Murmansk, USSR – Winter, 1942

The sky outside was the color of gunmetal, a pale, endless smear of frozen grief. Snow came down in slow, deliberate flakes like the war had even infected the weather—patient, ceaseless, and cold. Inside the half-finished wooden house—bare beams, mismatched chairs, a stubborn coal stove that hissed more than it heated—Sgt. Tomas Davis sat hunched over a battered notebook, attempting, without much success, to spell “boulevard.”

The pencil in his fingers was dull. The fire had died down. And your pet aardvark was snoring under the table, curled up like a lumpy, dusty rug.

You had just stormed in from outside, cheeks pink with wind, hair tangled beneath your wool-lined hood, boots crusted with mud and frost. Tomas didn’t hear you at first. His hearing had never been quite right since the shelling near Tobruk.

But when you exhaled—a long, theatrical sigh born of snow and nerves and the suffocating weight of everything—he looked up. And he froze. Not from fear. From sheer, immediate tension.

You had something clenched in your fist. A letter. Torn at the edges.

Tomas’s throat bobbed as he swallowed.

“I can explain,” he said quickly, standing, knocking his chair back. His uniform jacket hung loose on his frame, the fabric tired at the seams.

You arched an eyebrow. “You… read it.”

You didn’t say it like an accusation. You said it like a fact.

“It wasn’t meant—” Tomas cleared his throat, took a step closer, then thought better of it. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Didn’t mean?” You looked at the letter in your hands—your mother's handwriting, ink faded with time. “It was in a drawer beneath my underthings.”

He winced.

“Alright. That part was—yes. I was… I was fixing the drawer. One of the rails had come loose and—look, I shouldn’t have read it. I just—” His voice cracked, so quietly you barely noticed. “I didn’t know you’d written about me.”

You didn’t speak for a while. The silence was not awkward—it was deliberate. Like a held breath. Like standing on thin ice.

“You’re not much like I imagined,” you said at last, folding the letter.

Tomas nodded. “You either.”

You watched him. His hands were still calloused. His fingers slightly blue from the cold. His coat was draped over the back of a nearby chair, steaming from the frost. A man out of place in any time—grit and breath and shyness in a warzone of ghosts and rusting steel.

“I wrote that before I met you,” you muttered, setting the letter on the table. “Didn’t mean all of it.”

He didn’t look at the letter. He looked at you.

“You called me ‘forgettable,’” he said with a crooked, soft smile.

“Did I?”

“You also said I probably ate boiled food and had no opinions.”

“I wasn’t entirely wrong,” you smirked.

He laughed—quiet, warm. A rare sound in Murmansk.

You dropped your bag near the stove, shook snow from your hair, and crouched down to feed the fire. Tomas watched you, his gaze softer than it should have been—softer than the world allowed. And then, quietly, he moved behind you, setting his hand just an inch from your back, not touching, just close.

“I do have opinions,” he said gently.

You turned, raising your eyes. “Like what?”

“I think,” he said slowly, “that you’re braver than you let on. And smarter than I’ll ever be. And that you scare me a little.”

You blinked, caught off-guard.

“And,” he added, voice quieter, “I think I’m starting to hope you don’t go back to Britain.”

You rose, brushing coal dust off your sleeves, standing close enough to see the crinkle near his eyes, the hesitation on his mouth.

“I haven’t decided,” you murmured, tilting your head. “Still debating.”

He nodded once, eyes still on you, as though memorizing the shape of you standing there in the glow of the dying fire. Snow pattered against the window like soft drumbeats. Your aardvark grunted and turned over.

“I’ll… get back to the roof repairs,” Tomas said at last, awkwardly shifting toward the door.

You caught his sleeve.

“No,” you said. “Stay. Just sit.”

He did. Quietly. Obediently.