Hey everyone! First of all, I want to apologize for not publishing fanfics as often as I had been. Things had just been really crazy. But to make up for it, here is a new PruAus AU! The first chapter's a bit short, but I hope you enjoy it.

Rain fell from the sky in sheets and chilled him to the bone. He gritted his teeth as his trench coat started to soak through and silently cursed himself for having forgotten his umbrella. Head down, he slogged through the downpour, searching for a pay phone in the seemingly endless swirl of gray that consumed the foreign city.

Nothing had gone right so far since Roderich Edelstein had stepped foot inside the airport. His plane had been delayed for six hours. He'd missed his connecting flight and had to stand in line for an hour to try to get a new one. He'd stumbled off the jet frazzled and exhausted, his hair a mess and his patience a wreck, only to find that the airline had misplaced his luggage. The airport staff had been useless.

But the worst part was that the Vienna Philharmonic was performing tomorrow, and he still hadn't gotten his violin back.

Lost in the middle of an unfamiliar city, cell phone dead and unable to find his way to his hotel, Roderich shuffled inside a phone booth. Part of him wanted to try fighting with the airport one last time, but the other part just wanted to escape the weather. He slipped a few coins in the slot, dialed the number, and waited as the phone rang.

"Hello, Lufthansa Airlines, Gilbert Beilschmidt speaking. How may I help you?"

Roderich fell silent. On the other end of the line was the most mesmerizing, inviting voice he'd heard in days. Though his accent clearly said 'Berliner,' his voice was warm with just a little bit of roughness to it. The Austrian wanted to just melt with the phone still in his hand.

"Hello? Is anyone there?"

"Oh…" Roderich snapped back to reality. "Yes, I'm sorry. I've called several times already. My luggage was misplaced after I missed a connecting flight. I need it tomorrow morning early for a concert and I was told I would receive a phone call at two in the afternoon. That was hours ago!"

By the time he'd finished that little speech, the irritation in Roderich's voice had grown until he was very nearly yelling at the airline employee. "Sorry…" he mumbled, voice returning to normal. Gilbert probably had nothing to do with his luggage being lost.

"That's all right," Gilbert replied, sounding calm and unfazed. "We understand your frustration. Can you give me your name and your flight number? I can help you sort this out."

Roderich fumbled for the crumpled, half-soaked boarding pass that had been shoved haphazardly into his jacket pocket, and rattled off the information. The other end of the line went nearly silent. The click-clack of fingers on a computer keyboard was the only sound that could be heard.

For a moment, the Austrian wanted to resign himself to the hopelessness of his situation. He'd never get his violin back, he thought. He'd never perform in that concert, he thought. But there was something about Gilbert's voice, something that made Roderich believe he would make an effort when no one else had.

"Roderich, are you still there?"

His name, being spoken in that warm Berliner accent. Roderich caught his cheeks pinking slightly. "Yes…yes, I'm still here."

"I've found where your bags are located, both your suitcase and your violin case. They made it to our airport, but it took them a long time. I will personally make sure they are sent to your hotel tonight."

Roderich breathed a long, shaky sigh of relief, and for a moment, it was as though all the exhaustion of travel stress had melted away. Gilbert's voice and the patter of rain falling outside turned the little glass phone booth into his own temporary sanctuary of sorts.

"Thank you, Gilbert. Thank you very much. You're the most helpful person I've spoken to this entire time."

There was a laugh, soft and deep. For the first time in over forty-eight mind-numbing hours, Roderich cracked a smile. "I'm just doing my job," Gilbert said. "I wanted to help, so I did."

"Well, you certainly did," Roderich confirmed.

"All right, Roderich. I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip. I apologize on behalf of the rest of my company and we hope you'll give Lufthansa another try in the future. Take care!"

Roderich barely had the chance to get out the words "You too…" before there was a click, silence, and then a dial tone.

Gilbert Beilschmidt. The Austrian repeated the name silently to himself, committing it to memory. When he got back to the airport to fly home, he'd try to find the man who had helped him so much. If the voice was any indication of the rest of him, Gilbert must be handsome and cheerful, Roderich thought. Was it possible to be attracted to someone based only on his voice?

