AN: This fic is dedicated to Angel the Neko, because I wrote it on her recommendation. Hope you like it, Angel! It's set on Christmas the year after Italy stops living with Austria, and by now Holy Rome is thought dead by everyone.
I love Austria and Hungary together; they're so cute! Especially since I always imagined Roderich to be very romantically awkward but secretly very deeply in love with Elizaveta. That was the source of inspiration for this fic, as well as the story of the Little Drummer Boy (as you can see from the title). The idea of not having anything to give, but still giving anyway is so cool to me. :) I hope everyone likes it, especially you, Angel!
The soft sounds of piano notes drifted languidly through the house, like always. Music was a constant presence in Austria's home, but recently hardly a moment had passed when Roderich was not playing the piano. It made the house seem less empty, less lonely, since Italy left and Holy Rome was…lost.
Roderich would never admit it, but he was lonely without the children there. It had been…nice. Like a family, him and Elizaveta and the young ones. But his children had left or died—it made his fingers flutter harder and faster across the keys to think the word, even though the young empire had died years before Italy left—and even though he had seemed cold towards them, Roderich had cared about them.
And now it was Christmas. His first Christmas in years without at least one of the young ones.
Elizaveta was taking the Christmas season even worse than Roderich. She'd loved the children even more than he had, and she could hardly spend an hour without growing sad-eyed and unnaturally quiet. The cheerfulness of the season had brought her grief to the forefront of her mind, and Roderich hated to see her like this.
It was his best-kept secret that he was still in love with her. Even though their marriage had been brief, it had been some of the best decades of his life. She was lovely, strong, and kind, and she always took care of him. He was ashamed to admit that he needed a woman for protection, but his forte had always been artistry and musicianship, not war-making, even if he'd been created for that very purpose.
All he wanted for Christmas was to see her smile like she used to. All he wanted was to see her emerald eyes bright with her usual spark of life, not dulled by pain.
But that was something he could never, ever say. Roderich was a proud country, and he just couldn't bring himself to tell her how he felt. He had so little to offer. Just himself, and that wasn't much to give. He was frugal, so he would rarely buy her presents; he was wary of emotions, so his admissions of love would be few and far between. He was the last person any woman could love, much less a fiery beauty like Hungary.
All the same, he wanted to do something for her to make her happy this Christmas. For a long time, he sat there before his piano, wondering what he could give her.
After a few minutes of fruitless pondering, he looked down at the stark black-and-white ivory keys. The only worthy offering he could make was his music. That was the only thing he was proud of, the only thing he loved enough to give to a woman he loved.
Like the little drummer boy, he thought mirthlessly. This, my music, is all I have to give. I just hope that it's enough.
He set his fingers to the keys and began to compose a song. Melodies flowed from his fingertips, trills and rounds blossoming behind his amethyst eyes as he poured all his regret and remorse and star-crossed love and longing into the composition. The sweep of his emotions became the notes; the words he could never say became the beat of his song. Every line was an admission; each refrain was restraint. This was the song of a martyr, a man who felt so much that he could never give voice to.
When he finished, he felt strangely exhausted—everything he had was on the paper, written out in notes and phrases. The sheets of music were a reflection of his heart. He just hoped that Elizaveta liked it. If it made her smile for just a moment, it would all be worth it.
On Christmas Eve, a blustery, blizzardy night, Roderich and Elizaveta began to decorate the tree. This was an activity that made their grief swell bitterly in both of them—normally, the children of the house were the ones that put the decorations on the tree, and this year was starkly marked with the absence of children—but neither would have been able to have Christmas without a proper tree. So they swallowed back the lumps in their throats and put the candles, toys, candies, and crystal balls on the evergreen branches. As they wove ribbons through the needles, Roderich caught sight of Elizaveta's emerald eyes, the ones that always made his knees go weak, glistening with tears in the candlelight. When she noticed that he was looking at her, she glanced away quickly, scrubbing the moisture from her eyes and shaking her thick, light brown hair over her cheek to hide her face.
"I am sorry," she said, forcing a smile and waving away his concern. "I just miss the children, that is all."
"I miss them too," Roderich confessed.
Hungary managed a weak smile of gratitude. Not the smile he wanted to see, but it still made something inside him grow light and warm.
When the grandfather clock struck seven, they sat together at the piano and sang Christmas carols. Roderich played and sang as quietly as he could while still being audible—he wasn't particularly proud of his singing voice—and Elizaveta sang along with him, her bold soprano providing a perfect complement to his meek tenor. They sang for a while, letting the familiar tunes of the holidays provide a balm to their hurts.
