Hi there! I’m reinette/rein (she/her), from Canada 🇨🇦. English is my first language, but I also speak/read some Mandarin and French.
I write various things for Hetalia, as well as post hcs and reblog other people’s wonderful content! You can find my work through the tags on this post. I do repost nsfw content and write some myself, so if you’re a minor please use discretion.
I also have an AO3 account! (๑>◡<๑) it’s le_serpent_qui_nous_devore if you wanna check it out, I’ll be posting my old stuff and new fics on there ♥️
Lastly, my ask box and messages are always open! Pop in for a chat about anything — hetalia or otherwise.
(Aussi: si tu sais français, parlez à moi en français! Je ne peux pas le parler trop couramment, mais ça c’est pourquoi je dois pratiquer :3 )
Hi I'm back from the grave to pick your brain after that last chapter of In this universal river (available in all its glory on ao3 here yall):
Please tell us more about Luciano and Arthur's relationship -- When was the first time they met? When did he start calling Arthur godfather? Is there a specific word/title for that in Portuguese? How are they now?
After reading that chapter, I cant stop thinking about how Luciano and Matthew are technically god(?)siblings, but Luciano will know Arthur much better than the British kids ever knew Gabriel because of the timing of the whole 1800s...like Luciano says "best friends just like you and father" in the latest chapter, but do you think many of the anglophone british colonies grew up without even really knowing that relationship between England and Port exists? That maybe the first time a country like New Zealand met Port might genuinely be during the Second World War? If so, how does Port think of the British kiddies now?
Forgive me if you wrote about any of this in the chapters that I missed, just point me to 'em and I'll do my due diligence <3
Welcome back, darling!!! ❤️❤️🎉 I missed youuuu!!!!
This became a little biggg so I'm putting a read more haha
so for In this universal river I have Arthur and Luciano first meeting around the 1740s. Wales makes a comment in chapter 21 about Arthur and Gabriel spending six months in the colonies together and before that, in chapter 19, Gabriel invites Arthur to meet his colonies and sail together when they have time. The voyage itself doesn't show in the story, I might make a side fic later on, but I didn't want to introduce a bunch of people and not do anything with them, you know?
It's a pretty widespread headcanon in latin hetalia that Arthur is Luciano's godfather, given his friendship with Port, and it's super normal to call your godfather/godmother just that. In Portuguese we say padrinho/madrinha, in my region we also say dindo/dinda. It replaces the customary tio/tia (uncle/aunt) that we use to call any blood-related uncles/aunts or adults when we are children.
I think Luciano still calls Arthur godfather all the time. When he's super angry at him he calls him Mr. Kirkland and Arthur immediately knows something's wrong because he's also not used to Luciano calling him anything other than godfather. He has the softest spot for Port's kids. Given the alliance, Arthur and the British Navy had a pretty liberal use of all Portuguese ports and did most of their protection against foreign attacks. When there were attacks in Macau and Cape Verde, it was the British that protected them, during the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, the British occupied Portuguese India to protect it from the French (and then were invited to leave lol). Most British colonies were set up near Portuguese colonies because the Portuguese colonies were used as bases for the British Navy. This is an Empire that was built on the back for this friendship alliance, knowing that as long as Portugal remained unconquered by Spain and France, Britain could use their overseas territories as it pretty much wished without fear of competition. So to Arthur, Gabriel's kids were like nieces and nephews, they were not his own, but he was familiar with them enough to meddle in their lives and enjoy their company.
I don't think Arthur and Gabriel know what exactly their relationship is lol they're just good friends, pals. Bermuda and Barbados clocked them right away, but Alfred still lives in denial land. Matt knows something is up between them, but he doesn't want to say anything before Arthur does, it's not his business. The other Caribbeans and Guyana distrust Gabriel because of the trade (rightfully so) and they don't care much about him (although Jamaica likes Luciano ❤️). Every other kid that came after the Treaty of Paris and afterwards only heard stories of their friendship and how it fell apart. They have Portuguese colonies for neighbors and some are their friends, but as they see what Arthur's and Gabriel's relationship has become in the 1890s they mostly feel like Gabriel is a stranger to them at best.
