#aph axis

NYO AXIS GO!!

(Close-ups under the cut)

Headcanons for the main guys (Axis+Allies + Romano and Spain) having a crush on a curly haired Latina reader!!

Being Latina myself, I found this really fun to write, so I hope you enjoy this!!

Slightly out of character for Feli but I wanted to add the fact that these nations are so aware of their immortality it like kind of messes with them a little and yes you are a little silly in this one but! I wanted to speed up the pacing for this fic and pump out the idea as quickly as I could, NOT SUPER YANDERE like my other works but maybe if you squint. I need to write more gore tbh.

writing this as an American living in Italy right now. I don't get out much unfortunately :3 I should write a fic about the reader being in the military whilst overseas because it would be silly and whimsical but at the same time writing about military stuff as a daily life is like watching paint dry on the wall. ANYWAYS im rambling on again O3O

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Padua, Italy — Spring 1996

The warm April air carried the scent of blooming flowers and fresh bread from the corner bakery as (name) pushed through the crowd at the university’s spring party.

Music floated from the main hall, laughter spilling into the cobblestone courtyard. You had only been in Padua a week, and everything felt new.

You paused near the fountain, adjusting her bag, and saw him.

He was leaning against a column, sketchbook in hand, curls falling into his eyes as he smiled at someone passing by.

When your gazes met, his grin broadened, and for a heartbeat, You felt your stomach flutter.

“Feliciano,” a voice beside you whispered.

It was Sofia, your Milanese roommate, already swaying to the music.

“That’s… well, that’s just Feli. Local, sort of an art student. Always here, always laughing, somehow… everywhere.”

You watched as he waved at someone across the courtyard, energy spilling off him in waves. Then, his amber eyes met yours again.

“Ciao, bella straniera,” he called, his accent lilting, playful. Your italian still needed work.

“You are new here?”

“I—I’m (name),” you stammered, smiling nervously.

“From (country). I’m just visiting the university this semester.”

He tilted his head, examining you like a painting he couldn’t yet name.

“Then Padua is lucky,” he said lightly, and the sincerity in his voice made you blush.

Over the following weeks, You kept running into him not just at parties, but wandering the piazzas, sketching near the botanical gardens, at cafés you hadn’t even known existed.

He always had a smile, a joke, a small gesture that made you feel singled out.

Once, he appeared with a single croissant. “It looked lonely,” he said, pressing it into your hand.

“You brought me a croissant?” you laughed.

“It seemed right,” he said with a shrug.

He claimed to study art, and you believed it. He spoke with passion about color, light, perspective, he could make the smallest detail of everyday life seem magical. But sometimes, when conversation drifted toward history, his amber eyes darkened.

He spoke of wars as if he had witnessed them, of empires as if he remembered their rise and fall.

“You sound like you were there,” you said once, teasing.

He only smiled faintly. “In a way… I was.”

