Prompt: Drink

Characters: Canada-centric, with lots of America and some France and England.

Notes: I have no excuse for this. I was sitting down to write something cute with the NA brothers when the idea of America as an alcoholic popped into my head. I am so sorry.

Trigger warnings for alcoholism and domestic violence.

"When you lie, I / Cover it up. / When you hide, I / Cover it up. / When you cry, I / Cover it up. / When you come undone, I / Cover it up." –Metric, "Lost Kitten"

Canada couldn't decide what he thought of the sound of broken glass these days. On the one hand, it could mean America had given up drinking for good; on the other, it could mean he had gotten drunker than ever and decided to release his subsequent rage (Alfred was not a pleasant drunk) by throwing his empty beer bottles at something.

Or someone.

"Dammit, Mattie." Alfred hurled his empty Corona bottle just shy of his brother's head. "Thought I toldja not to come back."

Canada ducked and shut the front door of America's New York apartment.

"Of course you did."

He'd get over it soon.

America always got over it soon.

The younger of the two brothers took a long swig of the Jack and Coke in the cooler now full of nothing but slushy ice and lukewarm water.

"Whatdja come back for?"

Canada put down his backpack beside the door and trudged to the hall closet to find a broom and dustpan.

"You hear me, Mattie?"

"Yes, Al." Canada shut the closet door with his foot."I didn't come back to help you, and I didn't bring anyone with me."

"I don' need help." America finished his drink in one gulp, rolled over to bury his face in the back of the sofa, and threw his bottle at the wall this time.

"No." Canada bent down to sweep up the rest of the broken glass. "You don't."

Morning came the same as ever. After helping his brother rinse out his mouth following both of his usual bouts of vomiting at 2:30 and 4:00, Canada awoke on the bathroom floor just after six to the sound of broken sobbing and howling that could have awakened the dead.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." America's glasses tangled in his hair as he struggled to push them away to wipe his eyes. Canada sat down on the sofa beside him and held his brother's shaking frame in his arms. "Fuck, Matt, I'm so sorry."

"I know. I know."

"I won't do it again. You know I'm not gonna do it again."

"I know, Al. I know."

Within an hour, Canada had him dressed in clean (even ironed) clothes, his stomach stuffed full of toast, over-brewed Starbucks, and half a pack of Advil and his hair brushed and glasses straightened. America stared at his hands, either too guilty or, most likely, just too dizzy to speak the whole time his brother slipped past him and around his apartment. Canada walked him to the subway, hardy expecting him to drive with a monster of a hangover constricting about him and half-smothering him to death. Once he made sure Alfred had reached his Wall Street office in as much of one piece as he could feign, Canada took a breath, hoisted his backpack, and headed for Penn Station. Catching the next Adirondack train to Montreal, he plopped down in his seat, hugged his backpack, and stared out the window at the rising sun and fresh morning enveloping the city.

He didn't cry, of course, and finished the eleven-hour journey to Quebec with only heavy, not wet, eyes. After this long, he couldn't cry anymore (America had taken over grieving duties for them both), but only wonder how this horror had begun. It had been innocent enough, of course. The same way all major problems began (though he didn't dare use that word around his brother for fear he might actually get hit with the bourbon flask this time).

Canada knew that during the World Wars, England and America had begun a tradition of going out for drinks together. The reason mattered little. Sometimes, England just needed to get smashed to relax a bit during the Battle of Britain between missions; other evenings, he just wanted info from America, only to get drunk himself, since his companion didn't take to alcohol well.

Or so he pretended.

"Holy hell, Artie," America would always say after his first sip of ale, "how can you stomach this stuff?"

"You're just ignorant." England would glare at him over the rim of his glass as he chugged his third pint. "This is the finest drink in all of London."

"Then I'd hate to see the worst."

"Arsehole."

But the imbalance in BAC didn't last long.

After the first few years of WWII, America would return home and complain not about the inaction or the isolation or the Italians.

He complained about the drinking age. And he never tired of telling Canada his stories of long conversations (or monologues, as Canada often dubbed them) with his president about the issue.

"This is ridiculous," he'd say. "In half of my states, I can't even buy a beer legally. I'm the United States of Freaking America."

