We talk when it's needed, after we've drank all the alcohol found in the living room. Our movements here on after are sloppy, impaired and not all that thought-out. You know you're special when there's no one I talk to except for you, after you'd just betrayed me for a lad that'd been my life in the better part of two centuries. Fumbling, crashing to the floor, giggles. You've had too much wine, and so have I. Though I'd never been one to enjoy the bitter fruity taste, it fit me perfectly tonight, for I was bitter.
Yes, I was even more bitter than the acrid, fermented grape scent wafting from my glass as I laugh at you for spilling the wine all over my brand new black carpet. Black. Everything had to be black. Everything had to be black because I was mourning one that I had lost, even though he was still alive. It was never meant to be that way, and you knew it from the moment you went to help the bloody twat. Somehow, I couldn't be mad at you—not in all your powder-blue crushed-velvet glory.
It made even less sense that I was sitting here with you, getting drunk off of merlot in the rose gardens of London with you celebrating your success and Al--…. I couldn't even say his name… his success over the evil King George and England. Evil. It's what I'd been considered for quite some time now… I knew I wasn't evil of course, but now my head is spinning and I can feel my cheeks wet and hot and now I'm hugging my knees because I'm so lost, I'm lost without him and—Oh, dear, it's raining, and my chest hurts with the intensity of my sobs because he said he'd love me forever and he left… And then I realize that it's no longer 1776 and really 1945 and the war's ended and we're celebrating the death of Vichy France, and why the hell am I crying?
It's around this time that I realize strong arms have wrapped around me and I've buggered it up again haven't you Arthur Kirkland you wanker. I cling to you and just sob, and slowly my mind drifts away from one blonde with baby blues to another with cerulean, deep eyes that looked far too empty in the past four years or so and I sob harder because there's no England without France, yeah there's no me without you.
I find it kind of funny that you're the one who just spent the past few years as a puppet for Germany and here you are, holding me as I cry and I could never be that strong, ever, because there's not England without France and I would just get angry at you for the most trivial things but, Francis, goddammit, I look up to you and I'd never be able to live with myself if something happened to you….
I do the best I can but nothing ever seems to go the way it's planned because the way it plays out is so unfair and all I can do is sit here and cling to you as you whisper things in French into my ear and I can only murmur your name because it's the only thing my weighed-down brain can think of saying and you kiss me, because at least it shuts me up, right?
And so I just laugh, I laughed. And our lips touched again, and my brain speeds along with my heart…. And you pull away and smile. "Art'ur, mon cher, everything is okay, Angleterre. Ze war, eet ees over."
The words in that thrice-damned French accent are all it takes to make me smile, and it's the first smile I've given in years. You knew you were special when I couldn't let you go on a night like this, two centuries ago, and you know you're special now, you stupid wine bastard.