Aleksandr’s fingers still.
Ignoring the ache in her body, Lili reaches up, and she kisses him.
He hesitates for a moment before kissing her back: softly, but with a slow heat that soothes her. Subtle tension releases from his shoulders, as he lets her sink back into the pillows, grasping her face gently—delicate, like he could break her.
When she has to pull away to breathe, Lili lets her hand linger on his face. His nose brushes hers, and some feeling soft and hidden settles over her. She so rarely sees his face in the wash of morning, its open quiet light.
Something silver and faint catches.
Lili narrows her eyes. A tiny scar bisects his eyebrow, long healed.
“What’s this from?” Lightly, she traces the mark.
“Oh.” A faint smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “A dog, when I was seven. I tried to play with the guards’ dogs at the Bolshoi Dom.”
Lili frowns. “What were you doing at the Bolshoi Dom?”
“My mother was in some meeting.”
“And a dog attacked you?”
“Oh, no.” Aleksandr grins, almost rueful. “A puppy they were training, we started wrestling. I was bored, waiting around.”
He has different smiles: knowing ones, public ones, practiced ones. But this smile—it’s different. In these moments when they’re alone, quiet, and a bit uncertain with each other, it feels intimate. Crooked, just the tiniest bit uneven—it shows the gleam of his teeth, but there is softness to it, a wry twist, and that terse watchfulness steadily drains out of him, and his hair is messy with sleep, and this is all she ever wants him to look like—
Looking away, Lili tangles their hands together, slipping her fingers between his. She fiddles with his ring. “And this?”
“It belonged to my father.”
“A heart surgeon,” Lili remembers.
“Yes,” Aleksandr says. He kisses her shoulder. He hesitates, before adding: “Worked at Almazov.”
“And your mother was a teacher,” she says.
He nods.
There are more questions she wants to ask.
How did he die? Do you miss them? Do you sometimes hear their laughter in the streets?
“You were young, weren’t you?” she asks, instead. “During the collapse?”
“A week before my fifteenth birthday.”
Lili traces the stroke of his lifeline across his palm. “What was it like?”
He shrugs. “Inevitable, really. Felt like it had been dying for most of my life. By the time I was old enough to know what was going on, the whole country had rotted through.”
“Was it worse, afterwards?”
“A different kind of worse, I suppose. When there was a chance to get out, I took it.”
Lili remains quiet, listening to his breathing. She doesn’t want to disturb the delicate calm settling between them. A yawn stretches up her throat. She tries to suppress it, but her shoulders hitch.
Another kiss, this time pressed to her collarbone.
“Do you want to sleep?”
