It's a bit late for this story, but I found it in my archives and got a little sad that I hadn't published it. Enjoy!
Staring out over the coast from the comfort of his porch, Spain smiled as the sun set behind the waters. The sky dying itself a paling red into the deepening blue, another day gone by and another to come. Scraping the last of the cheese with the grating of his fork, he placed the utensil in his mouth and hummed softly as he walked into the kitchen. All was peaceful, no wars to be fought, and agriculture was picking up. Filling the sink with water, he rolled up his sleeves over his forearms and secured them at the elbow. Spain stared at the pile of dishes on the counter and sighed. He really ought to pick up France's 'clean up as you go' habits but it would be far too much work to figure out how the Francophone kept his work space so neat in the kitchen.
Plunging his hands into the water, he swished the soap in the sink till it grew to a froth and pulled the first of many pots into the hot liquid. In a matter of moments, he had lost track of what he was doing. Mindlessly washing the dishes and letting his thoughts wander to the next meal he would have. Perhaps the Italy brothers would care enough to make an appearance for the first time in a while. He smirked a little, remembering how flustered the older of the two had gotten about the tomato sauce he had spilled on his shirt the time before and how he refused to come out of the bathroom in such a mess.
A sharp pain brought him back from his thoughts. Glancing down at his dish work, he noticed the water tinting to an unsightly red. Pulling his hands out he examined them, yet was unable to find a laceration on the leathered skin. However, when he lifted his arm to inspect it, a trickle of blood slowly dripped off of his elbow and into the water. Blood? Why am I bleeding? Whipping his non-bloodied hand to his shoulder blade he felt a handle reaching from his back. Nauseatingly, he pulled it out begrudgingly slow at the awkward angle. He examined the throwing knife, it didn't have an insignia or identification. Was he going mad? It didn't hurt though he could admit that his shoulder was actually rather numb. Grumbling in his mother tongue, he turned around to see where the weapon had struck him from. In his peripherals, he could just see a slim figure who he could only assume to be female sprinting from the kitchen. She was surprisingly fast, dark brown hair whipping behind her.
"Hey!" Drying his hands on his pants as he ran Spain pursued the perpetrator around the corner of the door frame using his hand to swing around the wall. "Stop!" Jumping the front stairs and stumbling to catch his footing, he followed the girl out to the back listening to his feet pound against the stone of the veranda. It wasn't long before he found his feet tripping over one another, a complete and out of the ordinary lack of coordination overcoming him. Pushing himself onwards, Spain ignored the fuzz starting to crawl into his vision. This woman had just tried to kill him, and rather ineffectively too. When the lawn came to meet his chest however, the last thing he heard was the soft tone of a cellphone being dialed and the crunch of shoes on the grass coming towards him.
"Wakey wakey Antonio." Slowly stirred from his state of unconsciousness, Spain's eyes slowly dragged themselves open. An all too familiar red coat filling his vision. "Good lad. Now then, where did we leave off?"
"Wha... Huh?" Confused, he tilted his head and glanced the man in front of him over. "Arthur? What in the name of- What are you doing?" The man cackled loudly, the strong scent of whiskey washing over Spain's senses. Attempting to get up from his position, he found his wrists and legs to be tightly bound to a dining room chair. England trailed a hand down his shoulder and to his wrist, rubbing a few fingers over the wrist watch that lay there.
"Well, well. Whatcha got there now?" He unclasped the golden device from around the Spaniard's wrist and held it up to examine it. "Might fetch me back the pretty lil' penny it took to pay the kind lass who fetched ya for me, wouldn't it?" Spain shook his head, deciding to play along with the old antics.
"No. That's gold painted aluminium, I don't wear gold in the garden. Where'd you find all of your old stuff though? It looks brand new." Examining the clothing, he came to notice that there was in fact no hole where the Englishman had taken a blow with a sword about five hundred years ago. They were too new.
"Hm? Never heard o' that before. I'll keep it for myself then." He chuckled and tossed it into his pocket. "Someone's certainly lacking the usual charisma, aren't they? What's gotten into your head all o' a sudden? Dressing like a noble don't suit you much." Glancing over the button up shirt, jeans and small pieces of jewelery on his person, he looked back up at England. That's it. He's officially gone. Crazy, nuts, cuckoo, lost it, insane... Listing off a number more of the words he knew to address the situation, he ignored the man sifting through the belongings in the home. Judging from the flag in the pencil holder, he realized that he was in fact in England's house. This idiot was robbing his own home. Now Spain knew that intelligence wasn't his own strong suit, and many times this had been proven to him more often then not by France and England. Yet even he of all people would probably know when he was in his own home.
"Hey, Arthur?" The Englishman cocked his head over his shoulder to look at Spain while not so secretively slipping a few pounds into his coat. "You realize that this is your house right?" "Well 'course it is. Or, it is now." England chuckled and turned to face him, eyes glinting with that annoyingly smug light Spain had gotten rather sick of at some point in his life. "Now then, we left off at me torturing your sorry arse." Unsure of whether instinctively or quite consciously, he felt fear creep up his spine as that terribly wicked smirk from all those years back was cast upon him.
"L-look!" He stumbled over his words, stopping the nation before he could pick up the bowl in the corner and make it to the fish tank with it.
"Aye? I'm a tad busy here if you haven't noticed."
"I know! Trust me, I know. It's just that, don't you get tired of torturing the same person all the time?"
