Paint it Another Colour

Chapter 2

Alfred leant carefully against a lamppost eating his ice cream ,waiting for Matthew. He was over at a popular pancake house probably reducing their stock of maple syrup to nearly nothing. He did that, still. It was one thing that never changed about his brother, his love for maple syrup. 

They were in Ottawa having one of their monthly 'get togethers'. Both of them would have liked it if it was more often, but work had them both pinned down, so the week after meetings they'd spend the rest of the day aimlessly walking. Of course it would be work. Ever since he'd tried to multi-task with Canada, the pile of papers on his desk had been growing in a daunting way. Matthew was no better, having been gone for a year with only his help, and even then not much had gotten done.

"You look lonely" Matthew said, walking up to him, leaving a trail of maple syrup in his wake.

"Do I?" Alfred shrugged. "Dude, in your opinion, if ever anyone is by themselves, they are lonely."

Matthew grinned.

They started walking through a park opposite the pancake house, in silence at first, before Alfred spoke up.

"Hey dude, did you notice how Viktor didn't show up for the meeting?"

Matthew nodded. "He usually follows Ivan round like a lost puppy, or fires random ideas across the table that shut everyone up for a bit while they try to figure out what the hell he was really saying. If Ludwig ever gets a hold of the ideas before the room escalates into noise again, I bet  you we'd end up talking about them for an hour, everyone with different thoughts on what he actually meant." Matthew laughed. "And then he just doesn't speak again for the entire meeting!"

"He's creepy" Alfred took a bite out of his ice cream. "He's seriously creepy and I'm not sure what to make of him."

"You've already defined him as creepy" Matthew pointed out. "Isn't that pretty much knowing what you 'make of' him?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah stop being clever" Alfred lightly punched the other's shoulder. As he did so, his phone beeped. He glanced at it before pocketing it again. "Ivan's called a surprise meeting of sorts."

Matthew frowned. "Why?"

"Search me" Alfred shrugged. "I have no idea. He didn't say, just that there's going to be an inter-month meeting in Moscow in a couple of days time."

"It's something important though right?"

"I don't know" Alfred said. "I don't know anything about it. We'll just have to find out in a couple of days time."

Matthew sighed. "I guess we should get going then. It'll take a ten hours to get there, not to mention unexpected hotel bookings, packing, unpacking..."

"Dude, chill" Alfred laughed, throwing an arm around his shoulders. "You're always so serious about everything. They always have spare flights. Why would you go from Ottawa, a freakishly cold place, to Moscow, another freakishly cold place, through choice?"

"That's like saying why would an Italian go for a holiday in Spain. Why would an Australian go to New Zealand. A French to Argentina?" Matthew raised an eyebrow and got out his own phone, quickly looking up the flights.

Alfred frowned. "I get your point."

Matthew held up his phone. "Almost all flights are already taken."

Alfred stared at the phone and then blinked. "Wait... do you have your own plane?" Matthew didn't say anything. "You do right?" again, nothing. "How do you get places?"

"There's this thing called public transport" Matthew replied bluntly. "You should try it sometime. Private transport is seriously overrated."

"Why don't you just... I don't know... ask them to get a flight ready for you using the I.D.?"

"Over-using power" Matthew gave him a bored look. "Unnecessary. And anyway, if you're so fussed about it all, why don't you just call your boss and ask him to direct yours here earlier than next week?"

"He never uses his phone" Alfred shrugged. "He literally never uses it. He kind of hates the things actually. I'll send a message to him somehow from Moscow, but he'll probably already have been informed about the 'surprise meeting'.

"Public transport it is then" Matthew pocketed his phone. "As I said before, let's get going. There's one leaving in five hours. If we hurry, we can have ourselves sorted for that one and then we can be over there by tomorrow and don't have to bother about worrying the day before. He really should have given us more notice about it though."

Alfred ran after him as his twin picked up his pace, doing an almost Darth Vader like stride out of the park, a few people turning and raising an eyebrow.

"Mattie calm. We have time and anyway, it's just a flight. It's not like there won't be another one"

*****

Matthew glared at the small pile of paperwork he'd brought with him, not to mention the emails and spreadsheets on the laptop at the bottom of all of it. Next to him, Alfred was slumped against the window, snoring, his glasses at an odd angle and pressing into his face in a uncomfortable looking way. They'd only just made the flight and Alfred had fallen asleep almost instantly, not having the common sense to bring work with him to avoid doing it when they got back.

He rolled his eyes, signed a sheet and put it back in his bag. For not the first time since Alfred had read out Ivan's text, he wondered. Ivan didn't get scared easily and unexpected 'surprise' meetings were usually called if the nation found something that could be a threat. In other words, if they were scared. They'd all done it at some point, freaked out about something or other, which normally had turned out to be nothing.

Ivan had never called before.

He insisted once that he never would do so unless it was important so they didn't all have to rush to where ever for nothing. Now he had called, it had to be something serious. He was strong, it wouldn't be nothing he was sure of it.

A small part of Matthew hoped beyond hope that it was 'nothing' but deep inside, he knew it was bad. Really bad.