A/N - here's the second chapter! Because the first chapter was intended as a oneshot (the people over at LJ forced me to write more because they wanted to see FrenchMaid!Austria) the second chapter is set about a month afterwards (as is made obvious in the chapter) and then the events of the next nine chapters will follow on at the pace of about one day covered in each chapter. So reading the fic as a whole might be a bit weird with the time jump between the first and second chapters, but I did the best I could. And yes you heard me, this fic will be 11 chapters long in total. I think it's going to kill me XD

Roderich felt the urge to stretch in a very undignified way as he left the meeting room. He had been sitting in an uncomfortable chair surrounded by squabbling nations for over two hours. It had been incredibly tiring and nothing much had gotten done, despite Ludwig's attempts to keep everyone on topic. Roderich sighed. He hated these meetings.

"Hey Arthur!" Roderich turned as he heard a familiar voice, frowning as he saw Gilbert tackle the English nation with enough force to make him take a couple of steps back in order to regain his balance. What on Earth was Gilbert doing here? Since Prussia had been dissolved, Gilbert had been set free of all the duties that fell to the personification of a country. He hadn't seemed the understand that the rest of the world could keep functioning as normal without him, however, and a few times he had sauntered into world conferences and other important meetings demanding that they hurry up because he was bored and had no one to play with. In the end he had been banned altogether, which he seemed to view as a personal; achievement and bragged about when given the chance.

"Sometimes I can't tell if you're happy to see me or trying to kill me," Arthur was saying to him at that moment, Gilbert still clinging to him.

"I'm very happy to see you," Gilbert clarified. "But if I do accidentally kill you one day, can I have England? Since you won't need it anymore." Arthur arched an eyebrow, which was always a rather impressive sight, and looked as though he was trying not to smile.

"Well I suppose someone needs to take care of it," he replied, "but only if you promise to return Britain to its former glory. Start by invading France and those ungrateful former colonies of mine. And make sure to sink a few of Antonio's ships while you're at it – it's traditional." Gilbert let go of him so that he could grasp both of Arthur's hands together, an expression of total elation on his features.

"I will, I promise! I'll rename the whole world Prussia. It'll be beautiful." Arthur laughed at Gilbert's enthusiasm and Roderich, who had watched this exchange from a little way off, shook his head and turned to leave, only to hear his name shouted out in the same gleeful tone as Arthur's had been. He braced himself in case Gilbert was planning to tackle him in a similar manner, but thankfully the Prussian either managed to restrain himself or didn't quite dare, because all that he did was pop up in front of Roderich, blocking his escape and dragging Arthur with him.

"Did you miss me?" he asked hopefully.

"No," Roderich replied flatly, and watched blankly as Gilbert's expression turned to outrage.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"Is it me or are you even more hyperactive than usual today?" Roderich asked, ignoring the other nation's question. Gilbert's face immediately broke into a grin.

"I'm just excited about tonight," he explained.

"Why, what's happening tonight?" Roderich asked sharply. "I hope you're not planning to try and annex any of the Baltic States again because I will not save you from Ivan a third time. Also, don't even think about declaring war on Sealand again. Just accept that neither of you have armies; just because Peter can't beat you doesn't mean that you can beat him, and I'm sick of you dripping seawater all over my house. Furthermore –"

"Actually, all that's happening is that he's coming out drinking with me and some of the others," Arthur cut in, trying very hard not to laugh at Gilbert, who was looking incredibly proud at the mention of his exploits and either not caring or totally missing the fact that he was being scolded.

"Oh God." Roderich closed his eyes and adopted a pained expression. Even worse things happened when Gilbert was drunk than when he was sober, and that was saying something.

"You're coming with us," Gilbert added casually, so casually that Roderich had idly nodded and opened his mouth to tell Gilbert that he didn't appreciate lewd phone calls at two o'clock in the morning either, especially if the inappropriate comments were made between off-key verses of the Prussian national anthem, before he realised what Gilbert had said. He closed his mouth again and looked at Gilbert pityingly.

"Do you really believe that?" he asked.

"Don't worry, I'll protect you from Francis," Gilbert reassured him, as if there couldn't possibly be any other reason why Roderich wouldn't want to join them.

