Archive of Our Own

The light had slowly dimmed over long winter days with little to numb the seeping cold. 

Zoya had moved out late October to her brand new riverfront studio and no amount of reassurance –´Nothing will change, we will still see each other all the time, Lin. Don’t look so sad, you’re breaking my heart, baby.’– had been enough to keep the loneliness away. Alina’s working hours at the bookstore had slowly dwindled, naturally leading to less time spent out of her sad little flat with the single-glazed windows and the mildewy carpet. Genya’s brutal internship at some flashy record company had paid off and her new permanent position gave her the opportunity to travel more, to meet a whole new group of dizzyingly fashionable people who secretly scared Alina to death. Fedyor’s former just-fling had turned into a serious boyfriend almost overnight and the tension released in the aftermath of that simple switch had cut loose the few remaining ties of their comfortable and safe uni friendship. 

By late November, Alina’s life had felt completely hollow, every day marred by the feeling of being slowly unmoored one rope at a time. Week after week the pull to hide under her bed covers and dissolve into the darkness until there was nothing left of that sad lonely scrap of a person she had turned into had become a constant fight. 

At some point something must have gone really really wrong. She had been moving forward, trying to find her footing in the messy aftermath of graduation. They all had, their eclectic group of friends-turned-family. But she’d stumbled, it was hard to know when exactly, but everyone had gone on ahead; everyone except Alina. Life had simply kept moving and Alina hadn’t and now, with each passing day, catching up seems harder, the distance between her and the world and all the people that matter to her getting bigger by the minute.                  

By December the unbearable weight of the Holidays had threatened to pull her under. She would be alone, surely. For the first time since– Since before. 

But, like a desert mirage of bright ocean waves under the overpowering weight of impossible, life-extinguishing heat, life had provided a glimmer of hope. A small spark, enough to prove that the light  might have dimmed low enough to hurt, but she was not alone. Not yet. 

'I’m hosting Christmas + New Year’s this year. You are all invited to join me at my grandpa’s winter cabin  in Cornwall, it will be cosy and nice and life-changing. The BEAUTIFUL bonds of friendship AND LOVE will grow stronger as we fight to start a decent fire like the useless urbanites we are. 

 

No need to RSVP you are all REQUIRED to attend or I WILL END YOU. 

 

DON’T TEST ME ON THIS.

 

Food will be provided. BRING ALCOHOL and so on and so forth if you know what I mean :)

 

Partners tolerated as long as they aren’t annoying. (I’m 1000% serious, don't test me!!!!!!!)

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

Ps i forget who has a license/car/has exorcised themselves from their crippling fear of driving but we need to arrange transportation for the rest of us. M’s car can fit 5. Discuss? 

 

Nina’

---

“God, Matt, don’t start— Give me a moment, I need to–”

Nina still smells like home, like their cramped student flat and Tesco Value pasta for breakfast after a night out and kissing a girl for the first time and laughing from your belly until it aches. It’s impossible to fight, the need to cling to her soft wool coat and dig her nails into the fabric while they hug. So she doesn’t fight it and lets the feeling fall over her like a blanket instead. Alina breathes her in, on the sidewalk, in the cold, with a running car full of people waiting for them to just get on with it. 

“God, I have missed you. I’m going to cry, your hair smells so nice–” Nina sighs, a deep, powerful thing that seems too much after a mere four-months absence. “I love you, baby. I always forget how tiny you are, I should put you in my pocket and–”

“Princess, she’s freezing out there, can this wait?”

Nina met her boyfriend a few weeks into their third year, a bigger-than-life hulking mass of bravado and sexual eagerness that had been quickly dismissed as a ´been there, done that, let’s move on’ one-off that is now, five years later, both Nina’s husband and everyone’s designated furniture assembler and unofficial ‘you’re going to be a doctor, does this mole look weird to you?’ first responder. 

Matthias’ window is down, freezing wind rustling his hair as he leans out of the open window, a wide smile brightening his whole face into something far warmer than the current weather warrants. Nina pushes her, a soft hand in the vicinity of Alina’s lower back guides her closer to that smile and she bends, frosty nose ticking the rough patch of stubble on the man’s cheek.

“Hi, sweetheart. You look cold.” 

It’s dizzying. Their attention so focused, so painfully earnest and real, a powerful reminder of what she has been missing. Warmth. Love. Attention. 

Touch.

Nina and Matthias moved two hours north for Matthias’ training in the summer, it had been painful but they promised nothing would change. ‘You won’t get rid of me so easily, Alina. I’ll call you everyday. I’m going to be here every other weekend, you won’t have time to miss me.’ How silly, the fact that, for a while there, she had believed it. But Nina works full time, and Matthias works fuller-than-full time, and Alina– Alina hasn’t been able to speak on the phone to anyone for months. The feeling a little too painful: the distance, the weird coldness of half-formed conversations, the ever-flowing tidbits of their new life, their new friends, their new plans. Having them so close now, their steady warmth so tangible and real after months of almost painful numbness, feels somewhat bitter on her tongue. 

“I fought, like, full on, all–caps argued with Fedyor for you. I wanted you in my car, you are my baby, I told him that and he argued with me, can you believe it? I met you first, I have helped you shower, nursed you to health after a flu, I have been your emergency contact for forever, like, hello? Like he told me you would rather–” Nina’s warm hand stretches between their bodies as she speaks, a blush high on her cheeks, eyes full of indignation. 

“My love, my wife, master of my heart–it’s fucking freezing, can you tell her in the car? Please? ” 

Nina hisses, temper flaring as she’s interrupted mid-rant; but one quick look over Alina’s shivering form has her acquiescing to her husband’s request. 

The car is familiar too. Door rusty and its interior filled with the scent of lingering perfume. Genya is dozing by the window but her pretty face turns to greet Alina, a soft smile on her lips. 

“Just one more stop and we’ll be on our way, alright?”

It’s 6AM and the weather is only going to get worse. But Alina is in a car with three of the most wonderful people in the world on her way to a big old cabin that seems perpetually filled with the scent of burning wood and melted chocolate; she hasn’t felt this alive in months. 

Their last stop is a small terrace house near Parliament Hill with a tasteful Christmas wreath on the door and an icy red gate leading up to the sidewalk. 

Aleksander Morozova is their last stop and Alina really really should have seen it coming. 

Matthias’ older, cooler, calmer, more intelligent, chronically polite, disquietingly respectful, painfully attractive in a clean-linens-and-the-warm-scent-of-homemade-bread sort of way friend stands on the sidewalk and looks at her through the misty window. Aleksander Morozova is a writer and a disorienting presence that tends to hover on the edge of their friend group. Polite and painfully sharp when you least expect it. He might or might not have a black horse named Sugar, a zillion twitter followers, and, Alina is pretty sure, he is someone who passionately denies that cruise ships are a real vacation ‘since you’re basically trapped in a floating shopping centre’. 

Aleksander Morozova makes Alina crave attention in a way that reminds her a little too much of being the only orphan in her class during school functions. 

After placing his black travel bag into the boot of the car, Aleksander steps into the car, shoulders crowding her and politely pushing her closer to Genya’s sleeping frame. He smells good, and that simple fact is enough to make Alina recoil a little further into the seat.

He’s warm, despite the wind and the threat of rain in the air. Despite the darkness lingering in her chest. 

“Don’t make yourself smaller on my account, Alina.”

At some point after he opened the door her shoulders must have gone up, knees pressed tightly against each other while she held her breath, trying and failing to make as much room as possible for him. Is this her subconscious mind trying to do whatever it takes to get him to finally like her as much as he seems to like her friends? 

“Oh, no, it’s fine, I’m small, I can–”

She lifts her right foot, intent on moving a little farther back against Genya to make room for him— he really can’t really be comfortable pressed against her side like that. 

“I’m comfortable, this is enough.” He says, and, for a moment, his eyes seem full of a quiet humour that turns into something like concern as he looks over her face. The dark eyebags, the dry eczema on her right cheek, her bitten lips. “You can go back to sleep, I’ll wake you up when we get there.”

I wasn’t sleeping. It’s been hard to fall asleep lately. Hard to stay asleep too. Hard to wake up.

Hard, in general. 

But he’s still looking and his presence is warm and a little heavy and she does feel sleepy –weird, that – her eyelids falling shut as if he were willing it into existence. 

A nap sounds nice after all.

It takes them most of the morning and half the afternoon to make it to Nina’s cabin. The roads are treacherous and Matthias is too careful a driver to go even a mile over the speed limit. By the time they manage to force the creaky front door open, the last remnants of daylight flicker near the horizon. 

“Had a nice nap in the car, Lin?” Genya’s voice is teasing as she joins her in the mud room, her pretty pink boots make heavy, wet noises against the mismatched tiles. 

There’s a blush on Alina’s cheeks. She knows it must be more than obvious; just from thinking of the warm press of Aleksander’s thigh against her in the car, the soothing caress of his voice as he talked to Matthias in unhurried, calm sentences. Genya was meant to be asleep too, not watching her not-so-secretly rub her face all over Aleksander’s arm like a needy kitten on adoption day. 

“The boys are getting some firewood from the shed. You should go ahead and pick a room before the others get here.” Nina’s offhanded command gives her the perfect excuse to ignore Genya’s question and unnecessarily curious stare. 

Alina already knows the rooms she’s getting. On the north-side of the house’s second floor there’s a narrow corridor with a small lilac door tucked into the crooked side of a wooden panelled wall. It was Nina’s room when she was a little girl and not much has been done to change it in the years since. The bed is small and low, built from thick blocks of sanded pine and cloistered inside a nook carved into the wall. The bedroom walls are a faint, time-worn lilac and there’s a rocking chair near the window that looks as ancient as the house itself. 

It’s a little girl's room. Like the one she never had as a child. One she gets to call hers while she’s here. 

“May I?” 

When she turns to face the door, Aleksander is standing under the threshold, armful of wood and a small smile on his lips. 

“I’ll get a fire started to warm up the room. It’ll be nice and toasty by the time you go to bed tonight.”

Something in the way he says it makes her feel like there’s a joke hidden in between the creases of his words and it itches, the need to know if he’s laughing at her for picking this room out of all the possible options. It doesn’t even have a double bed, not really. 

The small fireplace by the window has been remodelled since their last visit, almost three years ago, fitted with a glass front to protect the room from errant sparks and the dangers of unsupervised fires. Alina watches the way Aleksander’s back flexes as he kneels and starts piling wood into the empty mouth of the fireplace. His figure solid, the masculine contrast of his presence here, in this room so perfectly delicate and stuck in time, igniting a funny feeling in her lower belly.

“I could do that.” She says, for no reason other than interrupting the silence stretching between them. 

“You could.” Comes his reply, a big hand thrusting a few logs into the small hole. “But I’m doing it for you instead. How’s that?”

Is he— joking? It’s hard to tell with him, it’s always been. A door always half closed, with him.

“Oh, I– Hmm, thank you, Aleksander. I–” 

“Don’t tell anyone but I like it. It’s very manly, isn’t it? Not a lot of chances to be manly in the city.” His faint smile pulls at the skin around his mouth. And there’s a dimple, right there on his cheek as he forms the words. “Silly too, but I’m very comfortable with silly sometimes.”

