[FIC AND ART FILL] (Much Less Than) Twenty-Four Hours
Title: (Much Less Than) Twenty-Four Hours
Author: peculuiarities
Recipient: crowitched
Characters/Pairings: Prussia, Germany, Prussia's chick, various
Rating: PG for Prussia's mouth
Notes: I don't know how to make good titles.;;
Summary: A day in the life of one Gilbert Beilschmidt. Now with 17% more awesomeness.
(Much Less Than) Twenty-four Hours
7.01am
Gilbert likes to tell people that his day starts at seven sharp. He likes to say that he jumps out of bed even before the minute hand slides into place, that his awesome super-senses and awesome reflexes have him working at top condition even after a full night of drinking and chatting up the ladies. If you are one of the aforementioned ladies, this declaration will be followed by a burst of laughter (his) and a devilish smile (also his).
What really happens, however, is this:
Gilbert’s alarm rings for approximately forty-seven seconds before it is knocked to the floor by a well-aimed pillow. Sometimes the force of the impact is enough to jar the batteries out and buy him a few minutes more. Sometimes all it does is, well, knock his alarm to the floor.
Today, it’s the latter.
Gilbert ignores the insistent ‘cheepcheepcheep’ of his completely-awesome-and-not-at-all-feminine-looking yellow chick-shaped clock (the avian type. Feliciano had brought it over one day. Gilbert had melted.) and turns over on his side, pulling the blanket over his head. It is two minutes later when he feels a hand shaking his shoulder firmly.
“Gilbert.”
Luckily, Gilbert is good at ignoring things.
“Gilbert.”
Well, not ignoring. Obviously he is fair and impartial and shit. Some stuff just isn’t cool enough to notice.
“Gilbert. Wake. Up.”
Take right now for example.
“Gilbert, if you do not wake up I will seal the basement door and leave you in there with nothing but a plate of English cooking.”
Aw shit.
“Of course the awesome me is awake.” The declaration is only slightly marred by the mass of sheets separating it from the freedom of the open air. “Go make breakfast like a good little brother and I’ll be up before you know it.”
Silence. Then,
“Get up, Gilbert.”
Sometimes Gilbert can never win.
---
7.37am
Breakfast is warm Brötchen with butter and jam, sliced ham, soft-boiled eggs and coffee. Like a gentle guest, the morning sun unfolds through the windows and picks out their edges in brightness. At the table, Ludwig flips through that morning’s paper with the quiet, measured movements of a man who has much to think about and little to say; his plate is wiped clean, fork and knife placed together at the same angle.
Gilbert chatters about the previous night’s adventures (a spider as huge as my fist you really should have seen it Lud I scared the shit out of it hahahahahahahahahaha) and asks for seconds.
---
8.04am
Ludwig leaves the house at eight sharp, his suit and tie cleanly-pressed. He leaves Gilbert the same reminders he gives every morning- feed the dogs, watch where his bird relieves itself and clean up the mess when necessary, lunch must be eaten at twelve-thirty in the dining room and not at four in the basement, and please do not invite The Other Two if any alcohol is going to be involved- with the weary air of one who knows that his instructions are, eventually, going to be ignored.
Gilbert grins and claps the taller man on the shoulder and tells him there is nothing to worry about, before sauntering back into the kitchen. He scrapes the leftovers into the disposal, puts the rest into the refrigerator, leaves the dishes in the sink to soak. Then he goes downstairs, back to his bed, and slouches into his sheets.
---
8.06am
Gilbert falls back asleep.
---
11.17am
Gilbert wakes up and uncurls lazily, stretches until he feels his joints pop to his satisfaction. In its cage, the little yellow chick that he carries around gives a little peep; Gilbert aww’s and flails a little where he sits before getting up to refill the feed bowl. When he replaces the birdseed sack into the cupboard, he finds a note taped to the back with ‘Feed the dogs’ in Ludwig’s crisp, evenly-spaced handwriting.
Oh yeah.
