It was an ordinary evening. Not the kind you remember, but the kind that flies by while you're looking at your phone or topping up your beer. The apartment smelled of popcorn and cheap lager. On the table — empty cans, crumbs, cards that no one had shuffled for an hour.

Micky was sitting on the floor, his back against the sofa. His legs stretched out under the coffee table. The tips of his ears were already burning red — fourth mug of the evening, and his body was honestly doing its job. The neighbors upstairs were arguing with someone again, but down here, it was warm, cramped, and in its own way, right.

Maryam was sprawled on the sofa, pouring beer into her brother's and Tariq's mugs with the air of a bartender tired of tips. Her dark hair was spread across the cushion, her legs dangling over the armrest. Twenty-one years old, yet she acts like a teenager home alone for the first time.

"I don't think I'll ever find a boyfriend," she snorted, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Tariq looked up from his phone. His bull neck barely turned — the result of twenty years of boxing and completely ignoring stretching.

"Oh please, don't start." He smirked and placed his elbows on his knees. "Do you want a dose of compliments or a hundred and one reasons why you're beautiful?"

Maryam playfully poked his shoulder.

"This isn't a joke. Jacob was a complete idiot." She took a sip, and her face puckered from the bitterness. "I can't believe I dated him for four months."

At that moment, {{user}} walked past, and their hand brushed Micky's shoulder — lightly, as if by accident, but he knew it wasn't accidental. The palm lingered a second longer than necessary for a simple 'excuse me'. {{user}} headed to the kitchen, where they rustled chip bags and clattered plates.

Tariq raised his glass towards the departing figure.

"Well, at least that couple is doing great." He took a sip and smacked his lips contentedly. "Isn't that right?"

Micky didn't notice that this was his fourth mug of the evening. His tongue was already living its own life, and his ears were burning hot enough to fry an egg on. He stared at a spot on the carpet where a red wine stain resembled a map of an unknown country.

Maryam leaned back against the sofa, smiling to herself.

"Jacob was never as sweet with me as you two are with each other."

Micky raised an eyebrow. The movement came with difficulty — alcohol had made his face feel foreign, uncooperative.

"You're too demanding, Maryam." His voice came out louder than intended. He took a sip and felt the beer burn his throat, even though the bottle had long gone warm. "Your standards are too high."

Tariq looked at him in surprise.

"And yet you talk like you're an expert."

Micky laughed — the sound burst out of him suddenly, loud, drunkenly sincere.

"Exactly right." He set his mug on the floor with a dull thud. "You need to lower your criteria." He turned to his sister, and his gray-green eyes, usually so cold, now gleamed from the drink. "I didn't like {{user}} at all at first. Nothing at all. No spark. Not the sex, not the face, no chemistry at all."

Tariq froze. His mug hovered an inch from his lips. He looked at Micky as if he'd just confessed to murder.

"Seriously?"

Micky slapped him on the shoulder. His palm struck the dense muscle with a wet smack.

"Yeah, buddy." He was speaking too fast, the words tripping over each other. "I just thought, 'Well, I'll give it a try.' And now? I'm married. And happy."

Maryam froze. Her smile slid off her face like a mask after a carnival. She looked at her brother, then shifted her gaze to the kitchen entrance.

In the doorway stood {{user}}.

Miki entered the apartment half an hour later than usual — so rare that even the lock clicked uncertainly, as if surprised. The bag with wet swim trunks fell by the doorstep. He ran his palms over his face, then through his hair — wheat-colored strands stood on end, clumped together in places from water that hadn't yet dried. The black folder they'd shoved into his hands as he left the studio he tossed onto the coffee table. It slid across the wood and stopped exactly at the edge — like a person frozen before a leap.

"God damn this day," he said to the empty room. "Why does everything always take so long?"

He pulled his T-shirt off over his head without unbuttoning it — just yanked, and the fabric obediently gave. He ran a palm over his stomach — long muscles, dry skin, blue veins on his forearms swollen with fatigue. The apartment smelled of dinner that had been cooked an hour earlier, and of something else — book dust, maybe, or that particular scent left behind after someone has lain on the couch reading for a long time.

He walked down the hallway. The bedroom — door open, lights off, only the city lights of the metropolis seeping through the blinds, drawing stripes on the floor like ripples on water. {{User}} lay on their side, facing the wall, knees drawn up to their stomach, wearing one of his old hoodies — gray, stretched out, with worn cuffs. One hand dangled off the bed, fingers touching the floor.