Gabriel thinks fondly of the older kids, but he is guarded around the youngest since he thinks they could always launch attacks to annex his colonies, which in turn makes him treat his own kids badly. He might only have met New Zealand during WW2, yeah, but I don't think he would have been particularly happy then. Portugal knew they couldn't fight off the Axis' powers if they decided to take its colonies and so they tried to stay staunchly neutral, despite still allowing the British to (mostly) freely use their ports. When Australian forces entered Timor Leste and the Japanese not only used that as an excuse to invade but also take the country, Gabriel would've been pissed.
Nowadays I think they are friendlier around each other. They are not friends per se, I think Gabriel's role is a lot more "my dad's friend", and I think they'd have been surprised to learn they are romantically involved lol which amuses Bermuda to no end.
Thank you for the ask!!!! I love talking about this!! And I'm sorry for rambling!!
Is this also how you see them? I'd like to see your thoughts!!
Thank you I love this so much!!! And it’s not rambling — in fact it’s hardly enough. I have so many follow ups to the follow up questions now (how old was luciano when arthur met him? was he cute?? what about France?????) but on the whole this more than canon to me.
I didn’t know that English colonies were purposefully established near Portuguese ones, but now that you bring it up of course that would make sense, and I love the way you put it — an empire built on the back of a friendship. (A very dysfunctional friendship, but a friendship nonetheless.)
I’m not sure I’m fully back and steeped in the history enough to contribute meaningfully with my own thoughts yet, but I would love to send more asks as I go through the fic!! <3
I got impatient with myself for writing so slowly so here have a small asakiku WIP teaser. (fic is set 1937, Kyoto. pron under the cut)
---
“What about your foreign minister, Shidehara—"
Kiku gripped his shirt with startling strength and wrenching him bodily forward — so hard that his chair screeched against the floor half an inch and almost tipped him over the table — kissed him.
And this, murmured against his jaw while Arthur could still taste the teethmarks on his bottom lip:
You shouldn’t say such names anymore, Arthur. Not even here.
Arthur swallowed, sucked a breath in through his nose. Swallowed again. Nodded.
There was something dark crawling up his spine and down his legs, something suspiciously like dread — but Kiku’s fingertips still felt like they were burning a trail on his chest as he leaned away and sat back on his own his seat. When he smiled at Arthur again, the mask was back in place, the curve of his lips placid like the lakeshore.
His words, however, his eyes—
“Perhaps it’s time for me to take you home.”
---
There was sex, of course, when they reached “home.”
Kiku’s hands on his shoulders, digging in and pushing down so hard he felt like he was nailed to the tatami floor beneath him. His teeth, a singing counterpoint, tracing lightly, almost tenderly down the lines of his neck, nipping gently at each juncture. Arthur could push him off, could struggle (would have, had this been any one of his many other lovers — had it been Francis) but every crash of Kiku's hips into his made his body tense with pleasure, the warmth of his breath on his skin, the way his dark hair fell over his face and was just starting to cling to his jaw with sweat, the way his voice was lilted, so so quiet, when he mouthed his name—
I got impatient with myself for writing so slowly so here have a small asakiku WIP teaser. (fic is set 1937, Kyoto. pron under the cut)
---
“What about your foreign minister, Shidehara—"
Kiku gripped his shirt with startling strength and wrenching him bodily forward — so hard that his chair screeched against the floor half an inch and almost tipped him over the table — kissed him.
And this, murmured against his jaw while Arthur could still taste the teethmarks on his bottom lip:
You shouldn’t say such names anymore, Arthur. Not even here.
Arthur swallowed, sucked a breath in through his nose. Swallowed again. Nodded.
There was something dark crawling up his spine and down his legs, something suspiciously like dread — but Kiku’s fingertips still felt like they were burning a trail on his chest as he leaned away and sat back on his own his seat. When he smiled at Arthur again, the mask was back in place, the curve of his lips placid like the lakeshore.
His words, however, his eyes—
“Perhaps it’s time for me to take you home.”
---
There was sex, of course, when they reached “home.”
Kiku’s hands on his shoulders, digging in and pushing down so hard he felt like he was nailed to the tatami floor beneath him. His teeth, a singing counterpoint, tracing lightly, almost tenderly down the lines of his neck, nipping gently at each juncture. Arthur could push him off, could struggle (would have, had this been any one of his many other lovers — had it been Francis) but every crash of Kiku's hips into his made his body tense with pleasure, the warmth of his breath on his skin, the way his dark hair fell over his face and was just starting to cling to his jaw with sweat, the way his voice was lilted, so so quiet, when he mouthed his name—
The Dark World is Not Far from Us: because it was the first and it's so so good, so gut-wrenching, the emotions so tangible, and I love the line you used in the ending!!
