Note: Next part of the series and I don't know if it'll get more or less triangle/quadrangle-ish but thank you everyone reading. I actually had a bit of trouble with this one but I think I worked it out. Still thanks to Edward Maya whose music is the soundtrack for most of this with a little bit of Mr. Probz thrown in. C&C always welcome
"Ludwig asked me where I was the other night." Those are the first words Austria utters since waking. He looks down at the croissants aux amandes with a frown. The coffee in front of him sits untouched.
"And what did you tell him?" France takes a long drink of espresso before pulling out a cigarette. Austria sighs and pokes at the large pastry.
"There's not going to be any meat, is there?"
"That was not a complaint at dinner, little master" France smirks as flicks his lighter. Austria sits back and crosses his arms with a frosty expression drawing the pale robe closed tightly over his neck. The chill breeze responds in kind whipping France's hair over his face. It blows the flame impossibly awry. He only laughs.
"Must you be so disgusting?" Austria directs the glare to the large pastry on the small painted plate his mouth tight. He crosses a leg.
"You do not wish to speak of it then?" France takes a long drag turning his head to the dewy fields that lie over the balcony. He passes the cigarette to Austria without being prompted.
"I don't know." Austria watches the same pastoral scenery with an even tighter frown. "For God's sake, why don't you unbutton your shirt a bit more and call for the fiddlers while you're at it?" He turns the cigarette in his fingers before shutting his eyes to everything and inhaling deeply hand still reflexively holding the robe closed off. France takes that moment to turn back slightly and look at him out of the corner of one blue eye.
"You should not worry about your large breakfasts. They are bad for the constitution. They make a man ill tempered."
Austria snorts and hands the cigarette back.
"Starving makes a man ill tempered." He drops his guarded hand in favor of viciously pulling off a corner of flaky dough powder lightly dusting his fingers and the table. "Waking to stubbly mange scraping over one's neck makes a man ill tempered." He shoves the croissant in his mouth chewing angrily until the dough becomes sickeningly glutinous. Austria swallows thickly. He opens his mouth but closes it again quickly keeping his eyes to the table. He rips off another piece of pastry not looking at France even as the abused robe is blown further from his neck to his shoulder. France, for his part strokes his chin thoughtfully as he brings the cigarette to his lips.
"Perhaps I should shave… But last night a man hardly seemed to mind the… 'stubbly mange' as it were so perhaps that is not truly what is making a man so ill tempered."
Austria takes a long drink of espresso eyes double blinking quickly as he sets it down.
"This bitter tonic is what's making a man ill tempered…" He straightens the robe only to have it fall defiantly back. "…the insufferable lout across the table..." Austria drums fingers on the white linen of the tablecloth and holds out a shaking hand as he settles for the indignity of the provocatively draping dressing. France passes the cigarette back keeping his eye contact to the hills.
"You've had it out with him then?" he asks softly. Austria is silent for a long while drink smoke drinking until the sun becomes more reality than promise. The shadow of the wall casts a growing darkness over the patio. The stone feels colder beneath his bare feet, slick and organic. He curls his toes against the granite.
"Don't be ridiculous. Two sovereign nations, two historic icons, two… holy relics don't 'have it out' like two ordinary men." Austria nearly drops the cigarette back to France as he picks apart more powdered pastry with two busy hands. "We're far more dignified than that." France snorts smoke from his nostrils in a puff of amusement.
"There is no dignity in love, Roderich. That is the wonder of it. The je ne sais quoi…" He smiles playfully. "…unless one is French of course. Everything we do is tres sophisticated." France chuckles with a wave of his hand.
"That sounds like something Alfred would say."
"Matthieu, in a moment of indiscretion," France gives a wink sipping naughty espresso. Austria takes another smoke with a long slow exhale, a jealous bristling feline affectation.
"Congratulations," he says tersely, "Your talent for seducing children is as sharp as ever."
"As is the sting of your tongue, little master." He looks at Austria pointedly. "But you are changing the subject again." Austria is silent, fixating on the plate, counting the petals of the fire sealed flowers. "That moment with Matthieu is but a wisp of a memory, you have my word."
