A/N: It has been over a month since my last update, butthank you all for the favs/reviews/alerts! Even if I couldn't reply to all your questions, I really do read each one, and I will try to clear up the confusion to the best of my abilities as SOM progresses. Sorry that this took an eternity to finish, but god, school's coming up and I had some sort of writer's block. ;-; SOM may or may not be updated once a month, due to school or me writing AAN on the side, too, so…who knows.
Haha, Alec. Prince of Tennis or something. oTL|||
Notes: -Weirdgirl012 is going to draw out a SOM doujin, or at least the parts she wants to, since I know my stories can drag on and on. XD Thanks a million! By the way, first page is up and on the CTD/PTP website! ouo
-For those of you reading AAN, I am here to inform you that that project hasn't been blown to oblivion yet, so you can expect more soon! For the TMH readers, I will desperately try to get another chapter up when I receive an epiphany or something; I started it for my friend and Goddammit, I am going to finish it, be it in three weeks or three years. But honestly, right now I have no clue what the hell is going to happen to it. I have the plot down and all, just haven't got around to writing.
-ou8smileydeath wrote a lovely sidestory for CTD, RusAmer (I believe this was done before I posted Little Puzzles, btw). The way it's written is just adorable, the interactions between the parents and the kids, and the last line made me smile. Go check it out at my profile! ^^
-I am very slowly (key word: very) working on another crossover fic: Arthur's Year of Cooking Dangerously, a five-chaptered USUK Hetalia/Julie & Julia. But…I've got that Kate and Leopold one on hold and AAN and TMH (TMH is kinda dead, lols) and sidestory and fffff— I'll make it work somehow.
-I changed my mind I am so sorry ;-; I'll post the sidestory as a chapter in SOM. It will be up next. /headdesk
Anyways, sorry about the not-so-action-packed chapter and have fun back in school!
SOM Character Guide:
Aloisa Beilschmidt: senior, age 18, blond, blue eyes, knows a little bit of German and some Italian, GerIta
Felicita Vargas Carriedo: junior, age 17, olive green eyes, brown hair, knows a bit of Italian and Spanish, afraid of dogs, Spamano
Adrian Braginski: senior, age 18, silver hair, blue eyes, Nantucket ahoge, lived in Russia before, RusAmer
Mikhail Braginski: senior, age 18, elder brother, blond bangs, violet eyes, Ivan-aura, lived in Russia before, RusAmer
Amelia Braginski: birthday on June 15, approx. 9 ½ m.o., violet eyes, ashy-blond curls, RusAmer
Alec Bonnefoy: senior, age 18, blond hair, sort of England-eyebrows, lived in London before, FrUK
Evangeline Bonnefoy: junior, age 17, green eyes, blond hair, lived in London before, FrUK
Ellen Mercer: senior, age 17, red hair tied up, Aloisa's good friend
Angelina Allred: blond hair, hates Aloisa, she and her father moved away when Thomas (dad) got fired by Alfred, current status unknown.
Lisa Berns: psychotic babysitter cover, burned part of Felicita's school after the kids' departure in CTD, ex-messenger for Russian underworld, used to be Natalia's personal assistant until she lost her marbles, current status unknown.
James Chase: 1960!character, blond hair, light brown eyes, used to be enamored with Alec, Ian's grandfather, assumed to have married Jane.
James Stanton: Alec's ex-boyfriend, goes to a university in the US.
Yukiko Karpusi: looks to be about 6-7, but is currently 15-16 age-wise (human birthday December 2) and represents the Kansai district, Giripan
Hanna Oxenstierna: blond, seems to understand her parent's identity, age 11, SuFin
Eirik Køhler: quiet boy with sailor hat, seems to understand his parent's identity, age 10, DenNor
Annelise (Anne) Køhler: friends with Hanna and Yukiko, seems to understand her parent's identity, age 9, DenNor
Sp/grammatical errors and DM linked words will be corrected after publication. I think I caught most of them, hopefully.
Chapter Summary: Aloisa watches TV, Lovino and Antonio talk and deal with a nosy reporter, Evangeline wants to research more on time traveling, and Alec and Adrian are not on such good terms.
Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia.