Ständchen: for lighting the fraport fire in my heart!!
The entire Tokyo Olympics drabbles: I love them all and I loved doing them with you!
All We Know of Heaven: because it makes me cry every single time I read it
Shiwlwld8wjkalshdheiwoalsndheiwoejehhd thank you 💜✨ it is my honour to write things worthy of your love
Do you have any fic about the difference between how Matt is to Alfred vs Jack/Zee? That feels untapped.
Four cunts and a Kiwi walk into a trench.... Please note this is a work of historical fiction based roughly on the Kaiserschlacht of 1918, Germany's last offensive. It is not a textbook. The interactions here cannot possibly begin to represent the real motions of history. The depictions of war and empire are fictional. Everyone's a piece of shit in this, but they are fictional pieces of shit. The existing author's views do not align with that of the fictional characters or any other message you think you're gleaning from this. Everyone in the following piece is fictional and over the age of 18. Do not get your morality from fanfic. No one is happy, no one is having a good time. They are individual, fictional characters and they are miserable. If I haven't made them miserable enough its because my wrist is busted in two places and I'm not in the fucking mood.
Flanders
March 1918
Matt’s slicker is draped over the tent pegs, a crude shelter against the elements beating down on them. Between Matt shoved in tightly to his left and Zee wedged into his right, and the blankets still tucked in tight all around them, Jack is as warm as he’s been since he stepped foot on this bloody continent. He shifts, something uncomfortable against his back.
He mumbles something and tells Matt to roll over, but Zee says something about Matt fucking off if he was going to be an insomniac. But Zee is to his right, and Jack is on his back. She can’t possibly feel anything. He disregards it, rolls back asleep, and snuggles in tighter against her back.
There’s a rush of cold air, Matt yelling at him to get up! To get the fuck up! There’s the crack of steel on a skull. He knows the sound has driven his own shovel into enough Turkish and German heads by now to know it, as well as he knows the sound of his own voice. Matt’s grunting gets louder. Jack is on his feet, pulling Zee up with him. He may as well have not opened his eyes. It’s so fucking dark.
He snatches Zee close, and she screams at him, working something over in her hands.
“Get down,” He hisses at her.
He’s too late. She’s lit the flare. In the dark, formless under the clothes and blankets, she might have not been noticed, but in the sick light of the flare, green as gas, there’s no mistaking her form, a girl’s form even in the trousers of the men’s field uniform, permitted this near the front with the medical officers. They were supposed to be safe here, three trenches back. There’s a joyful German noise and then the swell of bodies. Not a trench raid, not a squad. This is a counter-offensive. Matt throws one into another’s bayonet, and Jack breaks another German’s neck without thinking. The world is lit in green light reflecting from the gore.
He kills three men in seconds, Matt even more. But they’re replaced. This is no trench raid. It is a punch right through the line, a blow puncturing right through the armour of the front line. Jack takes up one of the rifles, but it won’t fire. He swings it into another man’s face. Where the fuck is his gun? Where the fuck is Matt’s?
“Zee! Go!” Matt bellows. Jack spun and watched his sister’s face. There’s German blood there, splattered across her jaw and cheeks, her hand red, a knife that is not hers dripping.
“Go!” Jack says and bodily shoves her back at the ladder. “Find Dad!”
Her eyes flash with the knowledge that this is the only way to avoid the worst, but also full of loathing. She hates him, and maybe Matt, for making her go.
“Go with her,” Matt tells him. Gripping him by the sleeve and shoving him as hard as he can. “Go!”
“Matt!”
“Go!”
He’s got a German rifle to his shoulder and is already flipping back the lever and aiming. He looked up, and he was horrific in this light, face sharp, eyes narrow, lip curled back. But a flash of Matt, of peacetime. “I can slip away if they capture me. You can’t! Go!”
“He’s right!” Zee whispered. “Come on!”
“No!” Jack wrenched his arm free of Matt. They’re surrounded by his soldiers. Australians are to their left and their right flanks, awake now and fighting. Their souls come to his awareness like stars as the sun sets. Pinpricks of light he can’t leave. Too much is happening. “No! Stop!”
“Jack, Go!” Matt’s firing, and something is screaming in the distance. Five bullets, then four. “I’m right behind you.” Four bullets left, more screaming. The trenches around them are coming alive. He won’t leave them. He can’t.
