Pull the Trigger... [1/?]
anonymous
March 6 2010, 00:23:52 UTC
First time!anon here. I don't know why this prompt called out to me the way it did. The game I was trying to reference was Halo, but I don't own it and the only experience I have with the game is playing it with my ex, so...
Hope the OP enjoys!
Pull the Trigger [1/?]
Arthur growled in frustration, shoulders hunching as he brought the game controller closer to his face, fingers pulling triggers and pressing buttons furiously. "Ah! This isn't fair!" His screen flashed a morbid crimson as he was shot again before Alfred swiftly took out the alien attacker from off screen. "I can't see anything! They all blend into the background!"
Alfred gave a weak laugh and moved forward to take out the next group of grunts up ahead. "That's sort of the point, Iggy."
Arthur's thick brows furrowed disapprovingly as the aliens on Alfred's half of the screen fell dead with a burst of confetti and cheering for each headshot. He was beginning to regret accepting the American's offer to play with him. "It's bloody ridiculous is what it is," he muttered, flushing as he realized that Alfred had just cleared the way ahead for him to catch up. "I don't know whether to be impressed or embarrassed at how good you are at this."
The younger nation let out a bark of laughter and sprawled back a little further against his beanbag chair. "I'm pretty awesome, aren't I? You should be impressed."
Arthur glowered over his shoulder at the bright, dazzling smile that Alfred flashed at him. He covered up the way that smile made him feel rather fluttery inside by readjusting his posture on the hard footrest he was sitting on until he looked as uncomfortable and displeased as possible. "I don't know why I agreed to this."
"Hey, come on, get on that Warthog there."
"What?" Arthur paused, looking from the controller to the screen in confusion. "How?" He could see Alfred's character just ahead of him, situated in the driver's seat of what Arthur could only assume was the "Warthog" the American was referring to.
Alfred sat up and leaned forward. "Just walk forward and press X when you get close," he instructed, breath warm against Arthur's shoulder blade, even through the fabric of his sweater vest.
Silently, the Brit thanked his luck that the fairies weren't here. He was sure they would have erupted into bouts of tittering laughter at the way Arthur's face went hot at Alfred's proximity, the way his cheeks suddenly began to resemble South Italy's beloved tomatoes.
It had only been a few months since their bosses had asked them to start working on mending the "special relationship" after that awful scandal with Arthur's brother and the Englishman was still rather confused about what it was he and Alfred were really doing during these week-long visits. Sometimes, when Alfred came to London, he spent the days working on papers while Arthur sat embroidering by the fire. A few times, he had asked Arthur to take him out somewhere, but it usually ended with the older nation getting frustrated with Alfred's insults to his cooking or the rain or his lack of awesome action movies (Hot Fuzz aside, of course). And whenever Arthur flew out to New York, he always seemed to spend his time doing what he would normally do at home while Alfred ran around from meeting to meeting, worked on some secret (and most likely, dangerous) project in his basement, or played his ridiculous video games.
But still, as boring or meaningless as their meetings seemed, Arthur always sensed a twinge of reluctance and regret when it came time to say "goodbye." He had chalked it up to his own sentimentality up until Alfred had pulled him into that tight, lingering hug in Heathrow just last month.
There was something growing there, but Arthur's pride refused to let him give it a name, give it any sort of acknowledgeable form.
The only real sign that it existed was the way the British nation's hands gave a little bit of a twitch when his former colony leaned a little bit closer to show him where on the controller to press.
Re: Pull the Trigger... [2/?]
anonymous
March 6 2010, 00:26:51 UTC
Pull the Trigger [2/?]
"Like that," Alfred said, the way his voice seemed to dip into a quiet, contemplative tone lost on Arthur, who was trying his hardest not to think about how close they were, how they hadn't been this close without screaming at each other in more than a century.
Arthur pushed the joystick forward and pressed the blue button to get on the tank. And then just as quickly as it had come, the warmth disappeared. Alfred flopped back onto his beanbag chair and maneuvered the "Warthog" through the terrain until the level ended with another one of those horribly narrated cutscenes.
Arthur felt a light nudge at the small of his back and turned around to see Alfred smiling up at him. "The next bit is pretty tough, you're probably going to want to be comfortable."
There weren't any other beanbag chairs in the room, just the one that Alfred was lounging on. One that was just big enough for two people, Arthur observed with a nervous flip of his stomach.
"I'm plenty comfortable," Arthur lied. He shifted slightly and tried not to wince at how sore his back and behind had become. "I can handle it."
