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i. It is America, in all his golden candor, who sets things in motion.
“I mean,” he says, his eyebrows raised over black coffee, and he leans in closer to Germany, lips quirked into an unusually straight line like he knows he must be about to say something wrong, “you two are married, aren’t you?”
Germany wishes he was a marionette, wishes there was someone to pull his strings and whisk him out of the conference room, because in the embarrassingly long time it takes him to register exactly what’s just been said, Belgium and Hungary have each choked on their coffees in separate attempts to disguise their sputtering laughter and are each bent over themselves, heaving.
He means to ask what on Earth gives that impression, but he can’t even find the will to breathe, so he just stands, with what must be the world’s most incredulous expression of dumbfoundedness on his face.
America only looks slightly put out.
“So that’s a no?” he asks, and Belgium has to turn away to ask the Netherlands to slap her on the back.
“You seem tense,” France says later in the elevator. He stands too close to Germany, their elbows brushing. “America had the ladies in fits, but he couldn’t quite capture your graces. I suppose his humor doesn’t really suit you, hm?”
“He thought we were married,” Germany says.
The elevator hums in their silence, a quiet rocking as the floors tick by; and it feels so much smaller all of a sudden, the two of them pushed together between mirrored walls and floors, feeling the same crowded heat and breathing the same tight air. He can feel France think beside him, and in the gauzy reflection on the silver elevator doors, he knows he is being watched.
He glances to the side, and those dark, thoughtful eyes meet his.
“Hm,” France says.
The elevator purrs to a halt.
“Well,” France says.
The doors glide open.
“Aren’t we?” France says.
ii. Prussia is entirely nonplussed.
“I definitely thought you guys were at least sleeping together,” he says. He pauses for beer; when he sets his glass down and Germany is still staring incredulously at him, he shrugs.
“You just have that unmistakable air of being together,” he adds, “when you’re, you know, together.”
“Except it is mistakable,” Germany says. “Because we’re not together.”
“Don’t be so sure. My sixth sense is never wrong.”
“You don’t have a sixth sense.”
“Yes, I do. I have a sixth sense that tells me when my bro is gettin’ some. Maybe it’s some kind of paradox. Maybe you are together, and you just don’t know it yet.”
Germany sighs.
“Hey,” Prussia says. “My sixth sense is never wrong.”
“If your sixth sense is telling you that I’m sleeping with France,” Germany says, rubbing the veins in his temple, “then it’s wrong. Because that’s definitely not happening.”
“Do you want it to happen?”
“I-” Of course not. “No.”
Prussia pauses, his beer glass raised halfway to his lips. “You,” he says, “are the worst liar I’ve ever met.”
iii. Perhaps over crepes and coffee on France’s Nice balcony is not the best place to make his assertion.
“You like Nutella in your crepes, am I right?” France calls from the kitchen.
Germany stares out over the beach, the morning sun splashing golden triangles across his face, and he is reminded, as the salty air blows through his hair and seagulls call overhead, that he is weak.
“Yes, please,” he calls back.
“You have something on your mind,” France says when they settle back after breakfast. He taps an idle finger against his coffee mug and leans back in his chair, one arm hanging over the balcony to test the cool of the brittle sea wind. “And I can’t imagine you came all this way to talk about the weather.”
“We’re not married,” Germany says, and France raises an eyebrow.
“So you came all this way to talk about us.”
“I just wanted to make it clear,” he says. “I’m sorry if I’m being…”
He trails off, struggling to find the right word in French. “If it seems that I’m being crass,” he continues. “But people keep talking, and I don’t want to give them the wrong impression that there is… something between us, when there’s not.”
France sets his coffee down. “If it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll put an end to it.”
Germany breathes again. “Thank you.”
“Of course. But, if you wouldn’t mind, I could use some help with these dishes…”
iv. Italy calls; he is in trouble, he cries. Help him out just this once.
It is France and Germany who pore over budget proposals and economic studies, who spend three weeks arguing about the logistics of the world, who put Italy back on the right track, who dust their hands off and toast to the efforts of the European Union.
France pours him too much wine, and Germany downs it all.
“We’re a little married,” he says.
France smiles. “A little.”
v. It works to their advantage, usually.
“Portugal decided not to vote against us,” France tells him after a particularly demanding EU conference. “He said he couldn’t be bothered to argue with both of us.”