"But who's going to protect me from you?" Roderich replied. Before Gilbert could respond, someone else spoke.

"Did I hear my name?" Francis asked mildly as he approached. Gilbert's eyes lit up and he launched himself at the Frenchman in a similar way to how he had tackled Arthur before. Roderich wondered irritably why every nation apart from him was greeted with such enthusiasm. Not that he wanted to be jumped on in such a manner, of course. It was just the principle of the thing.

"Francis!" Gilbert was now exclaiming. "I've missed you so much! You don't call, you don't write…"

"As a matter of fact, mon cher, I last saw you three days ago," Francis replied in an amused tone. Gilbert looked at him in bewilderment that slowly turned to thoughtfulness.

"Oh yeah," he said, ignoring Francis' hand as it moved in for a perfunctory grope. Roderich twitched.

"Ludwig's coming with us too," Arthur suddenly said to him, and Roderich gladly turned his attention towards the distraction. "So things shouldn't get too out of hand. Or, at least, they won't get out of control as quickly as they would otherwise. You'll have plenty of time to escape before anyone starts dancing naked on the tables."

"Would this 'anyone' be you or Gilbert?" Roderich asked. Arthur had the decency to look rather sheepish.

"Whichever one of us can get undressed the quickest," he admitted. There was no point in denying it. Both nations had a reputation when it came to alcohol. In fact Arthur had a Reputation with a capital R, but Roderich suspected that this was only because Arthur acted much more sensibly when sober, whereas Gilbert could manage incredible feats of stupidity whether he was intoxicated or not. Therefore it was much more memorable to behold Arthur 'pissed off his head' as the English nation might have put it. The contrast tended to shock people.

"Plus, if you don't come, he'll probably end up trying to invade your house at three in the morning and end up passed out on your roof again," Arthur added. "Did you ever find out how he got up there?"

"No. He couldn't remember a thing from the night before," Roderich replied. He paused as he weighed up his options and eventually sighed in defeat. "All right, I'll come with you, but only for a couple of hours. It sounds like the lesser of the two evils."

Although Gilbert had been chatting animatedly with Francis, he must have somehow sensed that Roderich had given in, because he immediately bounded back over to them, looking thrilled. "I knew you'd see it my way," he said smugly, as if he had been the one to persuade Roderich into reluctant acceptance of his fate. Then again, he had been the reason why Roderich had acquiesced because putting up with a drunken Gilbert in a bar for a couple of hours was preferable to trying and failing to kick a drunken Gilbert off his property. Not to mention the difficulty of finding a ladder long enough to reach the roof of his house.

"Don't look so apprehensive," Francis said soothingly. "We'll take good care of you."

"We will," Gilbert agreed enthusiastically. "And if you wake up the next morning to discover that you don't remember anything and unlikely parts of your body are aching, don't worry, that's perfectly normal." He beamed at Roderich while Francis leered behind him, and Roderich suddenly wondered if he had made a very wrong decision.

"You might want to keep a close eye on your drink," Arthur muttered to him. It was going to be a very long night, Roderich realised wearily. A very long night.

***

Gilbert barged into Roderich's house at about ten to eight that evening, He looked around the ground floor and, not finding his intended target there, climbed the stairs and entered Roderich's bedroom without bothering to knock. He stared.

"Do you mind?" Roderich snapped. He threw the shirt he was holding onto the bed and folded his arms across his bare torso. It was the stupidest question that he had ever asked, Gilbert thought vaguely.

"Um. No," the taller nation replied. Roderich arched an eyebrow, clearly meaning 'get out, you moron, I'm getting changed.' In response, Gilbert closed the bedroom door behind him and smiled innocently as if to say 'carry on, I won't stop you. In fact, I rather encourage you to take off your pants. Hint, hint.'

Sighing, Roderich turned to pull a more casual dark green shirt from his drawer, trying very hard to ignore the feeling of Gilbert's eyes boring into his back. He wondered if it was really a good idea to take his eyes off the other nation while he was half naked and decided that it probably wasn't advisable. Turning around, he fought off the feeling of acute self-consciousness caused by Gilbert openly staring. He tried to button the shirt as quickly as possible.

"So where are we going exactly?" he asked to try and distract the other nation and bring a sense of normality back to the room.

