A/N: This was certainly interesting to write, the pure product of my mind's ramblings on a Saturday morning.

Inspired by all manner of things, but the most obvious one I suppose is Oomph!'s 'Das Weiβe Licht'. I advise you listen to it, and of course look up the German-English lyrics. And if you can understand it already, colour me jealous. Rammstein's 'Du Hast' was also a major one, in particular 'Willst du bis zum Tod, der scheide (or, of course, 'Tod der Scheide', which puts such a wonderful spin to it, no…'death of the vagina', yes, yes) /sie lieben auch in schlechten Tagen'. And then the rest are various works of fanfiction, which I can't remember enough to credit even if you threatened me with England's scones. (As a side note, my mother loves those scones. Buys them all the time. Urk–)

And now, I do believe the A/N is longer than the fic itself. No, I am not stalling.

'La petite mort', I'm sure we're all very familiar with… La petite mort, French for "the little death", is an idiom and euphemism for orgasm. This term has generally been interpreted to describe the post-orgasmic state of unconsciousness that some people have after having some sexual experiences." As quoted directly from Wikipedia.

Enjoy.

-x-

La Petite Mort, Then a Little More

When France says he wants to kill him, England has never once doubted otherwise.

France is not a man of his word, or at least, he is perceived to be such by all those acquainted to this rose-toting Casanova, and he is perfectly content to keep it so. This may be that the antithesis amuses him: the greater their assurance, the greater their inaccuracy, and perhaps, wearied as he is, wearied as they all become at some point be it sooner or later, as is the nature of their responsibility, it is the pure, bright simplicity of it that charms him, like a child who has discovered the art of lying for the first time, and is captivated by it time and again. It is so easy, so very easy to curl the tongue another way, and wind round the truth with just a simple word of 'no' instead of yes.

Sometimes, when he is not remarking, as if it were a new revelation to him each time, how when the trite three are cut down to just its core the two humble letters could wield such power, it dismays him that there is no-one to understand the artist he is, and appreciate his skill. Or at least not in his lifetime, and even then perhaps not, and he values this to be the stigmata of a true artist. But his go further still: there are many who claim they do, there are yet more who express envy at his particular prowess – but not one of them recognise that they do not in fact recognise anything at all, and none of them realise that they are presented with a magic mirror, yet content themselves with seeking out only their own reflection.

Do not misunderstand: France is a man of taste, too, and his taste vary in such a manner that he finds dwelling in the world of yeses also, and twines silken strands of beauty in its many forms – a panorama of words, a touch upon the pillowcase – to weave with dexterous fingers garments for himself. Sheer, rich, elaborate or the gossamer-light of dreams, these are the guises he dons as he glides smoothly through the world's stage, an actor sure that the mirror will never break, for others perhaps but never for him.

The audience have eyes only for the actors, but the actors can see all the thousands held in their thrall, and perceive that they cannot see past the stage and the performance they put on. They cannot see past the scenes, there is little use for them trying to see through the scenes but they do so anyway and believe that they are touching a pinnacle with their fingertips, grasping at purely visual hallucinations and they would know it if only they would close their eyes and feel instead. Detach it from the other four, and anything the sense contacts is instantly intensified to vivid colours and textures and scents and all because it is all so basic, to feel things stripped to as they are, and this is the world of no.

The audience cannot see between sets, when the actors shed their façades, dropping them to the floor of the dressing room. They cannot see the dark areas, dark because sight is redundant there and many of them do not even know of the gaps let alone realise that they cannot see them, the actors scrape the make-up from their faces before their bedroom mirror, and wipe off the lipstick.

And they do not see how in these lapses, France stages his own Romeo and Juliet, a rendition fitting of the shadowy scope ruled by the neurones in the skin that are set alight by a warm, moist breath on the shoulder, a brushing of fingertips.

An assassin's art is his mission, how the beginning is the issuing of orders and the identification of the target, the end the closure of both, the vanishing of what was never disclosed to begin with, and in between there is only the linear single-mindedness towards achieving that end. An actor's art is his performance, the holding of a million hearts in his hand as he dances on razor blades for them. Between the sets, France amalgamates the two.

They are all familiar with death, they have all unleashed flocks of carrion-stripping ravens to blacken the skies of each other. France, however, considers himself to be exemplary. He is the only one to have threaded it into a cloak, invisible to everyone else and even himself, but he can feel it slink about his shoulders like dark, sleek satin. Those he plays siren to have the privilege, for the brief fraction of time its wings close over their breaths and they can see the darkness and they can see the light. But they do not appreciate and they forget, they forget that they have seen angels and most of all they forget that it was France who'd showed their ethereal beauty them.

