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fumblingmusings · 1 year

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I feel like Evie is the kind of mother that would have munchausens by proxy. Not that she'd deliberately make the kids sick or anything but be so worried that they might get sick that she's already preemptively treating them like they are. Then the placebo effect kicks in and the kid sort of suck in all her worrying with temperature checkings and chicken soup servings that they start to actually feel and act sick so Evie feels she was right all along and the cycle continues.

Kiiiiiiiinnnndddd of? I do love that idea though, that sort of toxic influence she has where she's actively stifling and causing sickness. Like a metaphorical Typhoid Mary scenario. Pretty apt for an Empire, honestly.

Her paranoia regarding the kids comes out more in their emotional state rather than physical in the fic. As Matthew states, she never once tied them up or locked them away. Once they were able, they really could go and do as they please. Just two rules: be discreet and come back to her. No-one else.

She jokes about wanting to be a recluse in the Estate and keep the children with her for as long as possible, but I don't think the thought ever crossed her mind to do something as restrictive as keeping them 'safe' in bed or not letting them outside. She wants them to be happy, and her version of happy is the good old 'out in nature's vibe. Luckily, the kids subscribe to that too.

She's the kind of mum who takes you to a blustery seaweed smelly pebble beach, snorts and breathes in deep and goes aaaahhhh, clears out the cobwebs don't it? whilst you stand there wet, windswept and cold, and wishing you'd just stayed at home in front of the fire.

In the fic, the illnesses are entirely her own and are almost entirely self-inflicted. She is genuinely sick, but what happened was she started taking opiods to help with lingering pain after her civil war, to which she became addicted and continued to take even after her body had recovered. After Alfred left, she went through withdrawal, only to get back on it at a higher dosage and stay there until the Opium Wars. She spent pretty much the 1790s - 1850s completely out of it and at times was a really disconcerting presence to Jack and Maia and Matthew. Thereafter, she's on it off it on it off it until the 1980s or so. She's been clean since 1987, which is ironic, because a lot went wrong in the UK that year.

She is sick. As some characters say though, it's her mind that's suffering, rather than any injured limb or viral/bacterial disease. The addiction then starts to fuck with her body, with stomach cramps and constipation. Her kidneys and heart aren't doing too hot either, hence her looking so grey and pallid all the time. Her ability to heal is kind of screwed because her body is forever trying to keep up with potential renal failure, let alone something that another nation could maybe shake off, like a gun shot wound.

And regarding the kids, I actually think she does completely right by them, physical health wise. She just understands dietary and sanitation requirements through a dozen lifetimes experience, so hopefully I show that when Alfred points out at one point that under her care he never caught any kind of water born illness, and Matthew remembers that the one time where she did - Cholera in the 1840s - its her alone that gets it and not Oz or Zee because she picked it up travelling without them to London, and Matt wasn't even in the country at the time. She gave all the kids vaccines for smallpox, and she is a big firm believer in playing outside and rolling in mud. She keeps them out of cities because she knows the air is absolutely gross. She understands basic things (even if the reasonings have not yet been discovered) like the need for salt, bicarbonate of soda and boiled water to make saline, or making ginger and honey tea for the kids when they get a tummy bug.

That said, when she's not there, the kids absolutely do pick up all kinds of bugs and diseases because the humans just don't understand quite yet. It's policy that she is not informed until after the illness has passed on account of her being a bit of a murderous monster to the person who allowed it to happen. Alfred, who wrote to her in a fit of delirium in the 1860s, was the exception as he got past the censors, and she was still willing to go to quite an extreme to get to him.

When the kids did catch colds or fevers with her though... You'd think they were two steps from death's door. Alfred only got sick once, and that was a two steps from death's door situation. I think she internalised that. Jack, who's much more prone to catching the sniffles whilst in the UK, makes her worry endlessly. You saw her mump and mope over how thin she thought Matthew was as a baby - call it maternal instinct or whatever, but the woman knows how to raise happy, healthy fat babies.

