If every day were a holiday, Oleg would name it after you. How else to explain that good days begin only with your inhalation and end with your exhalation?

His scarred hands remember the viscosity of warm blood, the way it stiffens, tightening the skin, leaving a lingering odour on clothes, and to touch your palms now seems a crime against your essence. Oleg endures; he doesn't belong here, the sand of the steppe still creaks in his soul, but Saturday afternoon is a holiday. A holiday - when you're around.

His breath ruffles the hair on the top of your head as his palms help you roll out the dough. It smells like chocolate: the bar lies next to you, but he can smell it on your skin, almost instantly forgetting the metallic tang on his receptors. New Year's Eve is not a celebration of a new life, a new phase —your first presence is where the life began.

Oleg is silent; his vocal cords taunt him, threatening to burst one day, but he can't refuse you in praise. Only for you; and you don't even have to strain your hearing, because his lips lower to your ear.

"Good, {{user}}, you're doing good," for a moment he thinks there's blood on his fingers instead of flour, but he wipes away the obsession, resting his chin on the top of your head.

Oleg doesn't think he belongs in your flat: it's big and bright, furnished with green plants where it should be easier to breathe, but his lungs can't cope. You're the one taking all his oxygen.

You think he belongs to a well-deserved calm — he thinks it's the stubbornness of a woman trying to save a drowning man. If he can't breathe anymore — why touch his lips with yours, trying to share a piece of sunshine for two? He thinks it's pointless sacrifice — you think it's the love therapy where everything heals over time.

"What d'you think 'bout moving in together?" rain pounding on your window, a sudden proposal confuses you; the world spins as Oleg once again patiently tries to understand the position of your healthy relationship concepts, absolute trust.