[fanfic] However Improbable
Title: However Improbable
Author: me
Characters/Pairings: England, fem!America
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Obscurity, horniness
Summary: One cannot wish to simultaneously be incredibly close and yet impossibly far from another; a fact not lost on England.
Notes: A sort of AU in which England is silently tsundere and America is not entirely a proper lady.
England wakes with a violent twitch, one which he feels as he comes into consciousness and the hard back of his skull rolls to one side against the flat surface of the wooden floor he’s sprawled over, unflatteringly. The light flooding into the wide window, its shades pulled back, accesses an acute stinging in his eyes that spreads around the perimeter of his brain and sends a thrum of pain through its entirety. He groans.
There is a shuffle of taffeta and the grind of thin heels on the floor across the room, a movement which vibrates through the floor and into his head, once more awakening the pain in the backs of his eyes. He tastes the thick mucus of cheap lager on the sides of his throat, and swallows it bitterly.
The room smells of its usual array-expensive brandy and old, musty books and the faint tang of magic, but a heady scent of sulfur mixed distinctively with sea salt and lavender is what makes him open his eyes more fully, in synchronization with the grinding of molars on a walnut. His limbs feel weighted.
“I was beginning to think Tower Bridge would open before your eyes did.”
The American accent grinds on his consciousness, the drawling syllables beating like drum mallets in his ears. He can hear the full lips parting and sliding closed around them, the smirk which twists them into condescension.
“Both eventualities, therefore accentuating your unparalleled impatience.”
“I had to wrestle you from Scotland Yard,” she chirps, her voice changing in pitch as she turns herself around to pour tea. The skirts of her dress sound like crashing waves as they are swept across the floorboards. “They’ve developed an affection for you that can only mean you’ve been in one of your drunkard phases.”
She sighs the last words, leaving an upwards inflection on them as she turns back to him, walking over so that she is standing over him. Her golden curls fall like curtains around her rosebud cheeks, her impeccably red lips pursed in thought and stark against the white of her skin, faded by the clouded sky outside the window. Her eyes burn blue like the smoldering center of a gas flame.
“I wish you wouldn’t, Arthur. I prefer not to leave New York on the fleeting whim that perhaps you’ve become a gentleman again, only to find myself disappointed.”
“I don’t wish to be a disappointment,” he says, his voice a groan as his abdominal muscles struggle to lift his heavy torso from the floor. “But in my defense, perhaps your whims are the true problem.”
She smiles, a tightening of her lips and eyes that suggests fondness smothered with amusement. He ponders whether she enjoys seeing him like this, hung over and humiliated on his own floor. By the look in her eyes, he deduces she does.
“You appear well,” he says, curtly; it’s a comment on her attire, they both know it-fancier than her usual shirt and waistcoat. The dress is professionally tailored to her waist and bosom, her hair combed through but left down, swirling around her chin. She seems to have cut it since they last met.
“The new world flourishes,” she responds, and her chest is puffed up a bit, proudly, as she pours more tea. She has no taste for it, he knows, and wonders absently if she’s drugged it. The lack of motive does nothing to discourage the thought, and he stays on the floor.
She reaches into a basket on the table before her with delicate, manicured fingers and draws out a cashew, putting it thoughtfully between her teeth. She savors it a moment, along with the silence. He breaks the latter pettily, as if to watch her squirm.
“Not from the news that reaches my ear,” he says, picking up the teacup, sniffing it silently, and putting it back down. “The mumblings among men are that it is a-flurry with panic, has succumbed to the dictatorial rule of the common woman, and has condoned the defilement of a lovely young flower whose name it fails to pronounce.”
Her smile is tighter now, as she pulls a bottle of heavy, aged wine from her side and puts it between her knees to pry out the cork. “Water, water, everywhere,” she toasts, putting the bottle’s mouth between her lips and swallowing deeply, “and not a drop to drink.”
“Terrible plight, that,” he comments, taking a sip of his tea in an attempt at seeming somewhat more dignified than the elegant lady drinking at an early hour; if not to resist the temptation of prying it from her grasp and returning to sweet oblivion.
“If not to end up in your fine state, Arthur,” she muses, sucking on another nut before crushing it softly. “But I get along.”
“Which makes this an excursion of pleasure.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” she says, setting down the wine. He resists grabbing it up once more. “I am obliged to visit you of late. I find I’m missing your company. It has been so long since you visited me.”
Suddenly she is on her feet, her skirts oscillating around her ankles, the sweetened, elongated syllable floating in the musty air. Her heels clack against the floorboards, like an impatient horse’s hoof pawing at flagstones.
“I find myself otherwise engaged,” he says, clipped and tight as she seats herself daintily in his lap, skirts tumbling over the edge of his chair like a silken waterfall.