"It's a bar that we go to quite often," Gilbert started, his eyes not straying from where they were following the path of Roderich's fingers moving along the buttons that suddenly seemed a lot harder to fasten than usual. Roderich faltered and stared at him.

"There are bars that let you back in after the first time?" he asked, genuinely astounded. Gilbert finally met his eyes, looking rather amused.

"Well we buy a lot of drinks, and I do mean a lot," he said. "It's good money and we don't take offense when they kick us out after we've had a bit too much – it's more fun to cause havoc in the streets anyway…" He trailed off as he noticed Roderich trying to undo his trousers inconspicuously. This attention was more than Roderich could bear, however, and he glared at Gilbert.

"Could you stop being such a voyeur?" he snapped. While in general it didn't bother him to get changed in the same room as someone else (providing the someone else was also male), he felt as though he was unwittingly performing a strip-tease. Gilbert had always been a little, well, perverted, to put it bluntly, a trait that Roderich believed to result from Gilbert hanging around Francis too much, but lately something had…changed. Since last month when they had gotten a little too close on the sofa, there had been a tension between them, and even Roderich couldn't pretend to himself that he didn't know what kind of tension it was, although he had tried very hard. But there were other things that seemed different: the way that Gilbert looked at him sometimes, the tingle that the other nation's touch left on his skin, and the way Roderich's pulse quickened every time Gilbert flashed that roguish grin at him. Most mysterious of all was that he hadn't immediately kicked Gilbert out of his bedroom just now.

"If you don't stop staring at me then I'm not going anywhere," he declared, folding his arms and praying that his pants wouldn't fall down now that they were unfastened. Gilbert pouted but grudgingly crossed to the other side of the bed and sat down so that he had his back to Roderich.

"Happy?" he asked. Roderich considered this.

"More so than I was a minute ago," he conceded.

Gilbert stared out of the window at the sunset that was tinting the clouds pink and listened to the sounds of Roderich getting changed. It was strangely thrilling and somehow more sensual to picture Roderich's movements in his mind's eye based on the faint rasp of cloth against skin than actually watching the other nation. When he was given the go ahead to turn around again, Roderich was wearing a pair of tan-coloured pants and placing his discarded garments neatly on the back of a chair. Bathed in the warm light that slanted in from the window, he had a sun kissed beauty that took Gilbert's breath away. He was also, chipped in the part of Gilbert that thought with an organ that wasn't his brain, deliciously sexy. But then again, Roderich always was.

As Roderich locked the front door on their way out, Gilbert silently positioned himself just so that when Roderich turned around he found himself trapped against the door by the taller nation. Taking advantage of Roderich's moment of surprised stillness, Gilbert leaned in to press a chaste kiss to the other's lips. Roderich pushed him away and instinctively started to raise a hand to his mouth, but paused it at about chest height as if unsure what he should do with it.

"I told you to stop doing that," he said, but Gilbert saw a totally different message in his eyes. Roderich didn't even seem to be aware of how much want showed in the way he looked at Gilbert at times like these. It was almost irresistible to just smother those protests until they turned into encouragements and inarticulate sounds of pleasure, but now wasn't the time. It would, however, be the time very soon, Gilbert was sure. He had a Plan.

They took a taxi into the centre of town where their intended destination sat on a road lined with bars, pubs and clubs. Various types of music washed out into the street through the open doors, creating a background thrum of energy through the mix-matched beats. Gilbert seemed totally in his element, but Roderich felt lost and stranded as he watched the taxi drive away. He unconsciously moved closer to Gilbert, who noticed and casually reached up to rest his hand on Roderich's shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

"This way," was all he said, leading Roderich along the road towards a bar that had its door wedged open to let in the last of the day's heat. Usually Roderich would have shrugged off the hand that stayed resting on his shoulder, but the feel of Gilbert's arm against his back was comforting and familiar in the Friday night clubland that was so alien to him. It was almost as if he had lost a lifeline when Gilbert let go as they entered the bar.

