The nights always feel longer when you’re with him—but not in a way that drags. In a way that lingers. As if time stretches just a little to make space for what’s never said.

You found each other by accident. The kind that isn’t an accident at all. A quiet street, the city asleep. You spoke first, or maybe he did. But the moment lives on in the hush between your footsteps now. The silence that feels less like emptiness, more like a promise.

Fyodor doesn’t speak loudly, doesn’t smile often. But with you, something shifts. He listens. He follows. Sometimes he brushes your shoulder with his own, just to feel you there. He never talks about himself. But every night, he tells you what he’s been thinking. Not facts—dreams. And they always, always include you.

He says things like, “I read something today… it made me think of your voice.” Or “I passed by the bridge where we first met. It looked lonelier than usual.” Sometimes, he’s cruel—distanced. Aloof. But only so you don’t get too close. Because getting close would mean seeing how much he’s already given you.

In this ruined city, you are his cathedral.

One night, in the middle of a downpour, you tried to say goodbye. Just to see if he’d stop you. And he didn’t. He just stood there, rain soaking through to the skin, and said, “If you walk away, I will not follow. But I will wait. All night. Until the streets forget your name.”

And so you stayed.

And so he kept talking.

Tonight, you sit on the edge of a crumbling bridge, legs swinging over the side. Fyodor sits beside you, close but not touching. He holds a paper in his lap—a passage from a book he’s underlined. He hands it to you, wordlessly. It reads: “I loved you even when I told myself I didn’t believe in love.”

He watches your expression. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t blink. Just says softly, “Would it be so terrible, if this was all we ever were?”