In no particular order:

The Top 5 Best Butts in APH

Spain: Spain has the best butt because he knows how to work it - outfits and shaking it. He just has... a very aesthetic butt. It’s round and grabbable and smooth-skinned, and it is a joy to watch in motion. He gets a lot of exercise of those muscles when he’s crouched down in the earth tending his garden.

India: India can shake what he’s got better than anyone, and - unlike Spain - no-one’s in doubt that he knows exactly what he’s doing when he does so. He throws in the hip-swinging and full-body movements as well, and then everyone is lost. He doesn’t feel grabbable, and doesn’t show bruises very much, but oh, is it fun to watch him stride/climb out of a bath/swimming pool.

Portugal: Portugal had a finer, firmer butt when he was sailing and horse-riding more, but he’s still got a toned ass and thighs. Not as round as Spain’s, and sometimes when you go to grab it you’re getting muscle without the jiggle. Shows handprints p. well though. This butt is most likely to be on display because Portugal refuses to buy new jeans until the denim has worn completely through.

Greece: nobody has any idea how Greece still has the body and butt he does with all the napping he does, but somehow? He does? Sleeping beauty has the marble arse of a Greek statue. Not much jiggling, but if you smack the butt it makes this fantastic echoing crack sound.

Australia: where his arse came from is anybody’s guess, but he looks very good in a wetsuit. Noticeable but not very round, put pretty muscled from an active lifestyle. A drawback to the Oz butt is that it’s at least three shades lighter in colour to the rest of Australia’s skin. Tan lines. But there are cute freckles too.

  Honourable Mentions:

England: this guy’s legs are the real appeal; his ass is flat but firm. It needs framing to stop you in your tracks though - get the dude a waistcoat and some fitted trousers and you’ll see vast improvement.

Veneziano and Romano: they have cute bubble butts, though they’ve got some work to do if they want to catch up to the fine muscled posterior of their nonno. They don’t do as much exercise, and Romano in particular definitely lazes around. They can work what they’ve got with fabulous clothes though.

America: America’s weight tends to fluctuate wildly depending on the season, stress, and latest health fads, but his terrible fashion is pretty universal. He is a man of many different butts, each with their own delights, but all of them are hidden by awful pants.

Canada: Canada plays sport more regularly than America, and so was just pipped out of the top 5 list. He’s got a lot of the same issues as his brother, because Canada will binge eat anything covered in maple syrup and wears clothes that do nothing for his assets.

Belgium: there had to be at least one lady on here? Anyway, Belgium’s pretty curvy all over. It’s more her hips than her butt that will make you drool, but she deserved the mention because sliding your hands over those fabulous hips to her butt is A++. Combo-attack is super effective.

France: the French butt is good, above average, but France really wins best overall presentation of his general everything. The butt individually does not make the list, although it shows fingerprints and scratches very well.

Turkey: Turkey has a decent butt, but it’s definitely seen better days.

“You were sorely missed at dinner.”

Truly, the Isles of the Blest were as lovely as their name suggested they ought to be – bright and warm under the illusion of a now setting sun, with cool clear waters and fields and hills of flowers, the greenest of grass. Past the ocean and the rivers and the plains, past all judgement and beyond the King’s House, the Isles of the Blest were the final resting place for weary souls who had well-earned their deserved peace, and they were the loveliest place in all of the Underworld.

They were also the only place in the Underworld elaborately barred to the Underworld’s temperamental god and king – and so they were the frequent refuge of the king’s stolen, particularly stubborn, new consort, Albion, god of the waters that ran through the worlds, and of those that navigated them. Albion, who rowed often with his husband, Lusus, both of them making a din loud enough to quake the foundations of the mortal world, to rock the earth and shake the seas, leaving the rest of their divine kin to deal, afterwards, with the answering onslaught of mortal entreaties, pleas and complaints. (But what did they care? After a fierce argument Lusus blasted the Underworld anew, and Albion stormed out of the King’s House, sweeping away to the Isles before he could be caught and dragged snarling into a quarrel again.)

