Wife- A Germania/Rome Fic
Title: Wife
Pairing: Germania/Rome
Fandom: Hetalia
Rating: This part, only PG.
Wordcount: 8,106
Warnings: Germania tops Rome. Hard. Definitely NSFW towards the end, although it takes about four thousand words to get to any sexings. Nothing in this part but a kiss though~
Summary: Rome first met Germania as a young nation. He thought 'she' was a beautiful girl, and he vowed to make 'her' his wife. Alas, they became adults and as it turns out Germania's protests of being male apparently had some grounds to them...
This was based off a theory given to me in-chat by my lovely partner!~ *sends kiiiissses* So it's dedicated to her!
The little blonde girl was about his size, and she was so different from the dark-haired, olive-skinned men and women he was used to, with her cornsilk hair and milk pale skin. And those eyes, they snapped a challenge at him everytime he wandered north into the lands that he had yet to conquer, the pale blue full of a fire that belied their icy depths. Her long green tunic was tattered, and her feet scratched and dirty for lack of sandals. She was obviously one of the barbarian tribes. He could sense she was like him. But which one?
One time, he tried to talk to her.
She replied with a thrown dagger that barely missed him.
He thought he’d never liked a girl quite this much before.
He found himself with an increasing desire to wander, but more often than not, he ended up in the woods to the north, and more often than not he’d end up watching the girl. He’d given up trying to talk to her after having daggers and rocks thrown at him everytime he tried to speak in the language of his people, (Everyone should speak a civilized language after all.) but he’d come to find watching her oddly entertaining.
He thought he’d been stealthy enough, but then, on another of his forays into the wilderness the girl seemed to call home, he lost sight of her. Quietly he craned his neck with a frown, trying to see at different angles through the bushes, when he felt cold metal at his neck and her thin arm holding his behind his back.
She asked something angrily in her guttural barbarian language and he thought he’d never heard anything so uncultured and wild; (or beautiful)
“I do not understand you!” he tried to tell her without moving. She seemed to understand what he meant well enough, and she cleared her throat before replying in halting, heavily accented Latin.
“Why… you come? Is my place. You… uh... no permitted be here.” The dagger though, never moved from his throat.
“I saw you- I was exploring, and I wanted to see what you were like.” he told her, partially fibbing. Evidently, she knew he was lying, because she promptly pressed the dagger closer to his skin, slicing a fine line into his skin, just enough to sting.
“Lie. You… me watch. For moons.” She told him, stumbling on the finer points of Latin grammar, and mangling the pronunciation terribly with a tongue obviously used to the rougher language of her tribe. He thought it made her sound… cute. Even in spite of the dagger’s keen edge pressed into his skin.
“I wanted to be your friend!” he told her nervously. He’d never been actually cut before- he wasn’t quite big enough to personally fight with the warriors yet. “You kept throwing things at me when I wanted to talk to you!” he finished, indignance rising as he remembered her rudeness.
The dagger lowered from his neck and she released him. He instantly reached up, rubbing awkwardly at the cut on his neck and finding blood coming away on his hand.
“That was mean!” he told her angrily as he turned. He opened his mouth again to unleash an indignant tirade at the girl, but his breath caught in his throat.
She had been pretty from afar.
She was beautiful up close.
Her nose wasn’t straight like his, it tilted up a little at the tip, and her cheekbones were high on her face, giving her a delicate, almost mystical beauty. He noticed her long hair, whilst not dressed and left to fall to her waist (“How indecent,” he could almost hear the women sniff.) a small part of her hair had been styled into a single twisty thing in it behind her left ear, with a pretty chip of stone at the bottom. He wasn’t sure what the twisty things were called though, but the little stone was her only adornment. He assumed this was because she was a barbarian.
“Why?” she asked frankly, bewilderment showing on her face. “Why want…my friend?” she demanded.
He shook himself and replied honestly. “You’re pretty! And you’re very different to the girls at home.”
She scowled at that. “I… not girl. Warrior.” She pointed at herself. “Warrior.”
