A little late Valentines Day gift for my girlfriend, who is also my Denmark (and my America, Italy, Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia). Jeg elsker deg, mein schatz~
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
WARNING(S): Yaoi. Mpreg references (lots of them). DenNor. One-sided SuNor. Implied Sweden/Finland hate. Implications that Iceland, Greenland, and the Faeroe Islands are Denmark and Norway's children (in that order). Cross-dressing. Historical references that are probably not accurate. Basic Hetalia warnings.
KEY:
Lukas = Norway
Matthias = Denmark
Emil = Iceland
Berwald = Sweden
Tino = Finland
Kristina = Greenland
Feliks = Poland
Ivan = Russia
Note: The Faeroe Islands are only mentioned briefly; they're (in my head) a pair of twins named Aleksandra and Diana.
Oh, and - ENJOY THE RANDOM GUNDAM WING REFERENCE. XD *shot*
1. Blame
It would never be either of their faults – what their King or Queen, or even their people decided was out of their hands 99% of the time – but in the years during and after, when they fought (sometimes more frequently than others), it would be a small, raw measure of comfort to blame each other.
2. Proof
He never needed to ask, if Berwald was ever joined by Lukas in their marriage bed, no matter how brief the union; the look of constant irritation on the Swede's face, and the smug look of cold defiance – something only he could read behind the blankness – upon the Norwegian's was always proof enough for the Dane.
3. Assistance
Even though Lukas had always been the musical one, when he asked for a bit of help with a piece he was working on, Matthias couldn't deny him; after all, the Norwegian asked for assistance so rarely, even this little bit was something that would make the Dane happy for quite some time.
4. Going
As Matthias watched Lukas going down the aisle from the back of the church – towards Sweden no less! – the only thing at made this even remotely bearable, was the fact that the blue-violet-eyed Norwegian had had him pressed against the wall in a near-bruising kiss only moments before.
5. Birthday
It was only on Emil's birthday following their wedding that Matthias noticed it; every time the little blue-eyed, blonde-haired boy aged another year, instead of being happy for his younger brother, Lukas would spend the day crying (it unnerved him that this was the most emotion that the Norwegian ever showed).
6. Scientist
Lukas didn't know whether to curse the scientist in him, or the magician, but he certainly did know he had the right to curse that damned Dane he loved, when he found out he was pregnant again.
7. Silent
Though there were often silences that could span hours, that Lukas and Emil shared, the only one who found them uncomfortable and weird was Matthias.
8. Behalf
When Queen Margret I was crowned on behalf of the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish people, even if Lukas would never admit it, that was the happiest day of his life; the one that trumped it, of course, was when, less than a year later, he married the man he had loved for nearly nine hundred years.
9. Rumor
As he kept an ear trained on European politics throughout the next (roughly) five hundred years, Lukas would always laugh to himself, when he heard the rumors and speculations about whether male Nations could have children; considering the fact that he had had his first child when most of the current Nations were still children themselves, he felt he was entitled to laughing at the rumors.
10. Tip
Though he would never admit it, that coquettish way that the paler, slighter blonde tipped his head to the side, and then coolly asked if he were completely stupid, was something that Matthias had always found incredibly sexy about Lukas.
11. Idle
"Idle hands do the Devil's work," was a saying that Lukas tended to live by; however, even he could be enticed by his husband to spend an hour or two just idly cuddling before getting up to begin the day.
12. Brother
Only Matthias ever saw that Lukas' heart broke, every time Emil called him "big brother," but he never knew why.
13. Beneath
Likewise, only Matthias could ever see beneath the cold, neutral expression always upon the Norwegian's features; of course, he didn't always act on what he saw there, simply because he didn't often understand it himself.
14. Redecorate
In hindsight, maybe Lukas had had the right to bash him over the head with his own axe… after all, he hadn't asked before redecorating and rearranging the Norwegian's personal library…
15. Gravitation
No matter how much they fought, they would always admit that there was an almost gravitational force that drew them together; it was never something they even tried to deny.
16. Kilt
When he heard of the kilts the Scots wore, and he made a rude comment about men wearing dresses, Matthias suddenly found himself encased in ice by a very peeved Norwegian magician.
17. Afterthought
Even if, for a very long time, it only seemed that Lukas said he loved him in afterthought, Matthias would always just be happy that the usually emotionless man had said anything at all.
18. Unearth
Though it wouldn't be until the 21st century that the long-buried truth would be unearthed, Matthias would often watch Lukas with little Emil, and wish that that bright, sweet, wonderful little boy was his son.
19. Shield
Staring at the shield mounted on the wall of their bedchamber – a relic from their Viking days – and thinking that they really needed to change the décor, was the only thing that kept Lukas from blacking out before his daughter Kristina (Greenland) was born.
20. Blacklist
If anyone ever wondered why certain ladies at court – especially those known to have been Matthias' lovers for varying spans of time – disappeared without warning, they certainly never connected it to a certain little black book Lukas kept in a drawer of his dressing table.
21. Misquoted
Matthias wondered if he had heard him wrong, when Lukas asked that the Dane not hit him – after all, the Norwegian wouldn't speak to him for a few days afterward…
22. Copying
At first, he had wondered why Lukas had Emil wear the same dresses that he did, only in purple rather than navy; then he realized that the boy was copying his brother of his own volition.
23. Argue/Arguing
Though he would never admit it, it worried Lukas when Matthias began to fight back less and less, every time they argued, as the years passed.
24. Lens
After he shot Sweden in the eye, Lukas would always smirk a little to himself, when he saw the light glint off the lenses of the taller blonde's glasses.
