossed it over his shoulder with a contented sigh.
Sometimes, all that was left was a shard of bone. But that, in itself, was enough.
He could wait for more.
Patience is the Hunter's Virtue
Curiosity his vice
for when he latches onto prey
the Hunter
won't play nice.