8th July, 2011; Cardiff, Wales

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Occasionally, Wales indulged in daydreams where he sold all his belongings, moved as far away from the UK as it was possible to get and, most importantly, never saw any of his family ever again. Attractive as the fantasy might be at times, he knew he would never actually want to live it, partly due to the fact that he began to miss his country even when he was halfway across the Severn Bridge, but mostly because, even though they infuriated him beyond reason more often than was probably healthy, he loved his siblings.

He reminded himself of this repeatedly as he edged around the wreckage of his living room: I love my brothers. I love my brothers. I love –

He stepped on something which crunched ominously. "Jesus Christ, Lloegr, is that my telly?" He lifted one foot and glanced down. "It is. It's my fucking telly. What the hell happened?"

England blinked slowly at him. "I'm not sure."

"You're not sure? You destroy my house and you're not sure?" Wales was aware he was near-screaming the words, but given that there were burn marks scorched on three of his walls, his curtains were in tatters, and his carpet was littered with pieces of glass and television innards, he couldn't exactly find it within himself to care about modulating his tone. "Bloody hell, I leave the two of you alone for ten minutes, and…"

It only occurred to Wales in that moment and with those words that he couldn't see Scotland anywhere. "Where is Yr Alban, Lloegr?"

"He's…" England looked at his shoes, his (trembling) hands, and then, finally, sidelong at Wales. "There may have been a slight accident."

"Yes, I had noticed. What sort of accident?"

"Magical. We had a… minor disagreement whilst you were out and, well." He waved his hand towards Wales' sofa, which had miraculously escaped with only minor singeing.

England and Scotland's magical talents had always been strongest in the field of hexes, and they had spent much of their youth cursing each other with various unpleasant ailments, animal heads, and the like. It had been many centuries since they'd last deployed magic in one of their fights, however, and England's skill had increased so much in the intervening years that there was no telling what Wales might find.

Worryingly, there was nothing behind the sofa save for Scotland's clothes scattered amongst a small pile of cushions. "Fucking hell," Wales groaned, "I think you might have blown him up."

"I did not," England sounded indignant, as though it were something he would never dream of doing and was shocked at the very suggestion. "I just –"

Wales shushed him as the pile began to shift. "Actually, you might just have turned him into a rat or something again." He leant further over the back of the sofa and gingerly lifted Scotland's jeans. Bright green eyes stared up at him from beneath them. "Oh. Shit."

"What? What is it? Is he a rat?"

"Not so much," Wales said, pushing the rest of the clothes and clothes aside so he could grab hold of his brother's arm and pull him to his feet. "You seem to have made him tiny."

"I shrunk him?" England sounded less anxious and more fascinated now. And a little smug. "That's an incredibly complex spell and yet I managed to cast it accidentally? That's –"

"No, you haven't shrunk him." Wales sighed. "Just turned him into a kid."

A kid who, if he were human and Wales had to guess, would be no older than six or seven, and almost lost in a dark blue T-shirt which now hung down to his ankles

"Really?" England appeared at Wales shoulder almost instantaneously, peering down Scotland. "Fuck," he breathed shakily, "I don't think I can remember him ever being that small before."

At the sound of England's voice, Scotland began to scowl and his little hands made little fists. It was, Wales thought, strangely adorable.

"You were just even smaller, that's all. Funnily enough, he didn't spring into being at six foot two." Strangely adorable or not, Wales had no desire to live through his brother's childhood, and more particularly, his adolescence, a second time around. "Can you reverse the spell?" he asked.

England shook his head. "I don't think so. It should wear off on its own in a couple of days or so, though. It wasn't that strong."

It wasn't what Wales had hoped to hear, but he thought it didn't sound as arduous a prospect as it could have been, nevertheless.
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"The evil little shit just bit me," England snarled as he backed away from Scotland's hiding place again, this time clutching his knee. He'd already been hobbling somewhat due to a well-aimed head-butt to his vital regions and had presumably presented an easy target. "If I ever manage to catch him, I'm going to kill him."

