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Description
Ever the grand entrance maker, he flung open the door to stride in.  Or he would have, if the door had opened.  Instead, it stayed shut, and he walked straight into it, nose first.

'What the- hey!  Brat!  Open the damn door!'  One hand prodding his wounded nose, he wriggled the doorknob and it moved as though unlocked, but the door itself refused to shift.  'Huh.'  Sadiq glared at the house for a minute before deciding that Heracles really wasn't coming out.  Better to drown his Eurovision sorrows in the nearest bar than wait for the probably napping Greek to wake up, he supposed.  Giving the door a hard kick for good measure, he turned away.

A low groan came from the other side.

Sadiq turned on his heel, spinning back to face the house.  He knew that sound- he'd been the cause of it often enough over the centuries, and it made a scar on his left side ache.  He stared at the door, hands twitching.  He didn't need to help- it's not like the kid would actually die- and somehow his feet had already carried him halfway around to the back garden.  If he was honest, the lack of cats accosting his jeans at every other step worried him more than the groan.  If the cats had fled, it was a bad one.  Though that said....

A rustling in the tall grass to one side of the garden path caught his eye.  A tiny calico kitten poked its head up and stared at Sadiq with a wide green gaze.  Sadiq stared back.  The kitten squeaked.  He sighed.

'Damn it.'  He glared down at the kitten, arms crossed.  'What?  You get left when your mama ran off?'

The kitten squeaked again and tried to scramble forward, tumbling through the grass.  Sadiq growled in annoyance and snatched it up, glaring into green eyes.  'Just like the kid, aren't you?  I'm not taking care of you too, though.  He can deal with you.'  The kitten fit in one of his palms, but it fit better in his jacket pocket, where it curled into a tiny ball in the warmth from his waist.  Absently rubbing the fuzzy head, Sadiq quickly made his way to the terrace doors and into the house.

It was silent.  Almost as bad a sign as the missing cats.  Heracles' house was never silent; from lyre to bouzouki to shitty pop music, something was always playing, just like in the streets of his cities.  Sadiq quickened his pace to the front door, grumbling to the cat in his pocket the whole way.

'Damn brat.  Probably just hung over as hell again and being all dramatic.  I swear he's spent the last century half-drowned in ouzo....'  He rounded the corner to the entry.

The reason the front door hadn't opened, he could see now, was that Heracles sat propped against it.  His head hung down to his chest, damp hair obscuring his face, and his limbs were limp.  Sadiq frowned.

'Brat.'

Heracles didn't move.

'Kid.  Wake up.'  Sadiq nudged one outstretched leg with his toe.  'Greece.'

Heracles groaned on an exhale and seemed to try to shift away from Sadiq's prodding shoe, but otherwise didn't stir.  He smelled, Sadiq noticed.  Like sweat and unwashed male and something darker.  He smoothly folded down to sit, reached out a hand and touched Heracles' forehead, snatching his fingers away at once.

'Damn it.  You're on fire, you know that?'

Heracles opened fever-bright eyes and blinked, as though without recognition, but shuddered slightly when Sadiq ran one finger along the sweaty line of his jaw.  Sadiq sighed.

'Can't take my eyes off you for two seconds, can I?  'Oh, I'm Heracles, I'm so tough and independent and-' fuck that, kid.  You'd be dead without me a hundred times over.  But do I ever get a thank you?  Fuck no.  I get a punch in the face and then a 'hey, let's get a raging fever and make this rescue one-hundred-and-one!''
The kitten in Sadiq's pocket had jumped out during his rant and clambered over his lap to pat at the Greek's knee.  Heracles leaned forward slowly, as though every movement hurt, and for a moment Sadiq though the idiot was about to start playing with the damn cat- but he kept going until he slumped forward to let his forehead fall onto Sadiq's shoulder and his overheated body rest against the Turk's chest.  Sadiq wrapped his arms around the trembling shoulders because of a too-old reflex and tightened them because this was his Heracles and sure, damn him to hell and all that, but he shouldn't be trembling.

'They don't want me,' Heracles whispered, his voice too rough and his breath too warm even through Sadiq's clothes.  'The economy and...the debts...and England said....'  He broke off to pull in a laboured breath and gripped the sleeve of Sadiq's shirt.  'Too hot.  It hurts.  And you took so fucking long, you bastard....'