“May I request to be penciled in?” she purrs, hooking her arms around his neck and smiling in a way that plumps her lips until they are full as the cheeks of a peach. She shifts to set her hip against his groin, perching it there innocently. His hands remain on his teacup.
“Afraid the offices are closed,” he says, a breath. “Holiday and that, you understand.”
She tilts her head, her eyes smoldering him, and she leans in to pour her warm, sweet breath into his ear before leaving his lap. Her bottom, piled with waves and curls of silk, waves to him as she stalks to the table and grabs the wine chokingly by the neck.
“Conveniently, New York beckons,” she purrs to him, taking a drag from the bottle and drawing the back of her satin-gloved finger over the crest of his cheek. He watches it with his eyes.
She produces a stiff card from an orifice of her outfit-in his peripheral, he fails to discern which-and sets it in the palm of her hand, slipping it, slow and flat, under the open collar of his shirt until her hand rests over the dip between his pectorals. She pats there appreciatively, and lets the card drop against the waistband of his trousers. The card is warm.
“Anon, my darling,” she twitters, taking a brisk, confident swagger out of the room, the wine sloshing as it sways by her side.
When the front door’s closing sets the walls quivering, he looses his fly and quenches the rush of blood to his thighs. As he lies back against the chair, exhausted, the card slips down under the waistband of his pants. He holds it delicately, observing the hand-written Staten Island address and her name, in deceptively elegant script, beneath. The note taunts him, speaking his words in her tongue, and he burns with the thought-the knowledge-that she knows his heart better than he does.
My love, Amelia.
Notes:
“I was beginning to think Tower Bridge would open before your eyes did.” -- Tower Bridge opened on the 30th of June, 1894.
“The mumblings among men are that it is a-flurry with panic, has succumbed to the dictatorial rule of the common woman, and has condoned the defilement of a lovely young flower whose name it fails to pronounce.” -- Respectivey: The New York Stock Exchange Panic of 1893, which causes a depression; the voting rights granted to women in Colorado on November 7th; and US military intervention in Hawaii which overthrows Queen Liliuokalani's rule and begins the process which eventually results in Hawaii becoming a State.
“Water, water, everywhere... and not a drop to drink.” -- Referring to the foundation of the Anti-Saloon League, and hence prohibition.
My love, Amelia. -- My name for fem!America.
The title is from a quote of Arthur Conan Doyle's, from Sherlock Holmes; "...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
Whew. Hope you all enjoy ^^
Author: me
Characters/Pairings: England, fem!America
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Obscurity, horniness
Summary: One cannot wish to simultaneously be incredibly close and yet impossibly far from another; a fact not lost on England.
Notes: A sort of AU in which England is silently tsundere and America is not entirely a proper lady.
England wakes with a violent twitch, one which he feels as he comes into consciousness and the hard back of his skull rolls to one side against the flat surface of the wooden floor he’s sprawled over, unflatteringly. The light flooding into the wide window, its shades pulled back, accesses an acute stinging in his eyes that spreads around the perimeter of his brain and sends a thrum of pain through its entirety. He groans.
There is a shuffle of taffeta and the grind of thin heels on the floor across the room, a movement which vibrates through the floor and into his head, once more awakening the pain in the backs of his eyes. He tastes the thick mucus of cheap lager on the sides of his throat, and swallows it bitterly.
The room smells of its usual array-expensive brandy and old, musty books and the faint tang of magic, but a heady scent of sulfur mixed distinctively with sea salt and lavender is what makes him open his eyes more fully, in synchronization with the grinding of molars on a walnut. His limbs feel weighted.
“I was beginning to think Tower Bridge would open before your eyes did.”
The American accent grinds on his consciousness, the drawling syllables beating like drum mallets in his ears. He can hear the full lips parting and sliding closed around them, the smirk which twists them into condescension.
“Both eventualities, therefore accentuating your unparalleled impatience.”
“I had to wrestle you from Scotland Yard,” she chirps, her voice changing in pitch as she turns herself around to pour tea. The skirts of her dress sound like crashing waves as they are swept across the floorboards. “They’ve developed an affection for you that can only mean you’ve been in one of your drunkard phases.”
She sighs the last words, leaving an upwards inflection on them as she turns back to him, walking over so that she is standing over him. Her golden curls fall like curtains around her rosebud cheeks, her impeccably red lips pursed in thought and stark against the white of her skin, faded by the clouded sky outside the window. Her eyes burn blue like the smoldering center of a gas flame.
“I wish you wouldn’t, Arthur. I prefer not to leave New York on the fleeting whim that perhaps you’ve become a gentleman again, only to find myself disappointed.”
“I don’t wish to be a disappointment,” he says, his voice a groan as his abdominal muscles struggle to lift his heavy torso from the floor. “But in my defense, perhaps your whims are the true problem.”
