[Fic] Lilies, Leaves and Weeds Chapter 5

[deegeeak]

In retrospect, Matthew should have expected this. Antonio, Francis and Gilbert's drinking weekends were legendary. He'd never been party to the after-effects, but he'd heard the stories. Alfred especially liked to recount his run-ins with the trio – mostly of finding them all drunk as skunks in some bar. His favorite story was from when he'd been working as a traveling judge;* he'd come to some now-nameless town and discovered the three sitting, drunker than drunk, on top of the destroyed bar, loudly singing a song bawdy enough to blister the ears right off your head.

In hindsight, Matthew felt he should have known.

The phone call came at three am. He hadn't meant to fall asleep, but the sheer torture of reading reports had taken its toll. Woken abruptly, he scrambled to find his private cell buried in the mess of papers, then flipped it open without even glancing at the number., “'Lo?”

“I'm looking for a Matthew Williams?” The voice was unfamiliar, the accent sounded almost, Spanish? It wasn't Mexican, so it wasn't one of Cara's people, and Alfred refused to even acknowledge his multilingualism most of the time, so he doubted it was him.

“This is he,” he croaked out. “Can I help you?”

“I'm very sorry for disturbing you sir, but I have in custody a one, Gilbert Beilshimidt, and you are his point of contact.” The voice continued, sounding vaguely disapproving. “He and two others were arrested for disorderly conduct last night.”

“...Arrested,” he parroted back, feeling awareness slowly thumping back into his brain. Just what the hell had happened? And why hadn't they called Ludwig?

“Yes. And as you are Mr Beilischmidt's Dom, and point of contact, we are notifying you of the arrest. Will you be available to take responsibility for him at this time?”

Matthew woke up completely at that. Gilbert. Arrested. In Spain. “Um. Yes?”

“Sir?”

“I mean,” he said quickly, “tomorrow. I'll be there in twenty-four hours.” He powered up his computer to see what flights he could bully his way onto.

“Of course, sir.”

Twenty-four hours later he was standing in a police station in Madrid, feeling a bit like a rabbit does when a semi-truck is blaring down on it. In front of him was a woman who'd he'd have described in any other sort of situation as a sweet, lovely looking young lady, perhaps a bit too young to be in uniform. “Huh?”

The now-formerly sweet looking officer glanced at him like he was particularly simple and slowly repeated herself. “Are you also taking into custody,” she paused to offer him a shark's smile, “Francis Bonnefoy?”

“I, uh.” Matthew felt even more trapped. Why was she asking him this? This was not in his plan.

“He has refused his phone call, or to allow us to contact his House of Record. He's a marked Lily,” the woman continued sweetly, “and you are on record as a Dominant from the same house. Ergo, I must ask if you will take custody of him until otherwise notified.”

It was rare that Matthew met people who could not only notice him, but actively confuse the fuck out of him. It was even rarer for him to come across people whom he couldn't just dazzle with a little bit of what made him a nation (cold winter, hot summer, rarely seen, but always there) to get his way. Unfortunately, Officer Marita Hernandez was one of those rare people who seemed to be immune to a nation's subtle push.

(The last person he'd come across who was like this had been a dark eyed young man in his Northern Territory. Unlike Hernandez, that young man had looked at him and called him “home.” He'd been unsurprised to discover that man had been training with the local shaman. A part of him was always nervous around Shamans and Wise Women – they always knew him, but another, far larger part felt like he was coming home each time he met one.*)

It was obvious to Matthew he wasn't going to get out of this the easy way. Nor was waving his magical top level diplomatic papers at her going to help. He'd already tried that only to have her snort disdainfully and demand to know if he was taking Francis with him or not. There was only one thing left to do – give her what she wanted.

“Yes.” Matthew hung his head slightly. Great. Not only had he been unable to stand up to Alfred last night about that damn water right, but now he'd been walked over by a human. Albeit, one of those special humans, but still. It sort of burned.

