Let Nothing You Dismay
OK, I don't know what it is but nothing gets me in the Christmas spirit more than looking through magazines with Christmas stuff in them. Like, I'll be getting my mail and it's about 30 degrees warmer than it should be and there's not a single snowflake in the sky, but when I get back in the kitchen and start flipping through pages of flannel socks and plastic Christmas trees and monogrammed bathrobes and overpriced fruitcakes and everything it just makes me want to bellow FA LA LA LA LA at the top of my lungs and make hot cocoa and bake Christmas cookies and string up the lights! Unfortunately this year, I started getting in the Christmas spirit about a month early. I had just barely gotten my Halloween costume in order (I went as Marty McFly, LOL) and I suddenly just NEEDED to put on the Christmas music. I have a soft spot for swing and stuff. It gets me all nostalgic. (I hate that word, it makes me feel like I'm getting old!) It was so hard to wait until after Thanksgiving to start putting up Christmas lights this year! England came to visit me that week.
"Those are utterly excessive," he told me stuffily, and then tried to feed me a basket of his scones. I told him his eyebrows were excessive and he spit out his drink and basically that was the proudest moment of my life, besides maybe V-Day, and the invention of indoor plumbing.
So it's Sunday night and I'm ordering stuff on Amazon, right? I'm beginning to realize that I should have ordered England's Christmas present about a million years ago, because I'm paying a ton for shipping just so I can get it here and wrap it for him before the 24th, but I had no idea what to get him until about twenty minutes ago. It's something I've wanted for myself for a while, and he knows it, but at least I was thinking of him too. Right?!
Last year I got England a chia pet shaped like a cat. He got me a cappuccino machine which installs directly into the wall. Whenever I want a cappuccino I just set my cup in the little compartment in the wall and out comes cappuccino juice, isn't that neat? It's saved my life a few times, no joke. It only takes about 2 minutes to fill the cup, which is so nice for when I have to get up early and fly out of the country. La Guardia this time of year is a madhouse. Not that it isn't always. And good luck getting through Heathrow, am I right? It's like, busier than any American airport, but not only that, everyone is much more British. People look at me funny. Probably because of the big "USA" sticker on my luggage! England hates picking me up from Heathrow. I can't imagine why.
Anyway, Amazon is a dangerous place. I mean the website, not the rainforest. Although I guess the rainforest is dangerous too, if you don't know what you're doing. :O But the website is even more dangerous. Sometimes I'm on there for hours just…buying stuff. Not even stuff I need, just things that I like. I once spent half of my savings account on funny ties, which was totally worth it. I bought a snuggie last week which is an actual godsend. I'm wearing it right now and it's incredible. But I also bought flannel sheets and pillowcases with stars and stripes on them! I bought replacement parts for my record player, and then bought a bunch of records to go with it. I found it in my storage a few months ago. I hadn't touched the thing since the Cold War, isn't that wild? Speaking of which, apparently Russia doesn't celebrate Christmas on Christmas. What the heck, right, Russia? He celebrates it on the 7th of January which is probably the most unexciting and bland day of the year. Like, really? I was in Moscow last February and they had this huge pancake festival which was pretty good, though. I love pancakes. OH ANYWAY! England's present. I got him a banana bunker! I've had my eye on those glorious things for so long. They're perfect for storing bananas so they don't get bruised. :O I hope he likes it!
So what happened is this. I'm ordering all this stuff on Amazon (England's banana bunker and some vintage stamps from the '40s and some sweet fire decals for my favorite car [black convertible '67 Chevy Impala, still runs like a charm]) and getting ready to watch some movies because I don't have to go to bed just yet, my flight isn't till tomorrow afternoon. Yeah, I'm going to Geneva for some meeting. England will be there, though, so that's all right. Anyway I was trying to figure out which movies to watch besides The Usual Suspects and High School Musical 2 and The Blues Brothers, and also obsessively checking Neko Atsume in case Tubbs came back (I love Tubbs, thank you Japan for such a marvelous character). (Also: the Neko Atsume theme music doesn't go very well with Ellington. It's a shame, because I think the cats would like Ellington. I do, anyway.) So I was doing all those things, and also sending screenshots of my cats to Japan because he likes when I send him those, when my phone rang.
It was England. (I have him saved in my phone as the top hat emoji.) But the weird thing about England calling is that there's a time difference between New York and London. I memorized it. It's five hours, which would make 10:00 in New York…uh…three AM.
Now, England doesn't really sleep as much as I do on his days off, but still this was a little strange for him. Maybe his imaginary friends were keeping him awake or something. But I answered the phone anyway.