“It’s not silly. It’s nice. I– I like it.” She adds, breathless. Wants to make sure he doesn’t think her ungrateful or stuck up or—

“No? I’m not usually someone who cares about stereotypical gendered tasks but it feels good sometimes, indulging a little. Nothing wrong with that, right?” The way Aleksander says it –all careful sounds and perfect annunciation–, it almost feels like he’s trying to say more than he is. Like he wants her to learn a lesson but doesn’t have the time or patience to spell it out for her. “Right, Alina?”

She nods a few times, hair falling in her eyes as she bites the corner of her bottom lip. 

She should say something smart. This is the time. Something impressive and intellectual and charming. Something that will make him think ‘Wow that girl, Alina, I never really thought much of her but she really is something, isn’t she?’.

Instead she kneels by his side and watches the fire flicker to life as he adds a few small sticks into the pile. 

“I like it here.” She whispers, nose in the air as the deep scent of his cologne mixes with the comforting smell of burning wood. “It’s a nice house.”

His face turns, and, up close like this, the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes look almost black and unbearably soft. “And what do you like about it?”

She brings her thumb up into her mouth, running her teeth along the tender skin around her nail. 

“I never feel alone here. It’s like– Like those crowded homes you see in sitcoms on TV. A lot of food in the kitchen, everyone’s stuff crowding the bathroom sink, fighting for a spot on the couch… It’s nice.” She refuses to look him in the eye while she says it, words too intimate to share already, she doesn’t want or need to know what he really thinks about them. 

No, thank you. That’s more than enough intimacy for one day. 

“You’re right.” She almost misses it, the way the back of his hand –casually, almost imperceptibly– caresses her wrist as he speaks. But it’s there. The touch soft, almost painfully so. “It’s nice to know you’re not alone.”  

For a second, she’s not sure who he is referring to.  

Fedyor’s car arrives shortly after, and Alina is lifted off her feet by an overeager Zoya, face flushed and eyes full of stars as she smells the soft clean scent of Alina’s skin. Zoya is home , even if she’s no longer physically home anymore. Fedyor has brought Ivan with him too, his now-boyfriend still a little shy around the edges as he moves around the kitchen trying to disguise any awkwardness by being overly helpful. 

“I feel like hunting, we– Nay! I need to hunt something!” 

Nikolai’s larger than life presence fills the room and the house and perhaps even the county if he were given free range; the way a wild infestation of some invasive species or other with no natural predators would take over the Welsh countryside if given the chance. His hands flounce wildly near his face as he joins them in the already crowded space near the crooked kitchen island. Alina likes him, has liked him since that time he jumped into a pool halfway through a party to prove he could swim– he could not. Zoya had dragged him out –kicking and spluttering, and still, somehow, laughing– by the back of his fancy shirt and he’d refused to leave them alone ever since. He smiles now, confident and free, that domestic light in his eyes a sight for sore eyes. 

“Hunt what, you dipshit?” Nina quips from the cupboard near the fridge. “A Waitrose Meal Kit?”

“Well, Nina, a tree, of course. It’s Christmas!” He bounces a little as he takes the leap on his long, lean legs and sits on the island, muddy feet dangling near the floor. Christmas is in three days, but he does have a point. “We need to get festive or Father Christmas won’t leave you any gifts, Nina-baby.” 

Nina snorts, ignoring Nikolai and going back into the pantry to sorting their supplies. 

“I’d like a tree.” Ivan says with a serene smile, coming to hold his boyfriend’s hand. “Can we even do that? Is that legal?”

“It is legal, within the property, at least. But it might snow soon and it’s too dark to–” Nina huffs, always the voice of reason. 

“You cunts can’t even hold an axe, I bet.” Matthias walks in, ready, as always, to goad them into doing something stupid. 

Nothing has really changed, Alina thinks with relief. You’re safe, you’re safe, everything is going to be okay. The visceral comfort that brings her is something to be best unpacked at another, more adequate time –never, perhaps, if she holds off long enough. 

“Sure can. I’m fucking jacked, you’ll see.” Nikolai replies, back playfully stiff, making himself look as tall as possible from his position on the counter. 

“We’ll see, pretty boy.” Matthias’ voice is a sensual taunt, followed by an answering snort from Nina, still deep into the dusty cupboard. 

In hindsight, Nina should have known that saying ‘no’ to Nikolai would only lead to one single possible outcome. It’s decided, with very little effort and almost no insults –‘idiot’ can hardly be considered an insult coming from Nina’s dirty mouth– the boys will go and get a tree. Zoya insists on joining them, and Ivan refuses to even consider the possibility of going back out there with a storm looming; so plans are made to find enough gear for all of them. 

Alina is unduly giddy about the possibility of a real tree. A proper Christmas tree to put near the fireplace in the old vast living room. The house will smell of pine and fresh green wilderness and they might manage to find some old baubles and tinsel in the attic. 

“Sasha, my man, are you joining us? We’re getting a big tree for the princess. ” Matthias is pointedly looking at Nikolai as he says the words, a cheeky bite to his smile.  

Aleksander looks younger after his shower, wet hair curling at the ends and darkening the soft fabric of his grey t-shirt. Alina is not looking, not really. Eyes flickering between her pale hands fisted around the small pink mug and Aleksander’s handsome face. She won’t make this awkward, not now, not ever. It’s just that he’s nice to look at. He’s always been just the right side of serious, the perfect balance between roughness and elegance. 

It’s not like Alina thinks about him often, because she doesn’t. It’s just that he is nice. This is nice, seeing the way his skin looks all soft after a shower, his big shoulders firm under the soft cotton of his clothes, nothing like the fancy stuff he usually wears—

“Count me in.” 

It startles her, just a little, hearing his voice so close to her ear. When she looks up, Aleksander is already looking at her, some intense, unknown emotion in his gaze.

They find a tree, a big, solid thing that needs four pairs of hands to drag it into the house. Decorating it is a messy affair, blamed in part to the bottle of rum being passed around with very little care. It goes something like this: Matthias lifting Nina on his shoulders to help her reach the upper half of the monstrous tree, more rum, Nikolai suggesting socks when they run out of actual decorations, Genya’s offhanded suggestion that someone should climb the tree to place the ancient Angel with the creepy smile at the top.

It’s Aleksander, solid, steady Aleksander who takes away the rum and shepherds them back into the kitchen to get dinner started. It’s always been easy for Alina to get lost in the blur, to dissolve into the mighty current of their combined personalities. The rude jokes, the quick snips, and grabby hands. She’s there while she is not. A phantom presence watching the fray from somewhere above the physical space they share. 

“Want a taste?” 

It’s Aleksander’s hand resting casually between her shoulder blades that pulls her back, straight through the fog and into this perfect moment. He’s close, again. They never used to be this close, not– not ever, she doesn’t think. He’s the polite one, the one that leaves early and doesn’t touch her or pays too much attention to her– or anyone, really. But he is now. And that really is something, in and of itself. 

It’s a good-bad feeling. Confusing and a little heady and she’s not sure what she’s meant to do about it. 

Now, he’s waiting for an answer to a question she can’t even remember.

“Open up.” There’s the hint of a smile on his lips and his command is playful but firm. Without questioning, Alina simply does as she’s told, opening her mouth, tongue already wet with too much saliva. 

The spoon is warm, solid metal sliding carefully between her parted lips, meeting her tongue. He’s gentle with it and the rich creamy sauce he’s been simmering over the stove tastes as close to perfection as it seems possible. 

“Good?” He whispers, eyes dragging, overindulgent, down her flushed cheeks. 

Alina nods, gaze nailed to the size of his thumb around the slender stem of the spoon. 

“Alright then.” 

She’s almost completely sure that the Aleksander she’d known would never do something like that but it just… happens. The next moment he’s bringing that same spoon, slightly warmed from the heat of her own mouth, to his lips and tasting it.

Tasting… what? Her? On the spoon? The sauce? Th–

“Alina, how come you didn’t bring Marie along with you? There was plenty of room for her.”

That, Fedyor’s voice, familiar and a little alarmed, makes her turn away from Aleksander’s hypnotising mouth, the words dizzying as she tries to figure out what Fedyor is even talking about–

“Ma–Marie?”

“Or did she fly home with her family? I can’t remember if she ever mentioned anything about—”

Perhaps it’s her fault. She must be missing something, some key point that would justify Fedyor asking about their old friend like Alina is meant to be the one who just knows if she spends the holidays with her family or alone or with her current girlfriend-partner-fling-it’s-complicated person.

“Oh, I told them Marie was taking over my room after I left the flat. You didn’t just leave her home by herself, did you?” Zoya’s smile is a little crooked and she’s busy trying to open a dusty bottle of Champagne that seems fused to its cork.

Oh. 

Oh, no. 

This is… well, awkward. Quickly, casually, she spins on her socked feet, back turned to avoid any stares, makes herself appear oh-so-busy gathering the silverware from a small cabinet far away from the stove. Away from her friends.

“It didn’t work out in the end, she– Marie didn’t move in. She’s living in Prague, actually.” She says, feigning a casual, almost enthusiastic deliverance for her audience. “I’m sure, I must have mentioned it, I… Maybe I forgot.”

 There’s a gradual silence, following her soft words. One by one, like little pieces of a puzzle, everyone stops. The smell of garlic and fennel is thick in the air, and the soup continues to bubble and splat on the heavy lid of the pot. But everyone else is still. Still as the crisp sharp ice over the roof, the cars, the chairs left outside in the cold. 

It’s Genya, sweet, gentle Genya who asks, voice as tender as raspberry jam, “So who moved in then?”

There’s a unique, almost terrifying sort of pain that comes from being known so deeply. 

Because, these people, they know her. They know her neediness, her tendency towards isolation. They know her anxiety, her crippling fear of abandonment. They know she’s too fragile to make it; not by herself. It’s good, sometimes, being known like that. Other times it feels like a noose, like she’s trapped herself into a net built to protect her from herself and she can’t get out. 

She’s afraid to look away from the forks she’s holding, fingers turning white from the pressure. 

The pity might really break her this time.

“So– Who–? Did anyone move in, then?” Matthias is gentle too, but it still hurts. The kindness in his voice. Like he’s afraid she might run and hide under the bed if his voice isn’t soft enough. 

Alina is still looking at the red, open skin around her nail beds when she replies, and the sound of her own voice threatens to have her running, for real this time. 

Poor Alina, she can’t be alone. Poor, fragile, sad girl gets all weepy when she has to sleep alone.

Little crybaby. 

“I’m staying alone, for a little while, at least.” She says, with more enthusiasm than the statement requires. She’s never been good at the whole sweeping things under the rug thing but she knows how to contort her face into something sweet and placid, something that will help her friends get rid of  that pesky guilt she has caused them. “It’s been… nice, pretty nice.”

The air is still and thick and she can  taste that soup on her tongue. Aleksander’s small smile while he asked her to open up her mouth for him, that, too, feels like it left behind a physical taste in her mouth. 

She looks up and Nina’s eyes are flaming, anger and resentment pouring over Zoya and she feels guilty, gutted, because none of it is Zoya’s fault and because she doesn’t need a babysitter and because it’s unfair –not to mention unreasonable– to expect anyone to just take care of her. She’s not a child to be coddled and they all have their own lives and— 

“Aww, look at you go. I’m proud of you, bub.” It’s Genya, wonderful Genya, the one who breaks the silence. There’s concern in her face, that sad little frown on her pretty mouth, and it’s clear that this is not the end of the story, that they will talk about this eventually. “Big girl moves, that’s so good.”