She smiled at him, another wolfish grin lighting up her face, making her brown eyes gleam. Fucking sharks didn't have anything on this woman. “Wonderful. It will be just a moment while we finish processing. If you would take seat over there?” She gestured to the row of uncomfortable looking plastic chairs behind him.

Matthew slunk over.

Oh, they were going to pay for this.

Gilbert knew in his bones that he was in trouble. He knew it the way he’d known the goblin green gas snaking over the mud and blood was wrong years ago. (War was never meant to be that way – it was meant to be face to face, sweat and blood in your eyes, not hiding in mud, crawling in dirt, and gasses melting your face.) The silence from France was making his skin crawl, even worse than when Antonio was sprung from their cell and taken away. He's got the bruises and cuts of a bar fight littering him, and a pounding headache from two nights of solid drinking. Gilbert hadn't been this drunk since…Before. Matthew always slept on the couch when one of them got drunk, leaving Gilbert alone in their bed attempting to curl around a warmth that wasn’t there. “Fuck.” France jerked up a little to peer at him, eyes carefully blank, but face curious. The sound of thumping feet coming down the hallways rang in his head, getting louder as they got nearer to their cell.

The look on Matthew's face as he was hauled out of the cool, darkish cell promised that he was in for it. Gilbert hadn't seen anything quite like that in any nation's eyes for a long time. The winter storm in those eyes didn't lessen when they flicked over the groaning French nation beside him. If anything they seemed to get harder.

Matthew looked hungover himself, black circles under his eyes and looking so not his normal self that Gilbert desperately wanted to go up to him and cradle him, hold him until the lines and circles disappeared. “What happened?” Matthew's voice cut across the lobby. “I'd like to know just what exactly prompted a two am phone call and a trans-Atlantic trip.”

The creepy feeling but cute looking lady who'd helped process them snorted, glancing through a police report the size of a small novel. “Try attempted arson of private property while intoxicated, and according to this one hell of a bar fight as well.”

“Oh?”

The guards that had brought them from their cell started to edge away, leaving the nations standing nearly by themselves in the center of the sunlight room. Gilbert opened his mouth – wasn't sure what he was going to say. Apologize perhaps? Maybe say that Matthew should have been there for what had been an epic two nights of bars and booze? In the end he said nothing, letting the words from the police officer spill over them, as she read out a painfully precise account of their drunken escapade to an increasingly grim Matthew.

As the cab pulled away from the sidewalk, a sort of mid-battle unease settled across them. The sounds of the cab as it moved through traffic, the murmur of the cabbie's radio, echoed in the back where he sat sandwiched between France and Matthew. Every breath pressed him against the other men, and every place they touched left him feeling a little bit more alone. Matthew didn't say a word, just rested his head against the cool window, facing away from him. France looked away and closed his eyes in the emptiness.

He curled up and tried not to think too hard on what was coming up.

Stepping into the hotel room Matthew had hastily rented was almost like stepping into an icy cold cave after suffering the sweltering heat of a desert. The low murmur of the conversation with the bellhop who'd accompanied them up as part of the hotel security, faded into black like some 1920s Charlie Chaplin film. Francis stepped further into the cool security of the room, ignoring the way Prussia and Matthew lingered in the door way, exchanging half-hidden looks and silent words behind him.

Let them talk in their own language, he decided. He had more important things to do, such as scrub the remnants of the past few day's efforts from his skin. It had been a long time since he'd felt even remotely comfortable with a few layers of dead skin and dirt resting on him. These days it wasn't the reminder of being trapped in a tower, tearing at his own head, crying out in horror one moment with the poor soul below, screaming in exalted joy along with the crowds, the next that prompted him to turn on the warm water and hide away from the world. Bathing had become less of a need and more of an escape from the pressures of his life.

