I don't own Hetalia okay? I'm glad at the response to this fic, so I am going to update as this and Family Bonds are my pet Hetalia projects right now. I am sort of toying with a spinoff of The Longing of the Heart but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, enough of this A/N, on with the fic!

After Alfred's slight improvement in ice skating, sort of like he was a young child again, getting upstaged by his brother at one thing, the hour ended and they had to leave the rink. Returning their skates, Ivan looked to Alfred with a smile. "So did you have fun Fredka?" Ivan asked as he pulled Alfred close.

"A bit." Alfred admitted. "I'm nowhere as good as you though."

"Well that is nothing to be ashamed of." Ivan smiled. "This was actually really fun."

"I know, and I normally am not the type to like being humiliated like that." Alfred teased. He looked at his watch and realized he hadn't been home since he had left for work the day before. "I should check in with my dad and papa. Let them know I am at least alive."

"I am sure they worry about you Fredka, even if your dad as you call him can be completely stubborn and shortsighted." Ivan said as they got in his car and headed back to the hotel. "I will give him a little understanding that his anger was misguided at best and not meant for you but what happened to you. He's just..." Ivan paused not wanting to insult his boyfriend's father after meeting him only one in less than ideal situations.

"...bad at expressing his parental instincts?" Alfred suggested. "Look I know that or I would have either decked him by now or stow away in the baggage compartment of your plane back to Russia."

"That would not be wise at this point." Ivan said with a slight laugh.

"I guess not. But if nothing else I can promise you, you'll see me back in the motherland this summer. I could not bear the idea of waiting to see you again so long." Alfred said as they headed back to the hotel. "And I don't mean by some video chat thing or something like that. I love holding onto you, hearing your heart."

"That is the same feelings I have Fredka." Ivan said as he kissed Alfred on the cheek. They had arrived and Alfred headed to Ivan back to his room, staring in his eyes. He's so over the moon with me. I hope that doesn't affect his studying. I want him to do well. I don't want to distract him. Ivan thought as he sat on a chair in his room to which Alfred followed and laid back on the bed. This is a new year and I am entering it with a new love. Will this work? He does want to take the chance. Our hearts may break. But that is a chance that I must take if I want to find someone to love. Ivan took off his coat and looked over at Alfred who was laying on the bed staring at him, feet kicking back and forth happily. Ivan then turned over Alfred and kissed him deeply. Alfred looked up in surprise and wrapped his arms around him and slipped his tongue into Ivan's mouth.

"God I love you so much Vanya." Alfred said.

"And I too Fredka." Ivan said, feeling his heart race.

As the night wained on, Alfred turned to Ivan and looked at his schedule for the first day of his semester. "Crap. I have to head home and get some sleep. I forgot about that class in the morning."

"What do you mean?" Ivan said as he looked on Alfred's phone's calender which he had placed the device to keep track of it.

"This required speech class." Alfred said pointing to the one at 8 am. "I HAD to take that, and from what I could tell, the instructor is so boring. And I hate those types of classes. Frankly I am looking forward more to the English Comp. I have a lot of help I can get from home if I need it."

"Your father is a high school English teacher, Da?" Ivan asked looking over Alfred's shoulder, taking in his sent.

"Yeah." Alfred said. "I am normally pretty good with things like that. My grades weren't as good as I liked them back in high school because I was busy practicing with my band and things like that. Wish I had known then what I know now."

"Don't think of your past like that Fredka." Ivan said as he hugged Alfred close. "If you had not done things the way you had done, you would not have followed that path. As much as I hate seeing you disappointed in the shattering of the dream you had, one you did not deserve, but if you had succeeded, then I would never have met you. I may have heard your music on the radio and become a fan of your voice and your lyrics but I could never have met the man with that voice and mind I love. You'd be like some distant and ever unapproachable star. Something that could at best be admired from that distance but one that could never be held in my hands. "

