Fic: The Movement of Language (6)
Title: The Movement of Language
Characters/Pairings: USUK(/US), ensemble (mentioned SuFin, NethCan, Frain, very mild GerIta, AusHun, DenNor, Romano->Belgium and past SpUK)
Rating: T - mild language
Summary: In a hypothetical experiment, a student takes reactant A (one grumpy English teacher) and mixes it with reactant B (one enthusiastic Physics teacher) in a glass beaker (life), stirring the mixture before adding substance C (updates and advice from strange friends, fed-up family, life, the universe and everything). The student witnesses a colourful reaction. Assuming all reactants are used up in the experiment, what would the end product be that is created from this reaction? (Answer: Two idiots, very slowly, very surely, just maybe realising that they might be falling in love.) Teacher!AU. KM de-anon.
Chapter: 6/?
i. - xiii.
xiv. - xxiii.
xxiv. - xxviii.
xxix.
xxx. - xxxvi.
*****
xxxvii. no man is an island
Fridrik Bondevik is, as many widely acknowledge, a great deal like his older brother, Lukas. Both are them are known for being fair, quiet and inordinately fond of each other - and (especially in Fridrik’s case) quick to deny the latter fact. They’re both prone to exasperation where their loud-mouthed and exceedingly clingy cousin, Mikkel, is concerned (although, as of late, Fridrik has noticed how Lukas will sometimes linger before kicking Mikkel’s ass to the kerb. It’s not something Fridrik’s keen to touch upon with his brother or Mikkel - the guy’s egotistical enough as it is - and. Tino. Tino just smiles when Fridrik mentions Lukas being weird and goes on with life like a family member suddenly going insane is a regular occurrence).
Fridrik is a lot like his brother - and he knows it, is somewhat proud of it, because. Because there are a lot of people who it’d be a lot worse to be like, and Lukas is a pretty decent person (weird kindness-to-Mikkel days aside). Not all little brothers are as lucky; Fridrik’s friend Li has too many siblings to keep track of sometimes and half of them seem to hate each other, and, closer to home, there’s Peter. Peter, who seems to oscillate between clutching at some of his given brothers and having screaming matches with them, miserable on the days he sees them and broken-hearted on the days they stay out of his way. Arthur especially - although Michael emails from Ireland once a fortnight about university and Owen sometimes calls in on random weekends, it’s Arthur who’s the best and worst. (When he remembers, Arthur tries.)
Peter is family through Berwald and Tino, a - a foster-cousin-friend (even if he is a few years younger. He’d once saved Fridrik’s bird from Hana’s puppy-jaws, and there’s a bond of ice-steel forged through that sort of trial). He’s family and they’re stuck with him, so it’s good to see him smiling as he comes downstairs after talking with his guardians and Arthur, pausing at the bottom to grab his startled brother around the waist and bury his face in Arthur’s chest. Arthur smiles after a stunned beat, flustered and awkward, reaching up to pet Peter’s hair - so Fridrik looks away, concentrating on the music playing instead of the low words being spoken over by the stairs, and when he looks back again a few minutes later it’s just Peter standing there, a little red but still smiling, so Fridrik nods at him, and that’s that.
“You’re alright?” he asks, and Peter nods back at him. “Then we should go now, or we’ll be late.”
So, like that, they both grab their coats and overnight bags and leave one party for another, giving a goodbye to Berwald before heading out into the night.
xxxviii. controversial but mundane
“Really,” Arthur says, when Alfred does nothing but stare at him, halfway across the kitchen floor and aghast as the last strains of That’s the Way I Like It die a suitable death and a new song comes on, “you should carry on.”
He’s smirking, the douchebag - like he’s never shaken his booty to some silly song before (and if the fuddy-duddy says he hasn’t it’s a lie, because everyone has at some point in their lives, however repressed the memory is). Oh, well. There’s always a refuge in audacity, and Alfred’s not one to ever back down.
“If you’re gonna stand and mock, I’m totally charging you for the privilege. This,” Alfred does an awesome spin, finishing it off by facing Arthur in the doorway again, hands splayed just behind his hips, “is some premium ass.”
“There’s a premium ass in here alright -” Grinning, Arthur gives his leaning post at last and advances further into the kitchen; Alfred wants to make some comparison with a shark, scenting blood in the water, one solitary electron ever-circling a hydrogen’s nucleus even though Alfred isn’t feeling so terribly positive right now -
(You and me, we should bond sometime -)
Arthur stops a scant few steps away and flicks his gaze casually up-down Alfred, up again. “But it includes more than just your posterior.”
“Hey -”
“Really, I’ve never heard anyone murder KC & The Sunshine Band quite like that before, but I suppose you can get points for effort.”
Alfred pouts. “Keep makin’ fun of me, and I’m feeding you to Elizabeta.”
A dire threat.
“I’d like to see you do that whilst remaining hidden from her yourself.” Arthur stretches his Cheshire Cat grin when Alfred winces at the thought, but he obliges Alfred in part by sauntering off to investigate the kitchen’s large supply of alcohol, all the bottles gleaming on the bench. “Is there anything you’d recommend?”
“Huh?”
“To drink?” Arthur looks back over his shoulder. “Teetotallers don’t usually hole themselves up in the one room that has all the booze.”
“Oh, I -” Alfred waves the empty glass he went through his musical performance to fetch. “I was just deciding that myself.”
Arthur hms, but grabs a tumbler from the side for himself, digging through the bottles with thoughtful clinks and clangs before taking his selection over to the fridge-freezer. Alfred just watches him - after setting down his own glass and fetching his abandoned bowl of candy, of course, chewing on a fizzy gummy cola bottle. Thinks about just grabbing a beer, because what Arthur’s doing looks far too complicated - a bit of ice, a splash of something sharp and clear, a bit more of that something when he decides the splash ain’t enough, some other stuff from another bottle and then a whole lot of a carton he’s just grabbed from the fridge. A very fattening looking something, which Alfred eyes speculatively when Arthur takes a long drink from his tumbler and offers it out.
“Dude, did you just top that thing off with heavy cream?”
“Double cream,” cat-tongued, Arthur licks his lips to clear it of said cream, gesturing with his glass once more. Someone in the garden shrieks - another twister game pro’ly come to an end. “Would you like to try this, or do you think it has too many calories for your curriculum? Because if you don’t want it -”
Alfred takes the tumbler. His Prissiness’ drink is a rich white colour, smoothly enveloping the ice-cubes clinking around at the bottom of the glass, and smells heavily of -
Alfred raises an eyebrow at his companion. “Coffee?”