In all things, no matter what happened, a warm tub of water, and a bar of soap remained eternal. As the water poured down on him, and the white suds turned brown, turned white, rinsed clear, the sounds of what was going on outside his little sanctuary were not quite hidden from him.

Dimly, over the steam he could make out the slightly pained tones of Prussia and the frustrated sounds of Matthew. He dunked his head back under the fall of water, watching it swirl down the drain. Prussia – Gilbert – No, Prussia, what was he? He'd been so good, so very good, when he'd been good for Francis; and he could see, he could feel the way Prus- Gil- , the other man was these days.

It wasn't the maniac slightly sane of the days after he'd been left on Ludwig's doorstep. Nor was it the frightening exhausted craze of prior days. It was almost...almost like he had been back then. Back when times were simple, when they were all but young nations, growing into their bodies, assured of immortality and their own eventual ascension to ruling the world. He missed that Prussian. He wanted that nation back, the one who'd curled up in a field of wild flowers with him on a sun lit morning. And that man was the one he'd thought long gone, buried beneath not just the snow and ice of Ivan's land but also the insanity that sometimes overtook nations before they passed.

(Rome and Germania had, before their end, gone insane in ways that still made Francis's blood run cold. The older nations, the ones he'd grown up with, the ones who had been there, had all agreed to never tell the truth of how the end had finally come about. He and Arthur had both quietly agreed long ago, when still bleeding from the final, frenzied death throes of both Rome and Germania, that rather than suffer the way their parent nations had, they'd end it themselves, or for each other.)

But Gil-, Prus-, the other man was Matthew's. Whatever claim Francis might wish to have on his former lover, hated, jailor, whatever he had become, he was Matthews. And Matthew was his.

A slight pain in his lip went ignored as he pressed a hand to his chest. He loved Matthew in a way that he'd never quite loved anyone else. He'd raised Matthew, given him the best start he could in a harsh and terrible world, during an empire building time. He'd mourned the child when he was taken from him, and gotten his revenge when he'd been able. Even from an early age it had been obvious to him and any other nation who'd come close enough that Matthew was a Dominant minded nation.

Francis remembered waking up one chilly day, having frozen through and through, to a far younger Matthew's face, hovering over his own, pale and white, pleading for him to accept the warm broth. Even though he was just barely out of childhood, perhaps 11, maybe 12, he'd reacted as any Dominant minded person would in response to an injured Sub – nursing and fussing over them. He'd had to finally force the younger man to leave, before he grew ill with neglect for his own health. There'd been something in his eyes when Francis had left later that season that he'd ignored, something almost betrayed at the way he'd been brushed aside.

Looking back, he knew what that emotion was, how could he not? But how could he return such a thing, when he still wanted his Prussian despite everything? After all that had happened, he ought to be praising Matthew and his old friend's new relationship, not wanting to interfere. They were happy, he hissed at the wall. He should be happy for them, not wanting them both. They were happy, he hissed at the wall. He should be happy for them, not wanting them both.

The door suddenly shuddered, jerking Francis back from his wayward memories. “Francis?” The door rattled, with the force of Matthew's annoyed jerk on it. “Francis is you all right?”

“I, yes.” It was but a moment's work to end the cooling water on him, and wrap a towel around his body. “I, ah. Yes. I'm fine” He was. He was, and he was going to be. No matter what.

Pulse. A heartbeat, a million beats, he wasn't sure, later, and Matthew spoke up. “Would you mind? I need to grab a few things before we crash for the night.”

Of course. Even if it had been years since he'd been in any sort of relation where he might have been in need of the sort of things Matthew was eluding too, he still remembered the comfort of a cool towel in a dark room. “Give me a moment?”

The voice behind the door was silent, “Of course,” then walked away.

He caught a glimpse of himself as he hurried up to dry off in the mirror. The reflection stared back, tired of running, tired of everything.

