Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia, or any of its characters. Those belong to Himaruya Hidekaz-sensei, who made a lot more out of them than I ever could have. ^^;; I just do fanfiction for fun, and earn no monetary rewards for writing it. Reviews are, of course, worth as much as silver.

Summary: Summary: You keep saying it, over and over, so easily. Doesn't it lose its meaning if you say it too much? We go 'round and 'round. Love and hate. Are you all right? You can't leave yet, I don't know you well enough!

Title: Drowning In Those Words

Chapter Two: Please Say It

Word Count: 5,098

Page Count: 7

[Total Word Count: 9230]

[Total Page Count: 12]

Anime: Hetalia
Pairing(s) in this chapter: England/France

Warning: Language, BL

Author: Kita Kitsune (Call me Fox!)
Date: Thursday, July 14, 2011

Miscellaneous notes: Another bit of randomness, to round off this universe. It's sort of similar to the previous post (although perhaps a smidge sadder in the beginning), but it's definitely in the same universe, so I figured I'd just add it here instead of as a new fic~

[ Apparently, Bastille Day this year happens to be 'The Day For Happy FrUK-Fanfic Coincidences' (for me, anyway). :D That is great in so many ways. The obvious one you'll all get, I'm sure (Happy Birthday, France~!), but the quieter ones only a few people will get. :3

Also, I feel so much better after writing this, you can't even imagine. /Haha, been up for 22 hours, wut… ]

Enjoy, I hope, even if it's a bit odd (all typos will be axed, eventually)~!

: : : : : : :

Ten days to go.

Let me take a breath and I'll fill you in, shall I?

…Well. Yes. In ten days it would be official. Officially, it would be a year. Not just any year, but a year. The past few months have not been easy. They have not been full of romanticism and pleasant dreams and screamed devotions from the highest mountaintop, no. They have been full of insecurity and anger, frustration and loneliness, and the occasional perfect word or moment.

I did break up with him once, you know. Around January, a few months after he was forced to relocate. It wasn't that hard, at first. We'd send letters, or e-mails. At times, call. We would still communicate, but even so, by New Year's I nearly couldn't stand it. We were able to talk, then, and I was so full of vulnerable anger that I picked a fight, and we fought right up until the ball in New York rang in the New Year. He was three hours behind me, by then, and paused when I whispered him a Happy New Year amidst the ruckus playing on the TV. And he went quiet, before saying he'd blow me a kiss over the phone. But it didn't matter, really.

How can I cover a year of happenings in a few pages? The letters kept coming, although sometimes I wouldn't respond to them for a while. My existence had gotten lonelier, barer, without him around, even if I didn't want to admit it. Even if I wanted with all my mind to be independent of him, even my… Even my attempt to break it off was treated like nothing. It was as though it never happened. Half of this past year I felt like I'd been living alone, while the other half was filled with so many memories and light it almost eclipsed the sadness. For it was sadness.

Not that I noticed it, at first. His relocation was unavoidable, really—his job transferred him to different places quickly, after that first half-year, and he wasn't often in the same place for more than a few weeks. It was hard on me. …Harder than I should have allowed it to be. Because really, even though he'd been sending me all these letters all through the months—in a timely fashion, given that I at times hesitated—I still felt alone. It wasn't enough. To be so close, so often, and to have it ripped away as though I didn't even matter… I would send him e-mails, and receive nothing. I would wonder if he had relocated again, without my knowing his new address and so perhaps my last letter hadn't reached him? I wondered if I was merely talking to a brick wall, and too often allowed myself a desperate laugh while situated in front of my computer as I typed yet another e-mail to add to the pile sitting in his inbox. No, I did not send him e-mails so often, but apparently he did not check this particular account so much as his business one, now. And so it was as though I was sending my angry, then quiet, then subdued messages into a spiraling void that simply sucked all of their emotions in without giving anything back.

I had to go on, of course. I couldn't allow this to affect me. I buried all of that bitterness and solitude deep within, where no one would find it. But it came about in other ways. I was sharper to friends. I was angrier about smaller and smaller things. I couldn't seem to put my life in perspective, there was always something blocking my way no matter which path I turned. Surely it couldn't be him. It didn't even cross my mind. It was me, wasn't it? There was something wrong with me. And I had been burying it for so long that I simply couldn't take it, anymore. My body couldn't take it. It started to feel like my air was being choked off just as it passed my lips. As though a meddling elephant of oppression followed me everywhere, hiding the sun and shoving me into places I didn't want to go. Shoving my mind into places it didn't want to see. But what else could I do? I went on living—existing. Because as I look back, half of this year feels like a dead weight. A blank span of endless daily routines piled upon each other to end a week, and then a month, and then another and on and on.