"Eh, not really." Shrugging, the blonde started to fill up the bowl with water from the aquarium, apparently unaware of indoor plumbing.
"Well let's talk it out this time. First off, what did I do now?" Not waiting for the pirate's response, Spain jogged the conversation rather unsuccessfully in the other direction.
"Toni." England poured the water and a very grateful goldfish back into the tank and pulled a side table over to plop himself down on in front of the Spaniard. Wooden heel clacking hard against the table, Spain found himself being forced to maintain eye contact as his once greatest rival held his face to look at him with a strong and unusually callused hand. "What's wrong with ye? Normally you'd be raring to have a go an' prove me wrong." Seeming to flicker between emotions, the thin man thought for a moment. "Fine, we talk. If I don't like what you say then it's the plank for you, got it?" Nodding fervently, Spain felt the hairs on the back of his neck go down.
"Yeah sure. I can live with that."
"I wasn't aware you'd be able to reanimate yerself." Speaking grimly and certainly not smiling, England plopped his hat on the floor next to him, plumage flouncing about and away to reveal the utter disaster of knotted up hair beneath it. "So what were ye planning on gettin' outta torture with?" Easing a hesitant smile onto his face, Spain glanced at the cellphone peeking from his pocket.
"Uh... Well... How have you been recently?" England blinked, apparently dumbfounded.
"You have any opening sentence in the world an' you pick that one?"
"No really! How are you? I don't think I've ever asked before." Broadening his smile, he could see the contagious happiness slowly creep onto the other man's expression in a small smirk."I'm pretty okay right now, so what about you?"
"I'd say about the same. So tell me whatcha joking at 'ere. I'm not letting go of ye due to courtesy."
"I figured. You see that thing in my pocket? Could you grab that for a minute here? I need to know the time." England plucked the phone out of Spain's pocket and looked it over bringing on more cringes then Spain would like to admit as he tossed it carelessly hand to hand. "The little button, yeah that one just put your finger on it." As soon as the screen lit up, Spain had to swallow down his laughter as the pirate threw it at him having it land square on his lap. It became much easier however when England moments later had a glock pointed at an area he'd much rather it not have been. "So that's where Alfred gets it from..."
"Who now?" Despite the stony expression on the man's face, his eyes were wild as though he had been held on gunpoint himself. "No matter, bloody 'ell is that thing?" When Spain didn't answer, or was trying to think of a way to answer that it was a small tablet that stored countless files on it to a man who didn't even know what electricity was by the looks of it, he was shortly grabbed by the collar. The chair tipped forward till he was forehead to forehead with England, one set of emerald glaring into the other, with a gun barrel dead center of his chest. "Look 'ere scum, I don't have time to deal with sorcery. Yer pretty damn talented if I do say so myself, but that just gives me another reason to kill ya right 'ere an' now."
"Arthur, do you have any tattoos? At all? Anywhere?" Throwing back the chair, Spain's head narrowly missed a table as his back landed on the floor.
"What're ye going on about now? Ye have ten seconds before I blow yer bloody head clean off!" This was not the right England.
"What year is it?"
"1532. 4...3...2..." Wow. Artie really must've screwed something up in his gibberish this morning...
"Okay! I have an answer, don't kill me!" Squeezing his eyes shut at the click of a trigger, he waited for the bullet. And waited. And waited. It wasn't until he could hear a muffled sound that eventually grew quite loud. Laughter. Yet it wasn't the cackling, maniacal laughter he was expecting it to grow into. No, it was actually quite normal. Normal, British, laughter.
"You should see yourself right now! Oh my Lord you're priceless! Tell me Antonio, would you have killed me first if I smashed your phone on the ground?" Peeling his eyes open, he felt himself being pulled up and unbound as Prussia, France, and Romano entered the room.
"My, my Arthur. You've become quite the actor over the years, non?"
"Maybe you should've given your bloody calender to him. What year is it? Look at the day first man!" Blinking, Spain noticed the calender that had been well in plain sight the entire time. It was indeed April 1st.
Now he wasn't sure whether to be mad at the collective, thoroughly impressed, or if he should mention the whole stabbing thing. Maybe the stabbing could take priority. As Prussia laughed at him openly and Romano appeared to be concealing his own rather miserably from behind his hand as to not draw attention to himself (more then likely out of fear for someone ruining it for him), Spain rubbed his wrists, glancing about the room.
"I can believe you all wanted me to get scared shitless, but why did you have to stab me to do it?" England looked at him.
"I don't even have a knife, how could I have stabbed you?" This seemed to puzzle everyone in the room.
"Well the hire did say something about him already being passed out when she got there." Romano shrugged, yawning a little.
"Lovino, why didn't you tell anyone?"
"She said she drugged him up and brought him back here like you asked so there wasn't any problem."
"Hm, you were probably hallucinating. C'mon, it's beer time! Drinks on me for Toni only. My credit can't support all of your drinking habits." Prussia slapped him on the back, guiding everyone out of the room.
"I missed a siesta for this. You're lucky I didn't stab him to get this over with faster."
"So in other words...?"
"No." Spain could only chuckle at the weak threat, but the words stuck to his mind. It couldn't have been him. It was obviously a girl that threw the knife. Yet somewhere in his subconscious he could feel that a small gap where his wallet used to be was replaced by a taunting note most likely about stain remover pens.