Title: The Thought That Counts
Character(s) or Pairing(s): Russia/America
Warnings: Adult language and implied sex.
Summary: It's August of 1975, and Alfred has a favor to ask of Ivan.
Author's Notes: It all started at a liquor store. My mom and I were stocking up on red wine when I offhandedly mentioned wanting to buy a bottle of regular vodka one of these days. We only have peach vodka in my dad's bar, and also I tend to regard all the alcohol back there with apprehension, since everything back there is extremely old. But since we were on the subject of vodka, she told me about a book she was reading about Diane Vreeland, a famous fashion editor and columnist, who worked on this exhibition of Russian outfits and accessories from about 1700 to 1900. According to the man who orchestrated the entire thing, "The Glory of Russian Costume" was the most successful of the five-part series of exchanges between the Soviet museums and the Metropolitan. More than eight-hundred thousand people came to see it.
But it wasn't such an easy thing to accomplish since the Russians weren't exactly like, "Lol of COURSE you can borrow that top! It'll totally look cute on you!" Negotiations were tricky. And the key to getting what they wanted was a man named Vladimir Popov, and as my mother told me, they blew him away by this bottle of cheap Popov vodka they bought in the states and claimed it was bottled just for him.
This is the part that made me decide right then and there that I was going to write a fanfiction about this. So thanks, Mom, and thanks, Dominick-Disaster again for beta-reading this for me and generally helping me through the doubt spiral that I was caught in for a while. Awesome as always, my dear.
Disclaimer: I don't own Axis Powers Hetalia.
Alfred never really considered the borders or the geography of his "comfort zone," but he knew, at that moment, he was one ocean east of it: sitting inside Ivan's living room trying not to clench his ass cheeks rhythmically. As if his ass was trying to distance itself from the awkwardness.
And it wasn't because he was in Ivan's house. It wasn't even because they were alone, with no politicians or satellite officials to dilute the potent meaning of them being in the same room together. It was the nature his business there.
Not to mention it was difficult for him to concentrate in a space that made him feel like he was tripping balls inside an oil painting—the dark, depressing kind with ugly models. Something Ivan probably had in his house somewhere.
The walls were painted a thick, congested green with gold trimming, overbearing and stuffy with the curtains drawn. There was no door, only an elaborate archway with phoenixes swooping towards the other room. There were no photographs of friends or family either, but there were antiques: candlestick holders and vases, a samovar. Two Faberge eggs perched on the mantle piece, which he tried to touch, but Ivan caught his wrist with unexpected force before his fingertips even brushed either of them.
Everything was so ornate, looming with a sense of age. He didn't know where to look. If he stared at the crimson patterns in the carpet for too long, they seemed to breathe and crawl under his boots. But even when he looked away he could feel the designs twirling up the clawed feet of their Soviet striped settees.
And then there was Ivan. Alfred spent the first five minutes of the meeting wondering where his normal potato sack of an overcoat went, and why today of all days he decided to replace it with an embroidered red jacket. He looked…
Weird.
"How are you enjoying your tea, Alfred?" Ivan didn't puncture the silence as much as he scratched it with a grating lilt of sweetness and consideration.
Alfred flicked his eyes up from the table, feeling the china handle become heavier between his thumb and finger.
"Great. It's very…" He searched for one flattering word he could say, but nothing came to mind. It didn't matter what kind of tea it was: it all tasted like herb-infused gas station water to him.
"It's very hot," he finally said.
"Hmm..." Ivan smiled as he brought his own teacup to his lips, observing Alfred over the brim with an unreadable glint in his eyes. Kind of the way that somebody would watch the person they just poisoned.
…Not that Alfred was even planning to drink the damn tea, but he almost chipped his cup on the edge of the table as he replaced it on its saucer, tilting backwards in his seat. "But I didn't come here to talk about the tea."
But the tea still took priority over what he did come there to talk about, as Ivan took his sweet time sipping his drink with consideration and embellished enjoyment. When he finished with a swipe of his tongue between his lips--nobody enjoyed tea that much. Not even Arthur. And his ears still turned a bit pink whenever Griffin's wharf was mentioned.
"…So many desires for one country."
Alfred cocked an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
"You want my government to change, you want me to submit to your way of life, and now you have come to take personal property from my home. Isn't that right?"
"Not when you put it that way." He frowned. "And that other political stuff, let's just call a time out on that, okay? It's not about politics right now."
"Of course not," Ivan said musingly. "…Just the clothing on my back."
