Ludwig watched Gilbert jump out of the but in his swim shorts and proceed to irritate Elizabeta, Roderich, and Feliks in two comments about Elizabeta's bathing suit within a span of about twelve seconds. He silently wondered to himself how his brother had so much energy. What was he...one, two thousand years old now? Not like age mattered a lot for them. Yao had to be around four thousand and he could still beat the crud out of you with a wok.
Last night Gilbert had slept on the couch on the bottom floor of their crazy double-decker tour bus after discovering that Lovino doesn't particularly enjoy being snuggled in his awake at four in the morning and that Matthew is surprisingly hard to wake up. So Lovino had kicked Gilbert out of his bed in order to clear room for Feliciano to not have to sleep with someone else. This wouldn't have bothered Ludwig if he hadn't come downstairs at around 5:30 - when he normally wakes up - to find his brother in the midst of a coughing fit with a half-empty bottle of NyQuil. Ludwig had tried to figure out what was wrong but all he could get between coughs was that the sort-of nation had been up most of the night coughing and feeling like...well...crap, to put it simply. The coughing had died down by the time everyone else started to get up - probably the half a bottle of NyQuil, but Ludwig was still trying to keep an eye on him.
Now he was being chased around a South Carolina cove by the 'demon frying pan' while dodging the other hundred plus nations that managed to fit on the beach without feeling too crowded. Lucky for them it was a surprisingly warm spring morning, even for this more southern-ended state.
"Ve~, Ludwig," Feliciano was bobbing up and down in his Italian flag swim shorts next to Ludwig, somehow keeping a death grip on his brother's wrist as to keeping his brother from running away from the older's beach day plans. Lovino also had Italian-clad shorts. Actually, most of them had their flags on their bathing suits - save for a few who seemed to find food, birds, and roses more important to them. Just being 'people' may be harder than Alfred thought... Ludwig thought to himself. "Let's play Marco Polo!"
"Uh, Feliciano?" Ludwig was looking curiously at Lovino. "Why does your brother have duct tape over his mouth?"
"Wha~?" Feliciano turned to his brother for a quick moment before turning back and responding. "Oh~, he did that to himself! I made him give up cursing for lent so he's carrying around a roll of duct tape just in case! Oh! He's even been making up stuff to say instead of the cuss words! I think he likes the duct tape better though..."
"Wow...how did you pull that off?" Ludwig question, remembering how catholic the two were even through their...everything. That, and Ludwig was a little weary of Feliciano's use of the word 'made'...
"Well he wanted to give up potato-eater's and pedophiles, but I told him he should give up something harder! So I got him to give up swearing~! Isn't that neat~!"
"I'd say it's more of a miracle..." Ludwig stared in amazement. "What did you give up?"
Feliciano's face froze, still in his smile, but it seemed like the sun was hitting his face in a way that was almost... Lovino seemed to be smiling almost maniacally under his duct tape.
Lovino must have gotten pay back...hard.
"A-anyway," The German now decided this was not the topic to talk about. "Marco Polo...with three people?" Ludwig raised an eyebrow. Feliciano pulled off another random jump back to his airily happy face. Ludwig sighed of relief inside.
"Four people!" Antonio seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Lovino seemed to be struggling harder.
"Five!" Francis seemed materialized from behind Antonio.
"Can we get Mr. Roderich to play too~?" Feliciano asked.
"Good luck with that," Gilbert muttered as he walked over to join them while rubbing the back of his head. "He too busy mumbling mostly-incoherent comments on how indecent Liz's bathing suit is. It's not even a two piece!"
"Ooh,-ooa-ooe-ooear-ooai-hou-ooat'f-goin'-om?" Alfred walked over from who-knows-or-seriously-cares-where with Arthur with a Subway sandwich sticking half out of his mouth. "Wha're we duin?"
"This is why you don't just jump into another person's conversation, bloody moron," Arthur scolded. "and stop trying to talk with your mouth full! No one can understand a word you're saying!"
Alfred swallowed. "Yes, Mom," he countered, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, what's happenin'?"
