[Fic] First Among Equals

[talkjive]

Title: First Among Equals
Rating: PG13
Characters: America, France and China make a cameo, human OC
Summary: America looks after his future, as best he can. This was originally for the prompt “Nations can have human friends too”, and also inspired by this.
Notes: So this is self indulgent three am writing, flawed, and if I start apologizing for it now I'll likely never stop. I hope, anyway, that you enjoy reading it. It came easier than anything has for a while.

Camila Garcia Gonzalez blew into the dorm on a gust of cold air and adrenaline, stopping just inside the hall door to blow on her shaky hands. The march had been amazing, and she was still giddy with it.

“Are you okay?” she said. There was a young man slumped over against the wall, pressing his fingers into his forehead.

“Election time,” the young man sighed. “Such a headache.”

“I've got some aspirin in my purse,” Camila offered.

“That would be great.”

He looked up only once she was shaking the bottle at him, and he blinked several times before he took it. “I know you,” he said. “You gave a speech.”

“You heard it?” Camila said. “It was kind of early, there weren't a lot of people there,” she said. The young man-rumpled, a bit sweaty-dry swallowed a few pills and tossed the bottle back.

“Thanks,” he said. “I heard it. It was good. You should get into politics.”

“Me?” she scoffed. “I'm an engineer.”

He shrugged and rubbed his hands together. “Might be nice, to have a few Senators who understood math.” He pushed himself off the wall and smiled, and Camila could see, around the edges, that this man was very, very handsome when he wasn't so sick. “My name's Alfred,” he said. “Alfred Jones.”

“Camila,” she said.

*

“Hey, there,” Alfred said, when she stopped by his library table. His eyes looked clearer now, and she said so.

“Yeah, that was an unsettling few weeks,” he said. “You know, I was just thinking about you.” He rummaged through his bag and came up with a bright blue flier. “Thought you might think this was interesting.”

“I'm not a Republican,” she said.

“You should learn how to talk to them anyway,” he said. “Your speech was good. Might change some minds.”

Camila took the flier and read it again, more closely. “Alfred,” she said. “I don't even have time for this. I have a huge exam to study for, and my mother's in town, and-”

“Hold on to it anyway,” he said. His bag started making noises like a mouse with a vuvuzela, and he winced. “Sorry, gotta take that-” Alfred dragged his cell phone out and left the library, waving. Camila tucked the flier away.

*

“It's ridiculous,” Camila said. “It's just ridiculous. I mean- “ She impaled a piece of lettuce wrathfully. “I remember who invented friction stir welding, I can explain the Carnot heat engine in frankly excruciating detail, and yet I can't remember why Napoleon invaded Russia! I just blank!”

“Dick swinging, mostly,” Alfred said, around a mouthful of hamburger. He was consuming his meal with the happy carbohydrate ignorance of young men.

“Beg pardon,” Camila said. Ranch dressing dripped off her leaf.

“Russia has always been, like, this huge frigid bitch,” Alfred said, waving a fry in a gesture that presumably illustrated frigidity. “And as soon as you become a big enough player in Europe, you decide you've just got to hit that, right? Conveniently forgetting that everyone else who tried to tap that died horribly.” He ate the fry, its noble work completed.

“I'm not a historian,” Camila said. “But I'm going to call that a very free interpretation of the text. Give me a fry.”

“Mi fry es su fry,” Alfred said. “It's a-it's a little trick I've got, for learning history. It helps you remember if you imagine them as people. You got a pen?”

She passed one over, and Alfred began unfolding all the napkins at the table. “Okay, so, See-uh, historically speaking-Russia had this huge boner for France.” He scribbled Russia + France and drew a big heart around it. Camila craned her head and stole another French fry. “Russia had always felt sort of culturally inferior to the rest of Europe, so they spoke French at court and read French books and France thought this was all-” His voice skipped up an octave and he shrilled, “Tres delightful, my darling. And all the babushkas were learning to make croissants until France decided to throw a revolution.”

He drew a big dark x through the heart. “And Europe pretty much thought that revolution was like the clap, so all of a sudden France had no friends anymore.”

