The snow outside has been falling for hours, quiet and obedient, piling itself against the windows as if it, too, wants to be let in. Inside, the apartment is warm—your kind of warm. The kind that smells like vanilla, butter, and something faintly spiced, the kind that clings to wool sweaters and bare wrists.
Fyodor stands by the Christmas tree, sleeves rolled up, his dark hair slightly undone. The tree isn’t perfect, it's one side leans a little, and the lights are uneven—but he refuses to adjust it without you.
“No,” he says calmly, holding a glass ornament between long fingers. “It should wait for you.”
You laugh, soft and surprised, and that sound—that sound—makes his chest ache in the quiet, tender way love does when it is lived-in and real. You pad over in socks, flour still dusted on your cheek from the cookies you abandoned mid-batch. He notices immediately, of course. He always does.
“Come here,” he murmurs, brushing his thumb gently along your cheek, smearing the flour instead of wiping it away. A faint smile touches his lips. “There. Now it’s perfect.”
You swat his hand, scandalized, but you’re smiling too. Always smiling with him.
You decorate together slowly. There’s no rush. Fyodor hands you each ornament as though it were something sacred— glass stars, deep red baubles, one crooked little angel you bought years ago on a cold evening when money was tight and hope tighter. He remembers that night all too well.
“You lingered over this one,” he says quietly, placing the angel near the center of the tree. “I knew, then.”
“Knew what?” you ask.
“That you were the one.”
You freeze, heart stumbling, even though you’ve heard him say things like this a hundred times before. Fyodor does not waste words. When he speaks like this, you know it is the truth.
Later, the kitchen becomes chaos in the gentlest way. Flour on the counter, sugar spilled like snow, cookie cutters everywhere. You stand side by side —the quiet evidence of domesticity, the reassurance that this life is real.
You steal a bit of dough. He catches you.
“My dear,” he sighs, though amusement softens his voice. “You might at least allow them the dignity of being baked first.”
You grin and lean up to kiss his cheek, quick and warm. “Arrest me.”
He slips an arm around your waist, drawing you back against him, his voice low and affectionate. “If I were to do that,” he murmurs, “I doubt you would ever be released.”
The oven hums. The lights on the tree blink softly in the other room. Outside, the world is cold—but here, here is warmth built deliberately, lovingly, by two people who choose each other every single day.