Chapter Two: Oyster Bay

The car squealed as Lithuania dropped his luggage into the trunk of the beetle black car. Alfred gave the other a smile and a nod before he gripped the top and slammed it down. Lithuania stood there for a while until Alfred waved him over to the front seat. Just like that Toris moved over, like a leaf brushed over by a sudden breeze.

As he climbed into the driver's seat, Alfred couldn't help but feel relieved to get out of New York- as much as he loved the Big Apple, there were things he had to attend to and Lithuania's tiny apartment had disturbed him a bit. Not that he would ever admit it, at least not to his new employee. The faster he drove away from the dungeon of a building that stared at them from behind, the better.

The car grumbled to a start and then began to pull out of the lot and into the street. As they sped off Alfred could feel the eyes of the apartment complex watching him, their hollow shells absorbing his image and the car. The people who leaned out for some air even looked like maggots wriggling out of a rotten apple. He swore to his beautiful lady liberty that he heard ghosts' nails trying to dig him a grave in the floors last night.

As they began to leave the city Alfred tried not to think about how Lithuania looked a bit like a zombie or some spirit from the other world. Even though countries were supposed to stop physically aging at some point around their early 20's, (thank god, Alfred couldn't imagine how horrible it would be if England actually looked like an old man) Toris was so pale and thin that he looked like a dead body left in the ground just long enough to start sink in on itself and lose any color other than "crap I'm dead" white.

They escaped the city almost an hour later. The rest of the drive was a mixture of towns and a whole bunch of green. Alfred liked to think that his surroundings looked like a salad. People called America a mixing pot, but out here there was nothing but green and humidity that summoned flies out from the depths of Hell. But even in this summer heat the mosquitoes couldn't reach him in his car. This baby could go up to a whole 30 MPH, and he couldn't help but smile to himself as the background whizzed by in a blissful blur.

Three hours later, Alfred didn't realize his passenger found the ride far less exciting (in a happy way) until they were parked in his driveway. When he turned to announce they were there, all he could see was Lithuania's face and the indents his fingers were leaving on the seat from gripping so hard. He would not describe the other's expression as pure horror, but- well, no, that was actually pretty accurate. He looked like that cat Alfred had thrown a bucket of water on in his youth, except without any intense waves of murderous hatred.

When asked if he was alright, Toris nodded slowly and dragged his fingers across the seat. They shook as he reached to pull himself out. "Uh, are you sure you're fine?"

"V-v-very, very f-fine." Lithuania's legs nearly buckled as his shoes touched grass. "I-I, I-I… never… c-car."

"…You've never ridden in a car before?"

His hair swung out as he shook his head. "I heard-d they, that they had, they had them i-in England, but i-i-in, in Lithuania, we ne-never. I-I never."

"Oh. Uh. Sorry." He didn't know what he was apologizing for. Alfred sucked his lips in before he got out and rounded to the back of the trunk. He beat Toris by just a few steps. "Here, lemme get this for you."

The pair stopped just before the steps up to the front door. "Home sweet home," Alfred grinned. "Oyster Bay, Long Beach. Good thing you went to the Big Apple, 'cause otherwise it would've taken forever to pick you up. Just lemme grab my keys and we'll be in, okay?"

Toris was left at the door for half a minute when Alfred couldn't find his house keys and had to run back to the car to find them. He grabbed them from the front seat and skipped up the steps to unlock the door.

The inside of the house managed to soothe some of Toris' jitters. The outside of the house looked beautiful, but the inside was outright… gorgeous. After Toris stepped inside he paused to just observe.

The living room was wide, with wood floors and faded blue wallpaper. In it was a brown fat-cushioned couch with a wooden table in front of it, and on an end wood table was a silent radio. There was a mirror on one wall, along with a painting of some rolling hills he did not recognize and a black and white photograph of some people he didn't recognize, either. The kitchen had white tiles and a gas stove and oven. The cabinets were also made of wood with silver handles, and the sink was an off-white, the sort of color snow became after it had a few days to collect dirt and whatever else nature threw on the top of it.