“Alfred, I don't think I'm allowed to talk about the clap on my test.”

“People really underestimate the influence of boning on historical events,” Alfred said. A little stick figure labeled France smoked a cigarette and waved a knife. The speech bubble read, I never liked you anyway. Stick Russia replied, Oh da? Well your pastries are fattening, while hiding a cracked heart under a scarf. Alfred started unfolding more napkins.

*

“Oh, well, I'm adopted,” Alfred explained, closing his cell phone. “And-so was most of my family. You should meet my sister, we think she was raised by llamas.”

“So you aren't really his father,” Camila said to the other man. He had the handsome, vaguely seedy look of a movie star who vomited on reporters.

“I should hope not,” the man said. “I would have taught him manners. For example,” and he gave a melting smile, and you could see why studios would hire him vomit and all, “My name is Francis Bonnefoy, and yours, my lovely?”

“Camila,” she said, and pulled her hand away from his quick grip. “And we don't do the kissing thing, here.”

Alfred looked immensely proud. The man Francis sighed. “You don't do many things here,” he said. “One of them is a decent meal.”

“Hey,” Camila and Alfred said at the same time.

“Are you here to take him away?” Francis said. “Please tell me that you are.”

“I came to say I passed my final,” she said, turning to Alfred. “Thanks, Alfred.”

“It was about the Napoleonic Wars,” Alfred said to Francis. “We covered them in detail.”

“Take him away,” said Francis.

“Let's go get some fries,” suggested Alfred.

“Oh, dear God,” Francis spat. Camila looked from one to the other. “A bottle of wine. A nice dinner. Some bread and cheese, for my sake, if nothing else-”

“Fries,” Camila said.

“Freedom fries,” Alfred said.

“I hope you choke on your freedom fries,” the man said. “I am going to go out and find a lovely young woman to teach the art of freedom kissing, after which, pray God she has a fine store of freedom lingerie, and I will put on a freedom tickler and set her crying vive le freedom all night long.”

“You have such weird family,” Camila said to Alfred, once they were out of the house and on the way to the restaurant.

“Mais fuckin' oui,” he said. “So now that you don't have that final, have you thought about that flier I gave you?”

*

“You bombed out there,” Alfred said.

Camila leaned back against the wall, rubbing her eyes. “I know.”

“What happened?”

“The other presenter,” Camila said thinly, “Was my ex-boyfriend.” She slid down the wall and put her face in her knees. “This sort of thing doesn't happen at engineering conferences.” Something nudged her knee and she lifted her head long enough to take the box of tissues.

“Cam,” Alfred said. “Let me give you the advice my unrelated father figure gave to me, about men.”

“By all means,” Camila said. Alfred looked up at the ceiling, waving his hands as he tried to remember.

“Okay. Okay, so.” He turned to her and put his hands on her shoulders. His face lost its grin, and without its illumination he seemed to gain ten years.

“When two people love each other very much,” he said seriously. “They amass great wealth and resources as part of a titanic struggle to bring the other under their dominion, and eventually bring famine and ruin to everyone around them.”

“Dear God,” Camila said, clutching her box of tissues to her chest.

“The best thing for it is to move to a port city until you can barely speak your own language any more, much less beat it into someone else.” He gave her a brotherly clap on the shoulder and let go, beaming. “I hope it's a help to you.”

“This explains so much about you,” Camila said. She blew her nose.

“So buck up, kid, you're too young for an exclusive trade union anyway,” Alfred said. “Let's go get some food.”

*

“Why does this matter so much to you?” Camila said, and chucked the new flier at Alfred's chest. The paper, lacking a sense of drama and an aerodynamic shape, swayed gently to the ground without touching him.

“It's important,” Alfred said, and his skin was nasty pale, like he was having one of his headaches. She made her lips a firm line and started gathering her books.

