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the-heaminator · 9 months

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Both actually succeeded in waking up before the time that they would be late in the morning, Arthur felt like shit, he needed his coffee, whatever that was last night had seemingly passed, he collected the forms, and filled a couple out when he got the time, changed and sped off to the closest coffee place, his order was a little concerning "As many shots of espresso as fill a large cup, and nothing else."

It frankly just tasted like coffee, he put a fuck ton of sugar into it, before he had to be off again, drinking it on the go, he felt better after that, not exactly calmer but more focused, he clocked in and found Ivan, it wasn't hard, he was usually in one of two places, the mechanics and engineering area or staring out of the exact same window, this time he was doing the latter, he rocked up looking more than a bit feral, Ivan wrinkled his nose, not in distaste, but because Arthur was a bit whiffy and smelled like truly unreasonable amounts of coffee.

Arthur opened his mouth to say something that he later forgot because he was cut off by Ivan saying "You smell like the devil's ballsack, Jesus fucking Christ."

"That was a nice greeting Ivan." Oh, he was definitely on too much caffeine, he was speaking a good bit faster than he normally was, the sarcasm was almost lost on him because of the speed but he just about managed to grab it.

"You do though, how much coffee did you drink? We don't want to scare off the estate agents."

"Just a cup, and what do we have to do with those leeches?"

"Don't you remember, we have the house viewing today?"

"Eh?" he thought for a moment, Ivan could see the cogs in his mind slowly turning "Fuck i forgot about that!"

"Don't worry, I have everything signed and all, you signed it the night before, we are in the clear, but my point still stands. You smell like the devil's ballsack."

"How would you know how that smells eh?"

"Experience."

You cannot frankly say anything to that, so Arthur didn't, Ivan took a bottle (canister?) of bodyspray out of one of numerous pockets, Arthur didn't question why he carried that, it had a lot of practical uses, to disguise a scent, to lead someone off a trail, to use it as a makeshift flamethrower, and also apparently to choke someone rather effectively at that "What the fuck was that for!"

His lungs did not like that at all, and he stood there coughing and spluttering for a while, Ivan grinned, toothy, he was frankly about to lose his shit but he didn't "See, better, you smell like a human, whether you look like one is debatable but we can work on that, now come, the viewing is in a few hours, we have to get the children, and I checked, the bus ride is like 2 hours long."

Arthur was not looking forward to that in the slightest, frankly, neither was Ivan, long bus rides were the spawn of satan honestly, Arthur coughed a little more up before choking out 14 different curses but followed Ivan to the children's room, Ivan gently rapped the door, it was still early and it was doubtful that all of them would be awake, and true to fashion, only Matthew came to answer the door, he looked tired like he had just woken up, he squinted up at Ivan "What do you want?"

"Did we not tell you that the house viewing would be today?" Both knew they didn't, they were supposed to have done this yesterday but were busy doing whatever it was that went down in their minds, so did not get the time to fulfil that, Matthew yawned "I have no memory of this, and it's too early, come back in a couple of hours, everyone is going to be cranky."

Arthur spoke, Matthew wrinkled his nose, he smelt like too much bodyspray and too much coffee, when he opened his mouth "About that, apparently the viewing is in a couple hours and the bus drive there is 2 hours."

Matthew groaned, "Can't either of you drive?" he did not very much want a 2-hour bus ride, he had had a couple of them before and they were always so mind-numbingly boring.

"Not legally, I'm half blind and he's half deaf and apparently that means we can't drive without getting that fixed and a specific driving test, so unfortunately not."

Alfred grumbled and shifted under the blankets, looked blearily at the door, and mumbled "Whadda fuck?" before shambling up looking a bit like a cryptid with how he had grabbed the blankets around him, it was a little funny to see, the humour was lost on Arthur at the moment though, a bit too antsy to get what needed to be done done.

Ivan didn't exactly hear what Alfred said, but he could figure it out "House viewing, we need to go soon."

"'s too early."

"What?"

"It's too early!"

"It's only 8?"

"Too early!

Arthur spoke, "We need to wake up Jack and Eleanor too, they are easy enough to wake up are they not?"

Alfred yawned, well, he was now awake, against his will, but he was awake, he gave a long shuddering yawn "Y-y-yeah, Matt's the only one that sleeps like the dead, and you smell bad enough that they'd wake up as soon as you got near them."

