Romano foils Wales' cunning plan less than ten minutes later by not having the good grace to sit his arse down and relax as Wales had asked and thus expected him to do.
He instead stomps up the stairs with his usual elephantine tread, and then loiters in the open bathroom doorway, where - if the prickling sensation that rapidly builds at the base of Wales' skull is anything to go by - he glares at the back of Wales' head with laser-like intensity.
His concentrated silence is very distracting, and Wales can't focus on the task at hand as a result of it. Every time he cleans away one smear from the window, he accidentally creates at least one more with a careless swipe of his fingertips or the side of his hand.
Eventually, he manages to contain the smears to a small patch in the lower left corner of the glass, which is easily hidden by a judicious rearrangement of the bottles set out on the windowsill. It's a shamefully cut corner, admittedly, but as he very much doubts that either Scotland or France will avail themselves of his collection of bubble baths during their brief stay, he's fairly confident it will go unnoticed.
He steps back to admire his handiwork, and then to the left and to the right, to make sure that his shortcomings are successfully concealed from all angles. When he's satisfied on that score, he very reluctantly turns around to face Romano.
He has, it appears, followed one of Wales' suggestions, if not the far more important one of entertaining himself and thus staying out of Wales' hair for the time being.
He's taken off his jacket, coat, and tie, undone the top button of his shirt collar, and rolled his sleeves up to just above the crooks of his elbows. He's also clutching two gently steaming mugs, one of which he holds out for Wales to take.
It's tea of the exact shade of brown Wales likes it best, suggesting that the ideal volume of milk has been added. It's a tricky balance; as little as one drop too many or too few tipping it askew into a mildly disappointing drinking experience. Romano must have a good eye and steady hand.
He's never made tea for Wales either, though, so Wales only takes a small, experimental sip of it at first. It's lukewarm and slightly stewed, but adequately potable all the same.
"Is it okay?" Romano asks, inclining his head towards the mug.
'Okay' is the perfect word for it. Wales nods. "Thanks," he says, and takes another sip as he casts one last, appraising look around the bathroom.
The tiles and mirrors are gleaming; the bath and sink scrubbed to a pure, brilliant white. His bright, fluffy new towels are neatly folded and hung on their rails. Not a thing looks unfinished or out of place, except, perhaps, the toilet roll. Wales' gaze keeps snagging on it, and something about it niggles at him.
"Are you supposed to hang toilet rolls over or under?" he says; mostly just mulling the thought over out loud, and not really expecting an answer.
And for a long while, Romano just stares at him blankly and doesn't give him one, though he does eventually spit out, "What?"
"Toilet paper," Wales repeats. "Over or under?"
"Why the fuck does it matter?" Romano asks; a perfectly reasonable and pertinent question to which Wales' answer would normally be 'It doesn't'.
But now, it seems imperative he makes the correct choice, because he has vague memories of once reading an article that espoused that the wrong one would indicate very unsavoury things about his character.
"Over," he decides after unearthing an equally foggy recollection that the article had ended with the assertion that over-hangers were clearly on the right side of the entire, ludicrous debate.
He quickly scurries off to flip the roll around, and then folds the loose end into the same triangular point that he's seen on display in countless hotel bathrooms over the years.
Romano's expression takes a turn from faint bafflement into incredulity. "Are you doing all this for Scozia?" he asks.
Wales snorts. "I doubt he'll notice any of it, and even if he does, he won't give a shit, either way."
"Francia, then," Romano concludes.
"I suppose so," Wales says. "In a way. He always looks after me so well when I visit him, and I guess I wanted to return the favour. But really, I just.. I fancied a change."
It's an idea that's been percolating at the back of Wales' mind all week - even though France was at the forefront all the while - which only becomes fully formed in the same instant he's speaking the words.
Beyond the bare essentials of upkeep to ensure it stayed moderately clean and didn't fall down around his ears in the middle of the night, Wales had done very little around his house in the near-twenty years he's been living in it. Most of the rooms are still decorated with exactly the same wallpaper as they had been when he moved in, he hasn't got around to updating his kitchen despite meaning to do so for at least a decade, and most of his furniture had also been hand-me-downs from England, and had been horribly dated even when he first received it.