Arthur just shrugs. “Liqueur. Don’t say I don’t do anything for you.”
So Alfred takes a gulp. The cocktail tastes as creamy as it looks, the cool of the ice-cubes set against the heat of the liqueur and - vodka? A hefty dose of vodka, enough to make Alfred’s eyes sting, just a bit. (Arthur makes his drinks strong.) It’s good, and Alfred finds himself mimicking Arthur and licking his lips, clearing them of the wonderfully thick cream.
“What’s this called?” Alfred knows for a fact he’ll be dooming both his waistline and his liver, but he knows for a fact he’ll want another tumbler when he’s polished this one off. He takes another large mouthful.
“Ivan,” Arthur says tranquilly, and watches Alfred spit out another drink in front of him, yet again.
“You have got to be shitting me -” There is no way Alfred can admit to liking ‘Ivans’ and still keep his cred. in the science staff room. Or his personal space. Braginski is mucho bad at personal space.
“Somewhat.” Arthur steals his drink back from Alfred’s slack grip, casually seating himself on the countertop and taking a deep swig. Thief. “It’s called a White Russian: roughly one part vodka, one part coffee liqueur - Kahlúa’s the standard for that, by the way - and four parts cream. Swap out the cream for Baileys and you get a Blind Russian - so saying because it’ll get you blind drunk if you have one too many. Either way, you serve it on the rocks.”
“Shaken,” Alfred quips, “not stirred?”
His reply is an unimpressed look - but it’s accompanied with a flash of white teeth, a barely-there grin.
xxxix. tell me where is fancy bred
Halloween had been a source of great consternation when Arthur had been young. Pretty young - not too young; Arthur can recall the memory and Francis had been there (smug at being Arthur’s elder even as he’d struggled through with his developing English), but…young enough for there to have been a - a blanket. Warm and knitted and knobbly, a rich red-green.
Arthur had loved that blanket, had loved to roll up in it. It had belonged to his father, and when the nights had grown colder the blanket had been spread out over his father’s knees - with just enough room for a small boy to wriggle up underneath it, take his place on his father’s lap and smell the smoke-and-aftershave smell that had always clung to his father’s jumper. (The blanket had vanished - alongside its owner - shortly after Arthur’s sixth birthday. He’d torn apart the whole house looking for it, and had cried and cried and cried until his sister, Erin, had slapped him to make him stop.)
But before that - there had been Arthur, firmly wrapped up in the blanket on the couch cuddling his favourite toy, Mint, watching some American film with a scene about Halloween in it on the TV. Francis had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, coaching a frustrated Morvyn through the complicated efforts of braiding long hair, and their mothers had been in the room just over, adult voices drifting occasionally through the open door in a comforting murmur.
The ‘Halloween’ in the movie had been nothing like the Halloween Arthur had always known. In the movie the whole neighbourhood got decorated with pumpkins and skeletons and cobwebs and bats, and everyone dressed up (the adults too!) and went from door to door and -
People hadn’t done that in England, so much.
So Arthur had pouted at the screen. “Why don’t we do that?”
Morvyn had just tilted his head back, seven and stupid. “Eh?”
“That,” Arthur had said, and pointed at the TV screen.
Francis had got it.
“Because,” he had said, drawing himself up and looking as haughty as he could possibly manage whilst sitting on the carpet with Arthur’s eldest brother tugging on a stubborn tangle in his hair, “zat is American.”
Arthur had just clung to Mint tighter. He’d wanted to carve a scary pumpkin like all the children on TV did, even if it meant he had to have a funny accent to do so. (At least none of their accents had been as weird as Francis’.) “’Merican’s bad?”
“’Orrid,” Francis had assured him. “And tacky.”
“Just like you,” Morvyn had added for the sake of his youngest sibling - and then he’d yelped when Arthur had kicked him in the back of the head.
xl. people or stars
By the time the topic moves onto family neither Alfred nor Arthur can still count as being ‘sober’ anymore, both of them moving to sit at the kitchen table after a few (quite a few) shots of sambuca to nurse Sonic Screwdrivers - another one of Arthur’s cocktails, as heavy with the (vanilla) vodka as the White Russian(s) had been. People have come and gone, intent on grabbing drinks for themselves, a few of the smarter ones just grabbing the bottles and heading straight back to whichever room of the house they’d been in before.
“So, uh -” Alfred is not known for his subtle conversation changes and the cheesy 90s Brit Pop now playing on the sound system is drilling through his head, “I noticed you have a mini-me.”
Arthur frowns at him, and sets down his drink. “I certainly do not have a mini you. The large you is annoying enough as it is.”
“Not a mini me, a mini-me,” Alfred stresses the difference between the two - but Arthur just looks at him blankly. “Dude, ain’t you ever seen Austin Powers?”
“I’ve got better things to kill my brain cells with, thank you.” Arthur sniffs, and picks up his Screwdriver again. Prissypants. “Where do you think I got all my expertise with alcohol from?”
“I was just gonna put that down to you bein’ an alcoholic work-in-progress -” Arthur glares around a mouthful of his drink, and Alfred hastily switches back to his earlier topic. “But your mini-me. Your miniature clone? He was - er, Peter. Looks a lot like you, except…y’know.” Alfred gestures with his hand, somewhere about knee-height. “Smaller.”
Arthur seems vaguely confused at the thought of a human (clone) existing at knee-height for a little while, but the name finally lets the light of understanding shine through in his eyes. “Oh.” And then again. “Oh. Peter’s my little brother.”
“Yeah? You the oldest in your fam?”
“Middle,” Arthur says, and looks down into his cocktail, almost drinking up the bright blue of it with his gaze. “I have four brothers - two older, and two younger - and an older sister. A sister-in-law, too, if that counts; my eldest brother is married.”
“…Man,” Alfred says after a few seconds of awed pause, trying and failing to imagine being raised in a house with five Matthews (one with boobs), “it must’a been hell trying to get in the bathroom at your place when you were all younger.”
Arthur laughs - a startled sound, amused, that creases the corners of his mouth and the corners of his eyes and makes him glow - but his smile doesn’t stick on his face for long. “One of many problems.”
“Any of ‘em do anything interesting?”
“What, to get the bathroom?”
