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The banquet had been going for three hours.
Somewhere behind them, glasses clinked against glasses and the low hum of Russian conversation moved through the room in waves — federation officials, coaches, sponsors, the particular constellation of people who appeared whenever figure skating wanted to present itself as something elegant and intentional. The chandeliers were the expensive kind. The tablecloths were white. Everyone was dressed like the evening meant something.
Sasha had smiled through all of it—the toasts, the officials, the photographers who appeared at the worst possible moments, the careful performance of being exactly who everyone expected her to be in a room full of people who had already decided what she was.
She had stopped caring about the evening roughly forty minutes ago.
The back corridor off the main hall was quieter.
And Anna was here.
The two of them had found a corner—not entirely private, but not fully visible either. The kind of space large venues accidentally created if you knew how to look for it. A small waiting room, likely meant for guests, half-hidden from the main flow of the event.
Inside, a settee sat tucked behind an architectural column, partially obscured by an oversized potted arrangement placed more for grandeur than function.
Sasha had maneuvered them here with the practiced subtlety of someone who had learned, gradually, how to want things without being obvious about the wanting. A look across the room. A slight tilt of her head. Anna, who understood her better than most people understood themselves, had followed without being asked.
Now Sasha leaned back against her, settling in like she belonged there, her head tipped against Anna’s shoulder as familiar fingers moved through her hair.
These meetings were rare enough that she didn't bother pretending she wasn't going to make use of every minute. Their schedules ran parallel more often than they intersected — different tours, different shows, different corners of a world that didn't particularly care about keeping them in the same city. When they found themselves in the same room, Sasha had learned not to waste it on the parts of the room that didn't matter.
She felt Anna's hands pause against her scalp. Sasha nudged back into the touch, a soft, questioning hum slipping out.
Anna resumed, like she hadn’t stopped. “Ever consider dyeing your hair another color?”
“What color?" Sasha asked. Her eyes were half-lidded, fixed vaguely on the middle distance — on the white tablecloths, the glint of the chandelier, none of it registering as anything requiring her attention.
Anna's fingers combed through a long strand, holding it up briefly like she was examining silk. “I don’t know,” She murmured. “Red does suit you, though.”
She pressed a light kiss to the top of Sasha’s head.
Sasha tilted back just far enough to see Anna's face. She looked — as she always did — composed. Proper. Like something painted carefully and dried behind glass, untouched by the messiness of everything around them. She had been at this banquet for three hours too, had smiled through all the same obligations, and she wore none of it. Even now, in a dim waiting room with Sasha half-draped against her, still in the gown she'd worn to accept her commendation from the federation, she was entirely herself. Almost untouchable in how neatly she held herself together, even here where no one was watching and there was no reason to perform anything.
She was looking down at her with soft, indulgent eyes.
It reminded Sasha of how she looked at her dogs — easy and warm and entirely unguarded. That particular brand of gentle, patient affection reserved for something that can't quite keep up with you. Sasha turned the feeling of it over in her chest and found, uncomfortably, that she didn't have a clean word for it. Not quite tenderness. Not quite pity. Something quieter than both.
Something domestic, almost.
The word arrived without warning and sat there, strange and true. Here, of all places. A state banquet in Moscow, crystal and chandeliers on the other side of the wall, and the thing Sasha's chest produced was domestic.
She wondered, sometimes, what people would think. The Olympic gold and the silver. Two girls folded into each other in a borrowed corner of a room full of people who thought they knew exactly what figure skating looked like. The federation officials toasting their names twenty feet away.
Anna's hands had gone still again.
When Sasha glanced up, Anna was watching her with an amused tilt to her mouth— she had asked something. Sasha hadn't caught it.
She considered answering. She rose up and kissed her instead.
Anna made a soft sound against her mouth, something halfway between surprise and satisfaction, and Sasha felt that small shift in her, the way she always softened when Sasha decided instead of asked.
Sasha pressed in closer, deeper, until they both sank further back into the couch, the cushions exhaling softly beneath them. She let herself go— the soft texture of Anna's tongue, the warmth of her underneath, the way her hands had found their way back into Sasha's hair like they belonged there.
That was the part that was almost dangerous — not the wanting, she'd made a kind of peace with the wanting — but how natural it felt. How easily her body knew where to go. How little she had to think about any of it. She had kissed people before who required her full attention, who demanded she stay present and deliberate, and Anna required none of that. Anna required nothing. Sasha simply arrived and everything else arranged itself around her.
They broke apart to breathe.
Sasha looked at her.
