A/N - I'm so sorry that I didn't update last week! I've started back at school now so updates might be a little more erratic than usual, although I'll try not to go so long without posting anything again. I was so uninspired for this chapter it was unbelievable! But the good news is that not only is the next chapter now here, but someone else drew fanart! The awesome xEmmie-kinZx drew an amazing picture that I've linked on my bio. Go see it. Because you know you need to see Maid!Austria on a leash. Oh yes~ And I was sad to discover that Liechtenstein doesn't have an official Hetalia name, but since a lot of fans call her 'Lily', I decided to jump on the bandwagon and used that as her name
"No, Gilbert," Roderich said firmly, not even looking up from the sideboard he was dusting.
"Please?" Gilbert implored from where he was lying on the sofa on his stomach, his head resting on his arms and his legs bent at the knee so that his bare feet rested against the back of the couch. "If you're worried about how much housework you have, I can make it quick. I'm sure you can spare a twenty minute break."
"If that's how incompetent you are then definitely not," Roderich replied drily. "You're not very skilled at persuading people to have sex with you, you know."
Gilbert's new passive aggressive harassment technique was starting to become annoying, he considered as he carefully wiped the dust from several small but expensive ornaments. For the whole morning, their dialogue had been variations of their current conversation, yet, oddly enough, Roderich had not yet been forced to fight off any physical advances. After yesterday, Gilbert seemed intent on pursuing whatever trigger he had unknowingly activated the day before that had resulted in Roderich coming onto him for a change. Now he was treating Roderich like some sort of scientific experiment. The sort of experiment where the test tubes are put to unconventional and pleasurable new uses. Strictly for scientific purposes, of course.
"I don't get how your mind works," Gilbert was grumbling now. "Yesterday you were in dominatrix mode and now you're being a total prude. What's up with that?" Roderich was almost stupid enough to question Gilbert's usage of 'dominatrix', but then he remembered what he was wearing and wisely decided to keep quiet.
Gilbert's question wasn't worth answering either, Roderich thought, and not least because 'what's up with that?' ranked rather low on Roderich's scale of intelligent queries. A sex-obsessed idiot like Gilbert couldn't possibly understand Roderich's psychology, even if it was explained to him using diagrams and a colour-coded user's manual. Roderich's view of sex was simply this: there is a time and a place. Just because he didn't flaunt his sexuality like Gilbert and Francis didn't mean that he was a blushing virgin. With the amount of marriages and non-martial relationships he had been involved in over the centuries, was it really surprising that he had some experience, some expertise even, in the bedroom department? However, just because he had developed a persona for sex that could achieve world domination if used rightly (as a former lover of his had once told him in the breathless tones of one who doesn't quite know what has hit them), that didn't mean that he should. It wouldn't be proper. It wouldn't be decent. There's a time and a place for seduction, and there's a time and a place for restraint. Roderich knew for a fact that he wasn't the only one who thought this way; he had heard things about Arthur (from Francis, naturally) that he had at first refused to believe, albeit only partly because Arthur generally came across as sensible and slightly reserved. A curious experiment, however, had proved that the position Francis had described in unwanted detail was physically possible, providing that both people involved were very flexible.
"Hey, I'm talking to you!" Gilbert interrupted Roderich's thoughts irritably as he realised he was being ignored. "Why are you acting like there's a bigger stick up your ass than usual today?" This time Roderich answered him quickly in order to prevent the obvious follow-up innuendo from passing Gilbert's lips. He was starting to get better at spotting them.
"I have work to do," he replied coldly. "Stop bothering me."
"You're so boring," Gilbert groaned, but he lay silently for a couple of moments before asking, "What time is it?"
"There's a clock on the wall," Roderich pointed out. "Or have you not yet learnt to tell the time for yourself?"
"It's ten to three," Gilbert replied defiantly. Roderich made a show of glancing over at the clock. "Hey! You don't need to check!" Gilbert protested, pouting sulkily. "Just hurry up and finish what you're doing." Something about the way he had spoken, combined with another impatient glance at the clock, made Roderich suspicious.