It couldn't be natural. It wasn't enjoyable. But still I managed to keep up a moderate mask, that no one knew. And perhaps it hurt more that no one knew. No one took a close enough look to know, and I was firmly oblivious to all of it. I forced myself to be, so I could go on. And yet, even with that I was so ridiculously happy to receive a letter every month or so in response to one of my own that I would simply stare at the envelope, at first. There would be both anticipaton and trepidation thrumming in my soul as I devoured the familiar curvy script—he always wrote my name with such a flourish, I think I accidentally smiled each time. Not to mention the on-going verbal spat we kept up on the very bottom of the back of the envelopes. I had to wonder if the postal workers read those, written out in the open as they were. Did they confuse them, or make them smile? I couldn't know, but I had to wonder.

As the time lengthened, his e-mails grew yet more infrequent, until I stopped trying to communicate with him by that means, at all. He still didn't have my mobile number, said something about his current phone being 'business-only'. I had to wonder if I was being purposefully excluded from his life. Because although we'd always seemed to have each other, there was this emptiness in my being that hadn't been there, before. It felt like he was always away, and I could never catch up. I was forced to wait, twiddling my thumbs for the next letter and hope that he wouldn't move again before he could receive my response.

I don't think there is enough waiting in today's society. Everything is instant—gratification, Internet, installment plans, downloads, mobile phones and voicemail. Everything. But this system forced me to slow down, and I had to wonder if I was experiencing something like an older generation. A generation who had lived in the time of letters and when phone calls were timed and rare enough that people would sit around the phone for hours waiting for a call from a loved one in service far away in a different timezone. People today might wonder how people back then ever survived without instant reassurance of the sort we have, now.

But it builds character, this waiting. It is not fun and it is not preferable, but given no other route it is something grasped at with both hands. Just a few words on paper. I would often hold the letter in one hand, gently running my fingers over the messages carved between the lines. I would imagine that he had touched this paper, too. He had written on it, running his fingers over it himself to smooth it out, unconsciously shifting the paper with a few fingertips the further he got down the page. I liked to think I could feel him on it. Could pretend we were phantoms, touching through a piece of paper that had traveled miles further than either of us could afford to, so quickly. And I always imagined my letters to him might have the same effect, but really what could I know? We didn't think the same, that was too clear, by now. But perhaps… Just perhaps, he treasured them like I did.

Every letter since the first one almost a year ago was safely tucked away with its fellows. I didn't unfold and refold them too often after the first two reads. I didn't want to obsess over them too much, re-read and think about them so much that I could think of nothing else. Because those letters were the only indication of what we'd had. A small oasis in a withered world that someone, somewhere, cared enough not to stop caring just because of distance.

He was part of my nightly ritual. His name would be uttered quietly in my mind after sending bolstering thoughts to those affected by natural disasters and after I acknowledged my concern for my parents. Following his name I would then send a quick thought out to anyone I had ever known or will know, that they be fortunate. Some might call me overachieving in this, but I couldn't care less. Whether my small act to think of even people I had never known actually had any effect, will never be known by you or I. But isn't it a nicer thought to think, even for just a moment, that a moment of your own time might just possibly make the world a little bit more bearable for someone else? For how many times have people done something that, to them, is nothing, but yet that one small action has an effect on someone else? I'd like to think more people think as I do. I'd like to think that everyone, just before they drop off to sleep, takes a moment to think of everyone around them, all of us inhabiting this earth together. I'd like to think at least some people think as I do, and that these thoughts at least make something kinder float around this planet we call home, and that that 'something kinder' might make a perfectly good person think twice about stealing a child or causing harm. You are welcome to laugh and ridicule me all you want, now that you know this. But it will not stop me from continuing to send kind thoughts out to blanket the world, in the hopes that somewhere they will make some small difference.

And then, after all my award-winning speeches are over, the echoes resound. Ghostly hands, a warm body lying behind me, indistinguishable French words in my ear. And I can close my eyes, but not to sleep. Not to dream, either, and that is the worst of punishments, for who sleeps but doesn't dream? And yet I find no nightly repose in these times—I shift each time as I am feeling sleep creeping upon me, reawaking my senses and shifting my reality. I do not want to sleep, in the same moment that I can feel I need to. Many nights have passed with fitful turning, and for no other reason than the fact that he haunts me to insomnia. My dreams seldom have him, in them I am released. But the time before the dreams set in is nightmarish. The time when I have been lying in bed some twenty minutes, with nothing for my mind to do but continuously circle around the same track of thoughts. And twenty minutes can turn to forty, to seventy, in a blink. Often I force myself not to think, only to count slowly from one to one-hundred and repeating that same set of numbers so as to bore my frenzied mind to sleep. For I am never more awake then when I have just lain down to rest. I can be exhausted and lie down to sleep, stay there for five minutes and get up again, wide-awake. It is a curse, this blessing.