Canada, like Roosevelt, would lean back in his (wheel)chair and await the end of the nation's whining.

"My brother can drink whenever he wants." ("Um, not whenever—"—"—Just shut up and listen to my story, Mattie!") Alfred would sigh. "All the other countries can sit with their leaders at fancy dinners and drink wine. Not that I like the stuff, of course."

"It wasn't but twenty years ago, Alfred," Roosevelt would say with a chuckle, "that no one in this country could drink."

America started and put a hand on his heart.

"How did I survive, Frank?"

Canada let his head loll back against the seat and put his fingertips on the window of the train as it whizzed through Upstate New York.

It took him hours to fall asleep.

The moment he stepped onto the platform in Montreal's Central Station, Canada wanted nothing more than to return to his home in Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. And he would, but not to rest or make pancakes or hang out with the university students living in the apartments on the other side of the arrondissement.

He looked at his watch.

If all went according to plan, he had minus one hour to make it to his meeting on time.

Not too bad.

He found a cab at the taxi stand just outside of the station and made it home twenty minutes later. In five minutes, he had his backpack and day-old clothes on his bed, his hair more or less combed into place, and a clean suit on (the last part taking the longest because his fingers shook too much—with exhaustion, he told himself—to fasten the buttons). His stomach growled, but he dismissed it by reminding himself that he could always get some poutine at the greasy spoon across the street once the meeting was over.

They would understand, he told himself as he turned the key in his car and hurried down the frost-covered streets. He didn't often show up late for meetings, especially not ones in the evening. (He ignored the fact that he'd more or less agreed with his government officials to forego any more early morning meetings or anything before noon, for that matter. Hundreds of years old or not, Canada remained stuck in a nineteen-year-old body with its screwy circadian rhythm. Even if he had begun to feel his real age more and more over the past several years.)

They would forgive him.

They would have to forgive him.

The first time America showed up to a meeting drunk, it had been funny. Funny in the sense that he somehow had to convince everybody that he himself hadn't been bootlegging, but that his incessant giggling and hiccupping came from his people and their speakeasies.

He was a nation, he told Canada while slumped in his seat and trying to keep himself from slurring. It wasn't his fault his veins contained more moonshine than blood anymore. His government had banned alcohol and only wound up multiplying the contraband consumption in the country in a predictable comedy of errors.

"Of course, America." Canada had patted his brother's head and chuckled to himself. On the other side of the room, Japan tried to keep a straight face but wound up staring with wide eyes down at the table. France just hid his face in his hand.

"But you don't get it," America would say after several slurred apologies for his people's devotion to lawlessness to his government officials and to the other nations, who had rolled their eyes and muttered something about American childishness. "This is awful. I just get the hangover without the fun of getting drunk."

Then he'd drunkenly monologue for the next hour as Canada helped him back to whatever hotel they were staying in about missing out on the experience of drinking. He would always raise an eyebrow at the irony that America, the nation who always pretended to hate booze around England, secretly loved the burn of a dark, dry California wine in the back of his throat and the richness of a cold beer whose malty tang reminded him of summer sunsets in his prairie states. He denied when it he finally sobered up, but he even admitted to loving the hot chill of icy vodka in his mouth (as long as it came from Poland or Lithuania or Finland—no way he'd ever drink any of that Russian bastard's brew).

And Canada would nod and say, "Sure. Sure, America. No, I don't doubt you at all."

Then, he'd laugh to himself. Because it was hilarious. Because they still wrestled with the important issues of the post-Great-War world. Because shit still got done. Because eventually, Prohibition started to work, and America didn't show up second-handedly smashed to every meeting.

And he still didn't. He was cleverer than that.

"Where in the world have you been?"

Canada swallowed.

He hadn't expected England to attend the meeting. He'd been counting on having only his Governor General and some lower-ranking British officials there.

Not the United Kingdom himself. Not one of America's closest allies, his own brother, who still didn't know how far into the darkness Alfred had been pulled.

This day just refused to go his way, didn't it?

