Because He Would

"What kind of shit is this?"

Spain shrugged and tapped a key. "It's a Mac. I though those things were popular these days?"

Romano glared sullenly. "It's fucking bright. And it has fruit on it. Fruit. Do you have any idea how soft this makes you look, capo?"

"Not at all, Romanito!" Spain replied indignantly, "Don't you find it stylish?"

"Stylish. I'm sure. Stylishly fruity. Who the fuck conned you into buying this thing?"

"Amer-"

"Stop right there, don't needa hear anymore," Romano answered, mouth curved rude.

"Hey, but he can be very persuasive!" Spain frowned, "Plus, it wasn't... China or something." He laughed suddenly. "Did I ever tell you the story of how Prus-"

"America and Prussia! What makes you think I wanna hear this?" Romano tapped his foot impatiently, shifted in his place. "Just check your goddamn email so we can get outta here. Mr. Pizza's Fun Hour doesn't last forever you know."

Spain laughed airily. "Alright, alright," he answered. Of course it took Spain a little longer than it would take most people, but that wasn't any big deal. He wasn't slow, necessarily; rather, he lived a time apart from most other people, or so Romano reasoned with himself. He manuvered at his own easy pace through the pages that popped up on his browser until he came upon an email from, who else but Prussia, whom everyone received emails from because he generally had nothing better to do than harass people via the internet.

Romano, because he didn't think Spain deserved privacy nor personal space, glanced up past Spain's shoulder and to the monitor. "Tch! That Prussia?"

"How'd you know?" Spain asked, appearing genuinely confused.

"Nobody else would write in that size font in that color." He paused, appearing disinterested for a moment, and made a kind of sarcastic noise behind his teeth. "What's he want anyway?"

"Oh...He sent me a link. He says that he can help me out with my economy, and that he sent me this link for some research. That's so nice of him!" he said, with a determined nod.

"Oh come on, are you seriously gonna fuckin' check that now!" Romano cried, checking his wristwatch frantically. He knew Spain- it would go from "I'll just check this one thing Prussia sent me" to "Let me just do this internet survey!" to "I didn't know Antonio Banderas was married!"

"It'll only take a second, Romanito," Spain said with another laugh. "Lemme just...," he continued, trailing off as he opened the link.

The wind outside the door was still.

The birds fluttered away in a cluster of dark confusion.

Romano was impatient.

And then a song began to play.

Romano frowned and got up from his place. "Oh, great, a music video. He's going to save your economy with a music video."

Spain peered closer to the monitor, studying it seriously. "Rick Roll," he said, the r's rolling heavily. "...What is that? Is that a company?"

"Hell if I know," Romano sucked in his breath and folded his arms, "Sounds stupid to me."

"Well...maybe that's what's considered stylish? Apple sounded kind of dumb to me at first so -"

"Ugh, moron - come on and ex it out already so we can go."

"You know, it's kind of catchy, actually," Spain replied, bopping his head slightly to the beat.

"...What is that guy even wearing?" Romano answered, curious despite himself, leaning in over Spain's shoulder. He studied the singer for a moment- all gelled pompadour, long trench coat, black outfit beneath - and those horrible dance moves! Romano found himself gradually getting angrier than he was at his usual level of tension, which was admittedly pretty high at the best of times. What did that man think he was doing? Abusing the very principles of clothing itself; Romano thought those days were over! Over! His sense of tragedy was inflamed. He felt he must put an end to it, so instead of asking nicely like a normal person would, he shoved Spain by the shoulder and snapped, "Hey! Rompipalle!" When Spain looked up at him over his shoulder, Romano punctuated the words by gesturing emphatically toward his watch, and then toward the door.

"Okay, okay," Spain said, smiling, and then wondered aloud why Prussia would send him something like that. Spain had nothing against the terrible fashion of the 80s, so he had rather been enjoying the song; but it was what Romano wanted, so he went along with it. He moved the mouse toward the upper left-hand corner to close the window when he found that, well, he couldn't.

"Jerk, moron, why aren't you getting up?" Romano demanded.