Sadiq tightened his arms almost painfully.  'Stop talking nonsense, brat.  Come on.  Let's get you cooled down.'  For a moment he considered pulling Heracles to his feet, but the kid probably wouldn't be able to walk all the way to the bath, so he just picked him up instead.  They were almost the same height, but Heracles was leaner and lighter, a fact he thoroughly disliked and therefore a fact Sadiq highlighted as often as possible by picking him up as often as possible.  Usually Heracles protested his howling head off and pummeled every inch of the Turk he could reach until he dropped him.  This time, if anything, Heracles just tucked himself closer, leaning his head back on Sadiq's shoulder.  Sadiq glanced down and sighed.

'You're too old to enjoy me holding you,' he reminded the Greek, carrying him carefully through the house.  'You hate me, remember?  You should be trying to bite my neck or something.'  He paused, eyeing faint scars on Heracles' neck he knew matched a few on his own.  'And not in the sexy way.'

Sadiq kicked open the door to the bath, a sea of blue tiles with just enough influence from the Ottoman palace baths to make him smile every time.  He set Heracles down in the wide tub and started pulling off his sweaty clothes.

'I could have you right now,' he couldn't resist pointing out as he tugged Heracles' shorts over his feet.  'I could do whatever I damn well liked and you wouldn't be able to stop me.'  He pulled up Heracles' shirt and ran calloused fingers over the golden skin of the Greek's stomach, counting ribs that shouldn't be so visible and scars that made him cringe.  'Maybe I should.  France would, if he'd found you instead of me.'

'You won't,' Heracles mumbled, eyes still closed as he rested his cheek against the cold tiles of the tub.  'I know you, bastard.  You like it when I fight back.'
Sadiq noticed that Heracles' breathing was growing easier as cool water filled the tub.  He didn't bother repressing a chuckle and took a cloth from the towel stand, wetting it under the tap, and began rinsing burning skin.  Heracles sighed in relief as the red flush began to fade from his chest.  That sound more than anything else, for some reason, made Sadiq keep his mouth shut as he worked, washing the sweat away and rubbing looseness into muscles tensed with pain.  He silently wrapped an arm around Heracles' shoulders to hold him above the water when he leaned the younger man forward to pour water through his sweaty hair and rubbed gently at his scalp until the curls were soft and clean and Heracles was groaning under his fingertips, relaxed and heavy against Sadiq's supporting arm.  Sadiq quirked a smile.  He was well familiar with that sound, too, and sure, he was completely (fucking painfully) hard right now, but the Greek was right. He'd never forced the kid when he really couldn't fight back.  Never wanted to.  Something about the pain and pleading in Heracles' eyes when Sadiq lifted him up from the floor reminded him, just like any sign of trust from Greece reminded him, of a little boy clinging to the Ottoman Empire's neck, wrapped under his heavy robes, where the terrified child had tucked himself during a thunderstorm.  Absently, Sadiq found himself stroking Heracles' back and quietly murmuring Turkish verses, just as he had done to the scared little boy so many years ago.

Heracles smiled, but it wasn't a smirk, and he didn't interrupt, so Sadiq kept reciting as he lifted the man from the warming water and carried him to his bed, snagging a towel for his hair on the way.  His body would dry quickly enough in the afternoon heat.  So would his hair, really, but- well, Sadiq defied any nation in the world to pass up a chance at getting their hands in the Greek's soft olive-brown curls.  Still quoting poetry he hadn't thought of in centuries under his breath, Sadiq sat Heracles on the bed and pulled him back to lean against his chest as he worked the towel through his damp hair.  Heracles was unabashedly half hard, and Sadiq knew he could feel his own erection pressing against his back, but neither acknowledged the other's state.  It was good enough to know they still had that effect without having to act on it now. Sadiq would have thought Heracles asleep, if he hadn't known his breathing so well.  When he set the towel aside Sadiq moved to rise but Heracles settled onto him more heavily, wriggling down until Sadiq reclined more comfortably against the pillows.

'Stay,' Heracles mumbled.  'Keep talking.  Pretend I'm still a cute toddler, if you have to.'

