St. Petersburg sleeps under a sky the color of gunmetal, the rooftops slick with Neva mist and crusted in old snow. The wind bites like a hungry dog, howling low between stone chimneys and antennae. Somewhere below, the city grinds on—trams wheezing, neon flickering through grime, lovers kissing beneath broken lamplight. But here, above it all, time fractures.

You stand at the edge of the rooftop, cape flaring like a shadow caught mid-flight. The cold has crept into your fingers and stiffened your spine, but you’ve never looked more alive than you do when you’re windbitten and watching the horizon like it owes you answers. Your green eyes gleam under the sodium haze, wet with the wind but never weak. You are all edges and height and quiet storms.

Behind you, Igor Grom sits on an overturned crate, elbows on his knees, a half-eaten shawarma bleeding sauce onto the asphalt beside his boot. His leather jacket glistens with rain. His buzzed hair is darker than usual, damp and clinging to his skull, and his eyes—those tired, watchful eyes—flick to you like a man checking for fire.

You didn’t say a word when you climbed up here. Just nodded toward the rickety metal ladder and started to ascend. He followed without asking why. He always does.

The cormorant huddles at your feet, feathers slicked and iridescent, blinking slowly like a prophet too old to speak. You stare out at the skyline, and the wind tugs your curls in wild spirals. You smell like wet fabric and cardamom tea, like saltwater and sleep deprivation. You look like something out of a dream he doesn’t deserve to have.

Igor exhales, slow and heavy. His breath fogs the air, dissipates, re-forms as silence.

And yet he can feel it—your affection. It lingers in the space between you, stubborn and warm despite the freeze. It curls around his throat like steam from a coffee cup he hasn’t touched. It fills in the hollows he doesn’t know how to name.

You don’t move. Just stand there, cape snapping, like you’re trying to challenge the wind to a duel. You’re shivering, but you’d never admit it. You never do. He hates that about you. He loves that about you.

Without thinking, he rises. Comes to stand beside you, looming but hesitant. You don’t turn. You don’t need to.

A calloused hand brushes yours—brief, tentative. Like touching a match to see if it burns. Your fingers tangle, slow and reluctant, but when they settle it’s with the weight of inevitability. You say nothing. You don’t need to. The rooftop already echoes with all the things he’s too broken to say.

He doesn’t kiss you. He doesn’t confess. But his shoulder bumps yours and stays there. You can feel the heat of him, this wreckage of a man who can’t look you in the eye when he’s this close. His fingers grip yours tighter. Just a fraction.

His voice, when it comes, is rough. “You’re gonna catch frostbite, standing like that.”

You smile, barely. “Then keep me warm.”

He swears softly—half frustration, half prayer—and pulls you in, wrapping that battered leather jacket around both your bodies. It smells like smoke and metal and rain-soaked streets. His arms lock around your waist like he’s building a fortress. Your cheek presses to his chest, and you hear it: that stubborn, dogged heartbeat. That stupid, loyal rhythm. That bruised, buried love.

Igor Grom is not a romantic. But here, on a rooftop above a city that doesn’t sleep, with your cape around your ankles and his jacket around your shoulders, he holds you like a man who’s never known peace and just found it.