Ludwig’s dogs are large, eager things, with coats so sleek and eyes so bright that a breeder would weep out of jealousy. Ludwig has kept dogs for as long as Ludwig has been Germany (a measure of years which is not so impressive to Nations, but to dogs is a very long time indeed), and by now he knows how to keep them happy and healthy until the end of their days. Gilbert likes them best when they’re puppies, because they’re just so much more awesome at that age, but they’re cool when they’re older, too.
He appreciates the barking,especially. Obviously anyone would be excited to have Gilbert Beilschmidt fill their food and water bowls.
Fuck yeah.
---
11.36am
Gilbert leans back against his sofa-bed with a contented sigh, fingers digging into the bag of chips that he brought down with him. On his shoulder, his yellow chick cheeps and ruffles its feathers, adjusting its grip on the fabric of his shirt. The basement (or Gilbert’s Super Awesome Manly Bachelor’s Pad, as Gilbert likes to call it) is cool and quiet, with just enough space for him to pile his things around. He had originally slept in one of the bedrooms upstairs, but over the years his clothes and toys (manly toys, not cute things from Honda or anything, there’s no way he had any of those hahahaha) had begun a slow migration downward.
At first Ludwig had complained, saying that the basement was for storage and really why would Gilbert want to spend any time down there when he had a perfectly acceptable room aboveground, but eventually he had seen the wisdom in giving his excitable older brother free reign downstairs. The fact that Gilbert liked to bring over his friends for loud, potentially offensive drinking sessions contributed largely to this decision.
“This,” Gilbert tells his feathery companion, “is the awesome life.”
And then he turns on the TV to see whether something manly and awesome like wrestling is on.
---
12.21pm
Fernando’s pregnant wife is sobbing on his shoulder, having realized that Anamaria, who is sleeping with a boy half her age, is, in fact, her long lost mother. In the other room, Xavier is deciding how best to tell his girlfriend that he is falling in love with another man.
Gilbert is definitely not tearing up.
---
12.31pm
Not many people are aware that Gilbert Beilschmidt has a fully-functioning spy network available to him in the safety of his basement. Of course, these are the same people who, upon hearing the phrase ‘spy network’, immediately call to mind a collection of highly-trained individuals skilled in the arts of forgery, deceit, information-gathering, and/or martial arts.
Snobs.
Gilbert likes to think that his spy network is a spy network for the average man. Not that Gilbert is an average man- Gilbert is the most un-average, super awesome man there is, thank you very much- he’s just really in tune with the needs of regular citizens. Especially the jobless ones who live in their brothers’ basements.
That, and his spy network is really a bunch of cameras he remote controls with his laptop. Totally affordable, and he would patent the system if it didn’t involve alerting other Nations to the existence of said spy network. Oh well.
The first person Gilbert always checks on is Ludwig. Mostly because he’s the easiest to follow around, and even when Ludwig discovers his secret agents (re: cameras duct-taped to Ludwig’s bookshelves) and returns them to Gilbert with a long lecture about privacy and its importance, Gilbert can always sneak back and duct-tape another set. Gilbert likes to say that it’s because he’s his baby brother and he needs to watch over him. As you can recall, Gilbert likes to say a lot of things.
“I wonder what Lud’s doing now,” Gilbert tells his chick conversationally. The chick pecks at the crumbs scattered on the arm of the sofa and doesn’t respond; it has just witnessed a grown man breaking down during an episode of a badly-written Spanish soap opera and still isn’t sure how to come to terms with that fact. “He probably hasn’t found the camera yet, because I made sure to put it in a super secret awesome location- Oh.”
The chick looks up in interest.
Silence.
“Feli’s really bendy, huh.”
---
1.08pm
After rushing off to the bathroom to finish off what twenty minutes of watching his brother engage in carnal relations with the anthropomorphic representation of Northern Italy started, Gilbert returns to the sofa wiping his hands on a towel. He flops down onto his regular spot, throwing a leg over a sofa arm; the chick peeps in indignation.
