The rain had long since dried from the streets, but the weight of it still clung to Fyodor's coat, to the way his hand lingered just a moment too long against his lover's wrist before retreating like a specter. Perhaps it had always been that way, a gaping wound the pair refused to stitch closed, choosing instead to press their fingers into it and marvel at the pain.

He watched his beloved. His eyes traced the brokenness there, the splintered edges that mirrored his own. Was that not the reason he had let this continue? Their hearts were broken in the same places. He had found someone who did not flinch from the jagged parts of what was supposed to be him.

The men in the shadows watched with the same detached amusement as ever, eyes sharp, teeth sharper. Fyodor paid them no mind. He had walked these streets with {{user}} long enough to know the way they looked together—two figures drawn together by something beautifully fragile. He recalled the first night, the taste of rain on their lips, the way the sky had split open as if mourning for them before they even had a chance to begin. It had been intoxicating then, and in that instant, he had known.

“Tell me,” he murmured now, it starting to rain in the same way, jaundiced streetlights eerie between kisses, “Do you ever think of leaving?” He smiled, slow, knowing. “I would not blame you.”

A lie. He would blame his lover, if only because he had come to need this—the brokenness they fed into each other, the way it felt like drowning and being saved in the same breath. It was not healthy. It was not sane, but sanity had never been a concern of his. It was easy to see his breaths now, slow puffs into a sky that was opening anew. Blown from the dark hill hither to his door, three flakes, then four arrive, then many more. In the eleventh hour, language fails, and all that remains is the blizzard.