“Right,” Matthew began, trying his best to not look in any one direction for too long. Gilbert was humming to himself softly the way he did sometimes, curled up on one side of the bed, Francis perched ever so, on the chair over there. Matthew’s clenched hands were starting to hurt a little, the muscles cramping like they might if he'd been picking weeds all day. “They only had one room. So we're going to be stuck like this until we can get on a plane tomorrow. So uh. Yeah.”

He winced at the immediate blank looks that flashed across two faces. Way to sound authoritative there. Francis was the first to speak, not too surprising considering that Gilbert was still curled up, breathing deep and slow. “I will take the couch then,” he offered. “I would not want to disrupt anything.”

“Francis...”Matthew wanted so very much to shake some sense into him.

Gilbert stirred. “I can take the floor.” Damn Gilbert's recently over developed guilt complex. Matthew wanted to shake some sense into him as well. Hell, at this rate he'd be tearing his hair out just trying to keep them from feeling guilty at every little thing – and he wanted both of them as his?

Man, he must be as crazy as Alfred always claimed he was.

“No. No one is taking the floor, no one is taking the couch. We're all going to lay down, share the damn bed and get some sleep even if I have to tie the two of you up to get some peace,” he half yelled at the pair, wanting them to just stop being martyrs for just a moment and work with him. He had a plan goddammit, why couldn't they just go with it?

There was silence.

“Ah.” Francis looked abruptly nervous, he noted. Gilbert had gone silent and Matthew couldn't see his eyes.

“Look,” he muttered, “I know, but could we put aside everything and just get some sleep without fighting?”

Gilbert was the first one to shift. “Climb in?”

Matthew sighed to himself, as he wound up in the middle. Gilbert was carefully not touching him, and Francis was almost about to fall out of bed in his attempt to be as alone as possible. This had to be, without a doubt, one of the most awkward bed-sharing experiences he’d ever had.

It was the noise that woke him up. Small whimpers, barely audible floated over to where he was curled around a pillow. At first he couldn't quite place when he was. Sounds of two people breathing – it had been a long time since he'd been in willingly in a room with two people. Gilbert sighed and rolled over, already knowing what he'd see. Matthew lay on his back, hands clenching and relaxing at his side, a deep furrow across his brow. The tiny twitches of his body had worked the sheets almost off the bed.

“Hey,” Gilbert whispered, carefully brushing Matthew’s hair out of his eyes. “Matthew, wake up, it’s just a dream.” Despite his best efforts, Matthew showed no signs of waking up or falling back into peaceful sleep. Sighing, Gilbert settled in for another late night one-man battle against Matthew’s nightmares. Matthew's nightmares were something he'd never had to do, care for someone in that sort of pain before. While he hadn't know what to do the first time Matthew'd had one while asleep with him, he knew the routine now. Gently wake him up, bring him out of the nightmare carefully, so that Matthew didn't jolt awake thinking the nightmare was real. Suddenly, out of the darkness from the other side of the bed, he heard a voice that sounded far too tense to have been asleep a few seconds ago.

“What are you doing? Let him sleep.” Gilbert bristled at Francis's tone of annoyance.

“He’s having a nightmare. What do you want me to do, leave him to deal with it alone?”

This time Francis’ voice was even chillier. “You’re one to talk about nightmares.”

Prussia flinched, curling into Matthew’s side like his Dom’s warmth could somehow erase those words and all the painful history behind them. He reached for Matthew's hand needing the reassurance it offered him even asleep. There was silence, except for Matthew’s quick breathing and occasional pained noise. Gilbert held his hand tightly, running his thumb over and over across it. Finally, after what felt like hours, he spoke, in a voice so quiet and cracked it hardly sounded like his own.

“I’m sorry.”

And after another silent eternity came a response just as quiet, just as rough. “Why did you do it?”

Gilbert hunched into himself slightly. “I..” Across the bed, Francis sighed and the bed creaked as sullen yellow light flickered across the room, lighting them both up. Francis stared at him, face blank and eyes betraying nothing of what was going on behind them. He gulped, feeling his throat dry and parched, and tried again. “I hated them,” he finally said.