"Don't flatter yourself into thinking that I would ever be jealous of your affairs... Ludwig isn't… jealous of my affairs." Austria's hands continue to pick the pastry apart. "He said he doesn't begrudge me my more… festive partners." His lip curls bitterly. "Perhaps I deserved that." Austria drops crumbled dough like dust scattered to the plate and tablecloth. He looks at France unblinking, face frozen until his eyes go out of focus. "Is that what you wanted me to say?" France puts the cigarette out on the ashtray dotting careful lines on the stained porcelain. He looks down and his fingers move across the small table turning Austria's hand over. Austria follows his eyes to their hands, to calloused fingertips playing over his sticky palm.
"I don't want you to say anything." He traces a circle. "With you I think talking is overly complicated." Austria feels the tickle of nerves and curls his fingers lightly. France traces a figure eight and slowly spells out names down the inside of his arm. Austria looks at him, making a study of his face. His breathing slows to a deep draw drowning in the breeze. He watches France draw every letter his lips moving with a soft breath whispering "O saisons oh châteaux…" He looks with an idleness of passing eternity by the seaside. Austria looks back down to his hand and awkwardly puts his left hand over France's trapping it.
"I prefer to be alone, Francis. I... I don't know how to be with anybody." He holds onto France's stopped hand tightly. "I don't know how to be…" His nails dig in. France merely looks at their hands with his head falling slightly contemplatively to the side. "I don't know how to live… the way that I want to live… if such a thing were even possible. Or dream… maybe I just… don't know how to dream."
"These are the things you should be saying to Ludwig, I think, little master." France smiles a sad winter frosted garden. Austria lets his nails slip, hand clutching just as steadily. Every muscle from palm to pectoral is stiff and straight.
"I'm saying them to you." He squares his jaw and looks at France. His face flinches as if to turn away. Austria lets their eyes meet, squeezing their hands more tightly together. "I'm saying them to you, Francis." France sighs, raises his head, leaning in a few tendrils of light closer. He raises his other hand, the back, the smooth polished fingernails sliding over Austria's cheek. There's a rush of warm air in Vienna as the sun also rises. Smooth nail beds skirt the edges of the Neusiedl until ghosting playfully over that one dark spot that is Neusiedl am See. Austria drops his eyes, closing them too easily when France pushes in. He doesn't push him away.
"Ah, see, little master, the mouth she both the most forthright and the most deceptive all at once."
He drops his hand down watching Austria'a eyes rise back to his unguarded, lips still parted in curiosity rather than condemnation. Austria's glasses slide down his nose before he can catch them, eyes violet mimosa before darting to the side self consciously.
"Smile." Austria looks at France's neck.
"I beg your pardon?" France holds up his hands framed, leaning back, drawing a lazy seductive knee up. Austria's eyes flit hummingbird beating down and up again.
"Like I am taking your picture. Like I am painting you for eternity, mon cher."
"Like you're talking complete nonsense as usual," Austria answers fingers stealing to the edges of his rob stopping short of pulling it back modestly.
"Like you are not wondering if I am how you say au naturel beneath this robe." France gives a saucy waggles of eyebrows and Austria finds a soft laugh, a gentle smile, a secret Mona Lisa moment escape him.
"And there I have found it again. Not eternity but..."
"But?"
"But why... do you not smile that way for him?" France lowers his hands in front of the broken kaleidoscope watching it fracture. The smile remains. The hand remains. Austria remains, silent. His ankle turns, foot curling until it starts to cramp painfully. Behind the smile his jaw clenches tight until every other thing that France says is buzzed and his entire visage blurs beneath a haze of a rippling pool as if the house were on fire. When he blinks again he realizes it's only the large wind blown flame from the lighter. He opens his mouth to tell France that he's going to catch his hair ablaze if he's not careful.
"I did ...once upon a time..." And he laughs for France now, as he did for Germany then, a soft laugh in a morning just a damning, a scar of a memory. "...and then the world went to hell."