When they ran out of songs to sing, they idled at the piano for a while. Roderich tried to teach Elizaveta a two-part song that they could play together, but she gave up after only a few minutes of the impromptu lesson with a hopeless laugh and a hint of petulant frustration.
"I'm sorry, Mister Austria, I just can't play like you can," she sighed. "I prefer listening to you. You play so beautifully."
Now was his chance. "Would you like to hear a new song?" he asked hesitantly. "I wrote it… It's for you, for Christmas." He stared down at the keys, a flush suffusing his cheeks beneath his half-rimmed glasses.
Her green eyes widened. "But, I thought we agreed not to give each other presents, now that the children…"
He cut her off hurriedly. "It's really not much, but I wanted to give you something. You've had so little to be happy about this year since Feliciano left."
"Mister Austria…" She looked genuinely touched. The red of Roderich's cheeks deepened. Now he was treading on uncertain ground. Anything even close to touching on romance made him uneasy.
Something close to stage fright filled him as he set the sheet music on the stand and began to play. Playing the piece filled him with the same emotion he'd felt while writing it. He was so connected to it that by the first measure, he was totally consumed with what he'd written it for. Her. Her wild beauty, her strength, the softness of her heart despite her appearance of indifference. A thousand memories of their marriage came rushing back—the feeling of her breath stirring his hair as they slept with their arms around one another, the touch of her hands, the pair of them wrapped together under a blanket as they watched a fire blaze away the cold Austrian winter, the glow that her smile ignited inside of him. Their sparing kisses. Even then he'd been wary of romance, but he regretted it now. He'd give anything to go back and make her realize that he loved her, no matter how cold he'd seemed.
But that was over now, and the only language he could use to convey the words was music—and that was, as she had just admitted, a language they did not share.
When his fingers stilled on the keys, it took him a moment to realize it was over. The warm bubble of remembered love was pricked by her silence as the final notes died away.
Nervously, he turned on his seat to face her. "That was it," he said, embarrassed.
Elizaveta's eyes were wide, and her lips were slightly parted. There was a startling openness and understanding in her face.
"Roderich…" she gasped. Roderich's jaw dropped slightly and his purple eyes grew wide. She hadn't called him by his name since they divorced. "That was…that was lovely."
"Thank you," he said stiffly. He wanted to tell her that it was the scrap of her in the song that made it so beautiful, but the words piled up on his tongue, blocked from getting past his lips like always.
"How could you make something so beautiful for me and then expect nothing in return?" she asked, her gemstone eyes catching his. "But I don't have a gift for you."
"I don't want anything, Elizaveta," he said, slipping into the informal without realizing it, just like she had. "I just wanted to give you something that would make you happy."
The most gorgeous smile he'd ever seen spread across her face. "You made me very happy," she said.
Roderich felt like he'd been knocked breathless. "I'm glad."
"But I still want to give you something," she said, tapping her lips with a hand on her hip. Roderich's pulse began to race. She looked so exotic outlined in shadows from the candles on the tree. "Now, what could I…? Oh, I know."
She took two swift steps toward him, closing the distance between them. Her hand came to rest on the nape of his neck, preventing his escape as her lips came down on his for the first time in much too long.
For a moment he was as still as a stone, too shocked to respond or even close his eyes. Then his eyes slowly slid shut and his lips hesitantly met hers, moving together in ways that had faded in their memories over the years but were impossible to forget. Warmth spread from her touch to cover his whole body, from his scalp to his toes, banishing the cold of the blizzard outside.
When she pulled back—he was too far gone to ever have even thought of breaking their kiss—he found that he had his hands around her waist and she was sitting on his lap, her arms around his neck and her fingers woven through his dark hair. He blushed furiously when Elizaveta leaned forward and kissed him on the nose.
"Szeretlek," she said softly, smiling widely at the embarrassment she remembered so well.
The Austrian translated wonderingly in his head. "You do? I thought…"
She silenced him with a quick kiss on the lips. "I thought that you didn't care for me anymore, too, but that song made me realize that you still feel the same way, just like I do."
Unable to resist, he kissed her neck just like he used to. It was best because it hid the flush on his face. "Ich liebe dich," he breathed into her skin.
The smile he remembered so well was back. "I know."
Just like the little drummer boy, he thought joyfully as their lips met once more. He sank gratefully into the kiss, pure bliss pouring through their contact. Even if he woke up in a moment and it was all a dream, he would never regret nor forget the Christmas song that had been all he had to give. It may have been all I had, but it was enough after all.
AN: Well, there you have it! Merry Christmas, everyone!
Oh, and in case you didn't guess from the context, szeretlek and ich liebe dich mean "I love you" in Hungarian and German, respectively. ;P