"Ah, Romano," Spain said, "You should see this..."

Romano sighed exasperatedly, rolled his eyes and threw his hands to his sides. "See what? You just have to click that x-thingy up in the corner, moron-"

Spain turned to Romano, alarmed. "X-thingy!" he repeated, like it was the end of the world, "There is none! Romanito, something is wrong with my computer!"

"What there's nothing - ugh, you have a Mac," Romano snapped, "Just - the um, the red circle, there!"

"Romano, it's not letting me do anything," Spain's brow creased, "I think it doesn't want me to leave, or something."

"Idiot, the computer doesn't fucking want anything!" Romano answered, trembling with fury because he may not be on time to meet Mr. Pizza, and from there the entire day would go to shit.

"I can't leave!" Spain said, suddenly panicking.

"Well if you're going to choose an inanimate object's feelings over mine, then maybe I'll just go myself, you dumb bastard!" Romano answered, the angry tremor making his movements jarring, tense.

Spain turned around to face him fully, surprised that Romano seemed to be so emotionally affected by this whole thing. "Ay! What's wrong, Romano?" he asked, trying, on instinct, to get up from his seat to hug Romano, but failing when his knees collided with the desk and sent him back to the seat. "I could never love Julio more than you! Me and Julio are just really good friends!"

"What the fuck are you even talking about!" Romano burst out, flustered, now almost at his full capacity for frustration. In a move of desperation, he shot his hand forward and smacked Spain's own hand off the mouse; while Spain cradled his hand with a drawn-out, puppy-dog ayyyyy and as the chorus sounded once again, he moved the cursor toward the red button at the left-hand corner of the window. And clicked.

Nothing happened.

Romano choked on an angry syllable, and concentrated his intensely disgusted glare onto the mouse, as though daring it not to work again. He clicked again. Nothing happened.

"Y-you idiot! What did you do!" Romano cried.

"Ay, nothing! It just- it was like that already!"

"It was Prussia - that fuckin' guy! Next time I see 'im I'm gonna smack 'im upside the head with..."

"With?"

"With...something, God! Let's just fix this! This song is terrible!"

"It's terrib-?"

"Okay, you think what you want, just - Cristo! What is this!"

"It's telling you that..." Spain paused, reading it as though it was a warning message from the operating system. "That it's never going to let you down or desert you."

Romano glared at him.

Spain laughed nervously. "Good news, right?"

"I don't need a computer to tell me it'll never desert me, moron. Unlike some," Romano huffed, brows furrowed as he clicked the mouse again. He clicked and kept clicking through more lyrics and more with a manic, desperate kind of anger, until he thought he was at the end.

But the end was only the beginning. He was fooled by a quick beat of silence into a kind of pompous security; he laughed to himself (less a laugh and more a "hmph" sound, really), said, "There, moron! You just had to keep clicking."

"Ah! Thanks Romanito!" Spain cried, flinging his arms around Romano's waist, "I knew you could do it!"

"G-get off me," Romano answered, flustered; his eyes flickered from the desk to the screen. He was about to say, Let's go but he then realized that something else was happening on the computer screen. Something that looked like confetti rained down from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen; he figured it was nothing. He was wrong.

The song started up again, all that brass blast of the 808 and deep vocals.

And this time, it was accompanied by something even more horrific than bad fashion and corny lyrics.

"Is that a head?"

Spain looked up to the screen and, upon seeing what Romano was speaking of, let out a dramatic gasp. Rick Astley's head had detached from his electronic body and was now bouncing around the screen like Korea bounced when he had one too many Red Bulls; it moved from one corner to another, backed by the seizure-scream colors of the confetti. The head was still singing, and singing loudly at that.

"Wh-what is that!" Romano said, more like squeaked. He jumped in surprise, so that Spain's arm was flung from off his waist and the mouse was knocked from its place on the desk, landing upside down, rocking back and forth in a more than sinister manner.

"I- I have no idea!" Spain answered in a hushed voice, jumping up from his seat. The seat rolled backwards, away from the desk, similar to the mouse.

