What's in a Name

Chapter Eight

England's head felt like it was on fire. He'd woken up in the dark, unaware of how he'd managed to make it back to his bedroom in the state he'd been in. He could feel the uncomfortable stickiness on his face where his tears had dried on his cheeks after he'd broken down.

Belarus had left him there after finishing her part of the job. No doubt that she had told Russia what he'd done after making the cut. What kind of gang member tries to stop the bleeding of a wound he had just inflicted? Not a very good one, that was for sure. He was going to get it in the neck the next time the gang met if Russia didn't hunt him down before then.

But then that question rose in his mind again. How did he get home? He couldn't remember anything after calling for the ambulance to pick of Latvia. Had it come? His mind was blank. Something kept tugging at the corners of his brain, telling him that someone else had been there. Someone who had held him...

A grunt at the end of the bed answered his question.

England started, seeing the floppy bangs of Alfred's hair drooping over his dislodged glasses. He was fast asleep, leaning with his face nearly completely covered by his arms on the edge of the bed, that one piece of hair still pointing proudly in the air away from the rest of his blonde locks. What could be seen of his face was showing a concerned expression even in his sleep. However, for a moment that kind look fractured and appeared to be panicked for a second before returning to peacefulness.

England vaguely remembered Alfred picking him up and carrying him home. He must've been heavy along with the shopping that he'd had with him. Although, Alfred did look like the type who was stubborn enough to lift a grand piano by himself if someone was mad enough to challenge him.

He leant over the younger man, inspecting him as his face strained into a pained look once more, which lingered for a while longer than it had done previously, making it obvious to England that Alfred was having a nightmare, and a bad one at that. The expression didn't suit his face. It made him look like a young child, not the nineteen year old that he was. But when he was sleeping calmly England had to admit to himself that Alfred was, though he loathed to think it, rather good looking.

Alfred's eyes fluttered open to see emerald green globes staring down at him. He smiled lazily at England's resultant surprise as he scrambled back up towards the pillow. He propped his glassed back into place on the bridge of his nose and stood up clumsily, taking note that his feet had gone numb as a result of kneeling on the floor while he'd been asleep.

"You feeling alright?" He said, finding his footing and flinching as pins-and-needles signalled the return of blood to his toes.

"Been better." England sighed, running his hand through his hair. "My head kills."

"Not surprised after all that." Alfred stepped forward, putting his hand on England's forehead (causing him to blush deeply), "You're still running a bit of a fever. Hang on a second."

He stuck his head around the door, addressing someone that England couldn't see, "He's woken up."

He returned to England's side, followed by a friendly looking man that England recognised instantly. "Good to see you back with us." The man removed his hat, placing it on his lap as he sat down on England's desk chair.

"Tino." England rolled his eyes and raised an eyebrow at the man. "I should've guessed they'd call you."

"Yes, yes." Tino ignored England's sarcasm. "Lighten up for once, will you." He put his hand to England's forehead, nodding at his slight rise in temperature and then lightly touched the side of his neck, checking the grumpy blonde's pulse against the second hand on his watch. "You're still running a temperature and your heart rate is up a bit. You'll need to rest for a few days. And don't argue." He stopped England from interrupting. "You'll be no good at work in your current state. I'll tell Berwald to let Roderich know that you won't be in. You've been working yourself too hard doing all of this stupid biker stuff. Don't argue." He held England down against the pillow. "Rest."

England folded his arms, glaring up at Tino and Alfred, who was leaning against the desk. He turned away from the two, not wanting them to see his face as it sank, "How's Latvia?"

"Berwald's looking after Raivis." Tino took on a dark expression. "It's a good job you got me on the phone instead of someone else when you called, otherwise the police would've been there too. I don't know what you were playing at, doing that to him. His arm should be fine, but the amount of blood he lost through the wound on his head-"

"I didn't do that!" England spun around, panicked. "His arm was me but his head was..." he looked away again, "that was someone else."

"Well he should be fine. We'll look after him." Tino stood up, nodding to Alfred and stepped toward the door, "Take care. I'll be outside for a while if you need me."

