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Alfred had just parted ways with Lily after going home from the lake. Being late afternoon, Alfred thought he should go home to eat dinner, but decided to take a detour to the Bonnefoys first. He opened the front door and waltzed right inside, announcing his presence with a loud, "I'll just hang out here, if that's okay for ya!" to which Francis had replied with a "Bien sûr!" from upstairs. Satisfied, Alfred headed to the door closest to his right and knocked forcefully before peeking inside. Matt was not present, so he wondered for a second if he'd have to study alone in someone else's house. However, Francis would have most probably told him if Matt wasn't home. With that in mind, Alfred grabbed one of the books from Matt's bookshelves and flopped onto his back on the bed. Sprawling, he felt the relief in his upper body and lower back as he could finally relax, realizing how much they really hurt.
Not long into his relaxation, he heard someone in the hallway approach the open bedroom door, a static hum accompanying the light footsteps.
When Matt had stepped through the door frame, he simply closed the door and sat down by his desk to commence whatever studying he had been doing till now. He was still humming into the water bottle through a straw. None of them cast each other as much as a glance to acknowledge each other's presence.
Alfred was currently reading a book about the bubonic plague, his eyes actively searching out the pictures. Though reading wasn't boring in any way, he was much more drawn to illustrations, both because he enjoyed interpreting images rather than words and because they were way easier to see. How someone preferred reading to looking at illustrations, Matt being a prime example, he would never understand. Besides finding it difficult to look at the word itself, reading how the plague doctors wore black robes and beak-shaped masks didn't intrigue him nearly as much as looking at the unnerving illustrations of humanoid birds with goggles, praying over a body covered in black boils and buboes the size of oranges. He also enjoyed the portrait of the Plague-hag that some Northern Europeans used as the plague's personification. Being the caring big brother Alfred was, he had once shown Peter the drawing of Pesta on the Stairs right before sleep. Ah, the fearful crying… Good times, good times. Except when Peter had taken his sweet revenge and gathered a cheap costume to scare Alfred back when he went to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
He must have fallen asleep, because it took Matt at least three calls before Alfred realized he had to open his eyes.
"Tired?" Matt asked, leaning the side of his torso onto the back of his wooden chair.
Alfred looked at him with droopy eyes before making a stretch so good his spine and limbs cracked, before relaxing again. "Super."
"Gee, I wonder why," Matt muttered.
Feeling slightly attacked, Alfred wanted to ask but was too fatigued to bother. For a few seconds silence reigned between them, but apparently Matt had something he wanted to say.
"I'm going to Oxford with papa soon, just for a short while," he started.
"Cool! Why?"
"Because we want to know what the rest of the year will be like, and because they signed me up for the wrong classes for next year. Sending letters takes too much time so we'll just talk with them directly."
"I would hug you and whine that you don't leave, but I'm too tired."
Matt chuckled but didn't say anything.
"Me 'n Dad are gonna be soooo lonely without you two," Alfred pouted and put the book next to him on the bed before forcing himself to sit up, "Don't you feel annoyed being followed around by uncle Francis, though?"
"I asked him to come with me," Matt shrugged.
"So you just… Asked, and he said sure?"
"Yes."
"Psh."
Matt looked at him with protest in his eyes before turning back to his desk again. With a heavy groan, Alfred swung his feet over the bed and planted them on the floor, grabbed the book he was reading and headed over to the end of the room where Matt was sitting. Next to the desk was the second window in his room. Tall and wide, there was little of the vast landscape it didn't frame. Though there was nothing but grassland until it reached a dense forest, the window was perfectly placed to watch the scenery as the sky gradually darkened.
"Don't you have to go home?" Matt asked quietly as he jotted things down in his notebook.
"You want me to leave?" Alfred smirked playfully at his friend, who paid him no heed. Though Alfred did think it was time to go home, even having thought so ever since he came, his feet wouldn't move. Heck, Alfred was too young to make a habit of just staring out the window for no reason, but the more he thought of carrying his heavy, aching body back to his house, the less he felt like moving.
"Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" Matt asked gently, now having put down his pencil and looking up at Alfred with attentive eyes.
"Just my tender physique," Alfred sighed dramatically as his eyes reached the mountains towering over the forest. At least he wasn't lying.
The door slammed shut when Alfred finally made it to his house and he collapsed onto his back on the floor, limbs spread to take up as much space as possible. There was nothing that could move him at this point, he was one hundred percent sure of it; Should a fire break out he would gladly let them consume him, if Dad came tumbling down the stairs again then let his ribs shatter for all Alfred cared, if it turned out the war wasn't over and the Russians or Americans dropped a bomb over town, then for all that was good and pure, let it happen. Alfred was not moving. Not even when Peter came running downstairs and sat down atop his stomach with all the force his tiny body could muster.
"Alfie, dinner!" the young boy announced.
"I'm too tired to make dinner," Alfred murmured and closed his eyes.
"No, there's dinner on the stove!" said Peter, getting off with a little pressure so Alfred's breath hitched in his throat. As quickly as he had come down, Peter headed upstairs again, "I wanted to wait for you before I ate!"
