if i gave it all for one thing;

[wingborne]

He thought the mirror was overkill.

The mirror made the entire situation feel tarnished. Dirty. Uncouth. But he reminded himself there was nothing honorable about having sex with himself in the first place. At first, he tried to console himself, call it masturbation. Nothing wrong with touching himself, loving himself, even when himself was another body. But when Arthur leaned forward, eyes lighted up against the dim bedroom lights, and suggested the mirror, he knew he would not refuse. He could not refuse.

When Arthur had first arrived, they had sat at the table and decided one would be “Arthur” and the other “England,” an arbitrary division. They sometimes mixed their names up, which England—Arthur—thought was fitting. They were both England, just the younger England spun an eye patch around his fingers when he answered the phone, and he arrived wearing a ridiculous hat that looked absolutely splendid on his head. Contrary to popular opinion, they hadn’t leapt into bed and gone at it.

But he had wanted to touch his face, kiss the younger England, a narcissistic mood that blossomed in his stomach and stretched its tenuous vines to his hands and feet. He wanted to have sex with him, he thought, and that was the thing about having sex with yourself. When he leaned back and looked into Arthur’s eyes, he could see he wanted the same thing, too.

He kissed him, much the same way he did now, in front of the mirror. It was different, though, because his eyes roamed to his own reflection in the mirror. They sat on the bedpost bed, half-dressed. Usually, his eyes would devour only what was in front of him—the slender lines of the jaw, the sculpted tone of the thigh. But now he wanted to see himself sucking at Arthur’s neck, hands roaming up the ridiculously splendid coat, stare at himself in the hollow mirror, because in a way, he was staring at Arthur.

There were differences, though. Subtle ones, like the inflamed pink scarring that ran from Arthur’s bony shoulder across to his ribs. England took the time to run his tongue over the fading wound, fingers working quickly at the gold buttons of the coat. He slipped the coat off, down to Arthur’s waist, revealing the cold wasteland of his body. The pink scar had already turned white on his own shoulder, but he latched his mouth to the warm body, fingers running down the slightly scarred back, where the cuts that puckered freshly had already turned into old withered stitches on his own body.

And there were differences in personality, too. Arthur attacked him vigorously, biting too hard into his skin with his teeth, licking viciously at his neck, fingers too strongly trying to force off his trousers and leaving tender white nail marks against his hip bones. England, though, had already grown old, and he knew the spots that excited him the most, dipping his head to trail along his breast to his naval, the way that always gave him pleasure. Arthur groaned and cursed under his breath, impatient, with his hands digging into England’s hair. But England only patiently pressed his nose into his skin, smelling gunpowder residue and the salt of the sea.