“This country is built on ideals, Cam,” he said, in a voice slightly hoarse. “Not on-a common language, or a race, or an outside threat, we didn't just happen. Being American is an idea, an important idea-”

“You're stuck up,” she said. “This country's built on roads, and bridges, and industry-“

“And justice, and fair trials, and equality-“

“Equality for who?” Camila demanded, and Alfred flinched. “Have you looked around recently, Alfred? Equality for who?”

Alfred picked the flier back up. “I want it for everyone,” he said, pleading, like Utopia was a Christmas present she could buy him. “That's why it's important.”

“Jobs are important,” she said flatly, and shoved her textbook in his face. “Jobs. Safe buildings. Fast trains. Economics are a social force-”

“The rally's about unions,” Alfred said, and held out the flier again. Camila glared at him. He waggled it invitingly.

*

“Economics are a social force as much as politics,” Camila said, to the flare of lights and the smirking face of her ex-boyfriend. “Poverty creates anger, creates fear, creates violence, and there can never be true peace without economic stability. This problem is doubled by the racial and ethnic lines of poverty in this country-“

“You were fantastic,” Alfred said afterwards.

“I'm gonna be in the paper,” she said, in a surprised voice. “Me.” Alfred beamed, and she beamed back, and suddenly they were both laughing, leaning against each other and laughing like kids.

*

Alfred was around less and less that fall, and when he was around, he was never alone. There was always someone new napping on his couch, when she opened the door. The Chinese man stuck around the longest, and became her favorite through simple bribery.

“You eat this,” he ordered every time she came through the door. “Ah, you take math? Good, good, maybe you teach Alfred.”

“I love you, Yao,” she said, and Alfred looked queasy and ill.

Yao rubbed his chin and watched her eat with the eye of a commodities broker. “You have young man? You married? I introduce.”

Without someone to stuff fliers in her face, Camila started finding her own.

“Immigration,” she said over a bowl of noodles. “I think I should go to that one.”

Alfred raised his eyebrows. “Whatever happened to shut up, Alfred, this has nothing to do with the tensile strength of iron, I'm an engineer, blah blah-” This time she folded the flier into an airplane before she threw it at him. It bonked off his nose.

“I have things to say.”

Alfred smiled down at his bowl, and Yao appeared, demanding to know why they hated him and his cooking.

*

“Look, Alfred,” Camila said. “Look, I'm in the paper-“

Alfred looked up at her. She blinked, and lowered the campus paper.

“You look like hell,” she said. “Another one of your headaches?”

“I have to go, Cam,” Alfred said. “I don't mean now, I mean-I'm going away,” Alfred said. “For a long time. My cousin-”

“You don't have to explain,” she said.

“But it was going to be a really good explanation,” Alfred said.

“You don't have to explain,” she repeated. “I know what you are.”

Alfred went very still. Finally he said carefully, “Other than handsome?”

“I'm serious,” Camila said. “The constant flights out of the country. No visible source of income. No birth certificate. The mysterious 'family' that doesn't look anything like you, or speak the same languages.” Alfred folded his arms behind his head and looked at her. “Your house is covered with maps, the way you're always busy right before some big news story happens--”

“I'm independently wealthy,” Alfred said. “And you know I'm adopted, so--”

Camila folded her arms on the the table and leaned in. “You're a spy,” she said.

There was a pause.

“-Yes,” Alfred said. “Yes, that is exactly what I am. Well done.”

“So I mean it's,” she paused, and noticed her hands were shredding a napkin. “It's not like you're just leaving. You're leaving for a really good reason, right?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “A very good reason.”

Camila forced herself to drop the napkin and clasp her hands calmly. Alfred's bag started buzzing and he sighed, reaching into it.

“-Hold on, “ he told the person on the other end, and hung up. “My flight leaves in two hours,” he said. “I've got to get going. I hope-I hope everything goes well for you.”

“Alfred,” she said as he was walking away. “I decided.”

He stopped and turned, walking backwards with his bag over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“I,” she said. “I'm getting a minor in Political Science.”

He stopped. The phone was going mad in his hand, but for once he thumbed it off. “Here,” Alfred said. He pulled a receipt out of his pocket and came back towards the table. “Take this number. I won't always answer, but I'll always get the message eventually, alright?” He wrote down a number-significantly more than ten digits-capped it with the description memorize and then burn, and passed it over.