“Maybe I should put parental filters on this thing,” Gilbert says, pulling his laptop up. A pause while he considers the idea. Then, “Nah. Let’s see what that prissy Austrian is doing, shall we? Bet it’s something prissy. And. Like. Austrian.”
He presses a few buttons and leans back to watch, an expectant grin on his face. After a couple of minutes, he minimizes the window. The grin stays, and if it’s accompanied by a couple of manly tears then the chick doesn’t comment on it.
“It’s awesome to be alone.”
---
1.14pm
For Fritz’s sake.
“Well, it’s Francis anyway so that’s pretty normal.” Gilbert’s expression looks like a mix between disgust and admiration. The chick just looks green. “Arthur, though.”
The chick peeps.
“I know right?”
---
1.25pm
So Gilbert may or may not have installed a camera in Ivan’s house. Okay, ‘house’ might be a bit too broad; it’s in his garden. He’d sneaked in after one too many drinks (how he had paid for a plane ticket and gone through customs while inebriated is a matter that still mystifies many experts up to the present day) and dropped it in the bushes. Whether or not Gilbert had spent the next few days holed up in the basement with a gun and a warning to Ludwig to ignore every knock at the door will not be disclosed.
Gilbert has successfully resisted every urge to check that little green dot on his screen for several months, and will continue to do so.
Until he gives in.
Which is right about now.
The screen on his laptop is a mass of black and white pixels until a click sounds, alerting him that this is a recorded message and holy shittttt-
“привет. Hello?” Ivan’s voice is cheerful and slightly crackly through the speakers. “Hello stupid person watching this! You left such a nice camera in my garden, I must thank you! It’s a shame you could not tell me about it to my face, it spent a lonely night in the cold. It is mine now, however. Do not worry! I will make sure that it has a safe home here. If you wanted to see how I live so badly perhaps you could come over yourself! I am always nice to guests. Да, Gilbert?”
Gilbert slams the laptop closed and pulls the plug.
He needs a drink.
---
6.34pm
When Ludwig returns home he finds an empty kitchen, three hungry dogs, a basement floor littered with bird excrement and potato chip crumbs, several empty beer bottles, and a Gilbert sprawled on the couch out cold. At least Gilbert hadn’t invited anyone else over. (This is not strictly true. Around 3.42pm, Gilbert had sent out a text to both Antonio and Francis inviting them over. Because Gilbert’s texting abilities had by this time degenerated to simply random numbers and letters in succession, it had been ignored by the latter. The former had thought this was an exciting new code, and had spent two minutes trying to decipher it before forgetting all about it.)
“Gilbert.” Ludwig takes a moment to ponder over just how much time he spends shaking his older brother awake. Too much, he decides. “Gilbert, wake up.”
“Hunh?” A pair of bleary, bloodshot eyes opens to meet his own.
“There is no dinner on the table.” Then, because Ludwig finds that greeting to be lacking, “Good evening.”
“Unghh. Uh. Yeah.” Gilbert rubs at his eyes with a fisted hand. “Sorry. The awesome me forgot. I mean. Fell asleep. And then I forgot. Because I was asleep. Yeah.”
Ludwig sighs, and smoothes down his already slicked-back hair. “Come on, brother,” he says, pulling the former Nation up. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” Gilbert stretches, then reaches down to pick up a sleeping chick and put it in its cage.
“To-” and Ludwig is about to say something about the state of the basement- really Gilbert I thought giving you your own living space would instill a sense of responsibility somehow- but instead what comes out is, “-dinner. We’re going out to dinner.”
“Awesome.” Gilbert grins, and scampers off to change into jeans.
“And you’re going to clean this up after we get home,” Ludwig calls after him weakly.
“Sure!”
Ludwig sighs, and half-smiles.
---
END.
---
ART TIME
because wrestling is so exciting and you should watch it with your pet chick all the time
apparently I cannot write or draw Gilbert. or his chick.;;
fifteen minutes later,
guys, spanish soap operas are life-changing experiences. remember this.