There was wine, laughter, and sweet music in the evening air – passing beyond the King’s House and stepping effortlessly through the barrier into peaceful warmth the god Igni could easily understand why a deity used to the babble of innocent brooks, to the open sea, would choose the Blest Isles over any other place in the Underworld; the islands were good for the spirit, full of souls who had drank of forgetfulness, shucking off their mortal cares and finding peace. Like Albion, Igni himself lived a divine life that was half and half, half above, half below – but as a daily commute, rather than an annual trial. The sun god, he did not dwell long enough in the Underworld each night for the world’s pervading cold to dim the natural burning of his skin, for the shade to seep chill into his bones – and yet, still, he could feel the relief that the Isles of the Blest provided, a balm that soothed hurts he hadn’t felt until they were gone. Empathy was a blessing and a curse, and an old friend and lover’s new spouse was a complicated matter. And this one –

Perhaps Lusus was really mad like so many whispered, to claim a husband from the water, railing up a roiling creature full of wanderlust and then expecting him to behave. There were more agreeable deities than the Sea King’s children; there were dryads of the woods, naiads of the brooks. Igni had seem them all as they had danced along beneath the sky he swept across – but no, no. Lusus, on one of his rare visits into the light, hadn’t wanted any of them. Hadn’t done much more than glance at them, even though his own brother had helpfully pointed out the pretty, agreeable ones.

(‘Why?’ more than one soul had asked the King of the Underworld, on many an occasion, anywhere between exasperation and outright anger at the mess left behind. Lusus hardly ever answered them, dismissing them in a flash of fire, flaming serpents coiled hissing about his throat.

‘Why?’ Igni had heard Pan ask his brother one time, when it was late and both of them had been smoothed softer with wine. ‘Why did you have to choose him?’

Lusus had smiled, so clearly distant on a sandy seashore, his dreaming worn in his eyes. ‘There were mermaids singing in the bay.’)

“Was I required at dinner?”

Though there were an endless number of souls milling about Albion had the grace, with his query, to not pretend that Igni had originally spoken to any of them – he’d felt, surely, the moment Igni entered the Isles, a second sun that walked on the land and made the flowers bloom even more vibrantly than before, one last goodnight before the evening drew to an end. He didn’t look up at his visitor though, sitting almost serenely beneath the shade of a white poplar tree and listening to a harpist playing just over a nearby knoll. His recent marriage had made him Lord of the Isles – but the souls were avoiding him, stealing swift glances at the heavy mourning wear the young god had adorned himself in and wisely choosing to stay out of the way. Black made Albion seem paler than he already was, a ghost of the laughter that had once lived by the sea.

Lusus loved bright colours, light, the joys of a wedding. Albion, petty revenge as it was, took great pleasure in giving his spouse the exact opposite, a funeral’s laments. Little hopeless spites – for two people who had been so curious, so enamoured with each other at first sight, the two gods had certainly managed to make a hideously unhappy marriage for themselves.

Igni no longer wondered why it had taken Lusus so long after the wedding to issue an invitation to dinner.

(The evening had apparently gone up in flames long before he’d arrived.)

He took a seat on the grass at Albion’s side, glittering white-gold beside recalcitrant black. Albion pulled away from him instinctively, looking at him like a wounded gazelle, startled by the sudden heat radiating from the deity beside him. Igni kept the sun in his bones.

The sun god only smiled, tranquil, and leant back against the tree behind them. It settled firm against his spine and Igni relaxed, letting his eyes slip closed. “As one of the masters of the House, no-one can truly require you to do anything. There was the impression, however, that you were expected.”

Albion made a noncommittal noise, shifting, the cloth draping him rustling the grass. (He was wearing enough of it.) There was quiet, for a little while, gentle harp music in the air. “…I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

“We might have been introduced, had you been at dinner.”

“I might’ve been at dinner, had I known we were expecting guests.” It was like arguing with the tide.

“Perhaps,” Igni said, and opened his eyes again to see his ‘gazelle’ was wearing a green gaze dark enough to rival a gorgon, a stony set to Albion’s mouth. Yes, this one had spirit – Lusus had loved it enough to claim it, and the Underworld could surely only benefit, in the long-run, with someone determined enough to butt heads with its king, “it was meant to be a surprise.”

Albion’s mood didn’t improve. “You will forgive me, but recent experience has made me less than keen on receiving surprises.”

Agreeable, Igni only inclined his head – a slight bow. “As the little master wishes.”

“…I wish that you would tell me your name.” Over the knoll, the harp music was tapering away, the cicadas starting up a song instead.

“You do not know who I am?”

