Not that Spain blames him. Not that Spain isn’t also just as bored, dulled, yearning and longing and aching for the willowed shade of broken sunlight through blooming Juniper trees, warmed by humid air and clouds so soft he could pull them from the skies, if only he had the will to lift a hand to them, to try.

His boss will likely scold him for not paying attention, but Spain can’t be bothered today, too unfocused to listen to off-handed bickering made worse through obligation, not when he can still hear the thumping of rain on the roof, pattering against the windows.

Not when he can watch Romano skate his nails against the table, pressing the soft of his fingertips up and down as if he were writing something, composing something, following the tune of a melody only half-constructed and–

Spain sits up a little straighter, squinting.

Romano keeps his eyes half-lidded and hazy, looking for all the world like he is two seconds away from drifting to sleep, but Spain can see the way his fingers move, curled, as if cradling the neck of an invisible guitar, other hand almost imperceptibly pressing down into the table, plucking notes Spain can almost hear being strummed aloud, if only he tried hard enough to listen.

Spain watches, head propped on an arm that fell asleep about half an hour ago, too lost and transfixed on the image of Romano shirking his duties in favor of– of writing, maybe, or composing, creating something Spain is already desperate to hear, to mold into his life in the way he molds everything Romano does, every noise Romano makes.

He’s out of his seat seconds before they’ve officially been dismissed, but Romano doesn’t notice, still in that world of tabletop timbres and notes unwritten, of hands born to cultivate.

“What are you playing?” Spain asks, and he smiles when Romano startles, eyes widening and fingers dropping, forming into fists atop pages with not one word written on them.

Not that Spain blames him. His own are the same, after all.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Romano snaps, cheeks ruddy with caught-out indignation, and Spain knows he was right, that he’d formed himself an audience for a performer who didn’t know he was being watched.

“You were playing something,” he says, beaming when Romano collects his papers with more stumbled force than necessary, always too combative, too cagey with his vulnerabilities.

Romano huffs, says nothing, brushing past Spain with shoulders that are a little too tense for comfort.

Spain follows, whistling, doing his best to find the cadence of whatever rhythm Romano had been tapping against the table.

It takes two months for Romano to bring it up again, and when he does, it’s by dropping down next to Spain in the sand, feet and ankles damp with dusk-sweetened sea foam, hands steady and curled around a guitar he had always insisted he rarely used, that sits too comfortably in his lap to be anything less than adored.

“Don’t say anything,” is all Romano says, and Spain can only bring himself to smile, arms pressed atop his knees as he feels the kiss of broken waves and clumped seaweed against his toes. He’s more than content to wait, would always be content to wait if it meant Romano pressing himself into the space at Spain’s side, frown on his lips like he’s shy, wary.

Romano shoots him a look—I mean it, bastard!—but Spain only rests his chin on his arms, watching with slowly blinking eyes and a smile he is sure is horrifically besotted.

Romano doesn’t look at him when he plays, head tilted down so his hair falls across his forehead, curling around his eyebrows and the rounds of his ears. Spain bites back the urge to brush it away, and when Romano begins to hum, the softest accompaniment to a tune Spain has never heard, Spain can feel his heartbeat in the palms of his hands, in the urge to mold himself against Romano’s back, to be close and close and close.

Still, he does not move, waiting until Romano’s fingers pluck the final string, mumbling hums and soft breaths petering out until the only noise left is the swell of the ocean and the rustle of air through grains of sand and surf.

Spain blinks—once, twice—and Romano clears his throat, forefinger and thumb drawing absentminded patterns across the guitar’s body.

“I wrote it,” he says, voice low, deep, barely above a whisper. “I’ve been working on it for…fuck, I don’t know how long. A while, I guess. Mostly when I mi–”

He flushes pink, voice cutting off in a choke, and Spain sits up immediately, thinks he knows, and his delight is immeasurable, second only to grand, enamored infatuation.