It didn't take long to spot the other European nations. They were sitting around a table that was already clustered with glasses of wine, beer and whatever it was that Arthur and Antonio were drinking, because Roderich would have bet the whole of Austria that it wasn't just coke. On one side of the table was a cushioned bench where Francis was seated in between Arthur and Antonio, an arm casually draped across the top of the bench behind either of them in an unnervingly good imitation of a pimp. He was currently teasing Arthur, judging from the expression on the English nation's face, while Antonio was chatting amiably to Lovino, who sat on his other side. Seated on wooden chairs on the opposite side of the table were Feliciano, who was also participating in the conversation between his twin and Antonio, and Ludwig, who spotted the newcomers and beckoned them over.

"You go sit down," Gilbert said, "while I get the drinks." Something about the pleasant innocence in his voice broke through Roderich's discomfort and he grabbed Gilbert's arm to stop him from getting away.

"I'll have red wine," he said pointedly and Gilbert sighed in disappointment.

"You're far too quick on the uptake," he said before slipping off towards the bar.

Roderich took a seat next to Ludwig, if anything feeling even more uneasy now that he was amongst familiar faces in such an unfamiliar setting. It didn't help that Francis looked delighted to see him.

"Ah, Roderich, I am so pleased to see you here," he greeted in his lilting accent. "You are looking très beau."

"Thank you," Roderich replied warily. Francis chuckled.

"Don't look so scared, mon cher, I don't bite." Several people around the table paused their conversations to stare at him in disbelief. Arthur snorted.

"Anyone who escapes you with only a few bites is very lucky," he said drily. Francis smiled and made a suggestion that caused Roderich to blush furiously and wonder through his shock how even someone like Francis could say things like that with such a mild expression, as if it was totally acceptable to make X-rated comments in public. Arthur merely took another sip of his drink as he listened calmly.

"Yes, maybe, but not with you," he replied, and Roderich felt a wave of sympathy for him. No one deserved to be around Francis for long enough to be used to comments like that.

Roderich was distracted from staring at Francis in a sort of shocked horror by a glass of wine clinking down on the table in front of him. Gilbert pulled his chair closer to the shorter nation's side than was strictly necessary and drained half of his beer in one go before sighing in satisfaction. It slowly dawned on Roderich that the two hours he had promised to stay for were going to last a lifetime longer than they should.

Indeed the first hour seemed to go by as if time was wading through treacle, moving Roderich through the evening and into the night at a snail's pace. By half past nine only Ludwig and himself were still totally sober, although it had to be said that Gilbert was only tipsy. He seemed to be drinking at a slower pace than normal, probably for Roderich's benefit. Arthur wasn't faring too badly either, which was rather surprising, but then again the night was young and there was plenty of time to get as wasted as possible. Why rush things?

"Ve, ve." Feliciano had popped up at Roderich's end of the table. "Lovino, Antonio, Ludwig and I are going to one of the clubs down the street. Are you guys coming?" Neither Ludwig not Lovino looked particularly happy with these arrangements, Roderich noted vaguely through his dread. He could handle a bar, but if he was dragged into a club then he would probably just die on the spot. Therefore he felt an enormous relief when the other three all declined the invitation.

"And then there were four," Francis remarked when the others had left. "Now it is like a, how you say, double date, no?" He slid along the bench until there was barely an inch separating him and Arthur. The English nation immediately got up and took a seat in one of the chairs next to Gilbert. "You are so cruel," Francis said to him, but he didn't look particularly upset. "I suppose in that case we have only one couple and a doomed love affair." Arthur snorted at Francis' description of them, but Roderich looked up sharply.

"Gilbert and I are not a couple," he said sharply. Francis looked mildly surprised.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Because I have heard some interesting things about an incident last month." Roderich shot a glare at Gilbert, who was studiously avoiding his eyes and looking suspiciously innocent. Francis' next question, however, shattered any irritation that Roderich was feeling by stunning him into the state of shock. "Haven't you even had sex?" the Frenchman asked curiously. Roderich snapped his head back round to look at him, wide-eyed and flushed.

"Of course not!" he somehow managed to protest, shaking his head emphatically to further emphasise his denial. Francis looked bewildered.

"Why not?" he asked, sounding genuinely mystified.