Monday, April 2, present, classroom, 11:45 A.M…
Once Evangeline had asked Aloisa whether if it was awkward that she was taking World History when their parents were, well, the world, for lack of a more logical explanation. And although Aloisa will admit, listening to the teacher lecture about the Special Relationship and Germany's severe financial problems after the First World War did sound strangely inappropriate (as if she'd caught Adrian's and Alec's mothers together in bed or something—that was one scene she could've lived without ever envisioning), but when it came down to it, no one else read the textbooks the way she interpreted them.
Twice a week the teacher would turn on her antique of a television to the news to "further educate her students on the current events using up-to-date materials", as she'd so gracefully put it. But what really happened was that after the television was flipped on and the room went dark, said teacher retreated behind her desk and look fixedly at her laptop for the rest of the class period, while one third of the class dutifully took notes and the rest pretended to be listening. Today, Aloisa decided to just write down exactly what the newscaster was saying to pass off as notes until she realized that, while rereading what she'd penned, that sentences were more or less the same.
But it wasn't as if her teacher was really going to read every single letter. To her, a block of text was the equivalent of a grade-A essay. The employment of this technique tapered on for another ten minutes or so until Ellen Mercer from behind her seat tapped her shoulder and slid a note underneath her elbow.
How did the date with Howell go? the note said.
She couldn't understand why everyone called it a date. Even her family referred to it as a date; her dad doing so with a frown and multiple warnings about kidnappers and such, her mother with big smiles and eager questions, Gilbert with his snide remarks and mocking laughs. It wasn't a date. She thought of it more as a monetary payment for those meticulous, free tutoring classes she'd been so foolish to agree to when Jack had proposed it. Actually, she wouldn't have said yes, if not for the math teacher coming up to her and asking it as a favor (extra credits and all).
Not a date, she scribbled back. And it was okay.
If okay meant that Jack Howell stared at her face (at least she thought he was staring at her face) while she ate and had been overly helpful helping her into her seat and seemed to be expecting something when they went for a walk afterwards (he insisted). The note returned almost immediately.
You know, half the girls in the school want Howell to take them to dinner.
Okay, she wrote.
Ellen passed the paper back, now with a doodle of a girl with blue eyes holding hands with a stick-figure of a boy who looked a lot like Howell. She muttered under her breath and pushed the note to the side of her desk, much to Ellen's chagrin.
For another ten minutes Aloisa concentrated on a dark spot on the wall that she guessed came from someone's lunch, and it wasn't until Ellen tapped her arm again did she turned around.
"What?"
"The TV," Ellen said, the lights from the screen flickering on her befuddled expression. "Isn't that your dad?"
Before Aloisa could respond, the sharp voice of a particularly eager news anchor fizzed from the television, going on excitedly about an airport and breaking news and gesturing to the loud, rustling crowd behind her. The camera zoomed in on a blond man in a hat, unmistakably Aloisa's dad, especially now that Aloisa could hear his voice ringing from the TV, trying to push his way through the frenzy of reporters and avoid the microphones being shoved at his face at the same time. Just as Ludwig's eyes caught sight of someone and widened in shock, the camera swiveled to another location, pointing directly at a young, very panicked man a few feet away, who appeared even more shaken as a new onslaught of reporters surrounded him; but as frightened as he was, he managed to shout out a single word, a name—
"Ludwig!"
Aloisa's mouth fell open, then hastily closed as she watched her dad reach Feliciano and immediately throw his fedora on the Italian, as if to shield him from the camera flashes.
"That's…" Her dad had looped his arm around Feliciano's shoulders, steering him to the exit and shooting steely looks at the various cameras. The last shot, a perfectly clear view of Ludwig, froze on the screen and became projected onto the background of a pair of seated news anchors, the two's avid discussion punctuated by the black and white subtitles running down the bottom—
Impossible. Unscientific. Illogical.