I really hope you like it, crowitched !! thank you for the amazing prompt, I hope I did it justice!!
Author: peculuiarities
Recipient: crowitched
Characters/Pairings: Prussia, Germany, Prussia's chick, various
Rating: PG for Prussia's mouth
Notes: I don't know how to make good titles.;;
Summary: A day in the life of one Gilbert Beilschmidt. Now with 17% more awesomeness.
(Much Less Than) Twenty-four Hours
7.01am
Gilbert likes to tell people that his day starts at seven sharp. He likes to say that he jumps out of bed even before the minute hand slides into place, that his awesome super-senses and awesome reflexes have him working at top condition even after a full night of drinking and chatting up the ladies. If you are one of the aforementioned ladies, this declaration will be followed by a burst of laughter (his) and a devilish smile (also his).
What really happens, however, is this:
Gilbert’s alarm rings for approximately forty-seven seconds before it is knocked to the floor by a well-aimed pillow. Sometimes the force of the impact is enough to jar the batteries out and buy him a few minutes more. Sometimes all it does is, well, knock his alarm to the floor.
Today, it’s the latter.
Gilbert ignores the insistent ‘cheepcheepcheep’ of his completely-awesome-and-not-at-all-feminine-looking yellow chick-shaped clock (the avian type. Feliciano had brought it over one day. Gilbert had melted.) and turns over on his side, pulling the blanket over his head. It is two minutes later when he feels a hand shaking his shoulder firmly.
“Gilbert.”
Luckily, Gilbert is good at ignoring things.
“Gilbert.”
Well, not ignoring. Obviously he is fair and impartial and shit. Some stuff just isn’t cool enough to notice.
“Gilbert. Wake. Up.”
Take right now for example.
“Gilbert, if you do not wake up I will seal the basement door and leave you in there with nothing but a plate of English cooking.”
Aw shit.
“Of course the awesome me is awake.” The declaration is only slightly marred by the mass of sheets separating it from the freedom of the open air. “Go make breakfast like a good little brother and I’ll be up before you know it.”
Silence. Then,
“Get up, Gilbert.”
Sometimes Gilbert can never win.
---
7.37am
Breakfast is warm Brötchen with butter and jam, sliced ham, soft-boiled eggs and coffee. Like a gentle guest, the morning sun unfolds through the windows and picks out their edges in brightness. At the table, Ludwig flips through that morning’s paper with the quiet, measured movements of a man who has much to think about and little to say; his plate is wiped clean, fork and knife placed together at the same angle.
Gilbert chatters about the previous night’s adventures (a spider as huge as my fist you really should have seen it Lud I scared the shit out of it hahahahahahahahahaha) and asks for seconds.
---
8.04am
Ludwig leaves the house at eight sharp, his suit and tie cleanly-pressed. He leaves Gilbert the same reminders he gives every morning- feed the dogs, watch where his bird relieves itself and clean up the mess when necessary, lunch must be eaten at twelve-thirty in the dining room and not at four in the basement, and please do not invite The Other Two if any alcohol is going to be involved- with the weary air of one who knows that his instructions are, eventually, going to be ignored.
Gilbert grins and claps the taller man on the shoulder and tells him there is nothing to worry about, before sauntering back into the kitchen. He scrapes the leftovers into the disposal, puts the rest into the refrigerator, leaves the dishes in the sink to soak. Then he goes downstairs, back to his bed, and slouches into his sheets.
---
8.06am
Gilbert falls back asleep.
---
11.17am
Gilbert wakes up and uncurls lazily, stretches until he feels his joints pop to his satisfaction. In its cage, the little yellow chick that he carries around gives a little peep; Gilbert aww’s and flails a little where he sits before getting up to refill the feed bowl. When he replaces the birdseed sack into the cupboard, he finds a note taped to the back with ‘Feed the dogs’ in Ludwig’s crisp, evenly-spaced handwriting.
Oh yeah.
