Khabib’s Left Bicep

It was familiar in a way that made something tighten in your chest.

You had spent almost ten years chasing a life in England - first lectures, then late nights at work, then the routine of a little flat you had shared with someone who was supposed to become your forever. Instead, you’d packed your belongings into a handful of boxes, handed over your keys, and booked a one-way flight home with no real plan besides seeing your family.

But what you hadn’t expected was that the first familiar face waiting for you wouldn’t simply be your parents.

Everyone in your family joked that your father had gained another brother before he’d ever gained a son.

Long before the UFC, before the championship belts and sold-out arenas, before millions of people knew the name Khabib Nurmagomedov, your father had known him simply as Abdulmanap’s best boy. Your father had spent most of his adult life inside the same gym, teaching alongside Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov for years, watching generations of children grow into disciplined young men. Khabib had been one of them. You had heard the stories your entire childhood - how your father would stay late after sessions helping tidy the mats, how Abdulmanap insisted everyone stayed afterwards for tea whether they wanted to or not, and how the three of them could spend hours arguing over wrestling techniques that all looked identical to everyone else.

By the time you were born, your father and Abdulmanap were already family in everything except blood. Naturally, that meant Khabib was woven into your life before you were old enough to remember it. There wasn’t a birthday, Eid celebration or summer afternoon at the gym where he wasn’t somewhere nearby. While the older men coached, you spent your childhood running around the wrestling mats with the other children, constantly being told not to interrupt training.

Khabib was one of the few who never seemed bothered by your endless questions.

He’d lift you out of the way when you wandered too close to sparring, hand you bottles of water that were far too heavy for your tiny hands, and laugh whenever you announced that one day you’d be able to beat everyone in the gym.

Then life happened.

He became one of the biggest names in mixed martial arts and you grew up, left school, and accepted a place at university in England just after your eighteenth birthday.

What was meant to be a few years studying somehow became nearly a decade away from home.

One graduate job turned into another, you settled into a comfortable routine, rented a little flat with a man you thought you would eventually marry, and slowly built a life that existed almost entirely outside of Dagestan. Visits home became non-existent, phone calls became less frequent than they should have been, and eventually your connection to home consisted mostly of family WhatsApp groups and the photographs your father insisted on sending every Sunday.

Then came the loss that shook everyone who had ever stepped foot inside Abdulmanap’s gym. Khabib retired undefeated, walking away from the sport exactly as he’d promised his mother he would, but his father’s death left a space that couldn’t be filled, and your own father took it upon himself to make sure Khabib was never left carrying that grief alone. If one of them was heading to the mosque, the other was already waiting outside. If your father went to the gym, Khabib was there before him. They trained together, drank tea together, visited family together, and somewhere in the middle of all that shared grief, their friendship deepened into something that looked more like family than friendship. Your mother often joked that she’d have to set an extra place at the dinner table because if your father appeared, Khabib wouldn’t be far behind.

You had barely stepped through the front door before your father’s unmistakable laugh echoed from the kitchen, accompanied by another voice you recognised instantly despite not having heard it in person for nearly ten years.

Khabib.

Your stomach gave the smallest, most ridiculous little flip.

You followed the sound without thinking, smiling before you’d even reached the doorway. Then you stopped.

For a second, your mind struggled to catch up with what your eyes were seeing.

He was older now, of course - that much was expected - but somehow far more solid than you remembered. Gone was the permanently weight-cut frame he’d carried through his fighting career. Retirement suited him. His shoulders looked impossibly broad beneath a simple T-shirt, his beard had thickened slightly, and there was a comfortable heaviness to him now that hadn’t existed when every kilogram mattered. He looked stronger somehow, despite carrying more weight, like a man who no longer had anything to prove to anyone.

His head lifted the moment you entered.

For just a heartbeat, he simply stared.

The little girl who used to trail after him around the gym asking endless questions had disappeared somewhere over the years.

