#even though it's sort of just one scene from a bigger AU i'll never write

[averyblair]

Halcyon

Fandom: Hetalia

Characters: England, America

Ship: AmericaxEngland

Tags and warnings: Human AU, post-apocalyptic, minor injury mention, minor infection

Word count: 1030

"Though Arthur had the fever, it was Alfred who was feverish, paranoia fuelling a frantic dash around the room."

In a ruined world, Alfred and Arthur take shelter in a motel.

Read below the cut or >here< on AO3.

(I really want to write a proper USUK apocalypse AU one day (I think high stakes are good for their dynamic) but I have too many other fics to complete, so this is just one little scene.)

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Before the motel door had even shut behind them, he had found the bed - stiff old sheets in a hideous beige, a lumpy spring mattress, and a splintering frame that creaked dangerously, threatening to collapse under the shock of his sudden appearance.

It was the most comfortable Arthur had been in months and he felt his body loosen, the burden of the chase lifting as he relaxed into the dusty comforter, closing his eyes to crumbling plaster and black mould.

Still, when no-one joined him after several minutes, he cracked an eye open and propped himself up on his elbow.

“Al?”

“I’ll be with you in a minute, Artie. Just rest up for a bit.”

Though Arthur had the fever, it was Alfred who was feverish, paranoia fuelling a frantic dash around the room. Whilst Arthur had lounged, he had rearranged the furniture, chairs and cabinets now barricading the door, the latch apparently not trusted to hold steady.

“Calm down love, we lost them miles back.”

“Yeah, but there’s always others. New place just means new problems,” Alfred muttered distractedly, closing the thin curtains and examining them thoroughly, checking for any gaps or tears that might expose their occupancy. “All good! All right, let’s see what we’ve got for you.”

He was at Arthur’s side in an instant, ready to tip out the small leather satchel that held their most essential supplies. Arthur stopped him with a hand on his arm, sparing him the effort.

“Tylenol, love. Expired Tylenol. That’s all we’ve got.”

“Shit. Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. I was taking stock last night.”

“Okay. Fuck… okay. Well you should take some anyway. It might help the fever. Fuck. Are you going to be okay?”

“I’m fine, Al. I’m on the mend, see,” Arthur held out his leg, trousers rolled to his knee. “We’ve come back from worse.”

Alfred, squeamish in a way that Arthur found endearing, took a reluctant glance at the wound. A deep stab from an attacker’s worn screwdriver, it had been gnarly in the first days, quickly infecting and leaving Arthur weak. Now it was still a little red, and perhaps too warm to the touch, but it was healing. Miraculous, when all they’d had to treat it was soap, water and time.

“Yeah, okay. That’s not so bad. It’s looking better.”

“Told you,” Arthur leant up for a kiss, but he stilled upon hearing a distant clatter, hand frozen around Alfred’s neck as he glanced back at the door.

After a moment of silence, he was about to laugh off his nerves, ready to accuse a passing animal or some loose trimming in the wind, when there was another bang. A loud crack followed, then, a little closer, violent rattling.

“Someone’s checking the doors,” he hissed to a startled Alfred.

“Looking for us?” Alfred whispered back.

Arthur shook his head.

“No. I don’t think so. We were careful. No-one could have seen us.”

The assailant grew closer. Arthur could hear their footsteps now, and there was a loud crack as a near-by door was forced open. Somewhere close enough that they could hear drawers opening and the magnetic click of a bathroom cabinet. Still at the bedside, Alfred ducked, and Arthur slipped off the mattress to join him.

“Under the bed,” Alfred gave his shoulder an urgent push, forcing him low onto the carpet. As Arthur sucked in his stomach and squeezed beneath the low bed frame, he distantly remembered a version of himself that would have been disgusted by the crusty fibres beneath his fingertips. 

It was too tight a fit for Alfred, who was taller, and somehow still muscular despite his meagre diet.

“Bathroom,” Arthur whispered to him, “behind the shower curtain.”

“No. I need to be here if they get in. You’re not in fighting condition.”

Arthur grunted in frustration, ready to argue, but the spirit left him when he heard a clatter to his right.

It was their door now. From the ground, he could see the wooden base trembling as someone gave it a few solid shoves, and then something heavier, perhaps a large boot or some makeshift battering ram. Arthur flinched at every crash, but the door held. 

The assailant moved along, to the next door, and then the next. Probably a rogue scavenger. Probably alone. Probably hoping to get lucky and find a room that hadn’t been pillaged yet. Toothpaste, shampoo, detergent. It was all valuable now.

Still, the noises were several doors away before Arthur could relax, and he squeezed out from under the bed, letting Alfred help him back onto the mattress.

“Okay. It was nothing. We’re okay.”

Arthur was not sure if Alfred was trying to console him, or if he was talking to himself. He smiled anyway, and took Alfred’s hand.

“Of course we are.”

“You should get some sleep. I’ll stay awake for a bit and keep an ear out for more trouble.”

Arthur felt like he’d been doing an awful lot of the sleeping lately, but chose not to disagree whilst the other was on edge. Alfred could be a hard man to argue with when he was feeling paranoid.

“Alright, but you’d better wake me if you get tired.”

“Right. Sure.”

“I mean it. We need to find food tomorrow. It’ll be dangerous if you’re walking around half asleep.”

“Yeah, okay. You’re right. I’ll wake you up in a few hours and we can switch.”

