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March 30th, 1814. The Parisian suburbs would eventually soak up the blood and swallow the sounds of gunfire, but nothing could be done for the infernal, shrieking indignance echoing from the north of the city, where Austria knew, she just knew, that Prussia had chosen to interpret his orders to attack from the rear as something that involved cruel and unusual ballistics. Bread rolls, perhaps.

She was late arriving at the loosely scheduled meeting point, expecting to catch hell for it- not from any superior (could she really be said to have superiors? Not in her estimation, thank you) but from her dear warmongerer, who lately grew rather sore when she missed their dates. It was mildly entertaining to watch him struggle to keep his lips from twisting downwards in a sulk, and stop his temper from spiking and dissipating wildly with the ebb and flow of her attention. Prussia, least deserving of her company and most insistent on it in recent times, was as easy to read as a book written in his own large and angular hand, but the knowledge of his earnest need for her acknowledgement did not satisfy Austria. She knew the what; she had not yet determined the why.

It was enough, that unknown motivation, and the attendant effort he seemed to be making to catch her eye, to persuade her to keep it on him. Not that she really required incentive to keep him and his foreign policy firmly in her sights, but allowing him to invite her to dinner, that seemed to need a little more justification. Presumptuous and wholly unnecessary, if the ultimate goal was her bed, but she had her own uses for free meals and willing bodies.

Attractive bodies, even, filling out a torn and disheveled uniform in a pleasing fashion- more pleasing because it ran contrary to her expectations of flawlessness, and any reason to look down upon him was a good one. She could spot him in the chaos a league away, a pale and bright blur of brutal movement swathed in darkness; if he had looked back to see her approach, she would have seemed to deliberately invert him, richly dark hair braided and twisted into impeccable voluptuousness. Not a hairstyle built for battle, though it pretended to be. No fighting had disturbed it, and to the astute, this would in fact indicate that she had paused to make sure it looked that way. As would the state of her clothing, pristine and crisper than snow.

She always wore white; Prussia liked to say, when he was feeling disagreeable, that it was so she only had to shake some part of her anatomy to indicate surrender. It was admittedly a good indicator of whether she was winning or losing. And she was, without doubt, winning, though she'd barely had to lift a finger, rallying her troops to support one of Prussia's endless, nameless brothers, but falling back from the melee herself. She had spared perhaps an ounce or two of effort to unseat one brazen opportunist with a bayonet from his horse, feeling that he needed a lesson about seeing a beautiful face and a skirted jacket wrapped around a small, sensuous figure and making assumptions. She was no warrior, but she could certainly ride.

Her sword hung unused from her belt as she dismounted, leaving her favourite mare in the hands of some boy who may not have even been a groom, but that hardly mattered. Doubtless he appreciated the opportunity to beat a hasty retreat to her encampment, where overly grand carriages and unnecessarily large tents marked her intention to impose herself on France's hospitality whether she was wanted or not. She had, after all, tried her best to reason with the woman. But she pushed the thought of their quarry from her mind as she picked her way past scattered bodies, making a face at the dirt and dust, the cannon smoke on the air. Ahead, Prussia was shaking his sword arm out, stretching and flexing, rolling the ache out of his neck as he surveyed the damage he had done. Austria thought it almost unsporting to allow him free reign on the field.

When she came within ten paces of him, it seemed appropriate to make her presence known, and she allowed her heels to scuff the ground more audibly than they would naturally. It caught his attention, and he swung around suddenly, abandoning the hapless former soldier he had been turning over with the tip of his boot.

"Princess." The way his face changed was a marvel to see, a flush lighting up the dirt-streaked cheeks and reaching his eyes, harsh and happy in equal measure, as if he had no mastery of his eyebrows, in particular. Austria arched hers as if in rebuke, and all it got her was a carnivorous grin, Prussia moving with purpose towards her until he was far too close for comfort, unclean hands reaching for her. "Where the fuck have you been?"

"Where do you think?" she began, and she had to cut herself off to push against his chest, then outright shove him, warding off the kiss he was intent on greeting her with until he backed off, laughing with his hands up. The smell of warfare on him was vile, undercut with something less offputting on the edge of consciousness, something promising victory. She brushed off her coat as if she had nothing else on her mind. "Restrain yourself or I shall have an example of insubordination made of you."

The threat was so laughable as to not be worth answering, and Prussia only smiled, his hands behind his back, bouncing on his heels as though there could be nothing more pleasant than their conversation. His good humour was genuine, and the thought that killing swathes of Frenchmen had caused such a mood would perhaps have been worrying to someone better adjusted than Austria.

As it was, she returned the casual courtesy, though with less exuberance. "I have been observing you, if you must know. Are you making progress?"

"Progress?" Prussia made a grand sweeping motion with his arm, indicating the catastrophic scene behind him, of which he was the proud orchestrator. Unfortunate men and horses, buildings crumbling under the weight of heavy artillery, and in the background, the sound of giddy Prussians helping themselves to large items that looked very like armchairs and dinner tables. "I fuckin' swept the board. I dunno where Russland is, the slow bastard, but if he doesn't get moving, 'm goin' after him. A busy man like me doesn't have all day!" A pause to determine whether she was listening, or if his grandiose manner of speech impressed her. The results proved inconclusive, and he continued. "Anyway, Frankreich locked herself in a bakery, with the entire damn stash of croissants I wanted, but I got tired of pounding on the window, plus she looked like she was gonna piss herself so I thought I'd considerately excuse myself- where you going?"

"I think the looting is in poor taste," Austria said with a shake of her head, stepping over debris and turning to make for her camp; she had seen enough to know she had nothing to worry about, and she would have been content to take tea while the battle inevitably came to a conclusion. Behind her, Prussia's face fell, and sudden as a cobra strike, he was lunging to grab her (mercifully, gloved) hand.

"Wait- oi, you haven't even seen- I mean, don't you wanna see?" He was uncertain; she frowned up at him, wondering at the shifting, worried features and the tight grip on her hand, the thumbs pressing into her palm, massaging in some unconscious attempt at mollifying her. "...I got you a nice coffee table."

She blinked. "For goodness' sake, Preußen." She did wonder if it was oak or mahogany, but he was already pulling her along with him, a nervous smile breaking over his lips and faltering now and then until her stride grew more purposefully in step with his. She would play his game for now, as long as he behaved; he had proved himself to be worth the trouble he caused, at any rate, if you wound him like a top and let him loose in the general direction of your enemies.

It was strange, though- not the change she expected might come over him between battle and rest, but the lack of it. He was unperturbed as he danced his way through corpses, leading her along a winding route he seemed to have mapped out in advance, holding her hand and turning back to her every few seconds to ensure she was steady on her feet. Treating the impromptu graveyard like a garden path, that dismembered body a rosebush, that worn-out cannon a fountain. Rambling as he always did, breaking off now and then as if looking for a comment. Her approval, she dimly realised.

"This thing- this thing, I aimed the cannon myself- see what a clean shot I got?! Look!" He was waving his hand at a half-collapsed guard tower, though what was clean about it, Austria could not guess. But she nodded obligingly, and after a moment's awkward pause, wherein he chewed his lip enough to bruise, she ventured a faintly interested remark.

"It must have been very heavy."

The contortions of his face were more interesting than anything he was saying. A hopeful expression, followed by a slight frown and finally, a wry grin.

"You can humour me, missy, but don't forget who brought you on a nice trip to Paris, alright?" He tapped a finger against his lips, speaking as if to a child, and she dropped what little effort she'd been making to look like she cared. It didn't seem to bother him, and he carried on as blithely as ever, swinging her hand as they walked. "Now, over here, are you looking? You're not looking, Österreich. See this poor fucker? I did him with my bare hands- Christ, Frankreich's infantry sucks- and this one, well, that's his own bayonet jammed up his- "

"This is all very romantic, but oughtn't we be going in the opposite direction?" Austria cut in, coming to a halt that pulled Prussia up short, unwilling as he was to let go of her. He scratched the back of his head, looking around at a gaggle of his men running by with barrels of gunpowder, deciding not to even acknowledge it, and turning his attention back to the bright eyes, the colour of cornflowers, searching him questioningly. Taking in torn cloth that would need mending, and beneath it, surely torn flesh that would need the same. He seemed unaffected, but she knew better, knew the slight shifts of his weight that betrayed at least a stray bullet or two lodged somewhere uncomfortable. Prussia's careful pause only confirmed it, but he smiled brightly at her next words. "I wish to rest. I am growing thirsty. Really- you are completely inconsiderate. Never mind the table, you might have requisitioned me a chair."

"Ahh, ah, if the little lady needs a break, I wouldn't be a gentleman if I refused," he said, his voice light with insincerity, and he gave her an excessively energetic bow, never one to conserve movement; even as she recoiled, she moved no more than she had to, her limbs gracefully rearranging themselves. She allowed him to keep her hand and he brought it to his lips, his kiss respectfully brief, but that was where his facade of gentility ended, and before she could stop him, he had rubbed the back of her hand against his cheek, dirtying her white glove with God knows what. "Ah- whoops."

She had wrenched her hand from his and brought it back against his cheek, with force this time, in the blink of an eye; she always did have good reflexes in her fingers, alive with the promise of pleasure and pain, exquisite to look at, and stern with discipline. It only made him laugh, though he stumbled, the edge of surprise to his voice not quite muffled fast enough; he had learned her limits fast, and yet the sting of her discontent- delightful as it may have been- seemed still to somehow bother him, on some petty level. She could not quite bring herself to push down the slight exhilaration of rebuking him, though she rarely looked too long at the wounded expression left behind, jarringly soulful on those strange eyes. Inappropriate, she thought, and false, never mind that she knew very well how bad he was at falsifying anything convincingly.

"Come," she snapped, the command belonging to a hound, with all the vitriolic attacks on his intellect and character merely implied. She turned on her heel and danced from his apologies and his grasp, his complaints, insults and laughter, half-thinking to throw her glove in his face, because it would entertain them both- but then he threw his arm around her waist and pulled her back with such a suddenness that she barely saw the reason. She only felt, to her veins, the tensing of his muscles like steel, the momentary grimness that overtook him as instinct replaced his affectations.

It was a man, or perhaps a boy, in truth, his allegiance difficult to determine while she was being forced behind Prussia, his grip on her fearsome for a moment. It relaxed just as suddenly, the better to apply that strength to their attacker- Austria's attacker, she suspected, and for a mad moment as she staggered aside, she was glad he'd missed, it would have ruined her coat. Better dark blue to soak up so much blood- but she didn't quite want that, either, she would have a terrible time getting it out in the wash, and she struggled to orient herself, to tell Prussia as much-

"Preußen...!"

"What'd you think you were gonna achieve?" He was ignoring her, with good reason, his lips curled in a frightful smile closer to a snarl; his eyes bored into the panicked face below him, and Austria almost felt pity. The young man was white-faced, trembling and half-collapsed as if the iron grip threatening to break his forearm was the only thing keeping him upright. His fingers barely grasped the knife embedded in Prussia's shoulder, but now he was stuck; he had made his bed, as Austria thought Prussia might say- though perhaps not so politely.

"I asked you a question- oi, don't look at her," Prussia said, evidently in a dark humour, but there was a hiss to his voice as he dragged the boy closer by his wrist, forcing the dagger deeper. "She ain't gonna do a thing for you. It's bad manners to stab a lady, kid, didn't you know, hm? Be grateful-" Here he broke off, tiring of the pain, and he held the assailant in place with one hand- to one side, like baggage- while he pulled the blade out, making a face more appropriate for removing a splinter.

"Be grateful- you got me," he breathed, waving the bloodied dagger in the boy's face before tossing it aside. This display of inhumanity unnerved him, and he let out a strangled yelp, looking to Austria despite his warning; she could not predict Prussia's intentions, though at least six outcomes flashed through her mind. She ignored the desperate, dirty face pleading with her, looking instead at the fierce dirty face belonging to her companion, staring her down, but patiently. A seventh possibilty arose: was he waiting for her command?

"Put him down," she huffed, with an air she had perfected for those moments where Prussia was making a scene. "That coat is going to be beyond saving."

It was only faintly surprising when it seemed to work. There was a grin that swiftly became a grimace when Prussia made the mistake of shrugging, and he dragged his hapless prey up from where the poor boy had almost fallen to his knees.

"She's only sayin' that to be contrary," he said in conspiratorial tones, frightening the young man out of his wits, Austria was sure. She wondered, in that helpless, distant way a nation must when faced with the sheer volume of humanity, what his name was, but Prussia was already voicing her thoughts, as he tended to do when she least wanted him to. "You got a name, voltigeur?"

In the ensuing pause, Austria almost wanted to prompt him like a schoolmistress, but finally, with much gasping and wet eyes, the young man managed it.

"J-Jean- Jean-Marie," he spluttered, and Austria closed her eyes; on cue, Prussia snorted, and it became a laugh, a full and yet guttural sound, swelling with the absurdity of the situation.

"Jesus Christ! You'd better run back to your Marianne, Jean-Marie, tell her what you've done," he said, with an odd fondness behind the mockery; he liked soldiers, Austria was well aware, especially the loyal ones. And he liked France well enough to kick her around and offer her a drink afterwards. His Francophile phase had been insufferable. "Tell her you nailed me right in the balls, it'll make her feel better. And oi, give her a kiss from me- and a croissant- easy, now, kid. On your way, soldier!"

He propped the boy up, setting him firmly on his feet, and Austria could only twist her hands together uselessly as he swayed and looked at her with his mouth hanging agape, massaging his wrist where Prussia had let him go. He had clearly never experienced a nation before. It would be something to tell his grandchildren, if he survived the rest of the day. Prussia dusted him down, more for the look of it than with any purpose, because he remained as dusty as he had been; then he gave him a wary push towards Paris proper, observing him as if he expected him to fall over. To Jean-Marie's credit, he did not. He did not even look back, and Austria suspected he was hoping very hard that the past ten minutes had been a delusion brought on by blood loss.

As they watched him totter away, Austria drew close to Prussia, peering up at his face; he looked calm for the moment, despite the blood seeping into his clothes and spreading fast. He felt her eyes on him, and he looked down to give her a brilliant smile, his teeth as white as his skin.

"Feel faint? I'll catch you," he offered, opening his arms wide as if he really expected her to fall into them. "C'mon- I'll send for a painter, we can re-enact it and you can, you know, open your blouse and look grateful- "

"What on earth did you do that for?"

His smile faltered, hands awkwardly hanging in the air. "That? I don't know what the hell that is, but someone's gotta teach these little French toerags how to behave, and it really fucking hurt, you know. If you're not gonna let me heroically carry you back to your men then I'm not taking you to your goddamn tea party. I'll go back with Pierre-Martin or whatever the fuck and play with Frankreich, and leave you crying in your stupid frilly tent, how about that, hah?!"

He was petulant, his voice rising almost shrilly in tandem with the colour flooding his deathly cheeks. He would never admit what he had done, but Austria had used up her daily allowance of tact.

"I forbid you from engaging in any further heroics, in defense of me or otherwise," she said, in a very bored voice (he had never, and would never, catch her out in a hand of poker); she held up a hand to ward off the expected protests, but they didn't come, Prussia's face contorting in embarrassment and his voice trapped in his throat, where it gurgled pointlessly. All the better for her to snatch his hand from where he had left it dangling and pull him away, so very like a dog on a leash, or, if she were feeling especially cruel, a husband by his shirt collar. "And I absolutely forbid you from playing with Frankreich. I have all the pastries you require, and they are not to be thrown."

-

"When I said I'd leave you cryin' in your fancy tent," Prussia began slowly, eyeing the impressive interior of what Austria was trying to pass off as a bivouac, "I thought it might be...purple, or something like that- you're really overdoing it again! I'd get my ass kicked from here to Potsdam if I demanded somethin' like this, d'you really need this prissy little table? Wait- replace it with my gift. Replace it when my boys bring it over, alright?"