“When you what?” he asks, because how can he not when Romano is looking like that, like he’s already cursing himself for speaking, as if Spain wouldn’t lay himself and his heart and his soul bare just to find the words humanity hasn’t created yet.

“Forget it.” Romano is scowling, bristling in that way he gets when he speaks before thinking, when Spain is close enough to hear him—when he’s paying attention—and Spain couldn’t forget this if he was given a millennium, if he was given an eternity and longer.

“When you what?” he asks again, because he has to, has to, would be a fool not to, would die, maybe, if he doesn’t. “When you…miss me?”

Romano shoots him a look so blistering and venomous that Spain knows he’s right, knows immediately and without question he’s right, and his hand is around Romano’s wrist before Romano even has the chance to stand, to run, because of course he’d run, and Spain can’t bear the weight of solitude right now, anyway.

“You wrote a song for me.”

Romano splutters, snarls. “It is not– I didn’t fucking write it for you!”

Spain could kiss him, wants to, wants to. “I can’t believe you wrote a song for me!”

“Are you even listening to me? I just said I didn’t–”

He’s red, so red, every shade the most beautiful color Spain has ever seen, and he can’t find it within himself to temper the need to touch, to be close and closer still, to kiss, fingers following the curve of ocean-misted waves caught on dark eyelashes, tangling in knots around his knuckles.

“My song,” he insists, lips light as they brush the warm of Romano’s mouth.

“Not what I sai–”

He shakes the thought away, eyebrow raised in question at the only other person here who hasn’t exhausted him yet.

Romano’s eyes flick from his face to the windows, to the rain pelting the windowpanes, and he scoffs. “And do what? Get soaked?” His fingers tap the glass in his hand, and Portugal watches with muted disinterest as the wine rocks back and forth, back and forth, an ocean all its own, confined and confined and confined.

“Better than staying here.” Staying here and playing pretend with a government who can only just tell him and Spain apart, and Portugal doesn’t have the stomach anymore for the accent or the language or the face of it all.

Romano tsks, and, for some reason, this infuriates him, as if Romano is content to sit here and be lessened, nothing more than a jewel on a crown on a head who so blatantly picks favorites. Like they’re above it all, the two of them.

He turns, and he leaves, and he doesn’t care enough to see if anyone watches him go.

vi.

“That was–”

Portugal is already pushing up off the bed, flicking hair from his eyes. “Want a drink?”

“Obviously,” Romano snorts, but he sounds like he’s amused, and when Portugal turns around to look at him, all he can see is the way Romano’s lips curl around his teeth, how his cheeks look when he smiles.

ix.

Romano snores when he sleeps, raspy and rough, and when his hair falls in front of his eyes, his nose crinkles with the tickle of it, too deep in dreams to bother moving it away.

We shouldn’t be doing this, Portugal thinks, because things are messy, only getting worse, and he doesn’t understand how Romano doesn’t grow restless beneath a thumb that demands obedience, that is all too comfortable pressing down on the pulse of their throats, hard enough to feel it beating, not hard enough to choke.

“I wish this was easy,” he says instead, and his skin goes cold when he realizes he means it, green eyes already looking down at tanned legs tangled with his, errant curl brushing his collarbone.

He’s gotten used to that, too.

iv.

Portugal can see him on the docks again, hair just as windswept as that first time, waves falling over each other to brush against dark eyelashes, to curl into knots at his hairline.

Spain’s hand is heavy on his shoulder, smile tipping into something that more resembles a bridler than a brother. “You look like you’re thinking hard,” he says, and Portugal hears the warning in it like a bell tolling within his head. “Everything all right?”

“Fine,” Portugal replies. The weight on his shoulder feels suffocating.

vii.

“We should have sex here,” Portugal says, out of the blue and apropos of nothing, voice hushed into a conspiratorial whisper when he leans himself into Romano’s ear.

Romano coughs, splutters, eyes narrowing when Portugal only grins at him.