In her place stood a woman he almost didn’t recognise.

England had changed you.

Your hair was longer, your features softer but somehow more defined, your style completely different to the teenager he’d waved goodbye to all those years ago. There was confidence in the way you carried yourself now, even if tiredness lingered behind your eyes. It took him far longer than it should have to realise he was still looking.

Neither of you had expected the years apart to make such a difference.

Neither of you realised, in that first quiet moment, that you’d both be seeing each other through completely different eyes than you ever had before.

Your mother appeared snapping you out of your thoughts, wiping her hands on a tea towel before wrapping you in a hug so tight it knocked the breath clean out of your lungs.

“My girl,” she whispered, holding your face between her hands the moment she let go. “Let me look at you.”

“Mama…”

“You’ve lost weight.”

“I haven’t.”

“You have.”

“I promise I haven’t.”

“They don’t feed people properly in England.”

Your father snorted from behind her.

“I’ve been telling her that for years.”

You laughed, letting yourself be fussed over despite knowing it was completely pointless to argue. You’d barely been home five minutes and already your mother was inspecting your hair, your face, your hands, muttering quietly about how tired you looked and deciding before you’d even answered that you needed feeding immediately.

Only once she’d finally stepped back did you look across the room again.

Khabib was still standing exactly where he’d been.

He simply watched with the smallest smile, arms folded loosely across his chest as though seeing this exact reunion was exactly how he’d imagined it.

“It’s good to see you,” you said, smiling at him.

His expression softened almost immediately.

“You too.”

“I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“I come here often.”

Your father answered before he could.

“‘Often’?” he scoffed. “He’s here every day, he’s practically moved in.”

Your eyes lingered on him for another moment.

You’d seen countless interviews over the years, watched clips from podcasts your colleagues insisted on showing you, and occasionally smiled whenever his face appeared online. Yet none of it compared to standing in the same room with him again.

He looked… comfortable.

Before you could stop yourself, the observation slipped out.

“You’ve changed.”

His eyebrows lifted.

“So have you.”

“No.” You smiled, tilting your head slightly as you looked him up and down with exaggerated consideration. “I mean… you’ve definitely become chunkier.”

Your father’s laugh echoed through the kitchen before Khabib had the chance to answer.

“I told him!” he declared triumphantly, pointing straight at his friend. “I said someone would eventually tell him.”

Khabib looked from your father back to you with an expression of mock offence.

“I have not become fat.”

“I didn’t say fat.”

“What did you say?”

“I said chunkier.”

He glanced down at himself before looking back up.

Even your mother laughed at that.

She shook her head fondly before clapping her hands together, instantly reclaiming control of the room.

“Enough,” she said firmly. “You can all tease each other after you’ve eaten. Food is getting cold, and nobody is leaving this table hungry.”

Nobody argued.

Nobody ever argued with your mother when food was involved.

Within moments everyone had settled around the dining table exactly as they had hundreds of times before. Plates were filled before anyone had the chance to refuse, bread was passed around without asking, glasses of tea appeared as though by magic, and for the first time since stepping off the plane, the tightness that had been sitting in your chest for months finally began to ease.

You hadn’t realised how much you’d missed it.

England had been quieter.

Even living with your ex, the evenings had rarely looked like this. Dinner had usually consisted of the television humming in the background while one of you scrolled absent-mindedly through your phone. If you spoke, it was often about work the next day, whose turn it was to buy groceries or whether the washing had been done. Comfortable, perhaps, but never alive in the way your family seemed incapable of avoiding.

Here, nobody could finish a sentence without somebody else joining in.

Conversation bounced effortlessly from one subject to another, never lingering anywhere for too long before somebody remembered another story or interrupted with a question. Your father was already halfway through recounting something that had happened at the gym that morning, your mother corrected every detail she claimed he’d embellished, and Khabib sat between them with the patient expression of a man who had spent years acting as referee in exactly the same argument.