The rest of the class stared in confusion at the television, wondering what had happened to the previous channel and debating whether or not they should be jotting down notes. The TV shrieked, booming out the whiny voice of the first reporter for every single person in the room to hear: "Although it is true that investigations are still underway, it is clear that, nation personifications do exist and that the two men we've just seen, Ludwig Beilschmidt and Feliciano Vargas, are, respectively, the representatives for the countries Germany and Italy—ah, Northern Italy, excuse me. As to the matter how this is possible—"
"Aloisa—what's the matter?" Ellen's gaze shifted anxiously from her friend to the screen. "That's not really your dad, is it? It's just a coincidence—"
But the name displayed at the corner of the screen glared at her, daring Aloisa to prove it wrong. "But that's…"
The door burst open and Gilbert stomped in, surveying the darkened classroom for Aloisa until his eyes landed on the television. With long strides, he shut the television off and faced the students, evidently agitated. For a total of ten seconds, the class gaped at him, and Gilbert gaped right back.
"That was not real," he proclaimed awkwardly. "That was a hoax, and if any of you brats want to suggest otherwise, I will beat your asses to a pulp." He looked around, but clearly his eyes were still adjusting to the dimness. "Now can anyone one of you tell me where the hell Aloisa is?"
The teacher rose from her seat the same time as Aloisa, but she didn't dare to approach Gilbert directly. Her hand twitched along the wall until she reached the phone, picking up the receiver and pressing it to her ear. In all her years of teaching, she had never anticipated such a situation. But then again, this was Gilbert.
"W-who are you? You are disrupting my class, so you better leave before I call the police!" Her finger poised over a button, trembling slightly.
"Wait!" she said quickly. "He's not a stranger! He's my uncle!"
"There you are!" Gilbert moved to her side and began throwing her pens and papers into her backpack, slinging them over his shoulder and grabbing the girl's wrist despite her protests. "Well," he said, turning to the stunned teacher conversationally. "Aloisa won't be coming back to class today, or tomorrow, maybe not in a while, until we can get things sorted out…"
The teacher still looked uncertain. "But—"
"Don't worry, lady. She might not look as sexy as me—" ("Excuse me?") "—but we're related And we'll sign out at the office and oh." His eyes narrowed dangerously. "Don't turn the TV back on. Seriously."
"I—"
"What is going on?" Aloisa said, trying but failing to pry her arm away. "Why are Mom and Da—"
They passed hallways and the office, stopping at a car that Aloisa did not recognize. "Whose is this?"
"Borrowed it," he replied. "Come on, get in, get in."
"From where, the junkyard? Where are we even going?"
"Meeting up with West and Feli," he replied tightly, bashing his palms on the wheel. "Verdammt, start already!"
Sitting back against the cigarette burnt seats, in a car that looked like it hadn't been driven in about forever and a day, Aloisa watched the school disappear in the distance as Gilbert stepped on the gas, muttering German obscenities under his breath as he drove faster towards God knows where. Saying that Aloisa was worried would be an understatement.
Especially when the car started to dip slightly above eight-five miles per hour.
Monday, April 2, present, Felicita's house, 11:50 A.M…
"Felicita didn't look too good the past few weeks."
Lovino scowled at the newspaper, not bothering to look up and lose his place.
"The hell do you mean by that?" he demanded. "Felicita's fine. But my goddamn brother isn't. He's been calling me for days and crying about how his potato daughter is going to college—"
Outside in the garden, Antonio pulled off his glove, smiling inwardly.
"And wouldn't you be sad when Felicita leaves?" he inquired calmly. "I know you hate people leaving, and you make a fuss about it, too—"
Lovino flushed crimson, burrowing his face even further behind the morning's papers. He adjusted the position of his chair, oblivious to the fact that he nearly elbowed and knocked over his entire mug of coffee in the process.
"I don't make a fuss, fucker. And it's called worrying, like a normal person," he said pointedly, the sarcasm laced extra heavily on the word 'normal'. He flipped to a new page and rather violently flattened it out.
"It's okay, Lovi, I'll stay with you forever and into the next millennium—"
"That's fucking terrifying," he returned irritably. "Forever and a millennium is a long time, Spain," he added as an afterthought.
"Yep! One thousand years, and then some more—"
"Yes, I know what millennium means, asshole. You really are an idiot, you know that?"
"Just making sure."
"Shut up. Are you done being Martha Stewart out there or what? My laptop's being a bitch and this error message keeps popping up…"
Antonio regarded him helplessly, but nonetheless, fondly. "You didn't crack it again, did you?"
