In this installment: remember the angst-n-moe, vodka-as-hair-gel, and oh-shit-I-have-a-gymnastics-meet-in-like-five-hours. It is shorter than usual for this reason. But it contains a kiss, so there.

What do you mean, "why is there a prairie behind their school"? There's a prairie behind my school. For real. We get to trek through it in AP Biology.

1793

Russia partitions Poland (surprise surprise) and gets most of Lithuania

"Snowball is hitting my face, da?" The other boy stood above Feliks, his violet glare in sharp contrast to his pink-flushed smiling cheeks. Feliks felt a shiver run down his spine, and it wasn't just from the cold: this Ivan Braginski guy was dangerous. He could feel it. "You are paying for this!"

Feliks was already crouched the ground. He couldn't see his Liet, for the other boy was behind a well-built snow fort's wall. He knew Toris would come for him shortly, though. Liet always did. Liet always came at the exact right moment, whether he was fetching the vanilla which Feliks needed like-OMG-right-now-caramel-doesn't-wait or defending his best friend from Gilbert.

Speaking of. The albino strode up as Feliks shivered on the frosted ground, with the crunch-crunch-crunch of heavy boots through a layer of crystallized snow. Feliks's mittens were too thin, he realized, as his remaining snowball began to melt through the fabric and trickled with icy pain down his wrists.

Feliks looked up, past Ivan's empty stare, past Gilbert's bloody eyes. He grinned, much to the surprise of his attackers.

"Totally late. Again. You remember, don't you, Gilbert?"

With a gleeful screech, Toris launched himself onto Ivan's back, pushing the other boy into a bank of snow. Feliks simultaneously sprang into action, hurling the half-melted snowball into Gilbert's face. They met after having put each attacker down and leapt, laughing, hand-in-hand, over a snowdrift to make their glorious retreat.

Unfortunately, boots met ice, and bodies met frozen ground violently. Toris's hat was knocked askew, Feliks's face pressed to the Lithuanian's throat in a painful, warm collision. Both breathed slowly, winded by the fall, until a booted foot colder than the ice beneath them kicked the blonde off of his friend. Ivan's powerful shoulders contracted beneath his coat as he lifted Toris into the air, a maniacal grin spreading slowly across his pleasant features.

"Leave him alone!" Feliks screeched, but his voice was lost in the controlling mitten of Gilbert crouching beside him. Gilbert spat in his face, but the blonde refused to give in, attempting to bite the Prussian's gloved hand. Gilbert made a noise of disgust and stood to join Ivan. The Russian seemed to be holding Toris close to him in a strange enemy's embrace. Feliks could barely see beyond Toris's limp brown locks, but Ivan appeared to be whispering something to his friend. Within moments, Ivan let go, and Toris collapsed back into the snow, his eyes blank and unfocused as Feliks had never seen them before. All the Polish boy could do was extend a comforting hand to his friend, who took it numbly.

To Ivan's retreating back, the Pole screeched, albeit with a quiver in his voice, "Learn how to use goddamn articles!"

Feliks reclined lazily on the sun-flecked slope behind the school, one foot casually stuck in the air as he pursued a fashion magazine. With the light wind rustling through the prairie not too far away, he could almost imagine that the sunlight fell on tall, golden rye instead of manicured lawn, that he had nowhere to be and nothing to do but simply lie within a dream, that the whistling wind that gusted through his hair was fingers and voice, smile and eyes, his Liet…

That breeze did sound an awful lot like a voice. A nervous, quivering voice. A heartbreaking, familiar voice.

The Polish boy sat straight upright, hair swinging into place, his eyes wide, as he listened.

"P-please, I swear…I swear I didn't…I…please, Ivan, I don't have anywhere else to go…"

Feliks flinched as the muffled sound of a vindictive slap echoed through the courtyard. Heavy, shuffling boots, all too familiar, thudded rhythmically and the Polish boy prayed frantically that the sound would become softer. Ivan's rage was a pathological thing, one that could not be quelled by things such as reason and kindness.

God must have been listening – Feliks's wish was granted. Sitting rod-straight, forest-green eyes wide as a deer's, he listened until the Russian's footsteps faded to silence. Diminuendo al niente. Thank God and Jesus and the Virgin Mary herself!

