EDIT: So this has been finished for some time now. I am likely not going to go back and edit the mistakes I've found now, a year later, but I will say I still love this fic very much and am extremely proud of how it turned out. I hope everyone who has found this fic after its completion enjoy it as much as the people who read it during the process did.

Sierra – thank you so much for your wonderful review. I would love to speak with you more, but unfortunately fanfiction . net deleted your email address, and as you weren't signed in, I have no way of letting you know that except hoping that perhaps you return and read this. : ( So I hope you return somehow and we can talk. I'm beabae on ffnet but also on A03, deviantart and tumblr, if you have accounts at any of those places and wish to talk there instead.

End Edit.

To restate: The pairs are UK - US and noncommittal!FrUk. One will have love, the other, sex. BEST OF BOTH WORLDS! [/shotshot by all fans because I can't make anyone happy]

So yeah, this is less focus on the pairings and more on the characters. I'm not actually a porn writer. I'm sorry if I mislead anyone with that last fic D8

Pre fic warning:I was focusing so hard on space travel (which mightstillbe inaccurate) that I couldn't stand the thought of researching complicated things like psychological processes in mental hospitals and treatment down to the fine lines, so some of the psychology may be inaccurate as well. Sorry in advance, I tried. D8

The boy was tall, blond, and silent as Arthur Kirkland entered the room. It was a simple room with windows, an easy chair and a striped green couch. The boy was sitting on the couch at the moment, shifting uneasily and frowning at the wooden arm rests on the sides, but looked up as Arthur shut the door and took his seat in the plush brown armchair.

"Good evening," Arthur says, smiling calmly and adjusting himself in the chair. He's so used to this room, it's familiar and cheers him up. Hopefully, his good cheer and calm will cheer and calm his patient as well, "You're Alfred, aren't you?"

Alfred says nothing.

His shoulders are hunched around his lowered head. If he were somewhere far more dangerous than a well-lit room with floral wallpaper, sitting on a rather distasteful green couch, he might look somewhat menacing. As it is, to Arthur the boy looks rather small and frightened. An impressive feat for someone who appears to be well built, and would tower well above the Arthur's head if they were to stand.

"My name's Arthur Kirkland. You can call me Arthur if you want. I work here, and we're going to be meeting rather often so you have someone you can talk to if you want to. That's alright, isn't it?"

Alfred says nothing.

"How much English do you speak?" Arthur says, making sure to annunciate his words as best as he can.

Alfred opens his mouth, hesitates a moment, and then says, "A little."

"Are there other languages you're better at speaking?" Alfred mutters something indistinct but it sounds confirming, "What is it?"

Alfred says nothing.

"Est-ce vous parlez français?" Arthur tries. Nothing. "Tu habla espagnol?" The same. "Sprechen Sie Deustch?" and he's exhausted most of his repertoire. He couldn't have spoken in much more than broken Spanish in any case. God forbid French or German. "I suppose we'll just stick to English, then."

Alfred agrees more heartily than before, a firm, "Yes," passing his lips. He doesn't nod or shake his head to agree or disagree, and though his hands are constantly fidgeting in his lap. He doesn't gesture much when speaking. Arthur wishes he would. It might make him more articulate.

"Then you understand me well enough?" Arthur says.

"Yes," Alfred says. His head is still lowered and his eyes stare straight ahead. He doesn't seem to mind staring at people or pointing, from what Arthur has been told. He doesn't appear to notice social signals. He doesn't speak any of the languages he's been exposed to, barring English. Even his English is spoken with an accent that some describe as German, others New Zealand and a third party, Norwegian. Arthur finds it rather slow, perhaps with a hint of Russian, and yet is reminded of the Welsh at the same time.

Alfred has no last or middle name. He claims 'Alfred' to be his only name, and thus his origins are difficult to trace, as he refuses to reveal those as well. It almost seems like he couldn't reveal them if he wanted to.

And so, Arthur Kirkland had done what any intelligent therapist would do before meeting with such a high-profile and potentially dangerous patient: he read the report.