Albion coloured, a splash of pink across his cheekbones, hands digging into dirt and grass. (There were things about Albion, other than his spirit, that Lusus must love too.) “All the worlds know who you are – you’re hardly subtle with your bloody all-seeing fire-boat. But you’re – we’ve not – I mean, it’s not proper -”

“I am Igni, little master,” Igni told him, cutting smoothly over the beginning of Albion’s ramble – and shifting so that he could calmly steal the other god’s hands away from the abused grass, cupping cool fingers between his palms and holding them close against his heart. “God of the sun, and all its burning flames. And you -”

Flooded a rather charming shade of red, Albion half-heartedly tugged at his hands – unsuccessfully; Igni only tightened his grip, perfectly serene. “I already know who I am, thank you very much. And, if you’ve eaten with my husband, you already know exactly who I am as well, and had me introduced to you in absentia.”

“All the worlds know who you are,” Igni agreed, “since we had such a time looking for you when you first left the surface.”

“That’s hardly my fault -”

“You are much more fascinating than Lusus implied you were.”

Speechless, Albion’s mouth opened. And closed. And opened and closed again, a most curious fish.

And then he found his voice, and snatched his hands back out of Igni’s grip. Any moisture there might have been trying to grasp a water god dried away immediately against the sun god’s own skin, but the tiny grains of salt the evaporation left behind – they scratched. “That’s still not my fault! And you – I would thank you kindly to – to -” He apparently couldn’t quite think of the exact affront Igni had provided to him, so settled for glaring instead. “What are you even doing here?”

“I thought I had already explained.”

“You most certainly did not.”

Igni regarded his companion thoughtfully – Albion, such slashed slivers of the self he hid away under black cloth and a blacker mood. “You were sorely missed at dinner, and I wanted to meet you. So I came here.”

Albion pulled even further away. “You’ve met me now -”

“Have I?”

“Leave.”

The illusion of the sun was dropping its last few paces in the sky, bleeding sweetly, and it left red streaks across the Isles, gold-scarlet light and strange hollow shadows. It left Albion an imposing creature, truly a worthy consort for the King of the Underworld – but a weird creature, beautifully strange. Lusus had caused so much havoc for a sea-wraith siren, cold and unreachable in waters they’d drowned red themselves.

As the sky’s light grew dimmer, Igni’s light seemed brighter in comparison, a soft soothing gold. “Lusus sent me with a gift for you.”

“I don’t,” a shudder of breath, someone failing to be soothed. Didn’t sirens have a predator’s teeth? Albion’s nails bit into his own arms, crossed over his chest. Through cloth, through skin, perhaps the mortals would sing songs about it. Deities were made up of little things too. “I don’t want anything from him.”

Lusus and Albion – on his travels across the sky, Igni had seen their first real meeting on the seashore, a beautiful day. The sands had stretched out on either side of them like an endless promise, something of eternity, and there had been mermaids just a little further out, singing in the bay. Albion had waded in to shore with the sea-foam, his attention caught thoroughly by a strange handsome god he hadn’t known on the beach – and Lusus had laughed at him, at the younger god he’d heard the Underworld’s rivers whispering about, seen reflected in dark pools deep underground. At blushing Albion, slick with saltwater, with seaweed caught hopelessly around his ankle, tangled up in his damp blond hair.

(To anyone watching, anyone at all, they’d both seemed so utterly charmed.)

“A shame.” Igni watched Albion watch him – so very wary, like a jaded cat. “May I at least give you your wedding gift from me?”

“A gift is unnecessary. Thank you.”

“…As the little master wishes, then.” Igni shrugged, a fluid motion, and pushed himself to his feet. From above, Albion seemed made up of mostly nothing but shade – even when he stood up as well, so clearly disgruntled at being looked down on. He still had to look up. “Perhaps another time.”

Albion frowned, pulling the drapes of his robe further around himself. “You’re planning on coming back?”

“Of course.” The sun passed through the Underworld nightly, and if Igni had the time to spare – “This is a lonely enough world to live in, without also choosing to be alone.”

“…I -” Albion seemed to think better of what he’d been about to say, biting down on his bottom lip. Quiet. The false sun of the Isles sank below the horizon, and the only glow between them came from Igni himself, finding the pale white flashes of the other god’s skin. Albion started again. “If I have word of your coming next time, I should be pleased to welcome you for dinner in the House.”

“I would be pleased to accept.” Igni smiled, and Albion drew back away from a step. (Even in the dark, the other deity went red.)

“It’s not -”

“Thank you, little master.”

Albion was getting disappointingly used to being cut off, amusingly, drawing himself up as tall as he could be, sharp-edged and imperial. He was growing into his role. “Until then.”

“Until then,” Igni agreed, bowed, and left.

(They next time they met they ate together in the King’s House, and though Albion still wore black he sat at Lusus’ side, Lusus’ hand laid very carefully over his own.

It was a good start.)