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The first thing that greets Nikolai when he comes home is the smell of cookies hanging in the air: sugary-sweet with a hint of chocolate and vanilla. Also, heavy. So heavy that he fears a damn bakery exploded in their kitchen. However, having lived with his girlfriend for the last two years, he knows that a bakery has nothing on her, which is why, once the door falls shut with a soft click, he almost stumbles over his own feet in his hurry to slip out of his shoes and get to the kitchen.
Because a smell this thick and heavy can only mean one thing, and unlike the cookies, it is not really sweet. Something happened.
Sure enough, Nikolai enters their kitchen only to see that literally every single surface is occupied with trays of cookies: the table, the counters, the shelves, not even the chairs have been spared. And Sigma is in the center of it all, scowling at the batch of dough in her hands so fiercely that even Nikolai feels a surge of anger in his chest for whatever crime it must have committed. That quickly bleeds into concern, though.
“Hey, honey,” he says, greeting Sigma with a hand on their lower back, “whatcha doing?”
She barely even glances at him as she stirs the dough, making something as innocent as baking look so violent that his heart both flutters and falls inside his chest. (He’s dating his dream girl. Somehow. He doesn’t know how he managed to do that, but he is.)
“I told Atsushi I’d bring cookies to his housewarming party, so I did, but when I tried them out, they were terrible. That batch is way too dry!” she snaps, pointing her whisk at the tray on the table — and accidentally, splattering a few dozen surfaces with the cookie batter. Then she jerks her head towards one of the chairs. “And those are way too sweet. It’s like trying to eat solidified sugar. Pure sugar, Kolya! And that one came out burned, and that tasted like ass, and that one hurts to eat, and this —” She glowers down at the dough, fingers shaking around the plastic bowl. “”— this just won’t turn into proper, good batter no matter how much I try or stir or follow the freaking recipe!”
Nikolai stops her before she can try to beat the dough into submission all over again, placing his hands over hers and squeezing gently. “I think there are enough cookies now, Sigma.”
For a few silent moments, he feels her fingers tremble. Then she lets out a long, shuddering full-body sigh and lifts her hand to her face, rubbing her eyes as her shoulders hunch more and more. “I just don’t understand why it won’t work,” she says, 98% less anger and 100% leeching frustration over something that probably isn’t actually cookie dough. “I followed the recipe, I did everything right, I’ve done this a hundred times already, so why can’t I get it right?”
“You’re being too hard on yourself.” Wrapping one arm around her waist, the other cupping the back of her head, Nikolai pulls his girlfriend into his chest. “Your cookies are the best.”
“You haven’t even tried them,” she grumbles, her voice muffled against his shirt.
“But you made them, and they are always good! Every single batch I’ve ever tried. Truly.” He blindly reaches out to the tray closest to them, steals one, and takes a bite. Although Nikolai isn’t above lying to comfort her — he pretty much isn’t above anything for Sigma’s sake, really — he is uttering nothing but the truth here. The cookie falls apart like divine sweetness in his mouth, chewy, gooey, and still warm from the oven. “God in heaven,” he moans around it, “thank ‘ew for blessing ‘eh.” Swallowing the last bit, he squeezes his eyes shut in pure bliss, his hand curling even tighter around Sigma. “I could eat this for the rest of my life and not get sick. Are you kidding me?”
Looking up at him, Sigma’s face isn’t quite full of gloomy shadows anymore, though the doubt still lingers. “You’re just saying that because you’re my boyfriend.”
“Would I really eat so many whenever you bake them if I was lying?” he prompts with a tilt of his head. Then he gives his belly a few slaps. “Would I have gained all that weight if I was, hm?” Much to his trainer’s dismay.
Sigma presses out a small, fleeting smile before resting her forehead against his chest again. From the very beginning, he had a feeling something else was bothering her. Because the thing about Sigma is that they are a stress-baker.
The day her childhood dog died, the whole building complex smelled like blueberry muffins for weeks because every single neighbor got a basket full of them. The night before her doctor’s appointment to discuss starting hormone therapy, she made so many apple pies that Nikolai had to threaten to cut the electricity to stop her from making even more. And then there are the trips home to her parents that always end up with her staying awake until the morning hours, turning something bitter into something sweet. Usually, it seems to help her, but right now, she just seems even more upset because of it.
And that’s strange, considering how happy and excited she was to spend the day off relaxing when Nikolai left for work this morning.
“So what’s really going on?” he murmurs against the strands of her loose hair falling out of her bun and framing her beautiful face. “Do you want me to kill someone? Because I would.”
Sigma snorts quietly. “Maybe I’m just really annoyed by my lack of talent for baking….”