But Zee’s got him by the arm and is dragging him with her.
“You know what happens if we stay!” Zee whispered. Three bullets become two. Hoarse shouts. She gripped him by the face, her own grey with terror, but her brown eyes set with certainty. She has all of Dad’s decisiveness. “What happens if I stay,”
And just like that, she’s straightened his thoughts. He won’t let Germans have her, and she won’t leave him here. So they go. They have to go.
“Okay,” He exhales his panic and shakes his entire body. “Okay.”
Matt has fired twice more. He’s out of bullets, and more are coming, more are coming now. His sister tugged him back. He snatched up his sidearm, forgotten on the floor in the mêlée.
“Be quick and be safe!” Matt tells them. It’s a benediction as hoarse as his prayers are when he thinks there is no one around to hear him. They’re just as futile, too. The time their slaughter brought them is at a standstill, and Matthew’s bullets are gone.
“Find Alfred!” Matt screams over his shoulder as if he’s on another German. The last thing Jack sees of him is the full horrific brutality of his Matt in hand to hand. The filth of his fight. Matt was a brutal bastard. He thrust his fingers into an enemy’s face, finding eyeballs for leverage and twisting heads, viscous as a wolf just before spring. Matthew gives Germans a fight the way he gave their father before Jack was born, and that’s before his fingers close around the pine of his favourite axe. Jack turns, hearing Zee say his name. Their artillery is waking now. He can hear the guns open up. They have to go.
Zee was just ahead of him, running headlong into the dark. It’s wrong. Leaving his men. But she’s ahead of him. It’s the way the world works. Zee sailed into a new day ahead of him on their spinning planet. He follows. A German must have crawled past Matt. Jack shoots.
Zee jumped, startled, and for a fucking moment, he thought his wee Kiwi-bird of a sister, flightless and round, was going to sprout wings and fly straight home to New Zealand. But she’s repeating his name, and he’s staring into the dark, eyes swimming with the gun flash, wondering if hell is a different sort of red from home, with all its bright baked clay. Zee took his hand, her bloodied fingers around his, and looked at him. He grabbed her and hauled her along, forcing her to keep up with him despite their height, as he has their entire lives, from the moment she toddled into existence and he was taller.
He can trace her in the dark as she zigzags through the bullets and is lit by the odd shell in the sky as they escape into the night. He never lets go of her, making her steps longer when her weight hasn’t completely shifted. She is not alone. He is not alone.
They slip into the night, into chaos, into darkness, and further back into the line. Jack trips when a floodlight opens on them, temporarily blind as Zee hauls him to his feet. Everywhere, everything is chaos. Horns honking on trucks they only see when their lanterns appear from nowhere upon soldiers firing up the ignitions, officers and enlisted men shouting. American rifles being broken out from their boxes, sleeping soldiers on rest, still dreaming as they take distributed weapons. The trenches give way to tents, and tents give way to the depots. Still, Zee pulls him along.
“Where—” Jack asked, panting. “Where the fuck are we going, Zee?”
“Alfred!” She huffed, breathless, like that was obvious. But he had wanted father first and figured she would, too.
“Why?”
“Father will prioritize defending the front line.”
“So?”
“So— Alfred understands defense in depth. Give up the first line easily, then they pay for driving in deep, using the salients for killing zones. The more warning he has, the more of his and ours that man those salients, the more of theirs will die.”
He swallowed. He hated it when she sounded like Dad.
“Like Ypres before Matt took the high ground. Guns on three sides,”
“Exactly,” Zee replied. She had picked up a lantern at some point, and as she raised it, her eyes, always more brown than green, glinted for a moment with father’s thrilled, satisfied cunning. “We make them pay.”
They stumble through the night, guided by the sensations of a nation so like and unlike them. They are flavours of the night jars that encircle the Pacific. They fly; they’re so much larger than their father. Matt, cold and clinging to the top of the world, his back against Alfred, with even more people. Then, Jack was warm and all alone in the Pacific in his early years. But the Tasman Sea is Zee’s hand on his elbow. He loves her so much, and he hates his father, and he hates Matt for making them go and both of them for being right and for being practical. He collapsed into the early morning grass off the road, nearly taking Zee down with him. Soldiers yelled, and more traffic roared in his ears.
“Jack?” Zee tugged him to a stop. “Jack, mate. Hey.”
He couldn’t quite seem to get his breath, and he barely avoided puking all over her as he sprawled to the side and vomited what felt like everything he’d ever eaten since stepping foot in France.
