Fr/UK/US frenemyship (what a title!) and minor historical inaccuracies, explained at the end.

Concordance

The day began quietly enough. America woke at about nine o'clock, then dozed off for another hour before deciding that if he was going to manage to fit in the daily hamburger run and his workout time to balance it out, he was going to have to get up.

There was a bunch of messages on his desk from the President, but he could deal with those when he came back. Aha! One of them was on yellow paper – it was great when the admin staff decided that white was boring. Heroes couldn't be boring, after all!

He shrugged easily into his jacket, noting in passing that it was a very nice morning for October, sun shining and the breeze just right to not freeze his ears off. Maybe he'd get a chance to go and visit those lucky, lucky astronauts who got to go all the way to the moon earlier that year. It was desperately unfair that he hadn't been allowed to go too. He'd wanted to visit Tony's relatives on the other side of the moon and show them his spaceship, but no. His boring, totally-not-heroic President had said he wasn't allowed to go, because he was "too valuable". Huh.

He was about halfway down the road when the most colossal BOOM shook the sky followed instantly by another, and America stumbled, hand flying automatically to his heart. What bomb could possibly have caused such an ear-splitting sound, and what damage had it done?

But there was no pain inside, none at all. It was as if nothing had happened – yet the birds were still bursting from the trees in panic. Something had definitely exploded, and very close by.

A second later, he became aware of two foreign nations standing on the borders of his land, two very familiar nations. In the time it took for him to take a breath, he was standing on the Eastern Seaboard, staring in absolute shock.

This was impossible. Completely impossible.

Britain stood staring at the sky, arms folded smugly, a combination of pride and resignation in his expression that America had never seen before. His eyes matched his trousers, but not his shirt, which looked like it had seen better days at a mechanic's garage. The boots he usually wore had been exchanged for steel-capped work boots in a strange sandy colour, and they were also smudged with oil and grease.

France's hair blew in the wind, as silky and glorious as ever, one hand posed elegantly on his hip. He wasn't wearing his familiar blue-and-red outfit, but rather a set of what looked like workman's overalls. It still looked amazingly fashionable, all things considered, but that wasn't the most inexplicable thing about the whole image.

No. What was truly inexplicable was that he had his other arm around Britain's shoulders. And the Brit wasn't doing anything to shrug him off, let alone punch him.

"Not bad, frog-face," Britain said as America approached. "Not bad at all."

"Ah, you know eet is all ze 'elp zat we French gave you," France answered with a tired grin. "'Ow is your one coming along, zen?"

"Oh, just you wait," Britain grumbled. "You'll see."

France looked absolutely ecstatic. "Eet is not finished yet?"

"Of course it's finished, you prat. We just need to run a few more tests before we send it up."

They were... they'd been planning to attack him together? He'd thought they had both been right behind him to stand against Russia should it be needed, and instead they'd actually built a bomb – one each from what he could hear – and launched it at him without fighting each other? What kind of twisted teamwork was this? Even in the Wars, they hadn't been this friendly.

Just then, Britain noticed him, and waved. "Good morning, America! Did you like it?"

America did not even bother answering. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he yelled, not caring that Britain was now scowling at him for being so loud. "What was that?"

"Concorde," Britain and France said together, which was unnerving enough in itself, but both of them were now wearing identical grins.

"The first supersonic aeroplane," Britain explained when America just looked confused. "France and I built it together."

"But zat one is mine, mon ami," France purred. "Britain 'as not quite finished testing 'is one yet."

"They're the same British design, you damn frog. Your people just decided not to strike for long enough to actually finish something!"

France looked aghast. "Well, yours didn't die of food poisoning before zey could 'and over ze designs to the people who made it actually look good!"

It looked like normal business was resumed. But America wasn't going to hold for this, not when something had just roared through his airspace so loudly that he'd felt the ground shake.

"You built a supersonic jet together?" he asked, shocked, meaning of course You built a supersonic jet without me?

"Oh, get over it," Britain snapped. "You were too busy wanting to get to the moon to bother trying to be supersonic here on terra firma."