For a moment, Canada was tempted to tell the truth. Pour out all the ache of last night and that morning. Plead with England to help his brother. To save him, to heal him, to make America's pain go away.

He held his tongue.

"Sorry, England." Why couldn't he be invisible when he actually wanted to? When he tried to back into a corner, the spotlight followed him, every time. He struggled to think up a lie. "Traffic was horrendous because of the ice."

"And you didn't think to leave early?" England crossed his arms. At the table behind him, both nations' officials shifted in their chairs. Coughed. Messed with their pens and notepads.

Except one: the Governor General. Canada looked past England toward his viceroy, his eyes pleading for help. He got none. Not even a hint of sympathy shone in the man's eyes. Only annoyance stared back at him.

"No, I didn't. I'm sorry, England. I'm sorry, everyone."

"I suppose an apology is fine. I mean, we have only been waiting for an hour."

In any other situation, Canada would have rolled his eyes. He had forgotten how passive-aggressive England could be when angry.

But he couldn't muster the strength to be sarcastic in response.

At first, America just did it for the excitement it brought. The forbidden fruit effect, Canada called it. The fun of making a fake ID to get into bars, the rush of taking a swig on the street when no one was watching (and even more so when someone was). Never mind that his government officials and others who knew his identity did let him drink at meetings with them (aside from France, who only caved when he was with America somewhere the younger nation could legally drink). It was all for the thrill, for the escape from sanction.

The big stuff didn't drive America to drink more: he didn't start binge drinking because of 9/11 or the JFK assassination or even the Oklahoma City bombing. Even as a young nation, he had armor to protect him from such pain.

The chinks in that armor made him addicted. Turned him into a victim, Canada thought.

One such chink could be a day when everything and everyone just got in his way. When someone accidentally dinged his car door in the parking lot, when he accidentally spilled water while making his coffee in the morning, when he accidentally brought the wrong papers to work.

Accidentally, accidentally, accidentally.

It was like a song. A poem. An elegy for the man, the nation, America had been before he'd been chained to the bottles, the flasks, the shotglasses.

No one had planned for this to happen, least of all America. He couldn't have tried to become an—an alcoholic (another word Canada couldn't use around his brother). And he hadn't wanted to walk such a dark path. Probably not. Most likely not. He wouldn't have chosen to do something like this.

It wasn't his fault he gave into temptation every time. It wasn't even his fault he'd had the temptation there to begin with.

America had convinced himself of that.

And, over time, he had convinced Canada, too.

When things got really bad, Canada wanted nothing more than to call his Papa and sob everything away to the sound of his soothing voice. America had anticipated such a move, however, and had beaten him down with such terrifying threats that he shivered at the thought of even seeing France. Even his brother's heartfelt apologies the next morning and his tears and pleas for forgiveness couldn't expunge Canada's fear that, if he told anyone in their family, America would—well, he didn't like to think about it much.

He called the one person America didn't think of cutting him off from instead. America probably couldn't give a damn if Cuba knew he had a bit of a drinking problem. What was the worst he could do, shake his fist across the Atlantic Ocean? Complain and kick and scream and call foul? (America would probably want that, in fact. More propaganda material against the Communists.)

Once the Hispanophone figured out that, instead of America, his most hated nation's brother had called him at three in the morning, he calmed down (slightly) and asked what in the world Canada needed so early.

And he told him everything. From the first bottle his brother had downed to the last one he'd hurled at the wall.

Cuba had listened, quiet throughout except for long breaths when he was taking a drag on his cigar—until Canada finished, of course, when he had yelled and ranted about what an asshole the American was and how much he was going to beat him up if he ever so much as tried to restore their diplomatic relations.

"Don't, Cuba." Canada finally had to cut in. "Please, stop. Don't—don't talk about him like that. It's fine. I just wanted someone to know. That's all."

Cuba sighed, speaking again only after a long pause and, Canada imagined, several puffs of his cigar.

"Well, I really can't do much, especially if you put it that way. What a shithead. I'll bust his ass someday for this." He scoffed but paused before his next words. "Please be careful, Matthew. Because one of these days, America's not going to miss."

Despite Canada's best efforts, France eventually noticed something was off.