Zee made a sympathetic sort of sound, and he felt her arms around her. It’s his soldiers behind them now. He can feel hers a little, too, on the flanks and Father’s, but his own are fighting, and he is running, and he has killed again. Again. And not for the last time. What’s his count? Can he add those to his count? Matt does. Zee counts hers against the lives she saved, and now she cradles his head, gently taking him by the jaw to make him look at her. Her eyes are hers now, and it’s not her father’s words in her mouth, not his will or his brutal practicality.
“Jack,” she said, and he squeezed her, clamping his arms around her smaller body like he had when he was little, and she was all he had of home in frigid England. “Jack, Christ.”
“I’m sorry,” He said but didn’t let go. She squirmed, not escaping but looking up at him. “I’m sorry,”
“Look at me,” she said, and he finally lifted his eyes to her. “Thirty-six thousand.”
“What?”
“That’s how many you evacuated from ANZAC cove. You. Not father, not me. You and your generals planned and executed that. Your balance is still positive, do you understand me?”
“Kiwi-bird,” He said because he was trying to argue, because she could read his mind sometimes, and he didn’t want her to, not now. He wanted to get up and move again and pretend he’d thrown up his sins with his stomach’s contents. “Don’t.”
“Thirty-six thousand.” She said again.
“Those weren’t directly... that kind of number is different from the ones you put back together on the table, Zee. It’s not the same. It’s not the same and it’s blood and it’s so much blood.”
“Look at me!” She said, this time harsh and sharp. “We do these things together, right? That’s what we said. My balance is your balance. You watch my back, I cover your arse.”
“Where the fuck was that cover when I got shot in the bum at Lone Pine, eh?” Jack shot back out of spite. But then she snorted so hard he thought she might puke, too.
“It’s not my fault it’s so bloody big!” She said. “You got the birthing hips, mate.”
“You are such an arsehole.” He countered, giving his side a rub where it most certainly did not round out into berthing hips. Then he was serious. “You mean it?”
“Heart and soul, dick.” She offered him a hand up, and he let her swing him to his feet. “Your balance is my balance.”
“Except at the commissary.” Jack huffed, unsure why that was the thought that popped into his head. “They won’t let me buy oranges anymore.”
“Correct. I trust you with my life and my immortal soul, but not the money.”
They push through the busy roads of new refugees and even more soldiers towards the pull of their father and the pull of whatever Alfred is, still half a stranger. It takes Zee pulling a “Do you know who my father is?” to some Oxbridge-educated fuck she might have rubbed elbows with in her school years to get them through the guard and into the command tent, and a damn good thing she did or Jack was ready to take out British soldiers like he had German. Arthur and Alfred are together, already half aware, and Father looks relieved, openly so. Not a good sign. Alfred looks bewildered. Less empire than boy startled out of bed. Because he still tends to sleep in one of those, even now. Because he is precious and held in reserve. Zee explains what happened and what needs to happen next. Jack fills in details as they go. His soldiers are the brunt just at that moment, and his heart is banging away in his chest when Alfred rolls around on him, full of piss. Looming because he does have two inches and an empire on Jack.
“You LEFT him?” He demanded, one fist gripping Jack’s collar. “You left Matt? What the fuck is wrong with you!”
“He can get away!” Zee said, trying to wedge herself in between, struggling as much with their father’s grasp as Jack was with Alfred’s. “Matt’s been doing this for years. He’ll be fine! We had bigger things to worry about!”
“Get the fuck off me!” Jack could do nothing about Alfred’s hold. His struggle was useless.
“Like what!” Alfred practically shouted. “What’s more important than making sure Matt gets home in one piece?”
“Like the entire western front, you dumb cunt!” Zee shoves her face up at Alfred’s, willing to argue even if she is a foot shorter.
“Enough!” Arthur slammed his hands down on the map-laden table and tugged Zee away, shoving one arm between Alfred’s chest and Jack’s, curling so he was in front of her. But he couldn’t break the grip Alfred had on Jack’s collar. “Get your hands off your brother, boy!”
“Fuck you!” That was all Alfred had to say to Arthur. Zee was tugging her arm back from their father and freeing herself.
“You left him there!” Alfred rounded on Jack again, closing the distance he already commanded with the grip on his collar.
“You always do this!” Alfred tossed back at Arthur. “You always leave him to do your dirty work. No one watching Matt’s back because why would anyone watch his back! Why would anyone give a shit except about how much killing you need done! Why should anyone watch his back?”