"Maybe I should try talking to him," Wales suggested. "I'm good with kids."

"You mean you're a complete pushover. You just let them do whatever the hell they want, Wales. They might well like you because of it, but that hardly makes you good with them."

"Nevertheless," Wales said, taking the high road and choosing to ignore the dig, "sometimes you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. You're probably scaring him with all the shouting and swearing."

"Oh, I don't think he's scared, I think he's just being obstinate. No doubt simply because it's me asking him to do something. The more things change, et cetera, et cetera." England threw his hands up, obviously admitting defeat for the moment. "Go on then, knock yourself out."

Scotland had managed to squeeze himself into the tiny gap between two of Wales' bookcases and the corner of the room, arms held tight against his side and knees folded up around his ears. His eyes narrowed, glittering dangerously, when Wales knelt down in front of him, but he didn't seem quite so tense, so ready to attack, as he had when England had done the same.

Wales smiled encouragingly, and pitched his voice low and soothing as he said, "Please, you've got to come out."

Scotland stared back at him silently.

"You can't stay there all day."

Silence.

"You've missed two meals already, you must be hungry. Or need the loo, at least. Please don't piss on my carpet, Yr Alban. Lloegr's made enough of a mess of it as it is."

When his heartfelt plea did not provoke even the smallest of reactions in his brother, not the slightest twitch of his mouth or change in his posture, Wales began to suspect that they might have been coming at this from the wrong angle all along. "Alba?" he said experimentally.

Scotland's eyebrows shot upwards and the combative light in his eyes dimmed to something softer, almost curious.

"Shit," England said, "I didn't just make his body younger, did I."

"Apparently not. How much Gàidhlig do you know nowadays?"

England hummed quietly as he thought the question over. "Not much," he admitted eventually. "And you?"

"A little more, probably," Wales said, because he suspected England's 'not much' equated to 'could probably order a beer and ask directions to the nearest pub', judging by the amount of Welsh he seemed to have retained. "But I'm certainly not fluent. I'm not even sure that he'd have used Gàidhlig allthat much himself back… Back in whatever year it was when he was this size."

Still, it didn't hurt to try something simple. Wales pointed to Scotland, back towards England, and then finally laid his hand against his own chest. "Bràithrean."

Scotland's eyebrows inched a little higher.

"Cymru," Wales continued, "agus…" He waved his hand towards England again, floundering a little. "Agus… Jesus, Lloegr, what the hell was your name back then?"

England made a rumbling sound of annoyance, almost a growl. "I can't fucking remember; I've had so bloody many. Best just go with Albion, I suppose."

Wales nodded and said, "Cymru agus Albion."

Scotland didn't smile so much as stop scowling quite as hard as he had been doing before, and shuffled forward slightly, coming close enough that Wales could probably touch him without even extending his arm to its furthest reach. Wales was reluctant to try, however, as he had no desire to repeat England's earlier mistake and perhaps have his fingers chewed off for his trouble.

"Well, that's fantastic, Wales." England snorted derisively. "At this rate, it'll be another couple of hours before he finally wriggles his way out of there. I hope your Gàidhlig is up to it."
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In the end, it only took twenty minutes. And then another twenty to gently persuade Scotland that neither the fridge nor the cooker were likely to attack him and it was safe to enter the kitchen.

Eventually, Wales managed to get him seated at the kitchen table with a plate of bread and cheese in front of him, which apparently passed muster as it was quickly devoured instead of subjected to several minutes of intense, mistrustful scrutiny.

"I guess you like that, then?" Wales asked him, in Welsh because he couldn't quite recall the Gàidhlig for it and Scotland seemed unwilling to talk to him whatever language he used, anyway.

Scotland's rounded cheeks dimpled deeply when he grinned up at Wales, something which made Wales want to pinch them or maybe ruffle his hair. He fought down the urge, however, as there was every likelihood that Scotland wouldn't take kindly to it now, and the memory of it would embarrass them both when he returned to his proper age.

