(...)
x x x Close Relations x x x
x...five...x
[that hapless debtor come casanova]
(...)
It was an absolutely brilliant, hatched only by the most brilliant of brilliant heroes. And sure, he got a little help from certain people (namely: Gilbert) and maybe, that nagging little voice in the back of his head (which sounded suspiciously like Arthur) was a little bit right in calling said plan 'the stupidest thing to have crossed your mind since the idea of a hamburger the size of TEXAS!' but Alfred was very good at ignoring these little hints.
And anyways, the hamburger the size of Texas had been a brilliant idea - in his mind, at least - until the President confirmed his sneaking suspicion (one that had crept up on him with dawning horror): there were no hamburger bugs anywhere near the size of Texas.
Getting back on topic, Alfred stood, looking as cool as cool could be - as the younger generation would say - right outside Yao's humble suite. The one where he, being the United States of America and the owner of the UN building, had a cardkey to. "Oh wait!" he muttered to himself, flipping through the pages of 'How to Get Him Wrapped Around Your Finger In Five Easy Steps', "it says here that breaking and entering makes him feel like you're a stalker!" Alfred pondered over this new piece of information, "... I suppose looking like a stalker isn't really charming," he concluded with a sigh. And then he proceeded to knock the door.
Or - to be more precise - he tried to knock the door, only to have Yao swing it open in his face.
"Yao!" he exuberated with a winsome smile ('Smile a lot!' the book had said, 'Guys always love smiles!'), "How are you doing today?"
"...Fine..." Yao replied, looking at Alfred oddly. "It's eight in the morning, aru, what are you doing here?" he asked - a perfectly legitimate question, of course - and one that Alfred had already supplied an answer for.
"Well," he chirpily started, making sure to smile again, "I woke up pretty early today and then I thought about my most favorite Asian nation of all!" He beamed at Yao, "That's you, of course," he added - for clarification - and continued with, "And so, I thought, what better way to relieve the stress of Russia almost frying all of your hair off, than to cook you a wonderfully American breakfast!" Yao looked stupefied. "With fried eggs!" Alfred added, because everyone loved fried eggs!
"...What?" Yao croaked out, most certainly not ready for Alfred and his antics, regardless of the time of day, "What is with the world and thinking that I love my hair to bits and pieces, aru?" he twisted a finger around his neatly-done ponytail, protesting with, "I mean, I haven't cut it in a while, and this is certainly the first time in fifty years that it's been burnt, but that hardly means I'll have a breakdown because of a flamethrower, aru!"
"Right, right," Alfred soothed, ('Agree with him, it makes him much more willing to listen to you!' the guide-book had advised) "But that doesn't mean you can't be in the mood for a hearty breakfast, right?" He smiled another thousand-watt smile, eagerly showing off each of his perfectly-brushed teeth (all shiny beauties that looked so much better than a certain Englishman's teeth!) to a... less than enthusiastic Yao. But the other's reaction hardly mattered, after all, persistence and personality was the key, the book had said.
And so - naturally - he would follow the book's instructions to the letter!
"Well, actually..." Yao started. And then he looked at Alfred's eager, insistent face, complete with an overly large smile. The other wasn't purposely trying to be cringe-worthy, and he had eaten too much sugar to begin with. Maybe salt (and cholesterol and the subsequent heart attacks) was what he needed, after all. "Sure!" Yao replied, mimicking tone, "I would enjoy someone else cooking, actually!"
"Great!" Alfred cheered, trouncing into the other's suite, "I brought all the necessary ingredients too!" The manual had reminded him - on fourteen separate pages - that it was tantamount to remember the ingredients. "I have eggs, and an egg beater, and some flour, and bacon - lots of bacon, you can have a couple slices of course, and then there's butter and milk and..." gracelessly, he wiped the line of drool from his mouth. "There's a lot of good stuff!" Alfred concluded.
"...Right," Yao said, as he stared on in abject horror. First Ivan, then Kiku, then Im-Yong Soo - and then Arthur of all people! And in the short span of... barely twenty-four hours, he had lost seven hours of sleep, three hundred and fifty two Hello Kitty goods, and much of his sanity. And now - Alfred, Alfred of all people - was coming, and deciding that an American breakfast (read: shaken, scrambled, and then soaked in grease) was exactly what Yao's heart needed.
Really.