“For a living.” Al leans on the table in front of him, chin propped up with one hand and eternally-worn dog-tags swinging out of his shirt to jingle around his neck. Pulling info out of Arthur’s like getting blood out of a stone - but sweeter, when achieved, for the effort. “I mean - you’ve met Matt already, seen his caf and stuff. He’s pretty happy doing that.”
Arthur smiles absently, hopefully casting his mind back to Trillium. “If his pancakes were anything to go by, he’s pretty damn good at his job, too. My sister…” he taps his fingers against his glass, a dull sound, “she lives over in Ireland - the Republic of. Works as a local journalist there and does other odd jobs alongside in her…area, and half-funds my other younger brother through university. Michael. He lives out there with her, during the holidays. She makes him earn his keep, of course; nearly everything I hear from them is one of them bitching about the other. You’d t-think the Irish Sea between us would spare me the earache but - no.”
Alfred just grins, nudging Arthur’s foot under the table. “No rest for the wicked.”
Arthur nudges him back - harder. “D’you want to drink the last of that Screwdriver or wear it?”
Alfred obligingly shuts up, bringing up his cocktail to down some more of it and discourage Arthur from tipping it over his head. It’ll pro’ly leave his tongue blue, but if it lasts until Monday when term starts up again, it’ll be something to chat about with the kids.
Arthur copies the motion - with a much larger swallow (he wasn’t kidding about the dead brain cells). “S’m- my other brothers - Owen’s my closest; he works as a vet. Loves animals, but for some reason all he’s got is a bunch of really pissy ducks and an iguana. Well, I say some reason, but the idiot bought a bunch of sheep one year and then realised he didn’t have anywhere big enough to put ‘em, so he sold them on again. At a loss. Prat.”
They both pause when the crazy umbrella-wielding guy from the front hallway comes into the kitchen. He stops and looks at Arthur and Alfred sitting at the table, a large amount of empty glasses and a half-empty candy bowl by their bent elbows - but Arthur just gives the guy a lazy salute, and said guy just shakes his head, grabbing a few bottles of beer from a box on the floor and heading out of the kitchen door again.
Alfred leans back in his chair and peers after him. “Talkative.”
Arthur snorts into his dr- well, his empty glass, as he’s just finished another Sonic Screwdriver and added its glass to the pile littering the tabletop. “He talks when there’s something worthwhile to say. The rest of the time his facial expressions usually say everything for him.”
“Dude, if you two got together you could totally, like…laser-eye everyone into submission.” Alfred ponders that, and Arthur helps himself to some candy. “Not that I really condone you using your powers for the Forces of Evil, but a little bit of evil’s alright if you’re cool enough about it. Like if you’re suave enough, or you’ve got a proper billowy cape. On the karma scale, that prob’ly evens out.”
“You’re using a villain’s fashion sense to decide their place on the cosmic balance between good and evil?”
Alfred pouts at Arthur’s amused disbelief. “You’ve got to give the awesome bad guys some brownie points for style. They put the effort in.”
“I really don’t think the cosmic balance factors in fashionable capes to make its daily decisions.”
“But you’ve gotta admit there’s some correlation between the villains who almost get away with it and how cool they look -”
Arthur just shakes his head. “Like who?”
“Luke,” Alfred intones, even as Arthur laughs and swats at his arm, “I am your father. Speaking of -” since Star Wars is the best way to segue into any topic, “you never finished what you were talking about before laser-eye guy came in.”
“Ah?”
“Yeah, your family.” Alfred had been on a roll. “What d’your parents do?”
Arthur pauses. “…My mother died when I was fifteen.”
“…Oh,” Alfred says. Oh. “And your dad?” Arthur just shakes his head; Alfred casually feels like the biggest douchebag on the planet. “I’m sorry. I mean. I. Yeah.”
Arthur just shakes his head again, offers him a smile that’s nowhere near the warmth of before. This one doesn’t suit him at all. “You needn’t apologise; it was a long time ago.” Because you just got over losing your parents, just like that. Of course. “What about your parents? What do they think of you being a teacher?”
Fair’s fair, but Alfred…has never asked his mom about it. He offers Arthur a rueful grin. “I think my dad’s just glad I finally made my mind up; I was kinda indecisive for a while. I wanted to be an astronaut and an archaeologist and a games designer and a pilot - I was all set for the airforce, actually. Wanted to head up into the skies.”
For the longest time. Ages and ages, to get away from it all, up into that endless forever blue - but he’d been stopped, stopped himself at the end of high school after talking to a retired pilot, some guy who lived down the block from his dad’s house that Al had mowed the lawn for. The hardest part about going up, the old man had said when Alfred had asked one hot summer day, paused a minute over the lawnmower to wipe the sweat off his brow and strike up a chat, the very hardest part about going up was that you had to come down again eventually, come down willingly or you’d crash and burn, and it was a heartbreak every time.
“Is that where you got the dog-tags?” Arthur flicks a lazy hand at Alfred, half a motion to the area of Al’s neck, the silver chain that’s so obvious there.
“…Actually, these are my grandda’s.” Alfred colours lightly when Arthur sits up a little at his response, looking over more inquiringly. “He flew in the ‘50s. Changed his name and ran away from home since his parents disapproved. I got called Alfred after him - Mattie’s named after our mom’s dad - but. Ah. I kinda changed my own surname when I was old enough to, and added the middle name. I was born a Williams.”
“…So what does the ‘F’ stand for?”
“Now that,” Alfred’s grin turns brighter, and he takes a bright blue swallow of his Screwdriver and smiles electric before continuing, “is classified information.”
Arthur’s amused again; he wears his laughter as easily as he does a scowl, a whole different range on his numbered (at least, Alfred numbers them) Look spectrum. “It’s so very terrible?”
“If I told you,” Alfred assures him, “I’d have to kill you.”
xli. star-trekking across the universe
Alfred’s spread the solar system out across the countertop - or the galaxy, or the universe, or some kind of constellation thing because, honestly, Arthur hasn’t got much of an idea anymore except it’s got. Something? Probably something to do with space and astrology, and…fiddly physics stuff.
Arthur’d tuned out Alfred’s rambling - minutes? Hours? - a long while ago, and the sticky assortment of sweets taken from Alfred’s stolen bowl to be used in the other’s demonstration is…somewhat bewildering, to say the least, to Arthur’s very-not-sober (but not drunk, thank-you-very-much) mind. He’s much more interested in thumbing the wet lip of his open bottle of cider than paying proper attention, pressing his hot forehead into Alfred’s nearby shoulder so he doesn’t topple straight off the kitchen bench he’s using as a seat again and end up as a inelegantly smooshed pile on Tino’s tiled floor.