Upstairs (the staircase was wood beneath its coat of white paint, and looked hand carved) there were two rooms and two bathrooms, one of which was Mr. America's. Toris' host cautiously skipped that room and went to the bathroom. The bathroom was decked in the same white tile as the kitchen, and a porcelain lined tub that had cast iron foot claws and faucet dominated the end of the bathroom. The sink was the same, with a clean square shaped mirror. Even the toilet looked spotless, and Toris couldn't bring himself to take a step inside the pristine bathroom as Alfred gestured in the middle of it.

Next was the guest bedroom, now Toris'. It had wood paneling like the rest of the house, though the wallpaper was green instead of blue. There was a twin sized mattress with a bed frame; a wooden dresser and a mirror on the wall were the only furnishings. Toris set his luggage down beside the bed and turned his head to inspect his new living space. Without looking he pressed a hand to the comforter and took slow steps over to the window. It was glass and was framed by dark green curtains, which felt even softer than the coat he had on his shoulders.

Toris' feet did not properly record the feel of the floor as he followed Mr. America down the stairs. The tour finished with America showing Toris a room cluttered with things, dust and cobwebs and requesting that Toris did not clean or organize anything inside of it. Its contents looked old and out of date, so Toris could guess that the room was storage for America's artifacts, likely some of the ones he had been concerned about his old human servants handling.

The tour finished at the kitchen table, where America insisted Toris sit while he prepared tea. He was out of coffee, he said, and added with a laugh that "I totally dumped all of England's tea in the harbor once, just to piss him off."

When the tea was gone along with any ideas for conversation, America excused himself and told Toris he could take a look at his room again and unpack. Toris took his suggestion (he would be out of place in any other space of the house) and went upstairs to "his" room. Within twenty minutes he had all of the contents of one suitcase tucked inside the drawers. A photograph of himself and Felix was set on top of his dresser, and another picture of a blurred crowd of his people in Vilnius was tucked between the face and frame of the mirror. It was his old capital, even if Felix was trying to take it from him. Even now Toris could feel the back and forth pull in his heart between Vilnius and his new capital Kaunas. Apparently the entirety of the Atlantic Ocean could not stop the tug of war.

His other suitcase kept its lips clenched. After everything it had been through between the ship and robbery Toris decided it couldn't even trust its own master anymore, and he sympathized with it as he put it into his closet. Since he had no idea what to do with himself, he spent the noon, afternoon and the beginning of the evening trying to make a rut in the floor around his bed. Wooden floors.

He didn't even realize the reason he had a stomach ache may have been because he hadn't eaten all day until Mr. America called him down for dinner. Saliva began to moisten the inside of his dry mouth the moment he smelled cooked meat. When he entered the room, his new employer was setting cups on the table. With a smile, the taller nation asked: "Have you ever had meatloaf?"

All throughout dinner the man across the table fought off any awkward silences with his perpetual talk. Mr. America explained why he had chosen to live in Oyster Bay. He had picked the location because one of his presidents had lived nearby, and even though they had died just a little over a year ago, America stayed because he enjoyed the location so much.

Toris nodded to every other sentence while he admonished himself for not asking where America had lived before they had driven away. As Toris' stomach began to churn like there was a little woman beating dirty laundry inside of it, he couldn't help but notice at how… unreal America seemed. Despite the animated gestures, the energy of his voice and the brightness of his ripe blueberry eyes, he was not real. It was as though Toris had eaten dinner with an opaque ghost, an eidolon.

When Toris' eyes opened next he was inside the guest bedroom, blanketed with dark. He could see a faint shine of light over the horizon through his window, a promise that if he ever neglected to close the curtains, the sun would glow straight through the illuminated glass and into his face. He stared at it, his surroundings entirely unfamiliar. It took him half a minute to replay what had happened yesterday and another half to realize he could not remember the last part of dinner. He pushed down into the mattress and admired the way it did not squeal.

The sun had barely begun to crawl above the trees when America was out the door. He took the simple breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast with him to the car and didn't notice the way Toris stared at him for what Toris considered to be bad manners.