[hetalia] the american dream -- one
title: the american dream -- one
genre: slice-of-life, gen, comedy, drama
pairings: side hungary/prussia, mentions and hints of belarus/many people
rating: T
warnings: most likely, many inaccuracies
summary: [human AU] somehow, at the end of the day, Natalia and Elizaveta are happy to have each other. a multichapter fic about friendship, love, family, and lots of other stuff.
notes: originally started for nanowrimo, this fic is my first huge multichapter baby and it's still uncompleted.
She woke up with flowers on the pillow beside her and a waffle house coupon tucked uncomfortably in the waistband of her pyjama bottoms.
It was morning, the downstairs neighbours were blasting old rock and roll, and she had a splitting headache.
Natalia blinked. It was the premise of all bad movies: a convenient lapse of memory about the past night's events and a chance that she suddenly had an unknown lover. Unlike the movies, however, Natalia Alfroskaya did not freak out; she merely set the flowers and the coupon down on her dresser and went right back to sleep.
She dreamed of sunflowers and trees made out of glass. It was all very pleasant.
---
"So how was your day yesterday?" Elizaveta asked her over the breakfast table. This was a common enough occurrence, since Elizaveta was very into questions even though Natalia was not so keen on answers.
They lived first as friends and second as roommates. Elizaveta was studying mechanics at the same university Natalia went to, and she worked part time in a dimly lit café that had been planning on expanding for years but never found the right opportunity to. Natalia studied architecture because she liked the sound of it, when in actual fact she had wanted to go into math but checked off the wrong box by mistake. Elizaveta told her that she should change faculties, but Natalia refused on the base that it didn't matter what she studied; in two years she would go back to Russia and marry her fiancée and all would be well.
Thinking about all of this, Natalia shifted in her seat until she was comfortable. The old wooden chairs they used were small: just like everything else in their apartment. "Were you not here?" She asked, rubbing at her eyes. Elizaveta came and went like the wind, one day she would be there and the next she would phone from all the way downtown saying that she was staying at her boyfriend's for the night. Natalia never spent more than nine hours away from her room.
"I told you I was staying over at Gilbert's." This was said as Elizaveta passed the cereal box, nearly knocking over the milk carton.
"Did you? I don't remember." Natalia wrinkled her nose at the cereal. Elizaveta had bought something multigrain again, which was not only severely unattractive but also very bland. "I don't remember anything from last night. I have a headache."
Elizaveta frowned. "Maybe you got drunk."
Natalia tried to remember. "Maybe." She looked down at her empty bowl. "I'm not hungry."
They both paused as the downstairs neighbours cranked the music up even higher. Sighing, Elizaveta got up from her seat and jumped up and down until the Beatles were lowered to a less annoying volume. After she sat back down, she ate a spoonful of brown cheerio's. Natalia watched in disgust. "You must have done some cleaning though. All the bookcases have been dusted."
Natalia avoided watching her roommate eat, focusing on the other girl's long brown curls instead. "Maybe I brought in a maid?" Natalia mused as she pushed her bowl away. "That would explain the flowers."
Elizaveta raised her eyebrow. "You got flowers from someone?"
"And a waffle house coupon."
"That's so romantic!" In an instant, hands reached across the table to grab hers. "Natalia, that's wonderful! I've always wanted to have a drunken one night stand, you know. Do you have any clue as to who he'd be?" She paused, frowning. "Come to think of it, Gilbert never gives me flowers, even after sex."
Natalia ran a hand through her tangled hair, noticing that it had been washed. "That's because Gilbert is a cheapskate."
Opening her mouth to object, Elizaveta stopped to think about it. "Yes, I suppose you're right. But still, Natalia, back to more important things! This could be your destined one!"
"My destined one is back in Russia," Natalia replied calmly. She didn't understand why she had to explain it again; she had told the other girl plenty of times already. "His name is-"
"I know his name." Elizaveta interrupted irritably. "You've told me like five billion times already." Natalia took offence to this, surely she had not mentioned it five billion times. Perhaps only a hundred times, give or take a few. "And he's not your destined one, he's the one that was picked out for you by your parents." Their hands still clasped together tightly, Elizaveta grinned. "Don't you want to have someone that makes your heart flutter, that makes your life worth living?"
