Just as I flipped onto my bed after a nice, relaxing shower, someone knocked at the door. At first I groaned and considered pretending not to be home. But then I decided against it and heaved myself off the bed to answer my persistent knocker. A familiar Canadian filled my sight.

"Matthew!" I said in surprise. "Wow, you don't look so good."

"Tope!" he exclaimed. Indeed, Matthew was looking quite panicked and uneasy. "I really need your help."

"What's going on, Mattie?"

"Al, Arthur, Francis, Yao and Ivan are drunk in my room and I can't get them to leave. I've tried everything, but they just won't listen!"

...wow. Shocker.

xXx

Rushing out the door with Matthew, we wasted no time in leaping down to the first floor where Matthew roomed with his brother. At his dorm entrance, we hesitated. Who knew what kinds of horrors awaited us inside? For all we knew, everyone could've been stark naked! Well, Francis was a given.

"On the count of three?" I offered. Matthew nodded.

One…two…THREE!

Matthew pulled open the door and rushed in while I paused. I heard some incoherent cursing and a few crashes inside, but a few seconds later Mattie poked his head out and said, "They're decent. Can you help me take them back to their dorms?"

The North American brothers had a very mediocre sized room with a bunk bed and two desks on the side. What I guessed was Alfred's top bunk was surrounded by posters of famous sports players, swimsuit models, and cars. Hanging above his bed on the ceiling was a giant American flag. Matthew's bed was a lot neater with pictures of him and his brother on the wall and a calendar. Judging by the amount of junk on one of the desks, I could tell whose things were whose.

However, with the room in its current state of chaos, I couldn't tell what belonged where. Books were strewn all over the ground, clothes were inside out and backwards and tossed carelessly everywhere, the smell of burning alcohol was hanging heavily in the air.

The first person to notice our presence was—of course—the shirtless Frenchman straddling a particularly flustered Englishman on Matthew's lower bunk.

"Ah, it'z ze beautiful Tope 'ere to jjjoin uz!" Leaping off of Arthur (or trying to), he stumbled over to where I stood and tried to grab me, but I deftly stepped out of his way. Francis fell face-first onto the floor and promptly knocked out.

Yao (draped over the chair) hiccupped and laughed something in Chinese. Alfred was snoring in the middle of the floor. Ivan's mouth was curled into an evil grin.

"Is he still alive?" I whispered, poking Francis' unconscious body with my toe. No response.

Matthew sighed and bent down to heave Francis up. "He's in the dorm just down the hall, so I can take him. I'll be right back." And with that, he left.

"I'm not going to spend the night sleeping below that frog while he's drunk," said a surprisingly sober Arthur. He slowly got up and (after a few tries) climbed atop the higher bunk, flopping down onto the thick mattress.

Yao chuckled, "Alfred be unhappy tomorrow. He sleep on ground! He get bad backache!"

"Who fucking cares?" was the tired response before Arthur finally fell asleep.

"Toooooope," sang an unusually high and cheery voice. I jumped as Ivan's arms came from behind and draped on my shoulder. Ivan's weight made my knees bend a little. He slurred, "Vi ochen' krasiv'ya…"

"S-Sorry, Tope," came Matthew's voice. He came in and tried to take Ivan from me.

The Russian immediately growled and bared his teeth. Mattie yelped and stumbled back. Ivan's expression turned sweet again as he turned back toward me, nuzzling my neck. "Vi' tak tyeplo…"

I gave Mattie a sheepish grin. "I can take him back," I offered. "You can help Yao."

"Okay."

xXx

"Ya skuchala po tebye," Ivan murmured in my ear as I just got his dorm door open. He had been muttering the same phrase over and over again in the hall, but I had no idea what it meant.

"Okay," I said. "Come on, we're almost there."

Inside his dorm, I couldn't help but stop and look around a bit. Ivan's room was quite plain. Its walls were a light grey-bluish hue and the carpet was a creamy vanilla white. It was a small room with a single bed and a desk. There was big sunflower in a huge vase, and next to it was a small decorative wooden box. It looked old.

Ivan and I stopped by his bed.

"Okay, big guy," I coaxed, trying to pry his arms off of me. "Come on, let go…"

"Nyeeeet," he drawled. "Y' ne hoshuu idti... Ya skushallla po tebye…"

"I don't know what you're saying," I sighed. "Now…let…go!"

In one great effort, I heaved him off of me and onto the bed, where he hit the mattress softly. Within seconds, I heard a light snore. My mouth curved into a small smile. I liked Ivan. He was a really good kid.