"It's not hard to see, Matthew." He smiled, his voice gentle and his hands light as he rested them on his son's shoulders. "Can we talk about it?"

Canada clenched his hands together beneath the conference table. Across the room, his brother chattered with Japan about something, waving his hands and laughing at the other nation's response.

But when he saw Canada talking to France, his eyes turned to ice. In them, Canada saw the slurring drunk and the stumbling teenager, the charismatic smooth talker and the cheerful country. He saw the manipulations, the threats.

And he saw the tears, heard the oaths of change and conversion, remembered the half-full bottles thrown in the trash.

America had promised for good this time. He had even called Canada last night to tell him he had been sober for a week and had gone to his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He'd pressed the silver chip in his brother's hand that very morning signifying his return to normalcy, as he'd put it. His ticket back to life. His way to turn things around.

He'd heal, he'd promised Canada. He'd get better. He'd get past this.

Canada had smiled and nodded and pledged his support.

That must have been why he was so angry Canada was about to confide in France. No, he wasn't even angry, just afraid. He had to be worried someone would find out before he was ready. Or, more likely, he had to tell their family and the other nations himself. They probably had a rule about that in AA. They probably had lots of rules America had to follow if he wanted to sober up. And if Canada made him break any of them or got in his way somehow—no. He couldn't do that. He would hurt his brother if he told anyone. He would make him regress. He would make him drink again.

He couldn't do that to his brother. He couldn't hurt him: he loved him too much. They loved each other too much.

"No, Papa." Canada smiled back and took his father's hands off his shoulders. "It's okay. I'm okay. Everything's okay. Please don't worry."

That night, America had a glass of tequila in his hand.

"Hey, Mattie." He licked some salt off his palm and took a swig. "Damn, I forgot how good this stuff is."

Canada trembled. He cleared his throat, but no words came; he clenched and unclenched his fists, but no courage swelled from his soul to propel him forward to knock the glass out of his brother's hand.

"What's wrong?" America laughed. "Want some? Then get your own."

Canada stood with his back to the door of his brother's hotel room. He'd just come by to say goodnight, nothing more. He hadn't at all expected America to start drinking again. Had hardly expected a thing. The rolling in his stomach as he knocked had only been from the food that England had forced on him ("Come now, Matthew, you're so thin and tired—it'll do you some good.") and that he'd been too polite to refuse ("Oh, okay. I guess. I'm fine, but thanks. England."). The shaking in his knees had just been a placebo, something he'd imagined and only developed because others had said he looked weak.

He wished he'd only imagined America tossing his sobriety chip over his shoulder out the open window, too.

Sometimes, he wondered why only he knew.

To some degree, he supposed, it made sense. Having the world's longest border between them and many of their major metropolises within driving distance of each other drew them close, though usually in their own sarcastic, snarky, sibling way. They defended that border and the people on both sides of it, protected each other, and maintained one of the deepest partnerships among all the nations.

They had been born brothers for a reason.

And thus it was Canada who watched America drink himself into blackouts, Canada who took care of damage control when—when things happened. Canada who held his brother when he cried and begged for forgiveness, and Canada who gave him absolution every time. Canada who cared for him, Canada who suffered for him, Canada who sacrificed for him.

Canada who loved him. And sometimes stepped into the crossfire for it, sometimes got crucified for it.

And accepted it all the same.

Still, England, at least, should have suspected something. A big drinker himself, he should have seen the signs. Half the time, Canada considered his second father figure a functional alcoholic. Deep down, however, he knew England had at least some measure of control. He knew how—and loved—to get smashed at whatever pub he liked any evening, but he also knew how to drink in moderation if he had to (not that he employed this knowledge as often as France suggested he should. Something about his nationality invalidated his efforts right off the bat).

He had something America lacked: maturity. And immaturity as seen through mature eyes stuck out like clashing colors.

England should have known.

He didn't.

Canada should have told him.

He didn't.

One of those days, America did not miss.

He hit a perfect three out of three.

