This Calls for a Drink [Ireland and Scotland]

[ireland]

(Beware, readers. Drunk Scots and Irishmen ahead. Prepare yourself for swearing and possible, good-natured bar fights. Rated R for language, most likely.)

November 11, 1918

There were many things that called for going to the pub for a drink. They consisted of, but were not limited to: weddings, funerals, birthdays, anniversaries, births, promotions, if you had a good day, if you had a bad day, dates, office meetings, family reunions, bad weather, good weather, refuge after a fight so you’re not sleeping on the couch, clearing your head, forgetting things that ought not be remembered, farewell parties, welcome back parties, watching the rugby or football game on the tele, and victory celebrations. Pubs everywhere were filled to the brim today all over Ireland, all over Great Britain, all over Europe, all over the world. Why? The War to End All Wars was over. Germany and the rest of the enemy had crumbled under the added weight from the United States, the fighting boys could come home to their families, and the world was at relative peace once again.

The official surrender had barely been broken to the public as the pubs began to fill up, but the barkeeps were ready for the masses. The first drink was free, the second was half price, and the doors would stay open until the taps ran dry, they said as more and more customers piled in to the relatively cramped rooms. No one grumbled about getting an accidental elbow to the gut or an impromptu beer shower, no one threw a punch if their toes were stepped on or someone took their seat. It was all smiles, hugs, cheers, victory songs, and laughter in every square inch in every pub.

Murph was among those in the pub, spreading the word like wildfire. He hopped from place to place, taking part in the celebratory discounts on the beer, as well as congratulating the families of soldiers who were on their way home and joining in a few victory songs. He fed off of the victorious spirit in every pub he entered, feeling more like a country the size of Russia than the suppressed place he was. He felt like he could do anything and succeed. For the past few years, talk of rebellion floated through the air, and now he felt as though if his people gave one big push, they might actually break free of Arthur’s hold. But that was a thought for another day. Right now he had more pubs to hit, more beer to drink, and more fun to be had.

“Aye, it’s true!” he called back as some very drunk men sudden started to doubt the news. Just an hour ago they had been laughing and dancing with joy, but so much alcohol had gone to their soggy brains they couldn’t really remember why they were even at the pub. “Germany has surrendered! The boys are comin’ back!” His words made another cheer go up, even though this was well-known news, and someone ordered a round for the entire pub. The roar that followed nearly rocked the building off its foundation.

Murph managed to squeeze out of the pub a few minutes later, a bottle of Guinness in his hand. He took a hearty swig as he headed down the road, cheeks and nose a bit red from all the free drinks he had consumed. He hummed under his breath as he walked along the dirt road leading from one small town to the much larger city of Dublin. A gentle breeze tossed his hair, and he shook his head to get it out of his eyes before glancing to the rocky cliffs to his left. He could hear the ocean beating against the rocks just a few meters away and gave a happy little sigh. He was quite glad Arthur usually remained on the other side of the Irish Sea. He felt a bit badly sometimes for the three over there, having to share that relatively small island between them. He, for one, was glad to be away from Arthur for a while. He had spent so much time with him as of late, as the war began to wrap up, that he was ready to strangle the little bugger.

After some jogging to make it to Dublin in a timely manner, Murph began his pattern all over again. He stuck his head in every pub and bar he came across, grabbing a drink, and moving on. He decided to rest here, as he had been doing this all day and, while a country had far more stamina than any human, they did need to rest eventually. Murph sat down on a bench outside one of the pubs and tilted his head back to rest against the side of the building. It was freezing out, but his insides were warm from both the beer and the happiness of his people, so he barely noticed.

[scotlandthebrave]

Victory.

The taste and smell of it was in the air, all through the British isles. The atmosphere was electric, with even his usual fighting with Arthur temporarily set aside to revel in the glory of mutual triumph. Today, there was no such thing as “Scottish” and “English”. They were all just British, and they'd been in this together, right until the bloody, bitter end.

He should have been in London, should have taken the opportunity to celebrate with his next door neighbour and long term foe. After all, moments like these were rare, they caught the light and made everything shine. The afterglow of winning a war had a strange effect on a nation, gave everything a euphoria-tinted kind of feeling. Hamish felt like he'd just had the shag of his life, and was sparking up the post coital cigarette.

