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Light was pouring through the cracks between the thick hotel curtains, providing little escape from a city that was always awake. Even on a high up floor, Romano could still hear the beeping and honking of cars from the roads below.
It all made him scowl as he sat in a chair beside the window, drinking a glass of piss-poor American wine. The hotel hadn't had anything Italian, nor did it have anything Spanish. There was plenty of french wine, which had made Romano shudder. It also had lots of North American varieties of wine.
Ultimately, Romano had simply told the hotel bartender to give him a bottle of whatever he thought was the best.
The Southern Italian nation was also bored out of his mind, needing to stay close by for the rest of the world meeting the next day, but not having anything productive to do. Stupid Veneziano always told him to relax and not worry about doing too much work. So his idiota fratello did all of the paper work, leaving Romano bored to tears in New York city.
Just as he was wondering why he was even there at all as well as trying to decide if he should go lay in bed and try to get some sleep, even though it was terribly early, he heard a knock on the door.
"Open up," called out the voice, raspy and loud as it always was, "I have something really awesome."
Romano rolled his eyes, wondering what sort of trouble he was about to allow into his room. He went to the door anyways and threw it open, staring Prussia in his crimson eyes.
"What are you doing here?" Said Romano, crossing his arms over his chest and trying to give his best glare, "Don't you have some kind of paperwork to do or some shit?"
Prussia pushed by Romano, not even paying attention to the squawk of protest that the Italian let out, "Nah. West is too uptight to let me go over the paperwork. Not when it needs to be done for tomorrow's meeting."
Yeah. That was something the two of them had in common. Two brothers who took all of the work for themselves for their own various reasons. It ended up causing both of the nations in the room to be bored out of their minds sometimes. The only things was, that Romano didn't use the excuse of boredom to cause general chaos and mayhem wherever they were.
It was just then that Romano noticed the huge box in Prussia’s hands. The pal skinned man was prying the box open, unwrapping long strips of brown paper off of something, throwing the packaging every which way.
"Stop you bastard! You're making a huge fucking mess," said Romano, trying for a snarl and a really loud voice.
He failed to make himself sound serious in the wake of Prussia's excitement. The albino had a wide grin over his face and a happy shine to his eyes. Prussia pulled out a long tube and a tripod.
"A telescope!" Announced Prussia, screwing the tube onto the stand, "That brat America lent it to me. I guess he's not so bad."
Romano watched Prussia set the device up and drag it over to the window at which he was just sitting, "Why the hell would he do that?"
Looking over at Romano as if he were out of his mind, Prussia said, “Uh, because I'm awesome. Why else?”
Shrugging, but moving closer to the telescope, Romano said, “To keep you out of trouble while in his city?”
Prussia blinked twice before snorting and waving his hand in protest, “As if anybody would try to keep me from improving their town with my presence.”
Really, Romano could have told Prussia that he did that all the time when the former nation was in Rome. Keeping Prussia distracted was a pretty good strategy to keep him out of trouble. Romano had been pleased with the results he'd achieved, keeping Prussia from mischief.
Of course Romano had taken quite a while to warm up to Prussia in the first place and not just ignore him entirely, or yell at him.
Alright, so Romano still yelled at Prussia, but he did that with everybody so that wasn't really saying much.
“And why the hell do you need to do that here?” said Romano, “I had things to do.”
A lie, of course. Prussia didn't need to know that though.
“West told me to get out of his room and mine doesn't have a good view of the sky.”
“Whatever,” said Romano, huffing and sitting back down with his wine.
That was, in Romano speak, like giving the albino the go-ahead.
“Damn!” swore Prussia, hitting his fist down on his own knee, “I can't see anything.”
“Well we are in the middle of the city. That what the crap are you expecting to see anyway?”
“Outer Space.”
“You can see the stars without one,” said Romano.
Romano was a smart man. However he had niche interests and tended to ignore what he decided was probably boring. He'd never cared for the stars other than to help prevent himself from getting lost at night. Sure they were nice to look at once or twice. Romano had lived for hundreds of years and lost the childish wonder he'd once had about the night sky and the stars.
Prussia gaped and shook his head, disassembling the telescope with an astounding speed. He packed it back up and said, “If you think that than you are really missing out.”
“Right, well don't let the door hit your ass on the way out,” said Romano, shrugging.
Prussia grabbed Romano's hand, nearly causing the Italian to drop the rest of his wine.
“What the hell bastard?” shouted Romano, being dragged along the carpet, trying to vain to struggle against the mighty power of a former warlord.
Romano only ad enough time to grab his keys and the room card before being grabbed again and brought down the hall. Nobody even tried to help Romano, not even that stupid bastard Spain, who just waved cheerily and let them go.
Jerk.
Of course Romano was also forced to take his rental car, since Germany hadn't given Prussia the keys to his and for good reason too. Prussia was the keys to a vehicle was never a good idea.
“Drive until we get out of town and it's dark,” ordered Prussia after loading the telescope carefully into the back of the trendy sports car.
Italian of course.
Romano took off into the thick traffic of New York with a groan.
#
It had taken quite a while to make it out of the city. Romano had dearly wished that he'd brought something sharp to stab Prussia with when the jerk kept playing with the radio. Stupid American pop music sucked. And Prussia wouldn't stop flicking stations.
Romano's throat was getting sore from all of the times he'd yelled by the time the darkness of the city had fled them.