Sure, and usually, Nikolai doesn’t want to push too much, at least not with her, but he fears that she will start storing cookies in their bed if he doesn’t. And the best way of pushing is just giving her enough space and time to step forward herself.
After another moment or two, she lets out another breath. “I just… I ordered all these pretty clothes, thinking that they would make me feel better. But when I tried them on… I only felt worse. They just look so bad on me. So odd. Every person that sees me will know that I’m —” She grits her teeth, head shaking. “— not suit to wear them.”
“That’s not true,” he says. Once again —
“It is!” she doesn’t quite snap but says with so much conviction that it doesn’t leave any room to argue, glowering at the floor under her feet. “I don’t feel good in them, they just remind me of everything that I’m not, but I also hate this.” She tugs miserably at her grey, oversized hoodie. “I don’t feel good in anything that I own, so what’s even the point in anything when I’m always going to feel like that? Do I just have to accept feeling so bad for the rest of my life?”
“What about that leather skirt that you love.” His hands stroke up and down the length of their arms. “That makes you feel good, no?”
Sigma shrugs faintly. “I guess. But I can’t wear that every day.”
“But it means that there are clothes that will make you feel wonderful and beautiful and right. It won’t last forever,” he tells her, cupping her face so she won’t just go back to look at the floor. “The sun will shine again, especially for someone as gorgeous as you, my love.”
She doesn’t avert her gaze anymore, but it’s still a sore point. He can tell.
“You’re tired and overworked and stressed. There is only one thing that can fix it,” he finally says.
Her brows raise. “A cookie…?”
The utter conviction in their voice makes Nikolai throw his head back and laugh, loud and crisp before he wipes his eyes and guides his girlfriend out of the kitchen. “No, princess, not a cookie. A hot bath!”
“I guess a bath does sound nice,” they mumble as they enter their bathroom, her fingertips touching a spot on her cheek. “I have some… dough on my face.”
“A banya is balm for the soul. It always made me feel better.” Lighter, even, despite how heavy his head got when the air was thick and soupy with wet heat and with all the excess sweat pouring out of his skin. When Sigma moves to let the water in, Nikolai beats her to it. “Don’t! Let me do the work. Let me take care of you today.”
Finally, a small but genuine smile appears on her face, and she sits down on the edge of the bathtub, watching him work. “A banya. That’s like a sauna, right?”
“Similiar, but also different.” Nikolai tried visiting a few places in the hope of finding a piece of his homeland here, even if it’s thousands of kilometers away, but it was never the actual banya experience that he remembers from the first part of his life. Little did he know that home is not necessarily a place but a pair of silver eyes and a heart that loves tirelessly.
“Do you miss it?” his home asks. “Russia?”
Listening to a steady stream of water fill the bathtub, Nikolai places his hands on his hips and hums in consideration. Does he miss the comradery that he used to feel back there, knowing that he belonged? Does he miss coming home to the smell of borsch and the soothing voice of his grandmother? Does he miss knowing what to say without wracking his brain for a sentence?
“Sometimes, yes.”
But does he also miss having to keep his mouth shut and press out a nonchalant grin while he listens to his friends and his family talk ill of people like him? Does he miss working his feet raw and still not have enough money to get by at the end of the month? Does he miss knowing that he will never make it to anything, no matter how hard he tries?
“But I left for a reason,” he says, “and I would do it again.”
Sigma searches for the truth in his eyes, or maybe she searches for the opposite, a reason to sink deeper into the hole that seems to try to drag her down today. In the end, they just nod. After all, Nikolai wants to pull her up, not down.
“So,” he says, sinking to his knees in front of her to tug at the fuzzy socks on her feet. “How about a bath now and spending the rest of the day in bed doing nothing later?”
“The kitchen —” she starts.
“Let me take care of that.”
“Kolya,” she sighs, and he expects to hear another argument, but when she speaks, it’s just gentle acceptance. “What would I do without you?”
“Everything you do now,” he says as he helps her get out of the faded grey sweatpants she’s wearing, “but without the… uh, what’s the word? Entertainment! Just without the entertainment that only I can provide.”
She lets out another quiet huff of laughter, then lets him undress her in comfortable silence. The water gets ready at the same time as them. Before they get inside, Nikolai lets her choose what sort of magic potions to add to their bath because her taste is much better than his. They finally settle, a long, content sigh leaving him as his body gets submerged in hot, but not too hot, water that smells like roses and vanilla and holds enough bubbles to rebuild the Russian Empire from it.
Humming quietly, Nikolai lets his fingers wander over the back of her neck and shoulders, dusted with galaxies of moles and beauty marks, working out some tense kinks and knots that have lodged themselves there. “On a scale of one to ten, how good do you feel right now?”
“Six… but it was a two before you came home, so it’s a lot!”