Sadiq looked down into Aegean-green eyes, unguarded with fever.  He sighed and dropped his head onto Heracles' shoulder.  'Don't do this to me, kid,' he murmured into sun-bronzed skin.  'You pushed me away every fucking time.  'We've been fine these last few decades.  Don't make it hell for me again.'

Heracles shifted in his arms to catch his eyes again.  'I'm not trying to give you hell.  I'll even fuck you when I'm feeling better, if you want.'

Sadiq stiffened, mouth settling into a tight line, and he firmly pushed the Greek away.  'I don't need a pity fuck, Hera.  Especially not from a brat like you.'  He swung himself off the bed and strode to the door, refusing to look back.  'I'll send someone to check up on you later.'

'Sadiq.'

Damn it.  He couldn't just walk away when the kid used his name for the first time in Allah only knows how long.

'I didn't mean it like that.  I was just trying to think of a way to keep you here.'
Sadiq shoved his hands in his pockets but didn't shift his stare from the door handle.  He heard the Greek sigh behind him.

'Do you know what I was thinking of, before you came?'

Sadiq snorted.  As if anyone could guess what went on in that head, even without the fever.  Nation of philosophy, enigma, and overintelligent lunatics.  'A mountain of your damn cats?'

'When I was little, there was a thunderstorm.'

Sadiq breathed out and couldn't remember how to breathe in again.

'I was terrified.  You talked to me, just like you did in the bath.'

There was a pause and rustling fabric.  'Every time after that, until we started fighting, you found me and talked to me when there was a storm.'  Heracles choked out a hollow laugh.  'What does that say about me, that every time I'm scared you're the only one I think of?'

Sadiq found he could breathe again, and every inhalation was like honey.

'Sadiq?'

Heracles' voice, still hoarse from whatever the fuck the EU's lack of confidence in him was doing to his people, broke over his name.  Just like it did when Sadiq raced through the halls of his palace, following the breaking, sobbing wails to a child hiding away from the storm.  In his memory, he sank into a dark corner and enveloped the trembling boy in his robes, blocking the flashes of lightning from his sight, and murmured children's tales into messy hair as he pressed the tear-stained cheek against his chest, tiny hands clinging to his clothes and whimpers soft in his ear.  In Heracles' room, he sank onto the sun-warmed bed and wrapped the shuddering man in his arms, blocking out the pain of history from their minds, and murmured his poets' vows of everlasting love and peace into drying hair as he pressed their too-warm bodies together and kissed the tightness from Heracles' jaw in between words, hands nearly as large as his own clinging to his back and whispered 'I'm so sorry's repeated over and over into his shoulder.

'Don't be sorry,' he said wearily.  'If I'd wanted apologies from you I'd have died of waiting a long time ago.  Look, I don't care what the damn EU or UN or Alfred or Arthur or anyone else says.  You're mine, Greece, you always will be.  And I take care of what's under my rule.'

For one aching moment that Sadiq once might have loved but now didn't have the heart to let last, Heracles looked crushed, and he quickly kissed wet green eyes before going on.  'And I don't care what Japan or your mother or France or anyone else wants to think- you're mine, Hera, and you definitely-' he leaned forward so that their lips were brushing with every word- 'always-' so close now that Heracles' eyelashes brushed his skin as they drifted shut- 'will be.'

Heracles' lips parted with a sigh as Sadiq's tongue traced the corners and they both just breathed for a moment, remembering the tastes of honey and anise and smoke and saltwater.  Sadiq licked gently at the top of Heracles' mouth and curled their tongues together before pulling away.  Heracles blinked at him, confused, as Sadiq pushed the boneless Greek to lie comfortably on his chest, tanned bodies pressed together from shoulder to toe.  Sadiq smiled and tugged his hair.

'Don't be ridiculous.  You're sick, remember?  I'm not gonna fuck someone who was practically half dead only an hour ago.  Sleep it off.'

Heracles chuckled and rested his head on Sadiq's chest, the smile staying even as his eyes closed.  Sadiq patted his back.

'We'll fuck when you wake up.'

Heracles laughed outright, the vibrations running through them both, and when the laughter faded into a lingering grin, Sadiq grinned back.  He carded his fingers through Heracles' hair and started talking.  'Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight...'