You laughed, but the flicker of something unspoken in his gaze stayed with you.

~~~~~~~~

The first real date wasn’t planned. He invited you to a street market “to sketch the people,” and you two ended up sitting on the edge of a fountain with scoops of gelato, watching the afternoon drift lazily around.

“You make me look… different,” you said, squinting at the quick sketch he had drawn of you.

“Alive,” he said simply, eyes meeting yours.

“That’s all that matters.”

You felt a strange flutter in your chest you couldn’t name.

Spring gave way to early summer. Days were warm, evenings golden. You found yourself searching for him in the crowd, hoping for a glimpse of that bright smile.

He was everywhere and nowhere, as if he had slipped into your life just to make your heart race.

One evening, after a small exhibition of student art, he offered to walk you home.

The streets smelled of warm stone, rain from earlier lingering faintly in the air.

“You make Padua feel different,” he said softly, walking beside you.

“How so?” you asked, smiling.

“Lighter,” he said. “Like before.”

“Before what?” you laughed, expecting a teasing answer.

“Nothing,” he said, turning away with a grin. “I talk too much.”

He leaned closer, and for a heartbeat, the world stilled. You could feel the warmth of him, the magnetism, the almost desperate longing in his amber eyes.

Then, just when you thought he might kiss you, he stepped back.

“Buona notte, (Name),” he said, smiling but the sparkle in his eyes was tinged with something else.

Weeks passed, filled with stolen afternoons and whispered laughter. Feliciano showed you secret corners of the city; an abandoned bell tower overlooking red rooftops, quiet courtyards where frescoes glimmered like half-forgotten dreams, little cafés tucked down narrow alleys.

“Do you ever… go home?” you asked one day as ya'll sat on the steps of the botanical gardens.

He laughed lightly, but it sounded hollow. “Home is complicated.”

You noticed small oddities. He sometimes spoke with people who didn’t look like students...older men in crisp suits, their eyes sharp, their smiles practiced. When You appeared, they always seemed to melt into the crowd.

“Who were they?” you asked, curiosity prickling.

“Friends,” he said too quickly. Then, softer: “Old friends.”

The first shift came on a night by the river. Feliciano had brought a bottle of cheap wine, a small radio crackling with static, and a blanket.

“You ever think about how old this city is?” he murmured, gazing at the dark water.

“How many people have stood right here, in love or despair, or… died?”

You laughed softly. “You make it sound morbid.”

“It’s not,” he said. “It’s… continuity. We carry them, all of them.”

Something in his tone made you shiver.

He reached for your hand, hesitant but warm, and you didn’t pull away.

“I’m glad you came here,” he said quietly. “Even if you’ll forget me when you leave.”

“Who says I’ll forget?” you teased, but were more confused with what he meant.

“Everyone forgets,” he said, amber eyes shadowed with something unnameable.

“That’s what keeps us safe.”

Then, he kissed you. Gentle at first, almost tentative, and then deeper, urgent, like he was trying to memorize your lips.

When your lips finally parted, Your heart pounded.

He looked different...pale, tense, fragile somehow.

“Feliciano?”

“Scusi,” he said too brightly, laughing it off. “Too much wine.”

But you noticed the slight tremor in his hands.

By July, things had grown stranger. Feliciano’s sketchbook was filled with faces from different centuries...soldiers, rulers, unknown figures but all drawn with uncanny accuracy.

You found old photographs tucked between the pages, him in the same poses, the same expressions, but decades apart.

“Are these… you?” you asked, incredulous.

He smiled, brushing it off. “I like history.”

One afternoon, you glimpsed at him speaking to a man you recognized vaguely from a local news story...a government official.

They whispered urgently, and when you called his name, both froze. The official disappeared into the crowd, and Feliciano turned to you with a calm, practiced smile.

“Nothing important,” he said.

“You were talking to a government man,” you said.

He tilted his head. “Sometimes, I’m asked to… represent things.”

“Like a student?”

“Something like that,” he said, eyes distant.

The final straw came on a weekend trip to Venice. The city was glittering under the late afternoon sun, gondolas rocking gently in the canals. They stood on a quiet bridge, tourists drifting below.

“Would you stay here after summer?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know. My visa ends in August,” you admitted.

He nodded. “If you go, promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“That you’ll forget me.”

You laughed softly, thinking it a joke. But when you met his eyes, you saw something ancient there grief, loneliness, and a depth that made you shiver.

“I don’t understand,” you whispered.

“You aren’t supposed to,” he said.

That night, you awoke to voices outside the pensione. Peeking from your window, you saw him in the alley, speaking to two men in dark coats. One held a folder with official seals.

“She can’t know,” one said.

“She doesn’t,” Feliciano replied, voice low. “She won’t.”

“She’s asking questions.”

“I’ll handle it.”

The next morning, you decided to confront him.

“You followed me?” he asked quietly.

“I heard you talking. Who were they? Why are they watching you?”

He looked at her for a long moment. “You think I’m a person, (name). I wish I were.”

“What does that mean?”

He exhaled shakily. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Then make me.”

He almost did, the truth hanging on his tongue, but something stopped him. “I can’t,” he whispered.

“If I tell you, you’ll never see me the same way.”

He kissed you briefly, a desperate plea rather than promise.

“I love you,” he said. “That’s the only real thing about me.”

You had thought you were done with Padua. The train ride home had been bittersweet; the city’s red rooftops had disappeared beneath the horizon, but the memory of Feliciano’s amber eyes lingered like an ache.

You had tried to convince yourself it was just a summer romance, a fleeting bright flare in a city alive with history.

But then the letter arrived.

It came from the university administration, stamped and official. You had expected something mundane a reminder of deadlines or fees but instead it demanded you extend your visa.

