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Northern Waters	By : Domina_Ecca Category: +G to L > Hetalia: Axis Powers Views: 1538 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia - Axis Powers and I'm not making profit off of this story.

Chapter List
- 8
- 9
- 10
He hadn’t made it a quarter of a mile from the house before he stopped.
The night outside was a drastic change from the warm, soft dark of the inside of house. Outside, the polished night sky of the north shone with such clarity that it put everything else to shame. Including the glistening, contrasting world around him. Including him.
The disciplined part of his mind scolded him for stopping, but when he didn’t continue, he felt as if he was nearly screaming at himself. Then, regardless of how he tried to stop it, the rest of his mind opened up, and he was forced to face it all.
Thoughts of warm fires at night and clear, icy morning flooded his immediate mind, and in a panicked way the other half of his mind argued that that’s exactly what he intended to have. But, it wouldn’t be the same. Because he knew that in all of those thoughts, those memories, and those fantasies, he wasn’t alone. He also knew exactly who was with him.
The dazzling image of Berwald’s smile lit up the dark world around him enough to make it seem like day. Thoughts of them sitting on the porch together, of going to bed every night, of Ludwig showing him how to read in German, and of Berwald teaching him how to work with wood flashed through his mind with so much power he felt he had taken a punch to the chest, but they didn’t stop. He shyly imagined being curled up with him under a blanket, his head on his shoulder while Berwald absently rested his cheek on his head, and their rough hands entwining on Berwald’s long thigh. He grinned like an idiot when he thought about the way he had woken him up so awkwardly in German one morning, and then how he had tried to explain that it was so he wouldn’t panic at the unfamiliar sound of a Swedish greeting. It was so deeply touching that he felt his eyes sting a bit, and then he realized something with an audible gasp.
He had left all of that. Berwald had followed him when he had left the bed, and yet, Ludwig had turned his back on him. After everything that sweet, gentle man had done, he had left…
Ludwig wasn’t an idiot. There were many things about relationships that he didn’t understand, but he knew love. There didn’t seem to be any way to avoid recognizing it, actually. Here, in the middle of the night, it was demanding to be acknowledged. So he did.
Telling his disciplined mind to fuck off, he whirled around and threw the crutch down. His eyes were made blurry by tears but he gritted his teeth together and sprinted back towards the house. His left leg and his feet screamed at him but he ignored their protests and ran as hard as he could back the way he had so stupidly come. He prayed the door wouldn’t be locked. Or that if it was, at least Berwald might consider opening it, even if he had to pound on it all night and shout his apologies through a closed door.
He reached said door and braced himself. Without slowing his speed by as much as would be proper, he extended his arm and gripped the handle. He twisted it harshly, expecting resistance, but when it twisted simply and fell open, he nearly tripped, which would have sent him sprawling over the threshold. He didn’t, although his entrance wasn’t any subtler, and the door harshly smashed off the wall behind it as he skidded inside.
Ludwig’s vision took a few moments to adjust to the dark lighting, but the light from the open door helped. To his dismay, he saw Berwald in the exact same spot at the entrance to the hallway. However, he was no longer leaning on the wall for support. He was on the ground, on his knees, half collapsed. He looked up as Ludwig entered crudely, and he saw the unmistakable shimmer of light below both of his eyes before his glasses gleamed and he wiped them away.
God, what had he done?
“Lud--?” he croaked out.
Ludwig cursed and lunged forward, falling hard to his knees in front of him. Berwald’s eyes were wide now, tinged with a dark color he realized to be red, and looked utterly shocked. The defeated German didn’t spare a second more than necessary as he pulled Berwald up to his knees by his shoulders, and then smashed their chests together in a crushing embrace.
After a moment of stunned silence, Berwald grunted in a broken manner, and wrapped his arms around him too, clasping his back and shoulder. Ludwig had embraced him for several reasons, but one of them was to help prevent himself from crying. It backfired, however, and the terrible wrenching in his chest was amplified by the kindness in Berwald’s touch. As sobs wracked his body and his lungs forced his breathing to come out in awkward hiccups and uneven gasps, he cried out loudly that he was sorry, begging for forgiveness.
Berwald seemed to have a hard time understanding the guttural German he spoke in his distress, but then he held him tighter, his long, strong arms pressing them together harder. After a moment, when Ludwig still hadn’t been able to compose himself, he reached up a cautious hand, and stroked his hair. The action was so simple, and so, like him, that Ludwig stopped sobbing instantly, and instead almost laughed.
“Damnit, Berwald,” he said, his voice was uneven as the tears flowed still, and he was speaking too loud, but he knew that he heard the smile.
He knew because the Swede pulled back looking confused.