The spell breaks and she’s free to fade back into the tender domesticity of this perfect December evening, only the itch of Aleksander’s eyes on her neck reminding her that she exists. 

That she’s really here. 

Dinner is a subdued, languid affair. They eat and they drink and they drink some more. Alina excuses herself not long after dessert is served. Tired and sad and giddy and excited all at once about her pretty room with its lilac walls and soft painted flowers on the solid oak furniture. The easiness of her bedtime routine in this unfamiliar rusty old bathroom lulls her into a sense of comfort. 

Still, sleep evades her. 

For hours. 

She tosses and turns in her bed, not even the welcoming scent of clean sheets and wood burning in the fireplace enough to soothe her to sleep. 

At some point in the night during those endless hours of just trying to will sleep into existence the pitter-patter of something on her window becomes too tempting to ignore. The storm has come, white and unstoppable, a winter orchard blooming right outside her window. 

Downstairs, on the front porch, the new snow is already piling up over the creaky old wood. She sits there, near the ledge, close enough to reach a hand out and touch the wet wind. The air freezes her from the inside out as she breathes through her nose, all the way down her lungs. It feels strangely good so she does it again. Happy for the cold, and the wind, and the green grass still peeking in between the forming ice.

“I love snow.” 

It’s Aleksander, of course it is. Looking a little tired, eyes focused somewhere far away into the dark vastness of the forest and the growing anger of the storm. She has worked so hard to ignore him for years, barely thinking of him for too long, and now here he is, a new warm and oppressive presence. As if he’d decided to grow into some shapeless and incessantly caring weight virtually overnight. 

“Me too. It’s very— Mmmm… Cinematic. Peaceful.” She adds, words voiced into the soft collar of her sleeping hoodie. 

There’s no silence, not with the wind roaring between them and she’s grateful for that, for the confort it provides while she scrambles to find something, anything, to say. 

“I think– you look different today. We don’t have to talk about it but–” Has he always been this gentle? She doesn’t think so. Not like this, with the delicate pressure of his voice falling over her like a blanket. 

It shouldn’t be easy, to answer that question. But she finds that she wants him to know. Perhaps to test him; her mind a little blurry on the details. 

“I’ve been lonely. Maybe even… Hmm, depressed, you could say. Just– I feel like everyone has figured out how to do stuff. How to be happy with themselves and go along with life and I’m happy for them, I really am. But I don’t think I’m built like that. Not–” She turns, looks at Aleksander’s profile, a little blurry too, even up close like this, sitting side to side. And when did he take a sit so close to her and why is he so–? “When I was a little girl I was sort of  a repressed sad quiet thing, always on my own, always reading, and making worlds in my head. But then I went to uni and, for some time, I slipped out of that role. It was wonderful, like the perfect picture I had painted in my head was suddenly right in front of me and I was eager to grow into this whole new open person— I don’t know, maybe… I think, for a time, I was bright and full of love and I was never alone. Like almost never, and even when I was physically alone I didn’t feel that way.”

She’s babbling now, words spilling out into the world. This is Aleksander’s fault. Irrational or not, this is his fault, she’s sure of it.

Why would he ask her about it? When he must know how overeager she is to talk about herself, to bare herself fully for anyone who shows her an ounce of affection? It is… not very kind or nice of him to ask, to force her to embarrass herself like this. Make her say more than she should when he will surely regret it and she will have to avoid him even more than she usually does and isn’t that dumb Aleksander? Look at what you’ve done. 

Badly done indeed.

“But then life changed again. And again, and again. And I’m stuck. Like really stuck, Aleksander. Stuck being that little girl who doesn’t want her birthday party to end. And I know I’m selfish, and childish, and spoiled. I barely feel like a person most days. I feel like if someone allowed me to just be myself I would turn into a nightmare of a person, someone so clingy and sad and unbearable I would ruin me and them and—”

Aleksander’s arm is a heavy thing around her shoulders. It pulls her closer to the heat of his body and that’s alright too because she’s crying and it would be nice to hide her tears into the white cotton of his t-shirt instead of tasting them on her tongue for once. 

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, Alina.” He says into the echo of her hiccups around the empty veranda. “I’ve felt like a monster a million times, but it has seldom been guaranteed.”

Alina can certainly admit, at least to herself, that in all her thinking about Aleksander –and Aleksander’s hands, and Aleksander’s lips, and Aleksander’s shoulders, even, on occasion, Aleksander’s c– charm – she never really thought much about him as a person with feelings and insecurities and, well, his own worries. 

He’s always seemed… beyond thar. His life a smooth road from point A to point B. A million different blessings planted on his path for him to collect. Easy, so very easy. 

Her head turns, she wants to see his eyes but his head is angled away from hers, only the dark shadow of his nose visible from the warm spot on his chest where her head is currently tucked in.

“This need you feel… I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Wanting to be needed… Just, wanting. It’s very human.” 

“It is. Wrong. If I can’t do things on my own, if I make my friends worry about me all the time.” Her voice is petulant and she hides her face against Aleksander’s arm a little further. Thinks about biting him there, ripping the fabric with her teeth. 

That’ll show him. 

He isn’t truly touching her– there’s only the light press of his arm over her shoulder–, not actively. But she feels touched, exposed. She feels like she’s actually very naked and very very small. She feels like one of those snowflakes finding their deaths against the green grass. She feels like she’s about to cry. Or maybe scream, she’s not sure yet.  

“What if someone wanted to take care of you? If they needed that as much as you do. Would you be able to feel like you deserve it?”

That’s a horrible question. Nonsensically cruel and devastatingly promising. 

“I– What–?” And then, a tentatively hopeful answer. “Maybe, I’m not sure, it’s not like I’ve tried it before—”

She thinks she knows where this is going. It feels almost impossible. Like she’s made it all up in her head. And maybe she has, maybe she’s actually so far gone she’s started to hallucinate the attention she really craves.                                                                     

“Should we try? Twelve days until we leave, huh?” He’s so gentle, like he’s knocking on her little shell and her soft snail body has no bones so he knows he has to be careful with her that way. And It’s not a bad feeling, not necessarily. “We could make it easy. You need me, I take care of you. But you also let your friends care for you without question, how’s that?”

“What– What are the rules?” These things have rules, right? She’s almost completely sure. Things like– sex rules. But maybe he’s not talking about sex, just– affection. Affection is nice too. She’ll take anything. Hungry as she is, she could swallow him whole if he let her. 

“I think it could be simple. You ask for what you want, you say no when you don’t want something, and you don’t feel bad about any of it.”

“I would like that.” Alina tells him, even if the whole thing is scary. Even if she’s still not sure if this is a mistake. 

She’s startled by the fact that they’re still seated side by side, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happen or will happen. He’s warm enough to keep the creeping cold at bay and she’s supposed to accept that, just like that. 

Suddenly, it feels like they might as well start now. 

“I want a hug. A long one.”

Aleksander, for his part, doesn’t hesitate. He wraps his whole body around her, lifting her up into his lap, side to chest. She giggles a little at the sheer absurdity of the moment but the air smells of him now, of pines and cold and the warmth of his skin. 

Girlish joy blossoms in her chest. This is happening. Whatever this is, no matter how temporary or short lived; it has brought with it an absence of numbness, an explosion of emotion, and colour, and life. 

“Well, this is cosy,” Nikolai’s voice startles her and she has the sense to at least try and remove herself from Aleksander’s lap. They haven’t even talked about what they’re going to tell the others and she should move, spare him the embarassment– but he holds on to her, removing that choice from her big pile of burdens. 

“Came to see the snow.” Aleksander replies all casual, unashamed. “It’s very cinematic.”

“It sure is.” Nikolai is closer now, his voice coming from somewhere around the vicinity of their tangled bodies. “Did you know my room has a lock on the outside? Nina’s grandpa was into some kinky shit.”

“Maybe they had a demon child.” Aleksander says, the words rumbling against her flushed cheek, hidden, again, against his chest. 

“Sasha, why do you always imagine the worst? It’s very concerning.”

“How is demon child worse than a kinky grandpa, you dirty dog?”

Nikolai’s laugh is a conforting sound, wet with the memories of a thousand nonsensical conversations. “Alina, would you move in with me if I asked very very nicely?”

The words are unexpected and so is the seriousness in Nikolai’s voice. She wonders how it’s possible to go from being so lonely to being so full, so perfectly surrounded by everything she thought out of reach?

“No way, you are a mess.”

“You are lucky Aleksander is here because I was going to say something so dark sided and mean you would regret ever calling me a mess, pretty missy.”

Aleksander shakes at that, a small, silent chuckle, only for her ears. 

“Yeah, but he is here, so shut it.” She says, and in her mind the word ‘mine’ takes root like a weed. 

There’s orange juice and there’s coffee and there’s toast and there’s pan-fried mushrooms and vegan sausages and regular sausages and Matthias seems to be arm-wrestling a pesky jar of preserves and she’s just standing there like a feral cat caught in a wire trap. 

“Sit down, I’ll get you something to eat.” 

Aleksander’s hand is on her tummy, pressing her back against the warm outline of his body. She can feel eyes on her, his and… is everyone looking at them? It’s suddenly very quiet in the kitchen. Strange quiet, like someone turned down the volume of the room just so they could listen to the way her heart is beating in her chest at the simple touch.

“I don’t like–”

“I know what you like, go sit.”

She feels a little silly, sitting on her corner stool with no food, waiting for Aleksander. Genya is looking at her curiously, a funny curve tucked at the corner of her lips. Fedyor and Ivan sit on her other side, aggressively whispering to each other. 

“Move.” 

Aleksander’s command is stern, matter of fact, and he lightly kicks Fedyor’s chair to make his point. It shouldn’t work, why would it? Aleksander can’t walk around making everyone do as he pleases. Well, it does work with her, apparently, an maybe Nikolai if he were to try it with him but not Fedyor, he’s not usually someone who—

Fedyor stands, grunts some complain or other and takes a seat on Ivan’s other side. Alina is a little startled by the fact that that worked for him, somehow. 

“Swap with me?” 

His hand reaches for the cold skin of her upper arms and she has to focus very hard in order to ignore the goosebumps his soft touch leaves behind. He guides her to the chair previously occupied by Fedyor and he takes a seat on the rickety stool she had chosen for herself. Aleksander places a plate in front of her –plain white toast, butter, strawberry jam, mushrooms, vegan sausage, no tomatoes, no beans– without a word and starts calmly eating his own breakfast.

So. 

This is really happening. 

Okay. 

Alrighty. 

Sure. 

“Alina.” Zoya’s voice is loud and it startles her. “Did you bring your hiking boots? We’re going for a walk after breakfast. Breathing the clean mountain air, looking for some mistletoe, some magic mushrooms maybe—”

“No magic mushrooms.”Matthias cuts her off. 

“Fuck you, Matt, you’re not even my real dad.”

Alina’s mouth is full and she’s still looking at the playful-faux-angry expression in Zoya’s face when she feels Aleksander’s thumb under the table, caressing the underside of her knee. His hand stays right there, big and solid and unwavering, all the way through breakfast and she wishes, naively so, that she could use her thighs to trap it there forever. Thinks, for a second of the odd sight they would make, going through life as a single unit, his hand trapped between her legs, perpetually tied to her with no real explanation but the fact that she felt like it. 

