Katya is sprawled lazily across his chest, Kira on his other side, Andrej somewhere beside Katya. The early morning sunlight is just beginning to peek through the gauzy curtains, the heavier dark blue velvet pulled back, casting the lavish hotel room in an ethereal glow. Katya’s breathing had picked up just slightly only a few moments before, signaling that she was awake, and so, lazily, quietly, Borys spoke. “I have been thinking, Katya.”
She stretches slightly, legs tangling further with Andrej’s beneath the blankets, though her chest presses closer to Borys’s. “That’s dangerous.” She says simply, sleepily, pressing her face into his collarbone.
“It’s a shame that you have to return to America.” He can feel her frown against his skin, her arms tightening around his chest, as if the thought is far too dark of a thought to have so early, so he continues. “I would much prefer,” he added slowly, “if you returned to Minsk, with Kira, Andrej, and myself.”
For a moment, he thinks he’s said something wrong — misinterpreted the past weeks.
“Can I?” She asks slowly, tentatively, sitting up slightly. Borys can hear Andrej stir at her side, but not wake — he rolls over, throwing an arm over Katya’s waist, his hand brushing Borys’s stomach in the process.
“I think,” Borys says, the plan already forming in his head, “we could manage it. You could always marry Andrej, as I am already taken,” He wiggles his left hand, wedding band catching the light, and Katya grins, shifting to absently push a few strands of hair out of Kira’s face. The other woman grimaces and buries her face into Borys’s shoulder.
“Unfortunate, but understandable.” She quips, her face almost unbearably fond as she looks at Kira. “Careful, though, Borys, this is sounding awfully permanent.”
“And would you be opposed,” he asks, fingers digging briefly, playfully, into her side, causing her to squeal and kick Andrej lightly (this time, he did wake), “if it was?”
"Are you asking me," Katya asks, slowly, carefully, "if I will marry Andrej so that I can unofficially marry you, Borys?"
"Something like that," he agrees, smile soft on his lips, the day still far too early for him to muster up a full, wide grin, "and I will take you ring shopping today, if that will make it more official. I, at least, will do that, not Andrej." That, at least, is very serious, though he casts a smile over his shoulder to Andrej where he is slowly beginning to shift about on Katya's other side.
"In that case," Katya says, with all the seriousness the moment demands (which is to say, not much, so early and so casually), "of course, Borys, I will marry Andrej to pseudo-marry you. And I will come to Minsk."
This time, even the early hour couldn't stop the wide smile that breaks across his face.