Arthur flinched, staggered back one step, exactly like a man hit in the face. He even half-raised one hand, as if to ward off a blow.

"Alfred...I..."

"I mean," Alfred continued, cool, cruel, merciless, "I just want to know how much this vacation is supposed to be worth. Is Mattie planning something cool? Although I guess I wouldn't know exactly what a blowjob or a fucking translates to. Is there like a set conversion rate for you people? Or for Hetalia Academy at least?" He shrugged, eyes still on Arthur's face like a wolf watching prey. Arthur shivered and thought despairingly of older days, Alfred's eyes bright in adoration, not dark with disdain. Like this, he looked like Bonnefoy, like Braginski - he looked like Arthur's father, surveying his fuckup youngest son with disinterest.

"Sorry - I'm not that up to date on how whores operate."

Arthur let out a soft sound, a hurt, gasping keening, and then he turned and fled.

Behind Alfred, Matthew - slipping in unnoticed as he always did - dropped the bags of Safeway groceries and gasped. Alfred turned slowly, hands stuck in his pockets, face a picture of boredom - except for his eyes, which burned.

"Al - Alfred!" Matthew cried, staring shocked. "How could you?"

"How could you?" Alfred retorted, scowling. "How could you bring him here, Matt? Couldn't you at least have called and let me cancel? You know that I don't want to see him."

"I brought him here for you, asshole!" Matthew snapped, his hands curling into tight fists. "Because you love him..."

"Says who?" Alfred scoffed, and added unpleasantly: "While it's considerate for you to arrange a whore for me, I wonder what Uncle John will say about that..."

"Stop calling him that!" Matthew yelled, voice cracking from stress and upset.

"Why? That's what he is, after all," Alfred snarled, dropping his mask of bored disdain to give full vent for the ugly, wounded snarl of hurt and blind rage and jealousy that had lived inside him for almost a year. "A dirty, cocksucking -"

"Stop it!"

"Whore!" Alfred screamed defiantly. Matthew, knowing Arthur could hear them, shoved at Alfred, in an unthinking violent need to stop the hurtful words.

He'd forgotten where they were. The narrow staircase leading to the Williams' basement was tucked into the side of the foyer - near where Alfred was standing. The shove from his cousin should have knocked him back a step, and only that - except he stepped wrong, lost his balance. For a moment of shocked silence he seemed to hover in the air, his body tilted impossibly far, while his eyes and Matthew's widened.

And then he fell down, and by the time Matthew scrambled down to his cousin, Alfred was already unconscious, his head lolling loosely and blood smearing the door.

So who is the father of Hungary's secret baby? What is the mysterious inheritance left to Iceland? Why is Spain so secretive lately? IS Romano really Romano - or his evil twin brother, Feliciano? And what will happen to Alfred? Tune in next week, same time, same channel, for another dramatic episode of Days of Our Hetalian Lives!

Okay not really but this is taking an awfully soap operatic turn isn't it.