A/N: I have two excuses for this: It's firstly a contest prize over at dA, and was therefore requested. Secondly, I've got a cold, and am a bit feverish. But anything I write is still my fault, isn't it? Anyways, if selfcest isn't your thing, kindly do not read this, and don't complain if you do and it disturbs you.
For everyone else who is as crazy as I am, enjoy!
(Caution: May contain slight allusions of a political nature)
Ivan Braginski was acutely aware of the fact that his hands were shaking. As he attempted to pour vodka from a bottle into one of the glasses on the table in front of him, they shook so much most of the liquid spilled on the scratched and stained oak surface. The man sitting opposite of him plucked the bottle from his fingers and took a few long draughts, wiping his lips with the back of his gloved hand.
„And what," Ivan asked, curling in on himself, arms crossed in front of his chest and shoulders down,"do we do now? You'll take over again?"
The other Ivan, the other Russia, smiled. Eyes narrow where his counterpart's where wide and wondering, lines of his face sharp and angular where the other's were soft and childish, he was the hand that held the gun. He was the voice that screamed slogans, the mind that plotted and upheld suppression under the cover of ending it.
"What if I did? I'd take care of everything, and you," he stated, getting to his feet and coming to stand behind his lighter side's chair,"wouldn't have to worry anymore."
The latter looked up, glancing at the features that were his own, but vaguely distorted.
"And if you get bored? Then you'll leave me alone again, in the middle of all the-" his voice broke, and his fingers clenched in the armrests of his chair,"all the ruins, like last time? I built everything from scratch again, I always do, but my reputation is ruined. I'm ruined!" he twisted around in his chair, coming face to face with himself, and the uncaring expression on the other's – on his own – face made his guts clench. His dark side's eyes softened, just enough to show there was still a soul behind all of the cruelty.
"I didn't get bored," he affirmed,"I was desperate. I was dieing."
Looking up at the side of him that caused pain instead of suffering it, he knew that the words were true, but he didn't care. He was the one who got left with the mess, he always was. He was the one who suffered, who bled. He got up, unsteadily, and his lips drew back in what decidedly wasn't a smile.
"If you can feel pain like I do," he stated, hands coming up to wrap around his counterpart's neck, squeezing,"then I can cause pain, like you do."
He felt the pressure around his own windpipe the moment his hands tightened, he couldn't breathe any better than his dark side, who looked at him with genuine surprise and something quite akin to pleasure despite the oxygen deprivation.
Why did they even need to breathe?
He couldn't, they couldn't, and he choked out a few words through lips that were getting blue fast.
"Which of us is stronger?" he asked, his bitter counterpart matching him word for word.
The answer was; neither.
Ivan let go, released his grip on the other's neck as well as his own just before he would have passed out. For a precarious moment, blackness enveloped his vision, and he clutched onto himself.
There was a rush of satisfaction that started somewhere close to his heart and spread out through his body right to the tips of his fingers when he realized his darkside was reeling just as much as he was.
The latter smiled through ash-golden hair that obscured most of his face except for the curve of his lips and the coldly violet northern lights' gleam of his eyes.
"Can it be my turn now?" he asked, voice so soft and incongruously childish it sounded like a parody of innocence.
Your turn for what? For this moment, or for our politics? Our everything? the lighter one of them wanted to ask, but his other side didn't wait for the answer. He was shoved over the table and landed in the armchair the dark Russia had been sitting in, one arm slung over the back and one booted foot on the table.
His darkside was sitting on the floor in front of him, deplorably casual, when he regained his equilibrium. The part of Russia that was – in his own understanding – an inconsequential fraction more innocent suddenly realized how unintentionally sexual his pose seemed; legs splayed at an almost painfully wide angle, arms well out of the way, head tilted back and chest heaving.
The not quite as innocent side of him smiled, a hungry expression, a greedy expression. He'd noticed it as well. Of course.
His hand shot out to intercept his darkside's, which had started to make its way steadily towards the front of his trousers. "Нет!"
No.
He was excited, he couldn't deny it, in body as well as in mind, but he couldn't let himself be overruled this time. Twenty years was far too little time to make up for everything.
"Hush," his darkside said, knocking aside his hand,"I don't do this because I want to hurt you."
His voice was brittle and barely there as he stated; "But you do."
You do hurt me.
There was an all-encompassing silence for a few moments, and the darker Russia said, as softly as before, "Come on. Tell me that you want me to stop."
He wanted to say it, wanted to scream it at the top of his lungs, but no word would come out past his lips, and he managed no more than a gasp when sudden wet heat enveloped him. His fingers scrambled and scratched at the armrests, questing for something to cling to, and found nothing.
He tried desperately to deny how good this felt, how right to be one with himself when he always was so split apart. He hated that side of himself, hated it with more passion than he loved the summer, hated what he could become if he wasn't careful.
But it felt so good.
And didn't he, in a way, love himself? Just enough to banish the guilt that threatened to overwhelm when he pushed forward in the sensation, seeking purchase on the back of the chair, when he strained his ears to catch the softly wet noises that only served to make him slip further into a whirlwind of ecstasy.
He didn't know what he hated or loved anymore, he only knew that when his fingers tangled into his darkside's hair, pulling roughly, he felt the twinges of pain in his own scalp, and he knew that they shared every sensation, because they were one.
They were one and the same.
They reached their pinnacle in perfect synchrony, every wave of both emotion and feeling mirrored.
They both needed the exact same amount of time to come down far enough to be able to think again. The darker Russia licked his lips in a display of the unthinking lewdness both of them occasionally displayed.
"Twenty years is an awfully short amount of time."
(And their thoughts always were and always will be the same.)
"You get more time. Maybe a century. Maybe a week. Who knows?"
The lighter Russia nodded, trusting himself to speak again but not wanting to. He had more time, and nobody new how much more. He hated himself. He loved himself. It was okay.
His hands were still shaking.