RUSAME - one shots

𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐜𝐚𝐭

[] a college au []

The campus clock had chimed nine far too long ago when Russia turned the last page of chapter 3 in this hellspawn literature textbook and let his head fall to the standard-issue dorm desk with a clunk. Damn. He swept a morose eye over the sideways scrawl of rushed Cyrillic that passed for his notes. Transcribing that was going to be a pain and a half, but—

Creeeak. Russia lifted his head, brows furrowing, at what sounded incredibly, inexplicably like his window opening in the room over— not a sound you heard a lot on the second story. He squinted into the darkness, listening.

"SH*T! Shhh—" Alright. No question anymore. If he was honest with himself, the adrenaline now underscoring his veins was a welcome relief from the numbness of eight consecutive hours of homework. Rus groped in the box beneath his desk for the cricket bat.

A cold December draft had permeated the entire main room and set his teeth grinding together as he pressed his back to the dividing wall, ears straining. A scuffle. Some small, indignant noise, almost animal, and an ensuing frantic hush. Rookie trespasser. I could break into a house better than this, he thought, grip on the cricket bat tightening as he bounced on the balls of his feet.

"Hey." He stepped wide into the view of the window, and had a single confused second to register not a hulking, black-clad invader but a short, hoodie-clad guy his age, one arm clamped around a writhing, blanketed bundle and the other clinging to his window ledge for dear life, before his head snapped up to lock eyes with Russia and he lost his footing.

"AHHHH!" Not a single thought had time to register in Russia's shell-shocked mind before he was there, hand clamped around the guy's cold forearm, and his wide eyes slid from the considerable drop yawning below his dangling feet to meet the stranger's distractingly large ones. A strange half-heartbeat passed, locked that way— Russia counted two stars reflected in his dark pupils— before he shook himself. Stepping back, he heaved the kid into his room, overshooting so that they both ended up falling hard on their butts. The bundled blanket slid two feet forward on the floorboards and came to a stop. For a second, the only sound was their harsh breaths intermingling, clouds of vapor turned blue in the moonlight.

"WOAH." Rus watched the intruder gingerly pat himself from the legs up for injuries, then clutch his head in two hands. "That. Was wicked."

"What the hell are you doing in my house?!"

"Shhh!" The finger this insipid home intruder pressed to his lips actually shocked Russia into silence, his mouth half-open in indignation. The guy took his chance to rise to his knees and peek over the window ledge just as a voice from outside rang out.

"HEY."

Russia, nostrils flaring, followed his gaze into the campus courtyard, where the aimless, drifting snow was steadily filling in countless sets of footprints. Something in his rib cage dropped as the harsh beam of a flashlight swung across the gray emptiness. "Whoever you are, come back!"

"My gosh." The glare Russia shot at the intruder could have poisoned a well. "Are you a criminal?"

"NO!" Eyes widening— they really were so large, what in the hell?— he held out both hands to profess his innocence. "I am not! I— well—"

"Well?" He didn't look like one. At all. But you couldn't trust appearances.

"This guy is." The guy reached over to the hunkered blanket bundle to pull back a corner, and Russia blinked incredulously as the head of a scrappy-looking black cat emerged— nearly identical to the stock photo they'd put on the dorm rules poster, with a red X pasted over it. No pets allowed. As soon as the semi-light hit it, it began to hiss frantically, swiping at nothing with vicious claws. The intruder flinched and threw the blanket back over it.