As Alfred lay on the floor with his eyes closed and body relaxed, he slowly picked up on the smell of dinner that he hadn't noticed before due to the only thing his body focusing on was to lie down. Mmm… Mashed rutabagas. And meat. That meant that Dad had been in the kitchen for a long time today and assembled some godly dinner that would soon make its way into Alfred's stomach, if Alfred could only find it in him to get up first. After the umpteenth groan he had released that day, he pushed himself into a sitting position before planting his feet on the floor and finally straightening up. Man, was he ready for bed after dinner.
Alfred entered the joined kitchen and living room and noticed the lack of presence.
"Where's Dad?" he asked as he made his way to the stove.
"In our room," Peter replied, his face buried in his forearms by the dinner table. Alfred covered his hands with a kitchen towel before grabbing the handles of the casseroles.
"Doing what?"
"I dunno… But he's not hungry."
"After all the work of making this good food..?"
The older placed the food on the dinner table before taking the seat opposite of Peter. He urged Peter to lift his head, and in unison they put their elbows on the table and intertwined their fingers. Alfred sighed. It was rare for him to take this role.
"For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly Grateful," he said calmly before bringing his knuckles to his lips, "Amen."
Once the table prayer was executed, Peter grabbed the wooden ladle that lay across the mashed rutabaga and scooped a towering spoonful onto his plate, and then some more. He eagerly proceeded to grab a few (many) pieces of pork to put onto the bed of mash. When Alfred could finally start filling his own plate, Peter was well into the process of stuffing his mouth with warm, aromatic dinner.
"Yannow, if you were that hungry you could've just eaten," Alfred chuckled, pleasant chills running down his spine when the steam from his plate hit his nose. He hadn't eaten since lunch which was six hours ago.
"Buft I duhdn' wuhnna eat alone, soh I wa'ted," Peter protested, some of his food possibly ending up back on the plate.
"Dad didn't eat?" Alfred asked, holding his palm in front of his mouth, as well as swallowing a good portion, to prevent the same thing from happening with him.
"Mno," Peter said before finally gulping down the food. However, being the clueless child he was, he loaded his mouth with another round before deciding to speak.
"I sehd he washn' hangwy."
"Huh."
As Alfred chewed down his food one fork at a time and his body rejoiced, he thought how utterly wasteful such a delicious dinner was when the whole family wasn't gathered. Rarely, if ever, was the family incomplete during dinner time. The only exception was if one of them were so sick the mere presence of light made them dizzy, or if they were at work or visiting someone. Counting out these options, Alfred could not remember a single time they had been missing one.
"Maybe Dad's sick," Alfred muttered before putting his fork down, "I'll go and check on him real quick."
"Alfie, wa-"
Within a second, Alfred had excused himself from the table and made his way downstairs. He knocked once before opening the door, sticking his head into the bedroom that Arthur and Peter shared. Arthur looked up at him, his eyebrows risen.
"Hello, Al," he said in a somewhat questioning tone.
"Ya comin' for dinner?" Alfred asked half-enthusiastically and stepped inside. Besides looking slightly tired and not wearing his eyepatch, revealing a nasty and un-grown scar, he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary about Dad. Sitting on the bedside, he was even embroidering into that old fabric. However, he didn't answer. He just looked at his son for a prolonged amount of time. Alfred however had no clue what he was trying to achieve by staring at him, so he slowly backed out the door again.
"I'll just… Go, I guess-?"
"If you don't mind, just leave me be for a while, all right?" Arthur eventually asked, his voice calm as ever. Though confused, Alfred nodded in compliance before closing the door. What a peculiar occurrence. Of course, bad days could happen to anyone, but it was unusual for Dad to hole himself up. Much less prepare a dinner so meticulous and proper and then not even doing the table prayer.
"He can just ask, huh", Alfred muttered under his breath, not entirely sure where that came from. When he sat back at the table, the same knot that he had had at the lake, as well as at Matt's, gnawed at his stomach. Though he did his best to keep up with Peter's ranting about how frustrating it was that everyone he ever played with in the span of a day were at least 15 years older than him, he couldn't put away the spiteful feeling that spread embers throughout his chest, and eventually he left the dinner table and said he felt unwell. He promised Peter he'd play with him soon if he'd be a good boy and clear the table.
Despite his body screaming for the sweet release of slumber, Alfred spent hours tossing and turning. He thought perhaps it was the water from when he had cut his finger on the metal earlier, and sucked on the wound, that was possibly starting to kick in. Ultimately, he decided to study. And then a thought befell him. Or rather, scratched his brain in a place that had been itching for a long time. Purely impulsive, an unpleasant intrusion that Alfred wished he could un-think: Would he have been closer to his goal if someone other than Arthur had rescued him?
Translations:
- "Bien sûr!". French, "Of course!".
- "Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?". French, "What's the matter?".
Notes:
- Pesta on the Stairs is a painting from 1896 by the Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen. It depicts the personification of the bubonic plague, or "Pesta", a figure which greatly affected the folklore of many northern European countries.
Seeya next week, folks!