Title: Child-Bearing
Pairing(s): Prussia/Austria
Disclaimer: Not mine. Tears of sorrow.

Just a little humour, and set in an AU universe where the European Hetalia crew are grownups, saddled with the task of raising the two Italy brothers, as well as America and Canada.
This is the Prussia/Austria one ;3

-x-

"Even the awesome me can't take it anymore!" Gilbert groused as the wails of an infant echoed through the shared house, filling his every waking moment (which was all the time, since it never shut up) with ear-bleeding agony. "West! Do something about it!"

Ludwig looked up from the sheet of papers he had been reading over and grading, adjusting his reading glasses slightly. Gilbert could tell just by the way his eyes were narrowed that his brother was annoyed, but he realized, with dismay, that it was him and not the baby Ludwig was annoyed with.

"Brother, I am trying to get these done," Ludwig stressed, gesturing to the pile of essays on the polished desk. "I can't help you right now."

"How can you ignore it?" Gilbert asked incredulously. "It's everywhere!"

"He'll quiet down once Roderich gets back," Ludwig replied, circling something in red and writing a comment beside it. "He always does."

Gilbert sneezed, but once he realized that his younger brother would only ignore him from here on out he drifted to the kitchen, figuring he might as well find something to eat. When the baby let out another cry, however, he flinched unwillingly, scowling once more. The little master was probably lost again, meaning that thing wouldn't shut up for awhile. Stuffing something the priss had made earlier into his mouth (with a mental note to tell him to make it sweeter next time), Gilbert poked his head out of the kitchen, glaring banefully at the stairway.

If the little master can calm it down, then the awesome me should have no real problem! he thought, ascending the stairs to the infant's room.

Ten minutes later, it was still crying.

"West!" Gilbert called down the stairs. "West, help! It's still crying! What do I do?" But there was no answer, and when Gilbert went downstairs to check, he discovered his brother's office empty, with no sign of him anywhere.

"That's cool!" he said aloud to the empty house. "I'm so awesome I don't even need their help! It's just a baby! Haha! If the little master can do it, I should have no problem!" So he trudged back up, lifted the squalling child from the intricate cradle, and carried it downstairs, sneezing once more before he heard the backdoor opening and closing.

"West! Take it!" Gilbert said as soon as he saw his brother, thrusting the infant towards him. Ludwig, with little time to react, gathered it up, trying very awkwardly to soothe it.

"The hell, West? Where were you?" Gilbert demanded as Ludwig carried the child into the main room, his face showing his evident discomfort.

"I had to take a call, and I couldn't hear over him," the German said gruffly, indicating the crying baby boy in his arms. "I, umm… I'm not quite sure what…"

"Wassat, West?" Gilbert asked, already raiding the fridge, hoping for a distraction. Sadly, the little master had begun hiding the food that could be hidden, and there wasn't much in the way of delicious sweets to eat.

Just as Ludwig was about to raise his voice, however, the front door opened and two people walked in, one of them chattering away hurriedly in Spanish while the other delicately ignored him (or something), placing his coat on the rack.

"Thank you for escorting me home, Antonio," Roderich Edelstein – their Austrian companion dubbed the "little master" in Gilbert's professional, humorous opinion – said cordially, to which the Spaniard beside him only grinned.

"No problem! But I need to go now – don't get lost again!"

A faint dusting of red across his cheeks was the only indication of Roderich's embarrassment before Antonio closed the door with yet another cheery wave. He then turned towards them, expression apprehensive before he immediately zeroed in on the squalling infant in Ludwig's arms, as well as the man's utterly despondent expression.

Wincing from his hiding spot underneath the table, Gilbert watched as the little master lifted the infant from his brother's arms, a frown on his face as the boy settled into his arms.

"Honestly, you two," he said, tone clipped. Ludwig looked away, and Gilbert tried to hide himself further around the corner, but the annoyed look Roderich sent him when he walked by was more than enough to cure him of the delusion that he had not been seen.

Gilbert noticed, suddenly, that the child had stopped crying, and goddamnit that wasn't fair! He voiced as much, only receiving a sharp flick to the shoulder as Roderich glided past him, and Gilbert internally winced at the thought of the lecture he would be receiving later.

He was right.

"Honestly, Gilbert, he's just an infant," Roderich said primly from where he sat from across the table.

Gilbert snorted. "You say it like that should make it better," he complained. "Why does he shut up when you hold him?"