Alfred, who has not given his age so they had to guess it, who has no last name and no history to follow, who turned up on the border of Russia and China with neither a passport, nor any personal belongings in the world. Alfredclaims to have spent his life since he was eight years old, adopted by aliens.

Arthur, a bristling skeptic, had been practically dyingto call 'bullshit' since the moment he'd received the file.

"Well, I'm your friend. I'm here for you to talk to if you feel the need to be with someone, and if I'm not around you can tell one of the lovely nurses and I'll see you as soon as I can. You can talk to other people to try and improve your English, but if there's something private or important that you don't want to tell others, you can always come to me, instead," Arthur says, smiling.

Alfred gives a small, uneven smile back, as though he's not entirely used to it. His lips thin but he doesn't show his teeth in the slightest.

Their session ends half an hour later, with Arthur demonstrating how to use a pencil, and Alfred's hands fidgeting quietly in his lap.

000

The man is blond, like Alfred, but they are very certainly not the same sorts of people.

Francis Bonnefois sits straight up in his chair, his hair, which Arthur supposes is usually quite sinuous, lays rather limp and wet from the downpour outside and dash to get indoors. The rain outside still rattles the eastern window frames. Francis' navy suit bears splatter marks on the shoulders and front, his gray pants the same.

"So the government sent you?" Arthur says.

"When people show up out of thin air, the government likes sending people," Francis says, smiling serenely.

Arthur nods, "Fair enough. I expect you won't be interfering with my work at all?"

Francis shakes his head, "Of course not. I will merely be here, you will give me transcripts and tell me what you believe dear Alfred's problem is, and I will send a report. That is all."

Arthur huffs. "Very well then. You'd like his first transcript, I assume?"

Francis smiles. He his white teeth that glisten between lush pink lips, Arthur can't help but notice. "That would be fantastic, thank you."

000

One week later, Alfred's English is improving and Arthur realizes the only reason he was so quiet before was he didn't have the words to speak with. Alfred seemed to understand well enough, with occasional miming, but now, Alfred can talk back to him. It's still unknown what his first language is, and his accent still sounds like Welsh and Russian, but now that Alfred knows basic English, he almost seems to enjoy speaking.

With a laptop computer on a coffee table and a notebook on his lap, Arthur listened to Alfred speak in his stuttering, broken English, and describe the worlds he'd visited in his mind. There's a sketchbook to Alfred's left, to help them communicate when words don't get through. It's been invaluable in the past week since showing Alfred how to use a pencil and eraser.

"Asþenëllajakûoiąs," Alfred pronounces without hesitation, though just hearing the word makes Arthur's brain ache a little. "People are short," he holds his hand down to his knee, "and big. I had to, um…" he gets out of his chair to shuffle across the floor on his hands and knees to the wall, where he stands and returns to his seat.

"Crawl?" Arthur offers, and Alfred nods (he only started the day before, but now nods in abundance), and repeats, trying the word on his tongue.

"Crr-awl," he nods, because along with English, he's started picking up habits such as nodding and shaking his head. It makes speaking to him much less formal. Much less awkward and halting. "I crawl, because it is heavy. I could not walk," Arthur digests this and nods in understanding, scrawling on his note pad again. Alfred doesn't seem to notice or care. "Very hot, and brown. Tony didn't like Asþenëllajakûoiąs, but we had to give cows."

"Cows?" Arthur says.

Alfred nods. "The skin and, er… inside? Very good. We… got things for it."

"You sold cattle, then? To aliens?" Arthur can hardly force himself to say it, but he repeats it three times in simpler and simpler terms until Alfred has a small smile on his face and is nodding once more.

"Tony is Grréh. He can…" Alfred pauses, considering, before inhaling deeply and purposefully.

"Breathing? Tony can breathe here?" Arthur does his own exaggerated breathing. "He can breathe?"

"Yes," Alfred smiles, proud of being able to communicate. "Cows grow on Earth, so many Grréh are coming by to take cows sometimes."