He hms now and then, however, makes an encouraging noise in the back of his throat when Alfred nudges him, waiting for a response, and tilts his head obligingly to look at the…whatever-it-is Alfred has just made with an interesting cluster of red smarties and a sugar-filled flying saucer. It’s very colourful and, were Arthur’s motor coordination somewhat better than what he currently knows it to be at that current moment in time, he’d give Alfred a pat on the head for his very pretty picture.
It’s not…bad, Arthur thinks. This. This thing. Even if it is mostly just the alcohol and Arthur’s own sluggishness talking, when Alfred’s not loud, is genuinely absorbed in something and consenting to be used as a human prop-up, it’s not bad.
The party’s winding down for the night - people have left already, are still leaving, and the music’s volume has finally been dropped to play something slower, piano and guitars. The quieter atmosphere is a relief, made for talking, conversations Arthur is quite content to let drift over his head.
“Hey, you guys still holed up in here?”
Noise, and Arthur looks away from Alfred’s rambling to see one of his host’s family in the doorway - Mikkel, the loudest nuisance of them all, with one very wriggly white puppy in his arms. Hana has never been fond of getting carted around by anyone other than Tino, Berwald, and occasionally Peter - so Mikkel’s commandeering of the dog can bode absolutely no good for Hana’s yappy temper.
Remembering the last time Hana had been pissed in his general vicinity; Arthur toes off his shoes and carefully draws his knees up to his chest. He wobbles a bit on the countertop, but Alfred drops his arm so he can wrap it around Arthur’s waist, automatically offering the other support.
“Hey, man,” Alfred doesn’t seem to even notice what he’s done, too busy grinning at the newcomer to register the fact Arthur is blinking up at him in confusion. “Come for the drink?”
Mikkel perks. “What - there’s stuff left?”
“Vodka, cider, ‘bout half a crate of beer -”
Mikkel cheers at the mention of beer and promptly deposits Hana down on the nearest flat surface - which is the counter. The idiot puts Hana down on the counter, and the little puppy almost immediately spies Alfred’s pretty pic-enthralling scientific diagrams, leaping forward with a bouncy yap and diving for their sticky sweetness. Mikkel yells, Arthur tries to stop the puppy and ends up dropping - and smashing - the last of his bottle of cider on the floor, and finds himself teetering dangerously on the counter-edge after going to catch it and miss it. He windmills, resigns himself to a face-full of broken bottle glass - and ends up smacking straight into Alfred’s suddenly-(re?-)available chest, the other man lifting Arthur up without a word (sodding bridal style), carrying him across the glass-covered ground, and dumping Arthur in the nearest kitchen chair.
“You okay?” Alfred asks, and Arthur closes his mouth from where it’s rudely hanging open.
“…My shoes,” he says somewhat feebly, pointing at where he’d discarded them in the expectation Hana would be doing her thing on the kitchen floor.
Alfred turns to get them, and Arthur stares at the back of the other man’s head. Just. Just - fuck, what was a Physics teacher doing being that strong?
“Dude,” Alfred tells Mikkel, as Mikkel bodily hauls Hana away from the sweets she’s happily guzzling by the scruff of her puppy neck, “your dog will totally be vomming that all up again shortly.”
“She’s Tino’s dog,” says Mikkel, and Hana promptly sneezes away some of the sweet powder she has stuck to her nose.
“Tino’s going to kill you~” Arthur doesn’t bother hiding his amusement (especially as he has avoided getting attacked by the puppy and landing on glass - admittedly, for the price of his cider, but there are still more bottles to be grabbed), and Mikkel pouts.
xlii. only going forward ‘cause we can’t find reverse
Amongst other things, Alfred goes home that Saturday night with a new name for Tino’s dog (the Black Hole); a new respect for ‘sweet and innocent’ Tino’s really scary temper; vindication for having his awesome beer called ‘cat’s piss’ (the Black Hole really did chuck up the candy she’d eaten and The Pain got made to clean it up); a googly-eyed pumpkin headband, and two black plastic bats. There are leftover Halloween cupcakes in the kitchen for Mattie, and in Alfred’s head -
Alfred has a lot of new information in his head about Arthur, thoughts and ideas jostling for space behind his happy alcoholic buzz. He’d helped pretty much pour Arthur into a taxi to get home, stumbling after him and kicking the other out when they reached his house, and - and -
Alfred falls asleep, dreams of wet green eyes and warm skin, and wakes in the morning with a hard-on poking his mattress and his alarm clock buzzing an angry early morning greeting. By the time he’s shut the damn thing off and stumbled into the bathroom he’s already forgotten everything about his dreams, and by the time he’s dunked his face in some cold water to wake himself up he’s forgotten that they’re anything much to remember. That there’s anything to remember - especially when he meets his own bleary blue eyes in the bathroom mirror, and realises that it’s a Sunday. That it’s goddamn Sunday, and someone has to have set his alarm.
“MATTIE! YOU ASSHOLE!”
From downstairs, there’s a distinctly Canadian cackle. “Happy Halloween!”
Notes:
Just a point: you can marry your first cousin in the UK - and indeed, a lot of Europe. From what I can find, Norway discussed banning first-cousin marriage in February last year, but nothing came of it.
If anyone particularly cares, what is called double cream, in the UK, must be composed of a minimum of 48% milk fat. Heavy cream, in the USA, has to have 36% or more.
With White Russians - people tend to make it with full cream milk, but Arthur was improvising. (It’s less of a grievous sin at a party to drink the host’s cream than it is to drink the milk said host might want to make cups of tea and coffee to aid them in the post-party clean-up.) If you switch out the cream/milk for goat’s milk it’s called a White Canadian. If you switch the vodka for run it’s a White Cuban, and with gin instead of vodka it’s a White Indian.
A Sonic Screwdriver is a slightly fancier version of what Americans call a screwdriver (vodka and orange), made using vanilla vodka, blue curacao liqueur (for the orange taste) and lemon/lime soda/pop. It’s sweeter than a regular vodka and orange - and yes, it is apparently named after the Doctor’s favourite gadget. I feel like I’m turning anyone who reads this into an alcoholic now. ;;;
Outside of the USA, these are smarties.