He left the two of them in an awkward silence, England refusing to look at Alfred and Alfred staring at the door that had closed behind Tino. It felt like England was a mile away in his own world that no one else could enter into. There was a thick void between them. A gaping hole that signified their differences.

Alfred broke his gaze at the door, meaning to fill the silence that had fallen in the room. Instead he found himself staring at England, literally shocked into submission as he watched the older man shaking slightly, clutching the bedclothes. He appeared to think that Alfred left the room with Tino and had broken down as soon as the door had closed. Alfred edged closer to the bed, not wanting to surprise the crying man, causing him to lash out. He reached out, gingerly placing a hand on England's shoulder, expecting the flinch that followed. He tried to pull away but Alfred held him in place strongly, not allowing his grip to falter. His shoulder was thin under Alfred's hand, but not weak. England seemed to have a sort of inner strength that he could use when he wanted, but at this moment he was allowing Alfred to comfort him, to hold him steady as the tears ran down him face uncontrollably.

"Hey, it's okay." Alfred said softly, lightening his hold on England's shoulder.

England shook his head quickly, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He hated this. The way that he could cry so easily in front of Alfred. He never cried in front of anyone. Heck! He never cried full stop. This whole situation had mucked him up. That had to be it. Otherwise he'd never be this weak.

Alfred felt England's posture stiffen, as if he was going to pull away even though he was still so obviously hurt by everything that had happened. It was too much seeing someone being in that much mental pain. Physical pain could heal; he knew that all too well. But mental pain could scar so much deeper and lasted a hell of a lot longer. It was then that the urge got too much and before he realised what he was doing and before England had time to react, he had spun the smaller man around and pulled him into a tight embrace.

England froze, his eyes wide has his breath hitched in his throat. "H-Hey!" He found his voice, "What the hell do you think you're doing, you pillock!" Alfred ignored his complaints, "Let me go!"

Alfred held him closer, running his hand down England's back, trying to relax the agitated man. He felt England stop pushing against his chest as his complaining stopped. He was hot from his fever, but not uncomfortably so. Alfred could feel the heat from the other man's cheeks radiate out further than his raised temperature. He smiled slightly, knowing that if England saw then a fresh batch of shoving would ensue.

Alfred was stronger than England had expected, so much so that it was impossible to fight back against him. He could feel the toned arms holding him firmly so that he couldn't struggle to get away and they were strangely soothing. It was like being held by someone he had known for his entire life, and yet this was Alfred, a man he'd barely known for a month. He closed his eyes, leaning against Alfred's chest, and allowed the tears to fall freely, letting Alfred's hand move casually up and down his back and through his already impossibly messy hair.

"You can't come in here! I won't allow it!" Francis's heavily accented voice could be heard even through the closed window.

Alfred left England to look down on the scene that was unfolding outside.

Francis was standing in the doorway of the block in his dressing gown, hair tied back into a loose ponytail, his arms folded tightly against his chest. The man he was speaking to was hidden in the shadow cast by the building, though Alfred could make out that he was extremely tall and dressed completely in black except from the white scarf he wore. He was accompanied by one other who was standing further back, completely hidden in the night's darkness.

Alfred glanced around to look at England, who, if possible, had become even paler. He was staring wide-eyed at the floor, gripping tightly to the sheets on the bed. Turning his attention back to the people outside, Alfred saw that the tall man had moved frighteningly close to Francis, only a few inches between them. His companion was guarding what seemed to be two motorcycles, which he hadn't noticed previously. Gang members...

Francis held his ground, though he was obviously shaken by the presence of the man facing him. "I will not have you tramping around my accommodation." Francis stumbled slightly over his words, unintentionally showing his nerves.

"I want to see England." The man's voice was pleasant but full of malice and even though he spoke quietly Alfred could hear him perfectly clearly from England's third floor window.

"Francis!" Gilbert joined the two, pulling Francis to the side and speaking hurriedly with the older man in a hushed voice that Alfred couldn't make out before both he and Francis moved back inside the block, allowing the man to enter, noting that the person by the bikes decidedly stayed behind.