Nothing moved, nothing changed. He felt sick, like someone had just gutted him and left him to rot in a field. “I hated them,” he repeated, “I hated how you'd look at them, how you'd look after, everything. But I loved how you looked at me, how you needed me and wanted me. You didn't see some jumped up order, you saw..me.”

Francis breathed, “That doesn't excuse what you did.”

“I know.”

There was a sharp intake of breath, like the dragons of yore might have taken in right before they roasted some poor knight. Gilbert tried not to think too heavily on that given he'd once been a knight (and if he was honest, his heart of heart was still a knight of the Teutonic Order, a healer with a sword, and how much more divided could you get), and while Dragons were more of an English thing, France had been Roman and the Romans had had Dragons the like the world had never seen since. And then the breath let itself out, without any of the scathing words he still deserved to receive from Francis.

“Then why,” the other nation said softly, “should I trust you with this, this most precious thing in my life?”

Gilbert looked down at Matthew. “Because in the end he looked and saw someone no one else did. And that someone was worth saving.”

It didn't happen suddenly, but they talked for the first time, ever really there in the dark. It wasn't easy but the trust that had been broken was slowly mending. Francis gingerly leaned into Matthew's side, helping support him as Gilbert gently petted him, soothing him out of the nightmare. Simply waking him didn't work according to Gilbert, and usually ended in frustrated bruises, as he came up swinging more often then not. It was easier and less painful to just sit there and try to sooth him awake then then jerk him awake.

It didn't take long.

Matthew woke up to the sounds of Gilbert and Francis talking (talking!) above him, and warmth all around him. At first he just laid there, blinking at the ceiling and listening to the conversation, as it worked to banish the last remnants of his nightmare away.

(Nightmares were not easy things. Dreams of red doors, being left alone in darkness alone was the usual. Being trapped in the muddy, blood, ground, his men dying around him, and green goblin gas eating away at every thing around him was the other one. He hated how helpless he felt afterward, hated how he'd accidentally left Gilbert with bruises the first time he'd tried to wake him up. Relief that Gilbert had kept Francis from waking him up; He wondered what had set him off this time. Usually nightmares only came under duress and stress.)

“Uh,” he croaked out, brain still halfway asleep, but still aware of seeing both Francis and Gilbert peer down at him curiously. He rather didn't like the feeling of being looked at like he was some kind of curious experiment that hadn't quite done what had been expected.

“We have talked.” Francis's pronouncement didn't quite take at first, rattling around his brain like the bits of rocks that got stuck in his tires sometimes. Then it took. And he sat up abruptly, feeling something clench at his chest and then start playing a fast two step wildly out of control.

His words weren't the most graceful, nor the most carefully chosen. “Eh?”

Gilbert leaned in from his other-side, eyes brighter then they'd been in a while and a smirk on his face. “We talked.”

“I got that, I think.” The look on Francis's face reminded Matthew of the look Gilbert was wearing, a wicked one that bore him no good. At least, no good for his plans. “I, uh.”

Francis interrupted quickly, “We are going to share you, yes?”

Gilbert added without letting Matthew speak (or squeak considering Gilbert's hand had just shot up his leg), “and maybe we'll share each other for you eventually.”

Matthew gulped. “Hum.”

“Providing of course, that this is amenable to you?” Francis's eyes were very very blue and very bright. And why hadn't he noticed how wicked the French nation's smiles could be before? (He had – but Matthew had forgotten since it had never been directed at him like this before.)

“Yes!” Plans, are all well and good, Arthur had told him once as they sat studying a map of a battlefield, but the real truth in planning, he'd continued, was in being able to throw it out and adapt to a changing battlefield. And Matthew was almost as good at adapting as he was at planning.

“Good.”

Then no one said much of anything. But in the end they didn't have to.