He was swinging his feet as he sat contentedly on a chaise she'd had set out for him- or, truthfully, for herself to take a mid-battle nap on, but it served both purposes- looking around with an expression almost of innocent interest. Austria regarded him warily as she set out, with a decorative finesse, the things she would need to tend to him- warm water from a kettle, cloths, bandages, a certain fine soap liberated from Parisian stores by the bucketful, as penance for the trouble of going there in the first place. Beyond that, implements she thought Prussia was more familiar with than she was, for the removal of bullets and the mending of wounds. Her interest in medicine was cursory at best, and she was more interested in how she would prevent blood staining her furniture, among other perils. She knew how he tended to get when surrounded by her things; curious, yes, perhaps even innocently, but irritatingly handsy, to the point of destruction, and she had brought some rather unnecessarily expensive and well-loved belongings with her. She was careful not to let her eyes wander to them lest he notice them, focusing on Prussia like sunlight refracted through glass. To her surprise, he seemed to feel her eyes on him, showing that unusual perception she sometimes forgot about; he let his eyes slide to her, pausing for a deliberate moment before leaving her again, the colour in his cheeks more lively than embarrassed, the slight smile definitely pleased, and not mocking. He was an idiot.

He was also seriously endangering the upholstery. Austria approached him, basin in hand, hoping to make this quick; she stood before him, a jerk of her head making her intent clear before she voiced it anyway, out of politeness.

"Please stand for the moment."

It took Prussia a moment to respond, caught as he was by the view of her slender ankles in tight-fitting boots, his gaze ponderous and frowning as it roved upwards. Eyes struggling to break from their path, close to unfocusing entirely, and Austria resisted the urge to shift in place, or indeed to snap her fingers in front of his face. He had a habit of staring, the strange clarity and uncanny shifting colour of his eyes threatening at times to overwhelm even Austria's stoicism. He took in the detailing of her coat, the gold buttons, the lacework showing at the collar of her shirt; all expensive, a cultivated image of class- more than class, but exclusivity, and he didn't seem to know how he felt about it. He had spent years, after all, centuries derisively picking holes in her aristocracy, calling her at best a bumpkin and a miser, and at worst a dolled-up strumpet who sank her claws into a large inheritance (though, admittedly, he came to heavily regret making remarks to that effect, when all was said and done; her icy barbs for weeks afterward were painful, but the application of cookware to his head, more so). Yet lately, she seemed to be convincing him. Irony, when it was now, finally, that she entertained the notion of being friendly with him, but the more she allowed him to see- and perhaps touch, on a good night- the more unsteady his opinion of her became.

Or at least, he told himself so, because the acknowledgement of having found her breathtakingly out of reach since childhood would be far too bothersome. And as for Austria, she did not quite know what to think when his eyes lingered too long, only that she had noticed it long before he had.

In an instant, though, the silence broke with the sound of him jumping to his feet, then cursing as he jolted his shoulder. He was not a particularly tall man, but he still loomed over her by nearly a head. She made the distance insignificant through force of personality.

"So..." He was staring her in the eye now, the guilelessly interested expression rather handsome under the dirt and blood, but the latter made the former unpalatable for her, and she brandished a washcloth at him without thinking. "How are we gonna- h-hey- oi, don't do it without warning! Mmph- ...tch."

"You are far too slow," Austria sighed, deciding that she preferred Prussia's face wet, red and pouting as he submitted to being forcibly scoured, her thumb pressing the cloth hard against his cheek to scrape away the grime. There was a grudging, stiff docility to him while she worked, as if beneath his grousing, he enjoyed the feeling, but she carried on only as long as it took to make him slightly less hard on her eyes. She was soaking her gloves, she realised, and she paused to peel them off. "Strip to the waist, if you would, Preußen."

He didn't miss a beat, a grin materialising out of thin air as he rubbed his damp jaw. "Ladies first, Österreich."

She slapped at him with the washcloth. "Stop touching your face with those hands. You are appalling. I will not have you riding into Paris in this state." Though it raised a fair point, unintentionally; tending to him would be a disaster for her white coat. She pressed the cloth into his hands, backing away from him to shed it, her fingers working the buttons with an unconscious precision. "I want your face and neck clean enough to shame Frankreich. Do not forget your ears."

Just as rapidly, the grin became an exaggerated look of despair, a groan drowning the end of her sentence. As with most faces he made, it was only a mask, and his eyes did not match; they were trained directly on her hands, interested again, but even he was not stupid enough to think she was taking all her clothes off. He slowly complied with her directions, rubbing the back of his neck and fumbling his own coat buttons with one hand. The pain in his shoulder had subsided to a dull throb, and he could feel a sticky crust of blood welding his clothing to his skin. Prussia was battle-hardened and used to grotesque conditions, but at his heart he was consumed with neatness, and it felt disgusting now that the adrenaline had passed. "That little bastard. This coat isn't three months old. I should've let you take the damn hit, you've had that for ten years."

"I have not," Austria retorted, quite mildly, "and that would be a terrible excuse for failing to do your duty as a man."

She was only semi-serious, her expression neutral as she folded her discarded coat haphazardly and tossed it over a chair. Beneath it her clothing was not precisely masculine, but certainly more so than anything else she ever wore, and not really very different to the outfits worn by the dandies at her court, the men Prussia scorned in favour of stable boys and conscripts. On her, however, the billowing shirtsleeves and tight waistcoat cut an intriguing figure, and he'd think her trousers obscene if his own weren't as fitted. In fact he was straining his neck to one side, waiting for her to turn and convince him of their obscenity anyway. That was the reason for the frock coat, he guessed, no doubt the manly clothing embarrassed her. It wouldn't do to have everyone knowing she had legs.

Legs that were approaching him with purpose, the impressive roundness of her hips and the stretching and shifting of her thighs giving him a sudden burst of energy to rip his coat off, regardless of the sting as it tugged on his open wound. Adolescence and a luxurious diet had made her gangly but plump where he had been scrawny; it seemed appropriate that young womanhood had smoothed and elongated her to fill her dresses more elegantly, much the same as his broadening shoulders finally filled his uniform. Over the years their differences had become startling, and where he felt strong and firm, she always looked like he could sink his fingers right into her, whether to indulge in her curves or break her bones. But appearance was deceiving, especially with the fashion for scant white dresses that made her look slightly indecent in her opinion, and both wholesome and tempting in his; tightly bound in her masculine suit, however, there could be no mistaking her subtle steeliness.

"Duty as a man? The hell's this, trying to put me in Ungarn's kennel? I'll open your door 'cause you're too fuckin' weak to do it, Princess, but we're all the same when it comes to getting sent out there to die." Chivalry was an odd concept that applied selectively to their kind, and he had inflicted his share of violence upon her, but he could admit he took no pleasure in it- well, perhaps a little, when she was forced to become as dirty and ragged as he was, enraged enough to tackle him and hit him around the face while he merrily deflected her blows. It was fun, like playing with an angry kitten. Striking her, though, he refused, he would rather stab her, shoot her dead, anything but brutalise her with his hands; it made a beast out of a man, and he could not afford to teeter any closer to the edge. So that was his courtesy to her in battle, as enemies- as allies, of course, she expected him to act as gentleman and pack horse in one, but that was a different argument, and a demand he indulged as often as he scorned. Another bit of fun, this time playing with the docile but spoiled housecat. "I swear you make up more duties for me than the damned king. Your duty as a woman of breeding is to turn away from the sight of a man undressing, isn't it?! But you won't, will you, hah?"

He was good-natured in his taunting, not at all expecting propriety and stripping off his waistcoat and shirt carelessly, though he wrinkled his nose at the sight of them drenched in his blood. It was the smell that bothered Austria more, and she advanced upon him with soap, taking the ruined garnents and tossing them far away from herself in a way that made Prussia cluck his tongue. Ever the taskmaster, scolding her for the untidy hedonism that hid behind her prim appearance; she had her mask, too.

"How can the nurse avert her eyes from the patient," she murmured, her voice flat as she took in the sight of his bare chest. Hardly a titillating view, gruesome was a better word. His whitish skin was patchy with scars to begin with, possessing a certain beauty by themselves, but now overlaid with fresh gashes and the rusted colour of congealing blood. She had been right about the bullet wounds, a graze on his right shoulder, an entry wound near his left hip, and as always she found it remarkable that he could stand, let alone ignore his injuries. He had a remarkable proficiency for shaking off pain and healing fast, supernatural even for them. "Do you need a glass of brandy?"

"Later," Prussia replied, shifting uncomfortably in place, his fingertips dancing shy of touching his injuries. They were not severe- by his reckoning- but they were bothering him. A certain tingling feeling cutting through the pain as even now, unseen, his flesh was knitting itself together again, mitigating the worst of the damage. "Get this blood off me, it's makin' me itchy."

He spread his arms out, plaintively, and she complied, in the measured way she attended to personal hygiene; she began at his collar bone, avoiding his worst wound as she swept the washcloth to his right shoulder, to skate around the tear that stray bullet had made where his arm began to curve with muscle. Down his arm, pausing to ensure the back was as clean as the front, and that necessitated her coming closer, holding his forearm gently with her free hand. The floral and wet smell of cleanliness overwhelmed the scent of blood from time to time, but mostly she held her breath, diligent as she reached for his hands. Focused entirely on scrubbing them clean, each finger enveloped by her own through a layer of soapy cloth until they satisfied her. So focused that she almost forgot who she was tending to, such a still and silent presence as he watched her work. Taking a fascinated comfort in her attentiveness, enough to keep him tame even as he felt the urge to hurry her, demand she dig out this damn bullet before he did it himself with his fingernails.

She was an exercise in patience, always. Slow to speak and prone to silence, unless she was annoyed, which was a frequent enough occurrence. Painfully slow to complete a task, though she'd do it to perfection; her washcloth passed over his other arm, his chest and stomach with a speed that he could not quite call lazy, but languorous, almost sensual when the cloth slipped and her fingers trailed his wet skin directly. It made him shift more than the metal embedded in his skin. But she was drawing too close to that area, and he sucked in a breath that visibly tightened his abdominal muscles, grasping for her hands to pull them off.

"Stitch me up before you hose me down, Princess, I'm fuckin' begging you," he grunted, sarcastic, but with an edge of desperation to his voice. Not for the first time, Austria suspected his stoic handling of his injuries was for her benefit, and that if she let him languish long enough, it would snap. But she complied, once again, dropping her washcloth into the basin to turn the water a little murkier, rolling her sleeves up to the elbow. Stalling, because she would never be a real nurse, and she disliked this part. But she was a talented seamstress, at the very least.

"Are you certain you will not take a drink?" She jerked her head towards a silver tray set to one side, where decanters and glassware stood. She could not promise even to minimise the pain; she had a habit of pragmatism in these matters, yanking and pulling less delicately than was usual for her- she did hate to get her hands covered in blood. "And do not complain if I do it incorrectly, it is your own fault for refusing to see the medics."

He ground his teeth together, staring at the dim light coming through the ceiling of the tent. "Later. Knit me like a fucking stocking if you have to, I want this ball of lead out of my kidney, and I want to stop gushing everywhere and maybe avoid gettin' a raging infection from the French air, you know?"

"Very well, Preußen, there is no need to be impolite," Austria sighed, and she regarded the wound at his hip with distinct unhappiness. "You realise it could simply be left in there to do no further harm."

She was already gritting her teeth and reaching to probe at the hole, looking as pained as Prussia was. She knew what he would say before he said it: "I am not fucking walking around rattling like a damn collection plate just for the sake of a little gangrene or whatever the fuck you're about to give me." He was peculiar that way. She was certain she'd had a musket ball in her left buttock since the 1740s, though he said that occasional twinge was probably just a symptom of 'being such a tightass'.

"Very well."

It was as unpleasant a task as she had anticipated, and by the time she'd gouged the shot out of him with a combination of forceps and shaking fingers, she was sweating more than he was. To his credit, he had swallowed most of his violent curses, his hand gripping her wrist uncomfortably tightly to make up for it. Predictably, he was bleeding again, the sight of it oozing from him rather too much for an already-shaken Austria, and she rapidly excused herself from nurse duties, darting across the tent to blanch her hands in hot water and fumble for a bottle of her best brandy, only just stopping herself from drinking straight out of it. The thought of losing her head enough to be so uncouth sobered her somewhat, and she eyed Prussia warily over her glass, watching him take a clean washcloth to his wounds himself, cleaning them with an air of sterile practice.

"Are you going to sew them yourself?" The hopeful tone to her voice was unmistakable. It drew a scornful roll of Prussia's eyes, a soft cluck of his tongue, and he flicked bloody water in her vague direction.

"Since I can't get a halfway decent job done around here, yeah, I guess I am," he said, raking through the collection of needles she'd left on the table, picking up the thread to go with them and squinting at it. "What the fuck is this? Embroidery thread?"

"It is perfectly serviceable."

"It's purple."

"I call it heather," Austria opined, pouring another measure into her glass, and approaching Prussia to offer it to him. "Perhaps a light mauve."

There was a weighty pause, Prussia staring her down and utterly unimpressed with her lack of medical caution, but at length he snatched the glass from her hand, pressing the reel of thread into it in return. "Then you do it, you're the one who spent three hundred years sewing samplers waitin' to get hitched. Make a pretty pattern, it'll be a conversation piece."

With that, he poured his brandy down his throat, slammed the glass down on the table, and promptly threw himself down on the chaise longue again. The sight of his insufficiently clean body against the intricate pattern worked in gold thread on cream velvet cushioning made Austria's left eye develop a spontaneous twitch.

"And where am I supposed to sit?"

"You ask some dense questions for being so sharp, Fräulein," he answered, patting the patch of seat next to his head, his eyes closed. He was gruff, in a way that suggested he was shy to make this request, but bold enough to do it anyway, never one to deny himself what he thought he needed. "Let me lie in your lap, lady."

She snorted at his rough eloquence. "Only your head, I presume."

Prussia grinned, arm thrown over his eyes as Austria gingerly approached with needle and thread in hand. "Ah, yeah. At least, 'til you get me in better shape. Y'know..." He exuded an air of mischief, innocent because his insincerity was obvious, as he lifted head and shoulders to make way for her in an equally obvious display of strength. "I'm man enough to grit my teeth and give it to you, if you really want, Princess, but you're gonna hate the stains- "

"What I really want, Preußen," began the low reply, Austria's hips shifting into place beneath him as she sat, her thighs a soft but restless pillow through fabric that did little to reduce sensation- and the weight of his head in her lap was a pressing one, causing her to grasp him by the hair and pause to situate him more properly before she went on. "What I want is for you to take great care not to disturb me while I am jabbing a needle into your flesh. Do you understand?"

Her hand had taken him by the jaw without her even having to think about it, covering his mouth in a way that made his eyes widen, and she shook him slightly, prompting him. "Mm?"

His smile was impossible to hide, lips curving against her hand, cheekbones sharp as his eyes narrowed with devious mirth; but he was silent, and he shook his head obediently until she released him.

"Hah...you know, Fräulein..." Prussia watched her hands snake towards his shoulder wound, his words soft, slow and distracted as some careful breathing disguised and dispelled his tension. Austria was almost enveloping him, leaning over him so that the billows of silk at her arms and chest obscured his periphery, and he dragged his eyes away from where she was approaching his wound with cloth and needle, to watch her lips and consider undoing her hair (quite without permission) to see how it would fall over him. "You're a fuckin' frightening nurse- oi, you love having me laid up and in pain, don't you? You should be gentler than if I was a damn chick under its mother's wing and kiss me better- ach, fuck- "

Austria was as unmoved as ever, smoothly pulling her thread tight. Such a gruesome task required her to approach it with a detachment suitable for darning socks- that Prussia's suffering tended to provoke a similar response was a convenient coincidence. Still, she was good enough not to slap his hands away when they gripped her arms, strong fingers clutching to feel her through the fabric. He was childlike in some respects, she mused. Behind the set jaw and tensed muscles, and his pained grin as she stung him with the needle again, there was a vulnerability barely visible in the way his eyes went wide and searched her face, the room. Looking for reassurance, or perhaps warding off irritating feelings, resurfacing like muscle memory; reminders of when a needle and thread stood between him and testing the immortality he didn't yet trust.

