#ruslith

[shivershin]

[hetagaeru]

#aphrarepairsweek2018 day 7: formal / nyo rusliet  nyo russia is having a great time at the ball but it seems nyo liet has spotted a competitor in the distance - nyo france, also after anya’s heart  ⚔

[rooshliet]

I drew fanart for a very beautiful fanfiction by @hinotorihime !

Please go check out their writing, they are very talented!

[hinotorihime]

Ruslith + consort au

(blows kisses)

tolys is actually from a different country so he has a lot of little religious/cultural rituals he still does. for example, every night he talks to his parents’ spirits, telling them about his day, about vanya, wish you could meet him you’d love him he’s so wonderful I love him so much-- (later, after they have little lud this turns into a lot of WAS I THIS MUCH TROUBLE I’M SORRY)

vanya and tasha both have to review tolys’s clothing choices and how much jewelry he’s wearing before they let him go anywhere because he has whatever the opposite of “taste and restraint” is. what’s the point of being rich and powerful if you can’t show it off?

they all do their paperwork and stuff together in the library. it’s mostly quiet, but sometimes vanya comes out with some weird non-sequitur and the conversation ends with the boys on the floor cuddling and tasha taking her stuff into her bedroom so she can focus

BALLS

sometimes tolys and vanya go on short vacations i.e. they take their work to a different house where it’s just them and a few servants and occasionally feliks and leave tasha in charge so they can just enjoy themselves and spend time together

[hinotorihime]

so I have this ridiculously self-indulgent au

doodle of the scene right before ruslith becomes ruslithbela, aka the king is a lot more okay with being married to two people at once than with wearing a fancy swan-feather cloak for the wedding. tolys was born poor and doesn’t understand why vanya’s complaining, he’d wear that kind of thing every day if he could get away with it

[meadowlarkx]

(shifty eyes) 26 for ruslith

this is set late 1800s-ish! also…i know this is you @hinotorihime

26. “Come back home.”

Snow frames the windows: the old glass seems to drip in thepanes, thick on the bottom, narrow at the top. They’re in Moscow, not SaintPetersburg – the more cracked and aging of the two capitals, and they’re inIvan’s townhouse, not at court: the beautifully designed wallpaper is peelingoff the walls in places. Resources are always running short for upkeep.

Tolys knows the light from the room where he sits (legscrossed, at the corner of the parlor, the windowsill brushing his thigh and thecold comfort of a wall at his back) is falling out onto the road outside,forming a blurry semicircle of pale gold. Even as his eyes scan back and forth overthe pages of the book on his lap –  in Russianthis time, because Ivan’s yet to come back and he’s not stupid – he’s acutely aware, as always, of the way the scene mustlook from outside: the little rectangle of yellow kerosene light, the manreading.

Without turning his head, he glances over, through theuneven, discolored glass: flecks of wet snow swirl down through the air. Acrossthe street, a few houses down, a streetlight glimmers. Two men walk on theopposite side of the road, arm in arm, bundled up against the cold. They passthe house without a second glance. No sign of Ivan.

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.

*letniy moy - “my summery one”, @hinotorihime‘s headcanon as an epithet Russia could use for Lithuania, that I’m borrowing here!

[hinotorihime]

@hetalia-shipping-yard here you go sweetie! ^^ thanks for the request, I’ve been needing more cute in my life.

this is based on an otp prompt thing I saw once and had saved on my computer for months but never actually did anything with. I’m glad for the excuse to finally use it! not that I really need an excuse most of the time haha

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?”

(He was a good deal less kind about it half an hour later, when the doctor’s verdict was ‘bruised shin, you’ll be fine’. Ivan didn’t really blame him.)

[hinotorihime]

@perlumi-delirium I’m actually just going to make this a separate post bc it’s a teensy bit off topic xD

this is a really good analysis of the situation, and I agree on most of your points!

I feel that ruslith is one ship that really, really hinges on your characterization of both characters. I actually discussed this with someone last night and the thing is, most of the ruslith fanfics I’ve read feature a very timid, all-loving-all-forgiving Lithuania– which, if you want to characterize him that way, that’s fine, but you have to understand it gives the pairing a very different feel than, for example, the stubborn and cynical way that I write him. and of course that’s not even getting started on the many, many different ways Russia is written– from sweet & childish & can do no wrong to sadistic, abusive rapetruck. (and then you get history involved and things get even more confusing.)

I shouldn’t have to point out how wildly different, therefore, different characterization can make the pairing. so it’s really hard to say “I ship ruslith” without also clarifying how you ship it. and considering the more… problematic aspects of the way the characterizations and thus the ship are usually portrayed, it’s even more important to be clear on this.