You found yourself smiling before you’d even realised you were doing it.

“So,” your father said eventually, leaning back in his chair as though he’d only just remembered the most important topic of the evening. “Tell us about England.”

“There isn’t much to tell.”

“There is ten years to tell.”

“I studied.”

“We know that.”

“I worked.”

“We know that too.”

“I paid taxes.”

Your mother laughed.

“You’ve definitely become boring.”

“You lived in another country for almost ten years,” your father replied. “Something interesting must have happened.”

You considered it for a moment, turning your glass of tea slowly between your fingers before giving a small shrug.

“Honestly, my life was much less exciting than everyone seems to think.”

The conversation naturally drifted elsewhere. Your father launched into another story from the gym, your mother interrupted every few sentences to correct details she insisted he’d exaggerated, and before long everyone was talking over one another again.

You found yourself sitting back for a moment, content simply to listen.

It was then that you noticed Khabib again.

It struck you how naturally he fitted amongst it all. There wasn’t a single moment where he felt like a guest in your parents’ home. He reached for bread without asking where it was kept, automatically refilled your father’s tea before pouring his own, and answered your mother’s questions before she’d even finished asking them. It was obvious this wasn’t simply somewhere he visited.

He belonged here.

Perhaps that was why seeing him sitting opposite you felt so strange.

He’d always been part of your life.

The only difference now was that you couldn’t seem to stop noticing him.

Noticing the lines at the corners of his eyes when he smiled. The way retirement had softened him without making him seem any less strong. The calmness he carried into every conversation. Even when everyone else spoke over each other, he somehow never raised his voice.

He caught you looking once.

You quickly reached for your drink.

“So.”

You looked up.

There it was again.

That single word.

Somehow, after all these years, Khabib still managed to make one syllable sound like the beginning of an interrogation.

“So?” you repeated cautiously.

He rested his forearms against the edge of the table, looking at you with quiet curiosity.

“You have boyfriend?”

There it was.

You laughed before answering.

“No.”

He gave a small nod.

“Husband?”

“No.”

Another nod.

“You were living with someone.”

It wasn’t really a question.

“Not anymore.”

“I know.”

Of course he did.

You looked immediately towards your father.

He had the decency to look guilty for all of three seconds before helping himself to another piece of bread.

“I might have mentioned it.”

“Might have?”

“I tell him things.”

“You tell him everything.”

“He asks.”

“I do not,” Khabib said calmly.

“You absolutely do.” your father argued.

“I ask how you are.”

“And then he tells you my entire life story?” you guess.

“He does.”

You sighed dramatically.

“I’ve got no privacy in this family.”

“You moved away,” your father replied. “We had to keep him updated somehow.”

You glanced towards Khabib.

Khabib merely shook his head, refusing to argue any further.

The smallest smile tugged at your lips.

Some things really hadn’t changed.

The conversation drifted for a moment before Khabib spoke again, his voice quieter this time.

“Your father told me about this man.”

You looked down at your plate.

“I guessed he would.”

“He said he wasn’t good.”

Your father made a noise of agreement before your mother silenced him with a look.

“It wasn’t all terrible,” you said eventually.

“No?”

“No.”

“It ended for a reason?”

You nodded.

“It did.”

There wasn’t much else to say.

You’d spent months trying to explain the relationship to friends in England, trying to pinpoint exactly when things had changed. There hadn’t been one dramatic argument or one unforgivable betrayal. Instead, there had been dozens of tiny disappointments that slowly became impossible to ignore. You’d realised one morning that you were making yourself smaller just to make somebody else comfortable.

Leaving had hurt.

Staying would’ve hurt more.

Khabib listened without interrupting.

When the silence settled again, he spoke with the same matter-of-fact certainty he seemed to apply to everything.

“He was foolish.”

You let out a quiet laugh.

“You’ve never even met him.”

“I don’t need to.”

“You’ve only heard my father’s version.”