She had not felt the same way in a very long time, Austria, always fortified behind other bodies, an imperial heart caged in gold wire and encased in iron. Always more willing to make an example of herself in dignified undeath, than to struggle on in fear and messy mortal suffering. She hardly even looked dead, more the sleeping princess in her bed of roses- or perhaps the vampire's bride in her coffin- waiting for her kiss, either way. No hardship for one certain of her invincibility- though it had been challenged and grievously tried, oh yes, by the man with his head in her lap and his face hidden in her belly like a little boy.

Or perhaps not a little boy, considering the way he was curling into her in a most unconvincing display of vulnerability, reaching firstly for her arm, then her hip, letting his touch wander.

"Where is your hand, Preußen?"

Prussia was singsong in response, eyes bashfully hidden and a broad smile on his face despite the tug of thread in his skin; he was taking advantage of her hands being tied up with tying it off, his wound sewn as neatly as a couture gown. "On your thigh, Österreich."

"And where is it going?" She was shifting again, only able to remain so unflappable with his fingers spidering around; it wouldn't do at all. When she felt a bold finger stroke the seam running between her legs, she clamped them tightly shut, drawing a satisfying yelp.

"...Ow." He withdrew his hands, petulant but chastised. Flopping back to the correct position with a sigh, drumming his fingers against his ribs; he was growing restless, but Austria was still concerned with her task, cleaning away the last of the blood, attempting to dress his wounds securely, and she would have no interruptions or half-done jobs.

"You are being unhelpful," she said, and like so many of her remarks, it was flat, with nothing to cushion the blow of her bluntness. "Sit up. If I can bandage your wounds without further trouble, we may yet see the end of our own battle. Though you will need to be made presentable again. I wonder if it is too much to hope that you brought a change of clothing."

She spoke of him as if he wasn't there, at times- a lot of times- and it forced him to draw on patience he was not entirely sure he possessed, tense and humouring, treating her like the child she thought him. He complied with her demand, barely, heaving himself up to let her compress his bullet wound and pull bandages taut around him. It was a sloppy job by any medic's reckoning, downright dangerously slow for a human, but it wouldn't matter at the end of the day; she was only making him slightly more comfortable- and Prussia suspected she was more concerned about saving his second set of clothes. Which, by the way, he did have. Somewhere, in the hands of some underling who knew enough to plan ahead for the possibility of Prussia ending up dripping with blood, and cared enough to do something about it.

"I'll put a shirt on before we storm Paris, keep your drawers on." There was a thoughtful pause while she tied off bandages neatly behind his back. "Are you wearing- "

"Silence." Austria cut him off with a pinch to his arm. All he did was rub it and smile, and she thought it about time she was getting up and away from him, but suddenly he fell back against her lap, head and shoulders pinning her legs. She clucked her tongue, disgruntled, her hands immediately falling to his shoulders to ward him off, but he took that as an invitation to grab her wrists; he was intent on taking liberties, then.

His smile was brilliant, his teeth unnaturally well-preserved. "Neither am I, if you wanted to know, Princess, but don't you think it's a little shameless to go around with nothing but buckskin breeches between that ass and a wandering hand? I'm surprised, Frau Österreich! Pleasantly! Feels nice, doesn't it?"

"Silence," she barked, but her attention was caught by his movement (and besides, his lack of underwear was obvious to any woman with eyes and a certain disregard for decency). Prussia's hands were wandering indeed, up her arms, his fingers dancing under her sleeves to feel the delicate bracelets hidden there, and her pulse throbbing beneath them; she caught him by his forearms, her grip threateningly firm. "I consider this to be an embarrassing state of undress, but no vulgar male underwear is going to improve it. Perhaps I'll be able to wear something proper this evening, if you ever finish this little skirmish."

Austria's fingernails were neatly maintained, yet long enough to leave welts on a man's back, if she so chose, and they gave him pause as they pressed against his skin- not because it worried him, no. She was losing patience, he could tell that much. Reacting to him as she always did, calm while he could be controlled, and a spitfire when he overstepped his bounds; he wished to avoid that disappointing middle ground where she grew bored with his attempts and shook him off before he'd really been bad, and so he reached up suddenly, hands sliding up her arms to come to rest at her jaw, fingers cupping her face.

"It's not just my skirmish, Liebchen," he admonished, tilting his head back to frown at her- always in that tone, like a nursery maid, and her nails dug in a little harder. "Maybe if you brought a real commander and not the good prince Karl, and got your hands dirty, we'd be done by teatime, but some of us have to pick up your slack, you know."

Her left eyebrow seemed permanently wrenched into a disbelieving arc, but she maintained her calm, her fingers raking down his forearms with a satisfying scratch, though she hardly noticed. She was consumed with the bare insolence of his stare, and the way his hands threatened and longed to pull her face down to his. He was hard to read. Simple on the surface- her beauty appealed to the man, her power and wealth to the nation. But beauty could be found elsewhere and he had little interest in claiming her power, he only used it now and then. There was something deeper at work, something she suspected went back to the days when he was hardly anyone, and she was everything. "...You are the one who overruled me and indulged that lunatic in his pettiness, Preußen. And furthermore- "

Austria's hands gained momentum as they slid down his biceps, clawing over his shoulders to reach his throat, and then his face, cradling him to mirror the way he held her; it made him arch his back suddenly, fingers digging into the hair at her temples in excitement. She had no clear intentions, but the air between them grew thick with his anticipation, she could taste it. It didn't quite make her smile, but she tilted her head to lean into his palm, eyes closed. "You like performing for me, Preußen."

Even unseeing, she could feel the hitch in his breath, the stubborn tensing of his body grappling with his natural honesty. More than honesty, but an uncontrolled self-expression that revealed itself in the fidgeting of his fingers, the need to inelegantly let his feelings spill from his lips. A foreign urge to Austria, who meant what she said, said what she meant to and withheld what she did not. There was a wry amusement to her reaction, then, whenever she admitted to herself that Prussia loosened her tongue rather more than she would admit to him; he could remain in the dark about her motives, frustrated by the sense that he could never best her in her own arena, one of social graces and subtle manipulation.

Frustrated, but finding his own satisfaction in that slight submission. "I like when you get it in that frilly head of yours that my plan is better, and you throw your fake fuckin' scruples out the window and take the first excuse I give you to beat some poor bastard down, instead of just throwin' princesses at 'em until they stick. Or have me do it, I should say, 'cause Christ knows you can't dirty your pretty little hands, can you?"

"So you enjoy leading me astray." Her touch became affectionate, blindly stroking the feathery hair from his forehead in a gesture she had picked up in childhood; he wondered if she ever did it to anyone else. Typically Austria, majestic and graceful, but condescending, and he seized her beautiful fingers, pressed them back to his cheek to feel every slender joint against his skin.

"Hah. You've been astray since the first damn moment you could give the old man the slip and step off the path. I just wanna see you admit it. Admit you're no better than a- what'd you call me?- a degenerate war-addled gutter rat from Berlin. I love seeing you lower yourself to my level." He broke off thoughtfully, his hand rubbing against hers as it would his own chin. "Raise yourself. Raise yourself to my level."

Her first smile of the day was a wicked one, in all its subtlety. Eyes open but lids heavy, with that cold gaze from on high she had perfected, she leaned down so close Prussia could smell the faded perfume of her hair, and her fingers pinched his cheek as if he were a charming toddler (though she'd never found a toddler charming in her life). "How like you to covet what you cannot have."

He didn't flinch, but there was a brief, contemplative pause, before his grin returned, a little harder than before. "You might not say it, but you're the one looking pretty damn pleased with yourself to think you have me on a leash and when you say 'Komm!' I'll drag your prize back to your feet and sit wagging my tail 'til you need me again. So same to you, Fräulein."

He prodded her cheek, singsong again. Once more, Austria caught the strange sense that despite the obvious derision in his words, his pleasant tone was guileless; she frowned, pushing his hand from her face without breaking eye contact, and he heaved a great sigh, as if he was letting her win. It was hard for her to tell when she really had won, he was so prone to doing that- but as with all the good ideas he had, she had adopted it for herself, and now they could be together in their uncertainty.

"Since you've been a good girl today and played nicely- even if you made a damn pincushion out of me- I'll play nicely too, Liebchen. I'll roll over and fetch- hell, I'll be your cute, savage little attack dog, just for today, but even a hellhound needs his back scratched, you know? So! I'll be taking that bone you're gonna throw me anytime, Princess."

It was almost impressive, the conviction with which he delivered his ludicrously audacious demands, blinding her with his smile and play-biting at her fingertips for good measure, until she seized him by the jaw. There was no surprise in his expression, only an intensified excitement; she put another hand on his throat, as insurance, and she felt him shiver against her thighs.

"You have yet to bring my prize to my feet, Hündl. And you are injured," she added, as an afterthought. "If I scratch any part of you, you may fall to pieces."

"You know I know you don't give a damn how roughed up I am if you're in the mood," Prussia said, and he pulled himself up on his elbows to bring his face close to hers; there was a distinct tone of impatience, almost hurt, and Austria squeezed the hand around his throat a little tighter. He only reacted by reaching to pull her fingers away and hold them, looking plaintive. "Don't you think a poor hard-used hound like me needs some comforting?"

"And what would comfort you?"

"You could start with a hot meal and a back rub- "

Her laughter was cold and airy, the laugh of one so above the insult that it induced no rage, but was not quite laughable enough to ignore; happy Austria had played the part of household mistress perfectly, indeed- so perfectly that it became terrifying, and she never tolerated any master. She pushed Prussia down again, by his injured shoulder, humming to herself when he dropped to her lap with a hiss of pain.

"Now, now. You are a hardened soldier, you have no need of a housewife. And nor," she said, her fingers pressing until he yelped, "do you have the right to one."

"Mother of Christ," he grunted, slapping her hand away. "Since when?! You act like my fuckin' wife when it suits you to torment me, Princess, and I don't see a single goddamned upside. I know you can't let the neighbours see me, but the least you could do is treat me good when we're alone."

It was a complaint Austria had heard before, and they both knew it led nowhere (and that the definition of 'good' varied immensely, depending on how obstinate Prussia was feeling; certainly, if he was foolish enough to press the issue, she would remind him how much enjoyment he appeared to derive from her savaging him with a sewing needle). She stroked her thumb along his jaw, very tenderly, and she found herself feeling a certain warmth in the wake of his petulant cries for her attention. "There will be none of that, until the day your ring is on my finger, Preußen."

He didn't even pretend to be surprised, or disgusted, his grin crawling crookedly along his face. "Not in a thousand years, Österreich."

They leaned in at the same time, the distance between them seeming to close organically. Hands reaching for soft cheeks and sharp jaw, spines and torn muscles protesting as she bent down and he arched upwards- but she reached her limit first, and she paused, merely leaving a smile as a challenge for him. One he was valiantly trying to meet, craning his neck back and eyeing her as though he would have liked to eat her, and perhaps he would, if only he could reach-

"Frau Österreich!"

The distance grew as subtly and suddenly as it had closed, Austria's back straightening until her poise utterly disowned the man sprawled awkwardly over her lap, holding himself stiffly in position. The messenger had caught them shamefully unawares, but there would be no admitting it. At the entrance of the tent there stood a clean cut soldier in Austrian garb, looking straight ahead as though he had been warned his beloved homeland may be fraternising with something unkempt, and was trying his level best to treat it as completely ordinary. He was no Jean-Marie; Austria recognised him, vaguely, and she knew that he recognised them.

"What is it, Fähnrich?" she asked, calmly adjusting her cuffs as Prussia very deliberately swung himself upright and away from her, eyeing the young officer in the manner of a tame but unfriendly dog. The ensign bowed, then saluted.

"Gnädige Frau, Marmont has surrendered. Fürst Schwarzenberg requests your presence." Here he paused, with a wary look to Prussia and his expression of contempt for the officer's rehearsed formality. Austria followed his gaze, wondering if the young man could not believe that this disheveled, poorly-bandaged creature with untidy hair and dark shadows under his eyes could really be something as proud as the Kingdom of Prussia. "And...sir, Blücher wants you. He says he wants more gunpowder."

The ensign's tone was exasperated, and Austria fixed Prussia with a very piercing gaze, but he was already on his feet. Now that she looked closely, she could just make out reddened patches on his back, suspiciously resembling burns.

"Jesus Christ, that old man doesn't know when to sit the hell down- hah, but fireworks would set the right tone for Frankreich's latest walk of shame, don't you think?" Injuries forgotten, he was bouncing on the balls of his feet, beaming from Austria to her soldier; the young man made a disgruntled face that marked him truly as a Vienna native, and his motherland was close behind. But she was pleased, and could not hide it, a lofty satisfaction replacing all else as she got to her feet, approaching her subordinate as if to leave immediately.

"I think you ought to leave off blowing up bridges now that we have secured our goal. You never can be civilised in victory, can you? Please escort me, Fähnrich."

Prussia was almost contemplatively silent as she moved away from him, his eyes following her body downwards the further she walked. "Damn, they really leave nothing about your ass to the imagination."

She came to an abrupt halt mid-step, wincing; the forcefully impassive look she gave the young man dared him to return anything but the same. "One moment."

"Ma'am." The ensign had been a good choice; he turned sharply on his heel and marched outside, knowing better than to bear further witness to the inscrutable dance of burgeoning international relations.

Austria watched him go, then reached for her coat, briskly making herself presentable again. There was a spare pair of white gloves in the pocket for just such an emergency.

"You will dress yourself before you rejoin your king, won't you? And you will kindly refrain from commenting upon the peculiarities of my figure in front of the French delegation." Austria pulled a small watch from the inside of her waistcoat, checking it with a faintly pleased expression before tucking it away. "In time for tea, would you believe. Come, we haven't all day, there may be refreshments."

Prussia had never fully decided whether her gluttonous remarks were genuine or meant to be witty; either option did nothing to help the sudden pang in his gut now that she had mentioned food, and he darted after her as she made to sweep out of the tent, catching up in a couple of long-legged strides.

"Gonna take more than some stale croissants to get me to stop talking about your- hey, you're forgetting something," he said, changing mental gears with dizzying speed and taking her by the waist to steer her gently back around, as though she were a wind-up toy to be redirected. She was compliant, letting the tent's flap fall closed again, but she plucked his hands from her and dropped them as casually as she would brush dust from her shoulder.

"Yes?"

"Your prize. Right at your feet, courtesy of the great Prussian army- " -and Russia, but no one cared- " -in time for tea, too, that counts for something, doesn't it?"

"And what do you want, a biscuit?"

"Acknowledgement," he stressed, and it almost read to Austria like a desperate admission, until she considered who was speaking. He had placed his hands on her waist again, in his insistance, but he removed them before she could tell him to keep them to himself. "I'm not asking- you always think I want that because your mind is in the gutter, you degenerate aristocrat- all I'm saying is I deserve all the praise you can wring out of that cold, dead thing you call a heart! Compose me a victory march with your grateful words, tell everyone the finest, fiercest force on the continent, Königreich Preußen- "

"Did what he was told?"

