"This would be a lot easier if you'd keep your eyes closed."
The observation is well humoured as the brunette stands upon her tiptoes, intimately pressed into her husband's back as she conceals his eyes with her own two hands. It's been hard enough dragging him discreetly across the city without anyone noticing and she doesn't want to ruin this - not after all the hard work she's put in.
She could stand to stay like this for a little longer though, she thinks, when her nose brushes against the base of Erik's neck and she can inhale the familiar scent of home. He smells like hard labour, like perseverance and tenacity all rolled into one - but it's soothing; calming even, when she's nudging him forwards, guiding him towards the project she's spent the last fortnight working on.
By the time they arrive, she mourns the fact she needs to move, a whispered warning uttered in his ear as she withdraws her hands and checks methodically that his eyes haven't snuck a peek as she fusses with a wooden door. The lock clicks and the handle turns, her shoulder pushing it open as she tugs those weathered hands proudly to guide him through the proverbial looking glass into a land of her own making.
"You can open them now." Magda tells him at last, her hand still clutching at Erik's own with a naive little swing until she severs the connection completely to smile and await his judgement. It's not exactly the most conventional of Valentine's gifts going, but she's tried her hardest to think of something he both needs and could appreciate - and in this case, it's a home.
The apartment is small, but it's all she can afford - and it's a step up from letting Erik sleep in a warehouse with god only knows how much asbestos. Everything she's done to this place is for his benefit, from the freshly cleaned carpets right down to the pristine sheets now stretched over a bed that will always be preferable to the floor. Photos line the adjacent wall, from the black and white beginnings of both their families, right through to the smiling faces of two technicolour twins. Every moment of positive history is on that wall, even their sole wedding photo, still singed around the edges from it's rescue in the Ukraine - yet all the more important because of that fact.
"The cupboards are stocked and there's food in the fridge. I ironed a couple of shirts, so they're in the wardrobe and then there's a collection of other bits and bats in the drawers like socks and things for when you don't want to go commando." The Pole's lips twitched nervously and she shuffled on impulse, glancing around the room as she continued to babble in earnest, waiting for some moment of judgement one way or another. "There's a few books on the shelf in the corner, I couldn't find anything really exciting so you've ended up with Winnie the Pooh, some Nietzsche and a bit of nonsense by Freud. There's also a copy of Jane Eyre, but I think I need to liberate that one."
Magda exhaled, ruffling her ever growing set of curls with a crinkle of her nose as she stepped sideways towards another room and finished her little tour of sorts. "This was supposed to be a nursery, but as you can see, it's not quite finished yet." She'd tried though, tried so hard it brought a tear to her eye. Once peeling wallpaper had now been stripped, the walls coated in a minty shade of pale green as tiny yellow ducks bordered the room. She'd worked all night to try and get that one finished before returning to steal Erik away into this modest slice of paradise.
It was him she turned to face now, as she rocked back and forth on her heels like a nervous child, simultaneously coy and smitten at the same time. 'Every heart needs a home, ahuvi. So happy Valentine's day, and welcome to yours."