I want to sit next to you, he thought to himself, but I can't because...because...because I don't know what that means. I don't know what will happen.
Arthur's shoulders slumped a little as Alfred consented with a flat murmur and settled back by himself in the large dip in the beanbag.
It was that same tone of voice his young colony had used whenever he had seen him off at the docks, whenever he had promised he would come back soon, when Alfred seemed to feel like his love wasn't enough to keep Arthur with him.
Arthur's hands tightened on the game controller and he took a slow breath. "Alfred-"
"Here it goes." The cutscene was over and when Arthur finally got his bearings straight on screen, Alfred's character had already run ahead, shooting at what looked like shadows scurrying along the ground. "Come on, Arthur! You have to keep up here! Don't stop moving!"
"W-why?" the Brit asked, feeling panic rising in his chest despite knowing that it was just a stupid game.
"It's the Flood, if you stand still, they'll get you." The American's voice seemed to tremble a little, like he had just finished watching a horror movie on a stormy night.
"The what?" Arthur asked incredulously.
"The Flood. Look-" Oh Christ, he was sitting forward again, closer this time, not even bothering to be careful this time as he bumped gently into Arthur's back. He jabbed a finger at the screen. "See those things on the ground? You know, swarming around that guy that just fell? That's the Flood. Their like bugs, but they possess you."
Arthur paled, fingers going stiff on the controller triggers as his stomach dropped into some endless pit of nausea. "They...that's..." Revolting didn't seem to properly describe it, but it came pretty damn close.
There were very few things that frightened Arthur, but watching as cockroach-like creatures the size of his head latch onto a corpse and bring it back to life was a little disconcerting. It would have stayed only a little disconcerting if the damned things weren't crawling everywhere and that bloodied corpse weren't stumbling forward in Arthur's line of vision, like some bad memory coming back to slowly destroy him from the inside.
Arthur let out an anxious whine and pulled back on the analog stick, sending his character furiously backpedaling from the undead creature.
"You've got to shoot them, Arthur," Alfred insisted from beside him, repeatedly pulling the trigger on his controller to take out the swarms that had gathered around his own feet and the corpses rising up around him.
"Ngh," Arthur squeaked as he kept scrambling backwards. His screen kept flashing at him, his controller kept vibrating. He was aware that he was being covered and slowly killed, but his fingers refused to pull down on the trigger.
All he could do was run.
He didn't like this anymore. This wasn't a game. The dead was meant to stay dead, the past meant to stay in the past.
But it just kept rising up to stop him, kept rekindling old fears and old wounds inside him, just kept crawling forward until he could hide from it again.
Re: Pull the Trigger... [3/3]
anonymous
March 6 2010, 00:30:23 UTC
Pull the Trigger [3/3]
He hadn't realized his character had died until Alfred let out a frustrated shout beside him.
"I told you it was difficult!" The American sighed heavily and dropped the controller in his lap. "Maybe we should take a break. You're way too tense to- hey, are you alright?"
Arthur swallowed down the lump in his throat easily now and gave Alfred what was supposed to be a nod but looked more like a nervous twitch. "Just a little...startled, I guess."
Alfred was quiet for a moment and Arthur could see those sun-kissed fingers pulling awkwardly at the hem of his t-shirt. For one tense and breathless moment, Arthur thought that maybe Alfred had seen some sort of meaning behind his words.
"Yeah, they freak me out too," Alfred said with a lopsided smile. "I would have warned you if I had known you'd freeze up like that."
The Brit frowned in disappointment and felt the tension in his muscles uncoil, leaving him slouching on the footrest. "I couldn't do it," he muttered offhandedly as he sprawled his legs out in front of him and stretched his arms above his head. "Just couldn't shoot..."
The beanbag squeaked as Alfred shifted around, little plastic beans crunching and clicking together beneath his weight. He smiled up at the former Empire, his expression as free as his wilderness."It's not so hard, Arthur," he said in such a tone that the Englishman couldn't help but smile back. It was so warm, so calming, a reminder that this was here and now and that the Flood didn't really exist. "You've just got to..." He raised one hand and squeezed one eye shut, looking down the length of his arm as he leveled his pointer finger at Arthur.
"I'm not your colony or your child or your baby brother anymore. From now on, I'm going to be independent."
"You ungrateful-" The sound of teeth being ground together in frustration blocked out the sound of the rain.
"Acknowledge me!" Even the wetness of the weather could not extinguish the searing heat of that brilliant blue flame.
England sprang. America pulled back.