“I know your father exaggerates.”

“He absolutely does.”

“But…” His gaze settled on yours. “Not about everything.”

You waited.

“You are kind.”

Heat immediately crept into your cheeks.

“You are respectful.”

You looked away, suddenly finding your tea very interesting.

“You have good family.”

A pause.

Long enough that you thought he was finished.

Then, in a voice noticeably quieter than before, he added, “And you are very pretty.”

The words hung in the air.

You looked back up almost immediately.

He wasn’t smiling.

He wasn’t teasing you.

If anything, he looked faintly uncomfortable, as though he hadn’t intended to say the last part aloud.

Your father looked between the two of you with poorly disguised interest before deciding, perhaps wisely, to keep eating.

Your mother simply smiled.

Khabib cleared his throat.

“Your father told me how this man treated you.”

You swallowed.

“I think…” He searched briefly for the right English. “He did not understand what he had.”

Your heart gave an unexpected little flutter.

“You deserved better.”

Nobody said anything for a few seconds.

You laughed eventually, partly because it was easier than admitting how unexpectedly those words had affected you.

“You’ve all definitely been spending too much time together.”

“What does that mean?” your father asked.

“You all sound exactly the same.”

“We are right,” he replied simply.

By the time dinner had finished, the table was littered with empty plates and abandoned glasses of tea. Your father leaned back in his chair with the satisfied sigh of someone who had eaten far too much before glancing towards your mother.

“We should go.”

She nodded immediately.

“I need to tell everyone she’s home before somebody hears it from somebody else.”

You frowned.

“Now?”

“If we don’t,” your mother said, already standing to gather the dishes, “half the family will be offended they weren’t the first to know.”

“And your aunt will somehow hear before your grandmother,” your father added. “Then we’ll never hear the end of it.”

You laughed.

“You’re really leaving me already?”

“We’ll only be an hour.”

“Maybe two,” your mother corrected.

Your father looked directly at Khabib as he reached for his keys.

“You stay.”

Khabib glanced up from where he was stacking the empty tea glasses, giving a small nod. “I’ll stay.”

You frowned almost immediately, already opening your mouth to object.

“Dad, I don’t need -”

“You’ve spent ten years away,” he interrupted gently, as though the explanation should have been obvious. “The house feels strange again. It’s better if someone stays while you settle back in.”

You opened your mouth to argue before realising it was entirely pointless.

Once your parents had decided something, there was no changing their minds.

Within minutes they were heading out of the front door, your father’s voice already carrying down the path as he discussed which relatives they should visit first.

The house, so full of noise only moments earlier, suddenly fell quiet.

You turned back towards the dining table.

Khabib was already gathering the empty tea glasses without saying a word, sleeves pushed back to his forearms as though helping clear away after dinner was as natural to him as breathing.

For the first time since walking through your parents’ front door, the two of you were alone.

For the next few minutes neither of you spoke. It was oddly easy, moving around each other in the kitchen as though you’d done it yesterday rather than nearly a decade ago. Whenever you reached for something, he’d already passed it to you. Whenever he carried plates towards the sink, you found yourself automatically drying them before he’d even asked.

He moved around the kitchen without hesitation, opening cupboards without needing to ask where anything belonged. It was impossible not to smile.

“You really have moved in,” you said, collecting the remaining bowls before he could reach them.

A quiet laugh escaped him.

By the time the last glass had been dried and returned to its cupboard, the kitchen looked as though dinner had never happened.

Your mother would still find something to complain about when she came home, you were certain of it. She always did. A teaspoon left beside the sink, a tea towel folded the wrong way, somebody having dared to put a bowl on the wrong shelf. It had become something of a family tradition to let her discover one tiny imperfection so she could sigh dramatically and declare nobody appreciated how much work she did.

You smiled to yourself at the thought, hanging the tea towel neatly over the oven door.

“I should probably unpack before I lose the motivation.”