He frowned. Of course she was a girl. She was far too pretty to be a boy. Ah, but maybe the barbarian tribes let their women fight? Maybe that was what she meant. He decided to humour her.
“Pretty warrior.” He told her placatingly. She shook her head at him and tried again.
“Not… pretty. I… like you. Warrior, yes? Not ah… “ Here she made movements in the air with her hands as though following the curves of the woman she would someday be. “Not like that.”
He tilted his head to the side, finding himself caught in a daydream about what she would look like as an adult. She would be so very beautiful, he thought.
“You can be my wife!” he told her happily. “When you come to live at my house, I’ll make you my wife!” Then he could keep her forever, and her exotic beauty would only serve to enhance the greatness of his empire!
She looked at him uncomprehendingly. “Wi… fe…?” she asked, before presumably repeating it in her own language as though tasting the idea.
He nodded encouragingly. “Wife!”
She scowled and punched him to the ground with a single hit, what seemed to be curses (judging from the vehemency of her tirade) streaming from her mouth in her language.
He didn’t understand this at all, because she should be proud he was willing to take a barbarian tribe for his wife. She would, after all, get more out of it than him- as the wife of the Roman Republic (Of course, he would be a great Empire soon!) she would gain citizenship, status and prestige!
He chuckled and sat up, rubbing at the back of his head, where she’d hit him, before jumping up. “You’re overwhelmed, I understand~” he told her happily, grabbing her hand in both of his; (forgetting the dagger in her other hand.) “So let’s be friends until I’m old enough to marry you!”
She rolled her eyes, seeming less than pleased. She pointed the tip of the dagger under his jaw, pricking the skin.
“Germania.” she told him abruptly. “Is name.”
He was taken aback. She wasn’t merely one of the barbarian tribes. She was the embodiment of all the vicious and bloodthirsty Germans.
Really, it explained a lot.
He grinned, not worrying about the dagger point pricking his skin. She had told him her name! Surely that meant she wouldn’t hurt him now?!
“I am the Roman Republic.” he told her proudly. “But I’m going to be a great empire!” She rolled her eyes again, almost as though… Almost as though she didn’t believe it!
The dagger was lowered and slid into a sheath belted to her waist. “You… we call people… same you idiot.” A toothy grin was aimed at him and with that same smile she told him something else he didn’t understand in her language.
----
Germania had long become used to Rome’s insistence that he was a girl. Nothing seemed to dissuade him, so the violent reprisals from the blond boy had retreated into acceptance. None of the tribesmen cared about what the arrogant southern idiots thought of them anyway, so he had decided he wouldn’t either.
“’Mania?”
That was another thing he’d become used to. That idiot had taken to shortening his name and calling him all sorts of silly ‘pet’ names.
“What?” he asked curtly.
“I want to give you a name!” the brunet said eagerly. He raised a brow.
“I already have one.” he told Rome slowly. His Latin had improved, and he could actually use proper sentences instead of the broken Latin he’d been forced to use when they first met.
Rome shook his head. “No no! I mean a name like what our people have!” Germania shook his head.
“Why would we need one?”
“So that we can go among our people and not be seen as ‘Roman Republic’ or ‘Germania’!~ ” Rome explained, seeming enthused at the idea of ‘secret excursions’.
“If you went among my people they’d kill you as a spy.” he told Rome flatly.
“That’s not the point!” Rome said impatiently, flapping a hand.
“And your people would have me ‘arrested’. And then I’d be forced to kill many to escape.”
“No, no! If you were with me, they wouldn’t arrest you!” The other boy’s golden eyes clouded for a minute, and Germania recognised the symptoms of his sporadic daydreaming. He rolled his eyes. The idiot’s favourite one was making Germania his ‘wife’, and after one of those daydreams, he’d spout flowery nonsense about marrying Germania and how they’d always be together and how beautiful ‘she’ would be in her wedding clothes.
Germania always ended up wandering off to practice his swordsmanship during those periods of Rome’s madness, and the idiot would end up sulking for many days.
“But you would make a lovely slave-girl…” Rome murmured under his breath and Germania punched him again, jolting him out of his daydream early. “Ow, what was that for, ‘Mania?” By the Gods, that pout. He found himself wanting to apologise for hitting Rome! Now that simply wouldn’t do.