Prussia's wild, bright-eyed imaginings came to an unceremonious halt; at some point, he had let his eyes drift to a far-off place, apparently in the direction of a tent pole, and they snapped back to fix Austria with a reproachful look. She met it almost expectantly- almost as if she was entertained, and she was not disappointed by the reluctant whine to his response.

"You could at least say 'well done, Preußen', if it won't kill you to admit somebody who ain't chained to you by the ring finger served your interests- and took a fuckin' dagger to the chest for you. I've done a lot of things for you today, little lady. I saved you the trouble of negotiating with that little harpy, didn't I? And oi, I know your French is rusty, so be grateful," he huffed, a chiding tone creeping back into his voice. He searched her face, moving from lips to eyes, and it was irritating how her gaze remained so steady- irritating, depressing, entrancing. "Maybe now you can force her to speak properly- on her knees, where you like her- sounds good, right?! Hey- maybe when Russland scares that uppity little fuck off his throne you can have your little girl back and marry her to someone taller, you'd like that- m-maybe- maybe you could stop fucking staring and say something, hah?!"

Austria pursed her lips at him, false astonishment crossing her features; who, me? He seemed to be sweating slightly, and she could not help noticing that he had come rather close to her; it was troublesome, the way he invaded her space with or without intent. "You were getting along so well without my input, it seemed rude to interrupt you."

"You mean you wanted to see me make a damn fool of myself- I won't beg, Österreich." He seized an errant curl of her hair, agitation making his fingers brazen, but they were gentle, speaking volumes of his improved self-control compared to their more youthful days. He was staring at Austria's hair as it twisted around his finger, avoiding her eyes even as he did something impudent enough to get another man slapped. The troubled look on his face was fascinating; as if this was normal, as if he had the right to be so close and could lose himself in thought without fearing a consequence.

"I thought you already were. Preußen?"

"Tch- don't fuckin' kid yourself- what?"

Prussia's eyes had no time to grow wide, until her mouth had already claimed his right to speak, and her hand pressed his shoulder wound in a way that made him bite her lip in accidental reprimand. It was hard to say whether it annoyed or excited her, her kiss suddenly fiercer, forcing her way into his arms, with gloved fingers catching him by the hair and holding him fast against her. Prussia had not spent eight hundred years sharpening his reflexes for nothing- unrelatedly, he had not spent those years kneeling before his master without it having some effect on him, either- and he grabbed her around the waist as he had wanted to all afternoon, a grip to crush her, if she were not the silk to his steel, fluid and soft and unbreakable. Prepared to yield to her insistent pushing and stumble backwards to any flat surface- the floor would be fine- but in an instant, she had withdrawn, leaving her warmth to dampen his lips, the pretty sound of her breathlessness barely audible.

"Well done," she breathed, arms around his neck, and now while he stared, transfixed, she caught his restlessness, eyes flickering to his lips to see how she had reddened them. Then she pulled away, slowly, and he let her go with his fingers trailing down her arms, merely suggesting his desire to hold on, rather than shouting it. Austria was proud of him, in a small way, though she took most of the credit for rendering him speechless.

The moment passed into mundanity as she tucked a loose curl behind her ear and straightened her coat, paying him no mind. "Now, your shirt, if you please. We are expected."

With that, she swept from the tent. Prussia watched the fabric settle back where she had pushed it aside, rubbing his lips where her teeth seemed to have numbed them, until finally they split in a broad grin, and he threw himself after her fading footsteps into the sunlight.

Ahead, Austria strode towards the ensign waiting patiently for her; the joyful shouts echoing around the encampment as news spread explained away the slight smile and satisfied mood she seemed to have acquired, and so she made no answer to the slightly querying look on the soldier's face. He was learning plenty about their kind without her interference, what with Prussia heading their way and shouting loudly enough to drown his own army out.

"Want a ride, Fräulein?! Best stallion in Europe- oi, Müller! Get me a shirt!" He broke off to holler to a luckless young man emerging from a tent, who sighed and ducked back inside it. Either he knew every recruit by name, or he made wild guesses and they were too downtrodden to correct him, Austria could never quite decide. She thought at first he would insist on travelling with her, but he seemed to have become distracted by bellowing at his underlings. "Where's my horse?! Oi! HORSE!"

"...Is he always like this, ma'am?" Austria's escort ventured to ask, as she nudged him to walk faster in the direction of Prince Schwarzenberg's retinue, intent on making an escape before Prussia could embarrass her. But she allowed a slight pause, gazing back at the sight of her ally, her great rival, the man- the kingdom- who had fought her to a standstill so often, the only single force she considered a real threat to her dominance, privately. Currently, he was rousing a group of his men to corral a horse far too proud and angry to submit to something as lowly as his rider; he seemed to have forgotten the creature's name, substituting curses, threats and terrified pleas.

Austria's expression was inscrutable. "Largely, Fähnrich. Come, I have seen enough of him injuring himself for one day."

-

Entering Paris in a show of grandeur and- supposedly- goodwill was briefly satisfying; Austria rebuffed Prussia's attempts to get her to ride with him, choosing instead to graciously accept an invitation to sit sidesaddle before an admiring Austrian captain, purely because Prussia had asked (and because she trusted neither he nor his horse to keep her in the saddle). As it turned out, riding her own horse would have been preferable to being awkwardly cradled in some well-meaning young buck's arms with the pommel of his saddle menacing her, but she let neither bruised ass nor bruised ego outwardly affect her. She was busy ignoring Prussia with gusto whenever he rode up close to her, only to have his stallion interrupt whatever he wanted to say by suddenly refusing to walk. It made the discomfort slightly easier to bear.

It was a relief to get her feet back on the ground, and sore buttocks into a soft chair, with a cup of coffee, if you please; she had little interest in the stiff and surreal meetings of princes after the fact, nor in engaging France in arguments. She was not alone in taking a back seat now that the day was won, and she tolerated Russia's pleasant congratulations and backhanded thanks for her help- which, naturally, she returned. Nations were useful things to have around to make a symbolic gesture, but they were never quite masters of their own destiny, the line between their ambitions and those of their rulers very thin; it seemed at times that their biggest benefit was keeping each other in check, a stalemated arms race unto themselves.

For no one was this symbiosis with the house and office of ruler more defining than Austria- except, perhaps, Prussia, in a sense as starkly different as day from night. A walking declaration of hostilities to her eminence grise, bound by a soldier's blood oath, where she was chained by the gentle vows of a consort. It was interesting, then, how he hovered behind her chair, with half-sincere intent to bother her, but she could see what he was doing; in this room of kings and ceremony, he had lost his purpose and sought his own kind. She withdrew purely because she had lost interest, because she knew the ins and outs of such a dance a hundred times over, and because she was feeling dehydrated. He withdrew because he felt awkward.

It was a good look on him.

Austria watched him from the corner of her eye as he slid closer behind her, resting his chin on the chair's high back; she was nibbling on a biscuit, and she sensed his fingers about to swipe for it before he even moved, deftly dodging.

"Tsch- piglet."

"Boar." Or boor. She popped it in her mouth, tilting her head back to look at him slumping over the back of her chair. "Haven't you anything useful to be doing with yourself? A bath, perhaps?"

Prussia affected a frown, sniffing himself. "I think I'll marinate in the scent of victory a while longer, thanks. How about you?" He leaned down over Austria's chair, forcing her to crowd to one side as his hand reached idly for the little table laden with snacks, grasping at thin air. "How come you haven't ducked out to soak yourself in asses' milk and pretty yourself up fit to be seen, hm?"

She paused with a pastry halfway to her mouth, and decided to sacrifice it, placing it in his searching hand just to get him out of her way; he dutifully withdrew to cram it in his mouth, and she sat back in place, regal and straight-backed with her cup poised at her lips. "I shall restrain myself until I am given leave to retire. You see, I try not to completely disregard my duties."

She made a vague gesture towards the squabbling dignitaries at the far side of the large chamber; Russia's imposing frame loomed over the proceedings, and not for the first time, she thought him unseemly, if dedicated. Prussia followed her gaze, staring for a long, hard minute while he brushed crumbs from his mouth, then snorted contemptuously.

"I've done my duty. All that asshole's doing is trying to make friends," and he waved his fingers in the air and widened his eyes as if it was a euphemism for something terrible, "with Frankreich. Which, no thank you, I'm not fuckin' interested in. Been there, she's only fun when she's throwin' a tantrum, and even then, her stupid speeches get on my damn nerves. Gets too fucking close for comfort, too- oi, you better keep that coat pulled right down, pretty girl. Bet you a Thaler she knocks on your door tonight- you and her, you're two peas in a shameful little pod, aren't you?"

Austria poured herself more coffee from a silver pot. "Only a Thaler?"

He was leaning right over her again, ignoring her as she ignored him. "That's how your species communicates, isn't it? Hey." He reached for the untamed curl in her hair, and she jerked her head away too slowly, this time.

"Your own communication skills are lacking," she replied, stilling herself until he decided to let go. "Would you like a description of how we negotiate? Perhaps you can learn by example?"

"Christ, no," Prussia said, a little too quickly, and Austria let him get away with the flickered glance in France's direction, the breath caught in his throat- and then she regretted it, because he was grinning, gently fingering her stray curl. "But you can tell me 'well done' again, I don't mind it from you, Princess. You can do it right now, I'm feeling unappreciated- no one's praised my work in over an hour, you know- tell me in detail how grateful you are, alright?!"

He let her hair go with a playful flick, and rested his chin in his hands, forearms splayed along the chair's back. Looking expectant- not for her to acquiesce, but for her to do something entertaining. She sipped her coffee slowly, eyes roving the room. In the distance, a smiling Russia bent to hear whatever France was straining upwards to whisper into his ear; he reddened as her lips moved, and Austria closed her eyes in exasperation. Foreigners, almost worse than Northerners.

"If I owe you a detailed congratulations then surely I owe one to Russland."

"Gross."

"Your army, then."

"Jesus." He sounded honestly perturbed. "Don't be dirty."

She didn't look up, but her eyes slid sideways, and she tapped her mouth to keep the sly smile from forming. Such innocence. "Is that not to your tastes? Praise by proxy."

"No, it fuckin' isn't- don't insult me- and oi, it's the other way around, Princess," he groused, leaning over her chair again to tap her shoulder, until she grudgingly turned her head. "I feel good and my men feel good. A compliment to me counts for everyone, you know- so if a whole army's what you want, you ravenous little thing, you're looking at one."

He preened and posed, straightening up and thumping a fist against his chest. Austria had to smile then- it was undoubtedly pathetic, but just witty enough, just boastful enough, in that contemptibly masculine way, to stir her interest. Coarse, of course, her proverbial roll in the hay, but lofty from a certain point of view, if one wanted to get philosophical. Lust of the mind as well as the body, to think that while he, in his ignorance, believed himself to be conquering her in some bawdy fashion, she would be playing him like the flutes she'd confiscated from him in 1745. Exquisite.

It must have showed on her face, because he was watching her and grinning the grin he grinned when things seemed to be going his way, and that wouldn't do at all, but it was too late.

"I have changed my opinion. A whole army sounds cumbersome."

Prussia scratched behind his ear. "Elite corps?"

"How many?"

"'Least a hundred, Fräulein."

"Elite, you said, not every Hans and Franz who can hold a bayonet the right way around," Austria sniffed, the look of distaste on her face quite genuine. "I realise quality over quantity is a foreign concept to you- "

"Christ! I can do you twenty strapping hussars with cocks like stud horses, take it or leave it- "

"I am more interested in their hands, dear boy, and how competently they might remove my dress?"

She had to admire his fortitude, he hardly wavered under her meaningful look; if not for the instant flush lighting up his face, one could almost believe he had come by his wildly embellished reputation honestly.

"Hah...that's the beauty of it, isn't it?! All the stamina and none of the, uh, mess," he said, holding up his evidently solitary pair of hands (and, thankfully, not following that up with his cock). "Don't try to challenge Prussian efficiency, little miss, you're gonna get yourself a lesson. I hope you're at least going to dress up, if you're this cocky, hm? No less than five layers, now, you'll disappoint me! I wanna strip you to your stockings and fold every fussy little underthing before you even feel the breeze between your legs, it's no fun if you're already half-naked...ahh, but don't worry, I'll let you get on your knees and swallow those disrespectful words before I dazzle you with what's under my uniform- "

"Preußen..."

His hands had been wandering to the collar of Austria's coat in his enthusiasm, and at the slightest interruption from her, his arrogant spiel clattered to a halt, and he froze. "Y-Yeah?!"

"Touch me with those filthy fingernails once more, and I will be wearing plate armour tonight." She pulled away from him smoothly, not bothering to watch him sharply withdraw to a respectful distance, or rub his hands fruitlessly on his trousers. Another coffee, just to ensure she made best use of their night of victory. "Liberal application of soap and water and a freshly starched dress uniform, I expect nothing less, Soldat."

"Hauptmann." He straightened up, fists at his sides, and suddenly he circled around her and her coffee table- yes, that one, and how odd it looked, her makeshift parlour by itself in a corner of the great hall- and he fixed her with a smile that she ignored. "Well, well, I think I have things to be doing- don't get lost between now and tonight, okay? You'll break my heart."

He saluted, and abruptly stalked off with a plate of croissants; Austria watched him go, watched Russia laugh and France bristle as Prussia interrupted proceedings like it was his vocation. Dinner with that rabble was unthinkable, and before long she had slipped away unnoticed, to force an unlucky servant to assist her in finding the guest room with the best acoustics.

And relocate her table, of course. It was mahogany.

-

"They're not friends, Russie," France was later heard to remark, very patiently and with her fifth glass of wine in hand. "They are fucking. You do not need to be friends to do that."

-

Prussia may have been vulgar, mannerless and filthy much of the time during war, but no one could honestly accuse him of lacking discipline, and he took no more pleasure in being unclean than could be derived from making women squeal at his dirty hands. He didn't need Austria's admonishment to bathe thoroughly and dress impeccably in full uniform, but he might have taken a little more time about it, since she'd expressed interest- or perhaps that was only because it was France's personal bathroom, and she didn't know he was using it, and would not until she found the coarse, ash-coloured hairs he'd left in her basin the next morning.

It was late when he and his meticulously scrubbed fingernails made their way to Austria's chamber, late enough to let her wonder if he was coming, but not late enough to quiet the constant hum of tense negotiations that, to his mind, overstayed their welcome; France should have just accepted it by now, but if she didn't want his help in doing so, then he had better things to be doing. He'd bribed a footman to find out which room was Austria's, to save time, and then he'd confused the man with a lecherous wink of thanks, for the hell of it. He was enjoying Paris.

He rapped on her door, with a furtive look to either end of the hallway, not knowing if he wanted a witness to his achievement or not; while he waited, he adjusted his cravat, polished his brass buttons with his sleeve, tipped his hat just so- because of course he wore his hat, and he would wear it all night, if she let him- and fingered something in his pocket, his little pinch of sweetener, should Austria prove...sour. Her room was silent, and he pressed his ear to the door, wondering if she might be asleep- it wouldn't be the first time, and he was quite prepared to pick her lock, if that wasn't obvious-

-and then he straightened up very suddenly when the door opened without any warning, and cursed her impossibly light feet.

They were bare, as it happened, and he stood with his head bowed to look at them for a moment before following the lines of her long white gown up to take in the rest of her.

"You're quite late." Austria's stance was all reproval, arms folded; Prussia had never known any other woman so short with the ability to look so far down her nose at him. It added to the appeal, really, and he appraised her with barely-bridled glee, from the delicate pastel-coloured petticoats brushing her toes to her pursed lips and elegantly upswept hair. Of course she wore white, that was perhaps the only thing about current fashion that really sat well with her, though she covered herself with a dark velvet robe that fastened beneath her bust, for the sheer gravitas of it, probably. It had been a shame to lose the stiff and striking corsets that had once pulled her breasts up to her chin, but the loose, translucent gowns had their appeal, whatever she babbled about feeling nude in them, or that they didn't suit her figure, decidedly not that of a Greco-Roman waif. More than once- more than twice- Prussia had pulled her into the river or caught her with a bucket of water, just to see how translucent they really were, and he wouldn't soon forget the way they'd clung.