The reason was vague: “national academic requirements” and “government authorization.” It was bureaucratic, yet firm.

Confused, You called the office. The receptionist’s polite, rehearsed tone made you uneasy.

“Yes, Miss (last name), the extension is mandatory. We’ve already notified the relevant authorities. Please return to Italy immediately.”

You tried protesting, explaining your plans, your home, your life waiting. But the words fell flat. By the time you tried explaining she hung up, your heart had begun to thrum with a deep, inexplicable anxiety.

Something felt wrong.

By the time you arrived back in Padua, the air was thick with heat and the scent of the canals. You wandered past familiar streets, your steps slower, wary. Everything looked the same...the bell tower, the cobbled squares but there was a subtle tension to the city now, a sense of being watched.

And then you saw him.

Feliciano. Leaning against the wall of the botanical gardens, sketchbook in hand, curls falling into his eyes. That damn smile the one that had made your heart leap weeks ago was there, but it carried something new. Something darker.

“You’re back,” he said, voice light, casual but the intensity in his amber gaze made your chest tighten.

“I… yes. The university,” you started. “They… extended my visa. I had no choice.”

“Ah,” he said, tilting his head. “The bureaucrats are helpful when they’re… motivated.”

You blinked. “Motivated?”

His smile widened, just slightly, and there was no warmth in it. “I like having you here, (name). Very much.”

Over the next few days, small things began to unsettle you. Your apartment door was never quite locked when you returned. Notes in your handwriting appeared on your desk things you didn’t remember writing.

Sometimes, you glimpsed him in your peripheral vision: at a café you had chosen at random, sketching quietly at a table you hadn’t noticed before. Always observing, always waiting.

And then you realized.

Every “coincidence” in your extended stay every small bureaucratic hurdle, every delay, had been orchestrated.

Feliciano had ensured you stayed in Padua. You had been manipulated, trapped without knowing it.

Your stomach churned. You confronted him in the garden where you two had first sat for gelato.

“Feli, did you…?” you voice trembled with anger. “Did you make them call me? Make me stay?”

He looked at you, amber eyes impossibly still, impossibly deep. “I…” He shook his head slightly, then smiled, faint and fragile. “I can’t let you go, (Name). Not after… not after I’ve found you.”

“You—what are you saying?” Your hands shook. “This isn’t just… love. This isn’t normal!”

His expression softened, almost painfully. “No. Normal isn’t my world. And you… you’ve seen too much, learned too much. I cannot risk losing you. You belong here, with me.”

The first night you tried to leave, you discovered it was impossible. Taxi drivers refused your fares, citing “special regulations.” The university denied your requests to return home.

Even the airport felt distant, as if invisible hands diverted your every step.

You turned to Feliciano, hoping for reasoning, for mercy perhaps.

He was waiting at your apartment, sketchbook in hand. “I warned you,” he said softly, almost mournfully. “You cannot leave. Not when I love you.”

“I’m not yours!” you shouted. “You can’t—”

He stepped closer, hands trembling, eyes glinting amber. “I love you. That is everything I am capable of feeling. You’re not just a person to me. You’re the one thing that keeps me feeling like I have control.”

There was a quiet horror in his words. The playful, charming boy from the party had vanished, replaced by someone older, more immense. Something… unhuman.

Over the next days, You observed him closely. His habits were strange. At night, you would hear whispers in languages you didn’t know, voices carried through open windows.

He spoke of wars you had only read about, of treaties centuries old, of things and places that could not exist.

One night, he cornered you in the garden, hands trembling as he held your wrists. His voice was low, desperate:

“You could leave. You could try. But you would not survive out there. Not knowing, not understanding… and I could not bear it. I cannot lose you, (name). I will not.”

You stared at him, fear rising like bile. “Feli… what are you?”

He exhaled, a shuddering breath, as if the weight of centuries rested on his shoulders. “I am… Italy. I am the years, the wars, the laughter, the sorrow. And I… I have loved you from the moment I saw you. You are mine now. You’ve seen too much to leave. And even if you tried, you could not. You belong here. With me.”

The ground beneath you seemed to tilt. The city, the canals, the streets they all seemed smaller, more constrained.

You realized, in a sickening heartbeat, that your world had been rewritten around him.

You tried to reason with him, to appeal to the man you had loved, the boy who brought sunlight and laughter into your life.

“I don’t want this,” you said. “I love Italy. I love this city. But I cannot stay like this, trapped!”

He shook his head, sorrowful yet resolute. “Trapped? No. Protected. Loved. You have no idea what it would mean to lose you. I cannot let it happen.”

The way he said it, the depth in his gaze, left you trembling. He was no longer merely a man. He was something impossible.

Days turned to weeks. You became a ghost in your own life, walking the streets under his watchful eyes, sharing meals he prepared, sharing conversations that left you haunted.

You could not leave. Every attempt met unseen barriers, every plan foiled.

And all the while, he watched you with that impossible intensity fervent love twisted into something terrifying, eternal, inescapable.

One evening, in the quiet of the botanical gardens, he whispered to her as the sun set.

“You cannot go back to your old life, (name). You have seen me, and I have seen you. You know too much, you feel too much, and I… I love you too much. We are bound now. Forever.”

You felt the truth in your bones. No matter what you tried, you could not escape him. The city, the bureaucracy, the laws of men they were nothing against the centuries-old force that was Feliciano.

And as you looked into his amber eyes, you realized the horrifying reality: You could never leave, not until death rips you from his grip.