Inspired by this post: wowitsmekate .tumblr "dot" com / post/137669139250/chubbyquicksand-blank-if-you-want-cute-names
(Remove the spaces and put the abbreviation for "hypertext transfer protocol" :/ / at the front, sorry)
This was originally going to be a one-shot based around that post. Now it's going to be a multi-chapter fic.
Please send help.
Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia. I am not creating this with the intention of making money off of it.
Human AU in which Russia is a New York Taxi Driver that speaks poor English, and America, is well, himself. (Hopefully. I'm really sorry if I end up writing him out of character.)
And now, if you bothered to read all that, on with the story!
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When Ivan Braginsky first moved to the United States of America, he did not speak English. And one year and one license to drive one of the yellow cars iconic to New York later, he has still only picked up enough of it to barely figure out where his passengers want to go, and to tell them how to open the window so they can vomit out the car door and not on the seats.
He is perfectly fine with playing charades every time a new face enters the car. And he is more than happy to return to his small apartment that he shares with his sisters and listen to Yekaterina reminiscing over what happened to her at work as they make dinner, or to tell Natalia stories about Russia as he puts the eight-year old to bed.
He is not however, anything but extremely irritated when what seems to be a drunk college student stumbles into the back seat and slurs incomprehensible directions through the screen providing as Ivan's one protection from 'kindly' old grandmothers with purses filled with pepper spray and inebriated idiots like this guy alike.
Ivan has nothing against alcohol. He, in fact, enjoys hard liquors such as vodka very much. It's just that he doesn't like having to reacquaint himself with that mind numbing liquid every time this moron decides to get plastered and obey the laws against drinking and driving too.
Because yes, twisting in his seat to look at the man, Ivan realizes that he has seen this combination of messy blond hair, shining and dazed blue eyes, and a grinning mouth that seems to never close for more than two seconds.
He glares at the customer (who is not worth driving around, no matter how generous he is with the tips-honestly, twenty-five dollars and thirty cents does not erase the fact that he is the reason Ivan taught himself how to say 'Use the knob on the door to roll open the window, please. To the right, not the left. If you vomit inside the car I will drive us into the side of a building,' in English, vowing that he will never wipe chunks of ham from the folds of fabric covering of the back seats ever again.) and turns the meter on and puts the car into drive so that he can pull out of the cramped parking lot of the bar and get this over with.
Because unfortunately, he has responded to this particular person enough that he has learned where his apartment building is. For a brief moment, he wonders why the college student, who he has seen carrying textbooks and a backpack on a bus before, never has another person to ride with him in the taxi.
But then a loud shout murders his ability to care as effectively as it does his eardrums' ability to function.
Ivan sighs, knowing that he will not be able make any sense of what is basically gibberish pouring out of the man's mouth.
He jumps as his passenger yells again, almost slamming his foot down on the gas pedal. Cursing and leaning away, he watches in disgust as the guy rubs his face against the screen and points at him excitedly.
Oh. It seems that Mr. Summer Break has seen him enough times to recognize him. Damn.
How and why did Ivan always end up driving around this particular bar? Really, he had no excuse for having not already memorized the address, and then making sure he crashed the car whenever he was in the area and someone hailed him.
He holds his foot on the break for a red light.
Why can't this boy just shut up? All Ivan wants is to go home and stretch, lie in his bed and listen to absolutely nothing but the far off rumbling of cars and the sounds of the apartment settling.
The rider keeps yammering on, meaningless strings of nonsense that hammer on Ivan's skull.
He grips the wheel harder and hunches forward, waiting for the red light to turn green so that he can finish the drive, collect the money, and finish what will hopefully be a quiet shift with normal, non-drunk people that understand that he can't hold a conversation with them in English.
Finally, finally, the red light switches off and the green one replaces its glow. And finally, something Ivan had resigned himself to turns off as well.
He glances back at the passenger to make sure that he hadn't died or something. Ivan doubted that police would smile upon him taking the fare out of the man's wallet.
But no, he is very much alive. Grinning, the guy had sat forward from his previous position of being sprawled across the seat, and is now staring right at Ivan.
Ivan turns the car so that they would be heading towards the apartment complex. His teeth grit as the man begins to talk again.
This time, however, it is different. Slower and softer, the man continues to speak, until Ivan turns around, sees his waggling eyebrows, and slams on the breaks.
Ivan smiles to himself as he hears the man groan, knowing that without the seatbelt on, he has to have been thrown onto the floor.
He is not going to put up with some drunk that probably couldn't even remember how many drinks he'd had. He also makes a mental note to not tell Yekaterina (or little Natalia, yikes) that one of the passengers had hit on him.
Ivan simply does not need to be teased that it is not a good idea to mix his romantic life and place of work together.
He tries to recall some of his English.
"Sorry," he says, accent making the pronunciation thick. "There was a dog."
The passenger, rubbing his nose, jumps up at his voice. Ivan scowls as the man begins to talk excitably again. Honestly, the constant noise wouldn't actually be so bad if it was just that: noise, like background music in a movie that adds to the mood but is easily ignored or forgotten in favor of the dialogue.
But Ivan knows just enough English to pick up random words, distracting him from the drive and making him wonder what he was rambling on about.
And he has the ears to hear the occasional yell, making him edgy and annoyed as he broods on whether or not the idiot is going to do it again, and if so, is it worth it to cut out his tongue and leave him in an alleyway.
From what Ivan can recognize and piece together, the drunk has figured out that he originates from Russia, and has poor English skills. Ivan decides that he truly is a moron. Why would someone continue to talk if they knew the person they were talking to couldn't understand them?
He glares at the car in front of them as his passenger begins to rant in a much more aggravated voice about. . . chicken? He winces as the word is shouted loudly in his ear.
And the English speaking customers he got treated him as if he was stupid for not being able to understand their terrible directions for forgotten addresses or agree that yes indeed, today was hot.
Outside of what was required for his job, keeping the apartment, and not going to jail for tax fraud, he just does not see the point of bothering to learn English. He had been thinking of moving back to Russia, anyways.
They had reached the tenement that the boy lived in. Sighing, this time in relief, he put the car in park and turned around to collect the money.
Only to realize that as he had gotten lost in his internal musings of what he would do when he moved back to his homeland, the passenger's voice had been getting slower and quieter, until it had stopped completely.
Ivan Braginsky, taxi driver, semi-professional road rager, and Russian national abroad, has a passed out twenty-something year-old laying in the back seat of his cab, and the growing horror of realizing that he does not have enough alcohol at home to forget this night.
Fuck.
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Man, I know I put this on here under the genre 'romance'. . . but I just don't think that that word gives justice to what Russia and America have right here. I mean seriously, Alfred's love for Ivan just managed to transcend the language barrier. I wonder what our Casanova will pull off next :3 Next chapter is partly going to be about how and why Ivan got to America with his family, and partly about what he's going to do about this little problem (read: opportunity). Please review and tell me what you think! This is my first fanfiction, so any advice on this would be great. Also, if any of you guys would be willing to beta future chapters, or know anyone willing to do it, could you let me know? Thanks for reading!