Before he started his cleaning and decorating spree, everything had begun to look decidedly shabby, and was so thickly coated with an accretion of useless knick-knacks that he could barely scrape together a square foot of clear, flat surface in the entire house.
Somehow, he hadn't even noticed how many he'd accumulated until he set out to dust them en masse instead of pecking away at the job over the course of a week or two as he usually did.
It had seemed insurmountable until he made the decision to be ruthless and start packing some of them away to join the rest of his store of memories in the attic. Gone was his sizeable collection of tourist-trap love spoons, winnowed down to only a small handful of the best examples of the art. Gone too were the worst of his own attempts at watercolours that had once decorated his hallway and lounge, leaving behind just the one he is least ashamed by.
He'd filled three boxes with books he felt sure he'd never want to read again, given that they were so badly written that he hadn't been able to force himself to finish them in the first place, and donated them to charity, along with all the superfluous kitchen utensils and crockery he never used.
Northern Ireland's recent visit had served him with a fresh reminder that the teapot Cerys had made for him was dangerously unfit for purpose, and he'd packed that away too. He'd ended up removing from display most of the little odds and ends and cheap trinkets that had once belonged to his past lovers, because he realised that being surrounded by such reminders of them day after day was making it harder to move on forward in the direction he knows he must.
His relationships with humans may all have ended unhappily, but they'd felt so much easier, they'd flowed so much more naturally, than the one he's trying to eke out with Romano. But he'd promised himself he wouldn't go back, and whatever the hell it is that's happening between him and Romano is the only prospect on his romantic horizon right now, so he's just going to have to find a way to make the best of it.
And if that means ridding himself of anything that might serve as a temptation to backslide into old habits, then that's how it will have to be.
"What have you got left to do?" Romano asks, startling Wales into the realisation that he'd been standing in front of the toilet roll holder and staring at it absently for far too long.
"Um, the rest of the windows downstairs, and the vaccing," he says. "Oh, and I should probably have a shower, too."
Romano's nose wrinkles slightly. "You definitely should."
Great. So Wales had not only been sporting ridiculous hair and clothes that should have been consigned to the rubbish bin long ago when he greeted Romano earlier, but apparently he'd stunk, as well. It was no wonder that Romano hadn't wanted to kiss him.
"Fine," he says with a sigh, "I'll find the time to squeeze one in, then." Consulting his watch, he's shocked to discover that his overly nitpicky cleaning of the window and vacuous contemplation of the toilet roll had eaten up a surprisingly hefty chunk of his remaining hour. "I'm not sure how, though."
"I'll clean the windows for you," Romano offers.
"You don't have to do that," Wales says, horrified at the suggestion, which he considers a fairly damning indictment of his skills as a host. "You're a guest, too. Sit down, have another cup of coffee. I'll manage."
Romano frowns, and then strides forward, bursting straight through Wales' personal bubble and coming to a halt uncomfortably close in front of him once more. And as had been the case on the other two occasions he'd acted in the same way, the rough set of his jaw and determined cast of his eyes leads Wales to believe that he could well be thinking about punching him.
This time, he does actually go through with raising one of his hands, but he holds it flat-palmed and lax, hanging suspended in the air beside Wales' head. "I'll clean the windows," he says again, and after a momentary hesistation, his hand descends and he takes a loose grip of Wales' shoulder. "Go on" - he gives Wales a gentle push in the direction of the door - "you really need that shower."
When Wales opens his mouth with the intention of mounting another objection to his proposal, Romano shoves him a little harder, and repeats, "Go on," in a sharp, abrupt tone which betrays that his patience is thinning.
Despite everything, they've managed to avoid ever coming to blows thus far, and Wales doesn't want to risk ruining the precarious harmony they've somehow maintained with a petty argument now. He doesn't have time for it, for a start.
Grudgingly, he gives in to Romano's urging, and trudges off to fetch his vac.