Arthur nods, smiles back, and notes down that Alfred seems to also have absorbed cow abduction urban legends. "And why do you bring them to other planets?"

"Food," Alfred says, "and the soft part," he rubs along his arm, "is nice. They like it. At Kanataraabajadina, cows make me see the people. So I liked them there."

Arthur is ready to write down the risk of a possible, serious food allergy as he asks, "Cows make you see people?"

Alfred nods, "Kanataraabajadina. I can not see people there until they eat or wear cow. I see different… eeh, lines? Than they do. Different light?"

"So you couldn't see anyone because they only appeared in certain lighting, which you couldn't see?" Arthur says slowly.

Alfred says, "Ih— yes."

"Why could you see them after they'd eaten beef?"

Alfred points at his stomach, "I saw the cow here."

Arthur decides not to question that, though he would have thought that being unable to see the skin also meant Alfred wouldn't be able to see below the skin. "So you visited lots of different planets?" Alfred confirms it. "How did you breathe?"

Alfred presses his hands to his face, "Em, erm, on my face… Tony made a…" he rips a piece of paper from his sketch book, folds it in half and holds it over his mouth and nose like a mask, "And for my eyes. Sometimes ears, too."

"Did you ever have to cover the rest of your body?"

Alfred nods again, "Some did not have good air for me. Or they are very hot or very cold. Or too close to, uh…" he looks out the window. "Like your sun. So I have to cover me or I am dead."

Arthur nods. He scratches more notes into his pad, and considers his next question.

"What was the very first place you remember visiting?" he asks.

"Tony ship," Alfred says. "I was little," he holds his hand down low by the seat of his chair to show just how little he thinks he might've been.

"What about before Tony's ship? The very first place you remember."

Alfred pauses. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and chews on it for a long moment before speaking.

"Earth."

Arthur chokes on the spit he was about to swallow. "Y—Earth, Alfred?"

Alfred nods.

"What, er, what about Earth? What do you remember?"

"Um…" Alfred thinks for a long time, his hands fidgeting in his lap for at least a minute before he reaches out to his notebook and pencil and quickly sketches out the scene.

Lines jut out from the bottom of the paper, what seem to be shoots of grass with large blobs at the end, and above them, blank paper filled with lightly shaded circles.

"Did you live here?" Arthur asks, and Alfred nods. "With who?"

"A big boy and girl."

"Adults?"

"Yes— that," Alfred smiles, but then it falters and his hands droop back into his lap as he lays the picture down on the table. "They were not nice to me. I don't like them."

"Did they hurt you?" Alfred stares blankly for a moment, before Arthur mimes hitting himself in the head and then clutching it in pain. "Hurt you?" Then, Alfred nods.

"Sometimes. It was not good."

Arthur nods slowly, thoughtfully, and believes things are starting to come together. "Can you tell me about them?"

Alfred's eyes scan the room. "Uh. Yellow," he tugs on a strand of his own hair, "and brown," he points to his face. "Never," he smiles, "and always outside in the, uh, sun. With me. My hands… hurt?" when Arthur nods, "They hurt a lot. Red water, here," he shows his fingertips. If he squints, Arthur can see the faintest scarring at the tips. "From taking these," he points down again to his picture, and at the little clumps at the ends of the grass.

"What color were they? The plants," Arthur also points to them.

"White."

Arthur starts a quick google image search, and pulls up a picture of cotton. "Like this?"

Alfred nods, "Like that."

"And what are these?" Arthur asks, pointing to the circles, "Can you describe them?"

Alfred thinks, fidgets, stands, and after a moment walks to the window to point out at the sky. "At night. But more."

"You mean stars?" Arthur says.

"Stars?" Alfred says, returning to his seat.

"Stars," Arthur goes once more to his laptop and google images, typing in 'stars' and is rather surprised at how many images that appear are satellite photos and not stylized five-pronged ones.

Alfred, it seems, is even more surprised. His eyes go wide and he positively yelps, jumping out of his seat and onto his feet once more. Pointing wildly to the images, beaming and shouting, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

He crumples in on himself, knees to chest and chin to knees. He breaks into gasps and tears not five minutes later.