This is an update full of dreadful references; I’m so sorry.
Characters/Pairings: USUK(/US), ensemble (mentioned SuFin, NethCan, Frain, very mild GerIta, AusHun, DenNor, Romano->Belgium and past SpUK)
Rating: T - mild language
Summary: In a hypothetical experiment, a student takes reactant A (one grumpy English teacher) and mixes it with reactant B (one enthusiastic Physics teacher) in a glass beaker (life), stirring the mixture before adding substance C (updates and advice from strange friends, fed-up family, life, the universe and everything). The student witnesses a colourful reaction. Assuming all reactants are used up in the experiment, what would the end product be that is created from this reaction? (Answer: Two idiots, very slowly, very surely, just maybe realising that they might be falling in love.) Teacher!AU. KM de-anon.
Chapter: 6/?
i. - xiii.
xiv. - xxiii.
xxiv. - xxviii.
xxix.
xxx. - xxxvi.
*****
xxxvii. no man is an island
Fridrik Bondevik is, as many widely acknowledge, a great deal like his older brother, Lukas. Both are them are known for being fair, quiet and inordinately fond of each other - and (especially in Fridrik’s case) quick to deny the latter fact. They’re both prone to exasperation where their loud-mouthed and exceedingly clingy cousin, Mikkel, is concerned (although, as of late, Fridrik has noticed how Lukas will sometimes linger before kicking Mikkel’s ass to the kerb. It’s not something Fridrik’s keen to touch upon with his brother or Mikkel - the guy’s egotistical enough as it is - and. Tino. Tino just smiles when Fridrik mentions Lukas being weird and goes on with life like a family member suddenly going insane is a regular occurrence).
Fridrik is a lot like his brother - and he knows it, is somewhat proud of it, because. Because there are a lot of people who it’d be a lot worse to be like, and Lukas is a pretty decent person (weird kindness-to-Mikkel days aside). Not all little brothers are as lucky; Fridrik’s friend Li has too many siblings to keep track of sometimes and half of them seem to hate each other, and, closer to home, there’s Peter. Peter, who seems to oscillate between clutching at some of his given brothers and having screaming matches with them, miserable on the days he sees them and broken-hearted on the days they stay out of his way. Arthur especially - although Michael emails from Ireland once a fortnight about university and Owen sometimes calls in on random weekends, it’s Arthur who’s the best and worst. (When he remembers, Arthur tries.)
Peter is family through Berwald and Tino, a - a foster-cousin-friend (even if he is a few years younger. He’d once saved Fridrik’s bird from Hana’s puppy-jaws, and there’s a bond of ice-steel forged through that sort of trial). He’s family and they’re stuck with him, so it’s good to see him smiling as he comes downstairs after talking with his guardians and Arthur, pausing at the bottom to grab his startled brother around the waist and bury his face in Arthur’s chest. Arthur smiles after a stunned beat, flustered and awkward, reaching up to pet Peter’s hair - so Fridrik looks away, concentrating on the music playing instead of the low words being spoken over by the stairs, and when he looks back again a few minutes later it’s just Peter standing there, a little red but still smiling, so Fridrik nods at him, and that’s that.
“You’re alright?” he asks, and Peter nods back at him. “Then we should go now, or we’ll be late.”
So, like that, they both grab their coats and overnight bags and leave one party for another, giving a goodbye to Berwald before heading out into the night.
xxxviii. controversial but mundane
“Really,” Arthur says, when Alfred does nothing but stare at him, halfway across the kitchen floor and aghast as the last strains of That’s the Way I Like It die a suitable death and a new song comes on, “you should carry on.”
He’s smirking, the douchebag - like he’s never shaken his booty to some silly song before (and if the fuddy-duddy says he hasn’t it’s a lie, because everyone has at some point in their lives, however repressed the memory is). Oh, well. There’s always a refuge in audacity, and Alfred’s not one to ever back down.
“If you’re gonna stand and mock, I’m totally charging you for the privilege. This,” Alfred does an awesome spin, finishing it off by facing Arthur in the doorway again, hands splayed just behind his hips, “is some premium ass.”
“There’s a premium ass in here alright -” Grinning, Arthur gives his leaning post at last and advances further into the kitchen; Alfred wants to make some comparison with a shark, scenting blood in the water, one solitary electron ever-circling a hydrogen’s nucleus even though Alfred isn’t feeling so terribly positive right now -
(You and me, we should bond sometime -)
Arthur stops a scant few steps away and flicks his gaze casually up-down Alfred, up again. “But it includes more than just your posterior.”
“Hey -”
“Really, I’ve never heard anyone murder KC & The Sunshine Band quite like that before, but I suppose you can get points for effort.”
Alfred pouts. “Keep makin’ fun of me, and I’m feeding you to Elizabeta.”
A dire threat.
“I’d like to see you do that whilst remaining hidden from her yourself.” Arthur stretches his Cheshire Cat grin when Alfred winces at the thought, but he obliges Alfred in part by sauntering off to investigate the kitchen’s large supply of alcohol, all the bottles gleaming on the bench. “Is there anything you’d recommend?”
“Huh?”
“To drink?” Arthur looks back over his shoulder. “Teetotallers don’t usually hole themselves up in the one room that has all the booze.”
“Oh, I -” Alfred waves the empty glass he went through his musical performance to fetch. “I was just deciding that myself.”
Arthur hms, but grabs a tumbler from the side for himself, digging through the bottles with thoughtful clinks and clangs before taking his selection over to the fridge-freezer. Alfred just watches him - after setting down his own glass and fetching his abandoned bowl of candy, of course, chewing on a fizzy gummy cola bottle. Thinks about just grabbing a beer, because what Arthur’s doing looks far too complicated - a bit of ice, a splash of something sharp and clear, a bit more of that something when he decides the splash ain’t enough, some other stuff from another bottle and then a whole lot of a carton he’s just grabbed from the fridge. A very fattening looking something, which Alfred eyes speculatively when Arthur takes a long drink from his tumbler and offers it out.
“Dude, did you just top that thing off with heavy cream?”
“Double cream,” cat-tongued, Arthur licks his lips to clear it of said cream, gesturing with his glass once more. Someone in the garden shrieks - another twister game pro’ly come to an end. “Would you like to try this, or do you think it has too many calories for your curriculum? Because if you don’t want it -”
Alfred takes the tumbler. His Prissiness’ drink is a rich white colour, smoothly enveloping the ice-cubes clinking around at the bottom of the glass, and smells heavily of -
Alfred raises an eyebrow at his companion. “Coffee?”
