RUSAME - one shots

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐣𝐨𝐫

It's bad to look through other people's things.

America, sitting cross-legged on Russia's bedroom carpet and locked in a doomed staring contest with his sketchbook across the room, pressed his fingertips together, assuming diplomat stance. Looking through other people's things was bad. But there were other things that were worse. Murder, for instance. Nobody would die if he just took the book and flipped around in it. Right?

His impulse control had run dry at this point anyway, so it really didn't matter. America bit his tongue as he scrambled to his feet, snatched the hefty book, and splayed it open on the floor, heart pounding.

On the page: a writhing mass of charcoal scribbles, crossing out the drawing underneath so violently that he couldn't tell what it was. Something was written across the top in Russian, cramped and tiny and shorthand; even if America could have picked out one or two words the letters were too spiky and rapid to recognize. He bent close to the page, wrinkling his nose as he caught sight the careful, half-birthed pencil figure that all the scribbles lay on top of— a certain familiarity in its angular stance, which was strange. Puffing out one cheek, he thumbed a few pages back to a sheet of inked eyes staring up at him, earnest and sly and laughing by turns, excruciating detail in their tear ducts, their stretched lids.

"What the," he murmured, lost in the wet shine the pen captured across pupil after pupil, so much so that when a few clumps of cigarette ash splashed softly onto the page he brushed them off by instinct. It took a full second, two, of dumb staring at the grayish smudge they left behind before he thought to turn his chin upwards.

"Guh," squeezed through Ame's strangled throat before he shoved the book off his lap and scrambled backwards to face Rus full-on where he stood in the doorway, thin cigarette smoldering in his fingertips. Unblinking, Russia exhaled a haze of dark, mottled smoke between the two of them. "Hey man," America found himself saying, his Diplomat Voice taking the wheel by force, broad and soothing and Clark Kent-adjacent except when it squeaked from fear. "Hey uh. I didn't see ya there buddy. Haha!"

Russia, ghastly, impassive, dark circles under his eyes, raised one eyebrow a fraction of a centimeter.

"UM," America continued, and he was hand talking now, a sure sign it was over— "listen, I just would like to extend my most sincere apologies and promise I will never look through your stuff again or so help me God I'll drop dead right where I st—"

"Ach." Rus jerked his chin towards the page, splayed open wide and obscene on the floor, the eyes all looking somewhat accusatory from this angle. "You picked bad page, luchik." He drew from the cigarette again, allowing America's racing brain enough time to register the thicker accent, the slower pace, in his voice— Russia was, in fact, somewhat drunk. All traces of atheism drained from the American's red white and blue blood as he dashed off the fastest, most furious prayer that had ever been uttered in a frantic hiss.

"Um— I thought it was really good," he stammered, reeling still. He wasn't dying tonight, no sir! Not this guy!

"That is because you are not so discerning." America's mouth pressed into a flat line. Alright, he'd probably had that one coming. It would have made him bristle more if there wasn't such inexplicable fondness in the way Russia said it. "You see Repin and ask why it is not more like Marvel comic."

"I do NOT— well, I guess I—"

"Shh, luchik, your lies hurt my head. It is mostly bad book," he continued meditatively, stepping forward to toe at the pages in a bleak, disinterested way before sitting down heavily against the wall, elbows propped on widespread knees. "You. C'mere."

"...Why?" Ame asked cautiously. It was entirely possible Rus still had murder on the mind. Nobody matched his poker face.

"I will give you tour properly." He stabbed the cigarette out in the crack between the floorboards, where ribbons of thin black smoke spooled out into the too-still air.