She’s not sure what she expected from this, everything they’d said yesterday a little fuzzy in her mind. But Aleksander stays by her side –no need for trapping thighs, after all–, a solid, gentle energy that makes her feel cherished and fragile. As if at some point during the night she’d really turned into something breakable, in need of constant watching. A tiny hand-painted fabergue egg under his protection. In the afternoon, they tramp the frozen woods side by side and she watches the wet clovers peeking through the icy ground instead of watching out for herself. Feels the careful pull of Aleksander’s hand as she takes slow steps over the sheets of frozen river water down the white meadows. 

“Careful here, sweetheart.” 

In the evening, she bakes a wet Christmas pudding and some fresh bread with Nikolai and Genya and finds herself hardly able to think through the haze of the oven heat and her friends’ eager attention. Dresses up for dinner too, committed to her delicate egg fantasy. Pastel pink and pale green pleated skirt and a white cashmere sweater Genya had purchased for her in Stockholm last spring, a pretty delicate thing with a high neckline and long scalloped sleeves. Applying any time of make-up would be completely ridiculous, it’s just a few friends, just— them , but the deliberate press of her fingertips as she applies blush to her cheeks feels electric and as necessary as breathing. 

“Sit with me, darling.”

After dinner Aleksander’s hand clamps around her wrist. That seems like a thing for him –wrists– and she is determined to not think about it at all. Rum and coke on the back of her tongue, music blasting on Matthias’ shitty speakers, and everyone is shouting –‘Shut the fuck up, Nik, just shut it, I swear…’, ‘Am I wrong? She killed the hamster, in the original play, she fucking did. Google it, just google it!’, and ‘And how would you know that, you illiterate cunt?’. The hot thick rush of blood on her cheeks as Aleksander’s body presses against the naked back of her thighs. 

A memory peeks around the corner of her eye, a New Years Eve party a few years back. Nina’s old flat with the leaky radiators and the overeager smoke alarm. Being so disgustingly drunk they’d started playing charades. Alina on all fours on the rough carpet of the living room, knees chaffed and tears streaming down her face as she tried her best to meow through her laughter. Cats, the movie, that was the answer. So damn easy too. Shouting and smoke in the air and a feeling like twisted vines at the pit of her stomach. Then a hand around her ankle, dragging her back, turning her belly up, her hair haloed –a mess, all tangled up, ugly, surely– all around her on the carpet. A body, big and smelling like fresh ink on paper and Christmas lights and maybe a little alcohol too, crowding hair against the floor. 

‘You’re a sweet little pet, is that right?’ Aleksander’s voice and his hands stroking the feverish skin of her neck. 

She’d known then, even with the hazy pulse of alcohol in her veins, that that wasn’t really true, it couldn’t be. Shaking her head no, rubbing her face against the thick hair on Aleksander's arm, her eyes half-closed and her mouth open and willing. 

‘No? And why not?’ 

And his hands, fuck, those hands. Wanting to bring a thumb up into her mouth, to taste him, but she could barely make herself breathe, much less actually move. 

‘I’m not allowed.’ Takes a few tries but she manages to form the words. 

‘That’s not possible.’ So soft with his words and his hands but drunk too and probably unable to store the memory of this gift, this pity he’s giving her. But that’s okay too, she’s learned to be grateful for what she’s given. ‘You were made for it. These pretty eyes and this soft mouth, you are just perfect aren’t you?’

‘Take… take me, then.’ Remembers saying the words out loud, into the air, into the universe between them. ‘I want to be an animal, I want to— yours.’

The end is fuzzy, she’s not sure exactly how it comes about. Remembers, vaguely, the shape of a kiss on her neck, and the tingling aftermath of a beard against her neck. It must have been Matthias, carrying her to bed, the only person strong enough to actually lift her, the one who knows she needs the comforter tucked in tightly around her.It must have been him. 

“Do you remember—?” She’s not as drunk tonight, but she somehow wishes she were, if only for the free added courage. “New Year’s Eve…”

He nods, expression on his face inscrutable. She’d tried so hard to forget it and now here she is in his arms, his attention focused on her, as close as it seems possible, talking about it.

“Tell me something about yourself, please?” She says, desperate and embarrassed. 

“The first time I saw a horse I threw up all over my shoes.”

He’s so matter of fact, so earnest, that she can’t control the laugh that escapes her mouth. 

“I was six years old and obsessed with horses. My mother thought it would be a nice surprise, for my birthday. She bought me a black stallion, as tall as a house as far as I could see. She told me I was going to ride him… that same day. I just nodded, took a deep breath and–”

It’s funny, he’s funny. The man who first made her aware of the existence of portable steamers. Funny. Has he ever actually been funny before or was she too busy trying not to gawk at him to notice.

“Was that the end of it for you and that horse?” She asks, lazily watching Matthias lift Nikolai on his shoulders, the group shouting instructions on the perfect placement for their foraged mistletoe. 

“Oh no, not at all. I learned how to ride him, eventually. He lived in my mum’s place until he died, a few years back. He was a good horse. A little wild and incredibly stubborn but– Good, very good.” And the way he says it –‘good’– like it’s a three syllable word he’s determined to taste, is a little distracting. 

“Do you– So you don’t ride anymore?” Hopes he doesn’t notice her fingertips under the hem of his grey cotton shirt. 

“I still ride. As often as I can. ew things in life that can compare with that feeling. The way enough effort and attention can lead to an almost perfect synergy, a natural bond. People think it’s all about asserting dominance over the animal, breaking them into submission. But that only gets you a fast horse, and only for a time. Or it gets you an angry, homicidal horse, depending on your luck. I think it should be about finding each other, about getting somewhere where the animal is actually excited to see you, to ride with you.” And then softly, against the side of her face. “Do you know what I mean, Alina?”

She doesn’t, not really, but that seems almost inconsequential when she’s being dragged under the lulling charm of his words and his body. 

“I’ve never— I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a horse.”

With his thumb he paints a delicate circle around her temple. She tries to keep her eyes away from the waxy shine of the mistletoe, now perfectly hung near the threshold. Zoya is still saying something, loud and larger than life. 

“Last year we found this pretty mare, white with brown spots and a very sweet disposition. She’s gentle, small for her breed, a very trusting animal. You should–” As he says that, the hand around her waist circles her wrist again, a perfect tight loop that almost feels like a rope. “You should come meet her sometime, she’ll like that.”

“Wouldn’t– would your mum mind?”

Confusion paints his voice, a deep rumbling sound that touches her cheek. “My mum?”

“If she’s small… Isn’t she your mum’s horse or do you ride her—?”

There’s a pause, long enough for her to take another careful look at the mistletoe. The smooth planes of the dusky green leaves and the little white berries, a wild piece of the outside world, uprooted and brought here. Watching over them. 

“She’s not for me to ride, no. She’s very special.”

It itches, the careful, smooth care in his voice. Perhaps this is how he talks to his horses, all low and attentive, lulling them into a sense of comfort. Building a need for connection from the weariness, turning their wildness into neediness. 

“Can I— would you kiss me?”

Again, the words are out before she has time to take them back. Guesses that’s the whole point of whatever this is, to get what she needs. It doesn’t make it any less embarrassing. 

His hands tighten around her wrist and neck, the feeling of closeness growing like winter vines. “I will. But—”

She tenses, coltish knees knocking together over his lap. Has he changed his mind already? Is a kiss really too much to ask?

“Listen to me before you let your pretty head run wild, Alina. You’ve missed your friend haven’t you?”

He’s talking about Zoya, of course he is. She nods before even wondering how he knows just how much she has missed her. The gnawing hunger that has characterised their friendship, all of Alina psychosocial deficits  turning her into a clingy, jealous, emotionally-parasitic friend who enters every friendship with the impossible need to be needed and wanted and cuddled and cherished and—

“Go give Zoya a kiss, then. Tell her how much you’ve missed her.” His voice leaves no room for useless whining. No place to hide under her usual faux-casualness. “And then I’ll take you upstairs and you’ll get that kiss, the one you so desperately need.”

Her face is a little numb. From the alcohol and the sugar sweet flow of his command through her veins. How convenient, the fact that Zoya is back, standing under the mistletoe with her pink nose in the air and a silly purple paper hat on her head. She looks almost elfish with the elastic tucked behind her ears and Alina loves her, like a friend, and a sister, and a woman, and all the ways she knows how to love. 

Zoya smiles as she comes closer, fingers reaching out to tangle around the two long strands of hair framing Alina’s face. Tugging her closer. They’ve done this a thousand times, messy kisses in dirty alleyways and sticky clubs and the backseat of what feels like every car they’ve ever been in together. It’s a comfortable kiss, sweet and generous in a way so unlike her usual personality she’s pretty sure means Zoya is making an exception for her. 

But it’s different tonight, because, for the first time in ages, she can hardly think about Zoya, or her soft breasts and her small powerful hands. Thinks instead of Aleksander’s big solid neck and the way he talked about his horse, the perfect line where his beard meets his cheeks, the lingering smell of his cologne on her hair. 

Thinks that there might be a lesson hidden here somewhere. In this kiss he’s commanded. 

‘Is it me that you want, Alina? Or anyone would do?’ An echo of his unspoken question, free of judgement, loaded with expectations. 

She presses a peck on Zoya’s lower lip, and then another one –an apology of sorts– as she pulls back. This is good, but it doesn’t feel like enough anymore. 

“Merry Christmas, Zo. I love you.” 

Zoya’s hug –strong arms around her neck, the crushing pressure of her forearms on Alina’s nape, a peppering of kisses all over her temple, the faint smell of vodka on the other girl’s tongue– feels even better than her kiss. 

“Love you too, puppet.”

For the first time in what feels like her whole life, Alina is the first one to pull back from an embrace. She almost skips back to Aleksander, still sitting in the spot she’d left him on the brown leather sofa, face a perfect unreadable mask of indifference. 

She stands there, sheepish, heart beating in her throat as he looks up at her, the world going quiet and icy white around them in this perfect moment. 

There must be eyes following them as they leave the living room together, hand in hand, bodies pressed together like there’s no other possible way they could ever move through life; Alina’s nervous-happy-hysteric giggles trailing behind them. 

Upstairs, he brushes her teeth for her. That’s not– a thing, is it? A thing people do when they are— together, like this. But it feels good, and in that moment, standing in the tiny bathroom with her hands gripping the edge of the counter and her neck arched back to give him better access to the back of her mouth. The rough but gentle drag of her pink  hand towel as he removes her makeup– ‘We need to find you something better than this, Alina. Polyester will damage your skin in the long run. –, his pointer finger guiding her head side to side, careful swipes of the worn cloth behind her ears. 

It feels almost platonic, at least it feels like he means to be platonic, going by the way he has yet to attempt anything truly intimate. Intimacy. That’s a tricky concept to define for someone constantly living on the edge of touch starvation. 

But he isn’t touching her tits, or her ass, or anywhere truly wicked, he’s just guiding her to her bed, still fully dressed, still in her pale green socks with the tiny jumping frogs stitched on the sides.

He’s guiding her back against her bedroom wall, tapping the underside of her jaw, redirecting her gaze up into his parted lips. He’s using his body as a cage, pushing her back, trapping her kindly, sweetly, the way she’s seen people do with feral cats living out in the wild that need to be claimed for their own good. But it’s not– it isn’t intimate , right?

“You are so good, Alina. I can’t— I can’t believe you’re letting me do this.”