Alfred felt the impact of Arthur's bayonet against his musket in his elbows and shoulders.
Long, long ago, America took England's hand in the sunshine of his open, untamed lands.
Now, he stared down the length of the musket being aimed at him by the man he had loved above anyone else.
"Heh..." The world came crumbling down into the mud. "There's no point in shooting...is there?"
And the rain just kept coming down.
"...pull the trigger," Alfred finished hollowly. He blinked a few times and lowered his arm, which had begun to ache from being held in the same position, and realized that the heat he was feeling were tears welling up in his eyes, rolling down his cheeks.
Arthur was staring back with the same startled look, with those same tears clinging hopelessly to the corners of his eyes.
The dead had come back to life and Arthur realized that he would never be able to pull the trigger.
"Iggy, I..." Alfred choked on his own voice, reaching out a hesitant hand to the older man. "I didn't mean to..."
"I think," Arthur whispered shakily, hands tight against his thighs, "that I should wash up before dinner."
"Iggy, wait-"
But Arthur was already gone, leaving Alfred feeling frustrated and empty and wondering where the hell he was supposed to go from here. He curled himself up as compactly as he could on his beanbag and cried silently into his knees while Arthur, locked up in Alfred's bathroom, sank down against the wall and did the same.
* * *
Alfred showed up at Matthew's front door at the end of the week, a sullen look on his face and video game in hand.
"Here," he muttered. "I don't want it anymore."
"Really? But you just got this last week-" Matthew stopped and gave Alfred's expression a long, hard look. "You didn't ask Arthur to play this with you, did you?"
The American shifted uncomfortably and straightened his back a little, chest puffed out to cover up the hitch in his breath. "Anyways, hope you enjoy it. I'll see you later, 'kay?"
And before Matthew could invite his brother inside, Alfred was already back inside of his car and driving away.
Re: Pull the Trigger... [3/3]
anonymous
March 6 2010, 00:56:14 UTC
Ah! Author!anon forgot that the mention the scandal with Arthur's brother is a reference to the release of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds. Al Megrahi was the only person convicted of the terrorist plot which killed 169 Americans and 40 Britons on Pan American Worldways' Flight 103 over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988. He had terminal cancer and wasn't expected to live much longer. However, there were rumors that a deal had been organized between Libya and the UK for his release, which prompted a great deal of criticism from the US and even a boycott of Scotland. In response to the event, citizens from both nations wondered if a "special relationship" really even existed anymore.
Re: Pull the Trigger... [3/3]
anonymous
March 6 2010, 02:14:47 UTC
Oh my... I think I'm gonna cry now. Those poor boys! T^T *incomprehensible noise* The emotions are so...I dunno, just tragically beautiful! Love your style, anon, it's so lyrical and pretty!
OP loved this and...kinda regrets not asking for a happy ending!! bawwwwwwww!!!! So so sad, and it was great to begin so far from the terrible moment, because it created a sense of calm and security, even knowing what was coming. Oh, god, I can so imagine Arthur's reaction being like that, and I want to smack him. And damn you, Al, you have to be more vehement on your explanations! these guys...they break my heart
Hope the OP enjoys!
Pull the Trigger [1/?]
Arthur growled in frustration, shoulders hunching as he brought the game controller closer to his face, fingers pulling triggers and pressing buttons furiously. "Ah! This isn't fair!" His screen flashed a morbid crimson as he was shot again before Alfred swiftly took out the alien attacker from off screen. "I can't see anything! They all blend into the background!"
Alfred gave a weak laugh and moved forward to take out the next group of grunts up ahead. "That's sort of the point, Iggy."
Arthur's thick brows furrowed disapprovingly as the aliens on Alfred's half of the screen fell dead with a burst of confetti and cheering for each headshot. He was beginning to regret accepting the American's offer to play with him. "It's bloody ridiculous is what it is," he muttered, flushing as he realized that Alfred had just cleared the way ahead for him to catch up. "I don't know whether to be impressed or embarrassed at how good you are at this."
The younger nation let out a bark of laughter and sprawled back a little further against his beanbag chair. "I'm pretty awesome, aren't I? You should be impressed."
Arthur glowered over his shoulder at the bright, dazzling smile that Alfred flashed at him. He covered up the way that smile made him feel rather fluttery inside by readjusting his posture on the hard footrest he was sitting on until he looked as uncomfortable and displeased as possible. "I don't know why I agreed to this."
"Hey, come on, get on that Warthog there."