“Just because it’s not a two anymore doesn’t mean we still shouldn’t shoot for the stars.” Leaning forward, he presses his lips to the elegant slope of her neck. Feather-light. Tender. “How about now?”
“A seven?” she says like she’s not sure whether something as simple as that is allowed to be effective. But she does like her neck kissed. And Nikolai is always happy to indulge her. It’s a gorgeous, delicate neck, very soft under his mouth, very kissable. So he continues peppering it with warm, tiny kisses, just enough to make the tension bleed out of her spine, relax back against him and even tilt her head and offer more room to work with.
“And now?” he asks after a while.
“A solid eight.” She fully leans into his back, water splashing a bit. “You don’t have to pamper me to make me feel better, you know. Just you being there is enough.”
As happy as his hollow heart is to hear that…. “But I like pampering my girl,” he murmurs with his face nuzzling the warm crook of her neck. “Treating her like a princess because that’s what she is.” His fingertips trace a heart on the skin of her back. “I like making her feel good.”
She shivers with every word, but it’s not a bad shiver, not from what he can tell and not when she squeezes his arms around her waist and whispers, “thank you.”
They spend some time like that, speaking now and then but mostly just soaking in hot water and each other’s presence. After a while, though, she starts picking at strands of her hair, murmuring that she’ll have to take a shower afterwards, so Nikolai promptly offers to wash them for her instead.
Admittedly, it sounds a lot easier than it is, and their bathtub isn’t the biggest, but he still takes great joy in it, massaging the shampoo into her hair, (trying out a Mohawk), rinsing it out with warm water, then applying conditioner until it feels like fine silk between his fingers.
“You are good that,” Sigma points out. Her tone is lighter than before. “Definitely better than the people at the hair salon when I go in for a dye.”
Nikolai chuckles. “I used to wash and do my sister’s hair when we were younger, and our parents were at work.”
“Oh. Julia...”
“Julia,” he confirms, a weighted smile tracing his mouth. Julia. Jülka. His little Julitschka. Unlike his parents, he still talks to her, still sends her money, still makes promises to bring her here someday that he doesn’t know whether he can keep, but a phone conversation can only do so much. At the end of the day, she is leading her own life back in Russia, an adult now, and he is here.
“I’d really like to meet her someday,” Sigma murmurs, resting her chin on her knees. “She’s so nice whenever we talk on the phone.”
He nods, oddly proud even though she probably didn’t learn that particular attribute from him. “She is a sweetheart. She always tells me that my girlfriend is very pretty.”
“Really?”
“Yup. And she has been trying out more make up stuff because of you.”
“Huh? I didn’t know that! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I forgot,” he admits. “But you two would get along well. I can see it.”
Sigma is quiet for a few moments. Then. “If you give me her number, I could send her some beginner tutorials that I used when I started experimenting with make up. And it would be nice to be able to text her. No offense, Kolya, but some things you just don’t want to say out loud in front of your big brother.”
He makes a face, not really in the mood to even think of his little sister and that sort of direction. “Yes, yes, I’ll give you her number right away.”
“Good,” Sigma says with a light-hearted chuckle. “Very good.” Her fingers drift through the water, lukewarm by now, before she lifts them and wrinkles her nose. “They’re all wrinkly already. We should probably get out.”
Resting his forehead against her back, Nikolai sighs. “We should.” But just because they should, doesn’t mean he wants to. It’s so peaceful, a small bubble of paradise floating far away from the real world. His only motivation to get up is the idea that crosses his mind when he traces the delicate chain of the silver necklace around Sigma’s neck. “Okay,” he says again, “getting up now.”
The water sloshes, and although their bathroom isn’t freezing, it’s definitely colder than the shape of soapy, vanilla-rose-scented water and his girlfriend’s heat, clinging to his skin like a second layer. Nikolai shakes it off, literally. Japan made him soft. He used to be able to stomp through the snow with nothing but a towel around his hips, and now he is whining about getting out of the tub? Embarrassing.
Then again, maybe it’s not such a bad thing, after all. Not if being soft means grabbing the towel and offering it to Sigma first as she follows him, wrapping it around her and rubbing her dry.
“I’m going to make us some tschai,” he announces once they’re both more or less dry, Sigma standing at the sink and applying some of her fancy-schmancy face creams on her skin, “and grab a few cookies, and you can already think about what movie you want to watch.”
“Anything as long as it’s not something Russian,” she mutters before shooting him a glance. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Even though Russian movies are home… they are also quite peculiar. And he is sure that his translation isn’t the best either, especially when he ends up commenting on everything.
