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Occasionally, although nobody ever believes him, The Kingdom of Spain reflects on his life and his choices. It’s not something he really consciously does, which everybody would believe if they also believed in his introspection to begin with– which they don’t— but it’s something he does all the same. In the marketplace at night, walking home with one of his neighbors, a nice young girl with a nice young daughter and no husband at all, he thinks about his own family. He thinks about the brothers and sisters he has had. He thinks about how he doesn’t have quite as many of them anymore. He thinks about how he would love to walk his neighbor, Beatriz is it, home all the way, but he bought ice and needs to get it home faster than the detour would allow him. He doesn’t think about how all the thinking, and his slow walking, have allowed the ice to already melt. Beatriz helpfully points that out, and as his protests are moot, he walks her home.
Really, Spain is too soft to ever give a firm no to one of his citizens. It comes from too many years of not being soft at all. But, ah, that is reflection.
Later, after reading a story to Beatriz’s daughter, and then another, and then just the last one, this will certainly be the last one, oh, oh you need a story for your stuffed bear too, well, he must have his story, but just one— she tricks you so easily, Reino— after all of that he walks home, alone, in the dark with his bag of water.
At home, he feels his people sleeping and not sleeping, so he sleeps and doesn’t. When he wakes he is not alone in his own home, not that he ever is, and he only barely remembers that while many things have changed over the years concerning maids, the only ones who care to see you naked, walking down the hall to the bathroom, scratching yourself mid-yawn, are the ones you don’t really care to have as maids. He grabs the nearest clothes to him, which are beginning the morning pressed and draped over the back of a chair even though they ended the night crumpled on the floor, and puts them on. Thus prepared, he is ready to face the day, and the maids.
They greet him good morning, Reino, when he shuffles past them stubbly and slow. He pauses to chat because Elena is getting married soon, and so is Raúl, which means Spain will have to ask the Ministry for temporary replacements so the two of them can enjoy their new lives. What is the point in working if you don’t have enough time, at the end of the day, or during the middle, Spain supposes, to go home and make love to your wife? Not much point, he thinks, unless you’re going home to a husband, or a lover, not that Elena or Raúl will be, but the theory is the same.
The point of life is living it, Spain tells them with a flourish, for an uncountable time, and they humor him just until they can all three of them hear one of the Personal Assistants stomping up the stairs, and then Elena and Raúl shoo Spain away, Reino you have meetings, and then Spain is alone in his bathroom with the shower running and his foggy face suspended on the wall in front of him enshrined in glass. There was a time when Spain was incredibly impressed by mirrors— thought them magic, even, and there are days when those times don’t seem so far off. This is one of them. When he looks at himself, Spain sees someone a little too old and a little too tired. He sees Reino, your signature here. He sees Reino, we are at war. He sees Reino, the car is here already, please hurry.
Spain takes his time.
Drawing pictures on the glass and reading magazines can only last so long, though, and he swears Elena and Raúl are actually spies that have certain slacking allowances for him. Ten minutes for dozing off, no more, that sort of thing. Whenever he asks them about their orders, though, they only tell him that they aren’t going to the restaurant with him because they have to take care of the house, but if he would really like it, they can have a sherry with him later. It always gives Spain the feeling that they’re making fun of him, a little bit, and he can’t tell from that whether they’re serious or not, or spies or not, or if he merely needs to get a little more sleep before meetings. Except, of course, there are always meetings every single day, and the only way he can get more sleep before them is to sleep during some of the less important ones, and each and every meeting is important to somebody. This, Spain reflects, is probably valid, but it makes his days much more stressful than he’d like.
He’d like to take some of his own wisdom, for once, and get a temporary replacement, or take off early, and come home to make love to his wife, because life is about living.
“You’d be the wife, dumbass,” is all that Romano says when Spain airs the idea to him, as they sit in and listen to very boring discussions that have a lot to do with them but actually nothing to do with them at all. The talks will proceed. The papers will be signed. And all of this would have happened anyway, even if Romano had slept in at his embassy or if Spain had stayed home with his magazines. “And who says I’d ever want to spend a day with you if I got to skip, huh?”