She preferred Anna like this. Beneath her, pupils blown wide and dark, chest rising and falling in an unsteady rhythm, a flush running soft along her cheekbones. All that careful composure, gently undone. It was the most honest version of her, Sasha thought. The version nobody else got to see.
She felt something possessive move through her at that— the particular satisfaction of being the only one who knew what Anna looked like when she stopped holding herself together. The only one she let in far enough to see it.
From the hall, another swell of applause. Neither of them moved.
Anna lifted a hand and cupped her face.
Sasha leaned into it without thinking, her eyes falling shut. Anna's thumb moved once, slowly, against her cheekbone and Sasha felt something in her chest go very still in response.
"What are you thinking about?" Anna whispered.
The question settled over her like something warm. Sasha answered before she could think to protect herself from it.
"You." Her voice came out quieter than she expected. "I'm always thinking about you."
Sasha was aware of her own heartbeat. Aware of Anna's thumb, still resting against her cheek. Aware that she had just handed something over without quite meaning to, and that Anna had taken it gently, the way she took most things.
Then Anna smiled and leaned up to kiss her again, fingers curling into Sasha's collar and tugging gently. Sasha followed the pull without hesitation, one arm bracing against the wall beside Anna's head, the other curling slowly around to the curve of her neck, holding her close as if there was no other place she was meant to be.
Her fingertips came to rest at Anna's pulse point, light as a question. She could feel it — the steady beat of her heart beneath thin skin. Sasha pressed the faintest bit harder, and felt it quicken.
Something in her chest answered it — that same unnamed thing, swelling just slightly, pressing against the inside of her ribs. She thought again about the word she hadn't wanted to look at. About how natural this was.
Anna kissed her slower this time. Less urgent. The kind of kiss that wasn't going anywhere, that had nowhere to be — that existed purely for the sake of existing, which was its own kind of terrifying when Sasha stopped to consider it. She was used to things with purposes. Jumps with points attached. Performances with scores.
Anna's hand had moved from her collar to her jaw, tilting her slightly, unhurried, like she had all the time in the world and intended to use it.
Sasha wondered when that had happened. When Anna had stopped waiting to be reached for and started being the one who reached back.
She pulled back just far enough to breathe.
Anna didn't go far. She stayed close, eyes still half-shut, the flush still soft along her cheeks. Her thumb traced a slow line along Sasha's jaw and Sasha felt it everywhere, which was inconvenient and entirely unsurprising.
"Hey," Anna said softly.
Sasha realized she'd gone quiet for too long. She could feel Anna reading her — that careful, patient attention that never pushed but never looked away either. Anna had always been good at that. Waiting her out. Giving her the space to arrive at things on her own timetable without making her feel watched while she did it.
"I'm here," Sasha said.
"I know." Anna's mouth curved. "You went somewhere for a second."
"Didn't go far."
"No," Anna agreed, quietly. "You never do."
Sasha leaned down and pressed her forehead to Anna's. Not a kiss. Just — closeness. Just the simple, ordinary fact of proximity, of choosing to stay exactly here instead of anywhere else. She felt Anna exhale beneath her, slow and even, and felt her own breathing match it without any decision being made.
They stayed like that for a moment.
On the other side of the wall, Russia celebrated its skaters. Here there was just the hum of the room, the warmth of the recliner, the soft and specific weight of Anna underneath her — steady, real, present in the way that things you had stopped pretending weren't important eventually became.
"Anna," she said. Her voice came out low. Careful in a different way than usual— but careful like something being held gently because it mattered.
"Mm."
Sasha closed her eyes.
The word sat at the back of her throat. She'd been carrying it for a while now — months, maybe, or longer if she was honest, which she was trying to be.
It wasn't a hard word. Three syllables, or one, depending on how you arranged it. People said it constantly. It survived being said.
She thought about the corner of Anna's mouth, years ago. The fluorescent lights. The completely unpremeditated decision her body had made before her mind could weigh in.
She thought about how little had been a decision since then. How much of it had just been arriving. Finding Anna already there. Finding herself already reaching.
"Nothing," she said finally. Soft, and not entirely true, and Anna would know it wasn't entirely true. "Just thinking."
Anna's hand moved to the back of Sasha's neck, fingers splayed across her nape. "Okay," she said.
Sasha pressed her forehead a little harder against Anna's and thought: soon. She would find the words soon. They were already there, had been there, were only waiting on her to stop pretending she hadn't found them yet. Soon.
For now she stayed exactly where she was, listening to Anna breathe, feeling her pulse slow and steady under her fingertips.
This was enough. This was, she thought, already more than enough.