Naturally, he was drifting again, and she snapped her fingers; he jumped, but he chose to ignore that.

"I'm exactly on time, according to my personal schedule, so shut it," he said merrily, and he let himself into the room, crowding her out of his way and closing the door behind him. "Princess! You're sounding tetchy again, is it something you already decided I was going to say? My hat? I brought you a present, you know, I wonder if you deserve it! Ah- "

He cut himself off before she could, and she was already holding up a hand; Austria did not suffer any lack of propriety in any place she made herself at home, even temporarily (and she'd chosen the frilliest suite she could have, it may as well have been her own parlour). But she didn't have to remind him, Prussia remembered his manners when it suited him; he made a grand gesture of sweeping his hat off and bowing low before her, as he had earlier, and she regarded him with raised eyebrows.

"That is better," she said, in the soft tone she used when exercising undeserved authority over others, as if it would disguise, rather than simply highlight, the iron fists she kept in velvet gloves. "Ah- I think not."

She reached out for the magnificent hat Prussia was attempting to put back on his head as he straightened, and she swiped it away from him before he could blink, tossing it rather unceremoniously to hang from an empty candlestick on a side table; he let it go with only a small grunt of annoyance, because he'd been expecting that. He grinned, clasping his hands behind his back and following sedately as Austria turned and drifted further into the antechamber. It was spacious, decorated with so much filigree and flower-patterned fabric that a cursory glance was enough to send Prussia's interest in it plummeting, but he did take note of the open door ahead, and the glimpse of a four-poster bed. Not yet; there was time enough for more pleasant conversation.

"What've you got against hats? Is it 'cause you want to wear one but you can't cram that weird curly thing under it?" He leaned against an armchair, watching Austria move; his gaze was drawn to the nakedness of her throat and decolletage, no cross or choker marring the milky expanse, and he felt a sudden, childish urge to nip her and leave her with marks she wouldn't be able to hide. "Because I think you might need medical help, Princess, if you're taking it out on every innocent, majestic piece of headgear you come across- is it hysteria? I happen to be a field hospital- "

"Former. Did you say something about a present?" Austria half-turned to inspect a cabinet, looking bored and finding a crystal champagne flute more interesting than Prussia's attempts at seduction. He would hit his stride at some point, but there simply had to be this fumbling to begin with, she would not have it any other way. She had no mother, but it was easy to imagine one filling her head with the virtues of giving seldom and grudgingly, or whatever it was. "Come, now, we have discussed this lack of focus you suffer with."

"Tch..." Prussia made a show of rolling his eyes, but he sauntered towards her, tugging his gloves off with his teeth in a wholly unnecessary fashion. He dropped them on the cabinet when he was close enough- too close, leaning against it and hemming Austria in, his hand slipping into his pocket while he waggled his eyebrows promisingly. "You seem even more spoiled than usual, has Ungarn been around? Courting you, hm? What's he got you this time, earrings, brooch, chastity belt?!"

"Please don't be silly," Austria murmured, in a voice that meant: keep being silly and you will come to physical harm. "Ungarn has neither the time nor the funds to keep me in baubles, Preußen."

But she raised her hand to pat her hair and the ornaments in it, band and pins studded with pearls, and Prussia narrowed his eyes at them, as impressed by her demure lie as he was by her harsh honesty. Impressed, and a little disgusted- by Austria's treatment of anyone who wasn't Austria, and by Hungary's utter lack of balls- but ultimately delighted.

"Well, I do," he said, his voice dripping with the satisfaction of being better, and he pulled a case from his pocket to wave it under her nose; her slight flinch made that untameable curl flicker, and he grinned wide. "Well?! Open sesame! Come on, c'mon- "

Austria was still examining the black jewellery case, but her eyes, intense in their oversaturated blue, snapped to his as he grabbed her hand, forcibly placed it on the case. He manipulated her fingers as though they were his own, and she let him, relaxing the vicious strength that existed only in her fingertips, and only when she required it; between them, the clasp fumbled open, and she finally dropped her gaze from Prussia's unconcerned stare.

"Coral."

"I heard- I mean, it's in now, right? Pretty, don't you think?!" He'd seen it on ladies and debated it with whores, determined that the rose-coloured beads were in fact fashionable, and decided, all on his own, that they would look striking around Austria's neck, more gentle than the blood-red of rubies, more interesting than predictable white or blue- in his opinion.

But Austria's silence was heavy on him, immediately, and mildly panicked thoughts of emerald and amethyst ran through his head. "Don't get bourgeois on me, now, Österreich, it cost me a pretty penny, so- "

"Very pretty," she said, so quietly that it took him a moment to bring his rambling to a stop, and she plucked the necklace from the case to finger the smooth, round beads and hold them up to the light; not as hypnotic as pearls, nor as captivating as translucent gems, but interesting, certainly. "I am impressed, did you actually set foot in a jeweller's? Or did you send some poor boy out with more than his year's salary in pocket change?"

She dropped the necklace into Prussia's hand, without ceremony, and he tossed the case aside, surreptitiously wiping his palms on his trousers while she turned around. "Funny. You want a receipt for your ledgers, Buchhalter?"

But his tribute seemed to have pleased the false goddess, and he mentally gave himself another medal, to go with the dozen or so he'd awarded himself that day for valour and witty comebacks. He brushed aside the hair at the nape of her neck, sticking his tongue out as he concentrated on the tiny clasp; he had no way of feeling her blood throb in her ears or seeing her eyes close.

Austria's hand came to her throat when he was finished, and she paused, perhaps for effect, before she turned to him in a soft flurry of silk, eyeing him with a guarded interest.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me," he said, pushing her against the cabinet, and Austria felt him pushing at her boundaries, and allowed it. "Thank me."

"You lack subtlety, Preußen, it pains me to watch you," she said, but she put her dainty hand on his chest and turned her cheek up for him, and he kissed her close to her mouth, lingering to breathe her in.

"And do I look beautiful?" she asked, when he pulled back to lean over her and look at her, almost studiously; she didn't bother with 'nice' or even 'pretty'. Her suitors had spoiled her. But she was beautiful, it was an ordinary fact, anyone could vouch for it; it didn't mean they liked her. Prussia didn't like her, but he liked her vanity, it reminded him of himself, as so many things about her did. He liked to tell her so, as if it was a compliment.

"Ye-eah..." he drawled, as if there was something coming to qualify it, and he shrugged a shoulder, mouth quirking to one side. "With that on, you're the second most beautiful thing in this whole godforsaken country tonight. Ah, but don't let it go to your head, it ain't hard."

"My, you are unkind to Frau Frankreich. When did she embarrass you?" A smile flickered around her mouth when his face contorted in disgust, and she turned to reach for a bottle of champagne. "I suppose it was over dinner. Would you like a drink?"

"Embarrass, my ass- that bi- that...woman, is a menace to mankind's pride, she's the goddamned devil," he spat, and he whirled away from Austria, coat rustling, rubbing one of his reddening cheeks and cursing his lack of melanin. "Give me the whole bottle. Frankreich, she- y'know, you're cut from the same damn cloth, but at least you don't come out with the shit she does- she's fuckin' vulgar, is what she is." He struggled with himself and the fresh memory of wicked French whispers in his ear, dropping into an armchair and thoughtlessly putting his feet up on a low table, so he could properly brood.

Austria did not see immediately, pouring two slender glasses full- and they would be the only ones tonight, Prussia's drunkenness outweighed his attractiveness a hundredfold- but her eyes narrowed when she approached him, fixated on his long boots. "I hope you realise the irony of that statement."

Prussia reached for his glass, and when Austria did not hand it over, he grabbed her wrists, pulling on them until he could tilt a glass directly over his mouth and drain it in one go; the face she made in response was sublime, and he took advantage of her stunned silence to wrest the other one from her grip and pour it into his mouth. "Prost. Another round, Fräulein! And I'll be vulgar 'til the day I die- which will be never- but I don't go around calling myself a lady, do I?"

It was too much to bear, and Austria let go of her glass, watching him fumble the catch with a flare of her nostrils that, honestly, alarmed him. "E-Easy, Princess- "

"Get out of that chair, Preußen. I don't recall inviting you to sit."

The pause was very brief, and Prussia was very careful when he set the champagne flutes down, and that was pleasing- his stance, firmly at attention with wide eyes fixed on hers, more so. The thing Austria appreciated most about soldiers was their blind obedience when you used the right tone. She moved closer to him, and he stood stock-still; with his mouth closed, one could forgive oneself for finding him strikingly attractive in that uniform. But that was another simple truth, it only made him more annoying, in her opinion.

"Are you going to continue rattling on," she said, her words almost melodic, "about yourself, and other women, or are you going to make wiser use of the time I have graciously afforded you?"

He- very wisely- swallowed his first thought, and his second- she could see his throat moving. He broke posture, spreading his arms in a gesture of peace. "Say the word and I'm yours, Princess."

He didn't follow it up with rambling invitations to push him to the ground and take him, and he was proud of himself. He fancied, after all these years, that he knew how she ticked; he was wrong, but in this instance he was right.

"Then help me out of my robe, please."

He licked his lips, warily, but his hands didn't shake when they touched her. If Austria had to name his virtues, she would list decisiveness among them. Oh, his eyes lingered when he fumbled open the buttons under her bosom, but then the robe slid from her shoulders, and to her eternal bemusement, he gathered it neatly and folded it before he set it aside.

Now she was a little more exposed than before, pale arms unused to work or sun bared almost to the shoulder; the loss of the dark garment actually brightened her, made her look, faintly, more lively. Prussia was staring, concentrating in a way that made him frown, and he was the image of his father; Austria's arm twitched, like she wanted to bring a hand to her mouth to hide a smile, but it didn't come, and she relaxed.

"Don't stand on ceremony, Preußen."

"...Mh?" He cocked his head at her, pale eyes more grey than red in the candlelight; Austria had long learned not to be bothered by them, no matter how unblinking his stare. He broke it first, glancing down at her arm, and the dark moles on her skin that vanished under her sleeve, reappearing at her clavicle. "Hmph, you'd have my balls for piano pedals if I didn't. What next? Come on."

Austria tilted her head to one side, the hair around her face tilting with it; Prussia had spoken softly, thoughtfully, and she nearly ordered him to do it again and let her listen, but perhaps he had no conscious command of it, that seemed likely. She pulled herself together, before he'd even noticed her stumble. "...Help me out of my dress, then."

A mock salute, and a rather hollow smile, before he was concentrating again, reaching around her to feel for the fastenings that ran down her back; Austria's dress was cut as low in the back as it was in the front, and his fingers briefly brushed her bare skin on their way down. She leaned forward, and her hand came to his chest again, touching buttons and medals before settling at his ribs, where she could feel a dull thumping somewhere beneath thick wool. There was only the rustle of silk and a lessening pressure of fabric as the fastenings came undone, one by one; Prussia's chin came close to resting on her head, until a pearl poked him in the jaw and he straightened.

Down came her sleeves, slowly and gently; then perhaps Prussia's patience began to wear out, because the rest of her dress was pulled briskly down her torso until there was nothing holding it up, and he let it drop to the floor.

Austria stepped out of it, lifting her petticoats- shades of rose, trimmed in lace. "Well?" she said, after she'd moistened her lips; shedding her already flimsy clothing while he remained fit for a uniform inspection was making her look more lively than ever, colour creeping to her face and chest, but she stood firm in her stays, worn against bare skin and sitting dangerously low. They were nothing compared to what she'd worn fifty years ago, even Prussia would be able to get them off her. She shook a petticoat at him. "Are you going to let that sit on the floor? These, as well, if you please."

He'd gone quiet, but he raised his eyes at that, and then his pale eyebrows, mischief playing around the corners of his mouth. "Tsk, tsk. You're not speaking to a footman, Fräulein. But I'll generously demonstrate how to take care of your clothes, because you have no idea- " -his eyes swiveled to the open bedroom door, and the suggestion of scattered clothing barely apparent through it- " -so pay attention, alright?"

"You say that, but I have never managed to shred three coats on the enemy's swords in a month," Austria scoffed, but she stilled when he dropped down- firstly to sweep up her dress and set it gently aside, sparing a second to marvel at how gauzy it was, and then to his knees, to pluck at the ties holding her petticoats up. "Do you even know how to- oh."

They fell in layers to her feet, and he gave her a look that she could only imagine mocked her own face, with pursed lips and doe eyes. It was rather disconcerting, with his face so close to her upper thighs, and only a very thin half-slip keeping him from seeing what lay between them- and he was reaching for it, so she put her hand over his eyes.

"You can get up now."

"Oh? Thank you, milady," Prussia snorted, pushing her hand off his face and getting smoothly to his feet, with the ease of muscles worked hard everyday; Austria imagined herself trying to do the same, joints creaking at the thought. He gestured to her head. "I want to undo your hair."

It was a plain request- or a statement, rather, one that came with an air of intent. His first words had been 'I want', she was certain.

"I suppose I can allow that," she replied, and he raised his hands to do so, but she caught his sleeve. "Do you think it proper to leave a lady in this state of undress?"

"I don't think it's proper, but I think you asked for it," he said, undeterred and reaching for her hairband. She let him remove it, wincing slightly as its teeth tugged her hair, but she took it from his hand to set it gently to one side herself, fending him off when he made to pull out a pin. It made him sigh impatiently. "What do you want, hah?"

"Only a little chivalry, Preußen, are you capable?" Her fingers left his arm, to trail his lapel, down to dance between double-breasted buttons; she thumbed one, threatening to pop it open, and she met his eyes. Prussia was looking at her with understanding growing like a weed, and his hand came to cover hers, full of warmth borne of heavy wool. Plucking at his own buttons, until she let her hand fall, watched him work them all open. She suddenly remembered his wounds; sure enough, he closed one eye when he slid his coat from his shoulders.

"I think I gave you enough chivalry today, but if you're coming over all modest, I guess it's knightly to cover your shame, hm? Hah, if you're that desperate to wear my colours, Princess, you can walk around like that every day, I'll share- maybe." He was smiling, not grinning, holding his coat out and draping it over her shoulders as if he really was a gentleman, and she was his lady, cold on a winter's day. Austria pulled it close around herself, surprised by the weight and the warmth, and a scent she couldn't place- paper, perhaps, and dust.

She made a noncommittal noise, her gaze wandering over his crisp shirt, tight waistcoat, and the dark patterned cravat, properly tied. There was no trace of blood. The propriety didn't suit him, however handsome it was. "You've been afforded enough clemency for the time being. Finish what you were doing, and then we shall see."

"See what?" Prussia asked, but she didn't answer, and he set his jaw, reaching for her again. His fingers were nimble, not always careful enough, but capable, and Austria remembered- long ago, flowers braided in her hair, an apology for pulling it. The pearl pins slid out, one by one, a braid slipping here and there, and then a curl, a long tress. He deposited each pin dutifully in her open hands, and she set them down reverently, in a long row.

At length her hair was free. Prussia took the liberty of running his fingers through it, separating the entwined curls, working away the slightest tangles. He held it up and let it fall, admiring it, and then his fingers came to her face, indecisive in the short strands that so rarely fell freely. He pushed them aside, traced the curve they made to her cheekbone; impulsively, he leaned down to kiss her forehead. He felt her startle, and suddenly, he let her go.