"Because…" For a moment words failed Roderich and his sentence spluttered and died, but he persevered desperately. "Because I'm not interested in Gilbert in that way," he lied, carefully avoiding looking at the nation seated to his right. He wished suddenly that he had more alcohol in his system; maybe then he would be able to fool himself into believing that he hadn't spent a lot of the night noticing the way Gilbert's plain black t-shirt clung to his torso, defining his well-toned muscles. Then again, he thought desperately, trying to make some kind of excuse, he had also been wondering whether the enormous rips in the other nation's jeans were a fashion statement or the aftermath of Elizabeta becoming so annoyed by him that she had tried to cut off his legs at the knees. He had decided that it was probably both and then moved back to stealing small glances at Gilbert's nicely-shaped upper body. OK, so there went the theory that he had only been observing the other's clothing in a superficial way. Damn.

"So you're not interested in him romantically or physically?" It was Arthur who had asked this time, leaning forwards and resting his chin on his hand, his elbow on the table, so that he was at an angle where he could see past Gilbert to meet Roderich's eyes.

"I don't care about him in any way at all," Roderich agreed, and he could almost taste the lie, it was so huge. He tried not to wince as he practically felt the hurt emanating from Gilbert.

"So you wouldn't want to, for example, snog him?" Arthur persisted, and there was a glint in his eye that Roderich couldn't decipher but definitely didn't like. He sifted through his mental file of British slang and hesitantly translated 'snog' to 'kiss'.

"No," he said, somewhat warily.

"So it wouldn't bother you in the slightest if I snog him then?" Arthur asked cheerfully, and for a moment Roderich was caught totally off guard. Francis was suddenly looking very interested in the way that only an experienced voyeur could.

"What?" was all Roderich managed, but Arthur wasn't waiting for an answer. Roderich watched through a cloud of emotions ranging in sentiment from 'I have no idea what's happening anymore!' to 'kiss him and I will sink your whole goddamn island, you bastard' as Arthur turned Gilbert's face towards him and angled his own, leaning forwards…

Roderich stood up so abruptly that he almost overturned his chair. He vaguely registered that his hands were shaking with rage. Arthur stopped, his lips mere centimetres from Gilbert's, and then he moved back, taking his hand away from the other nation's face. He met Roderich's furious glare with a mildly amused look and raised an eyebrow. Realisation dawned that Arthur had never intended to actually kiss Gilbert; the whole act had just been to provoke a reaction. The relief that flooded Roderich just added to his anger, however, and he subtly adjusted his glare from 'hands off my man' to 'oh, you did not just do that'.

"I'm going to get another drink," he said stiffly, and walked off towards the bar. Arthur watched him go with an expression of satisfaction.

"He wants you so bad," he said to Gilbert, who was staring back at him with something like awe.

"He does," the taller nation agreed.

"You two can still make out if you want to," Francis chipped in hopefully. He was dutifully ignored.

Meanwhile, Roderich had caught the bartender's attention easily after everyone else around the bar had caught a glimpse of his expression and decided that here was a man who really needed a drink.

"Do you know those men sitting over there?" Roderich asked, inclining his head to indicate the table where the other three were sitting. "The Englishman, the Frenchman and the Prussian?"

"Yeah, I know them," the bartender replied. "I think half the money I make is from drinks they've bought."

"Then you know what they're like," Roderich said flatly. "I've had to put up with them for over an hour. I don't know a lot about alcoholic drinks, so please give me something that you deem strong enough to get me through another hour of torture."

The bartender was clearly very familiar with the other three nations as he gave Roderich a look of deep, genuine sympathy before taking a glass and concocting a mixture from enough bottles of alcohol that Roderich lost count of them, plus a trickle of some sort of fruit juice. The resulting drink was an unsettling greeny-blue colour, and Roderich stared at it for a moment before lifting the glass to his lips and draining it completely. It stung his throat, but the fruity undertone was enough to stop him from choking. Feeling slightly light-headed, he replaced the glass on the counter, not noticing the people nearby staring at him.

"I think I need another one," he told the bartender, who nodded even though he looked quite stunned himself.

"You can have this one on the house," he said, recognising a man who had a genuine need to not be sober any longer. "But I'd advise you to drink it a little slower."