Germany takes the file France hands him. “Good. That will make our next efforts much more effective.”
“The dream team strikes again,” France says, and Germany pretends not to notice the casual arm slipping around his waist, but he stiffens anyways and France hums with laughter.
“Am I making you uncomfortable, dear?” he says.
Germany sucks in his breath. “No.”
vi. He wakes with an erection for the first time in what must be fifty years, and he is so mortified at first that he argues with himself for half an hour before he finally guiltily succumbs to the throbbing in his groin and crawls into the shower to jerk himself until he bites his tongue and bleeds.
“You’re talking kind of weird,” Prussia says at breakfast.
Germany stares mournfully into his coffee.
vii. He won’t say it; but he thinks about their first kiss.
It will happen over too much wine, he thinks, after an intimate riverside dinner in Paris, because lately they’ve been having an unusually high number of intimate riverside dinners in Paris. Each time, Germany insists that he will be fine after just one more glass of wine. Each time, he is too lightheaded afterwards, and he knows this because that last glass of wine always ends with an immense urge to take France’s face in his hands and smother their lips together.
He knows he’s not a particularly romantic kisser, especially not after that much wine, so each time he says goodnight and heads for home; and each time, he resolves not to anxiously down an entire bottle of wine at the next dinner, because he knows kissing France is imminent on the horizon and he cannot imagine he would want to do it anywhere else.
Like, for instance, at the United Nations.
“Well,” France sighs, “that could have been much less productive than it was.”
Germany taps his watch, brow furrowed. “It also could have been much more productive.”
Nations shuffle back and forth across the conference room, the small chatter of a workday’s end flowing from table to table, and France yawns as he pulls his jacket on.
“Stop nitpicking and go get some sleep,” he says, fussing with his jacket lapels. “God only knows what tomorrow will hold.”
“Hopefully an actual worthwhile day of work.”
France smiles at him. “You never stop. Until tomorrow, then.”
“See you tomorrow,” Germany says. He grabs his briefcase, kisses France goodbye, and starts down the hall.
Not two hours later, he answers a knock on his hotel room door, his hair still wet from the shower. France stands in his doorway, a kind of curious sparkle in his eye, and Germany stares at him apprehensively.
“Is something the matter?” he asks.
“Not that I didn’t appreciate it,” France says, “but you were a little forward earlier.”
Germany looks at him. “What?”
“If I’m remembering correctly, we agreed that we are only a little married. Now, I want to make it clear that I am not complaining, but you must admit there is a difference between a firm economic partnership and the kind of domestic bliss you seem to be attempting to impose on me-”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
France stops. “Oh, dear,” he says after a moment. “Oh, you poor, fragile bluebird.”
“France, what?”
“You kissed me, dear,” France says, “in front of the entire United Nations.”
Germany forgets to breathe. “…what?”
He did that. He remembers now, he did that. It felt so right, so natural, and he didn’t think about it at all, and probably the literal entire world saw, so that makes them really married now if they kiss each other goodnight and
“Oh my god,” he says, and France pats him on the shoulder.
“There, there,” he says. “We’ll get through this.”
viii. “It’s not official until you consummate the marriage,” Austria says at breakfast.
“Shut up,” Hungary says. She passes Germany a cup of coffee, and when he is too busy staring incredulously at Austria in a bewildered attempt to determine if that was a joke or not, she sets the mug down in front of him.
“Listen,” she continues, “as far as anyone in Europe is concerned, you two have had a special relationship for a while, so it’s not like this is really going to change anything.”
“Everyone was there,” Germany says numbly.
“Not everyone,” Austria mutters.
“Just be glad,” Hungary warns, “that your brother stayed at home.”
ix. He beats his brother to it.
“Can you make yourself scarce next weekend?” he says immediately upon walking through the door.
Prussia is leaning against the wall, arms crossed, mouth hanging open.
“You bitch,” he exclaims. “I was going to make fun of you for face fucking France at the UN.”
Germany drops his briefcase onto the front table. “France is coming over next weekend,” he says, and Prussia’s face contorts into the most shit-eating smirk Germany was ever seen him wear. “Can you make yourself scarce?”
x. They don’t consummate the marriage; not that weekend, at least.
They have nice dinners and they kiss on Germany’s balcony and they spend their days in Berlin’s museums, not so much looking at the art as they are looking at each other. He kisses France under the Pergamon Altar, and again under the Brandenburg Gate, and then again the arch of his front door, and all just because he can.
