Despite the hour, the substandard alcohol, the depressing décor, and every other glaring fault that had rightfully chased away its potential clientele the previous day, the hotel's bar swarming with nations again tonight.

Scotland navigates a path through the crowds separating them from the bar with ease, making judicious use of the skills that used to serve him so well on the battlefield: bobbing and weaving around their closely-packed bodies, his footwork surprisingly nimble.

France can only assume that his intimidating size and choleric resting expression – the harsh lines of which have a definite hint of incipient violence about them – secure them both prompt service at the bar, and shortly thereafter a table, though Scotland had done nothing more than stand quietly next to each.

The table is the same one Wales and Romano had shared before they retreated upstairs to consummate their burgeoning relationship, an association which is clearly not lost on Scotland, who glowers at the furniture as though it had been complicit in this betrayal. Once seated, he turns his unhappy moue towards the bottom of his pint glass, and gives it a far greater share of his attention than France, whose attempts at conversation go largely unanswered beyond the occasional disinterested grunt or apathetic shrug.

After ten minutes or so, France wearies of his efforts and falls silent, too. As the rosé he had been foolhardy enough to order offers no inducement to stay, either, he is on the verge of pleading a headache or exhaustion and heading for his bed, when Scotland scrambles clumsily up from his seat.

"I just need to go…" He waves his hand towards the other side of the bar in an impenetrable gesture which fails to explain anything. "Please… Please, just stay right here. I'll only be a minute."

He hurries away before France has chance to speak, effectively trapping him where he is for the moment, as he can hardly make his excuses when there's no-one to offer them to.

So, he sips his lacklustre wine, and whiles away his time reading through a leaflet about local tourist attractions that someone had left lying on the table – discarded, he imagines, in the spirit of horrified disgust, as it is unspeakably dull – until he hears someone sit down in the chair opposite his again. He looks up from tedious leaflet, and apology already forming on his lips, but it languishes there unspoken, because that someone isn't Scotland, but England.

His face is florid, his shirt collar unbuttoned and tie askew, and when he leans across the table, France is engulfed in a cloud of alcohol fumes so potent that it makes his eyes water. He smells as though he's been attempting to pickle himself in beer rather than drinking it.

"Are you having a pleasant evening?" he asks, his accent slurring into Estuary as it always does when he's drunk and doesn't have the wherewithal to keep up the charade of RP. His expansive smile is sloppy and doesn't reach his eyes, which are hard and severe despite being bloodshot.

"I was, Angleterre, before—"

"Angleterre?" England repeats, rolling the Rs in a mockingly exaggerated fashion. "What have I done to deserve that?"

"Do you want a list?" France crosses his arms over his chest, and meets England's accusatory glare equably. "Well, we can start with the odious room you booked me into for this week, if you like, and work up from there."

"Oh, so your room isn't quite as fancy as you like? And I had to reschedule a couple of meetings?" England sneers at him. "Is that why you're so pissed off? After everything else we've ever done to one another, that's what's lost me the privilege of my own fucking name."

It is, because England's behaviour has been so very petty these past few days, which makes France want to be just as petty in return. England has never brought out the best in him.

"Wasn't 'pissing me off' the whole point of it all? You should be pleased."

England ignores the question. "Well, at least you've got my brother to comfort you. That's what you've always wanted, isn't it?" He leans even further across table, weight resting against his clenched fists, and his voice drops low and sibilant. "Did you ever really want me, or was having me just a way to get closer to him?"

"Of course it wasn't," France says without hesitation, because he always known that to be true, but perhaps…

Perhaps here and especially now he can admit, if only to himself, that there was some small part of him that had wanted to find out how Scotland would react to seeing them together.

For hundreds of years, he hadn't cared that they only saw each other at the point of a sword or down the barrel of gun, but the Great War changed that. The front changed that, throwing them together once more, and France had discovered that couldn't practice his carefully cultivated indifference at close quarters.