“Good,” Arthur pressed a kiss to Alfred’s cheek, settling himself under the covers. It had been a long time now since he had slept under a blanket that could be considered clean - perhaps stale from lack of attention, but not grimy and unwashed - and he enjoyed the way it felt across his shoulders. Under real sheets and in a real bed, he could almost pretend he was in the past, when life was normal and his biggest worries were college assignments and job interviews.

A hand pressed itself to his forehead - not so hot today as it was yesterday - and then began threading itself through his hair. Arthur closed his eyes, settled into the pillow, and let the peace of the night pull him under.

#usuk #americaxengland #HWS England #HWS America #Hetalia #Hetalia Fanfiction #fanfiction #Halcyon #i finally wrote another fic this year #even though it's sort of just one scene from a bigger AU i'll never write #i'm feeling nice enough to actually make them both good guys #but not nice enough to let live in peace #so i've put them in another apocalypse

[halfmoth-halfman]

The new chapter??? I mean, every time I read your fics I’m completely immersed in the story. The way you distribute tension in the chapters makes them so interesting, I’m never at a point where I feel like the story is getting boring. (English is my third language if any of this is confusing I apologise😭).

And the conversation with Ghost?? I’ve been waiting for something like it, I’m really interested in your portrayal of him!! I feel like you’re one of the few writers who write him well, I’d love to see some sort of character analysis of him from your perspective. I love how humble he is with Canary once he realised his mistake, how he immediately helped her when she was panicking in the bathroom. I’m definitely gonna reread the entire series today😭

aaaaaaa omg thank you so much and your english is perfectly fine don't even worry about it!!

honestly i could talk about mr simon ghost riley for hours, i already annoy @mvtthewmurdvck with my ramblings about him sometimes LMAO but i'll give a little insight at least in regards to how he acts with canary for how i view him in this au!!

i think his biggest thing is loyalty and family. like since roba, the 141 are the only people he considers himself close to and there's this deep fear of losing them the same way he lost his family before so he does whatever he can to keep that from happening.

he's extremely suspicious of outsiders, like canary for example, bordering on paranoia that he can usually calm by finding information on someone and figuring out if they're a friend or if he needs to keep a bigger eye on them. which is what really set him off about canary. not only was she essentially a ghost, but she spoke russian (like makarov) and had the unfortunate timing of getting so close to price (a man ghost highly respects) at the same time makarov started moving in on their territory.

his suspicions about her kept getting raised, and, being as stubborn and dedicated to the 141 as he is, he wasn't going to just let her go without any information on her. he needs to know that she's safe enough to have around her family which unfortunately left with a bit of a one-track focus and open to being spied on.

it's his job to keep the 141 safe and he takes that very seriously. he's not afraid to do the dirty work and price kind of depends on that and that gives him a lot of power to work with. that doesn't mean ghost is heartless or cruel, though. like i said about the bathroom scene with canary, he knows when he's wrong and he's not afraid to accept responsibility for that. i think he has an esp soft spot for abused women and children, which only adds on to the guilt he feels toward canary.

all of this rambling to say, i think at the root of everything he just doesn't want his family taken from him again, and he does whatever he has to to give himself that peace of mind that he's keeping them safe. of course, he feels bad that canary got caught in the crossfires, and he'll help make that up to her, but he'll never feel bad about having suspicions about her.

#luvmariax0 #moth answers #answered #cod ask #private

[myheartalivewrites]

11, 12, 18, 19, and 20 for the writer asks!

(I'm sure there's more I'd love to know that I didn't look through, but I'm being greedy already, so feel free to add another one if you want!

❤️ thanks for playing!

11. Do you write scenes in order or do you jump around?

I TRY to write in order, except for sometimes scenes just download themselves into my brain, word perfect dialogue, and then I have to write them down. I find that a little disruptive to the writing though, because then I have to fill in the in between scenes trying to reach whatever I already wrote, which can be tricky.

12. Do you outline your fics? If yes, how detailed are your outlines? How far do you stray from them?

In a way? I tend to start with a big ass paragraph, like a stream of consciousness idea dump, and that sort of slowly grows into something of an outline, breaking it up onto sections. Mostly my outlines are just a collection of notes at the bottom of the doc, which I delete as I write the actual scenes. Also, I write on Scrivener, which has this nice little sidebar where I like to put down my structure (for anything bigger than a one shot), breaking down chapters into key things that need to happen there. And then as they're written I add in the word count, so I can try and have even sized chapters.

Lol, as for straying from them... yes, constantly, but then also I just immediately change whatever was on the outline before and bam! No harm done.

18. Do you enjoy research? Which fic of yours required the most research?

No, soz 😬. I've been doing SO MUCH research for my NaNo project (which is set in Victorian England) and there's still so much specific stuff I need to find out, particularly relating to clothes, and like, what hotels were actually there, what pieces of art were displayed at each museum. I find it super frustrating, it just never ends.

Love and War is probably the fic I did the most research for, but I also just used a lot of info from my brain and gave myself permission to not care about details ✌️

19. Do you enjoy creating OCs or do you prefer to stick solely to canon characters?

In fic I find it quite hard to introduce OCs and prefer sticking to canon characters, but in original writing I quite like making up new characters.

20. Do you prefer writing AUs or canon fic?

I'm an AU girlie through and through. I'll take my dudes falling in love in a hundred different universes any day, over anything.

#ask games #fic writers ask game #about me #my writing