Germany lets himself be touched, because he wants it bad and he knows it, but France asks for nothing in return, except perhaps a better movie than the one they watched last night.
When they do have sex, eventually, finally (Germany counts: almost exactly three months since the kiss), he lets France take him on his back, their hands clasping at bare skins, their toes touching beneath the sheets, and there is never an emotion so raw and real as the warmth he feels in that moment.
xi. It’s not the way he normally fucks.
He shouldn’t even call it that, because with France, that’s not what it is. France kisses each of his scars and murmurs things along his collarbones and tells him he is beautiful even when he is covered in sweat and semen.
But that’s what he first thinks, afterwards, when he’s on his back sweating into silk sheets and breathing hard as he concentrates on the ceiling patterns. His history of sex is embarrassing, to say the least, and his history of relationships is even worse.
“You are thinking about something,” France says when he returns to the bed.
His hair is tied up and he’s watching Germany from over his cigarette- “do you mind,” he asks, and Germany wordlessly gestures for him to pass it his way- and there is something different in those starry eyes now. Perhaps it has always been there and Germany is only seeing it now, but half of him thinks that deep light is something new and special, something kindled between them.
“I’m thinking about a lot of things,” Germany says as France slips back into bed. He hands the cigarette back and sits up to lean against the headboard.
“Not regrets, I hope.”
He is sweaty and exhausted and he crackles a smile at that. “No,” he says.
“Then what?”
Germany pauses, letting himself sink back into the pillows. Another silent moment passes, and France glances sideways at him, the cigarette dangling from his lips.
“If I tell you this,” Germany says, and France’s eyebrows rise, “you can not repeat it to anyone. Especially not to my brother.”
“Are you going to impart some earth-ending secrets on me?” France asks. He turns away to blow a cloud of smoke, then turns back, twirling the cigarette in his fingers. “Let me guess: we are living in the Matrix.”
Germany says nothing, and France’s eyes soften.
“This is serious,” he says.
“I lost my virginity to a prostitute,” Germany says.
France sighs. “Jesus. I’m not ready for this.”
He covers his eyes, his cheeks already burning. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” he says immediately, but France is pulling back the hand over his eyes, shushing him.
“No, that was my fault,” France says softly. “This is important. Keep talking.”
“There’s not really much to say about it,” he says. He hesitates for a moment. “I was young, and drunk, and everything was going to shit. I just wanted-” just wanted somebody to love him, to kiss him and hold him and tell him it would be alright.
“I just wanted someone,” he finally says.
France holds the cigarette out, and Germany takes it silently.
“I don’t know if I regret it,” he says, and he pauses to inhale. “She was kind, even though she didn’t have to be, but sometimes I wish I had waited for someone I…”
He trails off, staring at the wall.
“Someone you love,” France finishes.
He breathes out a trail of smoke. “Yes."
France reaches over and runs a delicate hand through Germany’s strewn hair. “You’re sweet,” he murmurs. “I bet you even remember her name.”
Germany swallows. “Alina.”
The bed creaks beneath them as France leans over, his fingers still wrapped in Germany’s hair, and brushes a delicate kiss over Germany’s temple. He drops his head onto Germany’s shoulder and takes the cigarette back, humming quietly. Germany leans his head back and closes his eyes, France’s breath tickling at his neck. They sit together, like that, in the silence of dusk.
“You know it is just an idea,” France finally says. The cigarette burns between his fingers, its orange glow a tiny beacon in the darkening room. “There is nothing inherently or fundamentally destructive about the first time a person has sex.”
Germany opens his eyes. “What?”
France takes another drag of the cigarette. “Virginity,” he breathes, “is only an idea. It is a construct of control and subjugation. It is only what you make it.”
He glances up at Germany, his gaze soft. “You can lose it as many times as you want.”
ix. “You have too much stress in your life,” France says when Germany comes home and collapses on the couch. “A holiday would do you some good.”
They rent a house in Marseille and they fuck in every possible place they can.
“Stop calling me,” Germany says over the phone. “I’m on holiday.”
“You hate going on holiday,” Prussia says.
“I don’t know,” Germany says. The wooden walls of the changing stall poke at his back and the sand between his toes tickles. When France traces his fingers down Germany’s hips and tears off his swim shorts, it’s all Germany can do not to gasp.
“It’s not that bad,” he says.