25. Belle
Even though he would always tell Matthias to stop saying stupid things, every time the Dane called him the "belle of the ball," Lukas couldn't deny that he secretly liked getting such compliments from his… oft-straying husband.
26. Arrested
Though neither would admit it, in the later 20th and 21st centuries every time Matthias was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct, the look of scathing disgust Lukas would give him when he bailed him out of jail traced its' roots back to the very first time the Norwegian had caught the Dane with one of his female lovers.
27. Havoc
Matthias never noticed, when Lukas used the havoc fights between the Dane and Swede would cause, to leave the table without eating anything.
28. Tool
Sometimes, Lukas merely felt like a tool to Matthias, something to be used when it suited the Dane, and ignored otherwise; the rest of the time he felt just like the "Danish whore/slut" he was accused of being, both to his face and behind his back.
29. Blanket
There were many times, when Lukas longed for the simplicity of the Viking age; back when it had simply been Matthias and himself, a blanket wrapped around them, gazing at the stars.
30. Fancy
Whenever he watched Matthias fancy stray, the Norwegian would simply look away and tell himself that one day, sooner or later, the Dane would return to him, as always; he could content himself with mentally ripping those bitches to shreds in the meantime.
31. Dash
As he was once again running from Lukas for doing/saying something idiotic, Matthias couldn't help but think that he had never met anyone who could run so damn fast in both heels, and a dress with an ankle-length skirt.
32. Away
There had always been some peace within the Union, despite how Lukas could see that Sweden was bitter about the fact that he had wanted to be married to Matthias; in the end, that peace was shattered, when Sweden and Finland ran away.
33. Syndication
Lukas never understood just why Matthias had killed all of Sweden's nobility, but at the time he believed that the Dane was in the right; later, he would come to see the act as nothing more than an insane form of syndication.
34. Champagne
It had been near the end of the Viking era, shortly before he had found Iceland, when Lukas had stopped drinking, though Matthias could never understand why; even so, there were times when he could convince his beloved to have a glass of wine or champagne with him (he was always hit if he tried to press that the smaller blonde drink more).
35. Note
It was when Lukas spent hours searching for Emil, only to later learn he had missed the note from Denmark that he was taking the younger Nation out for the day, that the paler blonde had his first panic attack.
36. Physical
It was after Berwald and Tino left, that the fights between Matthias and Lukas turned physical.
37. Dull
No matter what anyone else said, Matthias would always see Lukas' eyes as anything but dull.
38. Frozen
Lukas knew how everyone at court saw him – a frozen bitch of ice that Matthias shouldn't bother with at all; he never did anything to dissuade this notion, but he hoped that his husband knew better.
39. Stumbled
Unless he hadn't stumbled across the small patch of aconite, hemlock, and belladonna, Lukas was quite sure he would be disposing of the whores that dared to try and take his place in Matthias' bed and heart in a much more… gruesome way than simple poisoning.
40. Hunt
Though Matthias had never been one to hunt defenseless animals for sport, hunting Lukas was always something he enjoyed.
41. Gibberish
When Lukas showed up in his study, nearly crying and undeniably livid, it took the Danish male about five minutes of sorting through a mix of snarled and sobbed Danish-Norwegian gibberish to realize that the smaller male was expecting again.
42. Camp
So far, Matthias had had to endure being camped outside his own bedroom door twice since he had married Lukas, and he was beginning to wonder if the Norwegian knew just how much he really did worry when this happened.
43. Weakness
Lukas did know, but he didn't force Matthias to leave when the time came just because it was traditional for the father not to be in the room for the birth; it was also because he never wanted his beloved to see him as weak, and during the process of childbearing was as weak as he had ever felt in his very long life.
44. Bargain
As much as the two hated to seem weak, both Lukas and Matthias knew that if they didn't make the bargain and alliances with Ivan and Feliks, they would be crushed by the Swedish Empire – and there was no way in all of Hel that the Norwegian would let that happen to his family.
45. Alcohol
He knew he shouldn't have let Matthias drink before battle – Lukas still had the scar from where Britannia had nearly lopped off his right arm a millennia ago – but there really wasn't anything he could do about it; later, he would wonder if that were why they had lost the first few skirmishes with the Swedish Empire.
46. Wind
During the rare moments of peace, Matthias had always liked to watch the way the wind played with Lukas' chin-length white-blonde hair; he would never tell him this, but the Dane had always thought he looked like one of the Fae creatures he communicated with so often.
47. Temptation
Lukas had always known he was like temptation for the Swede; he had never known just how right he was, and remained blissfully unaware of it until it was far too late.
48. Eighteen
It was less than two months before the Treaty of Kiel was signed, that Matthias and Lukas celebrated their eighteen hundredth anniversary of being together (as best friends or lovers didn't really matter).
49. Bottle
When everything ended, the wars were over, and Lukas was torn away from his family, it could easily have been called the "bottom of the bottle;" later, when he returned, and his younger children wanted nothing to do with him anymore, his oldest had left without a backward glance, and his emotions had been forcibly repressed for so long that he couldn't even be sure they existed anymore… he drank himself stupid for the first time in over a thousand years.
50. Rhythm
Six hundred and sixteen years after they were married, and almost two hundred years after they had been forced to divorce so he could marry Sweden for the second time, as he and his Danish beloved danced a waltz for the first time in many years (the Norwegian careful of the precious cargo he once again carried), Lukas couldn't help but think that their life always seemed like the rhythm of an endless waltz – a beat of love, a beat of life, and a beat of loneliness, repeating and repeating throughout time.