[fanfic] A way you'll always be
Title: A way you'll always be
Author: sonofon
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Spain/Hungary (+ Austria)
Rating: PG
Warning: real boys don't cry!
Summary: In that fixture of life when the kaleidoscope starts going funky and Hungary is suddenly the immortal's answer to Mother Theresa.
Notes: relatively old and over-wrought with I don't even know, but it has a rarepair so that makes it slightly better :>
*
He couldn't remember the last time his head hurt so much. He thought about telling France about it because France knew how to cure these kinds of things. France was gone, that is, he'd already left and he was the last one stranded in a Budapest lobby with three-day old shirts and a half-squeezed tube of toothpaste in his bag. His shoes needed shining. He wasn't losing it, but maybe he was, just slightly. It wasn't like you could tell. The bus was late and he'd been trying to help out his boss by staying as cheaply as possible. The only good place around here was the bar but he didn't want to drink. The bar was a safe place compared to everywhere else. It was only four o' clock. He went in.
Spain liked to memorize the layout of bars. He wasn't sure when he'd begun noticing, but for as long as he could remember he had seen the slight dip on the wood-chipped tables, the fake licenses, the sloshed amber liquids on zinc or copper tops, the out-of-date calendars that featured buxom girls who wore no tops.
This month was June but the calender said it was May.
It was about as busy as he expected it to be. A man in his late forties was with a woman in her early thirties. It didn't take very long to realize that the woman was his mistress and he was hopelessly, hopelessly in love with her. Spain had his back to them but he could see the silhouette of the lady's hips through the mirror that faced him. The hips were nice to look at and the woman's voice had a melodious quality to it. "I've known you so long now but all we ever have for each," she was saying in her loud melodious voice, "is questions. Nothing but questions."
Then there were the teenage winos, and those were the people he felt most sorry for. Spain couldn't help feeling sorry for people, strangers, really. He felt sorry for people he didn't know, people he shouldn't have felt sorry for. He couldn't help it. Anyway the winos were gathered in their corner of the room and from the way they were talking and gesticulating Spain realized that this was their bar, their place. He hadn't ordered anything yet. That was not a good thing, and he got a drink in front of him just to seem less conspicuous, though it is difficult to be concealing when you are undeniably a multi-cultural and political personification of a nation.
But then again, maybe not. He looked to be very normal. He spoke like any other person, dressed more-or-less the same. It was only when you began talking to him about things like geography or history or science or just about anything and realized that something was not right. He knew too much. He looked too young. (He had known the kings and queens, the corridors that were bound to lead to nowhere, the simple awful truth he learned in 1926 that if you had to be on a trip anywhere it had better be with someone you loved.)
"You're awake now," said Hungary, and poked him.
"Yes," he hoarsely replied which surprised both of them.
"You okay?"
"I'm okay."
"You didn't seem so a few hours ago."
"I'm okay now."
"Yes. On the outside."
He instinctively touched his chest but did not feel any blood and stopped worrying.
"I'm tired," he said.
"You are, you know."
"I've missed you."
"We saw each other about five days ago. That's not too long."
"But it is. Isn't it?"
"Are you sick again? Whatever you do, don't get sick on me. Please, not here. I'll beat you to a pulp and dump you in a tree by the highway. The forecast says it'll be cold tonight."
He laughed. She laughed and took hold of his hand.
"How are you, Hungary?"
"I was wondering when you would ask," she said, and wasn't it funny how her head turned to two to three. Wasn't it funny how comforting her hair felt on his face. Wasn't it funny how she had come to his rescue in a third-rate imitation of Cambridge's YMCA only they weren't in Cambridge or even Massachusetts and that made it funnier. It was the punchline he wanted to tell her but he forgot. Wasn't it funny how she just knew. Just knew everything. Things. The good men who were bad men, the rich who were poor, the brave who were cowards, the loyalists who were backstabbers. Spain had known a backstabber but he wasn't allowed to say who it was. There was a time when all the king's men had tried to get it out of him with charades and other tricks. Spain saw then, and he'd laughed uproariously. Wasn't it so fucking funny.
It didn't hurt until he stopped to think about it and then it only hurt more. He told himself that it was nothing, that the pain was a temporary matter. A lot of the times, he was able to convince himself of this, and just as wounds led to scars and words faded to memories, Spain forgot, occasionally, the hurt. Hurt comes as frequently as pain and happiness. This was not something particular to him: he didn't try to dwell on it. You don't dwell on things. Shit hit the fan and you cried for maybe five minutes and drank a bit to get it out of your head. You calmed down. Maybe you took a smoke, but no more than two or five. Then you went on toward greater things. You just moved on.
You woke up on Sunday mornings thinking it was Tuesday and checked the clock to find it laying on the ground. Opened the window blinds and thought for a moment and remembered the vaguely bad thing that you had done the night before. But,
"It wasn't really that bad."