"It was asking for it."
"Lovi, I can't fix it if it's snapped in half." He sighed. "Where'd you leave it?"
"Upstairs."
The screen door slid open and shut as Antonio came in, putting that possibly permanent weary beam. He made no move to move upstairs, only reached for his cup and leisurely poured himself coffee. He leaned against the kitchen countertop, seeming to be studying the contents of his cup when he was really looking at Lovino. Lovino, his Lovino, who could squeeze in obscenities in three different languages in the middle of any sentence, who blushed as easily as anything and got mad at the speed of light, who'd smacked him senseless when he'd proposed and then broke down in furious tears, thinking that the Spaniard was joking, was sitting in front of him and scrutinizing his Italian newspaper with an awfully distasteful expression like he'd been doing it for a hundred years. Comforting. That was the first word that popped into Antonio's head.
"Don't you think we've gone domestic?"
"Huh?" Antonio blinked, shaking his thoughts away. "I'm sorry?"
Lovino's voice didn't have much heat in it as he repeated his statement.
"We have a kid. For fourteen or fifteen years we've pretended to be one of those families in the 50s. You tell Felicita that you're going to work when you really mean that you'll be getting lost in your tomato maze for half the day, and I do random shit around the house except I suck at it. Do you know where I'm going with this?"
"To be honest, no." He smiled at Lovino anyway. "Do you not like it?"
The Italian's eyes bore into him before he turned away in obvious resignation.
"I give up," he muttered flippantly. "I guess you can't cure stupidity—"
The next thing he knew, Antonio had dove next to his ear, and even without looking Lovino knew his mouth must be curving upwards.
"Would you rather we go back a couple of centuries?" he murmured. "I can sail the Seven Seas and uncover the New World with a pistol in one hand and you in that dress by my side—"
"That is not what I meant," Lovino interjected peevishly. "You can keep whatever sick fantasies you have to yourself." He shoved his palms in Antonio's face and brushed him off carelessly. "And no, I will not ever be wearing that dress again."
"That's a shame, Lovi. I thought you looked great in it."
"Ha." He looked away. "Do you want turn back time?" he ventured accusingly.
"Never."
His tone was so determined and certain Lovino wanted to laugh and mutter back, "Me, too."
Instead, he said, "You stupid bastard."
"You know, Felicita asked me about what it was like being a nation."
Lovino did turn around this time, surprised.
"And what did you tell her?"
"I told her I was a pirate. A good pirate. And that you used to be in the Mafia—"
"You what? Are you fucking kidding me—"
"—but you were in the good Mafia—"
"I am going to kill you—"
"I'm joking! I'm joking—"
The Spaniard's nose was inches away from colliding with Lovino's fist until the doorbell chimed; Lovino's scrunched up expression flattened out, momentarily distracted as his clutch on Antonio's collar loosened. But the doorbell rang again urgently after a very brief pause, as though whoever was on the other side was in a rush.
"Is it Felicita?" Antonio prompted, moving towards the front door. "Did she forget something?"
"But she has the keys," Lovino said blandly, settling down and returning back to his paper.
"Then it must be Feliciano." Without any hesitation, he flung the door open, grinning openly. "Hola, Feli—wait. You guys aren't Feliciano."
The first man began to speak rapidly and eagerly, "Are you Antonio Fernandez Carriedo, then?" In his hands were a microphone and a pen and a small notepad, halfway cramped with indiscernible scribbling, quick and erratic. There was something rat-like about his features that made Antonio think of a mole. An ugly mole.
Antonio blinked, his smile frozen. He cocked his head to the left, trying to see behind the first man and at the camera crew and van getting ready a few yards away; the microphone followed him.
"So. Who are you—agh—" He slipped his hand into his pocket and took out his phone. "Sorry, I have to take this first, would you like to come inside?"
"Toni!" the phone shrieked. "Toni, that's you, isn't it?"
Antonio moved aside to let the first man in, but he stopped midway when the voice blasted in his ear. "Oh, hi, Gilbert!"
"I'm driving to San Francisco right now with Aloisa—did you see the news?"
"What news?"
"The one with Feli and West! Some dumbass told the media they're nations, and they can't go back now. I'm heading to the offices and meeting them there."