With that he closes his trap, his lips a solid-warm-electric-toe-curling weight over her. And he’s tentative in a way that feels completely— wrong.  Like he’s trying to do what’s right, like he thinks he should be careful with her, the little broken girl with the sad little backstory. And that— that will not do. 

She leans forwards, hands tangled on the slightly longer hair at the back of his head, uses her nails to scratch him there, just a little. Pushes her chest firmly against his, sucking air through her parted lips, drinking him in, pulling him, forcefully, unkindly closer. He grunts, right forearm tight around her lower back, a viper curled around its victim, his nose a solid form against her cheeks.

That’s better, so much better. 

“You are— impossible. ” But he’s breathless, the words a beautifully tangled mess against her cheek. And his tongue is there too, a little wet, tracing the outer corner of her lips. 

She tries again, harder this time. All tongue and lips and nails and her knees wobble a little –like in the movies, in all the romance books she’s ever read, in those pretty fantasies she used to live in when she was a lonely teen– and he takes it, takes her in, drinks the whines straight from her lips and traps her further with his own. 

“Let me take you to bed, let me—” The gentleness in his voice is almost gone, swallowed by something else, a darker side of this whole journey they have embarked on. 

There’s that intimacy now, but devoid of all gentlemanly hesitancy, almost like he’s too riled up to pretend anymore. He pushes her back on top of the fluffy duvet, knees knocking together on her way down, her skirt riding up her thighs. She feels the need to giggle for all the wrong reasons. Because this— this version of Aleksander: all hungry, rough edges, his dark stare boring into the visible white cotton of her panties under her skirt– this is something she never knew she could ever dream of, much less have. 

“Keep your legs open for me, princess.” 

His fingers are strong, fast; he pulls on the hem of her pretty top, the one he should be careful with, the delicate fabric something precious to her, so very precious that she should be saying something, asking him to slow down, to be gentle—

“So pretty here too, aren’t you? You want to get fucked in this pretty cunt, princess?” 

But he knows, must have known she cares because he only pulls until her lace bra is visible, the hem of her top resting over the upper curve of her tits, framing the curve of her there. The soft cashmere feels almost too soft, too sweet, too perfect a touch.

“I want—” She says, like an idiot, the exact moment his lips close around the peaked outline of her nipple under the lace.

He sucks, warm and greedy, a hand parting her legs more, more, more , giving himself more room to press her to the bed, and she can’t breathe, not like this. He is so—

“Tell me,” He grunts against the wet fabric of her bra. “What is it, Alina? What do you want?”

And he’s a little mean, a little sarcastic. Overindulgent. It makes her feel small, dumb. Stupidly content. 

“I want to touch you.” She whimpers, free to let it all out. The bratty, perfectly childish side of her mind. 

He grunts his approval, face still buried in the small valley between her breasts as his fingers circle her wrist again. He’s forceful this time, the pressure delicious and painful all the same, right before he lifts her limp hand and drops it on his shoulder. 

There’d been a time he’d pulled her into a dance. A lifetime ago. He’d put her hand on his shoulder and dropped his into the dip of her waist, a funny smile on his face, somewhere between a joke and not-really-a-joke. They’d danced a proper old song, Barbra Streisand. She forgets the name of the song now. A mellow slow song to start with, Barbra’s voice lulling the dancers into the pulse of the bass, and then quick, a change in the current, her spinning on her kitten heels with Aleksander’s hands anchoring her to the dance floor. Remembers looking up at him, breathless, the buttons of his fancy shirt straining in between his painting chest. Eyes bright. 

That’s how he’s looking at her now. So bright. Naked on top of her, all greedy hands and white teeth. The thick outline of his cock a visible thing in the dim light of the room. She’s naked too, fully naked, with the bedside table light on like some sort of brave sensual grown up woman who is willing to be seen. Seen by a man like Aleksander. She twitches, a small whimper leaving her lips in protest. But he traps her ankle in his hold, sneaks a warm finger under the pink fabric of her socks, anchoring her back to reality. 

“It’s okay, you’re safe, baby. Look here, sweetheart. It’s fine.” And he’s right because– her fuzzy socks are one. She’s not really naked, not at all. She’s safe, cosy. And how how could he know that? That she can’t have sex or sleep or— do almost anything without her socks on. 

It’s an old psychosocial hangup from a time in her life where physical examinations and shared bathrooms and cold cement floors were as common as breathing. And it might break her, the knowledge that he knows, somehow, and he doesn’t think it’s weird. He agrees, he thinks it’s safer this way. With her socks on. He gets it. 

“I want you on your belly.” 

The good thing about Aleksander, she’s starting to realise, it’s that he does all the work himself, like turning her limp body around so she’s snug against the clean sheets, the fluffy comforter. And this too— How can he know that? That she’s protective of her belly. Her soft animal belly. Where all her important, delicate bits are. Her organs and all the places that hurt the most when kicked or punched. 

“Like this, all sleepy and relaxed. Isn’t that right?” He’s so smooth, so unbearably good with her body, that she hardly registers the stretch of his finger entering her cunt from behind, the tip touching the back of her thighs as he enters her, luxuriously slow, painfully kind. It tingles instead of hurting, clit pulsing uselessly against the empty air around it. 

“I’ve imagined it– a million ways. But this– this is my favourite. You’re tired, sleepy from your afternoon nap, and I come home and find you dozing off, open for me. Already wet, but so so sleepy. Isn’t that right? You want it, want da– Want me to take care of it—of you , to know what you need before you even have to say it. So I do. I put you on your tummy, the way you like it. So you can rest your head against your pillow and close your eyes if you need it while I fuck any way I want to.”

It’s not an order. Or at least it doesn’t sound like an order. But it sounds so good, his fantasy becoming hers by simply putting it into words. So she does, her cheek coming to rest over her right wrist on the pillow. Fantasy becomes reality as her body swims with the sleepiness he has conjured. He grunts his approval, and his finger moves, presses something inside her. A reward, a reward for—

“Good girl. God Alina you’re—”

She’s ready, she’s so ready. So so so ready to get fucked, to take his cock anywhere he wants to put it. Wants to tell him too, to whine and cry and beg; but she wants him to figure it out by himself even more. 

Next thing she knows he’s lowering his hips against her naked ass. Naked skin on naked skin, with his forearm around her neck, lifting her head slightly off the soft mother-like touch of the comforter on her cheek. 

Aleksander, he— He is big. Big enough that she should be scared. It feels insurmountable, the idea of taking him inside her fragile egg-shell body. But how can she be scared when he’s pressing soft, wet kisses on her cheek, over and over again? His nose too, caressing her face, touching and touching and touching like he knows how much she craves the connection.  Being scared couldn’t be farther from her mind. 

“Take a deep breath for me sweetheart. Hold it..”

And he’s so good. So so so so good at taking care of her that it hardly matters that he’s  huge and leaning towards painful. Definitely bigger than she thought she could take. But he’s doing it, endlessly patient. The pressure feels impossible inside her, pulling her open inch by inch. But it feels good, the angle and his lips on her forehead and his thumb going up and down her spine and her fuzzy socks pressed against each other and—

“It’ll be over soon, it’ll feel good, I promise. It’s a lot but you’re doing so good, Alina. Good girl, taking it so well, I knew you’d be just… perfect. ”

And it’s that word. And the friction of the bed against her clit and all the other ways he’s touching her. But that word . Perfect. No one has ever called her perfect. Not like this, not like he really means it. 

She comes with her mouth open, eyes glassy and unfocused, trying to keep his words and his touch and the feeling of his cock splitting her open in her conscious mind. Her orgasm is something hot and quick, like he’s milked the pleasure out of her. A quick, electric pulse of light from her nape to her toes and she melts, a formless thing on the bed underneath his large, solid body. 

“Alina— did you–?” There’s wonder in his voice, like he can hardly believe any of this is happening. And she’s loose and happy enough to enjoy it. That magical wonder in his voice. 

Yes, I am, perfect. I am, Aleksander. Please see it. Please. 

Please.

“Fuck, Alina, baby. You are—” 

And his forehead is hot and a little damp against the curve between her shoulder blades. Some deep unreadable emotion in his words. He pulls her leg up, spreading her open, aided by the sheer wetness between them now, and fucks into her. Fully.

He really is huge, but he cares about her enough to make it good, to make sure she’s feeling it in all the right places. He fucks the way he looks at her when she’s pretending to look away. Intense, all-encompassing. Hips slapping against her reddening ass cheeks, his mouth loose and wet painting a decadent line down her back. 

“Just from putting it in you, sweetheart? You came for me, didn’t you? Perfect– perfect little angel. Pretty slut, so willing for me. You let daddy fuck you with no prep, that’s how much you needed it, huh?”

It starts to build again, another orgasm looming over her under the relentless attack of his body and his words. She thinks vaguely, that none of this feels like pretending. That it feels real. And it must be—real enough, because she’s letting him fuck her raw. Completely so considering she hasn’t been on birth control in years. But it’s too good and she’s too selfish and greedy to demand he stop or to even mention anything that could make him change his mind about any of it. 

Little Alina, with her body like cracked caramel, always too much. Too sticky and too much work and too heavy a taste to be enjoyed. Yet Aleksander likes her. The pleasure and the pressure of their bodies together. She wants it to last forever, wants him inside her, being part of her, for as long as she can; the grinding thickness of his cock inside her tender cunt most of all.

“Alina,” He sounds ragged, drunk on the pleasure of fucking her. Of making her his perfect toy. “Look at me, baby. Look at me while I come inside you. Let me see how much you want it.”

And the thing is, she would do just about anything for him. Anything he asked, at this moment. Because she’s his. He might not know it yet, but she is. For as long as he wants to keep her and even longer, she will carry with her the intimacy of this moment, the imprint of his body on hers and his cock inside her and his fingers squeezing her jaw open like a caress. 

“I want it, Sasha. Please, I want it.”

He comes with his teeth, biting a fresh, hot mark on the crook of her neck. And she comes again with the grind of the soft cotton of their borrowed sheets against her clit and the stretch of the wide base of his cock against the abused nerves of her entrance. 

He comes with a kiss –of sorts– and she comes with a smile. Soft, perfect, just painful enough to make it all real. 

Aleksander is— different than she expected. In truth, she expected one time to be enough. But after he cleans her carefully, a worried dip of his eyebrows over his brow bone, he’s hard again. He tries to hide it, offering his side to her for cuddling. But the hunger is mutual. She insists she should sucks him off. Because she wants to, desperately so. That’s new too, the need to offer him something in return for the pleasure he has given her. The whole thing between them is strange enough but perhaps not as strange as her interest and willingness to offer herself up to be used in any manner that pleases him.

He has her on her back next, the warm ‘So good, lift your legs for me, princess’ of his voice rattling around her cotton-filled mind with her wobbly forearms holding him against her sweaty chest by the back of his head. They fuck face to face, forehead to forehead, forehead to back, and some other way that seems impossible to fish out of the river of pleasure her mind has turned into. 

They fuck with his lips peppering slow kisses on the tip of her nose. 

It might be that they are breaking every single rule of intimacy ever invented in one single night because she’s pretty sure people don’t just fuck like that. Maybe it’s been a while since the last time she’s done this, but there must be rules, still. About acting detached enough, about not sharing too much of yourself with just anyone. But by the time the sun starts lazily peeking through the horizon and casting long paper-thin shadows around the room, Alina is laying half on top of Aleksander with her head tucked into the soft, damp curve of his shoulder and her girlish heart tied to a little string leading straight to the wide knuckle of his right thumb, the one painting circles on her back.