It is a curse.

For it forces me to choke everything inside, since there is no one I would rather talk to. It forces me to continue to behave 'normally', when all I may wish to do is hurl the toaster through the door-window and onto my back patio. When all I want to do is weep, and yet I have no tears. There are sorrows so deep that tears cannot touch them. There are weights that cannot be lifted even when others offer a hand. It is not only stubbornness, it is fact. And the part of me that desperately doesn't want to be alone anymore and wants to yell and scream and pound on the walls until I am heard is silenced by the part of me that keeps it to myself. For there is only one person I want to hear me. And they are not around to listen.

: : :

A rare opportunity has him visiting, and he quietly closes the door as I ascend the staircase ahead of him, intending to take his bags to the guest bedroom. I can feel him watching me, his eyes likely training on the set of my shoulders, trying to judge the tension there. I am of no mind to turn around, right now. I have a task I must complete, and he will be a distraction. Perhaps half a year ago I would have immediately torn into him, but now—in what feels like a tattered mess of a rag clinging to a clothesline—I cannot. His presence is so rare, I cannot find it in myself to bring about a row.

And yet I knew it would come, but I still did not expect it to hurt this much. There are things about him I have forgotten. Little movements, small expressions that once seemed like glass to me but now play the reflection of a thousand different possibilities. Has it been so long? I cannot decide what I see. I cannot decide what he means his actions to mean. Everything feels disjointed, disconnected. I come downstairs and lift my head, forcing a smile for the situation's sake. It feels wrong and hollow, but I hold my chin up and continue on despite that. What else am I to do?

"What would you like for dinner?" Even my speech is polite and stiff.

I loathe it.

: : :

The evening passes without much event. We order something from a place nearby, for he is too tired from traveling to cook and I dare not set foot in the kitchen lest it burn to the ground in a preemptive blow to prevent me from creating any unspeakables out of its depths.

After a glib and awkward dinner, as the plates are put away, I feel an aching tug against my throat. I know he is looking at me the same—he does not notice the same things he would have noticed, had he been here for the past half-year. Are we really so far apart? He approaches me from behind as I scrub a plastic cup and I start, badly, as I feel the ghost of a hand on my hip. I turn and he watches me carefully. I look away and push past him. Perhaps it is not like me to be so avoidant, but I cannot stand what this has become. Have the months made me meek? I think not—I simply do not want to be touched. How ironic is it, that when he is here I want him nowhere near me?

"Arthur—" He calls after me but I continue up to my bedroom, absently locking the door behind me. I am not wanting to discuss this. Can he not leave well enough alone? I have survived without him—an entire lifetime without him, before we met—I can surely survive this visit. It is not denial, it is not my refusal of what we have, it is just—if I am no longer worthy, can he at least only give me this illusion that all is right? In my heart I know it is a lie, but I can convince myself it is not and if he does not give me any indication to change why should I? If it is awkward, it is my fault, I know. Will he leave me for being so difficult? How can he leave when he's already left—when he's already been gone so long I don't even remember what happiness was like. Real happiness, not these bursts of low and high moods I have, from repressing so much that the wrong emotions emerge at the oddest times. Real happiness, like it was when he could see through my actions and I through his and we fought more than we kissed but it didn't matter because we were alive and living that with each other, day to day. I do not miss it, do not make the mistake of assuming so. But what I have now is what I must cherish and protect, because yesterday is as good as dirt when it is over one-hundred-fifty yesterdays away. And living with a limp never killed anyone, so long as they didn't let the limp bury them.

My eyes feel sore and full. I did not sleep last night, for knowledge of his arrival today.

And the clock strikes nine.

: : :

It is hard to find something to react to, when you can feel nothing. I think there was a time I could. A time when I would argue with him over nothing, just to grin and sneer and swat and punch and argue. I could remember those days, if I tried, I think. Or are they perhaps too far gone? Even now I look back and that person seems like a stranger. Who was I? Why did I act like that? I am always so calm and rational, why did I allow him to rile me up that badly? Was I that insecure? Or did I just enjoy having an excuse to blow up at someone with it being taken in good humor?

What was his name, again? I think I've almost forgotten.