Arthur frowned, he would take more personal offence to those words if his head was working properly, still a little fuzzy from whatever yesterday was "A little mean of you to say that, completely uncalled for." He did sound a tad detached, as he almost floated into the room to wake up the other two, Jack buried himself deeper into the blanket when his head was uncovered, Arthur prodded him a little, then shook him, the final act did get him somewhere "Mgf? Who're you?"

He waited for Jack to recalibrate, blink the sleep out of his eyes "Oh, it's you, what do you want?"

"You have to get up," he wasn't even looking at Jack, more like looking through him.

"Whyyyy? it's too early."

"No it's not, get up."

There was significantly less tenderness there, he moved to wake Eleanor, who didn't actually need to be awoken, she woke up on her own pretty early anyways, and there were too many people speaking for her to speak for much longer, and Alfred was speaking loudly, presumably to get Ivan to hear what on earth it was that he was saying, frankly he was loud as it was, Matthew more needed to speak loud out of intent.

"Good, so you are awake as it is."

Her voice was still heavy with sleep "You said someth-" punctuated by a huge yawn "-ing about a house looking?"

"House viewing."

"No difference."

She had a point there, he needed to stop being pedantic "Anyways, get up, all of you get ready."

Ivan properly stepped inside, the door closed, Alfred and Matthew busied themselves with getting themselves and then the younger ones ready, it was always a bit of work to wrestle Eleanor into anything that looked halfway presentable, she had like 3 dresses for such instances, and she hated every single one of them, the one she hated the least was a dark red frock that had little birds embroidered onto it, but it was itchy, apparently no one ever had the idea of making her wear a white shirt underneath that to stop it from itching.

Ivan came up with that idea, Alfred facepalmed, that made so much sense, she changed, and looked considerably happier now that she was no longer itchy, she still didn't like wearing dresses but this was a considerable improvement, Jack very much could dress himself, he just looked like he came out of a bush at all times, Arthur practically had to wrestle him, something he was pretty good at all things considered, to get him to sit down for a moment to do his hair.#

Much like Arthur's, it refused to be styled or even to sit still for a moment, but he did find more leaves than should be found in the hair of any one child "Christ alive when was the last time you washed your hair?"

"Two days ago, why?"

"You have 3 different types of leaves in your hair, how on earth did you go about doing that?"

"I was looking for frogs."

Arthur clucked his tongue "You're not going to find frogs in this weather, they come out when it is warm and damp, they'll be looking to breed in the spring and summer, you're not finding frogs in February."

He turned to look at Arthur "Cool! so I can go looking for frogs in the summer then!"

"Turn around and stop moving."

Jack almost growled but stayed still, Arthur did something, and his hair was mostly in one place, Matthew was in awe "How did you do that? His hair never stays still!"

"Neither does mine, the same thing applies to his hair."

Alfred did his own hair, and Matthew did his own too, Matthew had nice hair, it was almost strawberry blonde, like 2 shades away from being ginger, Alfred's was the colour of ready-to-harvest wheat, Jack's was a very dark brown, Eleanor's was almost black, Ivan was braiding it, Matthew could do loose braids but she always found a way to make them look a mess.

"I didn't know you could braid hair?"

"I had sisters, I always did my younger sister's hair, I'm good at it."

How Ivan still had the muscle memory for it was beyond Arthur, before he realised he often braided rope to make it stronger, that makes sense, he was heavy too, the same cable that would support his weight would not do that for Ivam, practical too, he felt a bit foolish now that he thought about it.

She had very nice hair, long and silky, and very heavy, if he did one braid it could very easily be used as a weapon if a heavy elastic was put at the bottom, he did two to prevent it being used on him, and also she looked considerably better with two.

"Done, do you like your hair?"

She looked in the mirror, and poked the braids, "Yes, they are very strong, Matthew usually does them too loose."

"Matthew come here, let me show you. He pulled out a length of cord from yet another pocket, Matthew didn't question why he had that on him, spy things probably, knotted it on the top and showed him that he had to keep each strand pulled before looping over the other, so on and so forth, he got it pretty fast actually.

Arthur had been standing awkwardly in the corner, he had his briefcase in hand staring out of the window "We should probably leave now, I don't know how long the bus will take if any delays are involved."

Alfred got up, Eleanor grabbed a notepad and a pen, she would not let it be taken from her, and she had this odd little pink calculator that she carried with her everywhere for some unfathomable reason, that was in her dress pocket, at least she wouldn't be too bored n the bus ride, Jack got away with taking a little...well no one was exactly sure about what that was, it was an odd little fiddly thing that could be taken apart and be put back together in numerous different ways.