"That's impossible," he laughed. "Someone tried that in the nineties, remember? And also, you know it's illegal to drive and talk on your phone at the same time—"
Gilbert seethed, "Not now, Spain. Listen—Francis is stuck in France for some last-minute shit, and Russia and America took the brat to the office already. England is having America send someone over to pick up their kids—" He paused. "You haven't met any reporters, have you?"
Antonio could almost feel his smile literally sliding off his face. The words painted on the van seemed gaudier than ever: FoxNews. "That is…uh…let me call you back."
"Whatever. I just need you to get your ass over here—"
His finger hovered over the End Call button, and the phone disappeared into his pocket again.
"I'm afraid you have to leave now—" he began slowly, but started when he discovered that he was talking to the furniture. "Where'd you go—"
"Bastard! You're too close! How did you even get in?"
"But you are Lovino Vargas, aren't you?" the reporter pressed insistently. "You represent the southern part of Italy, and your brother is the northern—"
"Lovi!" Antonio kicked the door shut to prevent the camera crew from squeezing in and ran to the dining room. "Don't touch my Lovi—"
"Who the hell is this?" Lovino barked, backing up against the wall, his hands twitching against the cabinets. "Get the fuck away! You've got the wrong person!" he screamed at the man, who kept on pelting the Italian with questions, ignoring Antonio completely.
"Leaving," Antonio said brusquely, his hands on the reporter's shoulders and attempting to steer him away. "You can't stay here anymore—"
The reporter didn't seem to notice Antonio; he wrenched away and placed the microphone at Lovino's mouth, simultaneously pressing a button on his tape recorder. "As South Italy, can you tell us what your brother's relationship to Ludwig Beilschmidt is—"
"You have no business knowing about that," Antonio said fiercely, his grip tightening.
The reported answered self-importantly, "The people have the right to know about the issues regarding the world—"
Lovino's hand had trailed from the cabinets to the drawer; after feeling around the compartment for a bit, he pulled out a gun (unloaded, in case Felicita ever found it; the ammo were locked away in a briefcase and placed above a closet), and mercilessly slammed the tip onto the man's forehead, his every other word enunciated by a sharp prod.
"Get. The. Fuck. Out," he hissed.
The reporter visibly flinched, stumbling over the table as he hastily retreated. Lovino lowered the weapon and tucked it away, breathing heavily the same the front door slammed shut. However, through the half-opened blinds, Antonio could see that the van remained parked, and another was slowly coming down the street.
He turned on Antonio, looking as if he were about to unleash his temper and shoot swears at Antonio in stead of bullets, but he stopped, his expression melting into confusion as the reporter's words resurfaced and became more distinct.
Finally, he said incredulously, "He called me South Italy."
Antonio retorted in a tone just as shocked, "You keep a gun in the drawer?"
Monday, April 2, present, school, lunch, 12:01 P.M…
"—are you even listening?"
"Uh…yeah. Definitely." Felicita raised her hands defensively at Evangeline. "Really!"
"Okay. What did I say?"
"You were talking about Alec. And his tennis tournament."
"Nope. But I'll give you points for Alec. I was talking about time traveling, since Alec brought it up last time." She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a worn, milk-yellow book and a leather-bound notepad. "So I borrowed something. The lightered colored one is the book I read from the day we went back to 1960, and this one has my mum's notes." She passed it to the brunette. "Read it."
Felicita knew she should turn Aloisa at that point, assume the position of the angry do-gooder and argue with Evangeline about the morality of stealing and lecture her on the dangers of going back into her voodoo-induced basement and whatnot. But she didn't believe in magic. She didn't know what to make of her time travel adventure last year, but she categorized that as Science-Gone-Wrong for now. Like the Powerpuff Girls.
"What's in it?" She squinted at the ink-blotted print and foreign markings. "It's written in Ye Olde Renaissance Faire English."
Evangeline gave her a strange expression when Felicita pronounced Olde as 'Oldy'.
"No, I meant look at the diagrams." She leafed through a couple of pages, stopping at a figure of a crudely drawn man stepping into an oval. "Tempus," Evangeline said, tapping the scribbled word in the corner. "That means 'time'."
