#ruslith

Tolys looks back down at the book, and blinks, slowly,trying to give two-second-sleep to his weary eyes. He’d swear he hasn’t turnedthe page in at least half an hour.

No sign of Ivan.

He presses his lips together.

Everyone else is (meant to be) asleep: little Latvia, just-barely-becoming-beautifulBelarus. Teenage Estonia and Finland are in the room across the hall from them.Ukraine’s away on business; this month Kazakhstan and his siblings are in a(very different) house in Almaty (where Ivan and Irina go sometimes too).

“If anyone asks,” Ivanhad said before leaving what must have been three hours ago – he didn’t meanthe nation-children, and Tolys looked across, then, to meet his eyes. “I was inthe study. You didn’t see anyone going out or in.”

Tolys had nodded andwished Ivan would remove his hand from his shoulder. He didn’t want to be thebearer of Ivan’s trust.

The typical responseought to have been an official “Yes,” or even (even, for Tolys) “Yes, sir.” Butthere was nothing official about this exchange. Tolys simply nodded, after amoment, and kept his silence.

Tolys glances at the window again – has the streetlightgotten dimmer? – unfolds his lanky legs, and sets the book down with almost agrimace of resignation to his own nature.

Weariness sinks and settles in his bones as he stands up,like the glass moving ever so slowly down the window, one decade at a time. Hegoes to the closet and gets out an overcoat.

All things considered, he meets up with Ivan fairly quickly.It would probably have taken longer had he not found Ivan going back to thehouse anyway, barely managing to shuffle through the snow in that particularslumped-and-swaying way he does when he’s been drunk for a while. Noticing,Tolys is almost afraid for a moment; he refuses to admit it to himself, but hisnerves jump at the sight of him.

“Litva,” Ivan slurs, and Tolys grits his teeth for a momentbefore: “Letniy moy.”

It takes his breath away, just a little; he inhales thefrozen air and thinks is this how badthings have gotten, have you forgotten your pride so much that this conqueror’scompliments can reach you, in Russian, no less.

“You’re drunk,” is what Tolys says, cold and quiet.

“I got the papers,” Ivan says, and slings an arm over Tolys’ bruised bony shoulders until he’s leaning against him almost entirely, curved like ablade of grass. “And poems too – poems, Litva, not that you can read them, ofcourse!” He laughs and thumps Tolys’ back. “That would be bad, dear Aleksanderwould be so disappointed in you… a German novel too,” his brow furrows, “orhalf of one, I’ll go back for the rest when Kolya finishes copying it…”

“Ivan!” Tolys snaps, not looking at him but rather at theshadows that border mostly-empty street around them, and Ivan’s face turnstowards him, star-like eyes blinking away their radiance.

“It’s Vanya, Tolyushka, aren’t we friends?”

I’d never getdrunk smuggling literature, Tolys thinks, no matter how many times I’ve gone; Ican’t be careless or they’d shoot me in the head a few feet from the border.

(But my own peoplearen’t the ones doing it to me doesn’t even pass through his mind.)

He doesn’t answer. “You’re drunk, Ivan,” he repeats quietly.“It’s time to come back home.”

“Home?” Ivan murmurs, and tugs him closer, leaning hisuncovered head against Tolys’ shoulder – pale hair shaggy and dusted with snow.

“I’m not leaving you here for the Okhranka to find youpassed out or babbling about poetry,” Tolys says curtly (I’m not cruel, unlike you), trying to move as fastas he can with the extra weight and Ivan’s feet dragging in the snow – that isto say, slowly, and the cold bites at his face and sets into his ankles.

“You said home.” Ivan laughs a little and pokes at hischest. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“Move,” Tolys grates out, and home is not Ivan’s Moscow townhouse, home is Vilnius or Kaunas or… but hehasn’t been among his own people in five years, and before that, fleetingly,always sneaking in or out of one house or another, always returning to – homeis not Ivan’s house – home is notIvan.

But Ivan simply leans more of his weight onto Tolys’shoulders, right hand affectionately brushing snowflakes off the collar ofTolys’ coat, and smiles bright as awhole constellation. “Ah, how I care for you, Litva.”

Tolys doesn’t respond.

The yellow lamplight he left burning casts a hazy semicircleonto the half-frozen snow, caked in piles on the sidewalk under the window. Hecasts a final glance around at the darkened street – the lone streetlightflickering on and off at intervals, the closed milliner’s, the sound of acarriage a few blocks up – before opening the door and ducking inside; the sameway you do before reentering a town five miles east of the Prussian border,with Lithuanian books and church texts and newspapers sewn into your coat andthe bottom of your bag.

Ivan stared at the ceiling. There was a water mark on it that was shaped exactly like a dog with only three legs.

If he squinted, it looked more like a duck, actually.

"Tolys," he hissed. Beside him, Tolys raised his head, blinking blearily.

"Whaaat," he mumbled. At least it sounded like he had said "what". It could easily have been "but", or "mutt", or just "ughhh".

"Is that a three-legged dog or a duck?" he said urgently. Tolys stared at him. His expression could be best summed up as:

it is past midnight and i have work in the morning what is this idiot even talking about

but what he actually said was, "It's a cat. Go to sleep."

Ivan peered up at the stain. "I don't see a cat," he said doubtfully. "Maybe a turtle..."

"go. to. sleep."

"Okay," he said in a small voice. Tolys's head hit the pillow again with a soft whump.

Ivan sighed and kept staring at the ceiling. His neck itched. He scratched it. The itch moved to his arm.

The clock said 1:47 in blinking red letters. Ivan groaned and pushed the covers off of himself. Maybe, he thought, if he had some tea or hot chocolate or something, and maybe a snack, he’d be able to fall asleep. Tolys’s sleeping face, smashed sideways into the pillow, still looked vaguely annoyed, so he tried to be quiet and didn’t turn any lights on until he was at the stairs.

Everything looks different in the dark.

He groped for the light switch, didn’t find it, and leaned forward, running his hand along the wall, and by the time he realized he was far too far out he was already falling. He yelped, felt his shoulder hit a stair, yelped again, and then switched to a continuous scream when he kept falling.

He heard the bedroom slam open, and the light switched on and he was blinking up at his husband from the bottom of the staircase, vision blurry with involuntary tears of pain.

“Vanya! Are you alright?”

“I think my leg’s broken,” Ivan informed him.

Tolys made his way carefully down the stairs and bent to see the leg.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” he said. “If it were broken you’d still be screaming.”

“It really hurts,” Ivan whined. “We should still go to the hospital. Just in case.”

Tolys sighed.

“Fine. Can you walk?”

“No.”

Tolys looked like he was re-evaluating his life choices, but he got his arm around Ivan’s back and hoisted him up with a grunt. Ivan felt bad for him. He knew he was heavy, and almost all of his weight was now leaning on Tolys’s shoulder. But they staggered and limped their way out to the car; Ivan leaned back in the passenger seat and rubbed his aching leg while Tolys went back inside to get the keys, then back inside again to get his jacket.

“Why were you even up?” Tolys said at one point, his voice straining to be gentle over the worry and the exhaustion and the frustration of being woken up.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Ivan said quietly, fidgeting with the hem of his pajama shirt.

“Hey, that’s not your fault. Don’t feel bad.” Tolys flashed him a quick smile before looking back to the road. “I don’t really mind driving you to the ER at two in the morning, Vanya. What else are spouses for?”