"...Satisfied?" He took a step back, awkward, but appreciative, eyes darting up and down. There was a hunger to his features, a flash of a malnourished child to the sharp structure of his face, but he was well-fed, these days, and he'd grown into those bones; the hunger was for her, near-nude under his coat with her hair trailing like funereal ribbons, her pale legs long and invitingly soft. Austria undressed was strange and illicit, a thing to be covered up, in case the perpetrator got in trouble for touching something they shouldn't have. Something Prussia relished, because he lived to touch the things he shouldn't. But he was cautious; boorish words aside, he'd learned to respect the sanctity of women's bedchambers, the inviolability of white petticoats- mostly through beatings, admittedly. But he remembered the look of alarm he'd seen in Austria's eyes when he'd first accosted her in too intimate a setting, thoughtlessly, innocently, but too old by then to get away with it; he'd stumbled away, perplexed, and afterwards he'd felt a little sick, because seeing her shaken wasn't the same as seeing her startled, somehow.

He wasn't sure why he was thinking of that, now, of all times. The idiot fumblings of an adolescent that should stay where he'd left them. He had Austria's permission, after all, her orders, even, and besides, that childish fear was long gone. It was common sense and decency not to threaten her, self-preservation before anything else, but he didn't care, really, how she felt- how she might be vulnerable- so he would say, until it was beyond question. He had no idea if she really was vulnerable any more, they'd postured at each other for decades, even in bed.

She was moving, shaking Prussia from his thoughts, heaving herself out of her silence.

"Pointedly not," she said, and she wandered past him at a lazy pace that made him wonder what was going through her head while he thought of how fragile she seemed. Probably the opposite opinion. And he had to admit, as she took a seat in the armchair, legs crossed and resting her chin on her hand, that she exuded a certain quiet command. It had to be his coat.

"Are you asking me to service you, Österreich? It's about damn time."

"Not at the moment," she said, as if he'd offered her an hors d'oeuvre. "I really ought to see how your wounds are healing, would you mind...?"

A twirl of her finger in front of her finished her sentence, and Prussia snorted, but he obeyed. He stepped smartly in front of her, close enough that she had to tilt her head right back to look him in the eye; he liked that, looming over her, with her head at crotch level. He almost envied her view- almost, because his was delightful, her skimpy slip falling between her thighs and the hills and valley of her breasts framed by the rich blue of his coat. This close, he could see each long lash of her lower eyelids, and the dark flecks that dotted her legs as much as her arms. Not touching her was becoming uncomfortable, and the first thing he did was unbutton his breeches.

"I don't recall you getting shot there." Austria smiled, rubbing her chin. She uncrossed her legs, and crossed them the other way, casually, but she was glad she wasn't a man.

"Yeah, 'cause you weren't there- you'd have fainted on the spot, Princess, it was a massacre," Prussia joked, encouraged by her amusement, apparently, and he unfastened his shirt cuffs, fiddled with his collar and cravat. "I don't think it'll ever be the same again, you wait til you see the damage- ach, I might have to let you down tonight."

"Oh, no," she began, what a shame, eyes on his fingers as they plucked open the buttons of his waistcoat. "But I know you are creative enough to get around it, Preußen, I have great expectations- slowly, now."

He'd been rushing through his buttons, and it wouldn't do, Austria wanted to savour him. She could tell, from the fidgeting of his hands, that it was hard for him to take it slowly, but he breathed hard, and tried. First his waistcoat, then his cravat, thrown down in a manner that proved how much he disliked the formality of it; finally, his hands were on his shirt buttons, and Austria slid down in her seat without really noticing, eyes a little hazier. Her legs were restless, unusually so; with each button Prussia unfastened, she shifted, until her toes brushed his calves, and began to climb, pressing and dragging, searching for purchase against the laces of his boots.

"Haah...you're distracting me, Katzl," Prussia eventually said, his voice tight and his breeches tighter, but he kept his pace, making his way with agonising patience to his final few buttons. Austria paused with her feet flat against his inner thighs, one hand keeping her slip in place between her open legs, because she'd seen his gaze wandering down in interest.

"Katzl?" She rolled this new insolence around in her mouth, where it felt rather natural; no matter how refined her speech, it remained distinctive, and Prussia delighted in treating her as if she were Bavaria, stretching his clipped Berlinisch into the exaggerated drawl of country courtiers. He addressed her by name perhaps one time in twenty, as well, and it would have irritated her coming from someone else- Prussia had not earned the right, exactly, but he had strongarmed his way into obtaining it, as usual. "You are already exercising your creativity, how lovely. Oughtn't we retire some of these names before you confuse yourself? I think they are far more distracting than I."

She lifted her foot to his crotch, and propped her chin on her hand to watch, with affected boredom, the way he tensed when she pressed against his cock, stiff and curving towards his belly; then she pointed her toes and forced the last button of his shirt open with a little jerk of her ankle.

Prussia shifted his shoulders, and let his shirt fall off him without theatrics. He wore none of the bandages Austria had painstakingly wrapped him in, though her stitches were visible. His injuries were healing already, grown over with the tender pink of fresh scar tissue, though they would likely disappear entirely, inconsequential next to older wounds that left white lightning striping his body.

He wrapped his fingers around Austria's ankle, but he didn't pull her foot away. If anything, he held it closer. "Bullshit, nothing's more distracting than you, Puppe." He stared her right in the face, his smile defiant. "Stumbling around dressed like this in the mornings, breaking things- it's no wonder your place is in shambles. No one can concentrate! I'm right, right?"

Now he moved her foot, yanking it sharply to the left and spreading her legs, so that she had to scramble to catch her balance and keep her modesty intact; she was stuck in his grip, unable to pull herself out of her slouching position, and she made a sour face at him. "You were exactly the sort of little boy to look up dolls' dresses, weren't you? Unhand me." She struggled, and after a moment, Prussia complied, letting her right herself with a soft, offended breath. "And what on earth makes you think anyone but an interloper like you sees me in the morning?"

"Tch, it's innocent curiosity- you make everything fuckin' weird," Prussia hissed, but the colour in his cheeks cleared up as quickly as it had appeared. "And how should I know what you do when I'm not around, hah? Sounds Austrian to me, maybe you parade around the streets in your little, y'know." He gestured to her chest, evidently forgetting the word, and more interested in watching her draw his coat around herself, until it swamped and hid her. "Desperate measures to motivate your men, hm?"

"Don't be a fool. What do you take me for? Some sort of tart? You're not among your camp girls, Preußen." Austria crossed her legs again, kicking him in the process; he barely reacted. She sniffed, casting her gaze from gash to gash on his torso. "You look healthy enough. Continue."

Prussia only smiled, rather beguilingly, and Austria got the distinct impression he was withholding comment. "Mm? Continue? Like this?"

The remaining buttons of his breeches gave way under slow fingers, and he hooked them into the high waistband, plucking at it, rolling it down to let her see the sharp lines of his hips, but that was as far as he went. He shook his head, bone-coloured hair displaced by the motion, and he brushed it back. "I'm bored. Isn't this a game for two players? You're holdin' out on me..." He rolled his shoulder, closing one eye again, and brushing the neatly healing stab wound; it was still sore, just enough to make him want Austria's soft, slender hands on it, to see if it felt better when she did it. Without warning, he dropped to his haunches before her, and he patted her bare knee. "I want my coat back, Törtchen, before it picks up the smell of Strudel and I can't get it out."

She frowned at him, at the third idiotic nickname in as many minutes, and he raised his eyebrows innocently. He wasn't being entirely untruthful about the smell- there was a distinct floury note, and something tart and fruity, under the musk of flowers that she covered herself in, and it overwhelmed him like the scent of a working kitchen does a hungry stomach. He wouldn't, precisely, be displeased to put his coat on in the morning and take it with him. But it was too soon for thoughts of afterwards, with her hidden from his eyes and guarded against his touch, and if only she hadn't huddled herself awkwardly in that chair, he would have already been on her, hands and mouth, skin to skin. She was so difficult.

Austria held a long silence, and then, as if it had been her own idea, she gracefully slipped Prussia's coat from around her body, pushing it into his hands without meeting his eyes. She said nothing, and while he cast it aside without a fraction of the caution he'd used with her clothing, she pulled herself up and turned around. The chair, a tall-backed and silk-covered piece, was overly decorated like everything else in the room, covered in flowers. Austria would have chosen a more stately pattern, something in gold on white, or purple on a slightly different purple, something pompous. Prussia would have made it plain blue and called it a day. Against the disorienting flurry of pink, Austria glowed in monochrome; she knelt, leaning against the chair's back and pulling deep, dark hair over her shoulder to bare her white back to Prussia, and he breathed silently, watching her laces twist along the curve of her spine. Her limbs seemed long and slight, and her waist was narrow, but her hips led suddenly to thighs with surprising breadth- surprising, perhaps, because she kept them under layers and layers of fabric- and now they were just barely under that laughable little slip, even shorter in the back, because she lacked for nothing there and she never had really needed a bustle-

He'd seen it all before, but she acted like it was the first time, every time, and he dutifully gave her the appreciation she was always due. It was funny, how pale she looked until his hands were on her, and then she seemed to flood with brilliant colour, peach and red and gold and cream, and it looked right on her, not like his splotchy blushes. Prussia put his knee on the chair behind her, until he was almost on top of her, and he paused- and then he realised that he didn't need to wait for permission- probably- and he put his hands on her waist, let them slip over silk to her hips.

His warmth hemmed Austria in, made her press herself to the chair, and she took a moment to gather breath before she spoke. "Unlace me."

"That's what I'm doing..." The edge of a sing-song tone crept into his voice, but Prussia was quiet, sounding unfocused; he was also lying. He intended to unlace her, eventually, but his hands moved where they would, quite without his input, he would insist- first to press into the curved space where her hips began, then up to her shoulder blades, to lay his palms directly on her skin. Austria shifted, and his hands wandered, skating down her arms and pausing to press against a beauty mark here or there, dancing over her laces and plucking at them, but leaving them, heading down, down. Brushing the hem of her slip and itching to lift it, but resisting, and instead he grasped handfuls of her soft thighs, palms flat against the area beneath her buttocks and fingers splayed to squeeze and dig in deep.

It drew a soft exhalation from Austria and she tensed up, like she was resisting the urge to turn. She did jerk her head to one side, involuntarily, and it broke the spell of Prussia's concentration; he let her go, but only for a second, his hands immediately sliding down the front of her thighs, then up the back, tickling behind her knees on the way and coming to rest just beneath her slip. She felt his eyes on the back of her head, the unfaltering stare so easy to picture, the look he wore when he saw something he wanted, and all his theatrics fell by the wayside.

When his fingers began to drum against her inner thighs, Austria reached back for them, squeezing his wrists. "That is not," she breathed, "where my laces are."

"Sorry," he said, meaninglessly, and his nose was almost buried in her hair by this point. She dragged his hands back to her hips, firmly pressing them there. "Laces, laces, right- hmm."

They still weren't where they were supposed to be, hesitating where her stays ended and her slip began, and Austria held her breath, but not her patience. "Hmm?"

"What's this, Österreich?" Prussia asked, and she felt his breath on her shoulder, and shivered. "Feels like a lace- ah."

Whatever it was, it gave under a sharp tug, and too late, Austria realised it held up her slip. "My stays, I said- "

"Ah, but you didn't," he said, and another yank left her clenching up suddenly against the feeling of being bare, her hands coming back to her ass in spluttering disbelief; Prussia only crushed closer against her, sounding merry again, and loud in her ear. "This is why you need to work on your concentration, see?! Ah- hn."

"Any fool would understand my instructions, you are simply determined to disobey them- what?" She struggled around enough to look at him, ending up with her cheek almost pressed against his. He was staring down at her slip in his hands, contemplative. "What?"

"Nothing." And with that he tossed it aside, and Austria watched it sail away suspiciously.

"Did you tear it?"

"Princess," Prussia said, staring down at her backside, and more pertinently, the glimpse he got between her legs when he squeezed one cheek, "did you know you have a mole right on your p- "

"Preußen."

"What? Want me to unlace this thing too, now? Hold still!" He made an eager movement for her stays, but she slapped at his hands, annoyed; he raised an unimpressed eyebrow, catching her wrists with barely any effort. "Now, Katzl, don't make it hard."

Too late for that. But Austria snorted, unwilling to voice that thought, and she bared her teeth at him, arching her neck up. Her lips could have touched his jaw. "Take your hands off me, I have changed my mind. You do not deserve the privilege."

A pause fell over them, before Prussia scoffed at her, letting her go and pulling back, as though he was going to get up. When he spoke, he was wry, but there was a petty, miffed sort of edge to it. "Suit yourself, I like you like that."

His weight shifted on the chair, and disappeared, and Austria began to turn. The flat of his hand clapping against her ass as he moved away caught her unawares, and she jolted, a squeaky little protest escaping her. He was intolerable.

And he was laughing, a jolly sound that didn't belong and made Austria's head hurt in small twinges. She fixed him with an incredulous look over her shoulder; sitting on her coffee table with his legs spread, as if he didn't have a straining erection, or perhaps that was the point.

"I don't know what you think is funny," she sniffed, and she turned in her seat with difficulty, sliding down carefully with a hand between her legs and a faint redness to her face. Glancing at Prussia, almost abashedly; she hadn't intended to end up so exposed so quickly, and despite the recurring nature of her indiscretions with him, each instance demanded trust won anew- because he'd surely break it by next time. But he could earn it for the night, if he played his cards right, that casual trust that couldn't exist between them by daylight.

Prussia was looking at her, but not at her eyes, following the lines of her body instead, and they drew him to his feet in front of her. He put his hands on the back of her chair and leaned over her, a bird's eye view along the gentle swells of her breasts and belly under that bodice, down to where her hand nervously clutched between her thighs.

"I think you're funny, Modesty," he said brightly, and he reached for her hair, to stroke it from her face in a gesture that was perhaps meant to be reassuring, or apologetic. She appraised him with her head tilted back and her cheek resting in his palm, and then she cast her gaze lower. He seemed to understand, and he sighed like everything was hard work. "Patience is a fuckin' virtue, you know."

Austria eyed his hands as they pushed his breeches further down his hips, and slipped inside them, hesitantly grasping himself. "Shall I write that on your hand, so you don't forget?" But she fell quiet again, lips parted slightly, to watch him shove fabric out of his way and take out his cock, almost shyly, she fancied, from the fidgeting of his fingers along his length- but when she looked up, his face was all juvenile pride.

She rolled her eyes, and dropped them again. It was a vulgar sight, red and throbbing and intrusive. Simple anatomy loaded with masculine pretension and raw arrogance. Here I am, it said, with no better purpose than to impale you. It was vaguely appalling, and it made Austria lick her lips.

But she supposed it was rather pretty, the way Prussia gently caressed himself, as if offering something to her. Her eyes followed his fingertips to his scarlet cockhead and behind it, to the delicate line of ash-blonde hair barely visible and, it seemed, neatly maintained-

-and she laughed, a sudden otter's bark, and it made Prussia startle and flush.

"Wh-what?" He closed his hands protectively around his cock, and Austria covered her mouth with her free hand, amusement still clear in her eyes; in all her staring, she'd shifted around in her seat.

"You have, ah. Groomed yourself," she managed, and she wasn't certain why it was funny. What little body hair Prussia had was pale and sparse to begin with- perhaps that was it, the ludicrous effort, or vanity, in such unnecessary trimming, and she hadn't the heart to tell him she'd barely ever noticed his pubic hair to begin with. He looked set to voice his outrage already, but the protest seemed to die on his tongue, something else catching his eye.

"You haven't," he said, with eyebrows raised in mock scandal, and he stared down at the gaps between her careless fingers, and the sleek, dark curls they revealed. She closed her legs tightly immediately.

"How dare you. I have." He was grinning broadly, and she blew a strand of hair out of her face like an unhappy horse. He opened his mouth; she couldn't bear it, cutting him off rapidly. "I forbid you from commenting further. Please occupy your mouth some other way."