Khabib nodded once, leaning back against the kitchen counter.

“You have many bags?”

“Too many.”

“You always overpack.”

“I lived there for nearly ten years.”

“You still overpack.”

“You haven’t even seen my suitcase.”

“I remember.”

You laughed, shaking your head.

“You remember seventeen-year-old me.”

“You packed four pairs of trainers for one week.”

“I liked having options.”

“You wore the same pair every day.”

“They were the comfortable ones.”

His smile was small but genuine.

“I know.”

You couldn’t help smiling back.

It was strange how easily conversation came to the two of you. You hadn’t shared a room in almost a decade, hadn’t spoken properly in years, and yet it felt as though someone had simply pressed pause on your last conversation rather than ending it altogether.

You picked up the empty mug you’d abandoned earlier.

“Come on, then.”

He frowned slightly.

“Where?”

“Apparently you’re supervising me.”

“I don’t remember agreeing to that.”

“My father volunteered you.”

“He did.”

“So you might as well earn your title.”

He let out a quiet chuckle before following you out of the kitchen.

The staircase creaked beneath your feet exactly as it always had. Even the framed family photographs lining the wall hadn’t changed. School pictures, weddings, holidays you’d almost forgotten about. There were newer ones too, photographs your parents had collected while you were away. Your graduation. The first flat you’d rented. A picture your father had insisted on printing after you’d sent him a selfie outside your office building in London.

He’d made room for your life, even when you weren’t there to live it with him.

Your bedroom looked almost untouched.

Your mother had clearly kept everything exactly where you’d left it, dusting shelves that hadn’t been used in years and replacing the bedding with fresh linen before you’d arrived. It felt oddly surreal stepping inside. Part museum, part childhood memory.

Your large suitcase sat where your father had carried it earlier.

“There,” you sighed dramatically, pointing towards it. “My greatest enemy.”

Khabib looked between you and the case.

“That?”

“That.”

“It doesn’t look heavy.”

“You lift it then”

Without another word, he bent down, lifted it effortlessly with one hand and placed it neatly on your bed.

You crouched beside the suitcase, undoing the zip with a relieved sigh. The moment it sprang open, clothes immediately threatened to spill over the sides.

Khabib looked down.

“So…”

You glanced up.

“So?”

“You did overpack.”

You groaned.

“Oh, don’t start.”

He watched with obvious amusement as you attempted to push everything back inside before removing things one at a time.

For someone who had apparently packed too much, you’d somehow still managed to crease almost every item you owned.

The conversation faded as naturally as it had begun.

Neither of you seemed in any particular rush to fill the silence, and surprisingly, it wasn’t awkward. The bedroom was filled instead with quieter sounds; the soft scrape of hangers sliding along the wardrobe rail, the zip of your suitcase opening and closing, drawers being pulled out one after another. Every so often Khabib wandered over to take something heavier from your hands before you could protest, placing books neatly onto the shelf above your desk or lifting another pile of clothes into the wardrobe as though he’d been helping you unpack all his life.

You’d almost forgotten he was there.

Or perhaps you’d become too comfortable too quickly.

Years of living on your own had made unpacking an entirely thoughtless task. You simply reached into the suitcase, taking handful after handful of clothes without really looking, folding them automatically before deciding where they belonged.

Jeans went into the bottom drawer. Jumpers onto the shelf. T-shirts into neat piles your mother would inevitably refold tomorrow anyway.

The worst part was over. Your clothes were mostly put away, your books were stacked neatly on the shelf, and the suitcase that had felt like it contained your entire life was finally starting to look less like a disaster and more like the beginning of a new one.

Without thinking, you reached into the remaining pile of things inside the suitcase and lifted everything out at once, tossing it onto the bed so you could sort through it properly.

It was only when you reached down for the next item that you realised what was sitting directly in front of you.