Description
Ever the grand entrance maker, he flung open the door to stride in.  Or he would have, if the door had opened.  Instead, it stayed shut, and he walked straight into it, nose first.

'What the- hey!  Brat!  Open the damn door!'  One hand prodding his wounded nose, he wriggled the doorknob and it moved as though unlocked, but the door itself refused to shift.  'Huh.'  Sadiq glared at the house for a minute before deciding that Heracles really wasn't coming out.  Better to drown his Eurovision sorrows in the nearest bar than wait for the probably napping Greek to wake up, he supposed.  Giving the door a hard kick for good measure, he turned away.

A low groan came from the other side.

Sadiq turned on his heel, spinning back to face the house.  He knew that sound- he'd been the cause of it often enough over the centuries, and it made a scar on his left side ache.  He stared at the door, hands twitching.  He didn't need to help- it's not like the kid would actually die- and somehow his feet had already carried him halfway around to the back garden.  If he was honest, the lack of cats accosting his jeans at every other step worried him more than the groan.  If the cats had fled, it was a bad one.  Though that said....

A rustling in the tall grass to one side of the garden path caught his eye.  A tiny calico kitten poked its head up and stared at Sadiq with a wide green gaze.  Sadiq stared back.  The kitten squeaked.  He sighed.

'Damn it.'  He glared down at the kitten, arms crossed.  'What?  You get left when your mama ran off?'

The kitten squeaked again and tried to scramble forward, tumbling through the grass.  Sadiq growled in annoyance and snatched it up, glaring into green eyes.  'Just like the kid, aren't you?  I'm not taking care of you too, though.  He can deal with you.'  The kitten fit in one of his palms, but it fit better in his jacket pocket, where it curled into a tiny ball in the warmth from his waist.  Absently rubbing the fuzzy head, Sadiq quickly made his way to the terrace doors and into the house.

It was silent.  Almost as bad a sign as the missing cats.  Heracles' house was never silent; from lyre to bouzouki to shitty pop music, something was always playing, just like in the streets of his cities.  Sadiq quickened his pace to the front door, grumbling to the cat in his pocket the whole way.

'Damn brat.  Probably just hung over as hell again and being all dramatic.  I swear he's spent the last century half-drowned in ouzo....'  He rounded the corner to the entry.

The reason the front door hadn't opened, he could see now, was that Heracles sat propped against it.  His head hung down to his chest, damp hair obscuring his face, and his limbs were limp.  Sadiq frowned.

'Brat.'

Heracles didn't move.

'Kid.  Wake up.'  Sadiq nudged one outstretched leg with his toe.  'Greece.'

Heracles groaned on an exhale and seemed to try to shift away from Sadiq's prodding shoe, but otherwise didn't stir.  He smelled, Sadiq noticed.  Like sweat and unwashed male and something darker.  He smoothly folded down to sit, reached out a hand and touched Heracles' forehead, snatching his fingers away at once.

'Damn it.  You're on fire, you know that?'

Heracles opened fever-bright eyes and blinked, as though without recognition, but shuddered slightly when Sadiq ran one finger along the sweaty line of his jaw.  Sadiq sighed.

'Can't take my eyes off you for two seconds, can I?  'Oh, I'm Heracles, I'm so tough and independent and-' fuck that, kid.  You'd be dead without me a hundred times over.  But do I ever get a thank you?  Fuck no.  I get a punch in the face and then a 'hey, let's get a raging fever and make this rescue one-hundred-and-one!''
The kitten in Sadiq's pocket had jumped out during his rant and clambered over his lap to pat at the Greek's knee.  Heracles leaned forward slowly, as though every movement hurt, and for a moment Sadiq though the idiot was about to start playing with the damn cat- but he kept going until he slumped forward to let his forehead fall onto Sadiq's shoulder and his overheated body rest against the Turk's chest.  Sadiq wrapped his arms around the trembling shoulders because of a too-old reflex and tightened them because this was his Heracles and sure, damn him to hell and all that, but he shouldn't be trembling.

'They don't want me,' Heracles whispered, his voice too rough and his breath too warm even through Sadiq's clothes.  'The economy and...the debts...and England said....'  He broke off to pull in a laboured breath and gripped the sleeve of Sadiq's shirt.  'Too hot.  It hurts.  And you took so fucking long, you bastard....'