"What?" Arthur paused, looking from the controller to the screen in confusion. "How?" He could see Alfred's character just ahead of him, situated in the driver's seat of what Arthur could only assume was the "Warthog" the American was referring to.
Alfred sat up and leaned forward. "Just walk forward and press X when you get close," he instructed, breath warm against Arthur's shoulder blade, even through the fabric of his sweater vest.
Silently, the Brit thanked his luck that the fairies weren't here. He was sure they would have erupted into bouts of tittering laughter at the way Arthur's face went hot at Alfred's proximity, the way his cheeks suddenly began to resemble South Italy's beloved tomatoes.
It had only been a few months since their bosses had asked them to start working on mending the "special relationship" after that awful scandal with Arthur's brother and the Englishman was still rather confused about what it was he and Alfred were really doing during these week-long visits. Sometimes, when Alfred came to London, he spent the days working on papers while Arthur sat embroidering by the fire. A few times, he had asked Arthur to take him out somewhere, but it usually ended with the older nation getting frustrated with Alfred's insults to his cooking or the rain or his lack of awesome action movies (Hot Fuzz aside, of course). And whenever Arthur flew out to New York, he always seemed to spend his time doing what he would normally do at home while Alfred ran around from meeting to meeting, worked on some secret (and most likely, dangerous) project in his basement, or played his ridiculous video games.
But still, as boring or meaningless as their meetings seemed, Arthur always sensed a twinge of reluctance and regret when it came time to say "goodbye." He had chalked it up to his own sentimentality up until Alfred had pulled him into that tight, lingering hug in Heathrow just last month.
There was something growing there, but Arthur's pride refused to let him give it a name, give it any sort of acknowledgeable form.
The only real sign that it existed was the way the British nation's hands gave a little bit of a twitch when his former colony leaned a little bit closer to show him where on the controller to press.
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"Like that," Alfred said, the way his voice seemed to dip into a quiet, contemplative tone lost on Arthur, who was trying his hardest not to think about how close they were, how they hadn't been this close without screaming at each other in more than a century.
Arthur pushed the joystick forward and pressed the blue button to get on the tank. And then just as quickly as it had come, the warmth disappeared. Alfred flopped back onto his beanbag chair and maneuvered the "Warthog" through the terrain until the level ended with another one of those horribly narrated cutscenes.
Arthur felt a light nudge at the small of his back and turned around to see Alfred smiling up at him. "The next bit is pretty tough, you're probably going to want to be comfortable."
There weren't any other beanbag chairs in the room, just the one that Alfred was lounging on. One that was just big enough for two people, Arthur observed with a nervous flip of his stomach.
"I'm plenty comfortable," Arthur lied. He shifted slightly and tried not to wince at how sore his back and behind had become. "I can handle it."
I want to sit next to you, he thought to himself, but I can't because...because...because I don't know what that means. I don't know what will happen.
Arthur's shoulders slumped a little as Alfred consented with a flat murmur and settled back by himself in the large dip in the beanbag.
It was that same tone of voice his young colony had used whenever he had seen him off at the docks, whenever he had promised he would come back soon, when Alfred seemed to feel like his love wasn't enough to keep Arthur with him.
Arthur's hands tightened on the game controller and he took a slow breath. "Alfred-"
"Here it goes." The cutscene was over and when Arthur finally got his bearings straight on screen, Alfred's character had already run ahead, shooting at what looked like shadows scurrying along the ground. "Come on, Arthur! You have to keep up here! Don't stop moving!"
"W-why?" the Brit asked, feeling panic rising in his chest despite knowing that it was just a stupid game.
"It's the Flood, if you stand still, they'll get you." The American's voice seemed to tremble a little, like he had just finished watching a horror movie on a stormy night.
"The what?" Arthur asked incredulously.
"The Flood. Look-" Oh Christ, he was sitting forward again, closer this time, not even bothering to be careful this time as he bumped gently into Arthur's back. He jabbed a finger at the screen. "See those things on the ground? You know, swarming around that guy that just fell? That's the Flood. Their like bugs, but they possess you."
Arthur paled, fingers going stiff on the controller triggers as his stomach dropped into some endless pit of nausea. "They...that's..." Revolting didn't seem to properly describe it, but it came pretty damn close.
There were very few things that frightened Arthur, but watching as cockroach-like creatures the size of his head latch onto a corpse and bring it back to life was a little disconcerting. It would have stayed only a little disconcerting if the damned things weren't crawling everywhere and that bloodied corpse weren't stumbling forward in Arthur's line of vision, like some bad memory coming back to slowly destroy him from the inside.