"Why, what are you planning?" he asked, and his suspicions only deepened at the wide-eyed, innocent 'who, me?' expression that appeared on Gilbert's face.
"Nothing," he said in a tone that Roderich identified as a blatant lie. He kept a close eye on the other nation after that, noticing how Gilbert glanced at the clock more and more frequently as the time approached three o'clock. When the hour struck, he started to tap a finger impatiently on the couch. He was obviously waiting for something, and Roderich didn't dare consider what it might be.
Unfortunately, at two minutes past three, he no longer had the choice of staying ignorant. Roderich froze as the doorbell rang, an ominous sound when he was dressed as a maid. Gilbert had no such fears, however, and he sprang to his feet eagerly, saying "I'll get it!" He was ambushed on his way to answer the door, however, by Roderich grabbing at his arm, his shirt, anything to restrain him.
"You invited somebody over?" Roderich asked, looking so betrayed and distressed that Gilbert almost felt guilty for a moment. He lay his hands over Roderich's which were clenched so tightly in his t-shirt that the shorter nation's knuckles had turned white, and stroked his thumbs over them soothingly.
"It's for a good cause," he tried to reassure Roderich. "Trust me." If Roderich hadn't been so terrified of being exposed, he would have laughed at Gilbert's words. However, right now he really wanted to trust that Gilbert wasn't doing this merely to humiliate him. Grudgingly, he let Gilbert pry his hands from the blond nation's t-shirt and didn't even protest as a small, soft kiss was placed on his temple. "Trust me," Gilbert repeated, and as he left the room to answer a second chime of the doorbell, Roderich found that, inexplicably, he did.
As Roderich tried in vain to identify the quiet voices that started conversing in the hall, he looked down at the dress in despair and wished that he could rewind time and prevent the stupid deal from ever being made. He drew a little comfort from the fact that it was now the fourth day of The Week From Hell, and therefore over halfway through this ordeal. He just hoped that after all this was over, he wouldn't be the laughing stock of the rest of the world.
"Hey, Roderich," Gilbert said, grabbing Roderich's attention as he stepped back into the room. "We have guests." Two other nations followed him through the doorway and Roderich wondered why he couldn't just die right then and there and get it over with. It couldn't be any worse than the looks he was receiving now from Vash and, even worse, Lily, as they stared at him openly in shock. Vash's mouth was hanging open a little and he looked very flustered. He wrenched his gaze away and turned to Gilbert.
"So you weren't lying," he said weakly. "You're a sick, sick bastard, do you know that?" Gilbert beamed.
"Thank you," he replied, genuinely taking it as a compliment. Roderich shifted uneasily. He wanted to demand an explanation as to why Gilbert had brought these two here, but his throat seemed to be clogged up with nerves. Maybe it was some sort of self-defence mechanism and his subconscious was reasoning that if he stayed silent, maybe he would fade into the background until nobody could see him anymore. It was a comforting idea. His relationship with Vash was awkward and strained enough as it was; he didn't need his former childhood friend getting the wrong impression about his private life as well! And Lily was still just a pure-minded child, she shouldn't be witnessing the product of Gilbert's perverted mind.
"Why…?" he managed to ask before his vocal chords went back on strike.
"Well," Gilbert said in the tones of one who's about to tell a long story, "remember that photograph that Elizabeta took the other day to add to her perverted stash? I figured that you wouldn't want her to have evidence of you looking sexy – more sexy than normal, that is – and since I went easy on her when I tried to get it back since I'm such a nice guy, she got away with it. So I thought I should call in some help who wouldn't have any moral objections to using violence." He looked hopefully at Roderich, reminding the brunet vaguely of a puppy who has brought the newspaper, utterly destroying it with drool and teeth in the process, but still expects a pat on the head and maybe a 'good boy' thrown in its general direction.
"Um," Roderich said. "Thank you?" Gilbert wagged his metaphorical tail.
"I explained about the dress," the Prussian added. "I thought that it might throw a spanner in the works of my brilliant plan if the help had heart attacks and died."