Once the thudding rhythm of imminent doom had gone, another sound emerged. A soft, ebbing sob, breaking and becoming faster, infused by panicky breaths, as he listened. Feliks knew what that meant. Toris was not taking his medicine. It seemed his conviction of only an hour prior, that tenuous decision that all former ties of friendship must be sliced cleanly, would be revised to include a clause of "except in extreme circumstances".

Swallowing hard, Feliks stood before he could doubt himself. Turned the corner before he could doubt himself. Once he saw Toris, there was no way he could doubt himself.

His childhood friend was crumpled against the brick wall, eyes closed and head tilted back. It was a golden smile hidden on that chapped, gasping mouth, a friend in those shaking shoulders, Liet in the tears that coursed brokenly down cheek and chin and neck. Toris's lovely brown hair was damp with sweat and tears, clumped in an ugly mass at the base of his neck. Feliks swallowed hard again, and before he could stop himself, his arms were around the boy, his face pressed into that quivering shoulder, as though by sheer power of holding him close, he could stop the tremors.

Feliks breathed slowly, steadily, in an example for Toris to follow. Just like when they were children, Toris needed an example to ground himself when he became lost in panic. Gradually the rhythm of their bodies, pressed together, merged into one cohesive heartbeat, and Feliks drew back.

"What's in your hair?" He said quietly, almost reverently. It was not only sweat and tears, he had realized. The Pole should not have had to ask – during their embrace, he had smelled the answer. But it seemed right to give the Lithuanian the power to tell his own story.

The tremor in Toris's voice was slight. "Vodka."

Feliks sighed, leaning forward to wipe a tear from his friend's face. "I can't believe that man! And what he did to me in the hallway today…!"

And then, inevitably, cruelly, "You deserved it."

Feliks's eyes hardened as he inspected the other. Of course, they were not friends. He'd nearly forgotten. He drew back.

It appeared Toris could not stop talking. His gaze would not meet the Pole's, instead loftily fixed upon the prairie behind him, his mouth set in a hard, unyielding line. "Ivan says you lot get what's coming to you. You're a real idiot if you think you can flirt with me in the hallway and get away with it."

"What. The. Hell."

"I'm not like you, Feliks. You should know that by now."

"It's called a smile, you bastard! Not a flirt, not a kiss, not a fuck!" Feliks's rage was building. He truly was an idiot to think that Toris would be grateful, to think that Toris needed his help, to think that power of good in friendship was greater than the power of evil in high school. But he couldn't help but whimper, "We used to be friends."

"I can't be friends with you." Toris fixed him now, with eyes like emerald ice. "You…you've…it's a sin, you know."

Feliks stood, exasperated, stomping a high-heeled foot in absolute fury. His ankle twinged at the heady contact with concrete sidewalk, which served only to accelerate the righteous fire building inside him. One more spark issued from his mouth, though he knew he ought to get away from that poisonous once-friend that was his Liet. Toris. Never his Liet again.

"WHAT exactly is a sin, pray tell? Wearing heels? Long hair? Skirts?" He was shouting now, nearly screeching, though Toris's face was turning pale in fear as he spoke. Of course, that little treacherous bastard would kill himself if rumor got out that he'd been hanging out in the courtyard with that fag Feliks Łukasiewicz. That fag who was pure as freshly fallen snow. Purer than most of the boys at this school. "I haven't done a single fucking thing except look fabulous!"

"No, Feliks," Toris stood as well, his downcast eyes hidden by a curtain of vodka-slicked hair. His shoulders began to quiver slightly again, his single step towards the blonde shaky and uncertain. "You're not the sinner."

Before Feliks, outraged and utterly confused, could wonder what Toris meant, he got his answer. His answer to the standoffish boy who had once been his best friend. His answer to the end of the golden ages of childhood and rye. His answer, pressed against that intimidating brick wall, with a familiar calloused hand at his throat and a golden smile pressed against his own mouth. Liet's hand in his hair, pressing him closer, unclipping that little pink hair clip that had started this entire mess.

It was rye and hair mixing together, turning auburn and burnished gold in the sunset. It was wonderful and terrible and inexcusable. It was Liet and pain and vodka and the sin that he'd been searching for.

It was so wrong.

Coming Soon! Feliks gets his revenge, Toris gets a present, and everybody gets a little drunk. It gets cheesy, bitches.