"Hello?" I said into the phone. I was eating popcorn so I accidentally smeared butter all over the screen when I answered it. (Yeah, I made popcorn before starting the first movie and I was already almost done with it.)
"America?" he said. It was England, all right, and he definitely called me on purpose. He didn't fall asleep with his phone in bed and roll over onto it and ass-dial me like he did a long time ago. One time he left me an hour-long voicemail of him mumbling in his sleep. He didn't believe me when I told him.
OK, so here's the second thing that was weird. It was definitely England's voice, but not his normal voice. England was drunk. Like, really drunk. And also, he was sort of crying.
"Um, yeah?" I said. That seemed safe. :O
"America…" England said drunkishly. I turned off Ellington. Some music was still coming from somewhere. Oh. I closed out of Neko Atsume. There. Silence. I listened to England sort of catching his breath from crying for a few awkward seconds.
"Um, isn't it like really late where you are?" I said, not sure where this conversation was going.
"I'm outside your door," said England.
:O
WHAT?!
I got up from the couch and tiptoed over to the door in my socks. Sure enough, there he was, right on the mat, staring down at my hedgehog boot brush that I got from Marshalls. (Seriously, I don't blame him, that thing is the cutest boot brush I've ever seen!) He couldn't even stand up straight. He was leaning on the door handle and he looked all blurry from the frosted glass.
I unlocked the door and he fell over the threshold.
"OK, I see you," I said into the phone, but then realized that that was stupid because he had just fallen on top of me. I hung up on him.
"Sorry," England coughed. Ew! He'd been smoking, too. I could smell the stale smoke on his coat. His hands were freezing. "I didn't mean to…turn up…but—"
"It's okey! :3" I said. I didn't really say ":3", obviously. I just had cats on my mind from all the Neko Atsume. "Why're you here?"
"Happenstance," England said, rubbing his hands together. Um…okay. You just accidentally wandered all the way to New York and ended up on my doorstep? Sure, England. I decided to just go with it. Lots of times you have to just go with it with England. It's much easier to talk to him that way.
"Well, come on in!" I said. "I'm going to watch High School Musical and eat Nutella on a spoon, since I'm all out of popcorn. But I'll probably just end up watching a bunch of cat videos on youtube. You can join me, though. Here, let me hang up your coat for you."
I reached for his coat. It was a sort of wooly green one with a big collar that I'd never leave the house in (I'm more of a casual jacket kind of guy, myself) and I figured he'd be more comfortable without it on, but when I went to take his arm he…flinched. Like he was hurt or something.
"Um, England, you okay?" I said.
"I'm a little drunk," England said woozily. "Sorry." He sort of staggered over to the counter and sat in the stool he usually sits in when he visits. OK, I thought, so at least he can remember which stool to sit in. But he was still holding his arm like there was something wrong with it.
I had to be careful how I handled this. I needed to be tactful. "What's with your arm?" I said.
England was frowning so hard that his eyebrows looked like one long caterpillar. He sighed. The sigh sounded kind of squeaky, like he had swallowed his teakettle by accident. And he was still wearing that stuffy British coat. At least it wasn't red, LOL! I'm not a huge fan of red coats, obviously.
"It's an old injury," he said. "It's nothing."
I opened Neko Atsume again. Tubbs was back! Hooray! I love that cat. "Well, you can stay here for a while," I said. "We can go to Geneva together."
England groaned Britishly, and finally took off his coat. "Fuck Geneva," he said. "I just need to be alone."
OOPS.
"I can go in the other room if you want," I said, embarrassed. "I'll use headphones to watch my movies."
"No—" England started, slumping down against my counter. I hoped he wouldn't start drooling or something. He's done that before. "Bugger—I mean, alone with you."
WHAT?! :O :O :O
"Um, England," I said, laughing kind of nervously so that I looked like that emoji with the sweat on its forehead. "What are you talking about?"
England started to roll up his sleeve. At this point I was just sort of like, UM?! and hoping he wouldn't, like, take off his clothes or anything. You can't consent if you're intoxicated! :O
"You're the only one I could…share this with," England started. His arm was covered in tattoos and stuff. I guess I had never realized how many he had because he was always wearing long sleeves. But seriously, who tattoos the words "SEX PISTOLS" on your arm in all caps?
(England, that's who, apparently.)
England stuck out his arm at me and pointed to the crook of his elbow. "Right there," he said. "Shrapnel scar. It always starts to hurt something awful this time of year…"
He kind of hugged his arm to his chest. I stared at it.
"Well, it's just a scar, right?" I said. "I have plenty of them." And I do. I have a scar behind my ear all the way back from 1812. There's a scar on my ankle from Gettysburg and one right under my ribcage from the Battle of the Bulge. "Why's it hurting? Why're you here?"