Romano looks harried, like he always does when he visits someone else’s house. Spain likes to think that it’s all an act, that Romano just wants the other nation to feel so put upon that they feed him more, or act nicer to him, or stop sending him chain emails with the subject line changed to ‘Important Documents For Roma!’ or ‘This is Actually a Copy of the New Trade Agreement that You Have to Read Roma’ or even ‘Not Chain Mail This Time, Please Forward’. Spain is probably partially right but mostly wrong, and it’s just that Romano is the kind of person who naturally gravitates towards bad moods. But that thought is a shame, so Spain shies away from thinking it. Romano just wants a meal and a hug and maybe a lazy afternoon, all of which are things Spain thinks are marvelous and wouldn’t mind himself, and no one can convince Spain otherwise. Not even Spain.
“You don’t need to be so cruel anymore,” Spain says out of the corner of his mouth, “Because I’m not your Boss anymore.”
“What?” Romano whispers.
Spain doodles daisies on the edge of the papers someone in a very fancy suit had given him in the car ride over, Reino please read these. “You can be nice to me now.”
With a great big, catty smirk, Romano leans back in his chair until it bangs against the wall behind him and everyone turns to look at the noise. “Why the hell would I ever want to do a thing like that?” he taunts, ignoring the fact that the humans are going into conniption fits because he said it right after some great compromise on some small thing had been met, and now Spain’s people think that’s the official word and Romano’s people aren’t sure whether they should listen to half the motherland (“Fatherland, for Christ’s sake!”) or wait for direction from someone else, or ignore him completely like they always do when he says things they don’t agree with. Or maybe Romano chose that moment on purpose to say what he said. Spain will never know, because Romano will never tell him, and that is also a shame.
They each leave the meeting two hours late, alone, while the humans roll up their sleeves determined to get this over with after as little pain as possible. Romano passes the aide told to order the food on his way out the door. Spain slides away not long after, because even though no one in that room is going to be making love to anybody anytime soon, at least he hopes not because he’s pretty sure that even if that sort of thing weren’t frowned on these days it would really be his and Romano’s task to complete, as the nations doing the agreeing about whatever it is they’re agreeing about, it would be up to them, and it would probably take a whole lot less time, and then everybody could go home much faster, and be happier. Spain knows in his bones that whatever this contract is, he doesn’t mind it, so he doesn’t feel bad about not paying attention this time, or slipping away before he’s technically supposed to.
In the hallway, Spain thinks about heading for home, walking through one of the crowded districts and soaking up a little life that way, but ultimately dismisses the idea and instead makes his way towards what feels like the direction Romano went in. Things between them have never exactly been easy, considering who they are, but they like each other, now, and they like spending time in each other’s company, and Spain realizes that is what he wants tonight. He wants to spend time in Romano’s company, and relax, and be happy.
The door he ends up at is in the same building, although on a different floor, and he enters without hesitation because this is his government and he can go wherever he want in it, whenever he wants. It turns out that it’s a bathroom, and Romano is the only one inside of it, standing at a urinal on the far wall with his back to Spain. ‘He must have had too many espressos this morning,’ Spain thinks, then shrugs and walks over. He doesn’t really need to go, but he’s a very hospitable nation and even though Romano isn’t Spanish, because that would be weird and confusing, he’s inside Spain right now (Spain’s cheeks go hot and he cannot fathom why) so he shouldn’t have to piss alone. It’s a basic courtesy.
So, accordingly, Spain takes the urinal right next to Romano, unzips, pulls himself out of his sun-patterned boxers and begins to whistle.
“Can you st—holyshit!” Romano exclaims in what Spain decides to interpret as pleasant surprise. Romano turns to face Spain fully, is very lucky he finished all of his business at the urinal before he left it, unlike upstairs, and Spain can’t help laughing at that. “Why are you la— are you following me?” He begins to shake his arms and rant and say words and other unimportant things like that, but Spain forgoes listening because there is something very important that has caught his attention, and that something is at the level of Romano’s open fly and unbelted belt.
Romano remembered to tuck himself back in before turning to acknowledge Spain, but he forgot to zip up his pants, and now Spain is stuck in a predicament and he is very aware of how close they are and how he already has his right hand wrapped around his cock and how he’s begun to stroke himself even though that’s probably bad urinal etiquette. It’s not exactly Spain’s fault, though.
This is something he can’t be blamed for.
Romano.
Romano is.
Romano is wearing Spain’s emblem and colors emblazoned all over his boxers, from what Spain can see, in the bright colors and cheap sheen of the sort of novelty gifts that are sold to tourists and that Romano hisses at whenever they get too close to his person. Spain vaguely remembers giving Romano a novelty shirt covered in his own flag, once, but he thought Romano had stepped on it and thrown it away. He doesn’t remember ever giving Romano boxers.