The contents scatter across the duvet like a spilled secret: black lace, burgundy mesh, something in emerald green that’s barely more than two triangles and a prayer. A bralette with straps that are meant to be seen. Thongs with thin gold chains where cotton should be. A bodysuit so delicate it looks like cobweb.

Your hand pauses mid-air, holding a pair of sheer stockings.

Shit.

The silence in the room shifts. Deepens. When you risk a glance toward the window, Khabib is no longer looking at the street. His gaze rests on the bed - on the particular shade of crimson you’d bought in a boutique in SoHo, the saleswoman assuring you it was “impossibly flattering.”

One corner of his mouth lifts.

“You wear these in England?” His voice is completely level.

“Some of us do, yes.” You scoop the pile toward you with both arms, fabric slipping against fabric, and you’re about to cram it all into the top drawer sight unseen when he speaks again.

“The green one.”

You stop.

“That would look good on you.”

Your fingers are still tangled in silk and lace, and you don’t turn around because you’re not sure what your face is doing. The heat that blooms across your chest is the slow, spreading kind - not a flash of embarrassment, but something far more deliberate.

“You don’t know what looks good on me.” you manage.

The chair creaks. Footsteps, deliberate on the old floorboards, and then he’s not quite behind you, he’s to your left, close enough that you can smell cedar and clean cotton and the faint ghost of black tea. “Ten years,” he agrees. “You were a skinny thing. All elbows.”

“I’m still all elbows.”

“You’re not.” He reaches past you, and for a suspended moment you forget how to breathe, but he just picks up the emerald thong - the one that is definitely, definitively not enough fabric and holds it between two fingers like something precious. “You were a girl when you left. You came back a woman.”

The hush in the room is oceanic.

“Khabib.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re flirting with me.”

He doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t confirm it either. Just drapes the emerald lace back onto the bed with a care that feels more intimate than if he’d touched you directly. “Your father told me to help you settle in. I’m being helpful.”

“This isn’t helping.”

“No?” He turns his head then, and the space between you is suddenly not space at all - it’s a held breath, a question mark, a door left three inches ajar. “What is it, then?”

You should say something clever. You should make a joke, deflect, point out that he’s your father’s best friend and he’s known you since you were crawling and that this conversation is veering into territory neither of you can navigate without consequences.

Instead your mouth says: “I think you know exactly what it is.”

His expression doesn’t change, but something behind his eyes does - a flicker, a rearrangement, like watching a lock tumble into place. “Maybe I do.”

The underwear sits between you on the bed like evidence. The afternoon light has shifted, gone golden and syrupy, and it catches the silver gems and makes them glint. Neither of you moves.

“Finish unpacking,” Khabib says quietly. “I’ll wait.”

“For what?”

“For you to ask me to leave.”

Your heart is a fist against your ribs. “And if I don’t ask?”

He tilts his head, like you’re a door he’s been waiting to open for a very long time.

“Then I’ll stay.”

The word hangs there, suspended. Your hand is still resting on a pile of lingerie, and his hand is inches away. The house listens. The apricot tree outside the window drops a fruit onto the grass with a soft, overripe thud.

You pull open the top drawer of your dresser.

One by one, deliberately, you take out and fold each piece of lingerie inside. The black lace. The burgundy mesh. The cobweb bodysuit.

Khabib watches every movement.

“There,” you say, closing the drawer with a click. “Done.”

“Not quite.” He hasn’t moved from his spot by the bed, the air between you is so thick you could skim it with a spoon. “You still have to ask.”

The challenge in his voice is infuriating. It’s also the most alive you’ve felt since your plane touched down on Dagestani soil.

You step closer. One step, and then another, until you have to tilt your chin up to hold his gaze. The cedar-and-tea scent of him is stronger here, and you notice a scar on his jaw that wasn’t there ten years ago, silver-pale and slightly raised.

“Stay,” you say.

His thumb skims the thin skin of your wrist. Once. Twice. Your pulse jumps against the calloused pad of it like a small animal responding to a sound it’s been waiting for.