"I had hoped you were joking about it," Vash admitted, starting to get over his shock, although he was eying the dress warily, as if he thought that it might suddenly attack him. Roderich made a mental note not to make any sudden movements, in case he accidentally prompted Vash to attack first.
Abruptly, Lily stepped forward, drawing the others' attention as this was the first sign of life she had shown since being confronted by the dress. Something was odd about the way she was looking at him, Roderich noticed, Her eyes were…sparkling?
"You look so pretty!" she blurted out suddenly. Vash stared at her in horror and Roderich wondered whether he should take her comment as a compliment or as an insult to his masculinity. "Don't you think he looks pretty, Vash?" Lily continued, looking up at her brother to seek his opinion. Vash flushed a little and lost some of his composure in his haste to educate his younger sister about gender roles.
"What? No! Men aren't supposed to be pretty. That's not – it's not – they aren't supposed to wear women's clothes either," he managed, flailing his arms about to try and emphasis his point. Gilbert snorted.
"Don't listen to him, kid," he advised. "Men dressed as maids are perfectly acceptable as long as they look damn hot in the outfit." Roderich somehow managed to grab Vash's wrist before he could resort to violence. The Swiss nation did not take kindly to idiots like Gilbert filling his sister's head with improper ideas.
"You mentioned a plan to retrieve the photograph from Elizabeta?" Roderich said to Gilbert, desperate to change the subject. Although he wasn't as strict in his views as Vash, he was also opposed to letting Gilbert and Lily share breathing space for any longer than necessary. Nobody could survive the Prussian's corrupting influence for too long without being affected, and Roderich blanched at the thought of Lily developing interests in the same vein as some of Elizabeta's.
"Oh yes, let me explain my amazing plan," Gilbert said, eagerly picking up the new topic. "It's a work of genius the likes of which you've never seen before…"
***
When Elizabeta heard the chime of her doorbell, she was surprised. She was even more surprised, albeit pleasantly so, when she opened the door and found Lily standing outside, smiling shyly up at her.
"Well this is unexpected," Elizabeta commented, returning the smile warmly. "Though, of course, you're always welcome to visit me whenever you like. Come inside."
"Thank you," Lily replied as Elizabeta moved aside the let her cross the threshold. "I'm sorry I didn't call ahead, but I just bought a new film and thought we could watch it together." She held up the film in question for Elizabeta to see.
"It looks good," the other nation said. She was genuinely pleased that Lily had decided to come round since the two women didn't see each other as much as they would like. They got on surprisingly well, and it was always good to see another female in a world that sometimes seemed completely dominated by men. As Elizabeta led the way into the lounge, she missed Lily's quick glance back through the panes of glass in the door; a glance that didn't spot anything abnormal unless you counted the small flash of the sun reflecting on something that definitely wasn't part of the garden.
Outside, standing out of sight amidst the trees that lined Elizabeta's property, Vash trained his binoculars on the window of the lounge, watching as Elizabeta turned the television on. Stage one of the plan – distraction – had been completed. Behind him, Gilbert casually placed a hand on Roderich's ass and then caught the elbow that had been aiming for his ribs. Roderich glared at him and wiped the smug smirk off his face by stamping on his foot.
"We should wait for ten minutes until she's gotten settled," Vash said, unknowingly breaking up the silent tussle. "Then we move in." He lowered the binoculars and leaned back against the trunk of a tree. "This has got to be the stupidest reason for invading someone's house I've ever heard," he added, glancing over at Roderich with an expression halfway between embarrassment and disapproval.
"I agree," Roderich muttered. Raising his voice a little, he said, "Vash, I've been wondering: why exactly are you helping us? I mean, you and me – we're not – we don't exactly – well –"
"You don't get on?" Gilbert suggested, oblivious to the awkwardness that had filled the air between the other two nations in the way it always did whenever circumstances (usually Lily) brought them together.
"Lily wanted to help you and I couldn't persuade her otherwise," Vash said, sounding a little harsher than he had intended.
"Oh," Roderich replied quietly. He wasn't really surprised, but he must have looked hurt at the coldness in Vash's tone because the other nation relented a little.