"So?" The next page showed a more intricate sketch: and oval reflecting and showing the previous man, this time his hand disappearing into the space of where the glass pane would be. "It's a mirror," she said hesitantly.
Evangeline's finger trailed to a sentence squeezed under the picture—Res tempus valet quantum vendi potest.
"It doesn't mean anything, though," she said, sounding a bit uncertain. "The Internet doesn't say much. Sounds sort of familiar though."
Felicita mm-hmmed away, flipping through the earlier pages of stars inscribed within circles, written in what looked to be dark red paint, more symbols surrounding a drawing of a severely deformed man with three mouths and seven eyes, standing upright on a single leg, and the severed head of a cow.
"You said your mom wrote this?"
"I don't think my mum would draw that." She shrugged. "Maybe my dad…?"
Felicita deadpanned and showed her the page with the one-footed man.
Evangeline smacked her lips. "Right. Never mind."
She handed the booklet back and got up, digging in her backpack for her own homework. "I don't know what you're going to do with it, but I need to do my work—"
"I thought we could time travel and screw around. My dad said Mum was a delinquent decades ago. I kind of want to see that."
"Why?"
"Why? Because my mum punched him when he overheard, so it must be good."
"You should give the book back."
"I will. After I'm done."
Felicita gave her a look. "Two years ago, I remember you strongly believed that the D.C. trip was dangerous and that Adrian dating your brother was inappropriate."
"And it was dangerous, but something good came out of that trip. And they were being inappropriate, but they're practically married now, except without the kid."
"They haven't talked to each other for two weeks," Felicita pointed out. "Not until the last café visit."
"Oh. Well." Evangeline drummed her fingers on the brittle pages, making a small noise when the corner of the paper tore. "You know how they are. They have this on and off cycle now, like a plant or something." Her right shoulder rose. "They're in their 'off' phase."
"What does that even mean?"
"They went on their date, and apparently one of them, or maybe both, I'm not sure, said something stupid, 'cause Alec came home early looking miffed. So then they have a relapse stage back to when they first met. Like, when they wanted to kill each other. Or at least my brother does, I don't know about Adrian."
"Should we be concerned?"
"They're always like that. Adrian usually rings the doorbell within three hours of a fight. Which is sort of weird because it's been a day and he hasn't showed up. So that can only mean one thing."
Felicita raised her eyebrow. "Yes…?"
"UST," Evangeline answered breezily.
"Do I want to know what that means?"
"Unresolved sexual tension. They'll work it out later."
"That's disgusting." Felicita resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Sometimes I wonder what happened to that prim and proper British girl who threatened to kill Adrian if he did anything to Alec."
Evangeline shrugged, her attention diverted by a particularly grotesque diagram from Arthur's book. "I don't know, puberty?"
"You're seventeen."
"Then PMS."
They stayed quiet then, Evangeline immersed in the drawings and Felicita with her unfinished schoolwork ('morbidly incomplete', as Evangeline would put it). But she had zoned out thinking about colleges and fell asleep on her binder; it wasn't as if she hadn't to rush to do last minute work before, but random things kept popping in her mind, like Evangeline's mother's creepy drawings and, for some reason, her psychotic, arsonist of a babysitter from the D.C. trip. She couldn't really remember her name, but she could vividly recall her eyes, wide and milk-white, as if she'd leaped out of a horror movie—
When her cell phone began to buzz, Felicita nearly jumped out of her skin. "Hello?"
"Felicita? Can you come over to the parking lot? It's really—give me the damn phone, bastard—It's really urgent, so—"
"Dad—" She pressed the phone closer to her ear. "The parking lot…the school's parking lot? Why are you—is that mom?"
"Yes, please come over, I can't talk long, your Mama is…Lovi? Lovi! Where did you go—"
After a long silence, Felicita deemed the phone dead and hung up, stuffing her notebooks back and slinging the bag over her shoulder.
"I'm going to the parking lot for a bit," she said. "I think my Mom's going to kill my Dad."
Evangeline nodded absentmindedly. "Have fun."
Monday, April 2, present, school, tennis courts, 12:13 P.M…
What Alec would like to have been doing was bashing someone's, anyone's, head in.