At the start of the war, Scotland was as aloof as he'd ever been since their alliance dissolved, and even by the end of it, they'd hardly begun reforging the broken bonds of their lost friendship or anything of the like. But over the course of it, whilst they may not have smoked, drunk and laughed together as Scotland did with his brothers – finding whatever small comfort they could amongst the smoke, and blood, and despair of it all – or so much as spoken much more than ten words at a time to each other, they did grow closer in a different way.

When the deep gouges that the trenches had torn through France's flesh began to fester, he had turned in desperation - because he didn't trust England to be gentle, didn't know Wales well enough to ask - to Scotland and begged for his help in cleaning them. And Scotland had been gentle, and thorough at his work, and it seemingly sparked some remnant of his old protective instincts back into life.

For a short while, he was France's shield once more, guarding him from himself as much as the enemy. He cajoled France into eating even when he lacked the appetite for it, ordered him to sleep when he was nodding off on his feet, bathed his wounds and held him steady when France was weak and riven by the pain of them. Delirious, France had told him that he had lovely strong hands then, and Scotland had laughed, called him an idiot, but he didn't let go.

It had reawakened some measure of an ancient hunger in France – shameful, because he'd thought himself safely rid of it centuries back – and it didn't fade away at the war's end.

France had pursued England because he wanted to, wanted him, no matter what he might choose to believe. But they could have met in Paris, in England's crumbling Buckinghamshire estate, a hotel in either of their own countries or beyond. They could have been discreet, and France could have kept his distance from Scotland just as he ought to have done.

They met most often in England's London home, though, and France had kissed him in the hallway, the living room, the kitchen, anywhere, in hindsight, anywhere that Scotland was most likely to witness them.

Truly, it hadn't been a conscious act at the time, but England clearly believes him a liar all the same. He scoffs, and says, "Don't think I didn't notice how you looked at him. Watched him. I'd expected you to try and get your claws into him the minute you left me."

And he's clearly rewritten that particular facet of their history together to better suit him, as is his habit. "You left me, Angleterre!"

"Only because I saw the writing on the wall, and wanted to jump before I was pushed." His expression darkens. "You never really gave up on him, did you? No matter what I thought… What I duped myself into believing, you never stopped trying to get between the two of us. Trying to steal him away, just like you did with America."

"America?" France says, perplexed. "I haven't—"

"Yes, you bloody well have!" England's voice rings out stridently, forgetting to be subtle in his anger. "He told me so himself that you were together, after his… after his revolution. After all those years of dripping poison in his ear and turning him against me."

Another piece of rewritten history. "That ended centuries ago," France says, "and I assure you that neither America nor I have any interest in revisiting it now."

"That's what I thought about Scotland, and look how that's turned out." England scowls. "I don't trust you, Frog. I might have forgotten that for a few years there, but I remember it perfectly well now, and—"

He's interrupted by Scotland, whose return to the table is heralded by a shout of, "Shift your scrawny arse, Runt," and closely followed by a swift kick to the back of England's chair as soon as he moves into striking range.

England meets this ill-treatment with a syrupy smile, aimed at his brother.

"Oh, am I taking your place? Don't worry, it won't happen again," he says with cloyingly false sweetness. "I've finished with him now." He staggers to his feet, lurches towards Scotland, and then pokes at his shoulder with some force. "But not with you."

Scotland's eyes narrow warningly, and he bats England's finger aside with a casual swipe of his hand, as though he's swatting at a fly. "I think you've had too much to drink, Sasainn. You need to go upstairs right now and sleep it—"

"Don't you 'Sasainn' me, you bastard." England surges forward until his chest is pressed flush against Scotland's, and then he pushes himself up onto the balls of his feet, bringing his eyes almost on a level with his brother's. "And don't you dare act all high and mighty, like you're fucking… fucking above it all. I know what you've been up to."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Scotland says, frowning.

"Yes, you do," England insists. "You don't fool me, Scotland." He sniffs disdainfully. "I just can't understand why you're bothering to wine and dine him. You must know by now that he'll fuck anything that mo—"

Scotland punches him.