“Are you even listening to me?” Romano demands after an amount of time Spain couldn’t pretend to know.
“No.”
“How dare you—” Romano starts. He stops, and quite suddenly, when Spain grabs his slacks and roughly shoves them down to his ankles. As Spain thought, the little Spanish flags are cluttered over every little bit of the fabric, not just the area around the crotch, but around the sides and the top and the ass too. Spain breathes out long, and slow, and thinks about his goals for the evening. First he’d wanted to tell Elena and Raúl to go home early and enjoy themselves. Then he’d wanted to catch dinner with Romano, and then stay up in the breezy night, and catch up as they looked out over the lights of Spain’s heart. He honestly didn’t want anything more than that.
Spain’s revised goals involve a lot of licking and a little bit of mouthing that could quite possibly have gotten him excommunicated a few centuries earlier. It involves some slow, butterfly kisses and some slow, grasping touching, and a tiny bit of reflection on his life and his choices. He’s had sex with Romano before this, several times, but at the sight of la Rojigualda stretching taught over the curves of Romano’s cock he realizes that he would rather like to engulf Romano whole in a way that won’t end in formal declarations of Yes, Yes, I’m Sorry, I’ll Give Him Back, I’ll Retreat because Spain would like to not have to go through any more of those, preferably, whether as an observer or otherwise. He wants to own Romano, a little bit, and the thought races up his cock like the tingle of a spark, and he thinks how strange and wonderful human feelings are. Because, he now knows, the feelings of possession and taking and holding and having and licking swirling around in his steam-on-the-mirror foggy brain right now belong only to the him that exists in a bathroom in Madrid, wearing a fitted suit with the fly open and his cock straining out and up into his hands, both of them now, standing in front of half of a Republic who is looking at him as though he is completely crazy.
Oh.
Maybe he is.
Romano is the first to speak. “Are you just going to stand there or what?” he grumbles, making no move to pull up his slacks or headbutt Spain in the chest. “I—these—you—they lost my luggage,” he starts to blaze through explanations, but stops so suddenly that Spain actually starts paying attention again. “Look, if we’re going to do this again, we’re not going to do it in a fucking bathroom.”
“Huh?” Spain says, eloquently, eyes still locked on the little flags adorning Romano’s pert little ass, which isn’t actually all that little, because Romano can really pack in the pasta, but ‘pert little’ sounds better than ‘pert double-handful’, although if Spain added ‘juicy’ to the mix he could open a whole host of other doors in the poetic quest to write an ode to Romano’s ass covered by red and yellow and his.
“You have to have an office,” Romano shoves Spain back with one hand. “And if it doesn’t have a couch then you’re shit out of luck, because I refuse to get fucked over a desk unless it’s spontaneous, dammit, it isn’t exactly comfortable, and are you even listening to me?!”
“Yes,” Spain says, then pauses. “Yes, I have an office. No, I wasn’t listening. But we’re not doing this again.”
Romano deflates and opens his mouth to either insult Spain from the beginning of his history to the most recent second of the modern day, or to put up some sort of defense about how he was kidding and didn’t want to do anything like that anyway, where’s the nearest bar.
“It’s going to be the first time like this.”
“The hell,” Romano says, “have you been smoking.”
“I like your clothes today,” Spain presses a hand, taken slowly away from his cock, against the bulge in Romano’s boxers. “They really suit you, Roma.”
Romano’s eyes don’t go wide, and he doesn’t start to blush, like Spain had rather hoped. Instead his eyes go thin, almost all the way closed, and shrewd. He looks like a statue then, timeless, and Spain shouldn’t be surprised, because neither of them are the wife, or the husband, or the lover being gone home to (quite yet). “You are the least romantic person I have ever met in my fucking practically immortal life,” Romano growls out, “I am owed more naps and pasta than you can even imagine to make up for this shitty excuse for a confession, pickup, whatever the hell this is in your head, but.” He bends, grabs his slacks and rises with them, dressing himself with a wave of little grumbles, “I accept.”
“You accept?”
Spain’s pupils go large and dark.
“Don’t test your luck.”
They leave looking exactly the same as they did when they entered, Romano annoyed and Spain whistling to himself, but this time there is an extra spring in Romano’s step and Spain lets his hand drift down, down, and lets himself smile at the squeak Romano makes when he tests his luck anyway.