: : :

The second day of his visit starts early. I still cannot sleep—hours lying awake, sensing his shadow pause at my door like a phantom, before footsteps announce he has moved on. He gave me space. Wasn't it always that I had to keep pushing him away until he realized I didn't want more space? But does it matter, now? For what was it all that it could just… fade away.

I eventually emerge. It still feels like a mist, coming down the stairs to quiet noises in the kitchen. He turns around from his frying pan of eggs as I enter, a bright smile on his face as though he senses nothing is wrong.

"Ah, bon matin~!" I wonder how fake it is, and how badly my skills at reading his real smiles from the fake ones have become. I sit, not looking up after an initial nod of acknowledgement. The morning feels strangely heavy as he slowly deflates. Out of the corner of my eye I could notice this, and do, but dismiss it. What does it matter? A moment later I remember myself, and rise from my chair to set up the electric kettle for tea. I've barely set my hand upon it when there is another upon mine. I look up, and he is smiling at me strangely. Quietly, unsurely, cautiously—strangely. I blink at him, and move my gaze back to the kettle, trying to pull it from under his grasp. His hand tightens and I tense a little, peering back up at him just as my vision is blanketed by his shirt.

I don't move as the kettle is crushed between us, one of his arms going around my waist as the other tenderly palms the back of my head, his own moving to tuck his chin over the edge of my shoulder.

"Petit lapin—" The words are familiar, enough that they cause me to freeze up even more. I didn't think it possible, but at least he notices this, close as we are. I can't help but think my eyes are locked to the molding on the upper left side of the door. The paint is peeling. Why is he pulling me closer? I should really repaint that. Why is he softly combing his fingers through my hair? I can't imagine how I didn't notice the peeling had gotten that bad. Why is he leaning close to—

"Je t'aime." My eyes fall shut at that painful whisper. Not the least pained on his part—I'm sure I would be imagining any such emotion—but it's like a stab to my heart, hearing those words again after so many times where they've almost become meaningless. They're like a charm we say at the end of each letter—mine much more rare than his, of course. Because even if it's true, why does he need to proclaim it all the time? Why does it matter?

Why can't I just focus on the fact I'm obviously horrible at home maintenance—?

"Desoleé." His voice is even quieter, here, I think, interrupting my wandering thoughts. The kettle starts to shake, and I have to wonder why. Surely I'm not trembling. That arm around my waist pulls tighter, pressing our shoulders together and he ducks his nose against my ear and I can't help but notice his lips move a breath away from my skin as though stuttering, but no sound follows those movements until a few moments later. "I am sorry. I did not mean for this to—Arthur, mon cher, why will you not even look at me?" I blink, not quite realizing I have been doing so. The kettle's spout presses against his stomach as I look off towards the tiled floor.

"I'm not—" I try to reason with him, but am interrupted as he abruptly pulls back, glaring at me and I feel pinned in place. Something in my chest hurts at those eyes.

"Do not lie to me!" I blink at the chiding tone, but something in his gaze shudders and widens and his next words are soft, fingers brushing sweetly against my cheek. "Arthur, how long have you been so depressed?" I can only blink at him again, opening my mouth to respond before finding I don't really have anything to respond with. I look away, but those fingers angle my face back to him. Even despite that, I keep my eyes firmly on the ground. There is a tender pressure in his tone as he almost begs. "How long?"

"I dunno…" I find myself muttering, the words slurring into a horrible excuse for slang. I can't look at him. Why, when only last night, I could—couldn't I? Hadn't I looked at him? I had, right? I peer up from under my fringe, but he catches me when he brushes them out of my face and I withdraw, bringing a hand up to ward off those fingers. "I'm not…" I'm looking at him now, and an eyebrow quirks as I see the beginnings of a smile and feel my own face contort in a suspicious frown. Whenever he smiles, it's never good.

"Oh~?" That tone is arch, and the grin is growing on his face as he leans in, leering and I narrow my eyes, leaning back and slowly bringing the kettle in my hands up a little, in case it would serve a better purpose as a weapon. "Then it is just old age that has withered your wit and reduced you to naught but a mute apparition?" I glare at him, for that, turning and shoving the spout-end of the kettle into his gut. He backs off with an overly-dramatic 'oof' and holds his stomach as though in pain, but the grin on his face doesn't really waver and so I scoff and head over to the sink, keeping half-an-eye on him in the back of my mind. I feel rankled, and my tone is crisp.

"I do not think you are one to be talking of old age." I sense movement behind me and slip to the side just as he glides over to the spot where I'd been, eying him warily with my kettle full of tap water. He recovers magnificently, of course, smoothly raising a finger with that annoying grin lighting up his features, again.