Prussia let out a breath. "Naughty girl."

"I meant- " Kiss me, she'd meant, or bite her or something, anything but keep talking, but- well, it worked. "Very well, if that is the way your mind works. To your knees, Soldat."

"Ah, ah." He shook his head at her, not in refusal, but in disbelief that she could be so inadvertantly innocent. "If I give you a little kiss, what do I get?"

Austria arched a brow as he approached her, and her eyes swiveled up and down the lean, lithe lines of his abdomen, the whiteness made glaring by the colour of his wounds and unignorable way his cock jutted against his belly. He leaned down over her, and it bobbed slightly. His carelessness about it was fascinating.

She met Prussia's eyes as his hands found her cheeks and her shoulders, his mouth warm close to hers, and she shrugged a genteel little shrug. "A little kiss. Naturally."

There it was again, that hard, fierce satisfaction in his eyes, excitement at winning, and then he closed them, letting himself fall into her. There was a sigh that said at last from both sides of their wordless conversation, her lips a soft pillow for his, indulgent, warm and sweet; she was restrained, subtle invitation where he was eager tongue and hungry teeth, and he wanted to push her down and kiss her with his entire body, but- that damned chair. Prussia was certain she liked it this way for the same reason he did- it was a throne, and now he would find his proper place at the foot of it.

For the time being.

He let her go hurriedly, breathing hard, moving to her neck and kissing roughly, but too quickly to leave his mark. Moving down, coral beads under his tongue one moment, and then the pulse in the hollow of her neck; her hands found his hair, and he could hear her panting as much as he could feel it in her breasts and her ribs. He passed his mouth over the cushion of flesh that strained against her stays, biting in childish irritation that they remained in his way, stopped him from groping and suckling, but now she was pushing him, a hand atop his head, and there were those lovely thighs.

Prussia pushed them apart, more quickly than Austria could resist. She put her hand between them, seemingly instinctively, and he looked up at her as he dropped to his haunches. "Cute."

"Hush," she admonished, but she let him peel her fingers away until she was pink-cheeked, squirming with the urge not to hide the way she opened, unfolded, blushed the colour of roses- and at least she was prettier than he was, but she felt so exposed, and oh, wet-

And he knew it, and he had to stare and make her spread her legs wider, didn't he. The sharp grin told her it was for his entertainment, but he let her knees go, satisfied, and he looked almost wondering when he moved in close. She couldn't stand that, so she put her foot on his shoulder and pressed him to his knees.

True to his word, he kissed her- kissed her legs along an invisible seam, kissed her curls and a tiny mole at the point between belly and hips, to make her jump. Austria tugged a lock of his hair, feather-like under her fingers.

"Preu- "

"Shh." Prussia raised a finger to his lips, catching her eye with an oddly serious look that made her quiet and blush. She hated that, the way he could suddenly turn still and silent, and stop the whole room with him. As if there was a consequence to be feared in defying him. Well, she was fearless. Silence was her preference, a gift from him to her, and she would take it as such, the better to fill her head with the low hum of distant orchestras.

She closed her eyes, let her legs fall limp and pliable under Prussia's hands, and he kissed lips as warm and plump and pillowy as the ones he'd left quietly panting above him.

His tongue was a menace, she mused, as she slid down in her seat and left her hair trailing, clinging with static to the silk cover. In his mouth or in hers or on her body, it did whatever it wanted, intruded, teased and tormented. He always danced around the point- she pushed his head down firmly, thrusting her hips against him- and he dragged things on and on, she could just moan in frustration- but when he seized on what he wanted, finally, he would press and press and lick and lap- no, wait- and it drove her wild, the way he just would not let up-

And, God in heaven, he made some clever moves at times; she hated him for it, but did she ever welcome it, welcome him, with her legs wrapped around his neck and her fingers stroking his hair- yes, excellent idea, Preußen, I suppose you have them sometimes, attack from the south and put some pressure on them, wonderful- and she was losing her grasp on her orchestras, making amateur mistakes she would never make in reality, no matter where Prussia's tongue was.

And just like that he stopped, and she glowered at him through the messy veil of her hair, her legs draped scandalously over the arms of her seat. Prussia licked his wet lips, and smiled.

"Come?"

"No."

"Good." He knew perfectly well she hadn't, she'd have sung like a canary if she had, but it never hurt to check. She'd surprised him once or twice with a quick and quiet finish, falling half-asleep on him before he'd even realised. He heaved himself up, leaning in to give her a damp kiss; she scowled at him, but she opened her mouth, and her hands reached for his chest and shoulders, raked down his stomach and grabbed at his hips. She would have pulled him on top of her, aching to be filled, but he broke away, pushing her leg aside to perch on the arm of the chair. "Easy, tiger! I'm here all night, savour it a little."

He was laughing, playing with her hair with a look on his face so self-satisfied Austria wanted to slap it off him, then bite his lip bloody, kiss the breath from him, pin him down by the throat and hold him still while she rode him like his beautiful, worthless stallion- a thousand violent fantasies flickered through her head, zoetrope-fashion, and she snuffed them out, appalled. This was his influence.

She adjusted herself, gathering her wits and turning up her nose at him. "Do not get ahead of yourself. 'Here all night', indeed. What are you doing to earn your keep?"

It earned a snort, and a tug on her hair that was a little sharper than necessary, perhaps unintentionally; her eyes flashed as she looked around at him, but his cock was in her line of vision, and she remembered what she'd said.

"This aristocratic thing where you demand everyone scrapes and bows to please you and renege on every damn agreement you make is cute, but you know, I'd really rather you just shut the hell up and occupy your pretty mouth, Fräulein," Prussia said, awfully cheerily for a man staring death in the face, but he took his hands off her; he put them behind himself, leaning back and dangling his wide-spread legs, as if he was mocking her, with his hips jutting out for her consideration. His face was- well- impish, or- dare she say- angelic, with his colouring too, and it was too easy, suddenly, to imagine him misbehaving in church, the wanton scoundrel. Another thought never to pass her lips, and it very nearly let him get away with his disrespect.

"I hope you speak more politely to the whores," Austria said flatly. He had the gall to look offended.

"Sure I do," he said, gruffly, "they're nice girls. And they don't," he added, patting Austria's cheek and keeping his hand there, not pulling her, but certainly suggesting it, "get bent out of shape about sucking my cock- they consider it a treat- hell, an honour! Wouldn't you, if you got a lone wolf in a sea of sheep, hah?"

Prussia gave her a significant look, and she stopped herself from retorting that whatever sheep he was implying she tended to had horns enough to put him to shame. She watched him put his other hand on his cock, stroking slowly and self-indulgently, and she wrinkled her nose. Prussia was edging closer with an eager glint in his eye- as if his bravado could disguise his almost adolescent desire- and he thumbed her lips; it felt pleasant, despite his crass intentions, tender and appreciative. Attentive. Austria supposed she could not fault him there. He focused his infamously wandering attention on her rather too intensely for anyone's comfort.

And he wanted the same in return, however negative, because he never had a proper upbringing, of course- and how she scorned his neediness, but here she was indulging it.

"Well, well. I suppose you're about to elaborate on why I should be clamouring for such an honour- " -she couldn't help making a derisive sound, how thrilling, a harlot's privilege- "but you needn't bother, Preußen." She held up a hand to stop whatever he was going to blurt out, and then she lowered it, and by chance, her fingers fell on the tip of his cock, and slid down, down, feather-light- by chance, of course. "I made a promise, and I will keep it, as your hostess."

"So you fuckin' should," Prussia managed, but it was a token bit of discourtesy. He quieted immediately, taking his hands away to prop himself up, letting her have him- she got the distinct impression from him, whenever they went to bed, that all his aggression was a smokescreen, and he would lie back and think of anything if she was persuasive enough. But- horseriding fantasies aside- that unfortunately tended to mean servicing him, and that wouldn't do, so she made him work- usually. At the moment, well, she'd struck a bargain, and she did enjoy certain small things about it- the way his eyes grew sleepy with lust and he slid his hips forward, his feet tapping on the floor as she draped herself over his lap, curled up in her seat. The forced control when the pads of her fingers explored his skin, velvety and hot, his abdominal muscles clenching tight and relaxing as unsteadily as his thudding heartbeat.

She didn't use her tongue; her lips first met his cockhead in chaste mockery, before she moistened and parted them slightly, moving up, and down- sensitive slit to the point beneath the head, and down the underside of his length, lilting to one side. Hot, damp, breathy kisses- he twitched under them, gnawing at his lip, breaking into uncontrollable smiles each time her ultrablue gaze swept him from navel to untidy hair, like she was appraising and judging. Entertaining while her mouth was pressed to his cock, and he was rock-hard under those kisses, generous but flighty.

Too flighty, for his liking, after a minute or two, but he was patient, and he expressed it only by reaching to slip his fingers into her hair- he was hopeful, as her lips pouted against the very tip, that she was about to open them- and he swore he felt a hint of her tongue- but no, no such luck. It didn't occur to him at all, in the midst of his pleasant throbbing, that an Austria happily worshipping his cock was an Austria not to be trusted. Not for nothing did she call him a fool. He still hadn't worked out the rhyme and reason to her flirtations, how her affections were won and lost by his obedience and rebellion- he thought her merely finicky, and forgot everything else he knew about her in the face of a lovely pair of breasts and a mysterious smile (entirely as he was meant to).

Not that she wasn't enjoying herself, peppering his thighs and belly with spare kisses when she wasn't dragging her lips over pulsing heat, but it was ceasing to be quite proper, so she ended it. Indulgently, with one demure and appropriately French kiss that had him whimpering, arching to her mouth and trying to follow it, but she sat back out of reach, and she smiled.

"Ach...you're a damn tease, Österreich, a man's not a flute, y'know- even if he's big as an oboe, ha," Prussia was panting, stretching and lazily grinning as if it was just a breather, just a prologue before she really stole the show, and Austria cast her eyes down to make the most of her coy, ladylike amusement. The penny would drop in time- ah. "...Well? What's up, stage fright? Oi, listen- I know it's intimidating, but you're a big girl, I know you like a challenge- think of it like the biggest, most mouth-watering slice of cake you...ever..."

He petred out, and jolliness became uncertainty; uncertainty became a sulk. He knew her, when he shook himself free of the grip of her alluring mouth, and he didn't like her, but he wouldn't have her any other way (although visions of her gladly taking her place, knelt between his legs each night, were tempting).

"I gave you a little kiss, Preußen- I have been excessively generous, in fact," Austria nearly yawned, leaning back against the opposite arm of the chair and setting her feet in his lap, parting her legs in a way that could be taken as careless accident. It was a mark of Prussia's grudging regard for the selfish, demanding, callous parts of her nature that he didn't throw a fit, but he didn't look her in the eye, sullenly caressing her ankles and calves.

"Tch, you're a double-crossing, dishonest, dishonorable little Austrian hussy."

"In all Christendom, no lady ever had so silver-tongued a lover." She rolled her eyes; Prussia gave a token huff of laughter, watching her. Eyes roaming from the hair he desired to leave disheveled under his fingers, the disdainful eyes he wanted to see wild with desperation, the brooding mouth he ached for, but would settle for bruising with his kiss, to the full, constrained breasts he wanted to cut free- he thought of his sword, his dagger, and those fine laces- but now he came to her chatte- when in Rome, after all- and what was he doing sitting there staring with his cock idling in the breeze?

He slipped from the arm of the chair and between her legs as effortlessly as a cat from a wall, smirking at her grunt when his weight fell on her. He propped himself on his elbows, looking for all the world as though this awkward position didn't bother him at all, and he would take her like this, if he felt like it. Austria frowned her disapproval, more for his cock pressing uselessly against her belly than for the discomfort, and he gave her the sort of smile that leads to grass stains and misplaced maidenheads.

"You know, some days, Liebchen, I could strangle you," he said, offhandedly, and he reached for her with gentle hands, his thumbs caressing the soft skin where her throat curved to her collar bone, slipping under her necklace. She raised an eyebrow, her amusement barely concealed, and patted his hand like someone's spinster aunt would.

"Likewise. But not today."

"Not today." Prussia bent his head, and kissed the hollow of her throat; then he was pulling her up, anchoring his weight and hefting her against himself with a strength that made her feel weightless. Unfolding his knees to dangle them over an arm of the chair, settling Austria straddled across his belly, with her hands pressed to his chest for balance- all the movement had her breasts threatening to escape their satin prison, and he grasped them through the bodice, squeezing hard, groaning. "Let me take it off, already."

Austria slapped his hands away, rather absently, her hair dangling and brushing his chest as she turned to concentrate on how she was positioned. His cock was poking between her legs, and she was having none of that, reaching to line him up. "No. I told you, no- you haven't the ability to do anything delicately- will you please co-operate with me, for once in your life?"

He had her by the thighs, watching with interest as she struggled to mount him, pulling his hips away from her to deny her the pleasure until she turned to look at him, dripping with exasperated disdain. "What is the problem?"

Prussia sighed like he'd had a long, hard day, his fingers drumming just beneath her ass, where it tickled and made her roll her hips irritably. "I've been co-operating with you all day, Princess, and you don't co-operate with me. And I don't- " - his hands suddenly snaked halfway up her back, squeezing her waist, reaching for her laces and making to drag her down against him- " -like insubordinate soldiers, do you know what I do to them, hah?"

His tone was humorous and when Austria struggled, shock flitting over her face, he laughed outright; she couldn't resist the strength of his arms, giving in to fall against his chest with an angry huff of breath and a retaliatory shove to his wounded shoulder that he hissed his amusement over. "I'm not a soldier and you know- ah!"

She broke off with a yelp, out of surprise more than pain, Prussia's hand clapping against her ass hard enough to make a noise and nothing more. She strained against his grip again, struggling to push her hips down- both to lessen the vulnerability of her behind and to grind down against his cock, demanding him, but he held her firm, and his grin nearly made her want to headbutt him. But he wasn't looking at her to see her glare, he was grasping her tight against his chest, one-handed, to peer over her shoulder, tugging on the laces of her stays. When she had explicitly forbidden it. She couldn't believe the nerve.

Of course, she could.

"You're not a soldier but you're insubordinate, Fräulein, and you're lucky I don't bend you over my knee- stay still, damn it- bad girls don't get what they want," Prussia panted in her ear, their struggle evident in his voice through the breathy laughter. "You want it? You do, don't you? Fuck, I can feel it- "

"Ugh, I want you to shut up, you miserable little mongrel- don't pull!" Austria snapped- he'd yanked sharply enough to steal a breath from her lungs, and her fingernails caught hard in his skin, too near to his stitches for comfort. It loosened his grip on her laces, but it earned her another warm slap against one cheek, and this one stung despite the ample cushioning. "Ngh- h-how dare you- "

"More where that came from, Princess," Prussia cut in, and at least he didn't complain about the crescent-shaped welts she was leaving him with, not with her hot and infinitely squeezable on top of him, her struggles and indiscriminate violence only exciting to him, in light of the suffocating humidity calling to him whenever he let her hips dip down to his. But he was determined, consequence be damned, to see her in nothing but his gift- she could claw him to ribbons and tear his wounds open, if it satisfied her, as long as he could tear every piece of her armour from her. Every shred of fabric, uniform or ballgown, just to see her wear nothing like an ermine cape and crown.

But she was determined to get in his way- of course she was, only to be contrary- and he resisted, stubbornly, digging the heels of his boots into whoever's expensive chair this was and stifling the urge to give her what she wanted, by now a powerful ache in his groin. He smacked her again, and again for good measure, to hear her yelp, and he delighted in her reluctant laugh, staring and smiling up at her flushed face with open hunger, even as she wrapped a hand around his neck. She was flagging, still arching her back against his grasping hands, to prevent him getting a firm grip, but tiring of this battle, muscles aching and realisation growing that her arbitrary rule was only an impediment to her own satisfaction. Prussia watched the rueful smile spread over her face in the seconds before she collapsed on him, hiding it against his cheek, and her surrender felt vaguely like ecstacy. Especially when her fingers raked into his hair, and he bit down on his own lip, tilting his head back.