"Alfred..." Yao started, after the other nation had cheerily tied the apron on, proving once and for all that Alfred - much like Arthur - has little to no place in the kitchen, "Are you really supposed to set the flour right on top of the stove, aru?" The fact that said flour was smoking a little - already! - seemed to be no cause for alarm for Alfred.
"Oh yeah, this book here," and he whipped out an entirely inappropriate book - Yao managed to glance only the cover (a busty young girl and the words 'PLAYBOY'), "Oh whoops, that one's for later," Alfred promptly tucked said magazine back into his pocket, pulling out yet another manual, and tossing it at the relatively perturbed (read: absolutely scandalized) nation, "This one here says that you'll really like it if the pancakes are extra crunchy!"
"How to get him wrapped around your finger in five easy steps...?" Yao read aloud, horror dawning upon realization. "Alfred - do you have any idea what this book is supposed to do, aru?"
"No duh," the other said, carelessly flipping a what was once a strip of bacon right over the uncovered oven, "This is a guide that will show me how to solve all of my problems in one - well, actually, five - easy steps!" And then he tossed another grin - and a still-sloppy pancake - at Yao.
"What..." Yao caught the pancake, but refused to register the smile, "What do you mean solve all of your problems?" He flipped through the pages of manual, reading a couple select segments aloud, "Wake him up, make him an all-American breakfast... butter his toast, aru...?" there was a diagram included - one that most certainly did not include any butter or toast, "Wh-Why are you reading these kinds of things?" he shrieked, face positively livid.
"Woah, easy, chill," Alfred replied - coolly blowing off the flames that were rising from his fifth - and thankfully, final - pancake, "I understand that we have had a good share of differences and conflicts, but that doesn't mean that our entire relationship has to go out the drain because of the little things!" Yao stared at him, and then pinched his own cheek.
"This has got to be a nightmare. I am waking up - now - aru, and going to go see a good movie. Or concert. Or meeting!" he desperately tried, strangling the blasphemous piece of 'literature'. Alfred - of all people - rolled his eyes, mainly because the fifth pancake was simply refusing to come off of the stove top, and the bacon, well, that was a little bit of a lost cause. At least the eggs he could count on!
And then the smoke alarm went off.
"This is all your fault, aru!" Yao raged minutes later, as the two of them worked at dousing off the minor flames. Needless to say, the kitchen fire was easily extinguished. As for the nice, wooden, kitchen table, well... Alfred could always ask the World Bank for another one of those, right? "Just wanted to cook breakfast! Wrapping around finger!" he angrily repeated, stomping out the miniature campfire that had been lit atop the fifth pancake, "There was more of a chance of my hair being burnt from this encounter than - blaaieiih!"
The reason for Yao's sudden strange came from, of course, Alfred swiftly dumping the fully-filled (but cold, thankfully) teapot over the other's head.
Thoroughly soaked, and more riled up than ever, Yao ground out, "What. Was. That. For. Aru."
"There was..." Alfred started. And then bit his tongue. And then giggled a bit. Yao promptly kicked the other in the shins because he was now soaking wet and smelling of Earl Grey and to hell with UN regulations of not attacking member states and whatnot! "There was a little bit of fire in your hair..." Alfred confessed, looking guiltily at the ground. Yao, in response, ground his teeth, counting from one to ten, and then ten to one, in his head.
Breath in, Breath out. Remember, Alfred - the United States - is a very important trading partner, and your president would not like it if two thirds of your exports were made useless because of a silly little breakfast. Right.
"It's fine..." Yao sighed. Alfred laughed nervously, because the other was still making strangling motions with his hands. "Now will you leave?" he tried.
"Are you wrapped around my finger yet?" Alfred had the gall to ask. Yao promptly kicked him - again. "Ow!" Alfred cried, "I already said I was sorry! Look - look! He pointed wildly at the kitchen, desperate to relieve himself of Yao's glaring golden eyes. His index finger landed upon the eggs - the one thing that wasn't burnt to a black crisp, "The eggs!" he cried out, triumphantly, "They're still totally okay!"
"...So they are," Yao agreed, before training his critical gaze on Alfred once more, "Look, aru," he said, "I'm soaked to the skin and it's a little cold, so will you please tell me the real reason why you - or why Arthur and Ivan, really - came here in the first place?" He put his hands on his hips, and despite the drowned-rat look, Alfred still felt a bit intimidated. Must be the angry-Asian glare.