She smiles, a tightening of her lips and eyes that suggests fondness smothered with amusement. He ponders whether she enjoys seeing him like this, hung over and humiliated on his own floor. By the look in her eyes, he deduces she does.
“You appear well,” he says, curtly; it’s a comment on her attire, they both know it-fancier than her usual shirt and waistcoat. The dress is professionally tailored to her waist and bosom, her hair combed through but left down, swirling around her chin. She seems to have cut it since they last met.
“The new world flourishes,” she responds, and her chest is puffed up a bit, proudly, as she pours more tea. She has no taste for it, he knows, and wonders absently if she’s drugged it. The lack of motive does nothing to discourage the thought, and he stays on the floor.
She reaches into a basket on the table before her with delicate, manicured fingers and draws out a cashew, putting it thoughtfully between her teeth. She savors it a moment, along with the silence. He breaks the latter pettily, as if to watch her squirm.
“Not from the news that reaches my ear,” he says, picking up the teacup, sniffing it silently, and putting it back down. “The mumblings among men are that it is a-flurry with panic, has succumbed to the dictatorial rule of the common woman, and has condoned the defilement of a lovely young flower whose name it fails to pronounce.”
Her smile is tighter now, as she pulls a bottle of heavy, aged wine from her side and puts it between her knees to pry out the cork. “Water, water, everywhere,” she toasts, putting the bottle’s mouth between her lips and swallowing deeply, “and not a drop to drink.”
“Terrible plight, that,” he comments, taking a sip of his tea in an attempt at seeming somewhat more dignified than the elegant lady drinking at an early hour; if not to resist the temptation of prying it from her grasp and returning to sweet oblivion.
“If not to end up in your fine state, Arthur,” she muses, sucking on another nut before crushing it softly. “But I get along.”
“Which makes this an excursion of pleasure.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” she says, setting down the wine. He resists grabbing it up once more. “I am obliged to visit you of late. I find I’m missing your company. It has been so long since you visited me.”
Suddenly she is on her feet, her skirts oscillating around her ankles, the sweetened, elongated syllable floating in the musty air. Her heels clack against the floorboards, like an impatient horse’s hoof pawing at flagstones.
“I find myself otherwise engaged,” he says, clipped and tight as she seats herself daintily in his lap, skirts tumbling over the edge of his chair like a silken waterfall.
“May I request to be penciled in?” she purrs, hooking her arms around his neck and smiling in a way that plumps her lips until they are full as the cheeks of a peach. She shifts to set her hip against his groin, perching it there innocently. His hands remain on his teacup.
“Afraid the offices are closed,” he says, a breath. “Holiday and that, you understand.”
She tilts her head, her eyes smoldering him, and she leans in to pour her warm, sweet breath into his ear before leaving his lap. Her bottom, piled with waves and curls of silk, waves to him as she stalks to the table and grabs the wine chokingly by the neck.
“Conveniently, New York beckons,” she purrs to him, taking a drag from the bottle and drawing the back of her satin-gloved finger over the crest of his cheek. He watches it with his eyes.
She produces a stiff card from an orifice of her outfit-in his peripheral, he fails to discern which-and sets it in the palm of her hand, slipping it, slow and flat, under the open collar of his shirt until her hand rests over the dip between his pectorals. She pats there appreciatively, and lets the card drop against the waistband of his trousers. The card is warm.
“Anon, my darling,” she twitters, taking a brisk, confident swagger out of the room, the wine sloshing as it sways by her side.
When the front door’s closing sets the walls quivering, he looses his fly and quenches the rush of blood to his thighs. As he lies back against the chair, exhausted, the card slips down under the waistband of his pants. He holds it delicately, observing the hand-written Staten Island address and her name, in deceptively elegant script, beneath. The note taunts him, speaking his words in her tongue, and he burns with the thought-the knowledge-that she knows his heart better than he does.
My love, Amelia.
Notes:
“I was beginning to think Tower Bridge would open before your eyes did.” -- Tower Bridge opened on the 30th of June, 1894.
“The mumblings among men are that it is a-flurry with panic, has succumbed to the dictatorial rule of the common woman, and has condoned the defilement of a lovely young flower whose name it fails to pronounce.” -- Respectivey: The New York Stock Exchange Panic of 1893, which causes a depression; the voting rights granted to women in Colorado on November 7th; and US military intervention in Hawaii which overthrows Queen Liliuokalani's rule and begins the process which eventually results in Hawaii becoming a State.
“Water, water, everywhere... and not a drop to drink.” -- Referring to the foundation of the Anti-Saloon League, and hence prohibition.
My love, Amelia. -- My name for fem!America.
The title is from a quote of Arthur Conan Doyle's, from Sherlock Holmes; "...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
Whew. Hope you all enjoy ^^