Sadiq tightened his arms almost painfully.  'Stop talking nonsense, brat.  Come on.  Let's get you cooled down.'  For a moment he considered pulling Heracles to his feet, but the kid probably wouldn't be able to walk all the way to the bath, so he just picked him up instead.  They were almost the same height, but Heracles was leaner and lighter, a fact he thoroughly disliked and therefore a fact Sadiq highlighted as often as possible by picking him up as often as possible.  Usually Heracles protested his howling head off and pummeled every inch of the Turk he could reach until he dropped him.  This time, if anything, Heracles just tucked himself closer, leaning his head back on Sadiq's shoulder.  Sadiq glanced down and sighed.

'You're too old to enjoy me holding you,' he reminded the Greek, carrying him carefully through the house.  'You hate me, remember?  You should be trying to bite my neck or something.'  He paused, eyeing faint scars on Heracles' neck he knew matched a few on his own.  'And not in the sexy way.'

Sadiq kicked open the door to the bath, a sea of blue tiles with just enough influence from the Ottoman palace baths to make him smile every time.  He set Heracles down in the wide tub and started pulling off his sweaty clothes.

'I could have you right now,' he couldn't resist pointing out as he tugged Heracles' shorts over his feet.  'I could do whatever I damn well liked and you wouldn't be able to stop me.'  He pulled up Heracles' shirt and ran calloused fingers over the golden skin of the Greek's stomach, counting ribs that shouldn't be so visible and scars that made him cringe.  'Maybe I should.  France would, if he'd found you instead of me.'

'You won't,' Heracles mumbled, eyes still closed as he rested his cheek against the cold tiles of the tub.  'I know you, bastard.  You like it when I fight back.'
Sadiq noticed that Heracles' breathing was growing easier as cool water filled the tub.  He didn't bother repressing a chuckle and took a cloth from the towel stand, wetting it under the tap, and began rinsing burning skin.  Heracles sighed in relief as the red flush began to fade from his chest.  That sound more than anything else, for some reason, made Sadiq keep his mouth shut as he worked, washing the sweat away and rubbing looseness into muscles tensed with pain.  He silently wrapped an arm around Heracles' shoulders to hold him above the water when he leaned the younger man forward to pour water through his sweaty hair and rubbed gently at his scalp until the curls were soft and clean and Heracles was groaning under his fingertips, relaxed and heavy against Sadiq's supporting arm.  Sadiq quirked a smile.  He was well familiar with that sound, too, and sure, he was completely (fucking painfully) hard right now, but the Greek was right. He'd never forced the kid when he really couldn't fight back.  Never wanted to.  Something about the pain and pleading in Heracles' eyes when Sadiq lifted him up from the floor reminded him, just like any sign of trust from Greece reminded him, of a little boy clinging to the Ottoman Empire's neck, wrapped under his heavy robes, where the terrified child had tucked himself during a thunderstorm.  Absently, Sadiq found himself stroking Heracles' back and quietly murmuring Turkish verses, just as he had done to the scared little boy so many years ago.

Heracles smiled, but it wasn't a smirk, and he didn't interrupt, so Sadiq kept reciting as he lifted the man from the warming water and carried him to his bed, snagging a towel for his hair on the way.  His body would dry quickly enough in the afternoon heat.  So would his hair, really, but- well, Sadiq defied any nation in the world to pass up a chance at getting their hands in the Greek's soft olive-brown curls.  Still quoting poetry he hadn't thought of in centuries under his breath, Sadiq sat Heracles on the bed and pulled him back to lean against his chest as he worked the towel through his damp hair.  Heracles was unabashedly half hard, and Sadiq knew he could feel his own erection pressing against his back, but neither acknowledged the other's state.  It was good enough to know they still had that effect without having to act on it now. Sadiq would have thought Heracles asleep, if he hadn't known his breathing so well.  When he set the towel aside Sadiq moved to rise but Heracles settled onto him more heavily, wriggling down until Sadiq reclined more comfortably against the pillows.

'Stay,' Heracles mumbled.  'Keep talking.  Pretend I'm still a cute toddler, if you have to.'