"I also wanted to see if Gilbert's ridiculous story was true," he admitted, giving the dress another dark look. "I still can't believe you consented to something like this."
"I didn't consent," Roderich corrected immediately. "I was taken advantage of while intoxicated." He glared at Gilbert, who grinned in response.
"Don't pretend you're not enjoying it," he teased. Vash looked uneasily from one of them to the other.
"Are you two…?" he began in the tones of one who isn't sure they want to know the answer to their question.
"No," Roderich said hastily at exactly the same time that Gilbert said, "Yes."
"I see," Vash said slowly, the unreadable expression on his face making Roderich want to ask exactly what the other nation thought he saw. However, before he could, Vash turned back towards Elizabeta's house. "It's been long enough," he decided. "It's time to move in."
The three of them crept through the shadows between the trees until they were at an angle that couldn't be seen from the windows. They then sneaked silently through the gate at the side and into the back garden. The door that led into the kitchen was locked, but they had planned ahead and Vash, who was in the lead, held out a hand, Roderich passing him the key that Elizabeta had given him years ago. He had never imagined that he would one day use it for such a reason as trespassing in her house, but, well, desperate times and all that. Even if Elizabeta had said that the photograph would be part of her private collection (as opposed to what, Roderich didn't know), that wasn't a guarantee that no one else would ever lie eyes on it. What if somebody accidentally uncovered it? What if Francis' pervert senses started tingling and led him straight to it? No, the photograph definitely needed to be destroyed.
"We'll split up here," Vash whispered once they had successfully infiltrated the kitchen. "I'll search the ground floor and you two go upstairs. Try to be quiet, will you?" He addressed the question to Gilbert, who nodded and mimed zipping his lips together, but Vash didn't look convinced. He also seemed uneasy about letting Roderich and Gilbert pair up, probably anticipating some sort of argument that would alert Elizabeta to their presence, but he didn't really have a choice. At least if Gilbert was on the first floor, any noise that he made would be muffled, so it was safer to send him upstairs, and even if Vash had preferred working with a partner as opposed to by himself, he still would never have chosen to pair himself with Roderich. It would be too tense and make him careless. Plus, that dress would completely destroy his concentration. It was so…frilly. Therefore, there was no alternative but to send Roderich and Gilbert up to safer ground and pray that they didn't mess up, because the wrath of Elizabeta was not a wrath that Vash wanted to experience anytime soon. Or ever, actually, come to think about it.
Roderich was also wary about having Gilbert on his heels as he quickly ascended the stairs. It was just that Gilbert was so easily distracted, especially when in close proximity to a maid uniform. However, as they began to search through each of the rooms, nothing happened to send Elizabeta any hint that there were uninvited guests in her house. Roderich felt a little guilty about his lack of faith in the other nation. Finally, the only room left to search was Elizabeta's bedroom.
"What the Hell?" Gilbert asked abruptly, frowning at what he saw. "This is her room? But it's all girly!" Roderich stared at him.
"I'm not quite sure how this escaped your attention, but Elizabeta is a woman," he explained slowly.
"I know that," Gilbert replied impatiently, "but she used to be such a tomboy. All the pastel colours came as a shock." He started rummaging through the boxes and bags of make-up, jewellery and other 'girly' stuff on the dressing table. "Hey, what are all these for?" He had uncovered a box filled with nothing but keys. Roderich came over to look at them.
"The front door, the back door, the windows, the greenhouse, her car, my house, and…" He picked up the final key and examined it. "I'm not entirely sure what this one's for."
"You're very knowledgeable about Elizabeta's key collection," Gilbert commented, and Roderich was surprised by the sullen tone that had entered his voice.
"Well she's a good friend of mine and I was married to her at one point," Roderich pointed out.
"Yes: was," Gilbert snapped. "Past tense. So she shouldn't need this anymore." He snatched up the key that Roderich had identified as the one that unlocked his own house and thrust it into his pocket.
"What are you talking about?" Roderich asked in exasperation. "Put that back."
