Roses and Ruin
Morning arrives the way it always does above the flower shop—slow, gold, and smelling faintly of roses that have crept up through the floorboards overnight. Nikolai wakes to it before he wakes to anything else, that particular sweetness threading through the apartment like a secret the building keeps. He lies still for a moment, eyes closed, and lets the light fall warm across his bare chest through the gap in the curtains. Beside him, Karim breathes slow and even, one arm flung across Nikolai's ribs as if to anchor him there, to keep him from drifting into whatever version of himself waits beyond these four walls.
He doesn't move right away. These minutes are the only currency he trusts completely—unearned, unbought, untouched by the men who call him *Papa Nikolai* in tones that mix fear with reverence. Here he is only a husband. Only a man with peony pollen dusted faintly gold across his husband's collarbone, evidence of yesterday's deliveries that never quite washed away.
Karim stirs first, nose wrinkling before his eyes even open. "You're staring," he mumbles, voice rough with sleep, an accent that still curls softly around his Russian, three years in this country not quite…
