Title: Sweet as Ice-Cream
Author: The DayDreaming
Ratings/Warnings: Rated T for TOTORO! Slight language.
Summary: America finds himself eating Superman-flavored ice-cream (Superman, why are you so fucking delicious?) late at night, and goes from there.
A/N: Written for the CMC event on the Russiamerica comm, for the October 22nd prompt, 'Late Night Wanderings.'
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Alfred shoves the ice-cream into his mouth, depressing his tongue and filling his mind with the taste of cold metal (something familiar, something odd, something comfortingly uncomfortable), before whipping the spoon out and taking the oozing cream in at the same time with a curl of his upper lip. It's sweet and mind-numbing, a mix of blue and yellow and red that inevitably melts into a sage green mess, but it's what he needs (because maybe it is uncomfortably comfortable).
He wishes to be all things saccharine.
Because maybe, maybe…it's what he wants him to be, and doesn't it always seem like what he wants is always the right thing?
He bites into the ice-cream a little faster, and hey, aren't those teeth marks imbedded in his stainless steel spoon?
"I am what I eat," he remarks to himself, and a patron sitting at the next table over utters a quiet 'amen to that.'
If he can be sweet and cold, smooth and creamy—well, won't everyone love him?
And somehow it's appallingly easy to take his spoon and jab it down so hard that it breaks through the waxy paper of the bowl.
"Ever get locked out of your own house?" he asks, and the man from earlier only nods sagely.
"Women," the man says.
"Foreigners," Alfred replies.
He sits for a minute and watches the tie-dye of his desecrated ice-cream leak across the table before he swipes half-heartedly at the spill with an un-absorbent napkin and places the rest of his treat in the trash.
Treat.
Pfft.
More like the comfort food of a woman scorned.
He walks out of the little old-time ice-cream parlor and sets to the streets, hands shoved in his pockets and wondering whether he can find a convenience store that sells cookie-dough ice-cream in two-gallon tubs.
As it is, he decides to save the sole twenty two dollars and seven cents he has left in his pocket for a bus ride home in the morning, the time when he'll bust down his own door, grab that stupid Ruski by that fugly scarf of his, and bodily throw the bastard out onto the street.
He legs it on the sidewalk, by-passing stragglers heading home for the evening and rowdy teenagers trying to stay out past curfew.
It's eleven o' clock at night and Alfred F. Jones, United States of America, has nowhere to go.
What a bitch.
He promises himself to never invite that bastard over to his house again, never talk to him, never look at him, never even acknowledge his existence. The greatest cold shoulder of the century, because goddamn it that bastard deserves it.
Definitely.
Because Alfred definitely doesn't deserve what that stupid, stupid big-nosed butthead said to him.
Because being called an idiot and useless and no-good and a nuisance and Gods above why do I put up with you is—is—
Alfred sniffles.
He swerves and enters a supermarket, where he splurges on a carton of chocolate chip cookies, a box of doughnuts, and a tub of cheap, generic vanilla ice-cream.
He can't make it home on nine dollars and seventy-eight cents, but that stupid bastard calls him fat all the time anyways, so he may as well walk all the way.
He sits on a bench a couple blocks from the grocery store (God, don't need them calling him fat, too) and tears into the ice-cream carton. He doesn't have a spoon, but swiping his finger through the slightly softened mass works just fine. He gets creative a couple minutes later and starts make sandwiches of the ice-cream with his cookies.
See; he can be smart.
He thinks about adding doughnuts to the equation, but decides to save them for the morning.
Morning.
He hopes that bastard wakes up cold and alone. And he better not fucking sleep in his room.
He runs out of ice-cream ten cookie-sandwiches in, and switches to just mainlining the cookies as he gets up from his bench, grocery bag clutched tightly in his hands. He's thirsty, and so heads towards the local library some two or three miles away, where he can get a free drink.
If he thinks hard enough, he can forget about the ache in his feet. But all he can think of is how stupid he is to have let that man get in his home (his head, his heart; there's not much of a difference, is there?) and lock him out, and let all of those things that vodka-guzzling drunkard said throughout the years just slide right past him without confrontation.
Maybe he was naïve, thinking that the insults would stop after a couple months of going out, years, a decade, more…
Why can't anyone he knows forgive and forget?
Alfred wonders, if he just keeps walking, wandering into the night, maybe—maybe he can walk away from the world that locks its front door to spite him. Walking in the dark is so much easier than standing still in the light.
Batman is a hero of the night, right?
The world is so much larger and simpler in the dark.
He reaches the library, finds the water fountain, and then settles onto a bench at the front of the building, tired and cold. The hatred that burned earlier, that seared its way through the deep crevices of his heart is now nothing but a dull, numbing thrum. He can taste ice-cream on his tongue still.
"I am what I eat," he says, with an air of finality.
He wishes he could be all things saccharine.
He lies down on the open cement bench, staring up at the cob-web strewn awning above him. His head hurts a little, and he feels sick. He rolls on his side, just in case, wraps his arms around his torso (his jacket is in his house his house his house), and dozes through the night a shivering wreck.
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(This A/N was written for the users on livejournal and hasn't been altered. Please forgive any odd language, and the rant.)
D'aaaawww. Oh Alfred, why is it so easy to write you reacting like this? It's so easy to make you act like a woman (may or may not be why it's also easier for me to see him bottoming whoever I pair him with*SHOT*).
That title fooled you guys, huh?
The thing that always annoys me in stories is how people always write these characters that are mean. They always have something nasty to say to America, and America is portrayed with no redeeming qualities. The nasty commenter is often portrayed as someone more intellectually adept, and just generally better without reason. They apparently have no flaws compared to the stupid American (or the over-zealous Korean, or the oblivious Italian, etc.). I just—I don't know. How can you build a relationship on that? America isn't stupid, and he may ignore it for a while, but, seriously. No one likes being called and told, as Russia is implied to have said, "an idiot and useless and no-good and a nuisance and Gods above why do I put up with you." Multiple times. No one likes having their weight constantly brought up.
No one likes being told that everyone hates him or her because of everything that he or she is.
Am I being clear? It's just sort of hard for me to explain. America isn't completely blameless in this, but I wanted to get a point across. I don't like stories that have characters who constantly put down and patronize another character, and that character being patronized doing nothing about it, as is a consistent trend in America-centric stories.
Sorry for ranting guys!
And, well….if you guys would like a bit of closure, when the thirtieth rolls around I'd gladly put up what might happen when Alfred wakes up, the make-up-or-break-up scenario, though I won't tell you guys which. I know this one is a bummer compared to my last two entries (Eram, you were doing such a good job having a sense of humor!). If you'd like it to stay at this end, I'll leave it be.