For me, the real issues - the real illness - starts to rear its head when the kids develop a world view that extends beyond their mother.

#q&a #fanfic ask #hws england #fem!england #headcanon #hetalia

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clocksfanfiction · 6 years

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21. "I'm better when I'm with you." USUK with delinquent Arthur and nerdy Alfred

Better.

From Super sappy lines. (Requests closed)

A/N: I admit the delinquent/nerd thing has never been my particular style, but I really enjoyed writing this. And I may have taken a couple of liberties with the prompt.

Alfred’s parents didn’t like Arthur.

They had liked him once; when he was younger and cheerful and more reserved. He was in the year above, the first person to talk to Alfred when he’d moved to England eight years ago. And in Alfred’s opinion, his first friend.

It seemed like Arthur had changed a lot in that time. At first, his parents had been happy and excited to know that Alfred was already making friends, especially with a boy who was kind enough to help Alfred find the right bus when he forgot which one he was supposed to take. But they grew up. Alfred stayed much the same. He was still hyper-focused on his studies, still had niche interests that only Arthur listened to, still clumsy and still had a little bit of trouble expressing himself in front of others.

Arthur, however, had changed. It had started with a few piercings. Then a leather jacket instead of his blazer. Then dress code detentions had turned into late work detentions, skipping school detentions, and one suspension for getting into a fist fight with another lad in the car park. Alfred could hear people in their form group whisper about how different Arthur was from the nice, quiet guy he used to be, how much he’d changed.

His parents had wanted him to stop spending time with Arthur. They hadn’t said it in so many words, only implied it. They thought he was a bad influence. That his fighting and skipping and antisocial behaviour would lead Alfred down the wrong path. But as long as Alfred’s grades were doing fine and he wasn’t getting into trouble, then they couldn’t force him.

Everyone thought Arthur was a bad influence. Even their form tutor, who saw the most of his and Arthur’s interactions, had pulled him aside before lunch once and asked him if he was okay. If Arthur wasn’t being mean to him. He even had the audacity to imply that Alfred was only friends with him because he was too scared to say no to Arthur.

But Alfred knew the truth.

Arthur hadn’t changed. His behaviour had been a way to lash out, to get some relief from so much internalised anger that came with having shitty parents who didn’t care what he did either way. But he still helped Alfred get home. He still checked that Alfred was doing his homework. Most of the time Arthur was making sure that Alfred didn’t get into trouble, not trying to get him to join in.

Arthur was a rock. He was a spiky, troubled rock, but he was Alfred’s rock. He was the only person who didn’t ask Alfred questions like he knew what was best for him. He let Alfred ramble about the latest episode of tv shows he liked and asked genuine questions instead of just saying “that’s nice” and shutting him up. He only asked about Alfred’s schoolwork to make sure he was keeping on top of it and not because he needed to know that Alfred was on track for As. He laughed with Alfred, not at him, and never had Alfred felt like he was inferior when Arthur was around.

Most of all, when he was with Arthur, he didn’t think so much.

Alfred didn’t know what was wrong with him. Arthur had suggested a great deal of things, googled stuff for him and laughed when sites like Web MD gave the only option as some kind of tumour, and insisted time and time again that there was nothing wrong with him. If he needed help, they could get him help, but that didn’t mean he was broken.

He was the only person who said stuff like that to him. Alfred had a tendency to overthink, to overanalyze. He stared at homework tasks that were only cheap practise for exams and worked himself up into a panic over whether he was using the right words or not, if he was right about a certain fact, even getting to the point of doubting everything he said was even accurate and he’d imagined the whole lesson he was working on. His parents had told him to focus, to stop crying like a child, just keep working. When he’d come home with an essay just two marks off an A+ that he was incredibly proud of they’d said he could try harder next time. He was stressed, all the time, he had been since he started upper school and Arthur had commented several times that he was sure Alfred was going to get an ulcer before he even finished his a-levels. Which had been a mistake since he’d begun then genuinely to worry that all his stress would cause an ulcer every time he worked himself up over a typo.