Natalia sighed, Elizaveta's hands were getting clammy. "I do have someone like that. It is my brother."
"He doesn't count," Elizaveta groaned. "Don't you want to meet your Mr. Right, Natalia?"
"Is Gilbert your Mr. Right?" Natalia asked, unimpressed with the conversation. Elizaveta said a lot of crap for a person who was dating a college dropout who thought he was from a made up country.
Elizaveta finally let go of Natalia's hands, frowning. "I don't know. It's too early to tell."
Natalia looked out the window, wiping her hands on her pyjamas. The city looked back out at her, cars whizzing and pigeons pooping and everyone not caring about anyone else. She was in the city of Las Vegas and she was engaged to someone she didn't even know. Well, she knew his name and face. She knew his favourite colour and lucky number and that he didn't like pickles, but she didn't know him.
She wondered what she was doing with her life. She had come to America eight years ago as an awkward freshman that wanted to find her brother, but she had also wanted opportunities, adventure, fun.
Had she gotten any of it? She thought about the homework piling up on her desk and frowned deeper.
Elizaveta kicked her lightly under the table. "Where are you right now?" The brown-haired girl asked, her tone teasing.
Natalia looked back outside the window, not retaliating the kick. "I am on the line in between depression and apathy; somewhere distant and far away from the likes of you."
"Is that so?" Elizaveta pursed her lips, also looking out the window their breakfast table sat next to. Three floors down, people's heads moved through the crowds in an endless sea of worries and troubles. "Well, then. Do you want to find the person you were with last night?"
"No, I'm not curious. Today I am only going to order Chinese takeout and watch television until I remember the project I have to complete by Wednesday. Then, I will call my brother and leave a message on his answering machine." Natalia switched her view back to the pale yellow walls of their apartment.
Elizaveta clicked her tongue. "Maybe he changed his number again," she suggested. "And what are you going to do after that?"
"Maybe." Natalia agreed. She paused to think about her next answer. "After that, I will bake a cake. It will be chocolate flavoured and in the shape of my dying heart."
"Very poetic," Elizaveta said in approval. "But you don't know how to bake."
Natalia raised an eyebrow. "But you do."
Staring at her for a second, Elizaveta blinked. And then she laughed. "I actually have a date tonight, but that can wait. I'm sure Gilbert would be happy to be put aside for you."
"I like you more than I like waffles." Natalia replied, the smallest of smiles on her lips.
Elizaveta tilted her head as she smiled back. "And how much do you like waffles?"
"Quite a bit."
They looked at each other, feeling a sense of friendship (and perhaps if they had been slightly younger and more foolish, they would've kissed).
---
"Do you ever think that sometimes, you might be going down the wrong way of life?" Elizaveta asked this question as she measured out flour into old measuring cups that they had found somewhere between the meat cleaver and cheese grater.
Natalia hummed as she sat in her chair, watching television. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, everyone makes choices. Do you ever wonder if those choices were right?"
She turned around in her seat to grab the back of her chair and wrap her legs around the frame. "Yes, sometimes. But then I stop wondering, because I know I'm on the right path."
Elizaveta laughed, pouring the flour into one of the many multicoloured bowls that Natalia hadn't bothered to keep track of. "How do you know you're on the right path?"
Natalia shrugged, her glasses falling down her nose, "Because my family told me to go down this path, so that's where I'll go."
"Do you really love your family that much?" Elizaveta brushed a stray hair out of her face, leaving a mark of flour on her cheek. "Aside from Ivan, of course. I'm talking about your parents."
Natalia shrugged again, this time pushing her horribly expensive glasses back into place. "Not particularly, but they are the ones that brought me into this world, and so I must respect them."
Elizaveta laughed just as the oven beeped. "I find it strange that your country is so much more different than ours. In America, all the children run free of their parents, and hate to do what they say."