“Are you sore?”

“No, not r—”

Insolently familiar, his other thumb touches her cunt, sore as it is, and she winces. 

 “Liar. Let me get you some Ibuprofen.”

She huffs, teeth skimming over the curve of his chest. 

“Don’t you dare move. Or I will… I will— do– Do something mean.” She says, determined. 

He settles back with a warm chuckle, legs more firmly tucked between her parted thighs.

“Are we—” He starts again, voice low and almost silent. “Are we still friends?”

Her eyelids are heavy and she feels them closing, eyelashes tenderly touching his skin, right fist closed around his free thumb. Cosy and warm and safe and cherished. 

“The best, bestest of friends,” Alina murmurs back, right before she’s pulled into the most restful sleep of her life. 

In the morning, she still feels physically tethered to him. Like maybe he heard her last night when her mind started thinking about that magical string tied around her heart and he’d thought ‘Oh! what a joke it would be, if I tied her up for real, this time. She wouldn’t even know the difference. Poor little lamb’. So he’d snuck out, right into the freezing snow and the wind and the icy roads and went on a quest while she slept soundly in her princess bed, magically procuring a yard of invisible string to tie around her heart and then his thumb, compelling her to follow him around forevermore, like a lost duckling fresh from its broken shell. 

In the morning, right after Aleksander wakes her up, Alina follows him to the bathroom and then the shower. She follows the outline of his  back into his room and watches him get dressed while sitting on the floor with her back pressed against his bedside table. She allows his hands to dress her, braid her hair, apply a thin layer of moisturiser over the cold-dry skin of her face. 

At breakfast, everybody stares. 

“Aleksander, can I talk to you for a minute? Outside?” Matthias’ words are not unkind but there’s a silver solid threat in them and she clings, pulling Aleksander back to her as if ready to defend him against any and all dangers. 

The secret is out, and it really is mostly her fault, if she’s being honest with herself. They hadn’t been particularly silent the night before. Aleksander’s words ‘Do you want a secret, or do you want to feel good?’ rattling around her mind where she should have had the sense of being quiet. 

But Aleksander doesn’t seem to mind, murmurs a quick “I’ll be right back.” into her cheek and kisses her, shameless, in front of all their friends, fresh snow raining down the window glass behind him, giving the whole surreal scene a white clean feeling of rightness. 

He leaves her and she wants to follow, feels the sick need at the top of her throat, like a half-formed whine. But she waits where she is, waits for him to come back to her with the certainty that he will. 

She knows he will. 

He will. 

He will come back to her. Her nails dig into her palms and her throat closes painfully around nothing. 

Still, Nikolai is there, pressing a quick kiss to her cheek, his most playful smile on for everyone to see. “Well, congratulations to you, babe. I knew if someone could do it, it would be you.” 

“Cheers to that, but could you two at least keep it down a bit? Some of us are painfully single and in no need of a bloody reminder, you know?” Zoya says, half  laugh, half noisy crunching of her teeth on a dry block of Weetabix she has fished out of an open box. 

Nikolai is still wrapped around her like a blanket when he says “Piece of advice? Don’t hold your breath, Zo.” 

Turns out Aleksander does not actually mind clingy. Allegedly. Which is good. Excellent, really, because Alina doesn’t think she’d be able to stay away even if he did indeed mind. Whatever his conversation with Matthias was, he’s almost eerily unbothered by it all and she’s so relieved her teeth ache. 

So she follows him, clings to this side and tries desperately not to think about the countdown to the end of this little holiday they are in right now.

“Do you like it? Being a writer?” 

They aren’t alone, not really. Genya is napping on the other sofa and Alina vaguely remembers seeing Ivan walk into the kitchen not that long ago. But it almost feels like they are floating in their own bubble, side to side on Nina’s grandpa’s old leather sofa. Aleksander's hand is back in her hair and she’s been pretending to read on her kindle for what feels like hours. 

“Hmm, I like writing. If that answers your question.” And then a laugh, like a huffing breath. “Sorry, that’s so— pretentious. I do like it, yes. It can be difficult. Loads of self doubt and—Well. I don’t enjoy selling books. Selling my writing. I do want to make money and I want people to read my work but promoting it and marketing it and just— fucking begging publishers to give it a chance and having to justify why this book will sell, please do pay me more for it than you did the last one. That’s— less fun than I imagined. Going into it.” 

She turns on her side, sinking further into the mess of blankets,  Kindle all but forgotten on her lap. 

“I’m— I can’t imagine you begging, for money or anything.”

“Well, I do plenty of it.” He replies, shrugging, the way only a man like him could, somehow making it sound like he does not find any of it a threat to his confidence. “A good way of keeping one’s ego in check too.”

“I– I always recommend your books, at the bookstore.” Alina says, words sounding as pathetic to her ears as she knew they would. Still, she can’t seem to not say stupid things in front of him. It’s a skill. 

But he looks pleased. Inordinately so. A small smile curving his lips while  his nails reward her with a slow caress behind the ear the way one pets a cat that is just very recently learning what affection should feel like. 

“And do you tell them I’m your friend?”

There it is again, that word. Friend. 

“I wouldn’t, that’s— weird. Right? ‘Here, buy my friend’s book.’ It’s not right.” She says, and he laughs, like she’s being funny, On purpose. “Anyway I don’t recommend them because you’re my… friend. I like your books. You’re very good at it. I’ve always thought so. Ever since— Since forever, really.”

“Thank you, princess. It really means the fucking world to me.” 

And he seems to mean it to, that soft smile like he’s sitting on the best kept secret, only for him to enjoy. Reminds her of the time she’d gone to see him, to a book signing of his second novel, the one about the girl with the light trapped inside her, her journey through darkness, her sad-happy-good-bad-impossible ending that had made her cry more than anyone would find remotely acceptable if she dared talk about it. 

He’d look very handsome then, his soft soft soft shirt, his carefully trimmed beard, the excitement in his eyes. The way his fingers had played with the black marker he’d been given. His larger than life presence as he sat on his chair, looking up at all the people gathered there to sing his praises. His careful attention, his low voice filling the space with the sticky, inciting pull of his charisma. 

He’d signed hers to. ‘To a beloved friend ’ and then he’d written something, or tried to, at least. Crossing it out right after, like he’d regretted it instantly. He’d insisted, always the gentleman, on replacing the book. Getting her a new one on account of his mistake. It was his fault after all and it would only be right to replace it and wouldn’t she just accept it, please, Alina. Please be so kind as to let go of the scribbled defective book, won’t you? But she’d held on to that book, fingers white with how hard she’d pressed it against her chest, afraid he’d actually snatch it away from her. 

The words he’d tried to conceal, she’d tried very hard  to figure them out and there was only one word clear enough for her to read: ‘light’. 

“Is that something you’d like to do? Writing?” He asks now, like it matters to him, truly.

“Oh no, I love reading but— I’m not sure what I want to do yet. With my life, I mean. Sorry, that’s not what you asked.” 

The awkwardness is back, she can feel it. He’s seen her naked, complimented her ripe little tits and run his tongue down her belly and she has managed now, when all of that should have made it almost impossible, to bring back the feeling of otherness. She has allowed him to see her as a stranger again. A strange stranger who stumbles all over her words, who doesn’t really get social cues and the natural flow of intimacy. 

A woman’s biggest sin: being an impolite selfish unaware socially-awkward oversharer determined to be the centre of attention. 

“There’s no need to apologise, Alina. I understand. And there’s no rush to figure things out. It’s not— You don’t need to produce something, or to be ‘useful’. You can just be. Life is more than just work.” Patient, he’s so— understanding. Like he gets her, even when her actions seem almost determined on sending all the wrong messages, he still gets it. “I seem to remember you were into sculpting at uni, is that right?”

“Pottery.” She says, distracted by the shame of her awkwardness and an unfamiliar  itch under her skin. He’s lying, something— Something about the way he’s so still, so relaxed, like he is faking something. His interest or his memories of her or— “I used to do pottery but it’s an expensive hobby. Maybe you remember, I used to hold a spot at a studio near uni but it’s way out of my budget now that I’m no longer a student. I thought about buying my own wheel, there’s plenty of second-hand options out there but I’m not sure yet. I know I would want to save up for a kiln if I had a wheel and that’s too much to even consider at the moment, you know? I’m really trying to be responsible with my money.”

He hums, as if he understands but Alina knows he can’t, not really. Not when money has not been an issue for him the way it has been for her. Tiny fingers running along the seams of bus seats, under washers and dryers and the unmanned laundromat, searching for any coin they could find. Church donated cans of vegetables with dented corners and rubbed off labels. Charity shop clothes and reduced Tesco sandwiches, and reduced Costa paninis, and reduced 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner from the returns bin and reduced everything. 

But that’s hardly his fault, isn’t  it? Not more than it is hers. Chance, the flip of a coin that smiled at him and while frowning at her. And it hardly matters anymore. Because he’s here now. With her. He might not know that she still finds butter on fresh bread the very best of f breakfasts or that she cooks herself smiley faces and frozen breaded chicken dinosaurs when she’s sad as if recreating the taste of what she imagined a happy childhood would taste like. Ketchup on the side. A real brand ketchup, no ‘value’ or supermarket name written anywhere in the package. A real treat. 

“Pottery. That’s fantastic, Alina. I’ll remember to commission a koi fish mug, as soon as you have your wheel.”

It isn’t until much later in the day, when she finds herself on her knees on the kitchen counter, trying to find a decent set of wine glasses for Ivan’s bottle of fancy French white wine among the rows of chipped ancient china in the cabinets that she remembers Aleksander’s words. Koi fish mug. 

And how— how had Aleksander known? About the koi fish mugs she used to sell?

The fuck again that night. His mouth tight suction around her nipple, nursing gently on her like he can hardly get enough of her taste with his nose nuzzling the soft flesh of her breast. Back and forth, and back and forth. Just the tip, warm and gentle and nice. His hands spreading her thighs open for her, his cock bringing pain and pleasure to her sore cunt. 

Wet, soft lips, hot fingers from nape to tailbone. His thighs rubbing against her legs and the soaked flesh of her cunt. 

“Take it, princess. Don’t be difficult now, you were meant to take it. Say it.”

Pulling on her hair, not so gently this time. Lips like glazed cherries, eyes dark, cosmically deep in the endless night. 

“You’re mine.” 

And, 

“Nice, sweet, cunt.”

And, 

“Close your eyes for me. Trust me.”

And, when she’s about to fall asleep.

“Just one last time, princess. For me.”

It’s too much. Everything he has to offer. Too much for a girl starved. But he seems okay with that. For now, at least. And Alina is not one to deny herself anything that is freely given. 

“What do you want, sweetheart?”

Quiet music plays faintly in the background. Nina’s mum used to collect vinyls in her youth and now they sit forgotten in all corners of this house, only to be played on the rare occasion someone takes the time to dust off the old record player and gently pull them out of their yellowing plastic sleeves. Alina doesn’t know the song, or the artist, but she knows what she wants. 

“Dance with me?” 

This arrangement they have, this mock-up relationship weaved from cheap worn cotton and half-formed needs is making her greedy. There’s no other word for it. She’s getting used to it, asking for what she wants. Demanding it, really. 