Arthur just shrugs. “Liqueur. Don’t say I don’t do anything for you.”
So Alfred takes a gulp. The cocktail tastes as creamy as it looks, the cool of the ice-cubes set against the heat of the liqueur and - vodka? A hefty dose of vodka, enough to make Alfred’s eyes sting, just a bit. (Arthur makes his drinks strong.) It’s good, and Alfred finds himself mimicking Arthur and licking his lips, clearing them of the wonderfully thick cream.
“What’s this called?” Alfred knows for a fact he’ll be dooming both his waistline and his liver, but he knows for a fact he’ll want another tumbler when he’s polished this one off. He takes another large mouthful.
“Ivan,” Arthur says tranquilly, and watches Alfred spit out another drink in front of him, yet again.
“You have got to be shitting me -” There is no way Alfred can admit to liking ‘Ivans’ and still keep his cred. in the science staff room. Or his personal space. Braginski is mucho bad at personal space.
“Somewhat.” Arthur steals his drink back from Alfred’s slack grip, casually seating himself on the countertop and taking a deep swig. Thief. “It’s called a White Russian: roughly one part vodka, one part coffee liqueur - Kahlúa’s the standard for that, by the way - and four parts cream. Swap out the cream for Baileys and you get a Blind Russian - so saying because it’ll get you blind drunk if you have one too many. Either way, you serve it on the rocks.”
“Shaken,” Alfred quips, “not stirred?”
His reply is an unimpressed look - but it’s accompanied with a flash of white teeth, a barely-there grin.
xxxix. tell me where is fancy bred
Halloween had been a source of great consternation when Arthur had been young. Pretty young - not too young; Arthur can recall the memory and Francis had been there (smug at being Arthur’s elder even as he’d struggled through with his developing English), but…young enough for there to have been a - a blanket. Warm and knitted and knobbly, a rich red-green.
Arthur had loved that blanket, had loved to roll up in it. It had belonged to his father, and when the nights had grown colder the blanket had been spread out over his father’s knees - with just enough room for a small boy to wriggle up underneath it, take his place on his father’s lap and smell the smoke-and-aftershave smell that had always clung to his father’s jumper. (The blanket had vanished - alongside its owner - shortly after Arthur’s sixth birthday. He’d torn apart the whole house looking for it, and had cried and cried and cried until his sister, Erin, had slapped him to make him stop.)
But before that - there had been Arthur, firmly wrapped up in the blanket on the couch cuddling his favourite toy, Mint, watching some American film with a scene about Halloween in it on the TV. Francis had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, coaching a frustrated Morvyn through the complicated efforts of braiding long hair, and their mothers had been in the room just over, adult voices drifting occasionally through the open door in a comforting murmur.
The ‘Halloween’ in the movie had been nothing like the Halloween Arthur had always known. In the movie the whole neighbourhood got decorated with pumpkins and skeletons and cobwebs and bats, and everyone dressed up (the adults too!) and went from door to door and -
People hadn’t done that in England, so much.
So Arthur had pouted at the screen. “Why don’t we do that?”
Morvyn had just tilted his head back, seven and stupid. “Eh?”
“That,” Arthur had said, and pointed at the TV screen.
Francis had got it.
“Because,” he had said, drawing himself up and looking as haughty as he could possibly manage whilst sitting on the carpet with Arthur’s eldest brother tugging on a stubborn tangle in his hair, “zat is American.”
Arthur had just clung to Mint tighter. He’d wanted to carve a scary pumpkin like all the children on TV did, even if it meant he had to have a funny accent to do so. (At least none of their accents had been as weird as Francis’.) “’Merican’s bad?”
“’Orrid,” Francis had assured him. “And tacky.”
“Just like you,” Morvyn had added for the sake of his youngest sibling - and then he’d yelped when Arthur had kicked him in the back of the head.
xl. people or stars
By the time the topic moves onto family neither Alfred nor Arthur can still count as being ‘sober’ anymore, both of them moving to sit at the kitchen table after a few (quite a few) shots of sambuca to nurse Sonic Screwdrivers - another one of Arthur’s cocktails, as heavy with the (vanilla) vodka as the White Russian(s) had been. People have come and gone, intent on grabbing drinks for themselves, a few of the smarter ones just grabbing the bottles and heading straight back to whichever room of the house they’d been in before.
“So, uh -” Alfred is not known for his subtle conversation changes and the cheesy 90s Brit Pop now playing on the sound system is drilling through his head, “I noticed you have a mini-me.”
Arthur frowns at him, and sets down his drink. “I certainly do not have a mini you. The large you is annoying enough as it is.”
“Not a mini me, a mini-me,” Alfred stresses the difference between the two - but Arthur just looks at him blankly. “Dude, ain’t you ever seen Austin Powers?”
“I’ve got better things to kill my brain cells with, thank you.” Arthur sniffs, and picks up his Screwdriver again. Prissypants. “Where do you think I got all my expertise with alcohol from?”
“I was just gonna put that down to you bein’ an alcoholic work-in-progress -” Arthur glares around a mouthful of his drink, and Alfred hastily switches back to his earlier topic. “But your mini-me. Your miniature clone? He was - er, Peter. Looks a lot like you, except…y’know.” Alfred gestures with his hand, somewhere about knee-height. “Smaller.”
Arthur seems vaguely confused at the thought of a human (clone) existing at knee-height for a little while, but the name finally lets the light of understanding shine through in his eyes. “Oh.” And then again. “Oh. Peter’s my little brother.”
“Yeah? You the oldest in your fam?”
“Middle,” Arthur says, and looks down into his cocktail, almost drinking up the bright blue of it with his gaze. “I have four brothers - two older, and two younger - and an older sister. A sister-in-law, too, if that counts; my eldest brother is married.”
“…Man,” Alfred says after a few seconds of awed pause, trying and failing to imagine being raised in a house with five Matthews (one with boobs), “it must’a been hell trying to get in the bathroom at your place when you were all younger.”
Arthur laughs - a startled sound, amused, that creases the corners of his mouth and the corners of his eyes and makes him glow - but his smile doesn’t stick on his face for long. “One of many problems.”
“Any of ‘em do anything interesting?”
“What, to get the bathroom?”