Of course, it wasn't that he didn't feel sorry for Ludwig and his brother. The young blond was a bit of an uptight twat, that couldn't be denied (and his brother was arguably something of a sociopath) but at the same time, he could hear Arthur, Francis and Alfred already gleefully contemplating the prospect of reparation, with peace only barely secured. And dominating and carving up another country did not sit particularly well with Hamish. Perhaps because he knew exactly how it felt to be in those shoes.

So he was not in London. Nor was he at home, celebrating with his own people who, today, were Arthur's people too. It wasn't that he didn't want to drink with his fellow countrymen, but there was someone else that he was rather more eager to see.

Hamish liked Dublin. It always had that sort of air of a home away from home. And despite of, or perhaps because of, the civil unrest there in the last couple of years, he felt more at home than ever these days. The city was huge and the odds of bumping into the one person he was looking for were extremely slim, but today, when the air hummed with victory, Hamish was confident that he'd get lucky.

And so, turning a corner, he found himself face to face with a red nosed young drunk, who sat grinning on a bench with a look of drunken bliss on his face.

“Well...” he cocked his head to one side and folded his arms with a laugh. “Ah see ye've no been wasting much time.”

He plonked himself down beside Ireland with a conspiratorial grin. “Any excuse for a wee swally, eh?” he chuckled. “It looks like ah've got some serious catchin' up tae dae.”

Pulling out his ever present hip flask, which was loaded with his favourite single malt, he raised it in a silent toast and took a long swig, draining half the contents in one fell swoop. And then he produced a cigarette and grinned at his long-time drinking buddy.

“Tae victory...an a' that.”

[ireland]

Murph jumped a bit as the window over his head was opened and sound poured out, washing over him like a noisy blanket, thanks to the heat escaping the pub. He sat up a bit and moved from directly under the window, if only so his eardrums wouldn’t rupture. Shaking out of his little sleepy state, he tuned in to what the men and women inside were singing, catching only the end of it. Their voices were wobbly with drink, but they sang loud and strong anyway. “Tonight we man the bearna baol, in Erin’s cause, come woe or weal mid cannons roar and rifles peal, we’ll chant a soldier’s song!” He grinned, knowing the song as The Soldier’s Song, and hummed along with the last few lines as they finished. It was getting rather popular these days, and his chest swelled with pride as he caught a few people singing in Gaelic. His native tongue had fallen to the wayside when Arthur had come and taken over, but recently the people had made a move to bring it back into the mainstream.

Another song was stuck up and Murph took another pull from his bottle, wondering if he had ever been this content in his life prior to now. There had been great thrill in victories of the clan wars with the Vikings and a few rebellions against Arthur, but they had all fallen flat in the end. This…this had been his first major involvement in a war, and also his first major win. Granted, there were hundreds of thousands of men how had never set food in Ireland that assisted, and his troops were counted by the rest of the world as British, but they had helped, and they had won. That was all that counted now.

It was with a happy smile on his face and his head once again resting on the wall that he was approached. His slightly soggy mind picked up on the familiar footsteps, but it wasn’t until a rich Scottish voice spoke up that he actually opened his eyes. He turned his gaze up quite a bit before spotting Hamish’s face, his grin broadening a bit as his mind processed the discovery.

“No time ta waste whenna good brew’s involved,” he said cheerfully, pushing himself out of his oddly slouched position and into a normal seated one as Scotland sat beside him. He snickered quietly and nodded a bit more than needed as Hamish pulled out the flask he was so familiar with. It seemed to be an extension of his hand, really. Murph raised his nearly empty bottle in a little toast before downing the rest of it, a content sigh leaving his lips after it was gone.

“Lord Almighty, I know why all those crazy Europeans down there fought like dogs for centuries. I feel like I can do anyt’in’ right now!” He slid his hand into the open window and rapped on the glass from the inside, holding up two fingers. Just a few moments later and he pulled out two full bottles of beer, a pleased smile on his face. He handed one over to Hamish, should he feel the need to indulge in it, and kept the other for himself.

“Not in the mood for Arthur today, aye?” he asked after opening his bottle and taking another swig, a sneaky grin on his face. “I’ve had about enough o’ him ta last me a lifetime. And then some.”

[scotlandthebrave]

Hamish inhaled deeply on his cigarette as he watched the Irishman down the remainder of his bottle.

“Lord Almighty, I know why all those crazy Europeans down there fought like dogs for centuries. I feel like I can do anyt’in’ right now!”

The Scotsman grinned at the drunken fire in Murph's eyes. Between the Great War and the uprisings against British rule, the Irishman seemed to be getting a taste for battle. He only hoped that his fellow Celt wouldn't come a cropper in the midst of it all.