France has killed a myriad little deaths, and though they do not realise it, each time they leave from between his sheets in the morning a little part of them is gone. France has kept it, and it is already part of his cloak.

He whispers into their ears that he will love them until they die, and he is true to his words.

He is clothed in the beautiful cloak of his again, that and nothing else, which is just as it should be. Beneath his hands are a pair of shoulders, and beneath his thighs the sides of waist flowing into hips, which is also correct. He sits astride like a knight upon his steed, his cloak fanning out behind him, furling and unfurling to the pulse of the winds like angel's wings. He is looking down, down at where everyone else is, scurrying and worrying about like so many ants, and below him, England raises his eyes and looks straight up.

If France has killed a million times, then he has died only a negligible fraction fewer by the same hand.

And what sets him apart is that he knows that. He knows that France kills him, and like heady, intoxicating liquors temptation slips past his lips again, and before it has even slid past his tongue he thirsts for more.

Dying and death he does not care much for. It is the killing that fascinates him, the trance in France's eyes that transcend the human's hankering after sapphire and cornflowers and forget-me-not; rising over mountains with snow scattered over the peaks like handfuls of white flour or the strewn petals of edelweiss, they are the clear blue skies where no angels can be seen.

He does not remember this, of course, when he wakes again with a feeling of having been ravaged by alpine blizzards that have stripped away his skin with their relentless lashing, even though he raises his head he can still see the pale but very much present surface coating him, and when he passes his fingertips across it it is still intact, still smooth and supple and unbroken. Smudges of bruises like smog-filmed sunsets and the slivers of new moons do not count in perspective of what he had been thinking of…feeling.

By all rights he should, remember the unearthly emptiness of France's eyes at least, the many shifting lights in the ocean that drowns him, because he hadn't quite died yet, not then, but it's as if he is trying to rid a sheet of a stain, and when he takes the bleach to it the fluid spreads from the epicentre and ends up taking out the original patterns on the fabric directly around it, too.

None of this deters him from coming back. Why, the forced amnesia might even be the reason he does, a high he cannot get from adrenaline sports or a tank of pure oxygen or cold needles weeping sickness and addiction into his veins. He drinks, but the memory is only blurred and jumbled, and anyway, the pain afterwards is dissatisfying for its triviality, a mere migraine that can be dispersed by painkillers and whatever other human means, and anyway, the taste in his mouth when he wakes is unpleasant – sour, like curdled acid. Like this, though…he opens his eyes to sensation, sensation with the feeling that there is something lacking and the feeling grows stronger the more he thinks on it but sensation nevertheless, and among them the sensation that all taste has been burned from his mouth.

And it is sublime.

A man might confess to finding stimulation from killing others, he might confess to necrophilia, and the horrified masses would be shocked and condemn him and burn him at the figurative stake, perhaps branding him animal, screaming him insane. Then, what would that make England, who gets his kicks from being killed, from endorsing in necrophilia after that?

Why, it makes him fulfilled, the caustic agony that mirrors, satire of taste that is absent at the least, Purgatory, but is the very opposite of catharsis. And as a nation cannot die, especially a nation such as him, then paradoxically enough it means that he can die over and again.

"Why do you do this?" he breathes through his teeth, sucking in a sharp snatch of air immediately afterwards, as if it was imperative for him not to lose any. In perfect rhythm, France also chooses that exact moment to expel a breath that snarls from the back of his throat to the roof of his mouth and out through lips stretched back thin in a grimace, teeth flashing white just beyond.

"Judgement," France hisses back, sardonic, strands of damp blond hair curling down like Medusa's coils, and a second later England's hands are fisting onto the sheets as if he would tear them, and triumph blazes in blue flame. England, clenching his teeth, turns his head to the side and does not ask again, or indeed make any further sound or movement. When France half-smirks, half-grins at this, sharp rows of shark's teeth on the show, there are equal measures of gleeful smugness and hooded disgust.

When he opens his mouth to speak, all he says is a derisive "You won't understand."

"Yes, I do–"

And France's hands close over that slim throat, before any more words can leak from it.

-x-

A/N: So. So.

Erotic asphyxiation, somehow I don't believe this is quite it.