Arthur is unable to calm him, and so the nurses take him back to his room and try to tempt him with hot food, and discreetly fill a needle with sedatives.

He sleeps quietly until night. When he wakes, he begs to be let outside so that he might look at the sky more clearly than through his window.

He's led in once more when the tears resume flooding his cheeks, and no soothing words or promises of companionship will calm him.

And so, gently, Alfred is sedated once more.

000

That afternoon, before Alfred wakes and begs for the roof, Arthur fills out papers and prints the transcript before leaving the room with the striped green couch for good. The radio on a desk is tuned to a mix station when Arthur enters the office area, and Francis sits primly in the chair across from where Arthur normally makes his nook. Since the first day, he's sat there, calmly taking the transcripts Arthur hands him and sliding them into his black suitcase. They've done this for a week exactly and it's already as routine as it gets.

Today, Francis' suit is jet black, his oxford is deep red and his shoes shine like dimes. If Arthur looks closely, his nails have been newly manicured. Without looking closely, his hair is blond and perfect.

Arthur resists the temptation to ask how many hours Francis spends each morning plucking his eyebrows to get that perfect arch and wonders if he should monitor Francis' eating habits, just in case the man notices he's gaining weight and does something stupid to try and lose it.

Then, Arthur reflects he's probably just been hearing quite a bit from the two anorexics in Wing D and that not everyone tries to starve themselves when they find flaws in their otherwise immaculate appearances.

He refrains from poking at Francis' habits because of such concerns, though. After all, if the man wants to use eyeliner (which Arthur had caught him employing it in the bathroom the previous Thursday), so be it, as long is his waist remains fleshy.

"So I assume you've heard about our little incident?" Arthur says as Francis opens his suitcase to slide the transcript in. Francis will look over it later in the evening, along with all the other files he's gathered during the day, write down his report on the going-ons with Alfred, and send it all off in express mail, and all the packaging and envelopes arrive at their destination the following afternoon, right on schedule.

"I've heard only vaguely," Francis says as the radio on the desk begins belting Penny Lane by the Beatles. A passing secretary hums along with it. Her chest is flat, but Francis' eyes still dart over for a moment. Arthur has never particularly noticed her, but he does notice the glance. "Enlighten me."

"I asked him where he lived before he was in space and he drew a picture of a cotton field at night. So I tried to show him a picture of stars and he went completely off it. He was crying for at least twenty minutes and the nurses practically had to pry him off my laptop. It was bizarre."

"What do you think caused it?" Francis asks.

"The images of stars, obviously. Why they had that effect on him is a little more difficult to answer, though I'd wager it's a very extreme version of, ahem, 'home sickness,'" Arthur huffs, "He's very convinced that he's actually gone to other planets. They're in the transcript. I believe it's a sort of very vivid escapist fantasy that he's created to escape some sort of highly traumatic event that probably happened in his childhood around eight years old— when he first claims he was abducted. That, or his childhood as a whole, with it manifesting at eight years."

"Did he say about it?"

"He apparently worked in cotton fields and the people he lived with would hurt him. He doesn't quite… have the vocabulary to tell me exactly what they did, but it was most definitely not the sort of environment a healthy child would've grown up in."

"But he admits to being a human at least?"

"Human, yes. He's never denied that. The important thing he's admitted is that he realizes he's an Earthling."

"So you might be getting through to him?" Francis' pink lips quirk their ends upward into a smile.

"I might have a chance, if I don't tear all my hair out first," Arthur sighs, just as the radio changes songs again and David Bowie begins to bellow, "There's a star man waiting in the sky, he'd like to come and meet us but he'd think he'd blow our minds—"

Arthur might have broken the dial with how forcefully he turns the radio off.

Francis raises a single perfect eyebrow, and says nothing.