“Not now, obviously,” he continues, because his brother is here, and his—their, because God forbid any of it is really his—government, too, and he isn’t stupid enough to try anything here, now.

Romano wipes the coughed wine from his lips, arm crossed over his chest as he settles back into the wall behind him. “Please,” he says, and he already sounds scandalized and petulant, “as if I’d settle for anything less than a bed. You think I’d let you fuck me on a settee? Not a chance.”

“I think,” Portugal replies, smiling, “you’d let me fuck you anywhere I want you to.”

Romano scoffs again, furious and blustering, but his shoulder brushes Portugal’s arm, and he doesn’t move it away.

v.

Lively doesn’t adequately describe it when it finally happens.

Romano has him pinned up against the library wall, holding Portugal’s wrists against hand-bound books and shelves which haven’t been dusted in God only knows how long, but all Portugal can think is how difficult it is, when kissing Romano, to push him away, to have him be the one pressed between linen and literature.

He manages, only just, and the heady, groaned gasp of surprise he receives pleasantly makes it worth his while.

x.

Portugal can see him on the docks again, hair wind-knotted and wild, exactly like it was that first time, exactly like the second, like every other time, every other time.

He can’t discern the expression on Romano’s face, too far away for detail, sunlight blinding on wave-crested waters, but he can see him turn around, see him walk away, back to that house and that voice and that hand and that crown.

He almost regrets leaving without a goodbye, but he knows, is certain in the knowledge, that expectation for their kind is the heartbeat of disillusionment, and he doesn’t have it in himself to be disappointed by someone so supine as to find comfort here.

Nothing ever gets resolved with avoidance and shame, but their arrangement never really did have room for much else, anyway.

iii.

He has a dream, then, that lingers worse than a bad hangover or a bloody wound. Maybe it’s years after their last conversation, or maybe it’s days, or maybe it’s hours; he can’t be bothered to keep track, not that their kind usually does when it comes to time.

(Hard. He wakes up hard, and that’s not how his dreams usually go—or, not the ones with Romano, at least.)

Romano was over him, or under him, maybe—not that it matters, because it doesn’t matter, not really. What matters is that Romano was close, breathing against his neck, sighing his name, and it’s—

It was slow, the way they moved. Tender, close.

Odd.

viii.

He’s gotten used to it—the way Romano’s voice hitches, goes taut, tight as his white-knuckled grip on pearl-hued sheets. He’s gotten used to it.

He’s gotten used to it.

i.

They meet officially, formally—and notably without supervision—on the docks of Almería, both windswept and water-worn, and it makes Portugal wonder how long Romano had been standing there for him to look like that, like he himself had blown in with the breeze of the ocean, side-swept bangs tangling into soft knots at his temples.

He is sure he himself is no better, likely worse—a ribbon can only do so much with the whipping winds that dance themselves through his sails—but he doesn’t bother brushing his hair from his face before approaching, grin ticking at the corners of his lips.

Romano blinks at him, hazel eyes owlish before settling into something calmer, almost bored. “Oh,” he says, “it’s you.”

The mattress beneath him dips, and he almost pushes away the palm that slides across his stomach, his sternum, but it’s warm, too, and Romano always liked being warm, and he liked being warm beneath this hand even more. He leans into it, instead, keeps his eyes closed, and he makes a small noise that’s half deliberate and half desultory—because he does mean to acknowledge Spain, but he doesn’t mean to acknowledge him like a cat waking from a nap in lazy, dozy sunbeams, purring.

But that’s fine. That’s fine. He knows Romano sometimes sounds like that when he’s waking, and even not, just sometimes when he’s beneath the pads of Spain’s fingers, and Romano feels fine when the mattress dips again and Spain hovers over him, knees sweetly nudging his apart.

