It's been a long day. Hungary knows weddings, he's been playing that ridiculous servant role in Austria's house long enough to know the drill, the elegance of Vienna's high society gathering in the ballrooms of the Hofburg, the music of fake laughter and refined lies between Austria's lips. She's beautiful in white, with her soft curves and long, elegant fingers covered with Venetian lace gloves. She's beautiful and her eyes are cold, colder than when she talks to the Empress Elizabeth and colder than when she dares to play one of Chopin's most Polish polkas. Looking back at all of her past unions, this one feels like the most humiliating slap in the face, and Hungary knows better than to be fooled by her otherwise calm demeanour. He lets her smile and he smiles too, but the both of their faces take a sombre look when they're finally alone.
"Leave, please," Austria says with that small, incredibly feminine and incredibly dangerous voice. She's taking off her jewelry in front of the large mirror in her room, and she looks old, older than she should be.
Hungary hasn't even taken a step inside; he's standing in the doorway, dressed in clothes that cost more than Slovakia's annual allowance, still obeying the true mistress of the house.
"So this is how it's going to be?"
She turns towards him, and anger makes her eyes take that very sharp, very piercing purple colour.
"Yes."
It's an order from Austria and Hungary always obeys orders when they come from Austria, or at least he tries to. He still has scars on his back from Russia's last visit in 1848, and that knot in his stomach whenever Austria plays him Liszt with a soft smile on her face and her fingers flying over the keys.
It shouldn't surprise him to see Prussia in the music room later that night, going through Austria's latest compositions on her desk with an amused grin on her face as she turns the pages. She's been waiting for him, or maybe she's been waiting for Austria, that Hungary can't know for sure.
"It's a shame you can't read music," she says as she lets go of Austria's recent piano piece and turns around. "She might be good at faking smiles and practiced gestures, but she can't help but to write down symphonies of dying birds in B-minor whenever she's upset."
Hungary looks at her, and Prussia grins as she walks towards him, rising up to the tips of her toes to brush some invisible dust from his shoulders. Hungary lets her, but he doesn't let his guard down. Hungary never lets his guard down in front of Prussia, not anymore, because Prussia is sly and mean and mad, and she'd break him if he let her worm her way inside his skull.
"And you… You look good. Emperorship suits you well."
"What are you doing here, Prussia?"
She smiles, pointedly ignores his question.
"Czech told me she's spent weeks making Austria's dress. The poor girl's hands were completely destroyed from all the hard work she'd put for the little lady's wedding extravaganza, but I'm sure the bitch looked gorgeous on the altar."
Hungary frowns, because Prussia wants him to play a game he doesn't want to play. He gently but firmly pushes her hand away, observes her. All he can see is her teeth. They're white, sharp and biting.
"Czech says a lot of things, just like Bavaria."
Prussia makes a face, has a gesture of exaggerated pain, her hand clutching her chest as if she'd just been hit. The grin hasn't left her face, though, and she laughs. It sounds like victory and it makes Hungary wish he could strangle her with a string from Austria's piano.
"Already hitting below the belt? Is it Austria who taught you that?"
She twirls around him like a cat playing with a mouse, her severe Prussian uniform fluttering on her dry, masculine form. Prussia only ever wears women's clothing when forced to, has always done.
She's right, Hungary knows it, and so he doesn't answer. Prussia's grin grows wider as she stops behind him, tracing the line of his shoulders absent-mindedly, wandering down his back and over his sides.
"I didn't come because coming to Austria's weddings is something I stopped doing a few centuries ago. I'm sure you understand why."
She lets her hand brush over the hem of Hungary's pants.
"I guess I should have. The two of you must have been beautiful."
She laughs softly against his ear, and her breath tickles his neck. It's too much for Hungary, and he feels his blood boiling under his skin, screaming its hunger for death and destruction. He turns around, violently grips her bony shoulders out of anger. It does wipe that grin off her face, but there's still that spark in her eyes that won't go.
"What do you want?" he asks, and his voice is low and charged with wrath, pain and a tiny little hint of despair. "What are you trying to accomplish by coming here?"
Prussia takes a moment to answer, observing Hungary's face with a curious look on her face. Then, her mouth curls into a half-smile. It's about winning, it's always about winning and losing when it comes to Prussia and Austria and their games.
"I want to know if I really did beat her this time."
It's not the answer Hungary had wished for, and Prussia know how to take advantage of fallen enemies. She leans closer, her hands rising up to play with the top button of his shirt.
"And, when I look at you here and now… Well it seems to me that I did."
Hungary doesn't stop her as she pries open his shirt, runs her hands over his chest. He closes his eyes and holds her neck as she pulls him into a kiss that tastes like dead Frenchmen and a triumphant new century beginning in front of their eyes. Austria is losing and Hungary lost ages ago, he knows is from the way Prussia's mouth curl into a grin over his lips when he has her pressed against Austria's piano.
Prussia slips her hand inside his pants, and a few rough strokes are enough to get him fully hard. She lets out an amused little "Oh!" sound that makes Hungary wish he could smash her face against the piano keys. He doesn't do it; he doesn't want to give Austria a reason to leave her room and, most importantly, he doesn't want to deal with Austria and Prussia and the centuries they spent running in circles hoping to destroy each other one way or another.
"Shut up."
"Make me."
It doesn't matter what Hungary says or does now, and it doesn't matter if Prussia pliantly goes to her knees and undoes Hungary's pants. Her lips are chapped and wet, and her tongue feels warm against his cock. The sounds she makes are obscene, and she knows it, humming and sucking with an air of triumph. She moans as Hungary grips her hair and forces her to hold him in her throat, and it's a shameless moan, just as shameless as Prussia has always been.
It feels good, even though Hungary knows he'll want to drown himself in the Danube tomorrow, even though Prussia has won, will always win. It doesn't matter anymore, as long as it can make him feel like he's made a dent in Austria's frozen dying heart, maybe, a little bit.
Breakfast tastes sickly sweet, because various forms of cakes seem to constitute most of Austria's diet. Hungary eats awkwardly, trying to be the consort he was never meant to be from the way Austria's eyes linger on him with that thin shade of disgust whenever she thinks he can't really see her. He doesn't love her, hasn't in decades. Austria hasn't loved anyone ever since Holy Rome died with a soft, distant smile on his face. She sips her coffee, hot as the canons of Sadowa and sweet as that catholic guilt that paints itself on her face whenever she has to send a letter to Bavaria. She's back in one unbreakable piece, back to pointless, light conversation about the weather and condescending smiles in Hungary's direction. She knows about Prussia, of course she does.
"I slept very well last night," she says, and she doesn't mean it, just like everything else that crosses her lips. "Did you?"
"Yes," Hungary lies, and Austria gives him a short yet meaningful look before reverting back into the smile that seems to taste like rotten bodies all over a battlefield.
"I'm glad, then."
It's all Hungary needs to hear, and that's all Austria will ever give him. She closes her eyes as she takes another sip from her cup of coffee, and Hungary can see now, how stiff her neck still is from Prussia's last war, how her modest dress elegantly hides the scars of past losses, marriages and divorces. It almost, almost makes him smile as he looks outside and sees Vienna shining under the light of early spring.