For a moment, I stood there—reflecting. After a long while of thinking, I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of chilly snow. When I really thought about it, his room made me feel oddly whole. It seemed familiar somehow. Like a forgotten memory…

I should've stopped there. But I couldn't. A strange, overwhelming sensation overcame my body and lulled it into an unstoppable momentum. It swung me like a pendulum, hypnotizing it back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until…

I turned around dazedly and walked toward the desk with the sunflower and the box. My hand slowly reached forward to touch the smooth lightwood cover. Intricate patterns and designs embellished its surface. There didn't seem to be any way to open it; it was just a block of pretty wood. But something told me that if I rotated the flower near the back and lined up the lines there—

"Don't touch that." Ivan suddenly came up behind me, grabbing my wrist tightly. His touch snapped me out of my reverie.

"I—"

"Don't ever touch that," he snarled fiercely. "Don't ever, ever touch that!"

His voice was so loud that I froze up. It first occurred to me that the heavy door had long since closed by itself.

"I can't let you do that!" he kept raging. "I can't let you do it again!"

"Do what, Ivan?"

Instead of answering, Ivan seized my back and my shoulders, using his arms to pull me up directly to his chest. Everything was happening so fast that I couldn't react at all.

"So you don't remember this?" he whispered.

And then he kissed me.

His wet lips pressed hard against mine, exerting so much force at once that I gasped, an action he took advantage of by slipping his tongue inside. The feeling of his tongue probing my mouth made my knees grow weak. Ivan's arms curled lower and tighter. He coaxed my lips to part further. The kiss grew heatedly warm.

I didn't know when or how, but one second we were standing, the next he's above me on the bed. I was lost in his arms. He was everything, a source of heat and light that filled my everywhere. Behind my closed eyelids, I saw an image of his face, eyes low and smirk wide. So enticing. So damn sexy.

In between kisses, he murmured, "And you don't remember this bed? You don't remember that night, Utopia?"

What did he say?

I opened my eyes and suddenly, his arms didn't seem all that safe anymore. His words stopped my heart cold.

"Little bitch," he hissed, all of a sudden very angry. His violet eyes glowed in the lightless room. "You tried to leave me. You tried to leave me and now this happened!"

His grip turned vice-like. I struggled to break free. "Ivan! Let go of me!"

"I can't let you leave me, Utopia," he cried. "I can't… Ya skuchala po tebye, Utopia. Utopia…Utopia…"

Tears threatened to spill over my eyes. The way he spoke her name—it hurt.

I glared at him with all the hatred and resentment I could muster.

"I'm not her," I affirmed. "I am not Utopia!"

"Of course you are! If you weren't, then why do I still—" Ivan, eclipsing the ceiling from my sight, tightened his grip on the sheets next to my head. I could barely taste it when we were kissing, but the odor of alcohol was more prominent now. If it was possible, I would've said that he was drunker than before.

"Get off me," I nearly shouted. He refused to, and that pushed me to do the unthinkable:

I slugged him in the face.

As soon as my arm got free, I didn't hesitate to pull back and strike forward. My knuckles came in solid contact with the side of his left eye, causing him to recoil back in shock. A jolt of pain streaked down my arm, causing me to wince. Ivan groaned and rolled off of me, giving me the opportunity I needed to jump off the bed.

I almost made it to the door without looking back when a whimper caught my attention. Just to be cautious, I made sure I was halfway out the door before finally looking back.

Lying on the bed, Ivan looked so vulnerable. His eyes were shut tight, as if he was hiding from his worst fears. The thin sheets were twisted beneath him.

In his own world and oblivious to my presence, he whispered to himself, "Ya skuchala po tebye…Tope…"

I didn't stay to hear anymore.

xXx

~Ivan POV~

When she struck me in the face, the first thought that occurred to me was that I should strangle her. That I should kill her, then mutilate her body. I should drive my knuckles into her mouth and see how she likes being assaulted.

But just as I opened my eyes and clenched my fist as angry as ever, I saw the expression on her face…

…and it killed me.

There was anger and frustration, and oh was there the satisfaction of landing the hit. But beneath the surface of these emotions was something that I had been dreading for so long. Fear. She was scared.

I panicked. Anything but fear. Anything! When I fell to the side, she threw her body out of my daunting cage like a bird finally set free. The sight of it was a stab to the heart (the imaginary heart that I keep in my head). Defeated and depressed, I muttered nonsense to myself. She must have heard me, because at the door, she paused. I wanted to scream at her to run away.

Risking one last glance at her, I peeked at her through the slits of my eyes. She looked so vulnerable in the light of the hallway. Tope's eyes had never been kinder and more sympathetic. I loved it so much—the feeling of her kindness being directed at me.

The door closed, and everything was thrown into darkness. My head reeled with the aftermath of so much action. An insistent headache knocked violently at my skull. It was like the whole world was spinning, infinitely twisting grotesquely into new shapes that confused my mind.

The last thing I saw was the wooden box on the table.

"Not again," I whispered. "Never again."