“Ya came back,” he said after a moment, his eyebrows familiarly furrowed along the line of his glasses as his own tears pooled in the rims of his eyes.
Ludwig nodded, sparing a glance at the open door, feeling the cold creeping in.
“Why?” he asked and their eyes met again.
He looked down, something he rarely did, but something that felt almost necessary for him to collect the thoughts that had assaulted him earlier.
“I…I realized that I, didn’t want to leave,” he told him lamely.
“Oh,” Berwald mumbled looking somehow disappointed as his eyes dropped too.
“And,” Ludwig said, again too loud, but Berwald’s head lifted back up.
But how could he say it? How could he tell him that he couldn’t stand the thought of not being by his side? How could he, a traitorous German solider, tell this honorable, perfect man that he wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his damned life trying to make him happy? Waking up with him, going to bed with him, working, and cooking, and just living with him?
Ludwig realized that he couldn’t. Not at that moment, anyway. So when the moment began to waver in its age, he summoned all of his courage, feeling even the disciplined half of his mind conspire to give him the strength to act, and reached forward.
Berwald’s eyes watched the hand approach him, looking surprised when it touched his face. For half of a second, his eyes fluttered shut at the touch, and Ludwig’s eyes widened in disbelief at how soft and warm his skin was. Then, when those deep, dark eyes opened, Ludwig set the rest of his body into motion, and, with more confidence than he felt, moved forward, and pressed their lips together.
He felt the taller man startle, but the small jerk wasn’t enough to pull their lips apart, so Ludwig leaned forward further and kissed him with a bit more pressure. His lips were so warm and tender and even as they were completely motionless, and Ludwig felt himself melting. Those pink, gentle lips were touching his. The result flooded his muscles with warmth.
Gaining more confidence from the kiss, he began to carefully move his lips in actual kissing motions, as opposed to simple pressure. He swore, it stopped his heart. He knew Berwald’s lips were perfect, but he didn’t realize that Berwald’s lips were perfect for his. They fit, they locked, and as he tilted and moved, the beautiful way they created suction, without Berwald even participating, was utterly stunning. Stunning in a good way. Hell, in the best of ways.
After being mentally blinded by the desire to kiss him being fulfilled, his lips registered something. Something impossible. So, his mind sent this information back, and ordered his lips to double check and correct their report. The report came back the same.
Berwald was kissing him back. Berwald, the handsome, sweet, yet most socially-awkward man he had ever known, was kissing him back. That wasn’t the end of the report, either. It felt amazing, but even that couldn’t do justice to how unbelievably, exquisitely wonderful it was making him feel. He was sweet and slow, but not unskilled. For a moment, a pang of jealousy wracked his body at the thought that any other could have kissed his Berwald, but the thought dissipated when he felt a large, calloused hand cautiously touched his face. As they kissed, he tilted his head further to lean into the touch, feeling the warmth combat the cold that was still invading the house through the open door.
Somehow, very much against his will, the kiss eventually ended. He felt those divine lips part from his, and his whole body gave a shutter as the cold enveloped him in their absence. After a second, he realized his eyes were closed, and quickly opened them. They were met with Berwald’s intense stare. The taller man pinned him, his eyes darting between his, searching for something. Ludwig stared back, unsure of what he was looking for, but ready to give him anything. To give him everything.
“Ludwig?” he asked in a short whisper.
He only said his name, but Ludwig knew what he was asking.
“I love you,” he blurted out gracelessly, feeing his tongue tingle with those words. “And, and I want to be with you, here,”
The giant Swede seemed literally frozen for a second, and then the whole house lurched and rolled. Ludwig’s vision caught up when he was lying on his back, Berwald smothering him in a giant hug on the floor. The force of the embrace pinned his arms to his sides, removing both of their hands from each other’s faces. Since he couldn’t hug him back with his arms pinned down, and with Berwald showing no immediate intention to release them, once his mind registered what was happening, he tucked himself into the warm junction of Berwald’s neck and shoulder. He pressed his left cheek to the side of his neck and his lips silently to his large shoulder. The smell was unbelievably intoxicating.
“Love ya,” he choked out in a quiet, deep voice next to his ear. “I love ya too.”
Their hearts were pounding so loudly that Ludwig thought that it would be audible to anyone passing by outside. Berwald’s response was an acknowledgement of his feelings, and the return of his own. Ludwig hadn’t honestly expected anything like that; he thought that, at best, Berwald would tolerate his doting presence. In his mind, he’d imagined having to slowly win over his affection with unrelenting gestures of love. This was so unexpected that, to his dismay, he felt like crying again.
Then, there was a sharp, splitting crack that cut through the air and their tender moment. It was a sound both Ludwig and Berwald knew well; a gunshot had torn through the silence of the night.