“You’re shaking,” he murmurs.

“I’m not.”

A lie, and he knows it. The tremor runs from your wrist up through your forearm, and his fingers close around it gently - not restraining, just holding, as if your arm is something he intends to keep.

“Ten years,” Khabib says, and his voice has dropped to a register that seems to bypass your ears entirely. It settles somewhere in your sternum. “Your father sent me photos. Every time you called him, every holiday, every new job. And every photo, I’d look at you a little longer than I should.”

Your breath catches. “Khabib - ”

“Let me finish.” His thumb hasn’t stopped moving. “When you started seeing that man, your father would tell me things. How he didn’t respect you. How you’d call and your voice sounded smaller. I thought about you then. I thought about what I’d say if I ever saw him.”

“What would you have said?”

“Nothing.” His eyes meet yours. “I would have done worse.”

The space between you compresses. Neither of you looks away from the other.

“He never touched you,” Khabib says. It’s not a question.

“No. Not the way I needed.”

A muscle in his jaw tightens. The scar on it whitens. “And now? What do you need now?”

You don’t answer with words. Words would require air, and air is suddenly a luxury you can’t spare. Instead you lift your free hand and press it against his chest, palm flat, feeling the steady thud of his heart beneath the worn cotton of his shirt.

The fabric is soft from years of washing. The man beneath it is anything but.

Khabib leans down. The movement is slow enough that you could stop it - turn your head, step back, make a joke and pretend none of this happened. You don’t. You tilt your chin up instead, eyelids heavy, and when his mouth meets yours, the first contact is barely a brush.

Teasing. Testing.

Then his hand releases your wrist and cups the back of your neck, and the kiss deepens into something that is not testing at all. His beard rasps against your chin. His tongue tastes of black tea. His fingers curl into the hair at your nape, and a sound escapes your throat - half sigh, half surrender.

“I’ve thought about this mouth,” he says against your lips. “Every time you smiled in those photos.”

His free hand finds the hem of your blouse. The fabric is thin summer cotton, and when he tugs it upward, the air hits your stomach and makes you shiver. He pauses with the blouse bunched at your ribs.

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

He lifts it over your head in one motion. The blouse drops somewhere behind him, a pale ghost on the floorboards, and then his mouth is on your collarbone. His lips are unexpectedly soft - softer than his hands, softer than the words coming out of them and he presses them to the hollow of your throat, the slope of your shoulder, the place where your bra strap lay.

His mouth travels from your shoulder to the dip beneath your throat, and your fingers find the hem of his shirt. He makes a low sound - approval, hunger, some indistinguishable blend of both.

“Impatient,” he murmurs against your skin.

“You’ve had years to be patient. I’ve had five minutes.”

That earns you a quiet laugh, a huff of warmth against your sternum, and then his hands are at your waist and the world tilts. He lifts you.

Not awkwardly, not with the hesitant strength of someone uncertain of his own power, but in one clean motion that seats you on the edge of the dresser. The wood is cool through the thin fabric of your pants. Your knees bracket his hips before you’ve consciously decided to open them.

“Better,” he says.

His shirt is still halfway up his torso, caught on his shoulders, and you pull it higher. Your fingers map his body without permission, and he lets you, breathing steadily, watching your face as you discover him.

Hiss stomach tightens under your touch and sends a spike of heat straight through your center. He’s solid in a way that makes you want to test your teeth against his skin.

Khabib shrugs the shirt the rest of the way off. It pools on the dresser beside your hip, and then you’re both bare from the waist up, the late sunlight striping gold across your bodies, and his mouth finds your neck, your jaw, the shell of your ear.

“The things I want to do to you,” he says, and each word is a separate kiss, a separate spark.

“Tell me.”

“Better to show you.”

His hand slides up your spine, fingers finding the clasp of your bra with an accuracy that makes you wonder how long he’s been imagining this exact motion. The hooks release. The straps slip down your shoulders, and then -

The front door slams.