Wales distracted himself by clearing up the crumbs of bread and cheese that Scotland had manage to scatter all over the floor – if he thought Scotland could comprehend what he said, he would have teased him that his table manners seemed unchanged, if nothing else – until England came storming back from his phone call with Ireland.

"That was about as much use as a chocolate fucking teapot. She's got no idea how to reverse it, either," he said, slamming Wales' phone back in its base unit so hard that Wales was surprised that it didn't crack down the middle.

He then stomped across the kitchen and threw himself onto one of the chairs opposite Scotland, glowering at nothing in particular as was his wont when the world refused to work the way he wanted it to. Scotland flinched away from him, picking up his plate and moving it onto his lap as though he were afraid that England might try and steal his food.

England chuckled. "He probably doesn't even understand who I am, and yet he still doesn't like me," he observed, his off-hand tone completely at odds with the defeated slump of his shoulders.

"As I said before, it's probably just the shouting he doesn't like," Wales said, patting England's bowed back reassuringly, and hoping he didn't sound as though he were lying.
-


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Getting Scotland to go to bed was even more of a struggle than getting him to eat.

He refused to remove the blue T-shirt, even though he kept tangling his feet in the hem, so a bath was out of the question despite the butter he'd somehow managed to smear all over his face and some of his hair. England's attempt to brush his teeth was short-lived, aborted when Scotland bit his arm and refused to let go until the toothbrush was safely hidden away again.

After that, it fell to Wales alone to convince Scotland that the bed in the smaller of his two spare bedrooms was safe to sleep in after England abdicated all further responsibility for their brother by means of locking himself in the larger one and refusing to come out.

Perhaps it was the duvet cover, Wales mused when Scotland stubbornly shook his head yet again. Wales didn't want to throw it out because it had been the first joint present he and Cerys received after she moved in with him, but her mum and Scotland's – and, truth be told, Wales and Cerys' too, though they'd acted suitably appreciative at the time – tastes couldn't be more divergent, and he took the piss whenever he saw it.

Wales ran his hand over the chintzy, frilled monstrosity to prove that it wouldn't bite. "It's perfectly safe," he said in English, Welsh, and after slight pause to ransack the shadowed recesses of his memory, Gàidhlig and even Gaeilge too for good measure.

Scotland, however, remained rooted to the spot.

"Look, I'll show you," Wales said, deciding that a further practical demonstration was probably a good step forward. He kicked off his slippers and slipped into the bed, making an exaggerated groan of pleasure as he laid down. "It really is safe, and I promise you'll never have slept in a bed this comfortable before."

For a moment or two, Scotland simply watched Wales' face carefully, as though waiting for any signs of discomfort which might suggest he were in the process of being slowly suffocated by the duvet. Then, apparently satisfied that his life wasn't likely to be forfeit if he complied, he trotted across the bedroom and leapt into the bed beside Wales.

"See," Wales said, patting him gingerly on the top of his sticky head, "you'll be fine."

When Wales started to get up, however, Scotland suddenly grabbed hold of him, wrapping his arms around Wales' neck, forehead pressed hard against his collarbone.

"Yr AlbanAlba, I have to get up."

Scotland clearly had no intention of letting his brother leave, his grip tightening incrementally every time Wales moved, to the point where Wales found it difficult to breathe. When he finally gave up and relaxed, Scotland did too, rolling away to sprawl spread-eagled on his back.

Wales grumbled his deep displeasure under his breath as he rearranged the pillows and tried to make himself comfortable. He didn't think he'd ever had a decent night's sleep when he'd been forced by circumstance to share a bed with Scotland. If Scotland wasn't hitting him deliberately to wake him up because he was snoring, then he'd be hitting anything within striking distance as punched, kicked and elbowed his way through what must be very violent dreams.

Wales couldn't remember whether Scotland had had such dreams as a child, however, and perhaps he'd be lucky enough that they were something which had only started to occur as Scotland grew older.
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He wasn't.