He throws some dishes in the sink while waiting for the water to boil in the kitchen, even though the main part of the cleaning will have to wait until later. Once the tea bags are in hot water and the cookies arranged on a plate, he balances all of that on a tray and strides to their bedroom, where Sigma is already sitting on the bed and frowning at her laptop, wrapped up in the pink, fuzzy bathrobe that Nikolai brought home a few months ago.
“My lady,” he says, offering her the tea.
She grabs one cup and makes a face as she watches him rise back to his height with a slight bounce on his heels and walk over to the other side of the bed. “How does everything not just spill over?”
“A magic trick,” he trills with a wink when in reality, it’s simply the pay-off of year-long balancing and strength training that have ultimately landed him his current job as an artist and a performer in one of Japan’s most famous acrobatic shows. Balancing a tray is hardly worth mentioning when he juggles knives or plays around daily on the wheel of death.
“How was work, by the way?”
Their season isn’t starting for another two months, so it’s mostly practice, practice, practice, scheduling, and planning at this point. Nothing special. “Same as usual,” he says, settling next to her and stretching his arms with a big yawn before dropping his head on her shoulder. “The crew is planning a night-out next week. You should come.”
Sigma hums. “Sounds fun.”
“Have you picked something to watch?”
“Still deciding.”
“Well, while you decide… why don’t you try on the clothes you ordered again and show me?”
He feels them stiffen ever so slightly, tension getting stuck under the skin. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to, of course.” His fingers trail down the bare patch of skin on her wrist up and down. “But I’ve been thinking about you in that baby-blue sundress you showed me all day… I almost snapped my neck day-dreaming about it.”
Sigma’s head jerks to him. “I thought work was nothing special?”
“It’s nothing special when it happens every day.”
“Oh my god,” she mutters, shaking her head in exasperation before a sigh leaves her, and she sits up. “Fine. If it means keeping you from accidentally killing yourself, then I will do it.”
“However, do I deserve you?”
Her only reply is an inaudible grumble under her breath as she slides open her closet and rummages through it. “I’ll try them on in the bathroom first. They’ll look better when I walk in already wearing them instead of putting them on here.”
“I can even close my eyes,” he suggests.
“Just… stay here.”
“Can’t wait!” he calls after her.
He waits for quite a while, so long that he starts to think that he made the wrong decision when he made this suggestion, but it’s when he is about to get up and get on his knees to beg for her forgiveness that Sigma says, “okay, are you ready?” from the other room.
“I’ve never been readier!” Nikolai replies, leaning forward in excitement as he does.
Sigma waltzes in with her hands on her hips and wearing the most gorgeous sundress known to mankind, fluttery and light and showing off her long, slender legs, the picture-perfect living version of a dandelion in the summer breeze.
Nikolai stares at her for several long moments before his whole upper body drops, and he presses his fists against his face, letting out an inhuman wailing sound.
“Kolya…?”
“I’m sorry,” he mutters, shaking his hand as he looks up again. “You’re just so… you’re so…”
Sigma’s head tilts. The carefully-built confidence she strode in with threatening to collapse like a house of cards. But not on his watch.
“You’re just so fucking pretty,” he finally manages to get out and reaches for her until she lets him tug her to the edge of the bed. “You look amazing.” His hands slide down the length of her back, settle on her waist. “It looks perfect on you.”
“You really think so?”
“If I could eat you like a cookie, I would,” he mutters with a muffled voice when he presses his face against her side.
He hears her laughter reverberate through her whole body. Then she loops her arms around his neck, lets herself collapse in his lap. “You know, now that I feel a bit better… and now that there isn’t any cookie dough in my hair and all that, it really doesn’t look that bad anymore.”
“It looks amazing,” he insists because it does. Sigma is one of those people who look good no matter what they do or wear, naturally effortless. He just wishes she could see herself from his point of view. Just once.
“Maybe I’ll keep it then,” she murmurs.
“If you won’t, I will.”
She chuckles again, tracing his eye, the scarred one, with her fingertips when he lifts his head to look at her, the smile she offers him even more beautiful than the dress, rivaling the sun itself. “I love you, you know.”
“I know. I tell myself every day to remember that miracles, in fact, do happen.”
“Not a miracle,” she says. “Just the truth.”
“I love you too.” He presses the shape of the words to the corner of her mouth, to her cheek, to the slope of her neck, the shadow of bruised love and passion still lingering there from last week. He presses this simple truth to every patch of skin available until Sigma is giggling and sighing softly, her hair spread around her like a two-colored halo as she lies on the bed.
“We’ll never watch that movie, will we?”
“Ehhh, maybe, maybe not,” Nikolai replies with a hum. “But you will still show me the rest of the clothes.”
This time, her smile is a bit more genuine, the tension not as persistent. “Okay,” she murmurs. “I’d like that.”