He flicked his cigarette to the ground and took the bottle in one hand, clinking it jovially with Murph's drink and nodding gratefully. He wasn't half dying for a good piss-up, he reflected to himself.


“Not in the mood for Arthur today, aye?”

“An' then fuckin' some...” Hamish agreed enthusiastically, draining half his bottle in one gulp. “The wee cunt's already rubbing his hands in glee over what him an' the others are gonnae dae tae that poor bastard Ludwig. Not that ah'm no' happy that we've beaten the German twat fair and square, but ah just dinnae go in for revenge in that way.”

Scotland shrugged and took another slug from his drink. “Besides, ah' never really want to spend any more time around that bushy-eyebrowed bawbag than I can help. Not to mention, if ah'm gonnae celebrate our victory, ah'd rather be drinkin' with someone who disnae end up three sheets tae the wind after one bottle of the brown stuff, ken?”

He laughed and raised the remnants of his drink in a toast to his Irish companion and grinned broadly. “When it comes to a celebration, ye cannae beat the Irish for some good craic, that's what ah always say.”

Reaching inside his suspiciously bulky coat, he produced a craftily concealed bottle of single malt whiskey, and smiled conspiratorially. “What's say we start getting' serious about this, eh Eire?” He took a long, deep gulp from the bottle and handed it to Murph. “Cannae kick off a party withoot a wee dram, eh?”

[ireland]

“An' then fuckin' some...the wee cunt's already rubbing his hands in glee over what him an' the others are gonnae dae tae that poor bastard Ludwig. Not that ah'm no' happy that we've beaten the German twat fair and square, but ah just dinnae go in for revenge in that way.”

Murph nodded slightly, a little grimace on his face. He knew how Arthur and the rest of the larger countries worked. Once a war was won, it was instantly to divvying up the spoils. Of course, one couldn't blame them, really. It was all they had 'grown up' knowing: defeat the enemy, take their land so they become weaker and you become stronger, so you don't end up the one being beaten. He felt that in this day and age they shouldn't really be striving to end nations or crush them down to next to nothing. Rather, they should be helping each other up, drawing up fair terms, and seeing to it that everyone's war-torn cities and people were brought back up to speed.

“Besides, ah' never really want to spend any more time around that bushy-eyebrowed bawbag than I can help. Not to mention, if ah'm gonnae celebrate our victory, ah'd rather be drinkin' with someone who disnae end up three sheets tae the wind after one bottle of the brown stuff, ken?”

That got a snicker out of the Irishman. Out of all the nations in the UK, Arthur was the only one who couldn't hold his liquor. He had been put in some very compromising situations when he passed out before the rest of them did, which was probably one of the reasons he lorded over them when he wasn't drunk.

“When it comes to a celebration, ye cannae beat the Irish for some good craic, that's what ah always say. What's say we start getting' serious about this, eh Eire? Cannae kick off a party withoot a wee dram, eh?”

"Right you are, right you are!" Murph said with a laugh, eying the bottle that Hamish pulled from his coat. He could always count on the other to have some sort of hidden pocket in which he kept a flask of good brew.

"Aye," he agreed, taking the bottle and passing it under his nose to get a whiff of what he was about to toss back. A grin slid over his red face and he looked up at the taller man, his expression like that of someone who had just seen God. "Never fail ta bring the good stuff...ye know how to spoil a man, Hamish."

He took a slow pull from the bottle, savoring the taste and burn of the alcohol. You could only get good whiskey from Scotland. He was sure they had some sort of magic process that made it taste better than any other country who tried to make it. He licked his lips as he pulled the bottle away, his stomach nearly burning from the warmth of the alcohol. Passing the bottle back, Murph slumped against the cold wall of the building they were sitting in front of, hardly registering how the chill seeped through his coat. The alcohol and victory were still warming him considerably.

"Oi..." Murph reached over to poke Hamish's side to get his attention in case he didn't have it already. "What do ye think of me tryin' to kick Arthur out of here once and for all again? I feel like...this victory was what me people needed to light a fire under their arses and show 'em how...how good it is to feel like tis." He glanced up, green eyes bright as his mind worked a mile a minute. Drinking always seemed to make his thought process speed up rather than slow down.

"Might be nice, aye? Kickin' Arthur where it hurts just after a nice win...wouldn't even see it comin'."

(FINALLY done with finals ;w; Sorry that took so long, but now I should be back to posting at a normal speed. Happy St. Murphy Day, too! =D)