He was able to drill this into his mind. What was important was the tangible; that was the empty bag, the cold crushed coins, the faint shiver in his spine he got every time he took that first step.
That wasn't too bad. It took time to get used to it, but you could get used to just about anything. Netherlands said that when you got used to something you might as well be dead. Well, that was Netherlands trying to be a vague philosophic hipster because they couldn't die to begin with and besides, he was not the one who currently had congested lungs and wouldn't last an hour in a marathon. (It was their game.) Netherlands took offense to that, just as he ought. They spent minutes just shouting back and forth. They spoke in their languages, their special talk which only someone who has lived and experienced life as a Nation can understand. They were hateful words, and even though Spain couldn't really remember what exactly they'd been saying, he had remembered and felt the hurt, and that was what he hated about Netherlands.
With Hungary it was different. For one thing, she was a girl; secondly, she understood. He also shared with Hungary a special kinship that comes because two parties have, at one time or another, lived with a third. He could talk about it with her, not that they often did. There was no point to it but when they got especially lonely it was something to laugh about. They shared the sadness and Hungary would talk about horrible miscommunications. One story went like this: without being asked to, she filed his reports in the hopes of lessening the work load. Instead, he became angry at her and she threw a plate at his head but missed and hit the bust of Schubert on the piano.
"Why was he angry?"
And Hungary said that you really couldn't explain it. That sometimes two beings viewed the same situation with completely different eyes. There was no real solution. They constantly squabbled. They hated. Still, she had loved him, and when he came to her asking for forgiveness she could not help herself in giving it to him; it, and the rest of her. It was sad but it was true.
"And what do you do then?"
"I tried my best," she said. "That was all. It's so difficult to unconditionally love someone. Maybe it's impossible."
"I couldn't love him," said Spain. "I tried and I couldn't. I couldn't convince myself of it."
"That's terrible. What happened?"
"I'm not sure, actually. But it may have had something to do with my clothes." He waved his hand dismissively.
"He's a lovely boy, in the end. No matter what. He truly is."
"I know he is. He has these thin fingers, when he spreads them out in a fan. They're perfect for playing the piano, they simply glide on the keys, black and white keys, don't they? I've fat fingers but no one ever comments on them. He never liked it when I went around the house naked. He said it was indecent and I used to think that was strange. I thought I looked fine, I just had fat fingers."
"I thought he had lovely hair. It was like cotton. It melted in your hands. I don't know."
"I wonder what kind of conditioner he used."
"We ought to write and ask. Austria doesn't like computers, you know. Calls them beastly things."
"That's 'cause he can write a good letter."
"Oh his letters. He could write a damn good letter."
"I was never good about replying," Spain admitted.
"Neither was I," said Hungary.
("Can you remember the last time you went to Austria's house?" Hungary asked him many years ago. They were walking to escape the smoke and bureaucracy and the wind was blowing down and Hungary had her hair tucked under a hat. The hat covered her face and it made her look different, older and more tired.
"I don't, actually. Was it recently or was it before the war?" said Spain.
"You can't try and think?"
"I can." But nothing came up.
They walked along and observed nature. The trees were dead and a sign was up for acre clearing, and the developer had a picture stapled on and he looked like Berlusconi, or at least someone who would've been a private customer of the opium-selling Indian chief behind L'Opera.
"Isn't that tragic?" she said. "This land's been here longer than the people who've lived on it, but they have less say than a plastic bag."
"Plastic bags lasts forever. They're not bio-degradable."
"I suppose that's their way of getting back, isn't it," she said, still walking.)
"I miss Romano, just sometimes."
"Romano's a lovely boy."
"He grew up. He stopped liking me. He stopped talking to me once he moved out. That was . . . when the war ended. No I can't keep clear, there are too many wars to remember. When you're in them they all look the same. You step away a-and-was it something I did?"
"When was that?"
"It was"-he stopped-"too late."
"Of course he likes you. He just has trouble expressing himself. He always did. He told me so himself and it took five plates of pasta, four IOUs and a ticket pass to Denmark's Tivoli for him to admit that."
"It's all right, Hungary. Really, it is. We know now, don't we?"
It was knowing what you once had. It was recognizing that you'd lost it. There was no feeling of sadness, only an emptiness that would never be cured. Of course you tried. You made new friends and new lovers and thought innovative brilliant ideas (and made sure to patent them) but still that feeling remained. It stayed on as a benign mass of burdens. It gave him headaches and he wished he could ask France if he knew a remedy but it would forever be a problem he would have to deal with by himself. Even England's hocus-pocus was out of the question. It was wishful thinking, simple idyllic thinking that had gone out of fashion two centuries ago. The stars at night knew it, the plastic knew it, the ornery children of tomorrow knew it. He knew it and Hungary, that blessed girl, loved him for it.