Romano keeps his eyes closed when lips skim his jaw, keeps himself ensconced in the soft sunlight that shines itself across his eyelids. It’s good like this, he thinks. It’s nice. He can hear himself breathe with an awareness he never really has when he’s around Spain, always too preoccupied with other things, irrelevant things—what he’s doing, what he’s not, what he could be doing to Spain, instead. He likes being conscious of it, of his body and his reactions, and he sighs again when that palm moves to his side, his rib cage and lower, fingers skimming over his thigh as they drag heated sheets down, away.

There’s a laugh twinkling in his ear, something bright and charmed, and his skin pricks with cognizance when he feels the breath of it, lips curving into a smile against his cheek. “Awake yet?”

Spain speaks his vowels in a whisper, his consonants always catching on the tip of his tongue, and Romano’s shoulder shifts back in a shiver, presses into the bed when soft breeze meets skin, humid and carrying the smell of midmorning sunrise.

He makes a noise again, some groaned mhm that rumbles itself up his chest and out his throat, that gets lost somewhere around his lips when the heat of Spain’s laughter leaves his cheek and instead drifts across his nipple—and the gasp that leaves him is a surprised one.

He feels stupid like this, naïve, foolish, as if he isn’t war- and weather-worn, born and raised in the echoing, thundered footsteps of the Roman Empire, older than the New World and older still, as if his own sand dunes aren’t his brothers, the rolling fields his sisters. But this is his life now: homes across his country and Spain’s, furnished with soft beds and yellow kitchens and flowing curtains that always let the light in, because neither of them ever really do well when away from the sun, too used to its bite to go without for longer than a day, two. He wakes, now, to sheets that settle across the curves of his body, to someone in his bed, wiggling his legs until they settle around tanned hips, to sea-chapped lips that hum the song of his name until he is something melodious, made of more than sinew and sand, of memory.

Spain whispers his name, a question carried softly through balmy air and that sounds so fucking in love Romano almost opens his eyes, almost gives into the needling whine of it—

But Spain always did his best work when given a task, and Romano knows Spain has no qualms about being set to work on Romano, no end to the things he would let Spain do to him, and though his mouth goes dry as Spain nips at his throat and presses a finger against him, he can only find the energy to laugh, just dry air, enough to breathe Spain in, too.

And this, he knows, is Romano’s biggest fantasy, the thing that makes him hot and flushed and brazen, steadfast and sure beneath hands that have long since lost their hesitation. For all his blustering and posturing, Romano only ever cared for that which left him unsure, and Portugal understands in his own way, even relates to a certain degree. He expected it and he hadn’t.

It’s a truth that existed long before their paths wove themselves together so intrinsically, bonded in gold and sweetly-scented lavender, one that would exist long after their time in each other’s presence diverged, a truth that was laid out so plainly before him that he all but tripped and fell into it when he actually allowed himself to look. A truth Portugal could pluck from the skies of Alqueva and Lecce, shimmering like stars embedded in the outskirts of unwavering constellations, glittering fantastically before his eyes—a skittish, despairing, lonely truth.

Romano wants to be wanted. Not coveted nor revered nor exalted. Romano wants to be wanted, and Portugal, for reasons that dawned on him slowly at first then entirely all-encompassingly, wants him.

The notion of acting on this newly unearthed want had once been wholly at odds with Portugal’s nature. Romano has long existed within a sphere beyond Portugal’s notice, purview, and grasp, and he never cared to make any motion to extend his interest into that particular area of his brother’s imperium.

The nature of nations, Portugal knows, is that they are bonded to their people first and foremost. The nature of immortals, though, is that they are bonded to each other beyond what any human could ever conceivably fathom. As beings who live in the nebulous middle, their lives are only ever dictated by flux and wavering posture. All the more reason, then, he muses, to understand each other.

He knows Romano would laugh at the very thought of it, of being understood, of understanding those who have only ever burned his bridges. But—or so Portugal likes to believe—that was why they differed: he hadn’t intended to try, and Romano certainly hadn’t intended to deliver. To Romano’s endless annoyance and even more infinite delight, Portugal doesn’t care if he fails. This pleases him, and Romano, in return, gives, because nothing is expected of him and every gift, every action, every physical admiration is received like it’s all Portugal wants, with no expectation of other.

