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Language:
English
Series:
Part 3 of Refictions: Looking Back At My Old Fics
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Published:
2026-06-26
Words:
655
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
3
Hits:
77

That Lonely Night

Summary:

Welcome to the last fanfiction I posted to ff.net while in high school. I'm a little worried for this Refiction because it's short and better written, so I might not have as much to say about it. Anyway, while I try to think of a reason why it might be /good/ to post well-written fanfiction to the internet, I hope you enjoy reading it.

Original Description:
France is stressed, tired, and lonely, and the unwanted visitor that arrives at his hotel room in the middle of the night is not particularly helpful. Meant to be FrUK but could be read as platonic.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Francis [1] sat at the desk in his hotel room. He was sifting through his notes, trying to make sure he was prepared for the world meeting the next morning, but feeling as though he wasn't in his own head. France was exhausted. The meeting had originally been planned to be much closer to his own home, but at the last minute it was decided that northern Ontario would be a safer option. Being countries, none of them could really get COVID-19 [2], but they could transmit the virus to humans. Plus, it was impractical to try to get anywhere in France with the lockdown going on. So Francis didn't have to wonder about the source of his exhaustion. The flight had been long and it had been years since he had been without… company for such a long time (in both the innocent and the lewd sense). He glanced at the clock on the bedside table and sighed. It was 3 AM. He had to sleep, but he didn't want to feel like he was giving up on his notes. He had just decided that the isolation was driving him insane and that it really was time to go to bed when there was a sudden thunderous banging on the door of his room.

Francis froze, wondering who could possibly be at his door at such an ungodly hour. He didn't have to wonder for long though.

"FRANCISS OPEN THE DOOR YA GIT IMMA FUHIN KILL YOU!" Francis swore quietly to himself and rushed to the door, desperate to avoid getting complaints about a certain Englishman's drunken ranting. When he pulled the door open, Arthur practically toppled over, clearly having been in the middle of assaulting the door again. Stumbling, he latched onto Francis' shoulders to prevent his face from assaulting the floor. Francis gently pushed the door shut as the two men moved further into the hotel room. Holding Francis at arm's length with a firm grip, Arthur suddenly looked up into his eyes, a perplexed look dawning on his face.

"Franz?" he slurred. "Wha the 'ell are you doin' 'ere?" Francis made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a soft chuckle as he removed Arthur's hands from his shoulders. Francis gave him a once over and was relieved to see that Arthur seemed to be able to stand on his own for now. He was wobbly, yes, but not immediately about to fall over.

"This is my hotel room, you drunken half-wit." [3] It was honestly impressive how Francis managed to be both endearing [4] and derisive at the same time. "Alright, Angleterre, come sit down."

Francis led Arthur, who was nearly catatonic and only grumbled in protest, to the bed of the hotel room and sat him down. Arthur mumbled something that Francis couldn't hear, but based on past experience was pretty sure was some incomprehensible combination of centuries old rants and random insults.

"Don't be like that," he sat next to Arthur and gently put a hand on his head. "Tell me what's wrong." [5] Arthur looked at him incredulously for a moment before his expression faltered. He buried his face in Francis's shoulder and soon Francis could feel hot tears on his skin. Francis didn't know what specifically was wrong. It could have been anything. Francis sighed for what felt like the twentieth time in the last five minutes. If you would just be okay with having feelings instead of covering them with your chronic English douchebaggery, you wouldn't break down like this so much.

Francis pushed the Englishman onto his back, laying his head on the pillow. Then he turned away and walked tiredly to the couch, where he threw himself down, still thinking about England's stubbornness. As awful and unprepared as Francis felt with everything going on, he knew he could name at least one person who would enjoy the early morning meeting less than himself.

Notes:

[1] For this fic, I opted to exclusively describe countries using their human names. I can't remember exactly why I did this, but I like it. This fic is much more about the countries as people, rather than a political/historical fic that's more focused on the country side of things. I think this is a useful way of making that distinction and I like when longer fics switch between the two based on whether the focus is the countries as people or as countries, rather than doing it seemingly at random. Themes and whatnot.

[2] I think being a carrier actually does qualify as "getting" the disease, even if you don't have symptoms. *cinema sins ding*

[3] Another choice that I like is that I didn't write in France's accent. I have mixed feelings about writing accents in general. Especially in amateur writing, authors often get the accent a bit wrong and just a slight mistake can be really confusing. It often makes the writing unnecessarily hard to read and can easily dip into xenophobic and classist territory. So I generally avoid writing accents. Even in my fic "Life of a Drug Dealer in Gotham" (posted in "fic ideas"), where the main character has a southern accent, I tried to have him use appropriate vocabulary without attempting to transcribe his accent. I think I prefer that method.

[4] Note for clarity, I think I misused the word "endearing" here. I think I meant something more like "affectionate".

[5] For the relationship between Francis and Arthur, I wanted to give the impression of two people who have known each other for so long that they see right through each other's defenses. They might argue and fight and even hate each other, but they also /get/ each other in a way no one else does. Does anyone know a tag for that?

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