But he was stuck with a stupid racquet and a stupid tennis ball for the time being. Oh, well. He bounced the ball a couple times and served. He had murdered those people at the tournament earlier today, kicked their wannabe asses all the way back to wherever they came from, and that was probably mainly because he pretended the ball was Adrian's face. Or James Stanton's face. He used the two of them interchangeably, now that he thought about it.
Anyways.
Alec couldn't remember a time where he had been more irritated. Maybe that one time when he'd lived in London still and met this annoying America boy who took his tea in a café. The tennis ball bounced back and Alec slammed it, shooting it to the other side and watching as his opponent tried to swipe at it before it kissed the white lines and hit the fence with a metallic clamor. Why was he this pissed, again?
Oh, yeah. Adrian had compared him to a Disney princess yesterday as he was explaining about his brother's story or something. He was not a Disney princess. He wasn't stuck in some castle waiting for some no-name asshole to save him. Disney princesses sang and cooked and had furry little friends. Alec would rather draw on his own face than sing (and that was saying a lot); he couldn't cook to save his life (instant noodles were okay); and squirrels hated him (probably because he turned the hose on them, but only because they were trampling over the flower beds). And so in response Alec had said some choice words in French and promptly left the restaurant.
So what was he doing now? Asserting his manliness by rocketing tennis balls at unsuspecting bystanders?
That was so lame.
Whatever. Tennis balls did hurt.
He stared at the ground, waiting for the next player to step up, bouncing a ball idly when his new opponent called over smugly, "Nice shorts, Alec."
No way.
"Oh, hell no," Alec breathed. Even with the glare of the sun beating down and obscuring his vision, there was no mistaking that voice. "Get the hell off my court!"
Adrian only pulled a face, as if he were apologetic.
"Your court, Alec? Isn't that a little presumptuous of you?"
"I don't need to see your face this early!"
"Oh." Adrian shrugged, unaffected. "You wanna see it at night?"
"No."
The crowd watched on interestedly as the two volleyed their insults back and forth; they had seen Adrian around Alec multiple times afterschool, but they were not in any way this violent. The female students who'd thought the two were together observed them carefully, looking nonplussed; the tennis team acted as if this were an everyday occurrence, waiting for Alec to either win or finish blowing his fuse.
"I'm not playing," Alec said with venom.
"Because you'll lose?"
"No. Because you are a moron and I don't have time to waste."
"Hey, your insults downgraded from wanker to moron. That means your mood's improved, right?"
Alec visibly flinched, but he turned around because he was going to leave with his dignity intact like a gentleman—until a tennis ball flew at him and hit him on the back.
"What the hell was that for?"
"That wasn't me."
"How can that not be you?" Alec sputtered indignantly. Adrian was standing there, smiling benignly, and that was about when he realized that Adrian was doing it on purpose. He threw his hands up in defeat, scowling as viciously as he could.
"Okay! Fine! I'll play your game!"
"I knew it—"
"I will annihilate you."
They didn't see the two black sedans pulling up by the curb, Alec didn't see the suited men stalk up to them as he tried to push Adrian's face away and wrestle out of his embrace. But when he did look up, he stopped struggling long enough to notice the flip phone the man offered him ("Alec Bonnefoy? You have a call from Mr. Kirkland."), accepting it dumbly without a word and pressed it against his ear. "Hello…?"
Arthur sounded tinny and far as he said tightly, "Go in the car. Bring Evangeline and Alfred's boys, too."
He jabbed Adrian in the chest with his elbow and stepped away. "Why? Where are we going?"
"I believe it to be best if I tell you face-to-face."
"But…" Alec turned his back on the man (because honestly? he was freaking Alec out, what with his expressionless eyes boring into Alec's face behind sunglasses), nearly whispering. "Why do we have to leave? What's happening?"
His voice was heavy. "Alec, get in the car—"
"Is this a joke? Because if it is then it's not funny—"
"Alec." Arthur's tone was sharp and commanding but weary, and for the first time Alec wondered exactly how old his parents were. "Some loon had made an assassination attempt on Germany. I want you to get your sister and America's children and leave now."
And all Alec could manage to get out was a breathless, "Oh."