"Well, that's one way to look at it..."Alfred said. Yes he was getting everything back together and finding a new path for his life, it still stung that it was indeed the case that he lost the dream he worked so hard for and the friends that stood him up and did not have his back. He saw them as ones who sold out what they were as a band to the corporate interests. It was at this, he could remember the drummer of the band and what he would say. To him it was all about music, no matter what the music you played, if you were playing it that was what mattered. Creating your own was not so much the thing for him. However he was very anti-establishment and saw a music career as defying the typical corporate grind. Alfred had tried to tell him that caving to the music said corporate establishment wanted for him was defying that philosophy and if all he wanted to do was play music, that would be fine but Alfred would not compromise on the message he wanted the songs in the band to covey, something he thought they were all in it for. He looked at Ivan and sighed. "I had a friend,"

"Well if he kicked you out of the band you formed together, I would hardly call him a friend, but continue," Ivan prompted.

"Well this guy Roderich I had went to school with joined just to play and he could do great things with classical instruments in rock. I mean he was like the whole San Francisco Symphony Orchestra to Metallica in their No Leaf Clover song..." Ivan looked clueless. "Not a Metallica fan huh?"

"Cannot say for certain if I had ever heard that song by them or not. I will have to look it up." Ivan said.

"Well he had that knack. Did really great things to the mood of some of the songs. But he was also quite the asshole. We had to share a very small apartment. I mean rent in California is hella expensive and that is not even before you get into Los Angles. He hated having to work shitjobs to help pay the rent, insisted on shopping at organic markets, and threw a fit if all the money we had before our paydays were just enough for those microwave cup noodles. I had warned him about it before we even moved when we thought that we had a dream and that his dad wouldn't likely be very apt for his son to be a musician rather than a normal 9-5. He got cut off after telling his dad his plan, which he kept reminding me of. I told him everything! I told him it wasn't going to be instantaneous and we'd have to live the starving artist thing." Alfred started to rant, Ivan leaned back, knowing his lover had to let this out before he could let it go. "He claimed doing anything but getting paid for music was to sell out the goal and identity."

"But if you as a band had a message to convey and you don't stay true to that message because you are being paid, then you are 'selling out'" Ivan said.

"EXACTLY!" Alfred laid back on the bed rolling his eyes. "A record company says jump, he'd say 'What do you want me to play mister? Doesn't matter if it's the piece I wrote as long as you give me the shinney penny for me to play! That's not what we were! And if he saw me now..."

"What? Finding something else that is you as a person. Just because it may not get you a Hollywood mansion does not mean self expression is gone. And to me it sounds like this Roderich had more of an issue with his father than you." Ivan said kissing Alfred. "It just got vented at you."

"How do you know people so good?" Alfred said.

"Well, it's a long story." Ivan sighed as he reached up at his neck.

"I have time." Alfred said. "If I bare so much of my soul to you, it's only fair you do the same. And nothing you could have done would run me off."

"Nothing?" Ivan asked, thinking of some of the things he had done, even just to get by as a teenager.

"Nothing." Alfred said. "If my path led me to you, then your path led you to me."

"Nice use of my metaphor." Ivan sighed. "Fine. Growing up soon after the Soviet Union collapsed was not easy. The older generations could remember a time when living there was well...easier than it was then. It never was easy unless you were a leader in the party. Something that even to this day, everyone knows but some older Russians won't like you say it and think it almost treasonous. They'd call the KGB if it wasn't a waste of their time."

"So you got nosy old gossips there too." Alfred said remembering the neighbor from his childhood who kept spying on them.

"Yes. But everyone did it back in their day so they were conditioned to it. But anyway, it was never easy to live and I grew up in a poorer part of Moscow to begin with." Ivan began but Alfred stopped him.

"I thought you were born in Saint Petersburg..." he asked.

"We moved to Moscow when I was little." Ivan said rolling his eyes. " As is often the case, in the poorer areas, there is no work, nothing to do legit to get money. You have to be able to do anything to get by. I got wrapped up in a gang that sold some pretty harsh drugs to addicts." Ivan blushed.

"Okay." Alfred said nonpluses.