"Ah, but you are in the beginning stages, mon cher, and so are not aware of it yet, methinks~" I give him a Look for using that word, then think of something and smirk to myself as I take the long way around to the electric plate—that is, around the table instead of past the sink, which he is blocking.

"And who's the one using old words like 'methinks', here? Sounds like dementia to me." He gives a mock-gasp, covering his mouth to 'improve the theatrics' and I roll my eyes, shoving him out of the way with my hip when he tries to get between me and the counter, once again. He tumbles onto the floor and whines, so I cast him another Look as I set the electric kettle atop its plate and start it.

"You should not be so rough with me, rosbif!" He scrambles towards me as I'm distracted, causing me to squawk in surprise as he wraps himself around one of my legs. "I could break! I am fragile!" I glare down at his falsely-tearstricken face and sneer, kicking my foot to try and get him off!

"You are not! And stop that—"—by which, of course, I meant trying to 'subtly' cop a feel, resulting in me smacking his northerly-wandering hands away from my self—"Y-You are—!" He cuts me off with a darker grin, this time, nothing more, as his fingers begin their northward trail once again.

"Alluring?" A fingertip traces up over my covered fly and I squirm, feeling my cheeks go red as I try to get away.

"H-Hey—!"

"Irresistible?" A little more teeth to the grin, this time, and he catches my hands at the wrists, leaning to lick an obscene trail of moisture over the very same path his finger just traveled. My eyes go wide, nose beginning to burn with a blush as I quickly try to kick him off.

"N-No! Get off me, you sodding—" He just laughs, lunging in quickly enough to that sensitive spot that I freeze and wince, expecting impact but when there is none I squint open my eyes a little and the flush encompasses my ears and neck, wholly. He leers up at me, teeth locked around the zipper as he pulls it down and I try to buck away but he has me by the wrists so I can't go anywhere and— "A-Aaahn…"

"Or am I just yours, mon amor?" That comment is smugly murmured against the too-thin fabric of my boxers and I glare at him half-heartedly (it's rather hard to do so seriously when every goddamn breath he exhales sends another wave of heat onto… t-that area). He seems content not to go any farther for the moment, though, so after another to collect myself I snap back at him, annoyed and offended he would stoop to this level.

"Yes, yes, fine, now stop this nonsense and let me—" There is a spark in his gaze that I haven't seen before, not in a long time and for an instant—just an instant, damn you—I feel something familiar.

"Oh no, Arthur, I am not letting you get away that easily, especially after giving me such a cold shoulder last night." His eyes narrow and I blink, then frown, then open my mouth to argue but he is up before I can, cutting off my air and I choke at the suddenness of it, feeling my spine press into the counter as he kisses me.

Heaven help me, for I am lost to those adoring hands cupping my cheeks, that familiar scent wrapping around me like a memory from another life, and I cannot push him away—not when he is like this. So instead I grab his shirt and pull him closer so he must not be able to breathe as I can't and it feels like warmth, and it feels like comfort and it feels like—for the first time in a very long time—I am finally seeing him, again. I slide a hand down during the kiss to try and zip my fly back up but his own hand stops me and I pull away, perplexed, but he is grinning that same old infuriating grin at me, leaning in to rest our foreheads together.

"Leave it undone, oui~? It suits you so much better—" I go red from both anger and mortification, at that, but he just laughs and dodges away from my swinging arm. So I give chase, darting around furniture and doors and walls to try and catch him, a growl in my throat and a smile I will not give into carrying my soul a little higher.

Because it was just this, wasn't it? It was just this insanity I was missing.

"Hey, Francis!" And he makes the mistake of pausing at his actual name—it feels unused and cold in my mouth, but I take advantage and full-on tackle him and bear him to the floor, grinning as he groans beneath my full weight on him, glaring up at me.

"Arthur, that is not—" Always loving to keep him off-balance, I put a finger to his lips and he stops, just shocked enough at the action alone that it gives me an opening and I lean down as though to kiss him, but—

"本当に、愛している。" And he just freezes, and I smugly wonder to myself if he's been keeping up with his Japanese, so I sneer at his wide-eyed face, rubbing it in even more. "Or should I say 'ich liebe dich'~?" And his eyes narrow at that one, arms shooting up around my neck to drag me down as he growls against my smirking mouth.

"You—are—infuriatingly arrogant, mon lapin!" I just laugh in his face at that, not really minding when he presses our lips together again and so I let the laughter fall to a chuckle, pulling back while I still can—and even then, just enough to get the last word in.

"Just the way you like it, frog."

: : :

Ah, now that feels resolved. (Hurrah~!)

Reviews would be nice, if you have the time. :3 Thanks for reading, though! -Fox