"I'll do whatever the fuck I want with it," Gilbert replied, and his voice was rising to a dangerous volume. "She doesn't have –" Roderich silenced him the only way he knew was guaranteed to work. Then he pulled away from the kiss and frowned at Gilbert disapprovingly.
"Don't talk so loudly," he scolded. Gilbert glared at him sulkily.
"I just don't get why you let her have a key," he complained. Jealousy, Roderich realised. Again. Honestly, did Gilbert's possessiveness know no bounds? Roderich genuinely didn't understand how Gilbert could be envious over a relationship that had ended decades ago. Roderich viewed his marriage to Elizabeta as just another piece of history; something that was over and done with and not in need of any further consideration. It was just the same as the wars between Austria and Prussia that had been reduced from a bitter rivalry to fading scars, memories and pages in the history books.
"She looks after the house if I'm away for a considerable period of time and lets me into the house if I lose my own key," Roderich explained, mystified as to why this was something to get jealous of. Gilbert looked slightly placated but still faintly suspicious.
"So you're not still hopelessly in love with her and having some sort of affair –"
Roderich rolled his eyes and kissed him again, slipping his hand into Gilbert's pocket and retrieving the key while the other nation was suitably distracted. He wasn't enough of an idiot to believe that Gilbert would ever willingly give up an all-hours pass to his house.
"I wasn't being loud that time," Gilbert said when they broke apart, but he looked happier now.
"No," Roderich agreed, depositing the key back into the box. "You were just being stupid."
That was the moment when, in the corner of his eye, Roderich saw the door move. He froze. Gilbert looked at him in confusion for a moment, then followed his gaze and joined him in staring in horror. Slowly, the door swung open and Gilbert instinctively ducked.
"What are you doing?" Vash asked, raising an eyebrow at him. Gilbert straightened up sheepishly
"I thought you were a psycho pan-wielding maniac," he explained. "You shouldn't creep up on people like that!"
"Did you find the photograph?" Roderich asked.
"No," Vash replied, "and I take it that you didn't either. It could be that she hasn't taken it from the camera yet."
"We didn't find the camera either," Gilbert said. "But we've checked everywhere!"
"Everywhere apart from the room that Elizabeta and Lily are in right now," Vash pointed out. There was a silence as the three nations considered this problem.
"Oh, wait!" Roderich exclaimed suddenly, hope lacing his voice. "We haven't looked in the attic."
"All right, we'll check out the attic, but if it's not in there then we abort the mission," Vash said. Roderich looked thoughtful.
"I'm just not sure how we're going to get in," he said. "Elizabeta always locks the door and I don't know where she keeps the…" He trailed off as his eyes came to rest on the lone, unidentified key.
Elizabeta's attic turned out to be a large room dominated by piles of cardboard boxes of various sizes, all covered by a thin layer of dust. The windows, however, looked as though they were cleaned regularly, and rays of sunlight dispelled the darkness from the corners of the room. Roderich was about to express his despair over the sheer amount of possible places to store a photograph when his eyes were drawn to the back of the room. An extensive collection of photo albums were stacked against the wall, as clean and well cared for as the windows.
"Bingo," Gilbert crowed, picking his way through the boxes and kneeling by the albums, opening one at random and flicking through it. His eyes widened. "Holy shit, and you think I stalk you?" he asked, looking up at Roderich, who had followed him. Vash stood in the doorway, keeping guard.
"What do you mean?" Roderich asked, kneeling down next to Gilbert and checking that his skirt was still keeping him decent before looking at the album. He stared, shocked. The pages were full of photographs of him, discreetly taken without him noticing. Raising his eyes to look at the piles of albums, he felt faint at the thought of what could be inside them. Surely they couldn't all be pictures of him. He would have noticed if she had taken that many photographs. He must have noticed. It just wasn't possible to be that oblivious.
"Oh, wow!" Gilbert suddenly exclaimed gleefully. "I like this one!" Roderich swallowed his dead and caught a glimpse of the picture as Gilbert tore it from the page. The blood drained from his face.