Alfred and Matthew were too old for something of that sort, they had the agency-provided phones, cellphones to be that, anything else could very easily be tracked without very specific protection, and they were children so the fancy equipment wasn't given to them.

The phones that Arthur and Ivan had were considerably nicer, but there was next to nothing downloaded on them, there were so many passwords everywhere, they carried around phones similar to Alfred and Matthew's for general calls because the agency-provided ones were difficult, Ivan could work them, he was quite good with technology, but been to him they were a bit too much hassle, and Arthur was frankly a bit shit with technology so that really did not help his case.

Well guess they would just have to be bored.

When leaving, the security looked at them oddly, she was used to seeing those two go on missions by themselves, but there had been word on the grapevine that they were either being retired or relegated as informants, what she didn't know that the cover required 4 children and them to be married, she could see the wedding bands, Ivan forced himself to look serious, Erze loved teasing the everloving shit out of him, Lovino hadn't yet worked up the courage to do so, he was a mostly new recruit, and both Ivan and Arthur scared him, "So where are you six going?"

"House viewing." Both her eyebrows raised enough they almost disappeared into her hair "Christ so the rumours were true. Are you actually being retired?"

"By Mary no, not yet at least, we got relegated to information, which is...less than ideal, but we can't do anything about it anymore, so oh well."

"Well, you two have been getting quite old, it was probably a long time coming. A really long time coming"

The children just decided to listen and not say anything, everyone but Jack understood that intuitively, he had to be told because he was never the greatest at reading the room, the conversation continued "We aren't that old."

"Both of you were born in the mid 70's no? And almost everyone I've seen retired was like 30 max. You both are nearly 50, relatively speaking, yea you're fucking old now, and Francis, did you hear he was put into admin, I think they were doing a clear-out or something."

Arthur made a face "You aren't that young anymore Erze either." Arthur would file that information about Francis away for later

"Hey, I just turned 33. You've still got a decade and a half on me."

Jack was fighting not to explode, as was Alfred, Jack made a sound that sounded awfully like a balloon being deflated, this was just odd to watch, the lady, Erze, liked them quite a bit "And so these four are meant to be your undercover? Isn't being married not enough."

Arthur froze, fuck they had forgotten to take off the rings, it felt nice on his finger, so much so that he immediately forgot it was there "Yes, Yao said it was because they needed somewhere to go, and it isn't frankly safe for them to stay here for too long."

"He has a lot more faith in your parenting abilities than I would say is a particularly good idea, but I mean, they're pretty sensible and you've managed to keep yourselves alive for the past 50ish years, so I mean, it can't go too bad, now shoo, go to wherever you needed to go."

She let them through, smiled softly at Eleanor, who really did like her, she took that as a compliment because Eleanor didn't like a lot of people, and then went back to her work, Lovino looked at her oddly "You're 33?"

"Mind your next words very carefully."

That shut him up, anything he could say could be taken in a bad way and well, she was strong, she was sometimes used as an operative, for good reason, and in physical training, she could snap him in half with her bare hands, so shutting up was the best thing he could do.

The little chitchat over there had saved them a bit, they only had to wait a couple of minutes for the bus, it was a Saturday, so there were no children in the bus, and they were making good time, Alfred and Matthew sped up to the second decker of the bus, Ivan hit his head on the roof of the bus more than once, he had to hunch quite a lot to avoid it, the bus was practically empty so Jack and Eleanor took the front seats in front of the big window and pretended to drive the bus, because of course they did.

To be fair that entertained the both of them for a good while, it was a clear day, cold but clear, Alfred fell asleep rather quickly on Matthew's shoulder, he should have actually gone to sleep at a decent time last night, but no, he fell asleep at like 3 am, tinkering about when he really shouldn't have been, he was tired as all fuck, he was not used to operating on 5 hours of sleep at all.

Matthew saw that coming but Alfred was heavy, and he was hungry, they hadn't had breakfast in their hurry to leave, he looked behind him, he could see Ivan staring off into space so hard he almost went cross-eyed, Arthur was reading the information about the house quickly, or at least he was trying, some of the fine print, actually all of the fine print, he couldn't read, he sheepishly asked Matthew to read it, he knew about half the words in the more monetary side of things, but everything else considered this actually sounded like a pretty nice place, 3 bedroom, living room, garden, near the sea, this seemed nice.

