A/N: This fanfiction will be split up into 15 short sections/chapters. Each section/chapter will be focused on a different pairing. I will upload one chapter every day between now and February 14th, with one extra one being uploaded on the 15th. I do not own Hetalia or any of these characters. Pairings include (but are not limited to): PruHun, GerIta, Spamano, Ameripan, DenNor, TurGre, FrUK, CanUkr, and RoChu. Please review!

Chapter 1: Tradition

This year, he and Elizabeta had decided to go traditional.

He'd gotten her roses, just like every guy is supposed to. Then, in the evening, they got all dressed up and went out to a nice restaurant; he took the bill, like a proper gentleman. When they were finished, they walked a couple blocks down chilly February streets to the cinema where they bought tickets for a gushy new movie. It was perfect. Romantic. Traditional.

Well, almost.

The roses he bought her weren't exactly roses: they were chocolates that looked like roses. Actually, he took that back, too; they didn't really look like roses, either. They were a baggie of Reese's Pieces that were pink, white, and red instead of the normal colors, and they had a picture of some roses printed onto the package. He figured it was close enough.

And they hadn't really gone out to a nice restaurant, either. After all, most people probably wouldn't consider Buffalo Wild Wings to be a nice restaurant, or a flannel shirt and skinny jeans to be "dressing up". But there'd been a football game on between Germany and Netherlands and he'd really, really wanted to see how it went down, so they'd decided to scrap the whole fancy schmancy restaurant thing and pound some hotwings instead. As per usual, she beat him during their customary how-many-wings-can-you-stuff-down-your-throat-in-3-minutes challenge. He scored 8. 'Liza scored 13. When the three minutes were up, she'd grinned at him with a look of triumph in her eyes, her face covered in bright red wing sauce, still chewing a bit of the last wing she'd shoved into her mouth. After they'd finished off their wings and their beers, Gilbert took the bill, but not because he was a gentleman. Since Germany lost the game, he'd been forced into paying. Except he'd "forgotten" to add cash to his wallet, so they ended up doing halfsies anyway.

By the time they arrived at the theater after their "chilly" walk (a.k.a. cold as fuck), the movie had already started, but they flashed the lady behind the glass their membership cards and were waved right on through. She probably even recognized them, what with them being such frequent visitors.

So, even though the roses weren't real, and the dinner wasn't fancy, the movie they were seeing now was gushy, very gushy, in fact. Lots of red and hearts and… zombies.

Because, since neither of them could stand cheesy romantic comedies, they were seeing Zombie Combat 4.

And this didn't bother him at all, because he was a man, and men were just fine with guns and shooting and blood and decaying flesh and the living dead and being cornered in dark rooms the screams of people getting eaten alive by their best friends and—

He was a strong, tough, manly man, and he could handle this. Elizabeta would be the one in need of comfort, and he could totally give it to her. See? The movie was over twenty minutes in, and he was doing just fine. The first zombie had already come on screen, and the horny teenaged cast had already locked themselves inside the abandoned shopping mall. He hadn't even flinched once—

He jumped as a zombie lurched out from behind a food stall and started attacking the group. Dammit! He jinxed it. Well, at least he noticed Elizabeta had twitched a bit too. So, they were still even-steven. He wasn't actually scared, not really; the zombie had just surprised him. Anyone would start a little if something leapt out like that.

He managed to go another twenty minutes or so without any major balking, but this possibly could have been assisted by the fact that a good ten minutes of that time was filled by an awkward impromptu sex scene. Then again, pretty much the second it was finished, the couple's zombie-afied friend pounced out of the shadows and started biting the blonde chick's arm off. This may or may not have made him flinch.

And then there was a lot of fake blood spraying everywhere, and he found his palms getting all sweaty. And then another zombie-friend started attacking them, and he jumped again. And then the blonde became a zombie too, and started attacking her boyfriend. And then—

The movie continued like this, with scare after scare and lots of gore in between. Somehow he found himself gripping Elizabeta's hand for dear life, though he couldn't quite remember when he started holding it. By the end of the movie, he was staring away from the screen at his popcorn, playing a broken record of "it's not real it's not real it's not real it's not real" over and over again in his head. Unfortunately, it really didn't seem to help much. He could still hear the gunshots, the hoarse groaning, the shrill screams of terror. It had gotten to the point where the last person was being cornered at the escalator by all his zombie-afied friends, pleading with them to remember him, that they knew him, that they were friends, but it did no good. The movie ended with the guy's zombie girlfriend lunging at him and the screen going black. Gilbert could hear nothing but his marathon-heartbeat in his ears during the silence as the credits rolled.

"So, what'd you think?" Elizabeta asked loudly, startling him (a little).

"O-Oh, um, well, you know," he fumbled, trying to keep his breathing steady. "It was great! Really, awesome. Awesome movie,"

Elizabeta smirked, but didn't argue. Okay, that was seriously weird. Elizabeta would never miss a chance to make fun of him for that… His questions were answered when they got up to leave the mostly-empty theater, following the little trail of red lights on the floor.

"You look cute when you're terrified," she whispered in his ear.

He turned to look at her. "D-do I?"

"Mhmm…"

And just as they walked outside into the cold, she grabbed his ass and kissed him, and he decided that whatever she was planning for when they got home was probably worth two hours of terror.