The image on the photograph was of him, like all the others, but what was especially disturbing about this picture was that it showed Roderich getting changed. The vantage point seemed to have been through his bedroom door, which Elizabeta had quietly pushed open a couple of inches, although not without being noticed as Roderich was turned towards the camera, looking confused and pausing in the act of taking off his shirt. Unfortunately (or fortunately, as Elizabeta must have considered it), he had already gotten rid of his trousers and a pair of red boxers were all that was keeping him decent. Roderich thought that he vaguely remembered when this must have been taken. He had thought he'd seen a flash from the doorway, but when he had turned, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary, so he had shrugged it off as being his imagination. Now that he knew the truth, he shivered a little with a new fear of Elizabeta.
"Give it to me," he demanded, reaching out to try and take the picture from Gilbert, who batted his hand away.
"No way, I'm keeping it," the Prussian replied, moving the picture out of Roderich's reach. There was a brief struggle that ended when Gilbert dropped the heavy photo album onto a pile of even heavier albums, which collapsed. Loudly.
"You idiots!" Vash hissed from the doorway. "I knew you were too incompetent for this!" Sounds floated up from below – their cover was blown. "Hide!" Obeying his own command, he crouched behind a precariously balanced tower of boxes near the door. Gilbert grabbed Roderich's hand and half dragged him over to a gap between the boxes, pushing him down out of sight. As the piles were considerably smaller at this end of the room, they were forced to lie down to be completely hidden from view, and so Roderich found himself staring up at the ceiling and feeling the heat of Gilbert's body on top of him, the other nation's breath on his neck. He shivered a little and Gilbert smirked and kissed him on the ear.
Elizabeta marched up the stairs to the first floor, brandishing her frying pan threateningly, Lily following her closely. The poor girl had looked so scared when they had heard the thud from upstairs, Elizabeta thought sympathetically, yet she had still tried to persuade her friend to stay downstairs while she went to check it out alone. Bless.
As soon as she set foot on the landing, Elizabeta noticed that that the door that normally hid the attic stairs from view was ajar. She flung it open and raced up the stairs and through the second doorway at the top, gripping the pan above her head in case she needed to KO a burglar. However, the room looked disappointingly empty of intruders. Somebody had definitely been in there, though, judging from the mess at the back of the room. She narrowed her eyes. If Francis had been trying to steal her photos again, she was going to take her pan and –
"Elizabeta!" Lily squeaked. "I heard a noise! I think they're underneath us on the first floor." The intruder was trying to give her the slip! Elizabeta charged back down the stairs, cursing herself for not checking the bedrooms first. Lily lingered in the attic doorway. "You have to get out of here," she whispered. "I'll distract her." Vash emerged from his hiding place and nodded at her before she disappeared after Elizabeta.
Gilbert raised himself up onto his arms so that he could peer above the boxes and saw Vash gesturing frantically at him. He paused thoughtfully and looked back down at Roderich, who was still lying beneath him and looking positively delectable, Gilbert considered. "How about we stay here for a bit and –" he tried to suggest, but Roderich interrupted by pushing him back so that the shorter nation could raise himself onto his elbow.
"Your one-track mind never fails to astonish me," he said, not quite managing to suppress the urgency in his tone. "Sort your priorities out and get off me!" Gilbert grudgingly stood and reached down a hand to help Roderich to his feet as well. The three nations then descended the stairs as quickly as they could without making a noise, pausing at the bottom so that Vash could peer onto the landing and make sure that the coast was clear. Lily was standing in a bedroom doorway and doing a very good job of acting as though she was terrified of the burglars that Elizabeta believed to be inside her house.
"Check under the bed," she urged, then turned to wave the other three towards the second flight of stairs. They silently obeyed her, descending to the ground floor and thankfully managing to escape the house without experiencing any frying pan-induced concussions.
***
It wasn't that much later when Lily returned to let herself into Roderich's house. Elizabeta had been very frustrated to realise that the intruders had given her the slip, and Lily had had to console her by assuring her that there would be other burglars for her to inflict grievous bodily harm upon. This had comforted the other nation a little, although she had refused to let go of her pan in the hope that the intruders would be stupid enough to return. Lily hadn't had the heart to take this dream away from her.