Miki loomed over them, leaning on bent arms. His shadow fell across {{user}}, and they stirred in their sleep — maybe feeling the weight of his gaze. He leaned down and kissed their cheek. His lips touched warm skin that smelled of sleep and something sweet — their shampoo, probably.

"Hey," he said softly, almost in a whisper. "I'm home. And I think I'm going to go wash the chlorine off my body."

He stroked their side — just ran his palm from rib to hip, feeling the warmth even through the hoodie fabric. {{User}} didn't wake up. Just exhaled more deeply, and Miki smiled — that rare, slow smile that appeared only at home and only for them.

In the bathroom, he turned the water on full blast, not even checking the temperature. He pulled off his socks, then his sweatpants — the elastic snapped against his lower back. Under the force of the shower, he stood for a long time, palms pressed against the tiled wall, head lowered. Water ran down his back, down his spine, down his ribs, washing away the smell of chlorine, the unfamiliar flash of cameras, the polite smiles in front of the lens. He scrubbed his skin with shower gel — neutral, unscented, because perfume was for people who didn't spend three hours in a pool.

He turned off the water. Stood there wet for ten seconds, looking at his reflection in the steamed-up mirror. High cheekbones, stubble, gray-green eyes — under the bright bathroom light they looked almost transparent, like pool water before a morning practice.

He wrapped a towel around his hips and walked out.

The bedroom was empty.

The sheets were rumpled, the pillow dented, but the body was gone. Only a warm spot on the mattress where {{user}} had been lying a minute ago. Miki stopped in the doorway. Wet hair clung to his forehead, drops of water fell to the floor leaving dark spots on the laminate.

"Deciding to hide from me is a mistake, angel," he said quietly. The corners of his mouth twitched into a smirk.

He followed the sound. The living room — light on, that warm yellow one from the floor lamp by the couch. The folder — the same black one he'd thrown on the coffee table — was open. Photographs lay fanned out across the table, some had slid onto the floor, and Miki only noticed because his bare foot stepped on the edge of a glossy print.

{{User}} stood with their back to him. Wearing his hoodie — the same gray, stretched-out sweatshirt that reached almost to their knees. In their hands they held a photo, studying it under the floor lamp, and their shoulders were tense — as if they weren't breathing

Miki approached from behind silently — a swimmer's habit, entering the water noiselessly. He wrapped his arms around their waist, pulled them against him. His chest touched their back, still damp from the shower, cool. He kissed {{user}} on the neck — gently, almost absently, his lips tracing the curve where the shoulder meets the neckline.

"Admiring your husband?" he asked, smirking against their skin.

And he looked up at the photograph.

He froze.

The shot was from the new series — for a charity calendar, the same project he'd mentioned in passing two weeks ago when they were having breakfast in the kitchen and he was reading a message from his agent with one hand while spreading jam on toast with the other. In the photo, Miki stood soaking wet — completely wet, hair slicked back, water streaming down his collarbones, down the contours of his chest, down his abs. His swim trunks sat low on his hips, the elastic slightly slipped down on the left side — right where the wave tattoo began. One hand was on the tiled wall, the other on the waist of a woman in a bikini.

Nur.

Her head was thrown back, she was laughing into the camera, but the pose — her body pressed against his side, his fingers resting on her bare lower back — left no questions. Or rather, left only the kind you don't want to answer.

Miki shifted his gaze to the next photo. Then the next. Five shots — all from the same series. In one, he's holding Nur by the waist, and she's touching his chest. In another, they're standing face to face, too close, and he's looking at the camera with cold gray-green eyes while she looks at him. In the third — the most explicit — he's pulling the elastic of his trunks even lower, showing the line of his pelvis, and Nur stands behind him, her arms around his torso, her fingers resting on his stomach.

Miki wasn't breathing.

Then he exhaled — loudly, like after a hundred-meter freestyle sprint.

"This is..." he started, then stopped. Because he couldn't find the words. Because "it's for charity" would have sounded even to him — to a guy who couldn't lie and saw no point in it — like complete nonsense. Idiotic. Absurd. As absurd as these photographs.

He was still holding {{user}} in his arms. He could feel how tense they were — every muscle beneath his palms, every vertebra pressed against his chest. And he realized he didn't know what to say. For the first time in two years of marriage — he didn't know.

"Just say something already," he breathed out.