Ludwig’s dogs are large, eager things, with coats so sleek and eyes so bright that a breeder would weep out of jealousy. Ludwig has kept dogs for as long as Ludwig has been Germany (a measure of years which is not so impressive to Nations, but to dogs is a very long time indeed), and by now he knows how to keep them happy and healthy until the end of their days. Gilbert likes them best when they’re puppies, because they’re just so much more awesome at that age, but they’re cool when they’re older, too.
He appreciates the barking,especially. Obviously anyone would be excited to have Gilbert Beilschmidt fill their food and water bowls.
Fuck yeah.
---
11.36am
Gilbert leans back against his sofa-bed with a contented sigh, fingers digging into the bag of chips that he brought down with him. On his shoulder, his yellow chick cheeps and ruffles its feathers, adjusting its grip on the fabric of his shirt. The basement (or Gilbert’s Super Awesome Manly Bachelor’s Pad, as Gilbert likes to call it) is cool and quiet, with just enough space for him to pile his things around. He had originally slept in one of the bedrooms upstairs, but over the years his clothes and toys (manly toys, not cute things from Honda or anything, there’s no way he had any of those hahahaha) had begun a slow migration downward.
At first Ludwig had complained, saying that the basement was for storage and really why would Gilbert want to spend any time down there when he had a perfectly acceptable room aboveground, but eventually he had seen the wisdom in giving his excitable older brother free reign downstairs. The fact that Gilbert liked to bring over his friends for loud, potentially offensive drinking sessions contributed largely to this decision.
“This,” Gilbert tells his feathery companion, “is the awesome life.”
And then he turns on the TV to see whether something manly and awesome like wrestling is on.
---
12.21pm
Fernando’s pregnant wife is sobbing on his shoulder, having realized that Anamaria, who is sleeping with a boy half her age, is, in fact, her long lost mother. In the other room, Xavier is deciding how best to tell his girlfriend that he is falling in love with another man.
Gilbert is definitely not tearing up.
---
12.31pm
Not many people are aware that Gilbert Beilschmidt has a fully-functioning spy network available to him in the safety of his basement. Of course, these are the same people who, upon hearing the phrase ‘spy network’, immediately call to mind a collection of highly-trained individuals skilled in the arts of forgery, deceit, information-gathering, and/or martial arts.
Snobs.
Gilbert likes to think that his spy network is a spy network for the average man. Not that Gilbert is an average man- Gilbert is the most un-average, super awesome man there is, thank you very much- he’s just really in tune with the needs of regular citizens. Especially the jobless ones who live in their brothers’ basements.
That, and his spy network is really a bunch of cameras he remote controls with his laptop. Totally affordable, and he would patent the system if it didn’t involve alerting other Nations to the existence of said spy network. Oh well.
The first person Gilbert always checks on is Ludwig. Mostly because he’s the easiest to follow around, and even when Ludwig discovers his secret agents (re: cameras duct-taped to Ludwig’s bookshelves) and returns them to Gilbert with a long lecture about privacy and its importance, Gilbert can always sneak back and duct-tape another set. Gilbert likes to say that it’s because he’s his baby brother and he needs to watch over him. As you can recall, Gilbert likes to say a lot of things.
“I wonder what Lud’s doing now,” Gilbert tells his chick conversationally. The chick pecks at the crumbs scattered on the arm of the sofa and doesn’t respond; it has just witnessed a grown man breaking down during an episode of a badly-written Spanish soap opera and still isn’t sure how to come to terms with that fact. “He probably hasn’t found the camera yet, because I made sure to put it in a super secret awesome location- Oh.”
The chick looks up in interest.
Silence.
“Feli’s really bendy, huh.”
---
1.08pm
After rushing off to the bathroom to finish off what twenty minutes of watching his brother engage in carnal relations with the anthropomorphic representation of Northern Italy started, Gilbert returns to the sofa wiping his hands on a towel. He flops down onto his regular spot, throwing a leg over a sofa arm; the chick peeps in indignation.