Arthur let out an anxious whine and pulled back on the analog stick, sending his character furiously backpedaling from the undead creature.
"You've got to shoot them, Arthur," Alfred insisted from beside him, repeatedly pulling the trigger on his controller to take out the swarms that had gathered around his own feet and the corpses rising up around him.
"Ngh," Arthur squeaked as he kept scrambling backwards. His screen kept flashing at him, his controller kept vibrating. He was aware that he was being covered and slowly killed, but his fingers refused to pull down on the trigger.
All he could do was run.
He didn't like this anymore. This wasn't a game. The dead was meant to stay dead, the past meant to stay in the past.
But it just kept rising up to stop him, kept rekindling old fears and old wounds inside him, just kept crawling forward until he could hide from it again.
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He hadn't realized his character had died until Alfred let out a frustrated shout beside him.
"I told you it was difficult!" The American sighed heavily and dropped the controller in his lap. "Maybe we should take a break. You're way too tense to- hey, are you alright?"
Arthur swallowed down the lump in his throat easily now and gave Alfred what was supposed to be a nod but looked more like a nervous twitch. "Just a little...startled, I guess."
Alfred was quiet for a moment and Arthur could see those sun-kissed fingers pulling awkwardly at the hem of his t-shirt. For one tense and breathless moment, Arthur thought that maybe Alfred had seen some sort of meaning behind his words.
"Yeah, they freak me out too," Alfred said with a lopsided smile. "I would have warned you if I had known you'd freeze up like that."
The Brit frowned in disappointment and felt the tension in his muscles uncoil, leaving him slouching on the footrest. "I couldn't do it," he muttered offhandedly as he sprawled his legs out in front of him and stretched his arms above his head. "Just couldn't shoot..."
The beanbag squeaked as Alfred shifted around, little plastic beans crunching and clicking together beneath his weight. He smiled up at the former Empire, his expression as free as his wilderness."It's not so hard, Arthur," he said in such a tone that the Englishman couldn't help but smile back. It was so warm, so calming, a reminder that this was here and now and that the Flood didn't really exist. "You've just got to..." He raised one hand and squeezed one eye shut, looking down the length of his arm as he leveled his pointer finger at Arthur.
"I'm not your colony or your child or your baby brother anymore. From now on, I'm going to be independent."
"You ungrateful-" The sound of teeth being ground together in frustration blocked out the sound of the rain.
"Acknowledge me!" Even the wetness of the weather could not extinguish the searing heat of that brilliant blue flame.
England sprang. America pulled back.
Alfred felt the impact of Arthur's bayonet against his musket in his elbows and shoulders.
Long, long ago, America took England's hand in the sunshine of his open, untamed lands.
Now, he stared down the length of the musket being aimed at him by the man he had loved above anyone else.
"Heh..." The world came crumbling down into the mud. "There's no point in shooting...is there?"
And the rain just kept coming down.
"...pull the trigger," Alfred finished hollowly. He blinked a few times and lowered his arm, which had begun to ache from being held in the same position, and realized that the heat he was feeling were tears welling up in his eyes, rolling down his cheeks.
Arthur was staring back with the same startled look, with those same tears clinging hopelessly to the corners of his eyes.
The dead had come back to life and Arthur realized that he would never be able to pull the trigger.
"Iggy, I..." Alfred choked on his own voice, reaching out a hesitant hand to the older man. "I didn't mean to..."
"I think," Arthur whispered shakily, hands tight against his thighs, "that I should wash up before dinner."
"Iggy, wait-"
But Arthur was already gone, leaving Alfred feeling frustrated and empty and wondering where the hell he was supposed to go from here. He curled himself up as compactly as he could on his beanbag and cried silently into his knees while Arthur, locked up in Alfred's bathroom, sank down against the wall and did the same.
* * *
Alfred showed up at Matthew's front door at the end of the week, a sullen look on his face and video game in hand.
"Here," he muttered. "I don't want it anymore."
"Really? But you just got this last week-" Matthew stopped and gave Alfred's expression a long, hard look. "You didn't ask Arthur to play this with you, did you?"
The American shifted uncomfortably and straightened his back a little, chest puffed out to cover up the hitch in his breath. "Anyways, hope you enjoy it. I'll see you later, 'kay?"
And before Matthew could invite his brother inside, Alfred was already back inside of his car and driving away.
-fin-
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*incomprehensible noise* The emotions are so...I dunno, just tragically beautiful! Love your style, anon, it's so lyrical and pretty!
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Authoranon! I want to request a sequel. I need a happy ending
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