Camila looked down at his slanting old-person handwriting, and said, though she was not a woman who relied on intuition often, “I'm never going to see you again, am I?”

Alfred opened his mouth, and closed it again. “I can send you messages,” he said. “But no. Probably you won't.”

Camila swallowed. She rubbed her eyes fiercely and said, “You come over here and give me a hug, jerk.”

Alfred smelled like salt and old books. Camila took in the smell in a great dragging lungful, and for the rest of her life she remembered Alfred in old libraries.

*

“Caused a scene when the microphones started malfunctioning at a local high school,” the news anchor said. She turned to her coworker. “Bob?”

“It was the strangest thing, Alice,” he said. “She just left the stage, right in the middle of the meeting, and climbed up into the sound booth.”

“Did she get them fixed?”

“It says here that the problem was a broken amp, and the meeting resumed after half an hour. Let's go to the streets to see what people think of the handyman candidate--”

“Oh she's got my vote, definitely,” a young woman said. “She just took off her jacket and started, y'know--” she waved her hands around.

“I don't think her meddling was necessary,” an older woman said. “They coulda got it fixed, I think she just wanted to show off.”

“You hush, Monica,” her friend said. “I think it was nice.”

“Well,” a young man said, and laughed a little. “There's worse things than a politician who understands math, aren't there?”

Camila paused the recording as her phone went off. Saw you on on the news, the message said. Yao said it must have been a Korean amp.

*

I can't help you, the message said. I'm not allowed. Except maybe you should hire some Creole translators, too.

*

“I got into politics in college,” she said to the man beside her. “A friend of mine saw me giving a speech about workman's comp, of all things, and started following me around with pamphlets about this or that cause.”

“What did you want to be before this?” he asked.

“I studied engineering,” Camila said.

“Oh, yeah?” he said, leaning in a little to whisper while the speeches started. “I'm a civil engineer, I work for the Board of Transportation-“

“Here in Atlanta?” she murmured, lips almost immobile. “That must be challenging.”

Three weeks later, she ducked into a doorway out of the rain and tapped out a message for Alfred.

Is famine and ruin inevitable?

Yes, the reply came a week later. But Francis says sometimes a Golden Age comes afterward.

*

“It helps if you imagine them as people,” Camila said. She rubbed her face with one hand, and then dragged a scribbled-on legal pad close. On a clean page she drew a stick figure holding a panda's hand and a fat bankroll.

“If anyone asks, an intern drew these pictures,” she said to her assistant. “Now, China has a huge population, but relatively little arable land. Economically speaking they'd be better off growing cash, luxury crops, like fruits, but being grain independent is more important.”

Your attitude towards human rights is distressingly casual, stick-France said. I've a mind to stop selling you wheat.

I not need take your shit, stick-China said, petting his panda.

“So that's how you keep all this stuff in mind?” her assistant said. “With...?”

“With silly little comics?” Camila said. “Yes. Now you know why we go through so many paper shredders. It's a good trick, though, as long as the press never sees it.”

*

“There's someone you need to meet,” a former Vice President was saying in her ear, shouting to be heard over whistles and screams and a cascades of “Star-Spangled Banner”s all a half-step off each other.

“Right now?” she shouted back. “Matt, I'm going on stage in three minutes, can this wait?”

“He says he's sorry he didn't come to see you sooner,” he said. “It'll only take a moment.”

There was a man beside the door, waving his hands and trying to talk to the Secret Service guard. “Someone tell him to stop that,” Camila said as they approached. “For God's sake-“

The man turned. His hair seemed darker, and his face was exactly the same.

“So,” Camila said. “Not a spy, then.”

“Not exactly,” Alfred Jones said.

“You and I are gonna have a talk,” Camila said. “And stop distracting the Secret Service.”

“President-elect Camila Garcia Gonzalez!” cried PA system, and it was time to go on stage. “The First Gentleman-”