As We Live Dying
By all rights, she was beautiful, any mortal soul's dream. By all rights, he should have been happy.
If he ignored the breathy feminine cadence of her moans, turned a blind eye to the obvious, otherwise sensual curves of her figure, let only his hands map out some parts of the warm body atop him, Russia could almost trick himself into happiness.
Hands too gentle. Eyes too grey.
A small "oh!" announced her eyes landing upon the scars wrapped around his neck, a collar of torn flesh clumsily healed over and reopened with each of history's horrors. Perhaps to mask her lapse in concentration, perhaps because she thought that was where he wanted her mouth, her lips found a place against that ruined flesh, red kisses against pallid skeletal fingers that forgot to end their futile struggle for his death. Russia's shudder was mistaken for arousal, and her mouth continued its course at his neck.
But it was all wrong.
"I know why you showed me these."
"I showed you so you would stop asking." Unable to meet his eyes. How he missed those eyes now. Why would he waste an instant when he had the chance to drink in those blue chips of sky?
"That's what you can believe." He used to believe, believe in so much more years ago. Now, only precious few constants existed.
"Then you tell me what I feel, if you know better than I do." At what point had derision fall away to reveal their old easy tones with each other?
"Trust."
A dangerous word. An omen. Russia should have known then and there.
Because sometimes it was hard to avoid the impending state of being, the mounting feeling that he, Russia, could say there was not a single person in this world that he trusted. The horrid idea that he could look in a mirror and still not see a soul to trust.
Could he trust in tonight?
Her name was Victoria, come to bring him triumph. A victory against this battle the main opponent had won by leaving the field.
"Don't…they will reopen."
"Not with me…they ache, they pain you. I can kiss the hurt away. And you see yourself, your reflection, and you remember my lips against your throat."
"Vika," he muttered. Lovers sighed each other's names in the throes of passion, proclaimed to the heated musk and rustling sheets just whose they were.
A tender cooing. "Vanya," she said dotingly. Too dotingly.
"Ivan. You can call me Ivan when others are around."
And years later, Alfred called him Ivan when no one was around. And in less time than that, he called him Vanya.
Victoria sat atop him. The past loomed behind. Russia would be damned if he sat, complacent, while the ghosts of yesterday dug into him with biting claws. Tonight was for healing and forgetting.
His hands wandered, carefully, always carefully. Eyes closed, the slim pale shoulders beneath him were broader, darker, richest caramel and hardened from an almost feral strength. Down the quivering spine and its gentle slope- its…its hard, stubborn line, swaying, arching in time with him while short golden hair clung to his flushed forehead-
Russia's eyes flashed open, sunset violet meeting stormy gray. His labored breathing was taken as a sign of approval from Victoria, his blessing and his curse, as she smiled tenderly at him.
"Why that look?"
"Call it a boost to my ego, having you under me like this."
"I am still taking you-" A finger at his lips. A patronizing shhh. For every protest Russia tried to raise, America had an insolent smile. The hands on his own broad shoulders were scorching- a moan of pained delight escaped him as an even greater molten warmth blossomed between them. Sheets rasped beneath them, Russia's platinum hair haloed around him atop the pillow cushioning his flushed head, everything feeling as though hell itself had been raised to drown them both in ecstasy.
"How do you prefer it, Vanya?" Victoria asked courteously, her tone at odds with the mischief in her eyes. "A big man like you must be used to control. Maybe losing it is exactly what you need."
"You can trust me."
Bellowing silence. The beating war drum of the heart.
"Please."
"I can't."
"Yes, you can." Words laced with sadness.
No, he had thought desperately. No, no, it is not that I cannot trust you. I cannot lose control, I worked too hard, what was it all for, never again, never again, always show strength, strength means security, security means friends, safety, warmth, not alone with that again, not again, not again-
"Vanya."
Can the human soul want such opposing things at once? Could the man above him read into anguished tormented windows of a psyche long since shattered, rebuilt in isolation?
Yes.
A gentle hand on his hip. Warmth. An imperfect, clumsy shift of limbs as now he hovered above America, whose own eyes hurt to look into, they read too much goodness directed at him. All the while ready to withdraw, all the while just wanting him to be-
Happy.
A ragged gasp. It was not America's. How sad, to let such things slip. Since when had his resolve been like a house of cards, all treacherously ready to collapse as soon as one piece was tampered with?
America, you stubborn interloper. Come into my life with your light and your smiles and your heart, slide your way in and break mine.
But for such an unexpected intrusion into his life, this union was gentle, too gentle, who even knew two souls could dance together in such a soft sway? And their names fell from each other's lips and Russia felt the control he had, the control America reminded him he had, and the strength, the security, the friend, safety, warmth, not alone, loved, so loved.
He had buried his face in America's shoulder to mask his sob.
Russia clasped Victoria's hips in a firm hold, guiding her down onto the mattress.
"All right, then," she said with a plastic smile. She mastered the same mask he himself always carried. Russia kissed her collarbone. Did not dare travel lower.
His writers of old were wrong, Russia felt; sometimes it was just fine to lie to one's self.
By all rights, her touch was soft. By all rights she was a dream.
By all rights, every time he looked at her and realized his joys with America had crumbled was a nightmare.
The heart still beat for it had to, even as the soul hardened to keep out the ghosts.
Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky
THE END
Based on artwork by aphfridakahlo on tumblr which can be found here: aphfridakahlo . tumblr post /162852320033/ when-america-had-left-russia-he-was-left-feeling
Just remove the spaces. Original artist's text reads, "When America had left Russia, he was left feeling isolated. Russia pays an escort to spend a cheap night of ecstasy with him but no matter what he does, who he sees, who he's with, he can only think of America." A commentor, jadefire54, proposed the idea for a fic (different approach but truly wonderful), and I had the need to write.