And maybe, Portugal wonders, just maybe, it is.

It’s a small thing, only a tease, a tempt with none of the promise, but as they leave their table from a shared lunch one blinding, blistering afternoon, Romano reaches behind him, pulls the hand from Portugal’s pocket, and places it on the small of his back, beneath the flutter of his pristine suit jacket. His eyes flick over his shoulder, and Portugal is already watching, already receiving, delighted in that way he gets when he makes a particularly good dig or catches an underhanded comment, revelry adorned in equanimity.

Portugal lets his lips turn up into a smile, hand pressing just that much more against Romano’s back, thumb tracing the line of his spine, and Romano grins at him, the keeper of a secret he doesn’t know he’s already shared.

Lovino is smiling so brightly that the simmering heat of Agrigento’s summer seems more akin to the frigid winds of winter. He’s laughing—not a snort, not the contrite brush aside or sardonic smirk he gets when he thinks he’s being clever—head thrown back and shoulders shaking with mirth.

Alfred forgets how to speak, how to think or move or breathe, forgets everything except how to stare—gawk, his brain helpfully supplies, very obviously—regarding Lovino as if he was the one to paint the stars across the sky, to sprinkle indigo and amethyst across the midnight horizon, to use hardened hands to cradle the sun and bring lighted warmth to the world. As if he was something beautiful, ethereal, untouchable.

Except, he’s not; he’s not untouchable in the way Alfred previously perceived him to be, distanced by water and antiquity and a complex Lovino tends to wear like his own form of bastardized battle armor. He is there, right there, laughing, and Alfred wants to reach out a hand and–

And.

He’s touching Lovino’s face before he’s even thought the action through, before he’s even realized he’s done it, cupping his hand around the swell of a cheek and feeling the heat of it still flushed with laughter and wondrously-worn glee. He feels the expression under his palm calm as that smile fades, replaced instead with slowly-dawning confusion, soft in its perplexity, and he traces his thumb across the dip of Lovino’s under-eye, if only to savor the way those dark eyelashes flutter.

“Alfred?” Lovino asks, painfully sincere, with a tone that melds between a question and vague, befuddled acknowledgement. His eyes are wide. He does not move away.

“Would it be cool if I kissed you right now?” It’s a reply in the technical sense, an answer to a question that had seemingly been hanging in the air for longer than he realized. His own voice is startlingly soft considering the pressing urgency he feels tugging at his gut, his hands, his tongue, like if he can’t have this nownownow he’ll die, starved, stripped of life before he’d even realized he was bleeding.

Lovino gapes at him, blinking slowly. The cheek beneath Alfred’s palm burns warm, and he almost expected Lovino to blush, to feel skin stain itself scarlet beneath the pads of his fingers. He wonders if he should ask why it doesn’t.

There’s a moment where hazel eyes flick from his down to his lips before rising again, and Lovino makes a noise in the back of his throat like a hum, a huh, like he’s realized something about himself and the world and the universe. Like the knowledge of whatever it is has only just settled, and now he must contend with life now that he has it.

He blinks at Alfred again. “Yeah.”

He says it like it’s easy, like it’s always been easy, like permission would have always been granted had Alfred ever had the wherewithal to ask. Alfred files that away for later, wondering, not for the first time, if he missed something in the tones of Lovino’s voice, if something else existed in the recesses of cutting words and huffed musings and trite insults that were never really all that insulting to begin with. But that’s for another time, or maybe never, because Alfred never really cared to indulge in worries and preclusions, and Lovino is too good to be wasted on half-baked ruminations when the now was so much better.

Lovino says it like it’s easy, and when Alfred ducks his head down and leans in, it certainly feels easy, easier than maybe he expected. It feels like old nights spent tucked beneath the dim lights of New York speakeasies, of hushed conversations held in the stacks of his library, like something big and bright and cosmic had settled off somewhere far away, a revelation exploding in the periphery of his universe, vast and grand in its own private corner.