But then Arthur would text him. Say he was going to go out and stargaze and practise his guitar and Alfred could join him if he wanted.

So Alfred would. Arthur would have a beer he took from the fridge that his parents didn’t notice, he’d push Alfred away when he asked again if he could try it, and they’d sit on the roof of a multi-storey at the corner of town and watch stars while Arthur played his guitar.

“How’s the essay going?”

Arthur’s voice was soft. It was always soft when he asked about school. Alfred wanted to be annoyed and think it patronising, but it was accompanied by the gentle strumming of his guitar and a look of disguised concern that he couldn’t find annoying.

He picked up some loose pebbles, tossing them at the raised wall at the side of the roof.

“Awful.”

Arthur kept playing, a quiet snort his first response.

“Yeah. Essays are shit.”

Alfred laughed. He should’ve curled up, should’ve felt his chest tighten with worry and panic and let his mind run over with possible scenarios and answers to his failing essay. But he laughed. A high, peeling laughter coupled with hiccups of giggles for Arthur’s blunt and ridiculous reply, smiling even more when he glanced over to see Arthur grinning right alongside him.

Alfred’s laughter died down into a sigh, his lower lip pulled between his teeth.

His mind still spun with endless thoughts. He’d never been able to shut his mind off, not since he could remember. It was always loud and contradicting, an endless stream of thoughts and ideas that took over whenever there wasn’t anything immediately occupying his attention. But Arthur’s quiet guitar playing could lull the thoughts into a murmur. Still there, always still there, but not deafening.

Arthur was playing something Alfred didn’t recognise; maybe something improvised, maybe messing around with the chords of a familiar tune. It was probably just a cover of some obscure band Alfred didn’t know. But he didn’t care. It was soothing on Arthur’s beaten up acoustic, and Arthur’s steady, deep breaths were enough to ground him too.

He didn’t like to stare at Arthur. He knew it was rude, and weird, and frankly just a little frighteningly intimate. But he liked to watch him play. The way his hands moved so easily on the strings of his guitar, the way his breathing would even with the rhythm, the way he’d sometimes start humming subconsciously and Alfred could quietly try to decipher if Arthur was humming the vocal line or another instrument of the band.

Arthur was an art piece. He had a clear outer shell, the thing everyone took for granted when they grazed over his pierced eyebrow and worn leather jacket and steel toed boots. It took you time, a long time, to look at him and start to see the other things. Like the deepness of his green eyes, or the roughness of his hands from playing his guitar endlessly. The scar on his lower lip from a time he never mentioned. The way the corner of his mouth would tilt up just slightly when he was truly content.

Alfred knew a lot about Arthur. It came with the package of being best friends. He just didn’t like to dwell so long on how he felt about every detail.

“What are you thinking?” Arthur spoke up again, soft, quiet voice carried over his music.

Alfred looked at him for a long moment, looked at Arthur’s carefully kept gaze on the stars above. Arthur wouldn’t startle him by looking him in the eye when he was thinking. But what was he to respond when the subject of his thoughts had asked the question.

He swallowed, looking away and up towards the sky again.

“Just…stuff.”

Arthur’s playing slowed, but didn’t stop. From the corner of his eye Alfred could see Arthur glance in his direction.

“Bad stuff?”

“No…Just stuff.”

“Too much stuff?”

Arthur knew him well too. Alfred didn’t like to admit it, didn’t like to think of himself as a burden or so easily read. But Arthur understood him.

He looked back to Arthur, staring into those deep, questioning green eyes. Arthur would never push, never insist. He’d never made Alfred tell him what was wrong, just sat with him until he felt like talking. Everyone said he was so tough, so cold, so hard and shut off and mean and such a menace. But to Alfred, he was open, honest. There was nothing but understanding in those eyes.

And Alfred smiled.

“No. It’s just one thought.”