"Oh, I don't like doing what they say."
"Yes, but you do it nevertheless."
"Don't you do it too?" Innocently, Natalia set her chin down on the top of the chair's back, looking up through her black frames at her roommate.
Elizaveta snorted, thinking of the last time her mother had told her to do something. She didn't even remember. "Not as much as you."
Natalia tilted, her head, "But you do your laundry when your mother tells you to."
"I suppose you're right, but that's not the same thing. You're looking at this differently than I am." Silence was kept for a while as Elizaveta turned on the electric mixer. There were times when Natalia suspected the other girl used to live in a kitchen appliance store, since she had so many baking accessories and not much of anything else.
When the electric mixer finally died down, Natalia continued, "I'm just using common sense."
Elizaveta snorted again, "Are you saying that I don't have common sense?"
"No, I'm just saying that you are very free in your thinking." Feeling like she made a lot of sense, Natalia lifted her chin and nodded.
Shaking her head, Elizaveta got out the cake pan. "I don't get it. Have you been drinking today?"
Natalia looked to the side at all the beer cans on the windowsill. It was like a game, every day new ones would appear and old ones were taken away in secret. They knew someone had drunk, yet they didn't know how many were from the previous days and how many had been drunk the same day. Or perhaps they just didn't want to know. "Not nearly as much as you."
"How did you know I was drinking?" Winking, Elizaveta poured the batter into the pan with ease. Natalia remembered when she had once tried to do that; it had been neither easy nor beautiful. That was one of the reasons why she had not been allowed to take part in the cake-making, even though it had been her idea.
"Because red wine is stained on your lips." This was a lie, because they had not drunk red wine at all. They only drank red wine after nine when they wanted to feel classy and ran out of space on the windowsill forbeer cans. (They drank champagne the night before a test and whenever they felt like it, which was rare because none of them liked champagne anyway.)
"That's called lipstick, Natalia."
Natalia got out of her chair and walked into the kitchen, leaning against the fridge. "Really? It looks like red wine to me."
Elizaveta checked her reflection in the mirror above the sink. "It looks like blood to me."
"You have blood on your lips? You just said that it was lipstick." Opening the oven, Natalia basked in the warmth before Elizaveta stuck the pan in and closed it, nearly taking Natalia's fingers with it.
Laughing, Elizaveta began to wash her hands. "It could be blood, it could be lipstick. How would you know?"
"If you had blood on your lips, whose blood would it be?" It was an honest question.
The brunette grinned. "Maybe Gilbert's. Maybe yours. Maybe mine. I could be a vampire, you know."
Natalia shook her head, remembering the movie commercials she had seen on the television the other day. "I don't get why everyone here in America is so obsessed with vampires. The thought of someone sucking my blood is nauseating."
Patting her on the head lightly, Elizaveta chuckled, "You just don't get romance in general. It's the thrill of it, it's the feeling you get in your heart when you're doing something that's forbidden."
"Why would you do something that's forbidden? It's forbidden for a reason, most likely because it's dangerous." Moving away from any future head-pats, Natalia frowned.
Elizaveta watched her move away with a smile. "Why do you intend to go back to Russia and marry someone you don't even know?"
Natalia frowned, "That doesn't have anything to do with this."
"It has everything to do with this." And with that, Elizaveta stretched her arms over her head and yawned. "Oh, and I couldn't find any heart-shaped cake pans so you'll just have to do with a regular circular one."
"Oh," Natalia stopped to think, "Then it'll be in the form of my beautiful eye."
Elizaveta raised an eyebrow. "Eye as in singular?"
"Eye as in my left one," Natalia said as she took off her glasses and put her face forward. "My right one is slightly smaller and definitely not as beautiful."
To her roommate, Natalia's blue eyes were both beautiful. Elizaveta told her this as she blinked her own bright green ones.
Putting her glasses back on, Natalia moved to go back to her chair. "I have not told my fiancée this yet."