“For a living.” Al leans on the table in front of him, chin propped up with one hand and eternally-worn dog-tags swinging out of his shirt to jingle around his neck. Pulling info out of Arthur’s like getting blood out of a stone - but sweeter, when achieved, for the effort. “I mean - you’ve met Matt already, seen his caf and stuff. He’s pretty happy doing that.”
Arthur smiles absently, hopefully casting his mind back to Trillium. “If his pancakes were anything to go by, he’s pretty damn good at his job, too. My sister…” he taps his fingers against his glass, a dull sound, “she lives over in Ireland - the Republic of. Works as a local journalist there and does other odd jobs alongside in her…area, and half-funds my other younger brother through university. Michael. He lives out there with her, during the holidays. She makes him earn his keep, of course; nearly everything I hear from them is one of them bitching about the other. You’d t-think the Irish Sea between us would spare me the earache but - no.”
Alfred just grins, nudging Arthur’s foot under the table. “No rest for the wicked.”
Arthur nudges him back - harder. “D’you want to drink the last of that Screwdriver or wear it?”
Alfred obligingly shuts up, bringing up his cocktail to down some more of it and discourage Arthur from tipping it over his head. It’ll pro’ly leave his tongue blue, but if it lasts until Monday when term starts up again, it’ll be something to chat about with the kids.
Arthur copies the motion - with a much larger swallow (he wasn’t kidding about the dead brain cells). “S’m- my other brothers - Owen’s my closest; he works as a vet. Loves animals, but for some reason all he’s got is a bunch of really pissy ducks and an iguana. Well, I say some reason, but the idiot bought a bunch of sheep one year and then realised he didn’t have anywhere big enough to put ‘em, so he sold them on again. At a loss. Prat.”
They both pause when the crazy umbrella-wielding guy from the front hallway comes into the kitchen. He stops and looks at Arthur and Alfred sitting at the table, a large amount of empty glasses and a half-empty candy bowl by their bent elbows - but Arthur just gives the guy a lazy salute, and said guy just shakes his head, grabbing a few bottles of beer from a box on the floor and heading out of the kitchen door again.
Alfred leans back in his chair and peers after him. “Talkative.”
Arthur snorts into his dr- well, his empty glass, as he’s just finished another Sonic Screwdriver and added its glass to the pile littering the tabletop. “He talks when there’s something worthwhile to say. The rest of the time his facial expressions usually say everything for him.”
“Dude, if you two got together you could totally, like…laser-eye everyone into submission.” Alfred ponders that, and Arthur helps himself to some candy. “Not that I really condone you using your powers for the Forces of Evil, but a little bit of evil’s alright if you’re cool enough about it. Like if you’re suave enough, or you’ve got a proper billowy cape. On the karma scale, that prob’ly evens out.”
“You’re using a villain’s fashion sense to decide their place on the cosmic balance between good and evil?”
Alfred pouts at Arthur’s amused disbelief. “You’ve got to give the awesome bad guys some brownie points for style. They put the effort in.”
“I really don’t think the cosmic balance factors in fashionable capes to make its daily decisions.”
“But you’ve gotta admit there’s some correlation between the villains who almost get away with it and how cool they look -”
Arthur just shakes his head. “Like who?”
“Luke,” Alfred intones, even as Arthur laughs and swats at his arm, “I am your father. Speaking of -” since Star Wars is the best way to segue into any topic, “you never finished what you were talking about before laser-eye guy came in.”
“Ah?”
“Yeah, your family.” Alfred had been on a roll. “What d’your parents do?”
Arthur pauses. “…My mother died when I was fifteen.”
“…Oh,” Alfred says. Oh. “And your dad?” Arthur just shakes his head; Alfred casually feels like the biggest douchebag on the planet. “I’m sorry. I mean. I. Yeah.”
Arthur just shakes his head again, offers him a smile that’s nowhere near the warmth of before. This one doesn’t suit him at all. “You needn’t apologise; it was a long time ago.” Because you just got over losing your parents, just like that. Of course. “What about your parents? What do they think of you being a teacher?”
Fair’s fair, but Alfred…has never asked his mom about it. He offers Arthur a rueful grin. “I think my dad’s just glad I finally made my mind up; I was kinda indecisive for a while. I wanted to be an astronaut and an archaeologist and a games designer and a pilot - I was all set for the airforce, actually. Wanted to head up into the skies.”
For the longest time. Ages and ages, to get away from it all, up into that endless forever blue - but he’d been stopped, stopped himself at the end of high school after talking to a retired pilot, some guy who lived down the block from his dad’s house that Al had mowed the lawn for. The hardest part about going up, the old man had said when Alfred had asked one hot summer day, paused a minute over the lawnmower to wipe the sweat off his brow and strike up a chat, the very hardest part about going up was that you had to come down again eventually, come down willingly or you’d crash and burn, and it was a heartbreak every time.
“Is that where you got the dog-tags?” Arthur flicks a lazy hand at Alfred, half a motion to the area of Al’s neck, the silver chain that’s so obvious there.
“…Actually, these are my grandda’s.” Alfred colours lightly when Arthur sits up a little at his response, looking over more inquiringly. “He flew in the ‘50s. Changed his name and ran away from home since his parents disapproved. I got called Alfred after him - Mattie’s named after our mom’s dad - but. Ah. I kinda changed my own surname when I was old enough to, and added the middle name. I was born a Williams.”
“…So what does the ‘F’ stand for?”
“Now that,” Alfred’s grin turns brighter, and he takes a bright blue swallow of his Screwdriver and smiles electric before continuing, “is classified information.”
Arthur’s amused again; he wears his laughter as easily as he does a scowl, a whole different range on his numbered (at least, Alfred numbers them) Look spectrum. “It’s so very terrible?”
“If I told you,” Alfred assures him, “I’d have to kill you.”
xli. star-trekking across the universe
Alfred’s spread the solar system out across the countertop - or the galaxy, or the universe, or some kind of constellation thing because, honestly, Arthur hasn’t got much of an idea anymore except it’s got. Something? Probably something to do with space and astrology, and…fiddly physics stuff.
Arthur’d tuned out Alfred’s rambling - minutes? Hours? - a long while ago, and the sticky assortment of sweets taken from Alfred’s stolen bowl to be used in the other’s demonstration is…somewhat bewildering, to say the least, to Arthur’s very-not-sober (but not drunk, thank-you-very-much) mind. He’s much more interested in thumbing the wet lip of his open bottle of cider than paying proper attention, pressing his hot forehead into Alfred’s nearby shoulder so he doesn’t topple straight off the kitchen bench he’s using as a seat again and end up as a inelegantly smooshed pile on Tino’s tiled floor.