He handed the papers back to Arthur, Ivan had fallen asleep momentarily, Arthur jabbed him in where he thought his ribs were, he couldn't feel the ribs very well, but it woke Ivan up, he had only lightly dozed off and looked affronted at this manner of waking him up, but he was right, this was not the place to sleep, and he had gotten plenty of sleep over the past couple days, this was not the time.

Jack had finally bored from looking out the window, started fiddling with his little thingamabob, Eleanor was trying to draw something, she couldn't draw very well but she had drawn so many birds over time that yea she knew how to draw a crow from memory, in a very childish style of course, but reflecting of the style of old anatomical prints that she found in the library corners that had clearly not been looked at in so long, she liked tracing animals.

She did hate drawing feathers though, it looked considerably wonkier than usual due to being in a moving vehicle, it consumed a lot of her time, Jack stopped fiddling and watched her draw for a while, it was always nice to see, very few people got on the bus, maybe like 3 more people come onto the top deck, 2 of them disembarked, Ivan was growing suspicious of the one that stayed, but he got off a good couple stops before they needed to, so it was unlikely that they were being tailed. Good.

Alfred hadn't woken up once, Arthur was a little worried about him, the floatiness from earlier had mostly dissipated, good thing that was, he could not afford to be woozy in a time like this, there were other people around him for Christ's sake, this wasn't just about him and Ivan anymore.

They disembarked, Ivan hit his head hard again, cursed a lot of things, and Jack whined that he was hungry, Eleanor needed to piss, Alfred was not entirely present, still half asleep, and Matthew was also hungry, Ivan too, this was not going particularly well.

But they made it in good time, the house in question, 17 Priglestone Close, bit of an odd name, but it could be worse frankly, it wasn't even a proper estate agent, some other informant lived here before a while ago, the "estate agent" just so happened to be nobody but Antonio, massive gossiper of a man he was, but he could pull off the energy of an estate agent very well, oh this is going to send rumours all through the fucking agency wasn't it.

He looked genuinely surprised that they did actually show up, somehow he felt like this was a whole practical joke or something, It was beyond difficult to imagine those two settling down, they had been a staple in most high-stakes missions ever since Antonio had been there, and likely for a good long time before that, Christ they were actually getting relegated, he was not prepared for that.

Less was he prepared for the children to actually be there, so this was actually happening huh?

He was always a little scared of those two, they were always so good at their job, they killed without remorse, carried out orders single-mindedly, they were frankly scary, but they did look old now, not in uniform, not during a mission, not covered in blood, they looked human now.

He didn't have too much time to dwell on it for much longer, he didn't want to displease them, he showed them around the house, "As you will be aware, you're going to be provided with the furniture and everything."

Jack had sped off into the garden after checking out the rooms and kitchen and bathroom and stuff, and just next door someone looked over the fence at him "Who are you?"

"Who are you?"

"I asked first."

"Jack."

"Last name?"

"Ehhhhhh?? It's long."

"How long?"

"16 letters, 17 if we include the dash." Mental maths was never his strong suit.

"So then what is it?"

"Braginsky-Kirkland."

"That's 17 letters, 18 with the dash."

"Don't be weird about it, what is your name."

"Ludwig Belichmidt."

"What are you, German?"

"What are you, Russian Costco?"

That was a fair thing to say, the boy, Ludwig, asked "So what are you doing here anyways, no one has lived there in ages!"

"We're going to live here in a bit, I think."

"Jack who are you talking to?" Alfred called from inside, something made redundant by Alfred walking into the garden, someone yelled something in German that neither could understand, Ludwig yelled back, and someone else came out.

Immediately the tension on the room...err...outdoors, thickened "Jack who is this you're talking to?"

"Oh, that's Ludwig."

"And that's Jack the Russian Costco!"

Both Alfred and whoever that oddly pale kid across the fence was, were concerned, Jack the Russian Costco?? The two seemed happy enough about it, hadn't they met like not even 5 minutes ago?

Did Jack's animal magnetism work on humans too or something because this was odd, Jack continued "I don't know who he is though."

"Gilbert Belichmidt at your service." They tried to shake hands over the fence but Jack was a bit too short for that.

Jack laughed a little "So you're brothers! Yiu don't look like eachother at all."

"I'm too awesome for that." He didn't elaborate further and glared at Alfred, waiting for him to introduce himself

"Alfred F. Um....Um...Braginsky-Kirkland at your service."

Ludwig asked "What does the F stand for?" Jack also wanted to know that actually, Alfred always avoided the question when he asked, "Yea Alfie what does it stand for?"