"I'm sure he'll find it a pleasant surprise." Elizaveta joked, smiling. Natalia did not smile back.
genre: slice-of-life, gen, comedy, drama
pairings: side hungary/prussia, mentions and hints of belarus/many people
rating: T
warnings: most likely, many inaccuracies
summary: [human AU] somehow, at the end of the day, Natalia and Elizaveta are happy to have each other. a multichapter fic about friendship, love, family, and lots of other stuff.
notes: originally started for nanowrimo, this fic is my first huge multichapter baby and it's still uncompleted.
She woke up with flowers on the pillow beside her and a waffle house coupon tucked uncomfortably in the waistband of her pyjama bottoms.
It was morning, the downstairs neighbours were blasting old rock and roll, and she had a splitting headache.
Natalia blinked. It was the premise of all bad movies: a convenient lapse of memory about the past night's events and a chance that she suddenly had an unknown lover. Unlike the movies, however, Natalia Alfroskaya did not freak out; she merely set the flowers and the coupon down on her dresser and went right back to sleep.
She dreamed of sunflowers and trees made out of glass. It was all very pleasant.
---
"So how was your day yesterday?" Elizaveta asked her over the breakfast table. This was a common enough occurrence, since Elizaveta was very into questions even though Natalia was not so keen on answers.
They lived first as friends and second as roommates. Elizaveta was studying mechanics at the same university Natalia went to, and she worked part time in a dimly lit café that had been planning on expanding for years but never found the right opportunity to. Natalia studied architecture because she liked the sound of it, when in actual fact she had wanted to go into math but checked off the wrong box by mistake. Elizaveta told her that she should change faculties, but Natalia refused on the base that it didn't matter what she studied; in two years she would go back to Russia and marry her fiancée and all would be well.
Thinking about all of this, Natalia shifted in her seat until she was comfortable. The old wooden chairs they used were small: just like everything else in their apartment. "Were you not here?" She asked, rubbing at her eyes. Elizaveta came and went like the wind, one day she would be there and the next she would phone from all the way downtown saying that she was staying at her boyfriend's for the night. Natalia never spent more than nine hours away from her room.
"I told you I was staying over at Gilbert's." This was said as Elizaveta passed the cereal box, nearly knocking over the milk carton.
"Did you? I don't remember." Natalia wrinkled her nose at the cereal. Elizaveta had bought something multigrain again, which was not only severely unattractive but also very bland. "I don't remember anything from last night. I have a headache."
Elizaveta frowned. "Maybe you got drunk."
Natalia tried to remember. "Maybe." She looked down at her empty bowl. "I'm not hungry."
They both paused as the downstairs neighbours cranked the music up even higher. Sighing, Elizaveta got up from her seat and jumped up and down until the Beatles were lowered to a less annoying volume. After she sat back down, she ate a spoonful of brown cheerio's. Natalia watched in disgust. "You must have done some cleaning though. All the bookcases have been dusted."
Natalia avoided watching her roommate eat, focusing on the other girl's long brown curls instead. "Maybe I brought in a maid?" Natalia mused as she pushed her bowl away. "That would explain the flowers."
Elizaveta raised her eyebrow. "You got flowers from someone?"
"And a waffle house coupon."
"That's so romantic!" In an instant, hands reached across the table to grab hers. "Natalia, that's wonderful! I've always wanted to have a drunken one night stand, you know. Do you have any clue as to who he'd be?" She paused, frowning. "Come to think of it, Gilbert never gives me flowers, even after sex."
Natalia ran a hand through her tangled hair, noticing that it had been washed. "That's because Gilbert is a cheapskate."
Opening her mouth to object, Elizaveta stopped to think about it. "Yes, I suppose you're right. But still, Natalia, back to more important things! This could be your destined one!"
"My destined one is back in Russia," Natalia replied calmly. She didn't understand why she had to explain it again; she had told the other girl plenty of times already. "His name is-"
"I know his name." Elizaveta interrupted irritably. "You've told me like five billion times already." Natalia took offence to this, surely she had not mentioned it five billion times. Perhaps only a hundred times, give or take a few. "And he's not your destined one, he's the one that was picked out for you by your parents." Their hands still clasped together tightly, Elizaveta grinned. "Don't you want to have someone that makes your heart flutter, that makes your life worth living?"
