Better Days

Siemen – Netherlands

Isabel – Belgium

Luca – Luxembourg

Alin - Romania

...

Oh look, I've finally finished another fic inspired by a Pogues song! This time it's NedRo and the tone is rather... different compared to my other fics. Whilst most stories in the series are rather angst-filled (though there are happier ones scattered in there to mix things up) this one's... well, I don't want to say funny, more stupid and terrible. And most of it's in verse. Because I hate myself. This took months to write and I'm so glad that it's finally finished and I get to share this monstrosity with everyone.

I'm sorry.

...

"Opa, will you tell me a bedtime story?"

A big fat 'no' wasn't going to be an acceptable answer here, was it?

The last thing Siemen wanted to do was read anyone a bedtime story, but two pairs of bright green eyes were staring right back at him in the gloom of their shared room and he knew he could spend an hour arguing with a pair of screaming children, or he could just tell them a damn story. At least this way, he could be downstairs with a glass of wine in ten minutes.

Isabel and Luca's room was a mess of toys and clothes and Siemen wasn't sure he'd ever seen two people with so many possessions. When he was a child, he had a few toys and books and a little bike. That was all. How did they even have time to play with all these toys? Especially since he'd never seen Luca play with anything except an iPad and that one plastic cash register.

Okay, maybe he was a little proud of Luca for that one. Especially when the kid short-changed a teddy bear for being rude to him.

He stared down at his grandchildren in despair. They... really wanted a story, didn't they? Was there not something they could watch instead?

No, a story was always the best thing to send a child to sleep with. That was what his daughter insisted when she caught him letting the children watch Watership Down until they fell asleep (the TV show, not the film – he wasn't a monster).

"Okay," he said, voice cracking, "what book do you want?"

"Can't you tell us a story from when you were young?" asked Isabel. "You're so old! You must have interesting stories, right?"

It was illegal to dropkick a small child out the window, right?

"What did you do when you were little?" asked Luca.

"Respected my elders." A fat lie but oh well. It was a lie his family told him to get him to behave. It didn't work but they could sleep easily.

"Did you have TV?"

"Yes but only a few channels," he sighed, "and it was small and grainy." And if anyone knocked the aerial then the image was fucked and he'd miss the end of Floris in the time it took to fix it.

"So what did you do when you weren't watching TV?" asked Isabel.

"Rode my bike." He smiled, remembering the long summer days wasted cycling by the beach in the sun, maybe taking a picnic with him and spending hours just looking at the sea.

If he was being honest, he had to ride his bike everywhere, because he grew up in the countryside and everything was stupidly far away.

It was how he discovered-