Lovino’s hand settles boldly on his shoulder, fingers brushing the hairline at the back of his neck, and Alfred can feel every inch of it burn through his clothes. Lovino tastes like vintage wine and the cigarette he had been smoking not ten minutes ago, and even though Alfred hates the smell, he thinks he can learn to like the taste if it’s been tempered by sweet reds and the natural soft of Lovino’s tongue brushing past his lips. Alfred feels Lovino’s cheek move beneath his palm, and he doesn’t quite get why until he realizes that Lovino is smiling, pulling away enough that they look like two kids grinning into each other’s mouths, lost and dumb and found.

“Been wanting to do that for a while?” Lovino sounds smug, but his eyes are bright, sparkly, pretty, his hand fisting the back of Alfred’s shirt.

For a moment, Alfred thinks, if you count eighty seconds ago a while, sure, but that doesn’t seem right, isn’t right, and Alfred can feel certain pieces of their histories click into place—not any sort of life-altering change, but instead something soft, the clink of a plate placed in front of him on the nights when he wouldn’t bother with sleep, the fresh scent of pasta and garlic bread the only thing to bring him back into his own body, the reminder that he existed within the scope of four walls, the person as well as the land.

Lovino is so close, close enough for Alfred to feel the tickle of his bangs against his forehead, and suddenly every word and every gaze and every laugh pulled from scowling lips all align and glimmer like radiant galaxies, all with Lovino at the center.

Romano blinked, floundered, mouth opening and closing around a voice he couldn’t seem to find, the air in his lungs leaden enough to stay with him, refusing to leave, heavy and cloying. Not that it matters, his mind supplied. Nothing you can say will change anything. He knows that.

Spain stared into the distance, skin illuminated in tangerine and fire beneath the radiant sky of sunset, eyes locked on a horizon they had walked beneath for decades, centuries, dancing around willowing orange trees and sleeping beneath midday haze. Romano wondered what Spain saw when he looked out at a landscape of memories turned antique with change. Romano wondered what Spain saw when he looked at him.

He didn’t say anything, only watched Spain stare into the rolling fields of a land Romano would never call his own.

“Y’know what the worst part is?” Spain’s voice was soft, feather-light and delicate, only just carried from bloodied lips to Romano’s ears through a breeze scented with citrus and perfidy. “When I woke up, I felt disappointed that it was just a dream.”

The air in Romano’s body felt poisonous, rancid, fetid with betrayal and hurt and a grief so profound it felt tangible, like a mass within his body that he could hold, mold, could wrap his fingers around and see the validation of his sorrow. Like he could hold it out to Spain as proof of his apology, words he could never say lost to the inevitability of the future, a timeline of events to which he could only play spectator.

Romano supposed he should be glad Spain hated him. Maybe at one point it meant he had been loved.

The setting sun lengthened their shadows, and Spain’s silhouette was touching his, melding them together into the way they used to be—one form, one being, a single heart beating between the two of them, held together by dewy tomatoes and freshly-made churros and the echoes of tarantella across the tiles of Spain’s floors.

Romano pushed away, gagging on the sour taste of nostalgia grown cold, of yearning for that which could only bite, could only hurt, made bitter and beautiful in its lack of reprieve, of sentimentalities honeyed with war-ravaged brutality. He heard, after a moment, the rustle of grass and the footfalls of steps behind him, and he stopped in surprise when scarred arms linked around his waist, when a chest pressed against his back, when a voice laced with sorrow and imperial madness danced the shell of his ear.

“I hope you and Venezito do well.”

Romano stared at him—his eyes were always green, so green, he noted distantly, vaguely, green and earnest and too fucking good at burning hot with hatred—before shaking him off, walking away, forcing more distance between them, the too-steep edge of a cliff neither of them were willing to cross.