Berwald’s head snapped up as he pulled Ludwig momentarily closer in a defensive reflex, ready to protect him. Ludwig might have protested, as he was a soldier still, he would be the one to defend them if need be, but, instead he just waited tensely underneath him, his ears straining to hear anything more.
Without word or warning Berwald pulled away and stood up, moving to the open door in three long strides. He stared out for a moment, and then shut it quickly and locked it tight. Then he drew the curtains and went to the fireplace against the wall, putting it out. The house had already had most of its heat sucked out by the open door, but with the fire out and Berwald’s body absent from his, Ludwig felt the cold beginning to surround him.
“We’ll have to keep it out,” he said as he closed the other curtains covering the window nearest to the fire.
Ludwig stood up slowly, worry growing in his chest. “Ber?”
He seemed distracted for a moment, but then turned around and crossed the room again just as quickly. He stopped awkwardly with hardly any space between them, and in a fit of not seeming to know how to initiate touching again, he extended his fingers and touched his hand.
“It’s okay, just to be safe,” he told him in a manner that Ludwig realized was reassuring.
He nodded and smiled, but then a shiver ran up his spine and Berwald’s brow immediately furrowed in concern. Without speaking further, he took Ludwig by the hand by wrapping the three fingers which were touching him around his palm in an unbearably endearing way, and led him back to the bedroom. Berwald entered and began to pull down the blankets, adding a few on top, and then stood back and grunted for Ludwig to get in. He removed his shoes, carefully, and pulled off his jacket, and then went to get into the bed.
“Yer sleepin’ like that?” Berwald asked, arching his eyebrow at his dark green combat pants.
For a moment, he thought that he was suspicious, maybe even worried that he would try to leave again, but then he realized that Berwald probably just thought they would be uncomfortable. He had to smother a grin.
“Oh,” he said, and then began to move out of them.
Berwald’s face grew red enough to glow, even in the dark, and he looked away quickly.
Ludwig couldn’t help it; he laughed as he stood in his tank top, boxers, and socks, and then to save Berwald from death by embarrassment, he climbed into the bed. The blushing Swede pulled the covers over his shoulders for him, and then walked around the bed and slid in on his side. Eagerly, Ludwig rolled to his side and stared at the man next to him who had just professed his love in return.
Berwald, being himself, had opted to lie defensively on his back, and then simply shut his eyes. Ludwig had no intention of letting him off so easily, and affectionately cuddled up to him, molding his body against the side of Berwald’s and resting his head on his shoulder. After feeling his entire body tense under his touch, Ludwig felt his arm rise, and for a moment he thought he was going to push him away, but then the arm fell down around his shoulders, and his warm hand pressed against his back.
Ludwig smiled and sighed contentedly, and then he heard Berwald swallow nervously. As he tilted his head up to ask what was wrong, he felt Berwald’s warm lips place an affectionate kiss on his forehead. He was stunned enough to blush.
“Cute.” Berwald muttered as his other hand came up to brush Ludwig’s cheek.
He spluttered, trying to say that he wasn’t cute, that he was manly as hell, but he was still flustered from the kiss, and the soft fingers that continued to stroke his face.
Berwald smiled a tiny bit, the amusement mostly showing through those dark eyes, and despite the fact that he had just been called cute, Ludwig beamed at the smile, pushing himself up a little bit to look at him more directly. Then he decided that this called for revenge, and pressed a kiss of his own to Berwald’s forehead. Instead of being stunned, he simply closed his eyes and smiled. He couldn’t have been anymore endearing.
So Ludwig continued, kissing down the bridge of his nose slowly, kissing the tip of his nose, both of his cheeks, his slightly scruffy chin, and then quietly admired his lips before kissing those as well. Berwald let out a soft, deep hum of approval, and kissed him back. It was a gentle kiss; it made him feel warm.
The taller man’s chest suddenly swelled as he took in a breath, as one would before speaking, but then there was loud crack as a another gunshot broke through the night, and he froze. He let it out again after a moment, but remained tense.
“Who is it?” Ludwig asked in a low whisper.
“Hunters, probably,” he told him in the same whisper. “They pass the border chasin’ game, sometimes,”
Ludwig nodded and breathed, trying to tell his irrational mind that there was absolutely no way that German soldiers were anywhere nearby. If anyone was looking for him, they’d have all of Sweden to consider.
“Don’t worry,” Berwald suddenly told him and pulled him back down so that they were pressed against each other again.
Ludwig nuzzled against him without restraint. His husky smell of earth and pine along with the warmth that seemed to flow from his body in tangible waves was enough to remind his body of how tired he was, and despite his want to remain awake to enjoy this moment, it was only a few minutes before he fell asleep.
- 8
- 9
- 10
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Northern Waters