Chapter Text
The apartment had been lulling into a peaceful quiet for a while now, the only noise being the soft hum of the radiator and the occasional creak of the old wooden floors. The cold had settled into the walls, but Anora’s bedroom was warm, and Igor had been asleep for maybe an hour – maybe a little less – when the sudden jolt of movement beside him crudely tore him back into consciousness.
His heavy eyelids blinked in the dark, instincts kicking in before his foggy brain even tried to catch up to his body. Igor’s hand was already reaching for something on the bedside table – a gun, knife, whatever he didn’t actually have on himself right now – before his senses recalibrated. He wasn’t on a job; he wasn’t even in his own fucking apartment.
The bed underneath him was too soft, the mattress dipping under him in a way that always gave him stiff back pain that drew quiet curses from his lips in the morning. It was Anora’s bed.
Igor had slept on the floor of Anora’s bedroom the first few nights that he had stayed over – she hadn’t asked him to do so, but she hadn’t argued against it either when Igor had grabbed a pillow from the bed and tossed it onto the floor. She hadn’t protested when he had settled onto the cold floor – but she had curled up on the very edge of the bed, so close to it that Igor had thought she might roll over in the night and fall right onto him on the floor. And some nights, Anora had let her arm dangle over the edge, in the tense no man's land betwen them, her fingers nearly grazing at his shoulder on the floor.
A mere breath, a mere inch away, but never actually touching Igor.
They did that for a long time, Igor taking the floor without a question or a discussion. Anora settling on the edge of the mattress, her face illuminated by the streetlights outside her window, them falling asleep with a silence between them that felt like a living, breathing thing.
The first night Igor had actually gotten into her bed, he hadn’t actually planned to do it. It had been a quick shift, no conversation, no decision made out loud – just something that locked into place while neither of them was paying attention. That night, Anora had fallen asleep first – like she always did – curled up on her side, her fingers twitching in her sleep like she was bracing herself for something even when she was asleep.
Igor had been on the floor, his arms folded behind his head, the floor underneath his back like a fucking torture device in its hardness. And eventually, the cold from the floors had started to seep into his muscles, settling into his bones – and he had ignored it for a while. He’d slept in worse places, on worse floors; but the stiffness of his joints had kept on creeping up his spine, pulling his shoulders tight in a way that always made it hard to move his neck the next day. And so, he had sat up, rubbed a hand over his face in the dark and debated whether a decent night of sleep would be worth crossing the unspoken boundary between them.
Slowly, Igor had pushed himself up from the floor and slowly sat down on the edge of the bed, eyes on Anora’s sleeping form. He had stayed still for a moment, testing whether she’d wake up, muscles tense like he was waiting for her to wake up and tell him to fuck off.
But she hadn’t. And so, he had let himself lay down on his back, keeping himself still for her sake, barely even allowing his body to sink into the much too soft mattress with a quiet huff that felt too loud in the peaceful quiet. The blanked had still separated them, an echo of that silent, self-imposed line between them that still seemed too drastic to cross; Igor had merely laid there on top of the blanket, a small distance between himself and Anora, and allowed himself to fall asleep knowing that he wouldn’t be stiff as a board come morning.
That was the first night. And the next time, Igor had done it again. And again. Until eventually, it had become another thing they didn’t talk about.
Even now, weeks later, the blanket remained, still that thin strip of fabric that neither of them dared to cross. Igor still laid on top of it, his hoodie pulled around him to keep out the cold; there was no contact between them – he never felt Anora shifting closer, she never felt the warmth of his skin against hers. Theirs was an understanding filled with unspoken words and boundaries neither had the guts to address.
Igor never asked for more, and she never offered it.
And now, when Igor was jerked awake by Anora’s laboured breathing and sharp twitching that seemed to spread through her entire being instead of just her fingers, Igor felt it immediately. Felt her twitching, breathing ragged like she was being chased by something only her closed eyes could see in the dark. The sheets rustled around her as she shifted, fingers clenching the mattress, knuckles going white in the golden glow of the streetlights.
Igor exhaled before pushing himself up to an elbow on the bed, his voice quiet: “Anora.”
Nothing happened, not even a twitch of recognition. Just another painfully sharp inhale, another tremor wrecking through her frail body like whatever nightmare she was trapped in wouldn’t let go. Igor bit the inside of his cheek, shifting up further with his hand slowly hovering – very, very, hesitantly – above her shoulder. The blanket still separated them, that same invisible line neither of them had ever fully addressed. And now, in the silence, in the darkness, that fucking boundary felt like the biggest obstacle Igor had ever had to hurdle over in his entire life.
He inhaled deeply through his nose, cursing in his head, fully accepting the fact that he might just get beat the fuck up for what he would do next. And then, before he could truly overthink it, he finally crossed the line between them.
With careful movements, he lifted the edge of the blanket and slipped underneath it, shifting closer to Anora. The warmth of the covers, of her, enveloped him immediately as Igor pressed himself closer to her twitching body, his chest now firmly pressed against Anora’s back.
His arm hesitated for a second before finally wrapping around her waist; and maybe he expected her to flinch harder, to recoil away from the touch, to shove him away with some insult so creative it would make Igor dumbfounded by the colourful ways a person could use the English language.
But she didn’t move away. Didn’t flinch, didn’t recoil, didn’t insult him. The moment Igor’s arm wrapped around her, something in her body gave out: a sharp breath stuck in her throat, followed by a shuddering exhale that felt like a release. Her tight muscles began to uncoil beneath his touch, her body slumping back against him. And through it all, Igor stayed still, waiting, listening as the warmth of Anora’s skin seeped into his bones through the layers of fabric between them, her body like a little furnace in the cold room.
Igor adjusted his grip slightly, his palm pressing against her stomach, holding her steady. Anchoring her back to reality, back to her bed, back to him. His fingers twitched from the warmth of her skin once, twice, before he, too, relaxed into her. Time went on, slowly but surely, and Igor didn’t know how long they had stayed like that when Anora moved; not away from him, but closer.
She was like a little shadow melting into another, the tension in her body drained, sinking into Igor’s chest like it was the only thing bringing her peace through the hazy layers of her slumber. Igor exhaled in relief, confused by the lump lodged in his throat: it felt new, foreign, almost frustrating.
Slowly, carefully, his lips brushed against the crown of her head.
“Got you.” Igor’s words were barely above a murmur, rough with sleep and unexpected emotion as he spoke them into her hair.
His thumb traced absentmindedly over the fabric of Anora’s shirt, drawing small, steady circles against her ribs. Barely there, but an undeniable comfort, a touch that made his heart do something that felt like cartwheels.
The radiator hummed on the wall, the old floors still creaked, the cold was still settled into the walls. But the unspoken line between them was finally gone.