They got to a field that had several hills in and around it. Prussia yelled for them to stop and Romano slammed his foot on the breaks so hard that the tires squealed on the pavement.
“If that wreaked something in the car, you're paying for it,” scowled Romano, placing a hand on his chest from how loud Prussia had yelled.
Romano had thought they'd been attacked or that Prussia had seen a dead body or something.
Nope.
Prussia just happily got out of the car and grabbed the huge box with the telescope in it. Romano followed, slamming the car door shut and grumbling the entire way. It was fucking cold out in the middle of nowhere with not a cloud in the sky and a chill breeze sweeping over the dewy grass. Romano wrapped his arms around himself as best as he could.
“This is going to suck and I am going to punch you,” said Romano, making sure that his friend heard him.
Prussia ignored Romano and hummed the Prussian national anthem as he set the telescope up on the tallest of the hills. Romano watched Prussia more closely this time and noticed all of the gadgets that were attached to the telescope. It looked complicated.
“Have you done this before?” asked Romano, a little bite left to his words, but mostly filled with curiosity.
“Yeah. I borrow a good telescope from one of the Universities every now and then. They are too expensive for West to buy for me outright but the faculties of sciences let me borrow the equipment sometimes because they recognize how awesome I am,” said Prussia and then added, “I wonder how that brat America could possibly afford a € 9000 piece of equipment.”
Romano had just been about to reach out for the telescope but pulled his hand back at the last minute, afraid to break it suddenly and incur the wrath of the rather unpredictable American youth.
“Shit. That's a lot of fucking money to waste on a telescope,” said Romano, making a soft harrumph noise.
“Says the guy wearing thousands of euros worth of clothes right now,” said Prussia, right before he let out one of his cackling laughs, “Kesesesese.”
“Clothes are worth the money. At least I don't look like I picked my clothes at random from a thrift store,” snarled Romano.
How dare Prussia insult fine Italian fashion?
“Anyway, you'll see why this telescope is worth it in a second,” said Prussia in a voice that was so damn cocky that Romano wanted to smack him.
Why was he friends with this bastard again?
After another eternity of waiting for Prussia to adjust dials and aim at various points of the admittedly brightly lit sky, the albino cheered.
“Alright. Come here carefully and look through the scope. Careful you don't move it at all,” said Prussia, standing back and crossing his arms over his chest and looking so very confident.
SO Romano did so, if only to make this night be not a complete waste of time.
And when he did he didn't know what to think.
“What is that?” said Romano.
It was a disc and looked slightly swirled with a load of bright stars speckled thick all over it. But didn't somebody need one of those huge ass fucking telescopes to see things like galaxies. Like the ones built in huge buildings on top of mountains?
Maybe he really didn't know dick all about outer space.
“That's another galaxy, Andromeda,” said Prussia, staring into the sky, “It's our closest one.”
“Oh,” said Romano, and to try to save face he added, “It's alright.”
“Just alright? Each one of those stars has planets around it. There are billions and billions of stars in that galaxy.”
“Okay, so?”
“So think of how much life could be within that swirling circle? The whole sky is full of galaxies, all possibly full of life.”
“Oh,” said Romano, even though he knew that he probably sounded like an idiot, repeating himself like that.
That was, possibly, sort of neat. Not that he'd say that or anything. However despite his lack of acknowledging his new found interest in the night sky, he stayed quiet as Prussia adjusted the telescope to view new places.
Romano got to see things called nebulae. Sure they weren't really in colour or anything, but they were pretty all the same. It was like cloud-gazing. Only he was looking at things really far away. Prussia even brought pictures up on his phones of what the nebulae would look like in colour.
Eventually, They both sat down on the ground and just stared at the wide expanse of sky above them. Romano had a new found respect for the stars. They had become more than just specs of far away light to him. They were whole galaxies and solar systems. Stars and possible civilizations. Other living beings, incredibly far away could be sitting and looking at their galaxy right at that moment.
It took Romano's breath away. As antisocial as he could be sometimes, Romano was always more drawn to people and life. Living things. Now space wasn't just a lifeless void.
It was interesting.
“So it's pretty awesome, right?” said Prussia, leaning over to bump his shoulder against Romano's.
“Yeah, I guess,” said Romano, bumping Prussia back, “How do you know so much about this kind of stuff anyway?”
Prussia shrugged, “Everybody has their hobbies. Mine had always been stargazing.”
“Really? Always?”
“Well sure. When you were waiting on the battlefield and your weapons were sharpened and your stomach was full, there wasn't much else to do. My men were always too scared of me to really talk much, so I occupied myself with the stars.”
Romano leaned closer, just a fraction, without really noticing that he'd done so. With Prussia being so open and honest, Romano felt his own heart bare itself just a fraction more than normal. He yawned and then leaned his head against Prussia's shoulder. Prussia's arm made it's way around Romano's shoulder.
With a voice barely above a whisper, Romano said, “Well I'm not scared of you.”
Thankfully, he wouldn't have to repeat himself because Prussia grinned and said, “Good. Does that mean that I can bother you more often to come out and do awesome things with me?”
“Don't push it,” said Romano with a soft and gentle voice, nearly falling asleep, all traces of his normal grumpiness had fled hours ago.
“Alright.”
Romano didn't know when he'd fallen asleep completely, but the next thing he heard was a car door slam. He kept his eyes closed because he was just too tired to care.
The next thing he felt was a hand run over his hair and the quiet voice of a Prussian whispering, “Good night Liebling”