They stared, dumbfounded, for a couple of bars. The music seemed...almost menacing now. Almost like some kind of evil chant. "Wh-who would - Prussia-" Romano stammered, letting his fear get the best of him; making the connection that this must be somehow Satanic because Prussia was the son of the Devil. Of course. It was the eyes.

More heads popped up like a toadstool rash across the screen, lining up into several formations as the song went on - a heart-shape, a star-shape, something that looked like that English character Winnie the Pooh. Spain was still silent as a child in awe, hand clamped over his mouth. Romano was trying to fight the sense of fear with anger, and was, after an intense inner battle between the two forces, finally able to say:

"I-it's il Diavolo! Spain! Spain! It's the Devil!"

"Que terror - y-you're right!" Spain answered, not even stopping to think what that meant about Prussia. He turned to Romano, very seriously, and grabbed him by the shoulders. "God is testing our faith, surely!"

"Wh-what do we do, now?" Romano asked, reduced to whispering by the horror, the horror, of Never Gonna Give You Up.

Spain paused, considering his options heavily. He had fought on God's side before; this was no different. This "Rick Astley" character would be no match for him. "Romanito!" he said, flourishing dramatically despite the use of Romano's pet name. "Romanito, get to me the holy water!"

"Here!" Romano said, taking a small plastic bottle from his pocket and flinging it toward Spain.

Spain looked down at it; it said "Holy Water" in script and had a picture of the pope on it. "R-Romanito, you had this with you?"

"Of course, che cazzo! What do you think, I would go unprotected?"

Spain's eyes brimmed with light, as a proud parent's might; he flung his arms around Romano. "I'm so glad! Oh Romanito, I raised you so well!"

"Not the fucking time for that!" Romano answered, pushing him away.

"Oh, right! Of course!" Spain exclaimed, determined, and turned to the monitor. He squared his shoulders, and put his battle face on, the face his enemies in battle once saw, centuries ago, the face of a true conquistador. He reared his head and threw back his arm, only then realizing the bottle of water was, in fact, still capped. He paused briefly to unscrew the top and then repeated his previous actions, finally flinging his arm forward like a baseball pitcher, splashing the monitor with holy water.

Romano, meanwhile, had gotten the rosary that he also carried with him at all times from his pocket, and was striking the monitor with it. "There! I'll show you who's no stranger to love, dickhead!"

Spain paused in the impromptu exorcism to look at Romano with a broad smile. "Ah, Romano, with me you're never a stranger to love."

Romano paused as well. "What the- the fuck are you talking about?" he muttered.

"Romanito, I just want to tell you how I'm feeling- I'm never going to give you up, never going to-"

"What the fuck!" Romano interrupted, "What are you t-talking about!"

"I'm never going to let you down or desert you, Romano."

"Sh-shit! Spain! Snap out of it!" Romano cried, "It's possession! Possession, I've seen it before!" Quickly, he wrested the bottle of water from Spain and dumped the remaining amount over his head.

Spain looked around, blinking like he was new to the place. He paused. "-What just happened?"

Romano paused. "Mother of God, it was possession!" Oh, Prussia deserved some sort of divine penance for this. Romano privately wondered if witch trials were still acceptable.

"What were we just doing?" Spain asked.

Romano frowned. "E-excorsising, idiot!" he said, making an elaborate hand gesture that vaguely referred to both the rosary in his hand and the computer (on the monitor, the dancing heads had now formed into a rectangle, and the song had started again, this time even louder than the last).

"...In these clothes?" Spain asked, looking down at his pants and then at Romano. "Wouldn't you rather wear sweatpants? I have some you can borrow-"

"This is no time for puns! There's a demon in that computer, bastard!" Romano interjected angrily.

Spain looked at the monitor, and it seemed like the lights were on in the attic again, as it were. "Oh! Right!" he said, and then looked around. "The holy water...?"

"Well, I had to use it on you, didn't I?" Romano replied angrily, hands tightening around the rosary.

"O-oh, right! Thanks, huh?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever! Just- you know!"