France’s hands grasp at his thighs, and a devilish smile greets him when he looks down.
“I have to go,” he breathes.
“What? But-”
xiii. “How was the honeymoon?” England sneers.
France sighs, opens his mouth to explain, but Germany cuts him off.
“Good,” he says, and because the irritated crease in England’s brow isn’t quite furious enough, he keeps talking. “We had a lot of amazing sex.”
“You’re getting quite bold,” France tells him later, when they’re huddled in a corner at the bar. Germany silently swallows the rest of his drink, and France raises an eyebrow. “I see you already regret your words.”
“Sometimes I regret my entire life,” he says, and he doesn’t mean it like that, not really, because he’s tipsy and can’t believe he mouthed off to England, but that’s how it sounds, especially when his words are followed by the clink of an empty whisky glass set gently on the table.
France runs his thumb down Germany’s jaw, his fingers brushing gently against cool skin. “My dear,” he murmurs under the dim yellow bar lights, “sometimes we all do.”
xiv. They spend their Sundays in bed together; “because all the shops are closed,” Germany says, but really, because he never wants to leave the warmth of their bed, France’s arms tracing patterns down his bare back as they breathe together, their lips almost touching.
They don’t always make love on those days, because Germany revels in the quiet, domestic peace that they share, “and because your youth wears me out much more than I’d care to admit,” France sighs after Saturday nights, Germany’s fingers trailing through his hair, a classic wine still lingering on their lips.
They lull about in a Strasbourg apartment, cozy beneath white sheets in a timeless, rustic bedroom, and it is beneath those sheets that Germany, his hair loose and his eyes still heavy with sleep, murmurs something important into the pillows.
“I love you,” he says sleepily.
France cracks open his eyes. “Do you?”
Germany’s gaze flutters towards him, and their hands clasp together beneath the sheets. “Yes,” he breathes, and France smiles.
“I was beginning to think you’d never say it.” He leans forward and kisses Germany’s forehead, humming. “I love you, dear.”
xv. “France will be here soon,” he says, and he turns to the mirror again, fidgets with his tie, and catches Prussia’s eye in the reflection. “He’s the first other nation the new Chancellor will meet.”
He turns back, dropping his hand to hang limply by his sides. Prussia watches him from his armchair across the room, one foot tapping erratically on the ground as Germany fidgets some more, pacing and running sweaty hands through his hair.
“Do you think she’ll like him?” he asks finally.
Prussia smirks. “Jesus. You’re like a teenager bringing home the boyfriend for the first time. Yes, West, I think Mother will approve.”
“Don’t call her that,” Germany mutters, but then he’s wringing his hands again.
“Isn’t it kind of like that?” he says, and Prussia raises an eyebrow.
“What?”
“Like bringing home the boyfriend,” Germany says. He spits the last word, its implications heavy behind his teeth, and Prussia grins.
“More like you eloped with a foreigner twice your age. Oh wait, that’s exactly what you did.”
A quiet knock sounds at the door, and Germany barely makes it across the rug before France opens the door and steps inside.
“You’re here,” Germany says, moving forward. He hovers in front of France, staring at him expectantly, as if to kiss him or embrace him, but instead he turns his face to the side and swallows hard, wiping his palms on his jacket.
“You look terrible,” France says.
From the chair, Prussia waves. “He’s nervous,” he calls. “It’s been once or twice where I thought he was gonna shit himself.”
“I’m not nervous,” Germany says, casting an irritated glance over his shoulder, but France grabs him by the shoulders and kisses his cheeks. Germany’s hands rise, instinctively, to trail up France’s arms and take his hands, and he does, the real warmth of someone else tingling in his fingers.
“Everything will be fine,” France says. He brings their hands together and kisses Germany’s knuckles. “You have no reason to be nervous, dear. If anything, I’m the one who should be nervous.”
He takes a deep breath, staring into France’s shining eyes. “Everything will be fine,” he echoes.
Another knock comes from the door, and an intern pokes her head inside. “They’re ready for you,” she says, and when she leaves, Germany shudders through another deep breath.
“They’re ready for us,” France repeats, turning back to Germany. “Are you ready, my love?”
France’s eyes are bright and warm, and he squeezes Germany’s hand gently. Germany takes another deep breath and squeezes back.
“Yes,” he says. He lets go of France’s hand and wraps an arm around his waist. “I’m ready.”