Canada woke up in the hospital shivering from a chill that seemed to radiate from within his body. His right arm numb and heavy, he tried to move his fingers but found them pressing against something soft and warm. Languid, he tried to curl up closer to whatever the warm thing was (probably a blanket), only to find himself too exhausted to move more than his hands. Caught between cold and comfort, lost in a limbo within his mind, he struggled to make sense of what was happening until it hit him.

He remembered everything.

He wished he didn't.

But someone had to carry the burden of memory, since America certainly didn't remember attacking him. Canada could still see his brother falling unconscious to the floor, his face peaceful as if he hadn't just scattered broken glass and Canada's blood everywhere. He could see himself shaking, struggling to pull out his phone and dial 911 for them both, begging the dispatcher to hurry in his slurred voice, holding his head and trying to reach his brother.

He had still wanted to clean up every last alcohol-soaked shard. He had still asked the paramedics to check on his brother first. He had still struggled to answer their questions without adding more threads to the web of lies he'd found himself stuck in, though lying with a head injury proved to be more difficult than he'd imagined, as did just about everything else he'd tried to do with blood dripping down his face drop by drop onto the stained hardwood floor. When the room started going dark, of course, the facts didn't matter quite as much anymore.

And then he'd awakened with the truth smothering him, paralyzing him, holding him down. The reality bandaged around his head, stitched through the skin on his face, speared into his veins.

America had hurt him. Had been hurting him.

Badly.

The morning after the ICU nurses had transferred him back to a normal-care ward, three days after America had tried to knock his brains out, Canada awoke to a familiar voice that, over the past few years steeped in alcohol and stained by spilled shots, had become terrifying.

"Matthew."

Canada wanted to reach out his tube-pierced arms as best he could. The thought of those icy blue eyes, those gnashed teeth, those credible threats (despite the hangover howls of I'msorryI'msorrynopleaseyoubelievemedon'tyouI'msosorry), stopped him.

"Papa."

Within a few accelerating heartbeats, his father's hands were holding his own. Canada didn't dare look into his face, instead casting his gaze downward and toward the grey wall on his left. Nor did he dare listen to France's words, until something grabbed hold of his attention and refused to let go.

"It's not your fault."

The hands squeezed his tighter, as if commanding him to turn and acknowledge them. He obeyed. He knew how to do that much, at least, having gotten too much practice over the years. Still, meeting his father's gaze proved every bit as difficult as his first lie, his first defense of his brother.

Canada had only been trying to protect him, after all. Though the more he looked into his father's eyes, the more he realized his sword had been growing duller, not sharper, and his shield full of dents that had eventually broken through. No—that had been broken through. By well-aimed words and carefully constructed threats, by piercing shards of another's shattered armor.

He let his father take him in his arms and press his bandaged and bruised head to his collarbone.

And then they had a long talk.

When France emerged from the room, he had a wet patch on his shirtfront and loose stands of wavy blond hair in his fingers. His back to the door, he crossed his arms and watched the nation sitting motionless and silent in the chair across the hallway, head in his hands and shoulders hunched not to protect himself but to show his shame. England was already there sitting beside him, chin resting on his fists, staring at the wall as if equally ashamed.

After making sure he wouldn't try to get into Canada's room—neither boy was ready yet, France knew—he sat down beside America, hands in his lap and gaze directed straight ahead. He didn't expect the younger nation to say anything, but he waited nonetheless. Just in case.

Then, he cleared his throat.

And told America and England both everything Canada had told him.

"I think he forgives you." France paused. "And we do, too."

America didn't react but continued to sit still, his only movement the shaky shudder of his breathing.

France put his hand on America's back. England rested his beside it. "You need help, Alfred. You need help. Now."

Finally, America nodded.

He was too shattered to speak.

Historical Notes:

Prohibition. That's fairly obvious, but what isn't is that, to some degree, it actually worked... sort of. It did decrease alcohol consumption considerably, but then you have bootlegging, which can't be measured directly. I showed both sides of the equation here.

The cute stuff is coming, I promise. In the meantime, why don't you go check out my collab with The Goliath Beetle, Nineteen-Eighty FOOD? It's a wacky human!AU about Alfred opening a cafe themed around literature puns and running it with Francis and Matthew. We promise lots of Shakesbeers and Agatha Crispies if you read it. (: