[ this is a rewrite of a scene from fyodor dostoevsky's Crime & Punishment, ft russia guest starring as raskolnikov and america as razumikhin. for context, raskolnikov has just axe murdered two people and badly hidden some evidence, has not slept in days, is running a lethal fever, and is generally a greasy unhinged disaster of a man at this point in the story. please enjoy ]
Russia, hands fisting in his hair, stumbled to a halt on the bridge to Vassilyevsky Ostrov, feeling the streets of Petersburg lurch nauseatingly on either side of him. Fine droplets of sweat traced his temples like mocking fingertips, slipping down underneath his collar. He threw his head back and blinked several times, uncomprehending, at the soot-stained apartment building that loomed over him like an omen into the rotten, cloudless sky.
America. The one friend who remembered his name after college. America lived there. He hadn't come here on purpose, no— his feet had carried him unconscious through the streets of their own accord. What a weird feeling. Was it coincidence? Something subconscious? Didn't matter, he thought, a wave of gray fatigue crawling over his aching body. He couldn't go a step further.
He made the long, laborious climb to America's room on the fifth floor.
America was home, praise God, door propped open against the heat. Russia leaned against the doorframe, breathing hollow and ragged, for a long moment. America was hunched over his desk in threadbare pajamas, tongue poking out between his teeth, writing furiously. His bare feet swung an inch above the cheerfully dusty floor for a moment, until Russia hacked out a cough and he spun around.
"Is that you?!" he cried, and the size of his grin made Rus's head hurt. America looked Russia up and down and whistled. "Damn, Russie. Are you as flat broke as you look? Ha!" Russia glanced down at himself, thinking for the first time in weeks of his clothes— threadbare overcoat despite the heat, thrown in a frenzy over his bloodstained shirt, boots barely holding together. "Come on in!! You should sit down; I bet you're tired."
Russia sank obediently onto the leather sofa, overstuffed and swallowing him whole, the room blurring before him. America narrowed his eyes.
"Rus, you— you look really sick. You know that?" Stepping close, he pressed a cool hand to Russia's burning forehead, and Rus's rattling breath seized in his throat as he recoiled.
"Doesn't matter," he rasped, pulling America's hand away. "I came because— I, ehm— I have no job... I, uh, wanted— but nyet, I don't want a job. The hell..."
America snorted in concern. "Russia, you're literally delirious. We should—"
"No. I am not."
Head spinning, dead air rasping in his ears, he struggled free from the clinging sofa. Some part of him, he realized, some vital part, had not expected America to be home, had not expected to have to speak with him. Being face to face with him, with his enormous smile and his hands, touching, touching like he was still a person, as if he'd done nothing wrong, was more than he could stand. His spleen rose within him.
Some unidentifiable, frantic emotion filled his throat like cement as he stumbled across the room.
"Good-bye," he managed.
"Wh—?!" America grabbed his wrist. "Stop it, you weirdo! Stop leaving!"
"I don't want to," Russia gritted out, snatching his hand back.
"Then why are you even here?! Are you nuts? No." America placed a blessedly cool hand on his forearm. "I'm not just gonna let you leave."
"I am here because— govno. No one could help but you, you—" Shut up, he commanded himself— he was rambling, nothing good ever came of that, but too late now— "you are kinder than anybody else, America, you are clever, you can— judge— but eto nye imeet znacheniya, da?" He grabbed America's hand by the wrist and tore it away from him. "But I get it now. I want nothing. You hear? Nothing. Not help. Not— not you. I'm alone. It is enough." He dropped America's hand, darting eyes avoiding his face. "Leave me alone."
"I— don't understand. Stay! Stay just a little longer, you psycho! What are you acting screwy for? Look, there's this job I've got and you could do it with me and we'll split pay! Check it." Russia, hopeless, heart pounding loose and slimy in his head at the things he'd just let slip, had no choice but to stand as America fumbled out a handful of pamphlets, a breathless and probably fake grin across his face. "So I told this guy Heruvimov I'd help him translate his articles for a science magazine into English from German but the thing is I don't actually speak German which I remembered just now. So I've kinda been making stuff up, but, uh— you speak German, right? Look, this one's about whether women count as human beings and this one's about whales. And then the most boring stuff about Rousseau— but look, Rus, for real I could use your help. I can't spell like at all."
Dead silent, Russia reached out for the typed papers America proffered to him, German words blurring incomprehensible before his eyes, and turned for the stairs, black pressing in on his vision from all sides.
He had stumbled out of the door and across the bridge, the sun vicious and unrelenting on his shoulders, when he became aware of the packet of papers clutched in his fist and stopped short. Turned back.
He had trudged halfway up the stairs when America ran straight into him on the landing, sending him reeling back, shooting out a clumsy hand to steady them both.
"Are you raving?!" America demanded, seeing who it was and sending a hard finger into Russia's chest. "I'm worried about you, Russia! Is this some kind of joke? You're gonna make me just as crazy as you!" Rus pressed the papers back into America's hands, eyelids half-falling with fatigue.
"I do not want translation."
"Then what on planet earth do you want, huh?!" Rus swayed where he stood, looking up at America, his vision subdividing itself, cracking like glass along fault lines. The planes of America's face caught the fierce sunlight through a windowpane, searing across his cheekbone, the bridge of his nose, like fire in his hair. There was a freckle on his upper lip. "Will you— will you at least tell me where you're living?!" America demanded, breaking the feverish eye contact with something like nervousness. When he looked up again, though, Russia had descended the stairs and was stepping once more out the door.
The crowd jostled, elbowed him, and his breath was deafening in his own ears— enough that he convinced himself the yells from behind him were a figment of his tormented imagination. Better this way. Better this way.
— — —
a/n: okay so maybe it's a little ooc but this scene is my favorite ever and if u have not read crime and punishment u gotta. it has CRIMES. and also (get this) Punishmnts. and minimal misogyny. russian classic lit >>