"Well, the thing is..." Alfred awkwardly scratched his head, "I really like the eggs though!" he cheerily brought up, swerving the conversation entirely. "Here, I'll go get you a couple of towels, and then you can eat the eggs, right? I mean, you're not vegetarian or anything, right?"
"I thought you were," Yao dourly replied, flicking a wet strand of hair from his eyes. Some of the tea landed on Alfred's face; he wrinkled his nose.
"I was!" Alfred replied with a laugh, "But I couldn't stop myself from eating hamburgers and did you know - they made a whole new menu set at the BK! Just for people like me, who don't need to sleep from 12 AM to 4 AM!" Yao stared at him, utterly nonplussed. Alfred laughed nervously, again, "I'll be getting the towels now," he nodded, before going off in the direction of said towels. Yao sighed, wondering why-why-why he chose to put up with these people - with these problems - and how he would survive the final day of the UN session.
"So troublesome..." he muttered, setting out the plates, forks, and knives. He had to remember to get Alfred to clean up the explosion of flour (and charred remains of bacon) in the kitchen. If either of them survived eating the eggs, of course.
"Here!" Alfred declared proudly, "Towels!" And he threw three haphazardly around Yao, and then wrapped one around his own shoulders. "Man, even though some of the pancakes turned out a little messy, I'm pretty sure my eggs are really good!" he insisted. Yao rolled his eyes, before dividing the scrambled eggs into two portions. "Bon Appetit!" Alfred had to add, and Yao knew - intrinsically - that his doom was imminent.
"It's..." his eyes widened, and then he took another bite, and another bite. "It's actually pretty - " good he would have said, except then he heard a sickening crunch come from his scrambled egg. Staring in abject horror from said breakfast dish to Alfred - who was crunching on his own scrambled eggs at the moment - Yao really did not want to know. "Why is it crunchy aru?" he asked.
"Because the manual said that guys like protein in their meals and I like protein in my meal. So I added eggshells into the mix!" Alfred immediately replied. Yao sat - and stated - as the other crunched on his scrambled eggs. Crunched. On. His. Scrambled. Eggs.
"Aaaagh," Yao moaned, burrowing his face in his hands and his hands in the second layer of towels, "Can you please tell me what you're here for so I can tell you no and then I can get out of these wet clothes and take a shower, aru?" he pleaded with Alfred, as the other looked - almost - deflated, for a second. And then Alfred reached over - closer, closer, closer, and took a wet strand of hair. One that was hanging outside of Yao's now-soaked ponytail.
"What are you doing?" Yao asked, definitely - absolutely - not wanting to know the answer.
"I'm curling your hair around my finger," Alfred readily replied, doing just so. "Cutely," he added, "Because the manual said that guys like it. Well, it's supposed to be my hair, actually. But my hair's not long enough, and your's is, and I figured if you liked it, you would help fund, oh, all of the construction for the new UN meeting room? I am running on quite the deficit, right?" And here, he grinned, and Yao stared on in something like horror. And disbelief, definitely belief. So that was the reason why Alfred flounced all the way over here, to set off a smoke alarm and nearly kill Yao from food poisoning?
"Please remove your fingers from my hair," Yao ground out. Alfred pouted a bit, but did as told. Yao sighed, heavily, knowing that he would regret his next promise, but ah, what were allied for? Grudgingly, he put out, "I'll help pay for half of the meeting room - no more, aru!" And then he crossed his arms, albeit mainly to fasten the towel more securely about his shoulders.
"Woo-hoo!" Alfred cheered, "See?" he insisted, smiling all the while, much to Yao's chagrin, "That manual did work! Here," and he tossed the Playboy magazine at Yao, "It's one of the rarer editions, signed by the Man himself!"
Yao promptly tossed said magazine into the trash bin.
"Aww!" Alfred mock-cried, as he took his leave - subsequently leaving the reminders of his cooking disasters in Yao's kitchen, "You're just jealous that she's got better legs than you do!"
"I'm not even going to justify that with a reply, aru," Yao flatly said, slamming the door on the self-proclaimed hero. "How to get him wrapped around your finger in five easy steps aru," he mused aloud, taking said manual out from one of his own pockets. Remarkably, it was not soaking wet. And then he shrugged, pocketing it once more, "Could be interesting, I suppose..."
(...)