It was just a small smile, just a little tilt of his lips. But it was there, and it was warm, and it was only for Arthur to see. And Arthur smiled back.

“Just one?”

“Just one.” Alfred brought his legs up, wrapping his arms around his knees and perching his chin on his arms as he looked at Arthur.

Arthur had told him many times that Alfred was the bravest person that he knew. He couldn’t imagine why; he hadn’t done anything courageous, nothing that traditional bravery would bring to mind. He couldn’t even bring himself to say things unless he was alone with Arthur, and even then there were things he wanted to say to Arthur and lacked the confidence to do so. He wanted to thank Arthur for being there for him. He wanted to tell him how glad he was that they were friends. He wanted to tell him how much he meant to him.

But maybe he didn’t have to say all of that in so many words. He was tired of a life with too many words; too many hours of studying, too many subjects, too many words swirling about his head all the time. Except from when he was with Arthur.

Few words had been a comfort. A freedom. It wasn’t so scary to look into Arthur’s eyes and tell him how he felt with only a few words.

“It’s better…I’m better. I’m better when I’m with you.”

Arthur stared at him for a moment, a long moment. Long enough that Alfred felt he should’ve started to worry. But it was Arthur. Arthur had never once given him reason to worry. And he still didn’t. He just smiled his easy, lopsided smirk and slowly looked back to the stars.

“You’re better when you’re with me.” He repeated, slow and quiet, like the words had meant some great deal to him.

Alfred wasn’t analysing his reaction though, just following his gaze up and looking for constellations.

“I’m better when I’m with you.” He repeated.

He didn’t look when he heard the gravel under Arthur shift, he could feel Arthur’s body closer to his own, the head of the guitar in front of his legs and Arthur’s forearm resting against his shin as he resumed playing.

“What are you thinking now?” Arthur asked.

That your shoulder is touching mine.

That your guitar playing is perfect.

That I want to stay in this moment forever.

“The stars are beautiful.”

Arthur hummed, a quiet agreement, still focused on his guitar.

He’d jokingly named it Al once. He’d told Alfred how musicians sometimes named their instruments, that it was just a silly thing of connecting with music. Alfred had laughed, said it sounded stupid. So Arthur had said what if he named it after him, would it be stupid then.

It was. They’d both laughed and Arthur had shoved him for being a twat. But he’d declared he was calling his ridiculous guitar Al then, in honour of his best friend.

His playing slowed, Alfred was hardly aware of it until Arthur shifted and carefully put the guitar down. He glanced over, wondering if Arthur was about to get up, say he’d take Alfred home now. It usually went that way; he grew tired of playing and Alfred grew tired in general and Arthur would drive him home and say goodnight.

But he didn’t, he just rested his hands in his lap and turned to look at Alfred.

In the quiet, he saw again how close they were. It was a little cold, being late, but Alfred could still feel bodyheat where their shoulders brushed. Arthur blinked and he could see every eyelash, the faint freckles on his cheeks, the scar on his lip.

He’d spent a lot of time thinking about that scar.

“What are you thinking now?”

It was a murmur now, a soft, barely-there request and Alfred tried his best to look at Arthur’s eyes and not his lips. He didn’t know what he was thinking. There was no music, no homework, no pressure. There was just Arthur, staring at him, asking him a question he didn’t have the answer to.

“I’m not.”

“Good.”

Arthur’s hand was on the back of his neck, fingertips cold but palm warm. He pulled him in, gently angling his head and Alfred let his eyes shut and Arthur hold him there as their lips brushed in a soft, barely-there kiss.

“How about now?”

The murmur was against his lip, he could feel the movements of Arthur’s mouth, feel the breath on his skin. His mind was still blank. Nothing more than Arthur’s eyes and Arthur’s lips and the overwhelming feeling of utter contentment.

“…I want to kiss you again.”

So he did.

#usuk #usuk fanfiction #usuk fanfic #ukus #libertea #prompt #clocks writes #oneshot #romance #Anonymous

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