Sadiq looked down into Aegean-green eyes, unguarded with fever.  He sighed and dropped his head onto Heracles' shoulder.  'Don't do this to me, kid,' he murmured into sun-bronzed skin.  'You pushed me away every fucking time.  'We've been fine these last few decades.  Don't make it hell for me again.'

Heracles shifted in his arms to catch his eyes again.  'I'm not trying to give you hell.  I'll even fuck you when I'm feeling better, if you want.'

Sadiq stiffened, mouth settling into a tight line, and he firmly pushed the Greek away.  'I don't need a pity fuck, Hera.  Especially not from a brat like you.'  He swung himself off the bed and strode to the door, refusing to look back.  'I'll send someone to check up on you later.'

'Sadiq.'

Damn it.  He couldn't just walk away when the kid used his name for the first time in Allah only knows how long.

'I didn't mean it like that.  I was just trying to think of a way to keep you here.'
Sadiq shoved his hands in his pockets but didn't shift his stare from the door handle.  He heard the Greek sigh behind him.

'Do you know what I was thinking of, before you came?'

Sadiq snorted.  As if anyone could guess what went on in that head, even without the fever.  Nation of philosophy, enigma, and overintelligent lunatics.  'A mountain of your damn cats?'

'When I was little, there was a thunderstorm.'

Sadiq breathed out and couldn't remember how to breathe in again.

'I was terrified.  You talked to me, just like you did in the bath.'

There was a pause and rustling fabric.  'Every time after that, until we started fighting, you found me and talked to me when there was a storm.'  Heracles choked out a hollow laugh.  'What does that say about me, that every time I'm scared you're the only one I think of?'

Sadiq found he could breathe again, and every inhalation was like honey.

'Sadiq?'

Heracles' voice, still hoarse from whatever the fuck the EU's lack of confidence in him was doing to his people, broke over his name.  Just like it did when Sadiq raced through the halls of his palace, following the breaking, sobbing wails to a child hiding away from the storm.  In his memory, he sank into a dark corner and enveloped the trembling boy in his robes, blocking the flashes of lightning from his sight, and murmured children's tales into messy hair as he pressed the tear-stained cheek against his chest, tiny hands clinging to his clothes and whimpers soft in his ear.  In Heracles' room, he sank onto the sun-warmed bed and wrapped the shuddering man in his arms, blocking out the pain of history from their minds, and murmured his poets' vows of everlasting love and peace into drying hair as he pressed their too-warm bodies together and kissed the tightness from Heracles' jaw in between words, hands nearly as large as his own clinging to his back and whispered 'I'm so sorry's repeated over and over into his shoulder.

'Don't be sorry,' he said wearily.  'If I'd wanted apologies from you I'd have died of waiting a long time ago.  Look, I don't care what the damn EU or UN or Alfred or Arthur or anyone else says.  You're mine, Greece, you always will be.  And I take care of what's under my rule.'

For one aching moment that Sadiq once might have loved but now didn't have the heart to let last, Heracles looked crushed, and he quickly kissed wet green eyes before going on.  'And I don't care what Japan or your mother or France or anyone else wants to think- you're mine, Hera, and you definitely-' he leaned forward so that their lips were brushing with every word- 'always-' so close now that Heracles' eyelashes brushed his skin as they drifted shut- 'will be.'

Heracles' lips parted with a sigh as Sadiq's tongue traced the corners and they both just breathed for a moment, remembering the tastes of honey and anise and smoke and saltwater.  Sadiq licked gently at the top of Heracles' mouth and curled their tongues together before pulling away.  Heracles blinked at him, confused, as Sadiq pushed the boneless Greek to lie comfortably on his chest, tanned bodies pressed together from shoulder to toe.  Sadiq smiled and tugged his hair.

'Don't be ridiculous.  You're sick, remember?  I'm not gonna fuck someone who was practically half dead only an hour ago.  Sleep it off.'

Heracles chuckled and rested his head on Sadiq's chest, the smile staying even as his eyes closed.  Sadiq patted his back.

'We'll fuck when you wake up.'

Heracles laughed outright, the vibrations running through them both, and when the laughter faded into a lingering grin, Sadiq grinned back.  He carded his fingers through Heracles' hair and started talking.  'Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight...'