“Maybe I should put parental filters on this thing,” Gilbert says, pulling his laptop up. A pause while he considers the idea. Then, “Nah. Let’s see what that prissy Austrian is doing, shall we? Bet it’s something prissy. And. Like. Austrian.”
He presses a few buttons and leans back to watch, an expectant grin on his face. After a couple of minutes, he minimizes the window. The grin stays, and if it’s accompanied by a couple of manly tears then the chick doesn’t comment on it.
“It’s awesome to be alone.”
---
1.14pm
For Fritz’s sake.
“Well, it’s Francis anyway so that’s pretty normal.” Gilbert’s expression looks like a mix between disgust and admiration. The chick just looks green. “Arthur, though.”
The chick peeps.
“I know right?”
---
1.25pm
So Gilbert may or may not have installed a camera in Ivan’s house. Okay, ‘house’ might be a bit too broad; it’s in his garden. He’d sneaked in after one too many drinks (how he had paid for a plane ticket and gone through customs while inebriated is a matter that still mystifies many experts up to the present day) and dropped it in the bushes. Whether or not Gilbert had spent the next few days holed up in the basement with a gun and a warning to Ludwig to ignore every knock at the door will not be disclosed.
Gilbert has successfully resisted every urge to check that little green dot on his screen for several months, and will continue to do so.
Until he gives in.
Which is right about now.
The screen on his laptop is a mass of black and white pixels until a click sounds, alerting him that this is a recorded message and holy shittttt-
“привет. Hello?” Ivan’s voice is cheerful and slightly crackly through the speakers. “Hello stupid person watching this! You left such a nice camera in my garden, I must thank you! It’s a shame you could not tell me about it to my face, it spent a lonely night in the cold. It is mine now, however. Do not worry! I will make sure that it has a safe home here. If you wanted to see how I live so badly perhaps you could come over yourself! I am always nice to guests. Да, Gilbert?”
Gilbert slams the laptop closed and pulls the plug.
He needs a drink.
---
6.34pm
When Ludwig returns home he finds an empty kitchen, three hungry dogs, a basement floor littered with bird excrement and potato chip crumbs, several empty beer bottles, and a Gilbert sprawled on the couch out cold. At least Gilbert hadn’t invited anyone else over. (This is not strictly true. Around 3.42pm, Gilbert had sent out a text to both Antonio and Francis inviting them over. Because Gilbert’s texting abilities had by this time degenerated to simply random numbers and letters in succession, it had been ignored by the latter. The former had thought this was an exciting new code, and had spent two minutes trying to decipher it before forgetting all about it.)
“Gilbert.” Ludwig takes a moment to ponder over just how much time he spends shaking his older brother awake. Too much, he decides. “Gilbert, wake up.”
“Hunh?” A pair of bleary, bloodshot eyes opens to meet his own.
“There is no dinner on the table.” Then, because Ludwig finds that greeting to be lacking, “Good evening.”
“Unghh. Uh. Yeah.” Gilbert rubs at his eyes with a fisted hand. “Sorry. The awesome me forgot. I mean. Fell asleep. And then I forgot. Because I was asleep. Yeah.”
Ludwig sighs, and smoothes down his already slicked-back hair. “Come on, brother,” he says, pulling the former Nation up. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” Gilbert stretches, then reaches down to pick up a sleeping chick and put it in its cage.
“To-” and Ludwig is about to say something about the state of the basement- really Gilbert I thought giving you your own living space would instill a sense of responsibility somehow- but instead what comes out is, “-dinner. We’re going out to dinner.”
“Awesome.” Gilbert grins, and scampers off to change into jeans.
“And you’re going to clean this up after we get home,” Ludwig calls after him weakly.
“Sure!”
Ludwig sighs, and half-smiles.
---
END.
---
ART TIME
because wrestling is so exciting and you should watch it with your pet chick all the time
apparently I cannot write or draw Gilbert. or his chick.;;
fifteen minutes later,
guys, spanish soap operas are life-changing experiences. remember this.
I really hope you like it, crowitched !! thank you for the amazing prompt, I hope I did it justice!!