"They're coming inside..." Alfred turned to England, whose attention snapped back to Alfred. He was visibly terrified of what Alfred had just said, his eyes as large as dinner plates (or so Alfred thought).

There was scrambling in the living room as the door to Peter's room opened and closed hurriedly. The voices which had been animatedly talking until moments previously had all hushed, most notably Antonio's and Lovino's had disappeared.

The apartment door opened loudly, signalling Gilbert's arrival with the tall man. Tino's voice could be heard next, sounding desperate as he tried to stop the man from entering England's room ("He's ill! No, I must insist that you leave.")

"Hide." England moved suddenly, grabbing the back of Alfred's shirt and pulling him towards the bed.

"What-" Alfred stumbled backwards, taken aback by England's burst of strength.

"Shut up and get under there." England hissed, pushing Alfred down and under the bed. "Don't say a word or there'll be the world to pay."

Alfred could hear England move back onto his pillow, arranging himself under the bed covers to make it seem like he had been resting the entire time.

The bedroom door opened and someone moved inside, moving quietly inwards.

"No, please. Let him rest!" Tino's voice was strained as he tried to stop the man from moving any further into the room.

"If a member of my group is sick, then I must make certain that he will make a full recovery. It is a priority of mine." The man's voice was slicked with false concern, making it hard to tell whether he was actually serious about checking up on England. But one thing that Alfred had managed to find out from the hushed voice he was now hiding from was that this was the man that England and the other's had spoken so fearfully of. Their boss. A man who would inflict wounds upon a person without so much of a second thought.

Alfred heard the door click into place as the man shut it in Tino's face. The bed shifted horribly when a step was taken towards England, who had obviously attempted to move further away from his visitor. He could hear England's breathing get faster even from his hiding place under the bed and hastened to stifle his own. He didn't want to be found by the man who had entered the room. Nothing good would come of it, he could tell.

"R-Russia." England stammered, trying and failing to hide the fear in his voice, "I didn't except you to come." He pulled the bedclothes further over himself in a feeble attempt to protect himself from the threat that was edging closer to himself.

"Belarus told me that you had fallen ill." Russia's words appeared to echo through the small room. "That you did not complete your task to your full capability." Alfred felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as a chill seemed the sweep over him.

"No, well I've been tired recently..." England trailed off, not meeting the gang leaders eyes as per usual.

Alfred tried to shake off the feeling of dread that had captured his mind. The situation was all too familiar to him. That man, Russia, reminded him of someone he had never wanted to think about again.

"They said you were running a fever, England." Russia mused, almost purring at the idea of someone suffering, "They said that you should rest." The smile on his face didn't match his eyes, which were hard and unblinking, "I'll let you off this once." The amusement had vanished from him voice for an instant, becoming cold and harsh for a split second, "This is your last chance."

And with that Russia swept out of the room as quickly as he had entered it, leaving a thick silence in his wake.

Alfred could hear Gilbert hurriedly trying to make some kind of excuse for something, ushering the biker towards the apartment door before it banged shut.

Antonio's voice could be heard next, emerging from Peter's room where he had been hiding with the younger boy and Lovino, "Is he gone?"

"Oui." Francis's voice.

"Good." Antonio sighed, his voice getting louder, "I thought I was going to shit myself when he turned up, jeez..."

Alfred turned his attention away from the voices outside the room and crawled out from under the bed, faintly noting the sound of the two bikes outside the window driving away. He stretched his arms out, glad to be free from the tiny space he had been hiding in. It was only then that he noted the sound of heavy breathing.

England was huddled under the bed covers, shaking horribly and practically hyperventilating. "Hey? You alright?" Alfred shifted closer to England's small form. He placed his hand lightly on the older man's shoulder only to have it jerked away abruptly. "Hey, man. It's okay, he's gone." Alfred tried his best to reassure England, slightly panicked by the state the other man was in.

"Go away." England muttered so quietly that Alfred questioned whether he had spoken at all.

