She's already working when he arrives, barely glancing up when his tiny thirdhand Fiat grinds to a stop just outside the gate. Old clothes, and his hair already tied back; he swings his legs over the fence and walks quietly over to her.
"Didn't I give you a key?" Romana grumbles. Lithuania shrugs and wordlessly crouches in the next row over, brushing dew off a rosemary leaf.
They fall easily into a rhythm. Slow and swinging, a tight waltz in the cool air already starting to burn off; dawn comes early, here in the hot dry south. Brown and yellow, everything is brown and yellow, and in the distance, more brown and a few brave lines of green dripping from crumbling terraces. Oh, the dawn comes early, and is already ancient when it arrives. Romana is ancient too; Sud-Italia-from-il-Regno-di-Napoli-now-Roma-from-Roma, she's Rome's granddaughter and how can anyone forget—but one shouldn't pay attention to a lady's age.
(They meet in the middle of the rows, dark ponytails tangling together for a heartbeat.)
Chiara is golden sunsets and good dark earth, red-brown hair touched with morning sunlight and stubby fingernails caked in soil, skin dark-baked and dirt-smeared. Thin lips and nose too strong for her face and she is beautiful, narrowed eyes against the sun ripped jeans paint-splattered t-shirt hair stuck in pieces to her sweaty forehead. (No queen, no goddess: Lithuania tries not to put people on pedestals anymore. He keeps Romana on his level where he can see her—can look at her whenever he wants, drink in all her solid loveliness and revel in casual, unspoken affection.)
"Stop licking your lips," she complains. "You moron, you're probably dehydrated, did you even think to have a drink before you left?"
His lips do feel chapped, now he thinks of it. He goes to lick them again and stops, suddenly self-conscious.
"It's probably time for a break anyway," he says. "The sun's getting high."
"Hmph. We should have started earlier. Dawn comes too early down here."
Lithuania pushes himself to his feet with a groan and holds a hand out for her. "Any earlier and it would have been last night's heat we were working in," he protests mildly.
Chiara sticks her tongue out at him.
"You're cute when you do that," he tells her, and she snaps her tongue back in her mouth and looks chagrined.
"No I'm not."
"Yes you are," he says contrarily, pushing the gate closed behind them, and taking the excuse of slipping the key back into her pocket to wrap his arm around her waist.
"I'm not cute," she mumbles. Her face is redder than the sun-glared patio tiles.
"Why do you always argue most when you know I'm right?" He's not even trying to hold in his laughter anymore, and Romana wriggles out of his grasp and runs inside with pretended affront. She turns in the doorway and flashes a grin back at him, sun streaming through the doorway and lighting up everything behind her red and gold.
(She's the sunset and the earth and every time she looks at Lithuania he feels warmth spread through his stomach like fresh bread on a winter morning. There are words they are both too shy to say, thoughts they have both been burnt too badly to consider; but smiles are enough and more than enough and he wants to fall on his knees sometimes and thank God for this simple blessing. No goddess, no saint, no queen, just Chiara in all her biting-words imperfect practicality and maybe, he thinks—he dares to think—she might be a miracle.)
"I've got water inside, and then wine, if you want it," says Chiara, amber eyes as fierce and clear as her name. "But you'll have to eat too because I don't want you tipsy on an empty stomach."
"You will never be able to tease me about being a lightweight," he informs her, ducking inside, and the cool air of the house doesn't touch the warmth inside him when she grabs his hand and pulls him roughly into the kitchen.
Kaunas is grey and cloudy and Chiara plops down shivering on Lithuania's couch as soon as he opens the door.
"You know where the blankets are," he says, amused. "I'm sorry the weather's so bad."
"Your weather always sucks," she whines.
Tolys flicks her forehead with a fingernail. "Hey, you don't get to say that, only I get to say that."
Romana mutters something about whited sepulchres and filches Lithuania's jacket off a chair arm.
"Maybe you shouldn't have worn a tank top?" he suggests mildly, clearing out the hearth. "Oh, and you could wear one of your own jumpers. You leave enough of them here."
"I like yours," says Chiara simply. "Hurry up with the fire, why don't you?"
She half-closes her eyes and as she snuggles into the arm of the couch, wrapping the smoke-scented jacket close around her shoulders, she watches Tolys from between her lashes. The curve of his back and the straight set of his shoulders, and straining muscles peeking out just under his trouser hems where they ride up his ankles in his crouch. (He has such bony ankles. His socks slide down and wrinkle around his heels.) He moves purposefully and a little abruptly, every action distinct.
The fire crackles into life. The shadows flicker red—like the sunset, outside, that it's too cloudy to see.
Tolys, Chiara is reminded, when he starts idly straightening the knick-knacks on the mantelpiece, is only content when he's doing something. He has never confessed to her, but she's guessed, how when he sits still the worry comes seeping into his mind and the jitters, trembling fingers, fast breaths because anything could go wrong everything could go wrong when he tries to relax he starts watching his life go to pieces on the inside of his eyelids and he can't fix it can't stop it, worrying won't stop it but he can't stop and so he moves, works, because if his hands are busy they can't shake.
(She thinks of her little sister, who paints through the night, talking fastfastbright the whole time, until she finally crawls into bed and curls up staring at the wall for days on end and Chiara has to drag her into the shower and force her to eat.)
When Tolys settles next to her on the couch, she slides over, onto his lap, and pulls his arms around to cross in front of her. She feels his smile on the back of her neck; he rubs her upper arms gently and buries his nose in her loosened hair and his hands keep moving, moving, slow and purposeful, slipping under the loose-draped jacket to leave warm spots on her bare skin.
There are things they don't say.
Chiara lets her breath out, quiet, lets her gaze wander to the window, and thinks about dawn and dusk and grey twilight. Lithuanian dawns—she's seen plenty of them—restrained and unassuming and there's a charm about it, the subtle spread of lavender across the sky fading into dark velvet still sprinkled with pinpricks of white gold. Soft colours, she never wears pastels but the feeling as they fold around her like a smoke-scented jacket is so calm. Calm is a nice feeling; she doesn't get a lot of it. She feels things too intensely to be calm on her own: she yells a lot, and lets her anger settle in her, heavy and hot. She doesn't have any illusions about herself.
(Doesn't have any illusions about him either—his anger is cold and it burns low and sharp for decades and she's seen his eyes when he looks at Russia, prays he never looks at her like that. But.)
But.
"Kiki?" Tolys murmurs into her ear. "Are you staying the night, then?"
"What requires less moving?" she says pertly. His laugh vibrates against her back.
But they've never claimed to be perfect and he's a nervous wreck who won't let things go but his smile is so lovely and his voice is so kind and his jittery hands are gentle, he's stubborn and brave and he doesn't let things go he's not going to let her go he's soothed her nightmares as much as she's soothed his and Chiara is no goddess, no saint, to deserve such a votary but somehow, in all her pettiness and her sharp tongue and the constant uneasy stirrings of envy that she's never been able to hide from him, he's taken her into his life his arms his confidence and somehow, by some strange impossible miracle, they've made it work. She is his and he is hers; and they've never said the words but they hang like sunbeams in the air around them, like dawn breaking over the sea.