So, I just finished reading the updates for A Language of Their Own and this is what you get! I originally had a much more generic, fluffy idea going. You know, the standard "Alfred doesn't now how to skate, so Ivan teaches him" thing. But the angst plot bunnies took over and I do what I do best, write slightly dark themed things with lots of italics and flashbacks. Hope you enjoy!

Spinning around and around, the white world whirling around him like a snowflake blown about by the wind.

It had been a year now, since the accident. A whole year had gone by without him even knowing it. My, how time flies when you're having fun. He smiled wryly at the thought. The last year had been anything but fun for him. Nights spent lying awake, wondering at the fact that he was gone.

Gone, flying through the skies at a hundred miles an hour, rocketing across the ice with startling precision. Ivan had always been the stronger skater, but Alfred had always been the stronger swimmer.

In the first weeks, it had seemed like every morning he would wake up and for a second he forgot. He would smile and turn over, expecting to find him there. He never did, he was always alone in bed. Those days he wouldn't get up until well into the afternoon, if he got up at all. Those were the days when he forgot to eat, forgot to sleep, almost forgot to breathe

Breathing in sync as their hands clasped. The larger man smiled over at him and he felt like his heart would melt. He was sure the air around them was warm enough to melt the ice now; he sure wasn't feeling the cold.

But gradually, as weeks passed into months, he started to learn to live again. It wasn't really living, what he did. But he got up at a decent hour, dressed himself, and went to work. What more could they really expect from him. Wasn't it enough that he was still functioning, albeit barely? But no, it was never enough. They wanted him to smile. Traitors.

"Smile for me, solnuska. Please?" He asked, leading him out onto the ice.

"But Ivan! I don't want to go skating, I'm horrible at it!" He protested, trying to stay on the shore.

"You are not horrible, my sunflower, you simply need more practice. Come, I will show you."

Couldn't they see he didn't want to smile? Not even now, a year after. Everyone else had moved on and forgotten, too caught up in their own lives to notice that his was falling down around him. He felt so alone without the Russian man beside him in life and love. The only place he felt he belonged was in the graveyard. How ironic was that? A fleeting thought that that probably wasn't the correct use of irony flitted through his head and he let it pass, not pushing it away or examining it too closely. He came here every day now, to talk to him. And every time he left he could feel his heart breaking again.

Breaking. He could hear the ice crack seconds before being plunged into the icy water, but there was nothing he could do. They couldn't move fast enough to get away before it was too late. He had told Ivan it was a bad idea to go out on the ice this late in the season.

His friends told him he needed to move on, that a year was long enough to mourn. Who were they to judge how long it took to mourn the love of your life? He would be mourning for the rest of his days.

He struggled against the pull of the water sucking him under; the weight from his heavy winter clothing and the ice skates on his feet dragging him down, down, down into the dark, freezing depths.

"Hey big guy, guess who came back to see you?" He whispers softly as he sits by the head of the grave, tracing his fingers over the name on the stone. Ivan Braginsky, his heart and soul, was buried beneath that deceptively green grass.

"Ivan! Ivan!" He called, thrashing about in the water. He had somehow managed to get his skates and coat off and fight his way to the surface. But now his lover was nowhere in sight. He dove down, trying to see his shape in the dim light piercing the water.

"It's been a year now. I wish I could tell you that I'm okay, that it's gotten better. I know that's what you'd want to hear if you were still here. But dammit, I need you." He choked out, eyes burning with unshed tears.

He finally found him, sinking to the bottom despite his best efforts to keep himself afloat. The heavy coat he always wore during the winter dragging him down. Alfred tried to pull him up, but the only thing he did was succeed in being pulled down with him. He tried to pull the coat off, but it stuck to the other like glue.

"Dammit, you asshole, why did you have to go and leave me here on my own!? I can't do this without you! I don't want to!" He sobbed, fists clenching in the grass as if he could dig his way to where his love lay resting.

He was running out of air, lungs burning for oxygen and head starting to go light. Ivan merely smiled sadly at him through the murky light of the lake and pressed a gentle kiss to cold lips as he shoved Alfred towards the surface. Unable to fight against the force of the water, Alfred bobbed up and took a gulp of air.

"None of the others understand. They don't...they don't know how I felt, how I still feel about you. I love you, you fucking bastard and you left me here! If you weren't already dead I'd kill you myself!" He punched the ground, trying to release his impotent rage.

Alfred dived again and again, trying to find him, to pull him out of the water. But he saw neither hide nor hair of him. Two minutes later he was pulled out of the freezing waters and rushed to the hospital to be treated for hypothermia. But there was no cure for the hole in his chest.

"Please tell me it gets better. Or at least let me know that I'll die soon. This pain, it's just too much. I'm not as strong as you thought I was, I'm not as strong as you were." His voice was a hoarse whisper now, his body so sapped of energy that he was now lying curved around the grave.

They fished the body out of the pond three days later. It had been a closed casket funeral, sensibly so. Alfred didn't think he could handle his last memory of his lover being of a drowned corpse. But those eyes, those sad purple eyes as he said goodbye in the frigid water of the lake...they would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Alfred wiped the tears from his eyes and sat up, pressing a kiss to his fingers and then tracing them over the name on the tombstone one more time. "I guess I gotta head back now. It's getting kind of late. But I'll see you tomorrow, yeah? And every day after that. I love you, Ivan."

"I love you, you know. Today, tomorrow, and every day after that." He looked up at his boyfriend and smiled. He didn't know what prompted him to say that, but who was he to question romance?" The other man just chuckled and kissed him on the cheek.

"I love you too, Alfred. Now what do you say we go skating, da?" He asked, taking the American's hand and squeezing it.

"I don't know, Ivan. It's pretty late in the season, aren't you afraid the ice is too thin?" He asked, biting his lip in worry.

"Don't worry, my love. Everything will be fine, you'll see.

"You were such a liar, Ivan. Nothing is ever fine." And with that, Alfred turned his back on the grave where his heart lay and left the cemetery.