He hesitated but chose not to move from England's bedside, thinking that leaving him alone in this state would be the worst possible option. "Didn't you hear what I said?" England raised his voice, pulling the sheets away from his face to reveal those stunning emerald eyes glaring at Alfred, tinged with red from where he had hastily wiped away his tears. "Are you fucking deaf? Fuck off!"

He shoved Alfred away from the bed, knocking him into the desk, only to become more agitated when the bespectacled boy held his ground in the room. "You're a bloody prat! You know that?" His anger peaked, "I told you not to get involved with us! I said that it was dangerous and now look!" England's voice broke with his last few words, trying to fight back the tears that were stinging in the corners of his eyes. "Why did you have to find me there?" He retreated back behind the bedcovers, "Why did you have to hold me like that?" Pulling the covers tighter around himself. "Why did you have to bring me back here?"

Alfred took this as his cue to carefully wrap his arm around England's shoulders, gently squeezing them to make the smaller man aware of his presence. England struggled against the hold of the evidently stronger man before giving up and leaning into the embrace slightly.

"You have no idea how stupidly naive you are, do you?" He sighed, looking up into Alfred's cerulean eyes. They were so deep England could have sworn for a split second that Alfred was hiding something much more sinister than he let on. He looked away again, choosing instead to stare aimlessly at his now clean hands. "He's going to take everything away from me if I don't do as he says..." He glanced up again faltering as he saw the expression on Alfred's face had darkened. What was wrong with this idiot?

He continued on his train of thought, not wanting to question the rather threatening look Alfred had adopted, "If anything happens, I just want Peter to be safe. You understand that at least, don't you?" If it was possible, England could have sworn that the remaining light in Alfred's eyes vanished as he turned to look at the wall. "Oh, never mind." He ran his hand over his face, wiping away any remaining tears from the corners of his eyes. "I just don't want to lose anything else..."

"And you won't." England looked up, startled by Francis's heavily accented voice suddenly appearing in the room. The Frenchman sidled into the room, frowning down at the two younger blondes, "Just as long as you get your act together."

"What's that supposed to mean?" England glared back at the landlord, instantly defensive.

"I just mean," Francis began, his eyes softening as he looked down at England, "I can't look out for you and Peter forever." He untied his hair from its ponytail, smiling sadly. "Come now, cher, the young doctor said that you should rest." He pushed England down onto his pillow, "Sleep." He turned to Alfred, who had detached himself from England when Francis had entered the room, "May I speak with you for a moment?"

"Uh... sure..." Alfred tilted his head to the side before following Francis to the door.

"Hey, Francis!" England sat up again a little too quickly and fell back feeling dizzy, "Don't- don't tell him anything stupid."

"Sleep." Francis smiled weakly before closing the door with a click and striding out in front of Alfred to lead the way out of the apartment.

Francis leant up against the wall, pulling out a cigarette from the box in his pocket and lighting it. He took a drag from the fag, letting out his breath slowly as his massaged his temples wearily.

"So what did you want to talk about?" Alfred couldn't bear the silence any longer. His patience had finally worn thin after the night's sequence of unsettling events.

"Ahh." Francis let out another stream of fag smoke. "I am getting too old for this." His voice was calm and hard to understand due to the strength of his accent.

"What?"

"That boy and his brother have been through a lot more than you know, cher." He glanced at Alfred before pulling in another sigh from his cigarette.

"What?" Alfred repeated, his irritation rising.

"I've known them all for a long time, all of those boys." Francis looked up towards the window of England's room. "Ever since we were all children. England's parents moved to the town while his mother was pregnant with Peter. Let's just say he was not best pleased with the idea of having a brother nearly ten years younger than himself." He chuckled softly at his memories of the young England. "I was fourteen at the time. Needless to say I introduced him to Antonio and Gilbert, who both lived nearby. Lovino joined the group later on when his twin, Feliciano, and Gilbert's brother, Ludwig, hooked up and lord knows he did not like that."