Not a quiet closing, not a gentle latch catching. A full-throated, old-wood-against-doorframe slam that echoes up the stairwell like a gunshot.

Your mother’s voice follows, bright and carrying: “We’re back!”

Fuck.

You slide off the dresser so fast the edge catches your hip. Your bra is somewhere on the floor. Khabib is already grabbing his shirt from the dresser, pulling it over his head with a speed that speaks of practice of a life spent navigating situations that require sudden composure.

“My bra,” you hiss.

He spots it before you do, retrieves it from under the chair with two fingers, and hands it to you without a flicker of amusement. But his eyes - his eyes are still dark, still hungry, still promising things the interruption only postponed.

You’re fastening the clasp when your mother’s footsteps hit the stairs.

“Blouse,” Khabib says under his breath, and you snatch it from the floorboards, arms through the sleeves, one button done before the third stair creaks.

Two buttons.

Third stair.

Three buttons, good enough, and then your mother’s head appears in the doorway.

“Come downstairs. Both of you. I’ll make tea” She pauses, glancing around the room. The empty suitcases. The closed dresser drawers. The unmade bed with its rumpled duvet. “Nice to see you’ve unpacked sweetie.”

Downstairs, the livingroom is warm and bright and full of your mother’s insistence that you need to eat more and drink more. Your father is off his phone now, his attention entirely back on you.

Khabib sits across from you. His tea grows cold in its glass. Every few minutes, his gaze finds yours across the room, and each time it says the same thing: later.

“You’re quiet,” your father observes, nodding toward Khabib. “Everything all right?”

“Fine.” Khabib drains his cold tea in one swallow. “I should go, it’s late.”

At the door, while your parents are distracted, his hand finds your lower back. One touch. Barely a second. But his thumb presses into the dimple just above your waistband, and he leans close enough that his beard brushes your temple.

“Tonight,” he says, so low it’s less a word than a vibration. “Check your phone.”

Then he’s gone, and your spine is still tingling where he touched you.

Later at night, you find yourself staring at the walls, replaying what happened only an hour ago.

Your phone is on the nightstand, screen dark.

You check it at 10:04 p.m. Nothing.

10:17. Nothing.

10:41. You’re starting to wonder if you imagined the whole thing - the kiss, the dresser, the whispered tonight - when the screen lights up.

One new message.

Your thumb hovers. Presses.

The text fills the screen, and every drop of blood in your body redirects south.

I can still taste you on my lips. I haven’t stopped thinking about your mouth. Your skin. How easy it was to lift you onto that dresser. How much easier it would be to lift you onto my cock.

The breath leaves your lungs in a sharp, unsteady exhale.

Three dots appear. Bouncing. Disappearing. Appearing again.

I wanted to spread you open right there, with your mother on the stairs. I wanted to make you come so hard you’d have to bite your own hand to keep quiet.

Your thighs press together beneath the sheets. The friction is almost nothing - just cotton against cotton - but it’s enough to make your jaw tighten.

I’m home now. I’m hard. You forgot to put that green lace away …

Another message incoming.

This one isn’t words.

The photo is dimly lit - a bedside lamp, maybe, casting amber shadows across a man’s lap. His trousers are undone. In his hand, wrapped around the thick base of him, is the emerald lace you’d forgotten about.

The green barely covers him. The head of his cock emerges from the tangle of straps, flushed and glistening, and his fingers curl around the shaft below. The same fingers that held your wrist. That found your bra clasp in one try.

He’s hard. Achingly, visibly hard, and the delicate fabric you bought in a SoHo boutique is stretched around him like it was made for this purpose.

Your mouth opens. No sound emerges.

The three dots bounce again.

You asked me to stay. I said I would. Are you touching yourself yet?

Your hand is under the waistband of your sleep shorts before you finish reading the sentence.

Tell me. I want to know.