At that thought, Roderich almost wanted to laugh at himself. It was silly. Ridiculous, even.

Besides, the chances that he'd ever meet Gilbert, at the airport or otherwise, were all up in the air.

He hung up the office phone, rested both his elbows on the desk, and breathed a long, weary sigh. Being in charge of lost baggage for the airline meant he encountered irate, frazzled travelers on a daily basis who seemed to think the loss of their suitcases was personally his fault. They acted like he had been the one who had been out on the tarmac, loading bags onto the plane. And with Berlin Tegel Airport jam-packed with far more travelers than it had been intended to hold, as the opening of the new airport was delayed over and over again, it seemed like things were even worse.

That customer, Gilbert thought, hadn't been too bad. Sure, he'd been a little irritated at first. But those kinds of delays and complications would have been enough to make even the most seasoned of travelers annoyed and out of sorts. And that guy had seemed more grateful than most. Most people, even when Gilbert was able to locate the bags and deliver them in a timely fashion, huffed out words of thanks as though they were still angry with him for having supposedly been the one to misplace their bags. Some people didn't thank him at all.

It was a tiresome job, for sure.

He propped his face up in his hand for a moment and turned his gaze out the window to watch a fairly large jet rocket into the sky. He sighed again, this one filled with longing. Some lucky pilot was up in the air right now, while he was tied to a desk.

The door clicked open. Gilbert's head jerked up as he saw a disheveled-looking family of three shuffle through the door to his office. Only the daughter, who looked to be about seven years old, wore a grin. Who knew whether or not the father would yell at him? Whether the mother would complain? Gilbert shook off his weariness and affixed a smile to his face, because it was his job. It was time to get back to reality.

Three hours later, as the onset of evening further darkened the chilling gray sky, Roderich finally located his hotel. His clothes were so heavy with rainwater that it felt as though he was soaked right to the bone. He shivered and wrapped both arms around himself as he stepped into the lobby. Outside, the rain pelted the city mercilessly. Only a moment ago, it had been drizzling lightly, just enough to keep him freezing even after having spent almost an hour sitting in a little café nibbling at a pastry and sipping cup after cup of hot tea in an effort to chase away the cold.

Roderich allowed a grimace to cross his face for only a second. Once he approached the front desk, he forced his face to take on a reasonably pleasant expression, or at least as pleasant as one's expression could be after the travel nightmare he'd just endured. "I have a reservation under Roderich Edelstein," he said wearily, slumping against the desk a little.

The receptionist made a few more clicks on the computer keyboard. It was a sound that had become familiar to Roderich over the course of the past twenty-four hours since the first plane had been delayed. "Yes, we have you in room 304. Here's your key," she said. The Austrian reached out and accepted the key, relieved. Finally, he'd be able to get some rest –

"Oh, Mr. Edelstein. Two bags arrived for you from the airport."

Roderich had been about to shuffle into the hotel elevator so that he could find his room, strip off his wet clothes, and sink down into his bed at last. But those words made him stop in his tracks. He glanced almost hopefully over his shoulder. Already? How could it be? What if they had sent him the wrong bags by accident and the nightmare wasn't over?

Tentatively, he took the few steps back to the front desk. There it was – his slate-gray suitcase with a ribbon in the colors of the Austrian flag tied around the handle. And next to it, his precious Stradivarius, tucked safely in its case. For the second time that day, Roderich smiled. It was a tiny, exhausted smile, but it was there nevertheless. "Thank God…" he breathed. "…And thank you, miss," he added as an afterthought, already crossing the lobby toward the elevators.

Fifteen minutes later, dressed in his warm, clean oversized t-shirt, Roderich crawled into bed and shut his eyes. There was no better feeling than this.

"…Gilbert Beilschmidt…"

He pronounced the name at a hoarse whisper, trying to commit it to memory.

"…Thank you."

As always, thanks for reading, and reviews are love :)

Oh, and thank you to my beta, user Kuroi Inanis!