Written in response to a prompt ("things you said at 1 AM") by tumblr user fantastiix and originally posted on my tumblr. Decided to cross-post it here three months later. Largely moved away from writing Hetalia it seems but I clicked my tongue and figured I should at least post this. It's something relatively new and probably one of the last things I'll do for this fandom for a bit.

Hush

Austria was no stranger to Prussia's sleeping habits. He'd had the last two centuries to observe them as Europe fractured and broke and reshaped itself around them, and he'd had the last few years to observe them more intimately, occasionally waking to either a pushy body against his own or nothing, signalling that Prussia was having another one of his moments. Such was the case tonight, it seemed, and as Austria blinked the remnants of sleep from his eyes he cast his gaze to where he knew Prussia to be, where he was every time Austria woke alone, shaken from sleep by pure chance.

Prussia stood by the open window, his arms wrapped firmly around his body, head bowed in the darkness. There was no moon that night, no romantic sliver of silver light falling over him, but Austria knew he was there anyway, not because he had particularly good night vision but because this was a scene he had witnesses over and over, every time he inexplicably woke in the middle of the night to an empty bed and a cold breeze. He did not wake every time, of course, and he wondered, vaguely, if Prussia did this every night and he just didn't know, but that was neither here nor there.

Forgoing his glasses he slipped from the bed, clutching the open collar of his white sleeping shirt as he ghosted across the room to where Prussia was standing, his back to the bed. As Austria neared and his eyes adjusted he could see that Prussia had extended one hand, but if he'd been staring at it previously he was not now, his eyes staring unfocused at something in the sky Austria could not see, and did not care to search for. He knew what this was, what it had always been ever since one little blonde-haired boy had been replaced with another, one who had grown too quickly and suffered the mistakes of his forebears, and the part of Austria that still clung to the old days hissed in impatience while the other part, the part he had grown into, preached patience.

He was not there to coddle Prussia and his insecurities, but nor would he exacerbate them unnecessarily.

"It's all right," Austria said, reaching out to rest a gentle hand on Prussia's shoulder, an action that would have been impossible as little as fifty years ago. He felt Prussia shudder under the touch, heard a bitter laugh escape, but he ignored it, as he ignored many things. "It's all right."

This thing they had, this thing they'd always had–Austria was worried that, one day, it would finally destroy them both. He didn't voice that, though. Instead he shook the thoughts of centuries past from his mind, stepping out from beneath the mantle of empire and into a role he had always played in a perfunctory fashion: partner. He allowed Prussia to shift and turn under his touch, to draw him in, to bury his face against Austria's neck as he had several times before, his body shaking not with sobs but with frustration at what Austria knew Prussia perceived to be his own weakness.

"It's not a weakness, you fool," Austria said, allowing a tired sort of fondness to leak into his tone. "I tire of repeating this."

"Repeat it once more?"

Austria sighed, reaching up to rest one hand against the back of Prussia's neck. "The strongest and most long-lived empires did not remain the strongest because they isolated themselves and refused help. It's all right to accept it. It's all right to want this. It's all right." And as he whispered to those words he listened to Prussia hiss them back to himself and prayed, silently, that one day Prussia would allow himself to believe them.