[ ficlet ] A Matter of Measure [ Turkey/Greece, Hetalia ]
Title: A Matter of Measure
Author: frostberryjam
Rated: G
Series: Hetalia.
Pairing: Turkey/Greece.
Warnings: Human names?
Summary: Turkey and Greece at the beach, still playing their game.
Author Notes: Written in half an hour, prompted by inuyashacooks.
It’s an unseasonably hot June in Greece, a furnace blaze that brings a brash flush of color to the cheek of even the darkest-skinned of the people of Kos.
There, cast adrift on the clear waters that rise from the Gulf of Gokova, is a Greek youth of not entirely unremarkable carriage and face. He draws the eye but not for reasons too deeply true, merely because he is attractive, and beauty is always loved by the Mediterranean people. If should chance he speak to any of the locals (he hasn’t, he won't) then they would hear a voice perfectly matched to the face, deep with just the hint of sleepy sweetness and airy distraction that marks so many philosophers, a dreamy distance that is both a lack of awareness and vivid interest.
No one questions his presence there, Kos is an island of tourism. Yet, even were it a barren desert where visitors were as rare as the splash of a comet across the sky, they would take notice and then forget, for that is the nature of something that is so unchangeable that it slips out of mind, like the air one needs to breathe. The memory of this particular young man slips from conscious memory like a stone dropped in a pool, slips down farther than the unconscious subconscious, back to where knowledge of what he is belongs, in that which some call the human collective awareness.
Long stroke after stroke, slipping underneath the surface, a repetitive pattern of motion, like the chorus of a song. He swims unmindful of the hour, for he has lived too many of them to reduce them into slabs of time. Swims until others might have dropped from exhaustion, until he almost seems ready to touch the coast of Turkey only four kilometers to the East, and then swims more when he doubles back.
Annan watches it all from the beach, toes digging idly into the sand. He smokes a cigarette and rolls his shoulders under the bite of the sun. Some may wonder why he doesn’t swim. The truth is, he’d like to, for sweat drapes along the nape of his neck, down his bare back.
Unfortunately, he knows Heracles all too well, and how jealously he guards the waters, despite the fact that he has never in his lifetime been a master of the sea, not like Annan, or Antonio, or Arthur. Unless given a clear invitation, getting into the water will only incite a fight, break their little truce of ‘your ground, your rules’, and it’s too hot for that.
Therefore he flicks his ashes into the sand with a sardonic curl of his mouth that is only half-cruel and watches as the other nation makes a lazy, easy path back to the beach, not hurrying, letting the waves bat him about a little. Every time his head dips under the swell of a wave he surfaces somewhere else, sometimes farther away, sometimes closer.
Once he’s close enough, Annan raises his voice. “Ain’tcha pruney by now?”
A hand lifts, gives him the finger, and Heracles vanishes again, as quick in the water as any of his dolphins, or nymphs. When he surfaces again, he’s barely a speck in the distance.
Annan sighs and lights up another cigarette. Fight or not, once this cigarette burns itself out, he’s getting into the water to teach his childish lover a lesson. Even if he has to drag him all the way to Turkey to do so properly.
Four kilometers is not a very long distance, after all.
Author: frostberryjam
Rated: G
Series: Hetalia.
Pairing: Turkey/Greece.
Warnings: Human names?
Summary: Turkey and Greece at the beach, still playing their game.
Author Notes: Written in half an hour, prompted by inuyashacooks.
It’s an unseasonably hot June in Greece, a furnace blaze that brings a brash flush of color to the cheek of even the darkest-skinned of the people of Kos.
There, cast adrift on the clear waters that rise from the Gulf of Gokova, is a Greek youth of not entirely unremarkable carriage and face. He draws the eye but not for reasons too deeply true, merely because he is attractive, and beauty is always loved by the Mediterranean people. If should chance he speak to any of the locals (he hasn’t, he won't) then they would hear a voice perfectly matched to the face, deep with just the hint of sleepy sweetness and airy distraction that marks so many philosophers, a dreamy distance that is both a lack of awareness and vivid interest.
No one questions his presence there, Kos is an island of tourism. Yet, even were it a barren desert where visitors were as rare as the splash of a comet across the sky, they would take notice and then forget, for that is the nature of something that is so unchangeable that it slips out of mind, like the air one needs to breathe. The memory of this particular young man slips from conscious memory like a stone dropped in a pool, slips down farther than the unconscious subconscious, back to where knowledge of what he is belongs, in that which some call the human collective awareness.
Long stroke after stroke, slipping underneath the surface, a repetitive pattern of motion, like the chorus of a song. He swims unmindful of the hour, for he has lived too many of them to reduce them into slabs of time. Swims until others might have dropped from exhaustion, until he almost seems ready to touch the coast of Turkey only four kilometers to the East, and then swims more when he doubles back.
Annan watches it all from the beach, toes digging idly into the sand. He smokes a cigarette and rolls his shoulders under the bite of the sun. Some may wonder why he doesn’t swim. The truth is, he’d like to, for sweat drapes along the nape of his neck, down his bare back.
Unfortunately, he knows Heracles all too well, and how jealously he guards the waters, despite the fact that he has never in his lifetime been a master of the sea, not like Annan, or Antonio, or Arthur. Unless given a clear invitation, getting into the water will only incite a fight, break their little truce of ‘your ground, your rules’, and it’s too hot for that.
Therefore he flicks his ashes into the sand with a sardonic curl of his mouth that is only half-cruel and watches as the other nation makes a lazy, easy path back to the beach, not hurrying, letting the waves bat him about a little. Every time his head dips under the swell of a wave he surfaces somewhere else, sometimes farther away, sometimes closer.
Once he’s close enough, Annan raises his voice. “Ain’tcha pruney by now?”
A hand lifts, gives him the finger, and Heracles vanishes again, as quick in the water as any of his dolphins, or nymphs. When he surfaces again, he’s barely a speck in the distance.
Annan sighs and lights up another cigarette. Fight or not, once this cigarette burns itself out, he’s getting into the water to teach his childish lover a lesson. Even if he has to drag him all the way to Turkey to do so properly.
Four kilometers is not a very long distance, after all.