"Yeah, but..." He had a point, America realised. His government had indeed put their efforts into reaching the stars rather than the sound barrier. But for it to be Britain and France together who got there first, when he was the one who had actually invented airplanes... that was just mean.

"So?" Britain pushed after a moment. "Did you like it?"

America wasn't quite sure why he was so cross, whether it was to do with being in too many conflicts to keep a straight head, or whether it was that Britain was being so friendly with France (which was just plain weird). Whatever the reason, he was not impressed that his hamburger run had been so disturbed. "I guess you're gonna be flying those things over here all the time, then?"

"Of course!" France smiled. "Eet will so easy to fly over here quickly now. Le Concorde takes less zan 'alf ze time of normal planes. Eet will be expensive, oui, but super-quick."

"Can't you hear how loud those things are?" America snapped. "There's no way that my people are going to stand for all that noise. You remember how many people went deaf because of the bombs? It's just as loud!"

"So what do you want us to do about it?" Britain looked exasperated. "The sonic boom produced by an aeroplane breaking the sound barrier isn't something you can just turn off! If you want Concorde to be quiet, she'll have to fly slower than the speed of sound..."

"Which will wreck ze point of 'er being a supersonic plane." France finished.

If America had been thinking straight, he might have put his behaviour down to hamburger withdrawal. As it was, he just glared and said "Then you can't fly it over here. If you can't be quiet, stay away!"

Oh. Britain was pulling the one-eyebrow-raising trick, which he could do so much better than anyone else which was totally unfair. "No supersonic flights over the United States?" he asked, looking as if he was merely clarifying a clause in a treaty. "None at all?"

"No. I'll get my government to ban it. I won't have your strange airplanes scaring all my people."

"And making you jump and lose your place in your silly video game?" France asked, all sweetness and light and absolutely right which was unfair and just wrong because it was France, and France shouldn't have been able to be sweet. Was this what happened when he got all friendly with Britain? America decided he didn't want to know.

"Shut up, France. No, I just don't want my citizens dying of heart attacks from the shock. It sounds like you're... I dunno, like you're blowing something up!"

"Are you absolutely sure?" France asked, still smiling but with a glint in his eye that America really didn't like aimed at him. "She is great fun to fly, you know."

"She's very, very fast..." How on earth could Britain's smile look so similar to France's? Like they were... oh, for how stupid it sounded, like they were brothers. Or something equally terrifying. "Almost like you're flying a... well, like you're flying a spaceship."

Oh.

Oh.

This was so not fair.

Okay, the first transatlantic flight of Concorde wasn't actually until 1971, but this is the very first time that France and Britain have ever done something together in peace-time (the Concorde contract was actually a political agreement rather than a business deal) and they're going to want to show it off whilst they're still actually talking. Hence the minor historical inaccuracy.

I was halfway through the fic before I remembered that America is in the middle of the Cold War and the Vietnam War when this is set, so there's really not much surprise that he's so tense when he hears something explode, even if it is just the sound barrier breaking.

As has been pointed out to me several times in the writing of this, video games did not exist in 1969. In my headcanon, however, Tony is suspiciously good at video games, and therefore they're not actually human. I know, it's cheating.

The American government really did ban Concorde from overflying the US (from 1976) because of civilian complaints about the sonic boom. Some very cheeky historians have suggested it was because they were jealous that the Brits built a supersonic aeroplane first (with the French, no less, not the Americans with whom they had the still-new "Special Relationship").

Apologies if France's accent is tricky to understand. All the Zs are the "th" sound, and he's dropped all the Hs. Also, the French call Concorde "Le Concorde", unlike the British who just call it Concorde.

I was very sad when the last Concorde was taken out of commission; I thought it looked really pretty, and if I ever had enough money one of the things I wanted to do was fly in it. I wanted to travel at beyond the speed of sound, because that just sounded awesome to me. If anyone reading this has ever flown in one of the Concordes, know that I am deeply jealous of you.