He looked a little embarrassed "Ok fine, only because I know you're not going to stop pestering me Jack."

He took a breath, flushed a bit "It stands for Fly-From-Fornication."

Jack and Gilbert lost their collective shits while Ludwig was doing the maths.

"Wait, wait, wait, does that mean your full name is 41 letters long, without the dashes?"

Alfred hadn't actually done the maths before but that sounded about right "Yea, unfortunately."

Gilbert looked at the two closely, "You don't look like brothers either?"

Briskly "Adopted, I got my brother, hes got her sister, so I mean. We aren't related but we are in the same family."

"Fuckin' weird, who are your parents anyways then?"

Alfred really didn't want to call Arthur and Ivan his dads, not yet at least, but if he was to keep their cover then he would have to "Our dads are inside looking at the house, with my brother and his sister."

Ludwig's eyes went so wide "A man can marry a man? I didn't know that!"

"I mean, yeah you can, just don't ask Opa, I don't think he would be very pleased about it ok?"

Matthew sidled outside with Eleanor in tow, Jack and Ludwig were vibing so hard over the fence that a couple squirrels had come to watch.

"Gilbert, this is my brother Matthew, and that's Jack's sister Eleanor."

She was far too short to see over the fence, so she thumped against it and said "I'm here too."

Gilbert analysed all of them, he gave not half a mind to whatever Ludwig and Jack were doing because whatever it was was incredibly strong in the vibe department, Matthew did look a lot like Alfred, Eleanor a lot like Jack except she looked a little more predisposed to violence, just based off vibes. It may have also been because she was short and was staring up at him with very green eyes, with murder in them.

He lingered too long on Alfred for some reason, curse him, he shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain but Christ was this not a good sign at all for him.

Opa called them, they had to go, Jack and Ludwig already had hit it off so well that they already high fived to the best of thier ability over the fence, which missed but the sentiment was still there.

Arthur and Ivan finally came out to check out the garden with Antonio, spacious, had a tree, had space for flower beds, they knew they didn't have a choice but really this place was good.

The furniture was still to arrive, but yes, it was good, arranging the furniture would be an undertaking but they had done it so many times before that it really was no big deal "This is a pretty nice place, who were you talking to Jack, Alfred?"

"Neighbours, they're really nice!"

Jack really did like the neigbours, he barely knew Ludwig but he wanted to have so much fun with him.

Alfred made an odd little face, Arthur could recognise that, he hoped it wasn't but it was there clear as day, what is is I'm not telling you, fuck you, but you can probably figure it out "Yea...they're fine I guess."

Ivan clapped his hands, what he thought was lightly, it was not lightly, "Right, so who is hungry?"

Everyone save for Arthur was very much hungry, Arthur probably was too he just couldn't tell too well.

The arrangements were done inside with Antonio, the same signature was used as were with the rest of the housing documents so the government wouldn't get too concerned, they were good at this, they wouldn't slip up too easily.

Ivan remembered seeing a McDonalds on the way here, couldn't be more than a couple minutes walk, so they did just that, bidding a very surprised Antonio with the documents, the man still wasn't sure any of this actually happened.

"Lo siento, what the fuck was that?

No one answered him so he went about his day and getting the documents back to the agency without being too odd about it, the children were hungry and it wasn't every day they got to go outside of the protection of the agency building and even rarer that they got proper fast food!

The agency liked testing nutrient mixtures on them, and while some of them were indeed quite nutritious, most of them tasted like ass, not like Alfred particularly cared, the man was hungry most of the time and well, he was also quite heavy because of it, it might've tasted bad but eh he was hungry.

They all had big appetites, and none of them had eaten since last night, the total cost of food for the 6 of them came to nearly 45 pounds, which was a lot, but all the children fucking loved it, they all had a healthy appetite, Arthur had to be mildly cajoled into eating something, but he did eventually, the spare food was taken to be eaten in the bus.

The bus ride was...boring, as expected, everyone was awake this time, going back had them leave the children, they could practically feel the gossip crawling up their spine as they walked through the halls, doing it together made it considerably worse, they had been summoned by Yao again, this.

This could actually maybe not go too bad.

Maybe.

But christ Arthur was full, he needed his coffee, but according to Ivan he looked a bit more human so that was something.

"Come in you two. I've been expecting this."

#Spy au #The heam writes #Bro is being productive #Ruseng #Hws England #hws Russia #Hws america #hws canada #Hws australia #Hws New Zealand #Hws Germany #Hws prussia #Hws hungary #Hws spain

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