"Just some old stuff you have lying around that you don't wear anymore," Alfred corrected, watching Ivan re-cross his legs until he caught himself realizing he couldn't remember the last time he saw Ivan's leg in its entirety before. They were usually half-buried in his winter clothes, or under a table. It was almost disorienting to see Ivan this exposed. He kept blinking, as if reaffirming this wasn't a trick of the light or an optical illusion. Or else somebody replaced the real Ivan with a body double. The only thing familiar about him was his ever-present, "I'm imagining myself stabbing you right now" smile, and the scarf which never moved. Alfred was ready to believe the fibers stitched themselves to his neck.
"And what makes you think I have those?"
Because they all had mementos. Human beings clung to the 'old ways' to maintain their cultural identities and in some ways, the countries were no different. They compulsively collected souvenirs from the historical landmarks in their very long lives, something to find in a storage closet or on a shelf one day and reaffirm that the life that they lived was real. That they had actually watched their civilizations grow around them, from dirt to metropolises—rushing, buzzing; alive. They survived poverty, starvation, war, every parasite that tried to eat them from the inside out. And they still existed with their cultural pieces. "Even I have a suit that was mine before my independence. And if you ask me, all your stuff looks old-fashioned. So you must have something you're willing to give up for a good cause."
"C'mon!" Alfred grinned, even throwing in a wink for good measure. "Be a nice guy for once!"
His cheerful nudge was crushed into the ground by the heavy atmosphere, where he swore he could hear the whispered pulse of a clock in another room. And he almost wondered if he said the wrong thing before Ivan responded, smiling more than ever. "And why should I do this for you?"
"It's not me, Ivan. It's not like I'm taking your stuff and putting it in my closet." He almost snorted at the thought. "It's for the Costume Institute's exhibit—"
"Costume, you say? Is that what they are going to call my everyday clothes?"
"I don't know. But don't you want other people outside of the Iron Curtain to see your stuff and I don't know, learn from it or something?"
"Learn from my Kosovorotka?" Ivan said, voice lifting in amusement.
Alfred's eyebrows knitted together, forcing himself to stand by his heroic mission, and not get out of his seat to throw tea in Ivan's stupid face. "…Yes."
"Do you know what that is?"
Alfred's ears burned pink. "That's not the point."
Ivan hummed again and traced a finger around the rim of his cup. "If your people wish to get to know me, Alfred, they should visit. See my people, not what they wear."
"People already have visited your country. They thought it was depressing and lame. Vreeland doesn't, by the way, the lady who's in charge of all this? She says the women are hot and Russia is an awesome, luxurious land and blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, stuff like that." He gestured carelessly with his hands. "And what would be a better way for other Westerners to see that than to see the clothing of Russia? And I mean the personification. You."
There was the ticking of that clock again when Alfred stopped and waited for what he expected to be agreement. After all, how could Ivan turn down such remarkable reasoning? He watched him take a deep breath; fill his chest with air and then:
"No."
Alfred's mouth opened, hanging agape and stupid in the antique air. "Are you serious?" He had to ask because Ivan was fucking giggling.
"Very," Ivan sang. "I think if I gave you my clothes, tomorrow you might come back asking for my tea set, that couch you are sitting on—my precious nuclear weapons. In the end I will be left with nothing. You understand."
"The hell I do. I don't want any of that stuff; you couldn't just give me a sock or something?"
"I'm terribly sorry, Alfred."
Not that Alfred believed it for one second. Even if Ivan was sorry, which seemed just as likely as Matthew speaking up or Francis taking a vow of abstinence, he was too pissed to care.
Alfred slumped back in his seat, bumping the bag he set down when he came in and the metaphorical light bulb went off in his brain.
"Wait."
"Was I about to do something?" Ivan asked, eyebrows lifting in curiosity.
"Just hold on a second," Alfred repeated and bent over to fish inside his bag until his fingers scraped the one solid object that was inside.
"I'm still confused what I'm supposed to stop, Alfred."
"Just shut up and look." He brandished the object with as much enthusiasm as a trophy for his unmatched resourcefulness. "I got you a present!"
The smile fell from Ivan's face into something Alfred couldn't define, like the neutral space between his happy face and murderous intent. "A bribe?"
"A gift. And I'm not taking it back with me, so you might as well keep it."
He set it on the coffee table and crossed his arms as he sat back, trying to look absolutely stern. There was a squeaky sliding sound of fabric on fabric as Ivan scooted forward in his seat, putting down his teacup in order to pick it up, observing it from all angles.