Natalia sighed, Elizaveta's hands were getting clammy. "I do have someone like that. It is my brother."
"He doesn't count," Elizaveta groaned. "Don't you want to meet your Mr. Right, Natalia?"
"Is Gilbert your Mr. Right?" Natalia asked, unimpressed with the conversation. Elizaveta said a lot of crap for a person who was dating a college dropout who thought he was from a made up country.
Elizaveta finally let go of Natalia's hands, frowning. "I don't know. It's too early to tell."
Natalia looked out the window, wiping her hands on her pyjamas. The city looked back out at her, cars whizzing and pigeons pooping and everyone not caring about anyone else. She was in the city of Las Vegas and she was engaged to someone she didn't even know. Well, she knew his name and face. She knew his favourite colour and lucky number and that he didn't like pickles, but she didn't know him.
She wondered what she was doing with her life. She had come to America eight years ago as an awkward freshman that wanted to find her brother, but she had also wanted opportunities, adventure, fun.
Had she gotten any of it? She thought about the homework piling up on her desk and frowned deeper.
Elizaveta kicked her lightly under the table. "Where are you right now?" The brown-haired girl asked, her tone teasing.
Natalia looked back outside the window, not retaliating the kick. "I am on the line in between depression and apathy; somewhere distant and far away from the likes of you."
"Is that so?" Elizaveta pursed her lips, also looking out the window their breakfast table sat next to. Three floors down, people's heads moved through the crowds in an endless sea of worries and troubles. "Well, then. Do you want to find the person you were with last night?"
"No, I'm not curious. Today I am only going to order Chinese takeout and watch television until I remember the project I have to complete by Wednesday. Then, I will call my brother and leave a message on his answering machine." Natalia switched her view back to the pale yellow walls of their apartment.
Elizaveta clicked her tongue. "Maybe he changed his number again," she suggested. "And what are you going to do after that?"
"Maybe." Natalia agreed. She paused to think about her next answer. "After that, I will bake a cake. It will be chocolate flavoured and in the shape of my dying heart."
"Very poetic," Elizaveta said in approval. "But you don't know how to bake."
Natalia raised an eyebrow. "But you do."
Staring at her for a second, Elizaveta blinked. And then she laughed. "I actually have a date tonight, but that can wait. I'm sure Gilbert would be happy to be put aside for you."
"I like you more than I like waffles." Natalia replied, the smallest of smiles on her lips.
Elizaveta tilted her head as she smiled back. "And how much do you like waffles?"
"Quite a bit."
They looked at each other, feeling a sense of friendship (and perhaps if they had been slightly younger and more foolish, they would've kissed).
---
"Do you ever think that sometimes, you might be going down the wrong way of life?" Elizaveta asked this question as she measured out flour into old measuring cups that they had found somewhere between the meat cleaver and cheese grater.
Natalia hummed as she sat in her chair, watching television. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, everyone makes choices. Do you ever wonder if those choices were right?"
She turned around in her seat to grab the back of her chair and wrap her legs around the frame. "Yes, sometimes. But then I stop wondering, because I know I'm on the right path."
Elizaveta laughed, pouring the flour into one of the many multicoloured bowls that Natalia hadn't bothered to keep track of. "How do you know you're on the right path?"
Natalia shrugged, her glasses falling down her nose, "Because my family told me to go down this path, so that's where I'll go."
"Do you really love your family that much?" Elizaveta brushed a stray hair out of her face, leaving a mark of flour on her cheek. "Aside from Ivan, of course. I'm talking about your parents."
Natalia shrugged again, this time pushing her horribly expensive glasses back into place. "Not particularly, but they are the ones that brought me into this world, and so I must respect them."
Elizaveta laughed just as the oven beeped. "I find it strange that your country is so much more different than ours. In America, all the children run free of their parents, and hate to do what they say."
