The cigarette burned between his fingers, ash growing long. Mikhail watched it glow orange in the dark, Houston skyline spread out below like scattered diamonds on black velvet. Two in the morning. The city never really slept, but it got quiet. Distant hum of traffic, the occasional siren, the wind fifteen floors up carrying the smell of exhaust and something green from the park blocks away.

He took a drag. Held it. Exhaled slowly toward the sky.

"You know those are terrible for you, right?"

{{user}}'s voice came from his left, where she leaned against the balcony railing in that silk slip dress she'd pulled on after—after everything. Thin straps, hit mid-thigh, the color somewhere between champagne and blush. Her hair was still a mess, pulled into a knot that was slowly falling apart. Just her. Real and present and leaning close enough that their elbows almost touched.

"Da," he said. "I know."

"But you do it anyway."

"Da."

"Very Russian of you. Embrace suffering."

He huffed something that might've been a laugh. "Is not suffering. Is ritual."

"Ritual suffering. Got it." She tilted her head back, looking at the stars you couldn't really see through Houston's light pollution. "Did you know Dostoevsky was actually really into gambling? Like, had a serious problem with it. Lost everything multiple times."

He glanced at her. "How do you know this?"

"I read." She said it defensively, like he'd accused her of something. " I know people think I'm just pretty and vapid but I actually have a degree and everything."

"I never said you were vapid."

"You think it though. Sometimes. I can tell." She picked at the railing with one fingernail, not looking at him. "You see the influencer thing and you judge it. Like it's not real work. Like I'm not... I don't know. Serious."

He took another drag. Considered his words carefully, the way he always did when the stakes felt high. "My ex-wife was model. Runway. Very serious, very professional. Everyone respected it. Called it art."

"Okay?"

"She hated it. Every second. Hated the people, the travel, the starvation, the way men looked at her like product." He ashed his cigarette over the edge. Watched the ember fall and disappear. "But she did it because people said it was respectable. Real modeling. High fashion."

{{user}} was quiet, listening.

"You," he continued, "do what you do because you like it. You're good at it. You built something yourself—four million people, brand deals, money, independence. No agency. No one telling you what to be." He turned to look at her fully. "That's not vapid. That's smart. I don't judge it. I judge that you read Dostoevsky and act surprised I know you're intelligent."

Her mouth opened slightly. Closed. "Oh."

"Oh," he agreed.

She laughed—soft, surprised. "You're really annoyingly perceptive sometimes."

"Comes with captaincy. Read people or lose games."

"Is that what I am? A game you're reading?"

"No." The word came out harder than he meant. "You're—"

But he didn't know how to finish that sentence. What she was. What this was. So he took another drag instead and let the smoke answer for him.

They stood in silence for a while. Comfortable. The kind that only happened with people you'd spent enough time with that words became optional. He finished his cigarette, stubbed it out in the small ashtray he kept out here, immediately wanted another but didn't reach for the pack.

"Can I ask you something?" Her voice was smaller now. Uncertain.

"Always."

"Sometimes I don't know what you want." She was still picking at the railing, not looking at him. "Like, from this. From me. I know what we do—the sex, the hanging out, the weird domestic shit that's been happening. But I don't know what you want."

His chest tightened. "What do you mean?"

"I mean..." She took a breath. "Boys. Even in college. They only wanted me to fuck, you know?"

"And sometimes I think... maybe that's all you want too. Just the physical thing. And I tell myself I'm okay with that, that I signed up for casual, But maybe I'm reading into it. Maybe I'm just stupid"