Arthur mumbled something about befouling the Queen's language while Ludwig answered with, "Feliciano wants to play Marco Polo. But honestly I don't know how we could do that since there are so many people. You'd keep running into other people."
"Hmm..." Alfred took another bite of his sandwich and surveyed the simi-crowed-but-not-incredibly-crowed-as-to-make-you-want-to-leave beach. "Well if you head that way," he pointed northward up the beach, "And swim around those big rocks you can get to another smaller cove-ish kind of place. Probably enough space there."
"Ve~, You know this place so well, Alfred," Feliciano commented. "Do you come here a lot?"
"Well I try to visit all my states at least once a decade," Alfred took another bite but swallowed this time before talking again. "Not so easy when your boss always wants you either in D.C. or out-of-nation on business with you guys though. Y'know, when was the last time I was here?" Alfred turned a a man relaxing on a beach chair about five feet away that they somehow hadn't noticed before. "What was it, '98?"
Ludwig, Arthur, and several others, had looks on their faces as if they were trying to figure out who this man was. Maybe one of the bus drivers...?
"'89," he responded. "The year you tried to get me to skydive into the ocean and somehow taught Kumamaru how to scuba dive with your whale friend...in the wrong part of the ocean."
"Oh, yeah," Alfred smiled at the memory, "Thanks, Matt."
Oh, it was just Canada.
"Anyway, I've got to go debrief Bus I's new driver. Did you really manage to chuck one of those crap-scones through a wall and hit the old guy in the head?" Alfred asked Gilbert.
"Yeah, who knew crappy food wasn't just bad for digestion," Gilbert shrugged.
"Well, have fun, my semi-psychotic guests." Alfred swallowed the rest of his sandwich and waked off toward Bus I.
"All right!" Antonio took Lovino's un-Feliciano-occupied arm and started waving it in the air. "Secret Cove, ahoy! ยก Vamos a jugar, mi amigos!" Antonio then proceeded to drag - practically through the air - Lovino and Feliciano toward the large rock formation that enclosed the beach, Francis and Gilbert quickly following suit.
Arthur sighed. "Perhaps we were the only ones blessed with sanity in this chaotic group," he commented to Ludwig. Then he seemed to catch Alfred gossiping about him with the bus driver because he turned and started shouting, "They are not imaginary, twat! You're just blind!" and he ran off to go yell at him more.
"No..." Ludwig mumbled to himself, "It's just me..." and he walked after Feliciano's kidnappers.
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"Ve~, Marco!"
"Polo!"
"Ve~, Marco!"
"Polo."
"When do you think he'll realize we're not even in the water?" Gilbert asked Ludwig on the towel next to him.
"If it's anything like last time..." Ludwig responded, "He won't."
The cove Alfred had pointed them to was just a small patch of beach surrounded by large rocks on both sides and a cliff in the back. Gilbert and Ludwig were 'playing' Marco Polo with Feliciano, Antonio was trying to get Lovino - against his many complaints - to build a sand castle with him, and Francis was taking turns going around to everyone and being a pedo. Matthew had apparently come with them - according to Gilbert, at least - but Ludwig currently had no idea where the man was now.
"Come on, Lovi, please~?" Now Antonio was trying to pull Lovino into the water - a horribly failing attempt - but had only managed to get him ankle-deep. Apparently the Italian did not feel like swimming today. The only effort Lovino was putting into anything was pulling away and screaming his new made up swears so loud his grandfather could hear him. Were any of the words clear enough to understand? Of course not.
"What do you not understand about 'no'?" Lovino was yelling at the Spaniard. "What do you have against taking a nap, you over-eccentric freak? Two seconds ago you wanted to make a sand castle! How do you go from sand castle to 'Let's see who can swim out farther, faster!' in a span of two seconds?"
"My, my, mon cher," Francis appeared from under the water and almost immediately began groping Antonio. "You're not being a kind parental figure. Young children need their nap times."
Time to test just how well Lovino could make replacements for his constant swears. "Wha- Who are you calling 'young child', you piece of-"
"Marco!" Feliciano drowned out Lovino's newest variation of his 'nickname's for the Frenchman.
