gabolange

Small, thin-framed, faintly tortoiseshell, perched low enough on his nose that he was looking over them rather than through them at the page. She hadn’t even known he had a pair. He hadn’t mentioned it and she had certainly never seen him wear them before.

“Hi,” Margo said as she closed the door behind her. Her voice came out a register higher than she meant it to.

Sergei glanced up, finger still holding his place in the book. “Hi. Long day?”

“Yeah.” She hadn’t moved from the doorway. “Sorry.”

“Mm.” He went back to the page.

Margo unbuttoned her blazer and draped it across the armchair in the corner, watching him the whole time in a way she hoped wasn’t as obvious as it felt. He turned a page. The glasses slid a fraction lower on his nose and he pushed them back up with one knuckle, an absent, practiced gesture, like he’d done it a thousand times and simply never in front of her.

She crossed the room then and sat on her side of the bed, closer to him than strictly necessary, and Sputnik cracked one eye open to register the disturbance before deciding it wasn’t worth moving for.

“Since when do you wear glasses?” she asked, turning to him.

Sergei didn’t look up. “Only for reading. Small print, after a certain hour, it goes—” He made a vague gesture with his free hand. “—Нечёткий.”

There was something almost absurdly moving about it, Margo thought—the small vulnerability of it, the proof that time was doing its ordinary work on him the same as anyone. She’d known him through so many versions already: confident, frightened, broken, sharp with worry, soft with relief. This was just another one, gentler than the rest. A privilege, really, to be let in on the small erosions. She thought of all the years still ahead, the slow accumulation of moments like this one, and felt warmth settle in her chest at the thought that whatever new versions of Sergei were still coming, she’d get to be there for every one of them.

He finally glanced over then, and seemed to catch something in her expression, because his brow drew in, faintly amused, faintly confused. “Что?”

“Nothing.”

He studied her for a moment longer, and something shifted in his face—not quite a smile yet, but close. He set the book down, spine up, on the nightstand, displacing Sputnik enough to make him grumble and resettle on the duvet instead.

“You are being strange, Margo.”

Now he did smile and reached up to take his glasses off – an offer, I will take them off if you want – and Margo caught his wrist before he could. 

“Не-а,” she chided. “Leave them.” 

His eyebrows went up, delighted. “Leave them?”

“You should wear them more often, actually,” Margo suggested, and felt her face flush even as she said it, which was ridiculous—she was a grown woman, she shouldn’t be blushing over complimenting the man she lived with. “They suit you.”

“Careful, Margo,” Sergei teased, far too pleased with himself, “I might start wearing them to work. Only to see your face do that thing it is doing right now.”

“My face isn’t doing anything.” She knew this was a very obvious lie even as she said it—could hear her own drawl thickening the way it always did when she got flustered, vowels going slow and syrupy despite her best efforts.

“It is doing quite a lot.” Sergei brushed his thumb along her cheek, which felt even warmer than it had before. 

It was deeply annoying, the smugness radiating off him right now. Margo narrowed her eyes at him, but it only seemed to delight him further.

She leaned in to kiss him then – only partly to shut him up, and mostly because she simply wanted to – which seemed like an excellent idea right up until their glasses caught between them with an undignified little clack, and she pulled back half an inch, laughing against his mouth. 

“Подожди—hold on—” Sergei reached up, barely even breaking the kiss, plucking both their glasses off and setting them aside on the nightstand, then pulled her gently down on top of him, one hand settling warm at the small of her back to keep her there, and tried again, more successfully this time.

“We are getting old,” Sergei murmured against her mouth, half a laugh in it.

“Speak for yourself,” she said—he was, technically, a few months younger than her, a fact she liked pulling out whenever it suited her.

“Mm,” he hummed, voice dropping warmer, “but I like the idea of growing old with you, Margo.”

“Then shut up and kiss me, old man.”