“I’m no-one’s slave, Rome. Least of all yours.” he snapped harshly.
“Ah, I was just joking about that! I’d never make you my slave! You’re going to be my wife, remember!” Germania scowled.
“What were you saying about giving me a name?” he asked abruptly, changing the subject.
Rome’s face brightened. He was so expressive, and that was something Germania found oddly endearing- a warrior would have lost face amongst the tribes were he to show his thoughts and emotions so easily. “I want to give you a human name!”
“I can’t have a name in your language.” Germania pointed out. “It wouldn’t make sense for a tribesman to have a Roman name.”
“Tribeswoman, ‘Mania~” Rome trilled happily. “And it’s not in Latin! I’ve been practicing the barbarian tongue!”
Germania scowled again. He didn’t like his people being called something like that. It wasn’t fair. His people were just as civilised as Rome’s! They were just different to his.
“Practicing the language of the tribes?” he drawled. “Reaally? You got around to it?”
The gold-eyed boy opposite him pouted. “Of course I practiced! It’s the language of my future wife! You’re mean ‘Mania. The girls at home are much nicer to me!”
He rolled his eyes. ‘I’ll bet they are.’ he thought spitefully to himself. “I’m not a girl.” he told Rome automatically, the other boy merely flapping a hand dismissively.
“Anyway! I studied your writing! And I chose symbols for you!” Rome said excitedly, seeming to forget about Germania’s ‘meanness’ in favour of preening over his (likely incorrect) rune selection.
Despite himself, Germania was intrigued. “Show me.” he ordered.
Rome grinned and the other boy knelt on the ground and used the tip of his dagger to draw shaky runes in the dirt.
“In my language, that would mean ‘Elf warrior’” he said proudly. Germania raised a brow. Elf-warrior?
“Why would you call me ‘elf’?” he asked curiously. “I am no elf.”
He was certain that was a blush rising on Rome’s cheeks, but it couldn’t be. “But you’re pretty like an elf~” Rome said with a grin, rubbing the back of his head almost sheepishly. Germania furrowed his brow absently, studying the runes. It wasn’t an… awful name. And he’d even somehow managed to use the rune for a male warrior, despite his affirmed belief that Germania was a girl. ‘Likely because we only sing of male warriors.’ he thought to himself. ‘,and he didn’t realise there’s a different one for a female warrior.’ Still, it was a well-thought out name, and the rune signified a creature that was fearsome despite its ethereal beauty.
He’d consider using the name.
“It says Alfher, doesn’t it?” Rome asked worriedly. “I didn’t write them wrong did I?” The brown-haired boy leaned closer to the scratched runes to check they were correct and Germania sighed and took pity on him, kneeling beside him in the dirt.
He reached for the hand still loosely holding the dagger and gently guided it in the shape of the runes. “It needs to be sharper here,” he told the other boy. “,and you need another line here, for it to be the right rune.”
“Ah! I see! Thank you!” At this distance, there was no mistaking the blush. But what really surprised Germania (newly named Alfher) was the other boy suddenly leaning in and kissing him on the lips softly. A tingling sensation seemed to race through Germania’s body, starting from his lips and emanating throughout the rest of his being.
Before the blond could react to the sudden kiss, Rome had jumped to his feet and sheathed his dagger, blush still firmly in place. “Ah, I have to… go. Train. Yes. Train.” And with that the long tradition of Italians running away from Germans began.
Alfher didn’t see him for a long time after that- he was purposefully avoiding the Roman nation. His secret study of Latin progressed- Rome wasn’t the only one who wanted to learn every part of another language, despite the trials and hardships of studying language without a tutor by flickering candlelight in cold winter nights.
He told himself it wasn’t because he liked the other boy. It was merely a useful language, as the Roman Republic began to spread, becoming an empire.
And it definitely wasn’t because the other boy had recently been talking about a beautiful brown-haired spitfire of a girl named ‘Keltoi’- a beauty who Germania knew as ‘Celt’.
Definitely not.