Inside Roderich's living room, Vash, who had presumably stayed to wait for Lily, was arguing with Gilbert about who to lay the blame on for the failed mission. Roderich was sitting on a couch, watching them, an aura of gloom surrounding him.
"I'm back," Lily said, smiling in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere a little. Vash turned away from the bickering, looking relieved to see her.
"I'm glad you're here, Lily. It's time for us to go home," he said. He started to steer her towards the door, but Roderich's voice stopped him.
"Thank you," Roderich said softly. "Even though we didn't manage to retrieve the photograph, I'm grateful to you both for trying to help." Vash looked as though he was about to reply when Gilbert suddenly spoke.
"I just remembered something!" he exclaimed excitedly. "My plan wasn't a complete failure. I managed to take this." He extracted something from his pocket and held it up. It was the photograph that he had liberated from Elizabeta's stalker album. Roderich leapt to his feet and lunged for it, but Gilbert held it high above his head.
"I'm not going to let you keep that!" Roderich growled, stretching his arm up to try and grasp the photograph, but Gilbert was taller than him and was able to keep it just out of reach.
"You can't stop me," the Prussian retorted, smirking. "I think I might start a 'private collection' of my own, starting with this."
"Don't you dare!" Roderich stood on his tip-toes, a hand on Gilbert's shoulder to steady himself, his other hand grasping at Gilbert's. He strained his fingers, which brushed against the edge of the photograph but couldn't quite get a hold on it. Gilbert laughed, and suddenly Roderich became aware of how close they were standing and what a perfect height his lips were at if Gilbert wanted to –
Their lips met, because obviously Gilbert wanted to. Roderich faltered in his attempts to take possession of the picture, and Gilbert put a hand on his shoulder to gently but firmly push him back down to his normal height, both nations tilting their heads so as not to break the kiss. Well, Roderich thought as he lowered his arm slowly, trailing his fingers down Gilbert's skin, maybe he could steal back the photograph later on. Maybe –
A loud, deliberate cough behind him reminded Roderich abruptly that there were other people in the room. He pulled away immediately and turned, feeling the blood rush to his cheeks. Vash was also blushing from embarrassment, although that didn't stop him from glaring at them. He had covered Lily's eyes with his hand, shielding her from the sight.
"So that's the real reason for…" He looked pointedly at the maid uniform and then glared again, but this time only at Gilbert, as if he couldn't even bear to look Roderich in the eye anymore.
"No!" Roderich protested, waving his arms emphatically to stress his denial, and being so completely mortified that he didn't even notice when Gilbert discreetly slipped the photograph back into his pocket. "It's nothing to do with – I mean, I'm not – I didn't –"
"Of course not," Vash said, clearly not buying any of the half-formed excuses. He took his hand out of Lily's line of vision, revealing her confused expression, and took her by the arm to march her with him towards the front door. Roderich tried to follow them and protest his innocence in all maid-related matters, but Gilbert held him back.
"Just let it go," he soothed, although he couldn't suppress the huge grin on his face. Roderich looked at him in despair as the front door slammed shut in the hallway.
"But he's got completely the wrong impression!" he said, distressed. "I didn't choose to dress like this!"
"Not this time," Gilbert agreed, "but soon there will come a glorious era where you will cater to my every sexual whim." He beamed, and Roderich shot him an exasperated look before heading hurriedly out of the room. He would catch up with Vash, even if he had to chase him all the way to Switzerland, he promised himself as he headed out into the sunlight. The rest of the world could suspect whatever they damn well wanted about his and Gilbert's relationship, but nobody, nobody, was going to walk away believing that he wore dresses for fun.
A/N - After last chapter, somebody suggested that I write a FrUK spin-off of Duties about Arthur's ordeal of staying with Francis. I'm considering writing it, but before I make any promises, I want to know if anybody else would be interested. I've put a poll on my bio because polls make it so much easier to make sense of information. Although obviously I would love to hear any opinions or ideas in reviews as well since, at this stage, I only have a handful of half-formed ideas. Feedback on this chapter will also be received with love