Meanwhile Alfred jiggled in his seat, more out of hyperactivity than nervousness, needing to do isomething/i while Ivan picked at the wrapping paper like a dieting teenager fumbling with a salad. And 'wrapping paper' was a big word for the cheap, brown stuff that Alfred found at the last minute and bound together with masking tape. It was a shitty presentation, but it wasn't going to be entered in any beauty contests.
And besides, it was what was inside that counted, right?
Plus it didn't seem like such a loss or a waste of nice paper when Ivan peeled and then tore it up with half the enthusiasm as a kid on Christmas, but twice the concentration as a guy handling something that could explode and take his face off. In the end the packaging lay on the floor in curled, jagged strips, and Ivan cradled a stout glass bottle between his gloved hands.
"Well?" Alfred prodded.
Ivan said nothing. He unscrewed the top of the bottle and held it under his nose, sniffing it.
The corners of his lips quirked. "Vodka."
"Not just any bottle of vodka." It was Alfred's turn to grin a little, making a circular motion in the air with his finger. "Flip it over. Check out the label."
For a moment Ivan looked like he wanted to protest being told what to do. Or he was trying to dissect Alfred's intentions: just a minute ago he believed Alfred was after his teapot and nukes. But curiosity overpowered defiance and he finally rolled it over. And the expression returned, more unreadable than ever.
"…This is my name."
"Yep. Bottled just for you."
"How did they get it?" Ivan asked, his voice coming out at an angle.
"How do you think? Can I give a gift? Or can I give an amazing gift?"
Even when the corners of his mouth started to hurt, Alfred kept on smiling; trying to keep his knee from bouncing in anticipation as Ivan brought the bottle to his lips, tilted back and took a long drag.
Three bobs of his Adam's apple, and he tipped his head forward again. In the silence Alfred could even hear the suction of air when Ivan stopped drinking, and swiped his tongue between his lips again.
Alfred tilted his head. "…Well?"
Ivan blinked owlishly at him. "What?" He asked, a vague little smile crossing his lips, as if he were sliding back into the conversation from a bathroom break.
"Does this mean the deal is sealed?"
"…Tell you what, Alfred." He set his gift bottle of Ivan vodka down on the table next to his tea. "If you want, you can have what I am wearing right now."
Alfred almost started chuckling until what Ivan said to him really occurred to him—then exploded into untranslatable white noise. He might as well have answered him in Russian: he could not for the life of him process, what he…
"What? No, that's not—"
His sentence cut off when something red hit his face. He tugged the jacket off his glasses to find Ivan out of his chair, tugging the bowtie loose under his scarf with one hand and not breaking his heavy eye contact with him. Alfred wondered if Ivan was trying to look sexy: he never appeared more like a Russian villain straight from the movies.
Alfred fidgeted in his seat, not noticing his legs spreading an inch apart as Ivan skimmed the perimeter of the table and slid onto his seat without invitation or warning. Alfred certainly couldn't piece together how the conversation went from vodka to Ivan straddling his lap.
He watched Ivan guide his wrist between them; then smashed his palm against the material of his shirt. "Do you see?"
"See what?"
"The difference. It is a much different style than yours."
"And you had to come all the way over here to prove that?"
"You wanted to experience my clothes, so now you will." Ivan giggled as if the idea was hilarious, then like a channel changed in his head, became serious again. "And later, if I am in a good mood, maybe I will show you more."
Alfred lifted an eyebrow, suggestive without even realizing it. "And what is that? An agreement or a sex thing?"
Ivan ignored him. He became fascinated with his tie, sliding his fingers up the black silken texture and sending a path of electric ripples from Alfred's sternum to his Adam's apple.
"I have a suit that I wore to the wedding of Nicholas and Alexandra. How is that for you?"
Alfred opened his mouth to ask who they were, but Ivan ran his lips over his ear, causing him to shift upwards into the tickle. His hands unconsciously landed on Ivan's hips: it occurred to him that he was going to need his pants, too…
"….And clothes tell stories mouths should not." Ivan cupped his jaw, pressing a thumb to his lips so hard he thought it might bruise. "And speaking of which, it goes without saying you will tell no one about this, hm—?"
Ivan tried to make it a rhetorical question by trying to keep Alfred's mouth shut while Alfred struggled to answer.
Either Alfred broke free, or Ivan let go, but he wriggled from his grip long enough to mutter a "whatever" and crushed their lips together.
If Alfred knew all it would take was a bottle of Popov with a replaced label to make negotiations, he would've tried this a lot sooner.