Author: sonofon
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Spain/Hungary (+ Austria)
Rating: PG
Warning: real boys don't cry!
Summary: In that fixture of life when the kaleidoscope starts going funky and Hungary is suddenly the immortal's answer to Mother Theresa.
Notes: relatively old and over-wrought with I don't even know, but it has a rarepair so that makes it slightly better :>
*
He couldn't remember the last time his head hurt so much. He thought about telling France about it because France knew how to cure these kinds of things. France was gone, that is, he'd already left and he was the last one stranded in a Budapest lobby with three-day old shirts and a half-squeezed tube of toothpaste in his bag. His shoes needed shining. He wasn't losing it, but maybe he was, just slightly. It wasn't like you could tell. The bus was late and he'd been trying to help out his boss by staying as cheaply as possible. The only good place around here was the bar but he didn't want to drink. The bar was a safe place compared to everywhere else. It was only four o' clock. He went in.
Spain liked to memorize the layout of bars. He wasn't sure when he'd begun noticing, but for as long as he could remember he had seen the slight dip on the wood-chipped tables, the fake licenses, the sloshed amber liquids on zinc or copper tops, the out-of-date calendars that featured buxom girls who wore no tops.
This month was June but the calender said it was May.
It was about as busy as he expected it to be. A man in his late forties was with a woman in her early thirties. It didn't take very long to realize that the woman was his mistress and he was hopelessly, hopelessly in love with her. Spain had his back to them but he could see the silhouette of the lady's hips through the mirror that faced him. The hips were nice to look at and the woman's voice had a melodious quality to it. "I've known you so long now but all we ever have for each," she was saying in her loud melodious voice, "is questions. Nothing but questions."
Then there were the teenage winos, and those were the people he felt most sorry for. Spain couldn't help feeling sorry for people, strangers, really. He felt sorry for people he didn't know, people he shouldn't have felt sorry for. He couldn't help it. Anyway the winos were gathered in their corner of the room and from the way they were talking and gesticulating Spain realized that this was their bar, their place. He hadn't ordered anything yet. That was not a good thing, and he got a drink in front of him just to seem less conspicuous, though it is difficult to be concealing when you are undeniably a multi-cultural and political personification of a nation.
But then again, maybe not. He looked to be very normal. He spoke like any other person, dressed more-or-less the same. It was only when you began talking to him about things like geography or history or science or just about anything and realized that something was not right. He knew too much. He looked too young. (He had known the kings and queens, the corridors that were bound to lead to nowhere, the simple awful truth he learned in 1926 that if you had to be on a trip anywhere it had better be with someone you loved.)
"You're awake now," said Hungary, and poked him.
"Yes," he hoarsely replied which surprised both of them.
"You okay?"
"I'm okay."
"You didn't seem so a few hours ago."
"I'm okay now."
"Yes. On the outside."
He instinctively touched his chest but did not feel any blood and stopped worrying.
"I'm tired," he said.
"You are, you know."
"I've missed you."
"We saw each other about five days ago. That's not too long."
"But it is. Isn't it?"
"Are you sick again? Whatever you do, don't get sick on me. Please, not here. I'll beat you to a pulp and dump you in a tree by the highway. The forecast says it'll be cold tonight."
He laughed. She laughed and took hold of his hand.
"How are you, Hungary?"
"I was wondering when you would ask," she said, and wasn't it funny how her head turned to two to three. Wasn't it funny how comforting her hair felt on his face. Wasn't it funny how she had come to his rescue in a third-rate imitation of Cambridge's YMCA only they weren't in Cambridge or even Massachusetts and that made it funnier. It was the punchline he wanted to tell her but he forgot. Wasn't it funny how she just knew. Just knew everything. Things. The good men who were bad men, the rich who were poor, the brave who were cowards, the loyalists who were backstabbers. Spain had known a backstabber but he wasn't allowed to say who it was. There was a time when all the king's men had tried to get it out of him with charades and other tricks. Spain saw then, and he'd laughed uproariously. Wasn't it so fucking funny.
It didn't hurt until he stopped to think about it and then it only hurt more. He told himself that it was nothing, that the pain was a temporary matter. A lot of the times, he was able to convince himself of this, and just as wounds led to scars and words faded to memories, Spain forgot, occasionally, the hurt. Hurt comes as frequently as pain and happiness. This was not something particular to him: he didn't try to dwell on it. You don't dwell on things. Shit hit the fan and you cried for maybe five minutes and drank a bit to get it out of your head. You calmed down. Maybe you took a smoke, but no more than two or five. Then you went on toward greater things. You just moved on.
You woke up on Sunday mornings thinking it was Tuesday and checked the clock to find it laying on the ground. Opened the window blinds and thought for a moment and remembered the vaguely bad thing that you had done the night before. But,
"It wasn't really that bad."