"Oh, I don't like doing what they say."
"Yes, but you do it nevertheless."
"Don't you do it too?" Innocently, Natalia set her chin down on the top of the chair's back, looking up through her black frames at her roommate.
Elizaveta snorted, thinking of the last time her mother had told her to do something. She didn't even remember. "Not as much as you."
Natalia tilted, her head, "But you do your laundry when your mother tells you to."
"I suppose you're right, but that's not the same thing. You're looking at this differently than I am." Silence was kept for a while as Elizaveta turned on the electric mixer. There were times when Natalia suspected the other girl used to live in a kitchen appliance store, since she had so many baking accessories and not much of anything else.
When the electric mixer finally died down, Natalia continued, "I'm just using common sense."
Elizaveta snorted again, "Are you saying that I don't have common sense?"
"No, I'm just saying that you are very free in your thinking." Feeling like she made a lot of sense, Natalia lifted her chin and nodded.
Shaking her head, Elizaveta got out the cake pan. "I don't get it. Have you been drinking today?"
Natalia looked to the side at all the beer cans on the windowsill. It was like a game, every day new ones would appear and old ones were taken away in secret. They knew someone had drunk, yet they didn't know how many were from the previous days and how many had been drunk the same day. Or perhaps they just didn't want to know. "Not nearly as much as you."
"How did you know I was drinking?" Winking, Elizaveta poured the batter into the pan with ease. Natalia remembered when she had once tried to do that; it had been neither easy nor beautiful. That was one of the reasons why she had not been allowed to take part in the cake-making, even though it had been her idea.
"Because red wine is stained on your lips." This was a lie, because they had not drunk red wine at all. They only drank red wine after nine when they wanted to feel classy and ran out of space on the windowsill forbeer cans. (They drank champagne the night before a test and whenever they felt like it, which was rare because none of them liked champagne anyway.)
"That's called lipstick, Natalia."
Natalia got out of her chair and walked into the kitchen, leaning against the fridge. "Really? It looks like red wine to me."
Elizaveta checked her reflection in the mirror above the sink. "It looks like blood to me."
"You have blood on your lips? You just said that it was lipstick." Opening the oven, Natalia basked in the warmth before Elizaveta stuck the pan in and closed it, nearly taking Natalia's fingers with it.
Laughing, Elizaveta began to wash her hands. "It could be blood, it could be lipstick. How would you know?"
"If you had blood on your lips, whose blood would it be?" It was an honest question.
The brunette grinned. "Maybe Gilbert's. Maybe yours. Maybe mine. I could be a vampire, you know."
Natalia shook her head, remembering the movie commercials she had seen on the television the other day. "I don't get why everyone here in America is so obsessed with vampires. The thought of someone sucking my blood is nauseating."
Patting her on the head lightly, Elizaveta chuckled, "You just don't get romance in general. It's the thrill of it, it's the feeling you get in your heart when you're doing something that's forbidden."
"Why would you do something that's forbidden? It's forbidden for a reason, most likely because it's dangerous." Moving away from any future head-pats, Natalia frowned.
Elizaveta watched her move away with a smile. "Why do you intend to go back to Russia and marry someone you don't even know?"
Natalia frowned, "That doesn't have anything to do with this."
"It has everything to do with this." And with that, Elizaveta stretched her arms over her head and yawned. "Oh, and I couldn't find any heart-shaped cake pans so you'll just have to do with a regular circular one."
"Oh," Natalia stopped to think, "Then it'll be in the form of my beautiful eye."
Elizaveta raised an eyebrow. "Eye as in singular?"
"Eye as in my left one," Natalia said as she took off her glasses and put her face forward. "My right one is slightly smaller and definitely not as beautiful."
To her roommate, Natalia's blue eyes were both beautiful. Elizaveta told her this as she blinked her own bright green ones.
Putting her glasses back on, Natalia moved to go back to her chair. "I have not told my fiancée this yet."
"I'm sure he'll find it a pleasant surprise." Elizaveta joked, smiling. Natalia did not smile back.