Everyone responded with "Polo!" without looking up and immediately went back to their other conversations.
"Eh~...a bad parent?" Antonio continued the conversation without even the slightest sign of recognizing that Francis was sexually assaulting him.
"P-parent?" Lovino seemed to highly dislike the notion that Antonio was his 'father'. "Like hell he's my 'parent'!"
"Yeah," Antonio agreed. "I'm his big brother!"
"Wha-" Lovino didn't seem to like this either. "He's not a parent, or brother, or guardian...he's barely an acquaintance!"
"Oh hon," Francis chuckled, " Elizaveta's folders' would beg to differ."
Ludwig stopped watching the argument for a moment and looked over to check on his brother. Unlucky for him, Gilbert caught him before he could turn away again and glared at him.
"I'm fine, OK?" Gilbert retorted. "You don't have to go all 'worried-little-brother' on me. It's kinda creepy. Anyway, let's think of all the awesome things that have happened that we can say freely without some government official marking every word we breath," Gilbert made a big motion with his hands and lay down with a plop on his chick-print towel. "Starting from what you would remember, you've got meeting Feli, me, getting Independence, me, the Great War ending, me, Feli being unable to hold a grudge, me, the guy Roderich gave us - Mr. "He's-a-cruddy-artist-by-my-standards-but-his-crap-past-could-make-him-a-great-leader-or-something, why don't you take him?" - dies, me, we got to destroy that irritating-as-hell-wall, me, Feli's wearing pants for once...me."
"If you're feeling so 'fine'," Ludwig glared right back at his brother. "Then why aren't you out there picking on Feliciano and his brother like you normally would? Since when have you passed up opportunities to screw with other people's free time?"
It seemed like Ludwig had finally hit something when - Lovino's curses started echoing through the cove with a voice that could bring even an old man without his hearing aid to cover his ears.
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Heck to grandpa, Lovino was totally prepared to have his 'swears' reach even Germania at this point.
How could they possibly get 'big brother' out of 'that-creepy-ex-boss-pedo-guy-who-doesn't-seem-to-leave-me-alone'? Well...if you looked at Francis' relationship with Matthew...but that's not the point!
It wasn't that he had some freakish gay crush on Antonio that he spent most of his free time at the Spaniard's house, OK? It was just that his brother had a habit of inviting over potato freaks and he would rather completely zone out Antonio while eating a churro or something than trying to keep that freakish sorta-ex-nation-whatever-the-heck-he-was and his 'little' brother away from his fratello while trying to down that potato crap.
He was vaguely aware of himself repeatedly punching Francis multiple times. Honestly, he was more focused on his word choice than what he was actually doing. He barely heard over his own yelling Antonio trying to say, "Lovi~, you OK? You're face is all tomato colored again."
Lovino was only dimly aware of this catching Feliciano's attention - not that it normally meant much, being Feliciano, a worm could catch his undivided attention - as he turned to start yelling at what would soon be the worlds unluckiest Spaniard -
But then the world went black.
HOLYCRAPIHAVEN'TPOSTEDINFOREVERI'MSOSORRYDON'TTHROWTOMATOESATMEGHAAAAA-!
*ahem* Sorry about that too.
As I have no excuses, I will have to default with high school kinda sucks. (fiveweekstwodays-fiveweekstwodays-fiveweekstwodays)
So anyway, about Gil's rant.
Great War=WWI for those who don't know that already
Feli being unable to hold a grudge=Ludwig is lucky Feliciano didn't say enemy-esque after WWI when Italy kinda beat the crap out of Austria-Hungary(see Vittorio Veneto). Oh, and WWII...or so I'm told.
'The guy Roderich gave us'=Hitler. He wanted to be an artist but stupid art college wouldn't accept him just because he couldn't draw people.
The wall=Berlin Wall
Feli's wearing pants=well...Feli's wearing pants! Someone get a camera!
Oh! And I love my Beta Reader/Editor person c: She makes my spelling mistakes less noticeable :D