“Of course.”

There’s people around, nothing about this is intimate or discrete but Aleksander takes her hand and leads her to the soft grey rug near the fireplace, places his hands around her body and starts dancing. 

It’s not even awkward. That’s the thing. He makes it all so easy, so flawlessly natural; even when they’ve never danced together. Even if she’s barely capable of following the clear rhythm of the song vibrating through the floorboards. They dance, old-fashioned and slow, with his hand around her waist and her cheek on his chest like couples in old-school movies do. Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face wearing a white wedding dress and dancing with the man she loves and adores, the man who looks old enough to be her father and who sees something in her no one else ever dared to look at. A field of daisies and a happy ending all close enough to reach for if she wants it. 

Aleksander  guides her into a turn, and then another. Old socks twisting on the rug as she giggles, clumsy. Drunk on a single glass of wine and all the attention she’s been hoarding since she got here.

Zoya walks in the room and demands to take a picture of them. A candid picture, she says, no matter that her pushy directions make Aleksander grunt his disapproval. 

“You look kinda sexy when you are mad, Sasha. Has anyone told you that before?”

Alina bursts into a laugh, trying to hide the offending sound into Aleksander’s chest. He looks down at her fondly, the creases between his eyebrows smoothing over in amusement. 

“Oh you think she’s so funny, don’t you?” 

But he’s only playfully pulling on her hair. In all honesty it doesn’t feel playful in the slightlines, not to her overeager body. Her skin growing more and more demanding to his touch as time goes on. 

“Sorry it’s just—” But she’s not sorry, not at all. So she kisses him instead of lying and Zoya approves, asking the to hold it a little longer for the camera. 

“The things I do for you…” He murmurs it, quietly against her cheek, and Alina can’t even feel sorry for him, not when he’s digging his thumbs into a tender spot on her lower back while he says it.

Shortly before dinner on Christmas Eve, Alina places her Secret Santa gift under the big tree in the living room. A pair of vintage silver earrings for Fedyor she’d purchased from a small stall in Spitafield’s Market for way less than their real value owing to the deceitful tarnishing of the silver. She’d hand-polished them herself, used a tiny cotton swab to reach each and every crevice of the small intricate design to reveal the precious unblemished silver underneath the stain of neglect. 

Tomorrow morning they will open their gifts. She has a strong suspicion that Ivan is her Secret Santa on account of a peculiar text sent out of the blue a week ago, asking for her feelings on the colour yellow as a whole. It’s silly, she knows, but now she regrets not buying anything for Aleksander. She almost wishes she could send a message back in time to sad, lonely Alina in her three-days-on pyjamas, and warn her. 

‘Buy something for the man you’ve been pretending not to dream of for years. You’ll thank me later, I promise. Also you should probably shave a little better this time. Trust me. xx’

Aleksander is already waiting for her in her bed by the time she makes it back upstairs after smoking a few puffs of Nikolai’s weed on the back porch. The mellow effect of the weed slowly making her more pliant, the ever-present tension of her jaw grinding her teeth against each other fading off alongside the smoke. She’s all soft now, all warm cotton-candy floss in her veins. 

“Have fun?” 

She nods, carelessly taking her clothes off already. Comfortable, safe. Aleksander gets up too, and when she looks back at him, he looks almost nervous. 

“I— I got you something, Alina. I’m not your Secret Santa but– I wanted to get something for you. So I did. I hope you like it, but you don’t have to take it if you’d rather… not.” He’s so careful with her, ill-fittingly so. Like he’s trying on a mask that doesn’t quite suit him. 

His eyes are dark. Endless black pools of stormy winter winds and he’s so still, solid brick, frozen in place in his comfortable pyjamas and his thick wool socks. 

“How? How could you buy me something before—? You didn’t know this was going to happen. You couldn’t have… known, right?”

The questions echoes and dissolves into the night as he refuses to answer her question. 

“It’s midnight, you’re free to open it now. It’s on top of the fireplace.”

Inside one of her clean winter socks Aleksander has carefully stuffed a cardboard box, neatly wrapped in pink and yellow paper with a small silver tinsel bow on top. She opens it carefully, tries to keep the paper from ripping, sitting cross legged on the carpet floor, her heart on her throat. 

It’s a small heart-shaped locket, heavy gold with a tiny bunny in profile etched into the smooth front of the piece, a few delicate daisies decorate the back. When she opens it, she finds only the empty latch where a beloved keepsake ought to be kept. Hands shaking, she tries to read the engraving, but it turns out to be only  a small, intricate M branding the back of the locket. 

“This is… It’s too much, Sasha. I can’t take this.”

“Yes you can, Alina.” 

He’s already placing it around her neck. The short, delicate chain cold and solid around her frantic pulse. She should protest more. Ask about how or why or when. But she doesn’t want to, that’s the thing. She wants to take everything he has and hide it somewhere no one will be able to take it away from her ever again. Bury it in the sand or the snow outside the way small rodents do with their food. Hoard it and gorge herself silly with it once the hunger strikes. 

She looks up at him in his sombre socks, kneeling on the carpet next to her, and he looks like everything she’s ever wanted. All the love and the need and all the other things she has yet to find the nerve to ask for. She wants; wants him so desperately her teeth ache and she feels, vaguely, like a threat, the blunt press of her own nails on the palms of her hands. 

“Thank you, it’s… perfect. ” And he’s still looking at her, that restrained, painful hesitation in his eyes. “Thank you, Sasha. I—thank you, thank you…”

She’s crying a little by the time he lowers her onto the bed. This, too, is becoming a routine of sorts. Being carried around. 

Beloved keepsake. 

Christmas comes and goes in a haze of warmth and comfort. Fedyor, Ivan, and Zoya leave on Boxing Day, their grown-up jobs demanding their presence back in town straight away. ‘They’ll be back for New Years.’ Aleksander’s words, a comfortable murmur in her ear as she clings to his hand on the freezing porch are enough to dissuade her usual fears. 

The mind is a scary thing because she starts imagining it. Never going back to her cold, lonely flat. Tying herself to the big radiator in the corridor and screaming bloody murder if anyone tries to force her to leave. Begging and shouting and doing whatever it takes to keep Aleksander here with her. 

She could do it. 

She would. If she thought it would work. But she knows, deep down, that the only reason Aleksander is doing this thing with her is because of the temporary nature of their agreement. He wouldn’t want to stay. Not forever. Not the way she needs him to. 

So she sets out to enjoy the time she has left. Drink him in instead. Gorge herself now instead of waiting for Spring. 

It will have to be enough. Somehow.  

“Can you help me rearrange the cutlery in the dishwasher, please?”

“Could you help me detangle my hair? It’s all messy in the back.”

“Would you like to come with me on a walk?”

“Can I borrow your cardigan? The blue one?”

“Could you help me figure out the washing machine? I think— My sheets are… not nice.”

“Anything, Alina.”

“–society in its wisdom has found ways of constructing refuges of all kinds, for since it has been disposed to make the love life a pastime, it has also felt obligated to trivialise it, to make it cheap, risk-free and secure, as public pleasures usually are. It is true that many young people who love wrongly—”

“Aleksander?”

Sleepy, she turns to look up at his face on the bed next to her. He’s wearing his wire frame glasses, the way he does every time she asks him to read for her. Tomorrow will be their last night here. New Year’s Eve. Tomorrow he will kiss her at midnight and she will cling to him—half joking, half desperate. Tomorrow night they won’t be alone, which makes this their last night together. 

“Yes, sweetheart?” He’s putting the book away. An old corner-creased-broken-spine-and-yellowing-paged volume he has probably owned for years. Because she’s starting to learn that’s the sort of person he is. Someone who keeps what he owns. Keeps it and uses it, and goes back for more time and time again. Someone who doesn’t mind a little wear and tear. Wants the world to know he owns something worth keeping. 

“I— We’re going home. Soon.” She says. Not sure where exactly she’s going with her words, but incapable of keeping quiet about it any longer. 

“We are.” He nods, Adam’s apple bobbing as he speaks. “If the weather allows it, that is.”

The clean sheets rustle as she turns on the bed, her cheek lifted, not without difficulty, from the familiar spot on his chest she’s grown used to calling hers. 

“I want—” 

She stops. Looks at him again. And looks, and looks and looks. Feels the hunger and the desperation gnawing at her and takes a deep breath. 

It won’t matter. If he says no. 

It won’t.  

“Do you think we could—” Make this real. See each other more after we leave this place. “Pretend, we’re— more. For the night.”

“More?” 

He’s rotating too, now. Using his knees to lead her gently into her side, face to face, the tip of his nose brushing the crown of her head. 

“I always wanted to know what being in love would feel like. I think, if you think it’s possible, maybe we could try and see how it feels. Just– just pretend. I’m just curious, it’s not like we have to but—” 

And there it is again, that shadow, spreading over his face, the hint of more, worse, better, clean, tasteless darkness. 

“Is that all you want then? Tell me. ”

Just the look on his face, his hunger, is enough to tell her she should stop now. Go back to safe and comfortable and easy. That she shouldn’t ask for more, not when he looks like his composure might break any second now like the smooth, polished shell of an egg, spilling everything inside. 

“Married. We could pretend. For the night.” 

Her mouth seems to have a mind of its own. It can’t be such a bad thing, not when he’s kissing her like everything is just as it should be. As if she had just said a big happy truth instead of a cowardly half lie. 

“Do you want to know, Alina? How I would fuck my wife?” He says, mean and big and too full of himself to make the words feel the way she imagined they might. She whimpers, squirms on the bed under him, pinned by his larger body and the intensity of his stare. “Do you want to know how I use the things I intend to keep? Is that it, princess?”

So this is it. The shadow at the corner of her vision every time he pretended to be nice. To be a man who asks for things instead of doing what he knows is right instead. Yes, maybe he’d been pandering to her, probably. Maybe even lying to some extent. Lying to— to protect her. From indifference, from her own tendency to latch onto any sign of passion and devotion. But lying is not that bad, is it? To lie sometimes when you want something really really badly? Alina had been pretending too, to some extent. Pretending to be sweet and easy and unattached. Pretending to be cool and completely normal and incapable of thinking about all the things a good woman should not think about. Crying, and begging and manipulating him to stay. Trapping him with a baby and a sob story. Stealing his things and making him take her with him to get them back. Ruining sex for him forever, so every woman that might come after her would look like dirt  in comparison. 

Lies can be pretty too. She can’t regret him lying for her. 

Her legs spread as if compelled by the sheer darkness in his voice. And he isn’t joking and she relishes the truth more than she should. He really, really isn’t because he isn’t mindful of his nails this time as he removes her pyjama bottoms, deep red welts on her thighs all the evidence needed of his anger. 

But maybe it’s all because he doesn’t like her game. 

Maybe it’s too hard on him to pretend.

“Look at me, Alina.” He pats her, somewhere between gentle and cruel, his right hand already finding her wet between her thighs, soaking. “My wife would look at me while I get her ready for my cock.”

She nods, finds his eyes in the shadows of the room.  

“I wonder if you got all excited, begging to pretend to be my wife because you want to know what it feels like to be owned, pet?” There is an angry guttural quality to his voice so unlike the soft caress of his thumb against her open cunt. In the dark, the shape of his mouth looks twisted but his eyes are the way they’ve always been, hers. “Is that it, darling? What you want?”