When Roderich returned to the table with three quarters of his second drink still in the glass, Francis wasn't there. As he was nowhere to be seen in the immediate vicinity, but there was a group of attractive young women sitting at a table close by, he had presumably gone to the bathroom and not ventured out to harass any innocent bystanders. Taking advantage of his absence, Roderich sat on the bench where the French nation had been sitting in order to make it clear that he was still angry. Gilbert stared at his drink.

"What is that?" he asked curiously.

"I have no idea," Roderich replied truthfully. Arthur stared at it thoughtfully.

"Does it taste like pineapple?" he asked. Roderich took another sip and tried to determine the answer, but all he could really taste was the bitter aftertaste of alcohol.

"Possibly," he concluded. Arthur nodded as if this confirmed his suspicions.

"You don't want to know what it is," he said. Roderich took a long sip from the drink in question and sat in stony silence as he felt the effects of drinking such strong alcohol so quickly set in even more. It didn't help that the most he usually had was a glass or two of wine and so his body was completely unused to such treatment. His head had started to feel funny and his senses were getting a bit muzzy.

"Um, Roderich?" Gilbert suddenly spoke up. He seemed uncharacteristically uneasy. "Are you mad at me?" Roderich looked at him in surprise. Was he not making it obvious enough?

"I don't think I've ever not had a reason to be angry with you," he replied.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Gilbert asked in a hurt tone that only succeeded in irritating Roderich even more.

"Well, let's see," Roderich started sarcastically. "You always barge into my house uninvited and refuse to leave unless I remove you by force, you break anything fragile that you can get your hands on, you're always causing trouble that I have to sort out, you make a mess every time you come over and leave me to clean it up, not to mention –"

"OK, I get the picture," Gilbert interrupted, holding up his hands as if to defend himself against the barrage of words directed at him. "If you really don't like me coming over that much then why don't we make a deal?"

"What kind of deal?" Roderich asked suspiciously.

"Since we're in a bar, let's make things interesting. We'll have a drinking competition and if you win then I won't come over to your house or bother you at all for a whole month."

"And if you win?"

"If I win…well, do you remember when I said that I was going to take over Austria and make you my maid?" Roderich raised an eyebrow at the question. Did Gilbert honestly believe that he could forget that day?

"I remember," he confirmed,

"Well, if I win then I get total control of your house for a week and you have to be my maid and do everything I tell you," Gilbert said, looking smug at the very thought. If Roderich had been less inebriated and less angry then he would have flat-out refused the terms. In fact, he would have laughed off the whole idea of a drinking competition because any fool could see what the outcome would be. Unfortunately, though, he was intoxicated and he wanted to wipe the smirk off Gilbert's face rather badly, which is why he stupidly accepted the challenge. Gilbert grinned.

"Excellent," he said in a positively evil tone of voice that Roderich completely missed. At this point, Francis returned to stand behind Arthur and draped himself over the other nation.

"What's going on?" he asked, and Arthur turned to mutter a quick explanation to him, too distracted to even elbow the Frenchman in the ribs to make him let go. Gilbert ignored them both.

"We'll order more glasses of whatever it is that you're drinking until only one of us is still conscious," he said. "Whoever's the first to pass out loses."

They moved over to the bar and sat on a couple of empty stools, Arthur standing to watch with Francis still wound around him. The Englishman seemed to be past caring and Francis was eagerly taking advantage. The bartender served the first drinks and the two nations downed them. It didn't occur to Roderich that he had already had two glasses of the unnervingly colourful mixture, which was much stronger than the beer that Gilbert had drank four or five pints of. It didn't really make that much difference to his disadvantage, though, as Gilbert was a seasoned pro at consuming near-fatal amounts of alcohol in one sitting and remaining more or less upright. By the third drink, a small crowd of spectators had gathered and Roderich was clinging onto the counter to keep him balanced on his stool.

The fourth round was placed in front of them, and Roderich idly wondered if it was even legal for the bartender to be selling them so much of…whatever it was that they were drinking. He touched the glass to his lips, but he couldn't seem to swallow the liquid as quickly anymore. He could barely taste it as it flowed over his tongue and, come to think of it, he didn't feel very well. The empty glass hit the counter barely five seconds before Roderich's head followed suit. Gilbert smiled victoriously over the rim of his glass. Phase one of the Plan was complete.