"I've had quite enough of outer space for a while," Arthur huffs. Francis nods mutely, and yet manages to seem like he's rolling his eyes while doing it. "If you need me, I'll be making tea. Good day." He turns and walks out the door with nary a look over his shoulder, leaving the Frenchman far behind.

Arthur leaves late that night and walks home with the stars just barely visible above him, faded and hidden among the city lights so that only the merest pinpricks can be seen against an otherwise velvety black backdrop.

He imagines Alfred up on the roof with the nurses beside him (how it was when he left the hospital. No tears, yet. Not like that afternoon.) and thinks Alfred must be straining himself quite a bit to catch a glimpse of flickering lights.

His apartment on 3rd Street is across from the bakery on the fourth floor. It's small, messy and smells of cats inside, though he got rid of his cat years ago. He has no time to clean during his evenings and has no desire to clean on his days off. There are pictures on the wall of his adoptive family, and on the coffee table, a vase of badly arranged, half-dead, thornless roses that would've driven his mother and eldest brothers mad.

His address book lies beside the vase, all acquaintances, none particularly close. No girlfriends to speak of— or boyfriends, for that matter. No cell numbers or kissy-goo-goo notes in a diary. There's day-old leftovers in the refrigerator and he reheats it in the microwave for dinner, eating scraps of spicy chicken over the sink and sipping a spot of tea after.

His bed is empty when he crawls between the sheets near midnight.

He tells himself he's happy with his life, and a wretched little voice in the back of his mind recites all the drawbacks of lying to yourself until the drone subsides and, somehow— headache, sore back and all— Arthur falls sleep.

He pretends he doesn't pay attention when he wakes up all alone.

000

A/N:

This thing is so long and hard to write, I don't even know if I can manage this… afskgfd

I got the idea for this this back before Us/Entire UK, actually, but only just started getting it out. This was supposed to just be three chapters but I think it's going to be four now maybe. I'll try to keep it short…

This was kind of meant to try and marry FrUk and UsUk in a non-sexual fill, and also use space, which is awesome and US/sky/Outer Space needs so much more love. France and England were selected as the main characters because, though the story is driven by America, France and England are the main focus. Sorry, UsUk peoples. It's still important in here!

Notes:

-Something important right off: They aren't sedating Al because he's crying. They're sedating him because he'shysterical. It's different from crying. It's kind of frightening. It's just as frightening to be the one hysteric. It's a horrible feeling to not want to cry but just not be able to stop.

-Picking cotton by hand is very tedious and strenuous on people. The briars on cotton plants sometimes prick, draw blood at or scar the hands, arms and fingers of pickers if they're not careful. With how many pieces of cotton there can be in a field, however, it's pretty much guaranteed that (at least once) their concentration will falter. Cotton was one of the main exports of America (besides tobacco) and still is harvested today, but now with machines more often than not.

-I'm somewhat more familiar with German and French than I am with Spanish (wtf, Mexico?) . I can maybe tell you my name, how I'm feeling, a few colors, numbers, and "look, a tiny/big pregnancy!" in Spanish (is that even possible?) , but not well enough to know them on paper. I'm pretty sure the German and French are correct, though. Even though I can only read German and it's confusing with its capital letters on the nouns and four different ways to say 'the'. Oh, German D8 and they say English is confounded.

-the things that showed up in the google search bar were more likely satellite images of nebulas. Alfred loves stars as well (though being in a city, it's very difficult for him to catch a glimpse of any, and so he's halfway oblivious to them right now) but in space, nebulas look pretty damn awesome, too. And he wouldn't have to worry about his eyes melting out of their sockets each time he looked at them! 8D So Alfred's definition of "star" at the moment is a little vague. But he knows the general idea. Now as long as Arthur doesn't explain a pulsar or quasar as a star, too… at which point, Alfred would seriously question Earth's knowledge of space.

-Alfred's speech patterns are based on some of the foreign students at my school.

ONE CHAPTER DOWN. YEAH. WE ROLLIN'.

Hetalia belongs to H.H., not me. I own nothing. NOTHING I SAY. ;_;

Reviews are beloved.

Next time:pubbing with a government official.