“I was!” Jack was on his toes, the angle of Alfred’s fist the only thing keeping him from using his jacket as a hangman’s rope. He didn’t care. “I was here, watching his back while you were home turning a fucking profit! We were here when it was all for nothing! You only showed up for what? For what? To take credit? Aunt Bridgie always said you were brave, that you were brilliant. She forgot to mention what a bastard you are!
“You shut your mouth. I’m not the one who just abandonded Mattie.”
“Ah, my dear boy, but you did that first.”
One sentence. One sentence, and that’s all it took. Father looked unbothered. Alfred’s hand dropped like he’d been slapped. Jack fell back, and Zee was there, throwing off Dad’s grip and under his arm in a moment. The room was silent. Jack breathed hard. He would have probably swayed if Zee wasn’t so close, half shielding her body from Alfred, half shielding his sanity from the shouting.
“Want another first?” Alfred wasn’t facing them now. This was an argument older than both of them, conducted in shouts muffled from the other end of the house. “I took his head off his shoulders at Yorktown. I shot our dear lord father’s jaw from his fucking skull and his skull from his shoulders and the lobsterbacks surrendered. And then they left. And when the gutters overflowed, you were born.”
Zee’s hand tightened on his, squeezing, squeezing like when the hospital ship she’d been on went down, torpedoed by that kraut bastard, and he’d dragged her corpse off a beach, and the only sign of life she could give him was the vice of her hand on his. I love you. It’s not true. I love you. It’s not true. I love you. It’s not true.
Arthur exhaled a laugh. “Goodness, I read you lot too much Shakespeare. Such a flare for drama, children.”
Alfred’s face twisted. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Who’s us?” Zee countered. Jack wanted to throw up again. “What’s wrong with you? You two are the kraut fuckers, not us!” Father looked almost as shocked as Alfred. “Matt wouldn’t even be out there if someone hadn’t made mess! And it wasn’t us!”
The conversation had meandered, shot right from under them, from under Matt. Fuck.
“All right!” Dad intervened like he’d had the same thought. Hard and sharp like the furious fifties that marked the sea voyage home when Jack was small, he cut through the tension. “As flattered as your brother would be to see you defending what little of his honour he hasn’t left in a brothel, I rather think we should get to the task of finding him first, no? And perhaps, if you lot can manage more than one task at a time with the single wit I seem to have left you to inherit, we could perhaps even turn back what looks to be an entire German offensive that’s just caught us with our cocks out.” He paused and glanced at Zee. “Barring you, dear girl.”
Jack snorted so hard they almost toppled over. Alfred sighed like a martyr. A sigh to make him sound like Matt, if there ever was one, and leaned over the table. “Where’d you put your favourite knife this time, you old bastard?”
“Excuse you,” A note of laughter in a gravelly voice, still half-ruined by gas. “I am Father’s best knife. Only the finest for when the Krauts come for dinner, eh Dad?”
It was a pile-on, everyone rushing to get an arm around him. If Zee was his rock, the rest of them needed fucking mortar to stick together. Jack nearly elbowed Dad in the face as Arthur tried to look at a particularly large blood stain oozing from Matt’s shoulder but had to settle for turning his cheek and looking him in the eye a moment before he and Zee nearly got bowled over entirely by Alfred rocketing through. He practically picked Matt up.
“Let me down, for Christ’s sake.” Matt laughed. “I’ve got Gilbert brains on my shirt, bud, fuck.” But Alfred would do nothing but grip him and shake his head. He might have muttered idiot. Jack didn’t hear. Matt was looking over the Yank’s overly broad shoulders, nodding at them both with a wan sort of smile that said as much of pride as it did blood loss. Zee’s hand was on his shoulder, and he glanced at her.
“You want me to slip some arsenic his coffee?” Zee whispered, not doing half as good a job suppressing her grin as she thought she was. “They burn it so bad. It could be proper strong. Nice and quick like the cholera.” Her sense of humour was morbid like that, even if he wasn’t entirely sure it was humour.
“Naw,” Jack drawled. “Reckon I’d’ve taken it some kind of personal too if someone had left you out for the Krauts.”
He got an affectionate punch in the kidneys and a squeeze for his trouble.
“There’s nothing about you that came from a gutter.” She said, drawn tight to his shoulder. “Not a bloody thing.”