"Yep," Spain nodded his head and rolled up his left sleeve, "If you can hold it off, I have some more water in the kitchen."

Romano blinked and then shrugged wildly. "Okay, fine, fine! Just be quick, moron! You're leaving me alone with this thing, what kind of fucking 'thanks' is that -"

"I'll be back, Romano!" Spain called from the kitchen down the hall. Over the blare of Rick Astley, Romano could hear the nearly comparable clang of pots and pans being thrown down as Spain presumably searched for his water. Unsure of what to do next, Romano shook his rosary threateningly at the monitor.

What a persistent, evil demon! And Prussia sent this! Romano would be having some serious words with Veneziano about the kind of Germans he... associated with.

Some serious words, indeed.

"Okay, I'm back!" Spain called before rounding off into the study (he had tried and failed, in the spirit of the situation at hand, to will the cheerfulness out of his voice). Romano glanced at him, was about to say something like About fucking time, but his the words dropped back into his throat when he saw that Spain was hauling a rather large bucket, filled to the brim and splashing water everywhere as he walked.

"Th-that's a lotta fuckin' water," Romano commented, impressed against his will, and though his sarcasm suggested otherwise, he was completely unready for what came next.

Spain, without warning, hauled up the bucket and - and threw the entire thing at the monitor, bucket and all.

Getting Romano's nice clothes wet in the process.

Romano's eyes flashed red toward Spain, and he shouted something that would have been to the effect of, "You got my clothes wet, you dumb fucker!" but was otherwise incoherent for the amount of Italian swearing it contained.

...And for the fact that the volume of his words was overshadowed by a loud noice coming from the computer. He and Spain stared at it, open-mouthed, wondering what would come next. Something sparked; they both flinched as though they'd been hit, and watched as a series of pops and sparks lit up around the rapidly dimming screen. The colors darkened until the monitor almost went black, and then amid the little explosions the sound of the song slowed drastically, and then finally died.

They breathed a sigh of relief. The computer was dead, but sacrifices had to be made, in the name of the Lord - the enemy was at last vanquished, and now they could venture beyond the front door to see if Mr. Pizza was still present at Fun Hour.

...They were about to say something to each other, but as they opened their mouths, there was a burst of awful sound, and they jumped in surprise - surprise quickly turned to dread when they recognized that the song was beginning again, and that Rick Astley would truly never give them up, nor would he let them down... or desert them, for that matter.

Spain was about to comment on how persistent Satan was, but before he could say anything, Romano rolled his eyes.

"Oh for Christ's sake."

And with that, he pulled a revolver from seemingly out of nowhere and shot at the monitor with an almost uncharacteristic precision.

Spain gaped.

"Romanito..."

Romano sighed and lowered his revolver. "It was the only way -"

"Romanito, why do you have a gun!" Spain cried. He moved, almost hesitantly, toward the desk, where the dead computer was situated, bullet-riddled and smoking and most of all, forlorn.

"W-well, it's over now, what the hell does it matter!" Romano snapped, flushed.

Spain sniffled, cradling the computer as though this was all a quirk of destiny and he hadn't thrown a bucket of water at it. "It's okay, Julio," he sniffled, "We can get through this together."

Romano's eye twitched uncontrollably in a fit of irritation. "I - I don't even know where the fuck your mind is half of the time."

Spain sniffled a bit more, but after a while, turned toward Romano with a broad smile. "Well! It's okay - at least none of us was possessed! I don't know what I'd do if my cute Romano was possessed by an evil demon from the internet," he said, reaching to pinch Romano's cheek.

Romano smacked his hand away half-heartedly. "S-stop that!"

"Oh! That's right!" Spain said, "Didn't you want to get pizza?"

Romano pouted childishly. "Yeah, but fuckin'...Fun Hour is probably over by now."

"We should go somewhere else!" Spain said.

Romano paused.

"Fine, idiot, but you're paying the bill."

A/n: This was written in collaboration with my good friend Cait; you can read more of her writing at the LiveJournal community 'ammazzacaffe'!

xDDDD;; I hope you enjoyed our silliness!