"Gilbert," Roderich said exasperatedly, but he didn't elaborate so Gilbert figured that meant the conversation was over and that he could go back to trying to find where Roderich hid the food. Still… "What were you going out for, anyway?"

A weary look was his only response and really, doesn't he get bored of doing that? "Food, Gilbert. The stuff I bought only last week seems to have gone missing. Do you know what happened to it?"

"No idea," Gilbert said cheerfully, knowing very well that he wasn't fooling anyone. So instead of dwelling on it, he gave the brown-haired musician a wink, which seemed to make him freeze for a moment before Gilbert received a stiff nod in return.

"I'm going to practice," Roderich said, which was odd because the little master never asked to do these things – he just did them. He was music and music was him, and it had been that way ever since the three of them had started living together. Still, all Gilbert responded with was an airy shrug, and he snagged some pastry-thing from the box the little master had set on the table before vanishing into the basement.

Two hours later, Gilbert found himself ascending the stairs, rubbing his head almost absent-mindedly. Eventually the newest Elder Scrolls game (Antonio had insisted) had grown dull, and seeing as he had no actual work to do at the moment, wandering the house just seemed like the best thing to do.

Midway to the kitchen, however, he found himself stopping.

A sound drifted to him from one of the rooms – likely the room with all the "breakables" that Ludwig was always forbidding him from going near. From the glassware locked up in the equally old and antique wood-and-glass cabinet to just the intricate furnishings, all carved by hand, it was the kind of thing you would expect to see walking into an old, antediluvian (bet West didn't know he knew that word) mansion of some sort. Instead, the little master had shoved it all in one singular room, the one with the massive semicircular window and the walls painted a soft white, with the black grand piano sitting adjacent to the window and various musical paraphernalia that could sometimes be found scattered around when the little master was feeling messy. Hilariously enough, this often occurred far more than people expected, considering the Austrian's tendency to be scrupulous to a ridiculous degree.

But still, no one could deny that he played… well. He played… very, very well. And it was for this reason that Gilbert found himself inching down the hallway towards the closed door, glancing behind him every few seconds to make sure his brother had spontaneously appeared. West wasn't generally hard to catch were he following someone, but still.

He froze when the music stopped suddenly, the pleasant hums of the violin going silent, and for a second Gilbert, from his position by the door – which was opened slightly, the little master not knowing because Gilbert was awesome – thought he had been caught; however, that notion dissipated a few moments later when the faint gurgling of a baby could be heard inside, followed by a faint sigh, and Gilbert jumped when Roderich suddenly came into view, the bow of the violin still in his hands as he bent towards where a pair of chubby fists waved into the air.

Gilbert must have done something – it was probably the way he had jerked back and smashed his head into the wall, actually – because suddenly the door opened further and Roderich stood in the doorway, looking as close to shock as Gilbert had ever seen him as he locked eyes with the sheepish man on the floor.

"…. Gilbert."

"Hey, little master!"

"… What are you doing?"

Gilbert decided, for once, on the truth. "Listening."

Roderich said nothing, his hand curling reflexively on the handle of the door before a small wail from the baby made him angle his body towards where the infant lay in one of the various cribs Gilbert had insisted on.

Gilbert snickered before being interrupted by a sneeze, and Roderich sent him an icy look before walking into the room, lifting the child easily, where it quieted after awhile.

Struck with a feeling of sudden awkwardness, Gilbert watched from the doorway, his eyes trained on the child – on Feliciano.

"You can touch him, you know," Roderich said primly, not looking at him. Gilbert snorted and started to say something, but after a few seconds he shut his mouth and inched forward, hesitantly reaching out towards the baby.

"Hey, Feli," he said, showing an odd degree of nervousness, one that Roderich quickly picked up on.

"Hold him," the violet-eyed man said simply, and suddenly Gilbert found his hands full of Feliciano as Roderich walked back to where he had left his violin, resting on the plush cover that hid the piano from view.

"Heh… he's small."

"He's a baby, Gilbert."

"You're good with him."

"You're adequate."

"That means I suck, doesn't it."

"You need to learn."

So Gilbert sat on the fancy-couch-thing with the baby, watching in awe as he waved his tiny fists and Roderich played music in the background.

"… He's kind of cute," he said at one point, and was rewarded with a small smile from the Austrian, whose tempo never faltered.

"Yes," Roderich mumbled between notes, his face serene. "He is."