"I know what I was doing to people. I was working for a group supplying them that poison. You see in a lot of the former Soviet republics, heavy drug abuse is rampant. My sister wasn't making enough to support us and I was hired by a dealer to be security. Said I looked unsuspecting at first but knew I could pack a punch. So I was there in the case the deal went bad and I got 10 percent of the deal for just standing there. It got nasty sometimes but something bad happened when my younger sister was going to join. She found out what I was doing and wanted to follow me. Do not get me wrong, Natalya may seem small and unsuspecting but I pity the fool that crossed her. I saw her getting too close to the dealer for my liking and I wanted to fight him. She looked like his whore and I don't know if that was her choice or not. Part of me knew it was her choice but when you are desperate, you will do dangerous things. She was only 13 and I had just turned 18. I saw how she took out someone who wouldn't pay and knew she was skilled in fighting. I demanded the dealer to let her go, let her go back to school like a normal teenager and to stop touching her. That's how I got the scars."

"Your sister cut you up?" Alfred asked.

"No, the guy I worked for then did. That did scare Natalya enough that she did the same to him and left. My older sister made her go back to school once she found out what she had done and I decided to get a good proper job myself. By that point, Russia was becoming a little better economically and I had found someone who pointed me to this job in University and well, here we are now." Ivan paused. "You must hate me for what I did."

"Why? Honestly I kind of hate myself for having an easier time and complaining about it." Alfred shrugged. "But the fact was you did what you had to and even risked getting shanked for your sister's safety. Luckily she came to her senses after seeing what happened to you, so you still helped her in a way. You're a good guy Vanya, even if you had to do bad things or got wrapped up in it when you were younger. I love you for you. I don't care what happened to make you this way, I just regret that I couldn't have been a hero and saved you back then. But you wouldn't be who you are now then." Alfred said as he started into Ivan's amethyst eyes, which were now starting to water up from the memory. Seeing this, Alfred wiped the tears away. "But I can be your hero now."

"You know how silly and cliched that sounds?" Ivan laughed.

"Horribly. If that was in one of the songs I was writing I would hit myself on the head with a hammer for that reason."

"You're funny Fredka." Ivan said kissing him. I opened up to him on something I had never told anyone else before. Even Katyusha doesn't know the whole story of the he isn't repulsed by them or the story. He still loves me. If it was just loving the relationship, I doubt he would put up with that. I want to be with him so much more now. I want to have that expansion job so much so I can be with him so much...I've never felt this way before.

"Well I wanted you to feel so much better." Alfred smiled.

"I do now." Ivan said kissing Alfred on the cheek. He then noticed his watch. "But it is getting late. You start your classes tomorrow and I want you to do well. You said you had an early class and you need sleep."

"Awwwwwwwwww." Alfred moaned. "But I only have you until the 10th here..."

"I know, I know dorogoy," Ivan said as he sat up and walked with Alfred to his car. "but I see what your brain can do. But it cannot do it when you spend all my time with me sadly."

"I'll call you when I get home." Alfred said.

"I'll know you are safe then and I can wish you a good night. Be sure to tell me about your first day of classes tomorrow." Ivan said hugging him.

"I'm certain now that I will change my major from general to a cybersecurity one. The one that transfers for a four year..." Alfred started to talk as Ivan opened the door to his car.

"Sounds wonderful but you need your rest. I'll call you in the morning tomorrow to wake you up. I want you to start off on the right foot." Ivan said kissing Alfred. "Remember focusing on this will be for our future. You can do so much with me. I will help you of course but do your best."

"I will. Don't fret Vanya. I love you. Or should I say Ya lyublyu tebya"

"Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu, moy podsolnukh" Ivan whispered as Alfred kissed him, started the car and headed home. God I miss him already and he's at the traffic light at the end of the road. Well I will hear from him when he gets home. Ivan thought as he headed back into the hotel room, waiting the short yet interminable time when Alfred would call him back.

So how was that? Good? Bad? Short? Long? Let me know in a review. I don't have much else to say here. I do have a few big drama spots planned out but it's the building to them that gets tricky to do sometimes. I do have a few other RusAme fics you can check out in the meantime. Anyway, remember to read, well you just did, and to review. Ciao for now,

otherrealmwriter

aka

Realm.