Accordion Soul
Prologue

It was a bitterly cold evening in the small unnamed town on the mountain pass that bridged the east to the west. A northern wind blew, bringing with it the first flakes of snow, as the town's inhabitants stirred awake to prepare for another night of revelry. A new camp had arrived earlier in the day, and with it travellers who were looking to empty their coin bags. Men slopped mead in the alehouses, laughing raucously over fiddle music, as the streets lined with vendors and entertainers; everyone from acrobats to whores looking to relieve them further of their gold.

Ivan was sitting at the mouth of his tent in a camp, nursing a bowl of weak watery soup, when two hard and unsmiling men came up to him to enquire after his lute-playing. He immediately thought that they were dressed much too finely to be the sellswords they claimed to be. He sniffed cautiously at them; a pair of stallions, he confirmed, both middle seed and of excellent breeds. It struck him as more than a little suspicious for two such fine well-bred horses to go about pretending to be sellswords, but business was business. He was not one to turn down an offer of gold. When they gave him two solid tael pieces with the promise of more, he agreed readily to their terms.

"Our master wants you to entertain his guests tonight," one of them said as they led him and his lute to his mysterious benefactor. "He saw that you played well the other day. Play just as well for him and you will be generously rewarded."

Arriving at the inn where his benefactor was staying overnight, it appeared as if someone had taken all the town's most handsome womenfolk and crammed them into the squat little building until it was ready to burst. Food and wine flowed freely amid chatter and soft tinkling laughter. As he was brought inside, everywhere he turned to look, there were women of every conceivable type and breed collectively releasing a cloud of overpowering pheromones that made him reel.

Some of the women, he saw, were hired entertainers just like him; dancers, courtesans, and camp followers, many of them dolled-up as they flocked eagerly to the alpha who was utterly unapologetic of the effect he was having over them.

As Ivan neared the alpha male, assumedly his benefactor, he was suddenly assaulted by a clear watery scent that cut through the fog of heady pheromones, stopping him dead in his tracks.

It was the scent of a heavy seed, of a breed Ivan could not quite pin down, but he was powerful, and he was aggressively territorial. Ivan glanced nervously up the great dining table to where he sat at its head. The women, sensing the change in mood, turned curious heads towards him as well, as his eyes met with the handsome wine-flushed man flanked by two particularly ornate women.

The man was… beautiful. He was lean, with dark pupils set in burnished gold and hair that flowed like a river of ink swept to fall over one shoulder. He wore a simple pale yellow robe which kissed to his skin, exposing his long lipstick-stained throat and a strip of chest down his front. His features were delicate for a heavy seed, almost feminine. Although he had a powerful aura that set him apart from the women surrounding him, Ivan thought that they could hardly compare to him in loveliness.

"I thought I sensed something a little different," the man said, his voice carrying softly over the hush that had fallen in the room like a wind gently caressing the surface of a lake.

Ivan trembled at the sound of it.

Then, just as abruptly, the man tilted his head to one side and returned to the conversation he was having with one of the women. Ivan sensed that he had just been dismissed. The atmosphere in the room returned to its amicable state, and he released a breath he did not realise he had been holding.

A quick glance at the stallions' faces told him that this was not unexpected. One of them nodded towards an empty chair set near the table, indicating for him to take his place and set to work. Without another word, they turned and exited the building, leaving him to his own devices.

A/n: I've always wanted to write both ChuRo and a Sex Pistols!AU for Hetalia, so the idea for this mess was born. This would be Kotobuki Tarako's yaoi manga series Sex Pistols, not the band.