He was able to drill this into his mind. What was important was the tangible; that was the empty bag, the cold crushed coins, the faint shiver in his spine he got every time he took that first step.
That wasn't too bad. It took time to get used to it, but you could get used to just about anything. Netherlands said that when you got used to something you might as well be dead. Well, that was Netherlands trying to be a vague philosophic hipster because they couldn't die to begin with and besides, he was not the one who currently had congested lungs and wouldn't last an hour in a marathon. (It was their game.) Netherlands took offense to that, just as he ought. They spent minutes just shouting back and forth. They spoke in their languages, their special talk which only someone who has lived and experienced life as a Nation can understand. They were hateful words, and even though Spain couldn't really remember what exactly they'd been saying, he had remembered and felt the hurt, and that was what he hated about Netherlands.
With Hungary it was different. For one thing, she was a girl; secondly, she understood. He also shared with Hungary a special kinship that comes because two parties have, at one time or another, lived with a third. He could talk about it with her, not that they often did. There was no point to it but when they got especially lonely it was something to laugh about. They shared the sadness and Hungary would talk about horrible miscommunications. One story went like this: without being asked to, she filed his reports in the hopes of lessening the work load. Instead, he became angry at her and she threw a plate at his head but missed and hit the bust of Schubert on the piano.
"Why was he angry?"
And Hungary said that you really couldn't explain it. That sometimes two beings viewed the same situation with completely different eyes. There was no real solution. They constantly squabbled. They hated. Still, she had loved him, and when he came to her asking for forgiveness she could not help herself in giving it to him; it, and the rest of her. It was sad but it was true.
"And what do you do then?"
"I tried my best," she said. "That was all. It's so difficult to unconditionally love someone. Maybe it's impossible."
"I couldn't love him," said Spain. "I tried and I couldn't. I couldn't convince myself of it."
"That's terrible. What happened?"
"I'm not sure, actually. But it may have had something to do with my clothes." He waved his hand dismissively.
"He's a lovely boy, in the end. No matter what. He truly is."
"I know he is. He has these thin fingers, when he spreads them out in a fan. They're perfect for playing the piano, they simply glide on the keys, black and white keys, don't they? I've fat fingers but no one ever comments on them. He never liked it when I went around the house naked. He said it was indecent and I used to think that was strange. I thought I looked fine, I just had fat fingers."
"I thought he had lovely hair. It was like cotton. It melted in your hands. I don't know."
"I wonder what kind of conditioner he used."
"We ought to write and ask. Austria doesn't like computers, you know. Calls them beastly things."
"That's 'cause he can write a good letter."
"Oh his letters. He could write a damn good letter."
"I was never good about replying," Spain admitted.
"Neither was I," said Hungary.
("Can you remember the last time you went to Austria's house?" Hungary asked him many years ago. They were walking to escape the smoke and bureaucracy and the wind was blowing down and Hungary had her hair tucked under a hat. The hat covered her face and it made her look different, older and more tired.
"I don't, actually. Was it recently or was it before the war?" said Spain.
"You can't try and think?"
"I can." But nothing came up.
They walked along and observed nature. The trees were dead and a sign was up for acre clearing, and the developer had a picture stapled on and he looked like Berlusconi, or at least someone who would've been a private customer of the opium-selling Indian chief behind L'Opera.
"Isn't that tragic?" she said. "This land's been here longer than the people who've lived on it, but they have less say than a plastic bag."
"Plastic bags lasts forever. They're not bio-degradable."
"I suppose that's their way of getting back, isn't it," she said, still walking.)
"I miss Romano, just sometimes."
"Romano's a lovely boy."
"He grew up. He stopped liking me. He stopped talking to me once he moved out. That was . . . when the war ended. No I can't keep clear, there are too many wars to remember. When you're in them they all look the same. You step away a-and-was it something I did?"
"When was that?"
"It was"-he stopped-"too late."
"Of course he likes you. He just has trouble expressing himself. He always did. He told me so himself and it took five plates of pasta, four IOUs and a ticket pass to Denmark's Tivoli for him to admit that."
"It's all right, Hungary. Really, it is. We know now, don't we?"
It was knowing what you once had. It was recognizing that you'd lost it. There was no feeling of sadness, only an emptiness that would never be cured. Of course you tried. You made new friends and new lovers and thought innovative brilliant ideas (and made sure to patent them) but still that feeling remained. It stayed on as a benign mass of burdens. It gave him headaches and he wished he could ask France if he knew a remedy but it would forever be a problem he would have to deal with by himself. Even England's hocus-pocus was out of the question. It was wishful thinking, simple idyllic thinking that had gone out of fashion two centuries ago. The stars at night knew it, the plastic knew it, the ornery children of tomorrow knew it. He knew it and Hungary, that blessed girl, loved him for it.