Hetalia ficlet, France/Germany
Kink meme fill: Domestic France/Germany. There is more where it came from.
It had started at some point when somebody (who? it never mattered) had asked him to do it, had thrown up his hands, pulled his hair, stared just aside of Germany's head because it had taken decades until they would meet his eyes when they knew who he was - and told him that it was France, had to be France. The last war had proven them, had proven everybody, how wrong some things were, and Germany was so young and at the same time, was anything but. It was with France there was bad blood; it was with France he had to sit down and have coffee and talk about something that wasn't business
(and forty years later, he had felt that he needed to explain to his brother and Prussia had rolled his eyes and told him that all that "bad blood" was because of that nancy in the south who had pulled them all down with him whenever he went and picked fights)
and somehow, what had started as terse hours spent drinking coffee and eating pastries and not meeting each other's eyes had ended up in an apartment just far enough south in Kehl to make commuting a chore. With his brother in Berlin because he had been around the longest and because it was deemed wiser to keep his temper and his decidedly coarse language within the domestic politics as the younger Herr Beilschmidt (so called for the purpose of decorum) dealt with the diplomacy.
That was the reason a - person - such as the younger Herr Beilschmidt lived in an ignorable town with the symbolic border to Strasbourg, as Strasbourg of course was anything but ignorable in the policies pursued by the Bundesrepublik after the war. It was an easy explanation, a comfortable story; there were times when they asked about his life (his brother could report that the matter of Ludwig and his non-existent last name was a recurring subject of debate in the offices of the Chancellor and her cabinet), but the matter of his residence and its inconvenient distance to federal agencies was awkwardly bypassed.
"I suppose it is a necessity," was the only thing the Chancellor had said to it, and that was more than any of her predecessors had.
"That is so absolutely German," had been France's comment to it. Germany had not asked how France explained it; he suspected that France did not think of it as something worth explaining anyway. France never seemed concerned with showing up twenty minutes late if he knew that the meeting could not start without him. That kind of casual disregard of schedule was how he could wake Germany with fingers in his hair and softly spoken French,
"Mimi, the batteries of your alarm clock died overnight and Prussia is on the phone."
and ten seconds later, Germany was sitting on the edge of the bed and squinting at the clock that had come to a stop at twelve minutes past two as his brother greeted him with a wail of "West, please tell me that he didn't just call you what I thought I heard him call you."
He tuned out his brother's lecturing about that kind of tardiness that he had been raised to avoid despite all bad Mediterranean influence he liked to subject himself to, and stumbled into the kitchen to confirm that he had overslept by two hours and fourth minutes and that France had not woken him for at least long enough have breakfast and go through his elaborate morning grooming. He was searching for something in the living room with his laptop bag slung over his shoulder, and Germany was waking up enough to realize that he should be angry, but wasn't. The breakfast table was still set for him as France's dishes had been put away, and by the point when he had stopped counting the years, he had long since learned that France considered it a favour to let him sleep in. 'Why else would you have a home office?'
The home office demanded the daily briefings with his brother in Berlin, but the professionalism of politics had never been Prussia's forte; he was making up for the time lost waiting for Germany to call by reprimanding him for it with a great deal of length and language and as Germany was not listening, France had located something that was slipped into a pocket. He came to the kitchen and leaned against the wall beside the door, and made a hand gesture that likely was meant to convey something unflattering about Prussia.
"Just a second, Brother." He lowered the phone from his ear as France sighed exaggeratedly and walked over with brisk steps, and bent down to kiss him.
France's idea of goodbye kisses was not much like that of Italy. It was open-mouthed, deep, involved tongue and a hand cupping the back of Germany's head. They were both breathing heavily when he pulled back, for then to lean in and press his lips briefly to Germany's left ear. "No later than four, I think."
He didn't say anything else, but turned around to leave with a wink and a hand lifted in a brief salute. Germany was left with the scent of his cologne lingering in the sunlight and his brother's impatient demands as he lifted the phone to cut through the complaints and find out how delayed he was in the day's schedule.