Alfred kicked the dirt at his feet, only half listening to what Francis was saying. It wasn't that he didn't want to hear about what England was like when he was younger (even if the description Francis was giving sounded extremely similar to how the moody blonde was at that current point in time), he just wanted answers as to why the man was being targeted so much by the gang he was a member of.

Toris and Felicks had said that England and the others were different from the other gang members. That much was obvious from the way that the leader had treated England when Alfred had been hiding under the bed. But why was he in the gang in the first place if he was so different from what was expected of the members.

And then there was the leader himself; the man who was uncannily familiar to Alfred from the darkest parts of his memories. Heaven knows it wasn't pleasant hearing that tone of voice again, the icy cold voice that drawled out its wishes without caring about the consequences so long as they worked in his favour.

Alfred shook his head, banishing the thoughts from his mind as he turned his attention back to the rambling Frenchman in front of him.

"You don't think that he sounds any different to back then, do you?" Francis quirked an eyebrow at the younger boy, "But believe me, he's a mess inside his head." He discarded what remained of his fag, stamping it into the ground. "Just as he was getting ready to leave for college with the other boys there was an accident on one of the main roads into the town." Francis's expression darkened as he remembered the incident. "England was at school when the call came in. I heard it from Antonio. One of their teachers called him out of class. His parent's car had been at the centre of the crash and they had died instantly." Alfred noticed that Francis had turned his gaze to frown at the ground at his feet, his hands balled into fists.

Alfred couldn't help but stare weakly at his landlord. Was this why England acted the way he did?

"That's when he stopped responding to his own name. Of course we all tried to reassure him and bring him back to the way he was, but it is anyone's guess what has been going on inside his head since then. It's been three years." He flexed his hands, inspecting the marks his fingernails had left in his palms. "He and Peter lived with me for a while in my apartment. Of course I was only too glad to look after them, they were like brothers to me, non?" He gave Alfred a strangely pleading look, as if willing him to understand what he was trying to tell him. "But that is when all of this behaviour started. That gang leader found him riding about in town and hooked him in with the lot of them, stringing along the other three with him." He glared over at the two bikes that remained in the car park. "That's when he adopted the name England. That man gave it to him and he accepted it and expected all of us to use it too." He glanced up once more, "He's terrified though." Francis concluded, nodding his head gently. "That boy is terrified of losing anything else, that's why he acts that way when someone gets hurt because of him. Antonio and that boy both got hurt because of something he did. Gilbert told me after you brought him back this evening." He sighed and crossed the short distance between him and Alfred, pressed a hand hard on his tenant's shoulder, "Listen to me, Alfred." His voice had become steely, "I've watched you with him, and I'll tell you this much: don't you dare cause that boy any more pain than he's already suffered. I've looked out for him this long and I don't want Ar-"

"Good evening." Kiku had turned the corner onto the complex, making his way towards the apartment door followed by another Asian looking man with longer hair tied back in a ponytail. "Oh sorry, did we interrupt something?"

"Ah, Kiku! Mon ami!" Francis greeted his second tenant warmly; his previous seriousness disappearing the instant Kiku had made his presence known, "Non, non! You did not interrupt a thing. Ah! Bonjour Yao!" He kissed the other man quickly on each cheek in a very French manner. "It is so good to see you again!"

"Ah, yes..." The man called Yao replied, shaking off Francis's hand from his shoulder. "I hope I will not be imposing at all by staying with my brother tonight?"

"Of course not!" Francis beamed, ushering the two towards the door. "Come now, or we'll all catch our deaths." He went to follow the two inside, beckoning for Alfred to follow.

"Don't hurt him." He whispered dangerously into Alfred's ear as he passed, making his way back up the stairs.

Alfred glanced back around, looking at the serious expression that had set itself back on Francis's face. "I know about you, Alfred Jones, and what you're running away from." Alfred stared in shock down the stairs at the man who now had his usual sly grin fixed upon his face again, "Look after him for me, oui?" He chuckled, disappearing into his own flat, leaving Alfred standing at the top of the first flight of the deserted stairwell.