A/N: This was a quick drabble I wrote, forgive me if it's cluttered. Today in APUSH I learned that Stalin was a chain smoker and my teacher gave a rather impressively seductive impersonation of him.
Please be warned, this has references to an abusive relationship (not romantic) and thoughts of suicide.
He was cold.
But when wasn't he cold? Every time he took a step around his home, every time he looked out the window, he felt like his heart had frozen over, over and over again and counting.
The cigarette between his lips made his lips and throat numb as he looked over the snow draped landscape of his home. The resort was colder than anticipated, though that didn't stop politics. He rested his forehead against the frozen metal railing he was leaning against, one gloved hand wrapping around it.
He could hear the jovial party going on behind him inside, hearing them laugh and flirt beneath the ghostly golden glow of the lights above them. It made him sick to his stomach as he thought of his people down below them, hungry and poor, begging on the streets or suffering alone in their homes.
It wasn't right.
He heard a familiar voice and closed his eyes, hoping that they wouldn't come any closer. Hoping he would just leave him alone. It took him a moment to realize that he had already been talking to him.
"You're all alone." Stalin joined him at his side against the railing. Their hands were close, twin cigarettes perched between their fingers. "Why don't you join the party, Ivan?"
He stared at those hands. Those hands, gracefully holding that slim, unfiltered smoke (Stalin refused to try the new filtered ones- he said they ruined the taste). He couldn't stop thinking about how uncharacteristically soft they were. How they were so often near him.
He couldn't help but think about them. Those were the same hands that held him when his body ached and hushed him when he cried, and the same hands that struck him only moments later and put him in his place.
"I just came out for a cigarette," he muttered as he cinched the cigarette between his fingers, feeling the tobacco crinkle under the force. "I'll be in soon."
A hand clapped down on his shoulder and he flinched. It didn't escape Stalin's eyes. "Don't be too long."
When his stifling presence was finally gone Ivan could lean against the railing once more, eyes closed with his eyelashes brushing the icy metal. He gripped it tighter; tight enough to bend it beneath his numb fingers. If he could fling himself over that railing he would. He would welcome the hard landing and he would gladly welcome his own death. Until he woke up several hours later, of course.
He took a deep breath and glanced over his shoulder. The golden glow of the lights was giving him a headache and causing him too much distressing thought of the one person who was always plaguing his thoughts. The golden boy who taunted him and hated him, just as he returned that hate.
But oh, he didn't hate him, he never did, he never would. He wanted to hate him. He wanted Stalin's words to sit deep in his mind and brainwash him and convince him of his feelings, he wanted the torment to be washed away by the teachings of his leader, he wanted the need and the ache in his chest to be crushed and tossed out, until there was nothing left but undying and unconditional love for his own country instead of someone else's.
The sick feeling in his stomach eased when he took another drag from his cigarette. He could just imagine what Alfred would say if he could see him, what he would ask him about. How thin he was, how tired he looked, the black eye and the hand shaped bruise on his wrist.
He could just imagine him, the look on his face as he jokingly asked where the bruise came from, if it was sexual, if it was anything that included him involved with somebody else. He opened his eyes, feeling the warmth of the lights from inside on one slice of his hand. He clenched it into a fist, dreaming of Alfred's eyes, two oceans of blue punctuating each side of him, his hair like wheat and sunshine physical enough to warm him when he touched it. He wanted him. He wanted him, and he would die if he couldn't have him.
He wanted to feel those fingers lacing with his and he wanted to be warm for once. He wanted to think he was better and he wanted to think that the hand holding his own could hold him and hush him and wouldn't strike him. He wanted America, war or no war, just to be with him. Just to feel loved.
He promptly stubbed the thought out, just like his cigarette.