England sighed again, slumping down even farther in his stool so that his face was squished against the counter.
"Eep-rr," he mumbled squishily.
"What?"
England turned his face away from the counter so that he was looking at me. "Ypres," he said again, looking annoyed. "A hundred and one years ago. Shrapnel. I keep thinking about…but it's stupid, all of it…"
He started shaking his head back and forth, and put his head in his arms with a funny "fwump" sort of noise.
"Hey," I said, reaching for the jar of Nutella and a spoon. "Maybe you just need something sweet?"
No response.
I got up and turned off some of the lights so that it was more cozy. Then I turned on the Christmas lights! Those were sure to cheer him up, even if he happened to think they were excessive. Sometimes you need a little excessive cheer.
"I owned the world, America," England said softly. "But how fragile it all was…there we all were, hovering on the brink of collapse, and we didn't even know it…bound to blink out any minute…"
Um…yikes. OK, so you may have noticed this, but England either gets really really loud and obnoxious when he's drunk, or really really dark and philosophical. I guess this was going to be a dark and philosophical night.
I patted his shoulder awkwardly. "There, there," I said. "It's almost Christmas. No time to be sad. Tidings of comfort and joy, and all that."
England looked up from his nest and actually gave me a tiny smile. He was blushing like mad. "If anybody embodies the Christmas spirit," he said, "it has to be you, America."
I laughed. That was just ridiculous. "What about Finland?" I said.
England sighed. "Finland is…different," he said, holding onto his arm again.
My phone buzzed, killing Christmas spirit dead. Oh. It was a notification from the Christmas Countdown app, telling me that there were only 4 days until Christmas. It was midnight.
"Come on," I told England, and brought him over to the couch. I tucked him in with my snuggie. (Oops, it was covered in bits of popcorn. He was too drunk to notice, though. Whatever.) "Just rest for a while."
England started drunkenly humming a little bit. I think it was supposed to be God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. Great, now that's going to be stuck in my head while I'm writing this. It's definitely not my favorite Christmas carol. (My favorite carol is Jingle Bell Rock, and Sleigh Ride. Just hear those sleigh bells jingling ring ting tingling too!)
"It's…quite beautiful in here, America," England said, looking around at my Christmas lights. I beamed proudly.
"I know."
"This part of the Great War wasn't so bad," England mumbled. I sat down next to him on the couch and patted his head a little bit. His hair was so soft. "Winter nights. We'd just…gather in the trenches…everybody would light their cigarettes so that they looked like tiny comets… the cannon fire would fade away for a while, especially when the wind was so loud …sometimes we even got to see the stars through the smoke. The night sky was always at peace, no matter how much we shot at each other. And for a while, all of it could just…just disappear. The trenches, the mud, the barbed wire, no man's land. There was a sort of magic in the air."
I wanted to make a joke about England and his magic, but Christmas is the exception. I totally believe in Christmas magic. I always have and always will. I guess I got that from England himself.
"Christmas isn't a holiday, it's an idea—that's why the magic works," England said. "That as long as you believe there's magic, there will be. But I haven't felt that brand of magic since 1914."
So I didn't join the Great War (England still calls it that) until three years after that, but I can picture it like it was yesterday. I do remember the cold, and the mud. I remember puddles freezing at the bottom of the trenches and I remember stepping on a rusty nail and then catching pneumonia in the infirmary. Yeah, that sucked. But most of all I remember this huge…well, fear. I knew I'd be able to swoop in and turn the tables for the allies, it was just that I didn't know what the world was going to look like after we won. Nobody did.
I gave England a big hug. He needed it.
"America," England said softly. His eyes were sliding closed. "You know…this feels like one of those hopeful nights, way back then…you give me so much hope."
I had no idea how to respond to that, so I just kept hugging him and hoping for the best. :'D
England was still going.
"I really appreciate…everything you've done…" he said. "You've always…" And then he curled up under my snuggie, fast asleep.
Always what?! D:
Well, at this point, even though I was really curious, I was pretty tired myself, so I put Ellington back on (quietly, though) and spread myself out on the couch next to England. His hands weren't so cold anymore. I had a feeling he wouldn't remember this the next morning, but I did it anyway. I smoothed his hair back from his forehead and gave him a tiny kiss. A friend kiss! England is my best friend. I love his company so much. I hope he likes the banana bunker I got for him. I'm so excited to see how he reacts.
"Good night, England," I said quietly. "Sleep well. Tomorrow morning, before Geneva, we can watch Elf and bake Christmas cookies and make paper snowflakes! How does that sound?"
Obviously he didn't respond. He was asleep, duh. But I swear I saw him smiling when I got up to get an extra pillow. There was a popcorn kernel in his hair.