Somehow, saying yes feels like the wrong answer, even if she doesn’t know why. By now, Aleksander is used to opening her body up for himself. Helping her tilt her hips up, stretching the muscles on her lower back to open up her hips, caressing the sensitive underside of her thighs until she’s wet enough to make room for what’s coming. 

Tonight his devoted attention feels almost painful. 

“I don’t— I don’t just want it… Like that… I–” She takes a deep breath, wet lips making an embarrassing sound as she tries to make her words form properly on her tongue. He’s busy, biting the underside of her breast not-so-gently, like he knows he’s allowed to do anything he wants tonight. Like he has finally figured out that she’s way too needy to complain about anything he has to offer. “I want it from you. Not just— not just anyone. Only you, Sasha.”

It happens all at once. His cock at her entrance and his teeth around her nipple. His left hand closes, just enough, around her neck, and his right is pushing down on her belly, making the pressure almost unbearable. 

“My wife.” It’s all he says for a moment, while his cock forces its way inside her, a punishing push until she’s full, stuffed way beyond respect. “My wife is a little whore, isn’t she? Desperate for me.”

He’s decided to finally be crude tonight and the rightness of it sends a shiver down her back and right to her clit. She’s throbbing, whimpering, babbling like a babe asking for ‘more, more, more’ , begging for a kiss, and –please– a break and – please, please, Sasha – more pressure around her neck. She’s a mess, she’s wet, and she’s open in a way he seems to find infuriatingly satisfying. 

“I don’t think– I don’t think little wives cry when they get fucked, Alina. I think they only say thank you to their husbands.”

Alina’s eyes are screwed shut and she’s holding on to the slippery shape of his upper arms like she’s trying not to drift away from his body, but it’s that cruelty, the way he knows how to dangle what she wants from him just out of reach that actually makes her sob. 

“Aleksander, Sasha, please— ”

His thumb leaves her clit to lift her chin instead, a wet, sticky touch that isn’t fully enjoyable. With some effort, she manages to separate her soaked eyelashes and lift her eyelids to look up at him. 

“Don’t be silly. I’m not Aleksander, sweetheart. I’m your husband. Be polite or I’m pulling out right now.”

He doesn’t mean it, he can’t possibly—

“Husband, Sasha, please— I… thank you, thank you, I–”

Her voice is raspy, almost painful, but he kisses her so tenderly. Like she really is his wife. And maybe she is, in that moment. People have been married for less. Alina knows, from a few long-ago classes in Mediaeval history and tradition, that there was a time when making a commitment, calling each other husband and wife, would be enough to make a marriage real. Something as little as a promise would do. Wouldn’t this thing they’re doing – pretending , Alina, Jesus fuck , Alina, nothing but pretending– be enough? Somehow?

“If you are–” She tries to focus on her words while the girth of his cock transforms the soreness into pleasure. Tomorrow she will feel him again, all day, between her legs the presence of this moment will keep her grounded as the year and the fantasy comes to an end. “ Ah . If— if you are my husband that means— That means I love you, Sasha.”

The look on his face while she says those words  – I love you, I love you, I love you, pretend or not, I love you – makes her want to keep saying it for as long as he’s willing to listen. His thumb is back against her clit and he’s serious now, as he fucks her, singlemindedly focused to the point of pain. 

The next moment he’s squeezing her thighs together over her chest the way she likes and she’s rewarded for the breathless moan she lets out in response. The word wife is back on his lips but so is her skin. He’s mindless with it, kissing every inch of available skin within reach of his generous mouth and she wants only for this to last. For them to become this everlasting version of themselves. To become one and stay just like this, forever. 

“I love you too, sweetheart. My beautiful wife. I’ll never let you go, I promise. Now come for me, be good. You’ve always been so good, so so good—”

He’s impossible to deny, and she’s pliant, soft in all the ways she never knew she was allowed to be. 

Tomorrow, it will all end in nothing but a memory. But tonight he’s her husband, and she comes knowing he loves her. And that’s enough. 

The truth is that, for Alina, lying to herself is almost like breathing. An instinct that is effortless right until you become aware of its existence. Alina tries really hard  to pretend saying goodbye won’t be a problem and ends up making everyone uncomfortable with her compulsion to follow Aleksander into every room for the remainder of their time in the cabin with her eyes glued to his face and her pinky looped around the waistband of his jeans. She’s pretty sure Nina is about to bring it up, her shameless clinginess, when Aleksander leaves the room to go to the bathroom and she ends up spending a whole minute watching the door while holding her breath like she’s waiting for a miracle. 

Maybe it’s his protective hand around her shoulder, or the way he has always been able to command respect from them all in such an effortless manner. But no one dares say anything and the day slips through her fingers before she’s able to hold on to anything but the memories of their time together. 

Aleksander helps her pack but he doesn’t look sad, not really. It hurts the most, knowing he’s had his fill. Knowing a taste of her is enough to satisfy him and he won’t be thinking of her for the rest of his life the way she probably will. 

Starved, sad, creature. Get a hold of yourself. 

New Year’s Day morning and there’s nothing else to say. They haven’t even talked about seeing each other as friends after this. Checking on each other. 

Would that be weird? 

Asking Aleksander if he would like to get coffee sometime? 

Grab a drink or whatever other casual things people who once fucked like they loved each other do when they get tired of each other? She would like to try, and is fully ready to risk the embarrassment of a dismissal. 

But there’s really no time left. Because while her friends spent their youth being late to every single event and get-together including their graduation, they are on time, for once, the one and only time Alina needs a few more minutes to figure out how to beg for a sign that maybe there will be more next year, or the year after that or ten, fifteen, twenty years from now. Maybe. 

“Sweetheart, do you want me to help you with that?”

She doesn’t know how long she’s been standing in front of the open trunk of the car, fingers tight around the straps of her old worn travel bag, entertaining the crazy thought of pulling Aleksander’s bag out of the trunk and tossing it in the frozen stream not far from the cabin. He won’t be able to leave then. Not without his clothes and his notebook full of scribbles and his reading glasses with the thick metal frames.  

But he doesn’t deserve that. It’s not fair to him who has been so kind and generous and hearbreakingly patient with her to be forced to endure one of her tantrums because she’s been dumb enough to fall in l–

“Alina? Sweetheart, is everything okay?”

She takes a deep breath, feeling the cold of the New Year’s wind freeze her windpipe as it makes its way down her lungs. She won’t cry. She won’t. She can be mature and kind, and gracious about this. She can be cool.

“Yes, I was just— Do you think we’ll ever come back?” 

A strand of hair curls over his forehead and he seems distracted as he takes her bag gently from her frozen hands. He turns away from her to tenderly place her bag on the pile, giving her his profile, and the slight frown on his brows as he inspects the messy pile of bags in front of him makes her want to cry. 

Nonsense, Alina. This is ridiculous. 

“Mmmm… I guess that’s highly dependent on the wine stain in the foyer carpet lifting. But there’s plenty of other places to visit, next year. Scotland would be nice, for some real snow; or maybe France, if you ever wanted to ski, although you’ll probably have to start small, learning slopes and protective equipment would be a must…” He doesn’t even look at her and she has the sense that he’s moved on, just like that. 

“I guess—” She swallows, the thickness on her voice inevitable. “I guess I wish we’d had more time.”

Something in her voice —the high pitch, the shaky quality of her t s– makes her sound like a child who is one single ‘no’ away from crying. Aleksander stops in his tracks, frozen too, and turns to face her. But Alina is quicker, unwilling to listen to his dismissal, to a cruel ‘I’ve had my fix’ coming from his now familiar mouth. 

Her steps crunch on the melted snow as she steps on the moist gravel, making her way around the car. Aleksander has always been faster than her, that’s the thing. Faster and better and—

He grabs her by the wrist, a touch somewhere between gentle and possessive, his thick thumb –the one he’d used on her clit less than 24 hours ago– pressing against the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. 

“And what exactly do you mean by that, Alina?”

He’s crowding her and it’s so unfair, the way he’s using his larger body to push her against the side of the car. No way to escape him now. The intensity in his eyes almost punishing. At the front of the car, someone starts rolling a window down, and she hears the faint murmur of a voice asking them to hurry up and get in the car already. In response, Aleksander’s hand slaps the side of the car hard enough to dent it. 

“Alina…”

She looks to the side, past his broad shoulders and over the house in the distance, to the place where so many happy memories will be left behind and takes another deep breath. 

“Well, I do. Wish we’d had more time, I mean, but— I’m happy with the time we had and— I’m grateful. So thank you, I almost forgot to say it, but… Thank you for taking care of me. You’re— You’re a great friend, Aleksander.”

“Alina… What the hell are you talking about?”

She blinks, confused. For a second, she forgets how painful looking at him will be, and her eyes find their way over to his. Aleksander—He looks angry, confused. The wrinkles at the side of his eyes are visible as he frowns and his mouth is set in a hard solid line. 

“I— I just wanted to thank you, for every—”

He stops her with a hand around her throat. Gentle, this time; even if his eyes are hard as ice. 

“Alina, are you under the impression that this is goodbye?”

Silence. Only the ragged sound of her breathing filling the air and she’s looking now, in earnest. At him. Always looking at him, isn’t she?

“I— You never mentioned—”

“Do you really think I’d let you leave, pet? After I spent years trying to get your attention? After I finally managed to make you mine? After I fucked you the way you deserve to be fucked and you said thank you in the sweetest fucking voice I’ve ever heard? Alina, I told you I would take care of you and give you anything you wanted, so unless what you want has changed I have no intention of letting you go, pet.”

It feels almost like a rush of cold water down her spine. Like her mind has decided to go for a sudden dip in the freezing ocean on this cold January morning. The fact that she’s weeping now is a little embarrassing, a few fat tears sliding down her cheek as he cradles her face. A gentle swipe of his fingers takes those tears away but she keeps crying, relieved, fucking delight, nosing into his palm, the familiar warmth there feels like a promise. 

“I want you. So— so much. I really—” Alina is still sniffling, holding on to him for dear life, nails digging into his wrist. But he’s not pulling back, not at all. 

Aleksander only pulls her closer until her cheek is on his chest –where it belongs– and his nose is pressed against her temple. 

“Matthias is going drop us off at my place and you’re going to stay the night. We will talk about this, about what you want and what I want and what we could have together. And then I will make you dinner, whatever you fancy. After that I will draw you a bath and tuck you in my bed and hold you as close as you’ll let me.” His voice is firm and there’s no doubt there, he means it. Every single word. “After that— If you want to go back home, I’ll take you home. But not before I’m sure you understand how much I want you. Present tense and all, sweetheart.” 

The way he says it, it makes her laugh a little. So soothing and crossed and more than a little firm. Like he really means it and it should have been obvious and she’s just being silly now, acting like she doesn’t know. 

“I’ll always want you.” She says, firm too. Just as sure as he is. "I wasn't pretending, I wear my heart on my sleeve I couldn't possibly fake any of it."

He can’t possibly get it. The hunger she feels. Not the way she does. Feral and dark and angry and desperate. 

“Good. That’s settled, then.” He thinks he might kiss her, if only she were to turn her cheek up into his face, but she wants to savour this moment too. The comfort of his body around hers. If this all belongs to her now she won’t waste a single moment.

It’s Matthias, this time, the one who rolls down the window and shouts “Are you guys almost ready to go?”

“Yes.” Alina replies, fist still clinging tightly to Aleksander’s sweater. “We’re ready.”