He hms now and then, however, makes an encouraging noise in the back of his throat when Alfred nudges him, waiting for a response, and tilts his head obligingly to look at the…whatever-it-is Alfred has just made with an interesting cluster of red smarties and a sugar-filled flying saucer. It’s very colourful and, were Arthur’s motor coordination somewhat better than what he currently knows it to be at that current moment in time, he’d give Alfred a pat on the head for his very pretty picture.
It’s not…bad, Arthur thinks. This. This thing. Even if it is mostly just the alcohol and Arthur’s own sluggishness talking, when Alfred’s not loud, is genuinely absorbed in something and consenting to be used as a human prop-up, it’s not bad.
The party’s winding down for the night - people have left already, are still leaving, and the music’s volume has finally been dropped to play something slower, piano and guitars. The quieter atmosphere is a relief, made for talking, conversations Arthur is quite content to let drift over his head.
“Hey, you guys still holed up in here?”
Noise, and Arthur looks away from Alfred’s rambling to see one of his host’s family in the doorway - Mikkel, the loudest nuisance of them all, with one very wriggly white puppy in his arms. Hana has never been fond of getting carted around by anyone other than Tino, Berwald, and occasionally Peter - so Mikkel’s commandeering of the dog can bode absolutely no good for Hana’s yappy temper.
Remembering the last time Hana had been pissed in his general vicinity; Arthur toes off his shoes and carefully draws his knees up to his chest. He wobbles a bit on the countertop, but Alfred drops his arm so he can wrap it around Arthur’s waist, automatically offering the other support.
“Hey, man,” Alfred doesn’t seem to even notice what he’s done, too busy grinning at the newcomer to register the fact Arthur is blinking up at him in confusion. “Come for the drink?”
Mikkel perks. “What - there’s stuff left?”
“Vodka, cider, ‘bout half a crate of beer -”
Mikkel cheers at the mention of beer and promptly deposits Hana down on the nearest flat surface - which is the counter. The idiot puts Hana down on the counter, and the little puppy almost immediately spies Alfred’s pretty pic-enthralling scientific diagrams, leaping forward with a bouncy yap and diving for their sticky sweetness. Mikkel yells, Arthur tries to stop the puppy and ends up dropping - and smashing - the last of his bottle of cider on the floor, and finds himself teetering dangerously on the counter-edge after going to catch it and miss it. He windmills, resigns himself to a face-full of broken bottle glass - and ends up smacking straight into Alfred’s suddenly-(re?-)available chest, the other man lifting Arthur up without a word (sodding bridal style), carrying him across the glass-covered ground, and dumping Arthur in the nearest kitchen chair.
“You okay?” Alfred asks, and Arthur closes his mouth from where it’s rudely hanging open.
“…My shoes,” he says somewhat feebly, pointing at where he’d discarded them in the expectation Hana would be doing her thing on the kitchen floor.
Alfred turns to get them, and Arthur stares at the back of the other man’s head. Just. Just - fuck, what was a Physics teacher doing being that strong?
“Dude,” Alfred tells Mikkel, as Mikkel bodily hauls Hana away from the sweets she’s happily guzzling by the scruff of her puppy neck, “your dog will totally be vomming that all up again shortly.”
“She’s Tino’s dog,” says Mikkel, and Hana promptly sneezes away some of the sweet powder she has stuck to her nose.
“Tino’s going to kill you~” Arthur doesn’t bother hiding his amusement (especially as he has avoided getting attacked by the puppy and landing on glass - admittedly, for the price of his cider, but there are still more bottles to be grabbed), and Mikkel pouts.
xlii. only going forward ‘cause we can’t find reverse
Amongst other things, Alfred goes home that Saturday night with a new name for Tino’s dog (the Black Hole); a new respect for ‘sweet and innocent’ Tino’s really scary temper; vindication for having his awesome beer called ‘cat’s piss’ (the Black Hole really did chuck up the candy she’d eaten and The Pain got made to clean it up); a googly-eyed pumpkin headband, and two black plastic bats. There are leftover Halloween cupcakes in the kitchen for Mattie, and in Alfred’s head -
Alfred has a lot of new information in his head about Arthur, thoughts and ideas jostling for space behind his happy alcoholic buzz. He’d helped pretty much pour Arthur into a taxi to get home, stumbling after him and kicking the other out when they reached his house, and - and -
Alfred falls asleep, dreams of wet green eyes and warm skin, and wakes in the morning with a hard-on poking his mattress and his alarm clock buzzing an angry early morning greeting. By the time he’s shut the damn thing off and stumbled into the bathroom he’s already forgotten everything about his dreams, and by the time he’s dunked his face in some cold water to wake himself up he’s forgotten that they’re anything much to remember. That there’s anything to remember - especially when he meets his own bleary blue eyes in the bathroom mirror, and realises that it’s a Sunday. That it’s goddamn Sunday, and someone has to have set his alarm.
“MATTIE! YOU ASSHOLE!”
From downstairs, there’s a distinctly Canadian cackle. “Happy Halloween!”
Notes:
Just a point: you can marry your first cousin in the UK - and indeed, a lot of Europe. From what I can find, Norway discussed banning first-cousin marriage in February last year, but nothing came of it.
If anyone particularly cares, what is called double cream, in the UK, must be composed of a minimum of 48% milk fat. Heavy cream, in the USA, has to have 36% or more.
With White Russians - people tend to make it with full cream milk, but Arthur was improvising. (It’s less of a grievous sin at a party to drink the host’s cream than it is to drink the milk said host might want to make cups of tea and coffee to aid them in the post-party clean-up.) If you switch out the cream/milk for goat’s milk it’s called a White Canadian. If you switch the vodka for run it’s a White Cuban, and with gin instead of vodka it’s a White Indian.
A Sonic Screwdriver is a slightly fancier version of what Americans call a screwdriver (vodka and orange), made using vanilla vodka, blue curacao liqueur (for the orange taste) and lemon/lime soda/pop. It’s sweeter than a regular vodka and orange - and yes, it is apparently named after the Doctor’s favourite gadget. I feel like I’m turning anyone who reads this into an alcoholic now. ;;;
Outside of the USA, these are smarties.
This is an update full of dreadful references; I’m so sorry.