#my ult unable to be poly ot3

[unhetalia]

ivan being in love with an alfred who is with arthur and using their terrible relationship to get away with spending time with him like a dog desperate for scraps. he tries to goad alfred into physical altercations because at least he's touching alfred, and maybe he'll close his eyes while he's got alfred pinned to the ground and squirming and try to imagine —well. something different.

arthur sees right through him, but he doesn't mock him or threaten him like ivan expects. instead, he looks at ivan with something like sympathy in his eyes, and ivan HATES that even more. he loathes arthur, who receives all of alfred's love and never seems to appreciate it. who doesn't know what it feels like to have the sun shine on you one day and then disappear, because even when arthur and alfred were at odds, they always orbited each other.

arthur knows that it could have been ivan. that once upon a time, when his and alfred's relationship had been at its worst, ivan had been there, and alfred had noticed. he knows that if the wind had blown differently, he could've been in ivan's place, pining over someone happily unattainable. he looks at ivan and wonders: if he couldn't kiss alfred or hold him close at night, would he resort to violence for a poor facsimile of the experience?

alfred looks at russia and only sees someone who loathes him. he doesn't remember looking at him, his country fighting each other and another trying to take his place, and his mind almost forming a maybe. a tiny blip that could have blossomed into something had it been watered and allowed to grow.

(but it hadn't, because ivan had left and hadn't been allowed to look back, and the seed never got a chance to be planted and instead arthur had come back into his life and made a garden.)