"Get on with it," came Austria's voice in his ear, unnaturally in command of itself. His fingers almost tore the slender laces as he worked them undone, blindly- sharp blue eyes and sharper nails in his periphery gave him a burst of caution, and he fumbled them loose. Then he found himself shoved off, and he became docile, lying limp under her while she sat up, made a few tugs herself- and finally, that graceful body stretching upwards, she pulled the bodice over her head. Not struggling with the straps as he would have done, in his fever to get them off, but letting them slide from her so simply that he forgot every moment of clumsiness, every fussy and finicky habit- bewildered, almost humbled in the face of a kind of poise completely out of his grasp.

Then she threw her stays across the room and dragged her hair from her face, where it had caught in her mouth, and she stared him down with sweat beginning to gleam on her breasts and her straight, pointed nose, and she wasn't perfect, but for a fleeting instant, Prussia felt like the dirty, vagrant child she'd never let him forget he'd once been.

And then he felt like a king, under such a mistress, such a queen- not his own, never his own- and he heaved himself up, and threw himself at her, stealing the sweetness on her lips for himself, capturing every inch of her territory she was foolish enough to leave unguarded before him. Indulging, finally, her demand, fumbling at her hips with his mouth pressed to her neck until he found her. Austria arched her back, a startled, urgent sound escaping as she scrabbled at his shoulders, feeling him press in- something stuck, and then something gave. She looked faintly like she was concentrating- Prussia nearly laughed through the stab of pleasure she gave him, but he cupped her backside, guided her to comfort with a prompting kiss to her uncertain mouth. Then he shifted, leaning back; she followed him, clutching fingertips and sliding hips, rising off him, but he pushed her down firmly, and her uncertainty fled her, a flutter of hazy interest starting between her legs and flickering over her face. It made her squeeze Prussia tight, and he blew out a cool breath of air, light-headed and ready.

"How's the fit?"

"Si...silence." Austria waved him off, leaning against his chest and squirming, tensing, pulsating under the grip on her hips. The soft touch of her fingers while she tested the way they'd joined together had him stilling to enjoy her, hands wandering her back, smooth as satin, unscarred but speckled. She bumped her nose against his cheek, not impatient, but ready, too. "Move me."

"Oh? I'll take that as- hah- " -he squeezed her ass hard, pulling her up to thrust inside her, without preamble, and his voice took on a snickering falsetto- " -a pretty please, my big, bad, Königreich, ravish my, uh, rosebush, storm the Hofburg- take the, nnh, Wienerwald- "

"If you must use awful euphemisms," she panted, grabbing him by the scruff and tilting his head back, "leave your- invasion fetish out of it."

He would have protested that it was merely an academic interest, but he found his mouth and mind invaded by her, and perhaps there was nothing to protest at all.

His body was another matter, urgently responding to the nip of her teeth and the grind of her hips, but protesting every time he bucked against her, crowded into that chair and pinned by her lovely weight, the heaviness all in her lower body and filling his greedy hands delightfully with each short, sharp thrust. His back would be broken by the end of this, he was sure, and he didn't especially care. He was certain Austria could not have cared about anything less.

Of course to care, she had to know. She didn't know much of anything but the damp heat clouding her body, her hair flyaway with it, and the pleasure. Soft and teasing in one moment and piercing the next as they shifted, pulled; she favoured riding, rocking and rolling herself against him to feel him soothe that itch inside, while he was desperate to thrust, long and hard. Fighting her, and they tussled from the waist down while arms and hands said otherwise, fingers entwining and breaking away again. Prussia could have wrestled her into submission- she wondered why he did not- but he was distracted beyond saving, a breathless laugh against her throat one moment, an earnest, delighted whimper the next, his gluttony for her stronger than his desire to have his own way- because he was already having it, she presumed, enough to satisfy his ego- and she smiled indolently at him. Testing him with held eye contact and raised eyebrows, open mouth brushing his as she rocked in his lap, agonisingly slow, for her fulfilment and not his. He bit his lip, looking wry, but there were no words; he was enjoying her, beginning to slide back against the arm of the chair to let her have him, fingers dancing down her thighs, and for once, her laugh was full, in the face of his predictability. This happened often, this pretense at wrestling for dominance, and whenever Austria won, Prussia became the most docile captive she had ever known, whatever sulking expression he adopted.

Perhaps she should have realised why he wasn't sulking in this instance; perhaps she should have thought more of his eyes on her breasts as they trembled with the renewed vigour of her hips, or noted where his hands traced the map of her abdomen to rest on her waist, but nothing mattered, and she gripped his forearms and moaned under her breath. Prussia was almost horizontal, she could feel his leather-clad thighs against her backside as he rested his feet on the opposite arm for leverage, and when he guided her forward, to rest her hands on his chest, she complied without thinking. It was harder for her to ride him, this way, and- forgetting herself entirely, thinking for a moment their goals in anything could ever be the same- she lifted her head questioningly.

She met mischievous eyes. A full thrust interrupted her sudden flash of understanding, and she only let her head drop to his shoulder when he gripped her tight and pulled her flush against him, bent to take him as deeply as he liked, as fast as he liked- his vulgar exuberance knew no bounds, how barbaric- her groan drawn out in his ear until it was pleasantly melted away. It returned in force, in short and sharp gasps, when he began to slap her in tandem with his thrusts, each heated touch jolting her with pleasurable indignance, and he must have enjoyed it; he was groaning more than she was. But this pastime had to end as it grew harder to keep the pace and limbs began to ache, all of his effort going to keeping her moving.

Austria grew hot, her skin wet; she abandoned the red marks she'd been patiently leaving along Prussia's ear to set her hands on the arm of the chair, push herself up and shake out her mane. Her body shuddered against his, anchored by his hands on the backs of her thighs, slippery with her sweat; she looked down and found him a mirror of her exhaustion. Fascinated by the ripple of his abdomen, the silvery scars running over it, and the shift of biceps and scarlet wounds that almost matched the metronome pounding in her chest. His neck must have ached in that position, his shoulder undoubtedly sore, and his entire body was blotchy with heat, paper-whiteness looking almost burned. His hair stuck to his face. On some impulse, risking instability, Austria put her hand on his cheek, and he looked up in a daze; she bent low, suddenly, fingers brushing hair from his sticky forehead to press her lips there, and the noise that left his throat was dry and gasping. She aimed again, for his mouth this time, but he grabbed her- forced himself up and tight against her, narrowly avoiding a collision with her forehead to lower his lips to her neck, yank her up with a bounce and bite his way down her breasts with little finesse. Her yelps came half-laughed, stuttered when he found a nipple and sucked hard, and she scraped at his broad back with her fingertips- but then her leg slipped, and he was deep inside her, sinking his fingers into her flesh-

-not, as it turned out, in passionate embrace, but because she was falling, and he rolled over with her, right out of that defiled chair-

-and to his eternal credit, he threw himself under her to take the brunt of the hard floor, littered with clothing. Prussia let out a loud curse- more for exhilaration than pain, Austria felt- and Austria hissed as her knee clipped the coffee table, but the sharp throb fell into the same jumble of any sensation that wasn't involved in making her come, and she fell against Prussia with her teeth on his neck.

He rolled her over; she didn't fight him, stretching out under him with her legs held high, fingers clawing through thin carpet and discarded fabric. They celebrated their victory to the last there on the floor, murmuring into wet mouths, unintelligible insults, filthy promises, traded back and forth in return for bruised hips and burned buttocks, savage fingernail marks over sore wounds.

Austria sang when she came, and she was beautiful, just the way she was, in sublime ruins; but she never could be ruined, and no matter how rough, this was her arena, not Prussia's. He knew it- intimately, intensely- and he held her hands either side of her head, sword-calluses intertwined with those from the violin bow, to let himself fall to her, just for one perfect instant of surrender.

One he had an urgent need to repeat, again, and again; but that didn't need to be addressed.

He lay upon her while he filled his lungs with air and the perfume of sex, head on her chest and one hand idly plucking her nipple, eyes on the middle distance. Flooded with a mellow energy, his aches could be ignored, but hers could not, and she pushed at his head, heaving her hips to get him off her. He rolled on his back, and he looked like he'd been worked over by half a dozen brigands, but he'd come out smiling.

Austria knelt by him, rubbing her backside where it was a mottled red from the carpet, brushing back hair made wild by moisture, contemplatively. Eyeing the pale body, still a little lanky despite the surge of muscle manhood had granted him, sprawled out like some languid animal with his softened member unobtrusive against his hip. Almost an artistic nude, even with all his battle-marks and his boots still on, trousers halfway down his thighs. Austria was certain she looked no better than something from a pleasure house by way of a sudden rainstorm in the street. She used his shirt to mop between her legs, out of spite.

Prussia watched her, only grinning. His fingers trailed her thigh, down to the bruise forming on her knee; she expected to feel him prod it, but he thumbed it tenderly. "Let's fuck Frankreich up tomorrow as well."

"Oh, we will," she replied, and she crawled to his arms, uncertainty masked by a sultry stoicism; he did not allow her to rest on him, meeting her halfway instead, taking her around the waist. "She still has le petit empereur to be dealt with. In the boardroom," she cautioned, noting Prussia's excitement forming in his eyebrows. "Not with guns."

"Boring." But necessary, and it would do, his adrenaline would translate neatly into the language of lust for days yet. He was examining Austria, and she tilted her head while he did so, feeling him rake her many bites and bruises with his eyes, thoughtful, but prideful. Then he looked her hard in the eyes, and he kissed her with closed lips, firmly; she could make neither head nor tail of this gesture- perhaps a sort of post-battle handshake, awkwardly interpreted for her choice of duel- but she let him pull her into his lap, and she laid her head on his injured shoulder, mouthing at the scar. It tasted of iron.

Prussia seemed to enjoy that, but in time he heaved himself to his feet with her slung across his arms, the most careless bridegroom she'd ever known. But he dutifully carried her to her bed, kicking discarded jackets and dainty shoes out of his way. She saw him wrinkle his nose, and sighed before he even spoke.

"Fuck me, Princess, how'd you make so much mess in a room you set foot in hours ago?!" He hefted her in his arms, as if in reproach, and she gave him a bored stare.

"You told me to dress up. I am certain Russland's room is much tidier, if that is your chief criterion- "

"Spare me the fuckin' mental imagery," he spat, and he laid her on the bed with a distinct lack of care, bending to retrieve and fold some trifling garments for his peace of mind before he would lie next to her and patiently unfasten his boots, shimmy out of his trousers. Austria looked at him with interest, thumbing his cheek to watch him sulk, but lean into her touch.

"Is it his looks, Preußen, or his personality?"

"What?" Prussia grunted, rubbing his cheek against her hand; she made to remove it, but he firmly pulled it back, and she relented, stroking his face.

"Russland. You object so strenuously, despite your obvious ease with this sort of...alliance," she said, all delicacy. She wasn't questioning him out of genuine curiosity, she knew perfectly well that there were allies one slept with, and allies one did not. She had exacting tastes and Russia assuredly did not make the cut. But one never said never.

Prussia scoffed at her. "Don't be so goddamned obtuse. That guy gives me fucking chills, feels like he'd look at a rabid squirrel gnawing on your leg and say it was cute, and he says depressing shit all the time in this stupid tone of voice like he's giving you a fuckin' hint...ugly as sin too, and I don't think he knows his cock from his giant nose, besides- oi, what is this, you want to invite him next time? Like it both ways, hah? I didn't think you were that kind of gi- "

He cut off, wisely, when she tapped his cheek in warning. "I have no interest. I thought he seemed more in your line. In any case, what about Frankreich?"

"Funny. ...What about her?"

"I mean," Austria said, rolling slightly, to face him and move into his space, her eyes at his collar bone and her fingers following, "Why not?"

"Why not...ach, we've been through that, haven't we? Do you retain anything that isn't a recipe or a fucking Mozart score?" He tapped the top of her head, frowning down at her. "Listen, Princess, we can play with her if you want, but it's a little tasteless to fuck the loser, isn't it?" Especially if she's desperate for it. He repelled a slight shudder.

"I don't want her," she said, airily. She hadn't missed that we. She moved to rest her head in the crook of Prussia's arm, and he curled around her without protest, trailing a hand over one breast and down her abdomen, to rest between her legs. She let him pet her for a moment, before continuing. "But you want this."

There was a long pause, Prussia's eyes glinting and fixed on her face; she saw them in her peripheral vision, as she stared at the canopy above. His fingers toyed with her hair- both hands, above and below. "You going anywhere with this?"

"I suppose it is fruitless to ask why." Austria's tone was idle, her legs spreading a little for his fingers to massage her. It wasn't that she cared; it was never that she cared. Call it academic interest.

Prussia shrugged, his arm shifting her and causing her to have to readjust for comfort. "Guess you're my type, or somethin'." He'd closed his eyes, and he opened one when he felt her turn to look at him, mischievous. "Brunette with a great ass and a full treasury, if you wanna know."

"How succinct." She pouted her lips at him in an uninterested way, and he pinched her cheek; when she barely reacted, he poked her ear, pinched her nipple. Nothing. It made him laugh.

"I guess maybe you're fun to play with, y'know, you're like a little grouchy doll," Prussia said, looking down now to where his hand cupped and stroked her. "Sometimes when I push the right spot, I can make you- "

His finger pushed down on her clitoris until it slipped off; she made a little squeak of a noise.

"Make you squeal," he said, in her ear. She looked unimpressed. Prussia kissed that unhappy mouth, and her chin, and moved down to her sternum, finding, in his descent, a mole here, a mole there. "So what gives, Püppchen, what's in it for the little lady with a hundred suitors and the tightest pu- purse strings east of Amsterdam? Apart from, I mean, all this-" -he gestured down at himself from head to toe, taut stomach to muscular thighs, with a sleazy smile against her breast.

Austria looked down for a long while at his cock, stirring to hardness already, and she found him mildly disgusting, as much as she found him enticing. She snorted in answer, dropping her head back to the sheets, and that was the end of that conversation. Prussia returned to his amusements.

"Knew it." He swirled his tongue around her nipple. "Wanna go again?"

"Hmm." She was damp under his exploring fingers. They wandered down to circle the tiny beauty spot hidden deep between her thighs, where her skin was satin-soft, until his mouth came to her navel, tongue flickering in. She twitched, rolling her hips, but he squeezed her waist to keep her still.

"Ah, ah- don't move, I saw something cute down here earlier- " Down he dove, to press her thighs apart and look for himself, breathing on her, revelling in the childish lewdness of it. She breathed out her amusement, and it caught in her throat at the touch of his tongue.

"You enjoy this- almost too much, I fancy- ah- "

Prussia pulled up an inch or so, watching the way she covered her eyes with her arm. "Can't help it, bein' in Austria gives me a fuckin' craving for something sweet." Down he went again. He wasn't particularly expert at the task, just at her topography.

"You are not in Austria, idiot, have you- ngh- forgotten?"

"But I just was."

Austria might have seen that coming, if he hadn't been cheating. She clipped him around the head, and then she lay back silently with her legs spread wide; she would let him do this for the next hour, perhaps, and then-

-he was pulling away, suddenly, scrambling to his feet to trip over a shoe in the direction of the antechamber. Austria sat up, disgruntled and wet.

"What now?"

He was half-disappeared through the door, white behind vanishing like a rabbit into a- "Hat!"

Oh.

Then she hoped, as she lay back and made plans, fondling her necklace, that he would bring her the coat.