homelovefamily | [its beginning to look a lot like syvatki]

Somehow an idea had become lodged in Anya’s head and gotten thoroughly stuck there.

She was going to have a Christmas tree. Very little could be done to talk her out of it and fortunately thus far no one had truly tried. Passing by the various stands and stalls that had popped up across the city as she had gone about her daily business had put her in the spirit of the holiday in a way she hadn’t been in years. The day that they were all counting down to might be wrong (it was January 7th not December 25th), but she was going by getting a tree later in the month it would last the entirety of Svyatki.

Last year she hadn’t quite been ready to celebrate the holiday, hadn’t known quite what to do. Christmas had gone away with the Bolsheviks and Gleb had arrived and she had been all over the place. This year would be different. This year she was making it count.

Dressed for the damp and cold weather, albeit in fewer layers than she would have back home, she’s carefully studying each of the trees in the small lot. Her breath is forming a gentle fog around her, her expression serious. Gleb is thoughtfully by her side. There had never been a question in her mind of whether or not he would join her. This celebration was just as much for him as it was for her.

Then she spots it.

Giving Gleb’s hand a gentle tug she scampers over to a tree that is a bit on the scrawnier side. “This is it,” Anya declares, letting go of his hand to run her hand over the branches. “It’s perfect, don’t you think so?”

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Aside from Anya awkwardly if charmingly insisting that she spend the holiday with him last year, when he was still just a few days newly arrived, Gleb hasn't celebrated Christmas since he was a child. That part of his upbringing was something he just moved on from out of necessity, not even stopping to give it much thought. It's only in having it reintroduced to his life that he's become aware of the weight of that, if not resistant to it, mostly because he knows that Anya would rope him into it regardless. Oh, if it were genuinely a problem, she would understand that, but aside from that, she's very stubborn and very good at getting her way, which is exactly how he's come to find himself out with her to choose a tree now.

"It's a little... slight, isn't it?" he asks, brow raising as he glances from the tree to her. He doesn't take issue with having a tree that's smaller and with sparser branches, but it isn't at all the sort of thing he thought she would want. "They have some that are fuller, taller. If you're worried about getting it into your apartment, I can manage."

Reaching out into the tree, Anya grabs ahold of the trunk. She can feel the familiar knobs through the knit of her gloves and while it isn't perfectly straight like a pole, she doesn't think it needs to be. A frown slightly worries her forehead as she surveys the tree again, trying to assess it from a different place.

"No? I mean, perhaps a little underfed, but I would not say it was scrawny," she defends, holding the tree up a little straighter. It takes the effort of both of her hands, largely to compensate for the fact that she is shorter than the tree, though not by much. Others around them are much taller and fatter, but they don't strike the same chord as this one does. This one seems to need a home greater. "This one just seems right somehow."

She cannot explain it. But at the mention of her apartment, a new sort of color reddens her cheeks, hopefully hidden due to the cold. It reminds her of something that she has been meaning to bring up to him. "It isn't about getting it into our apartment at all."

Even before she finishes speaking, Gleb can't help but get the impression that the conversation has just become about something more significant than a tree. On that front, he has no preference. He's only really here at her behest anyway, picking out a tree something he has no intention of doing for himself. If he were going to, its appearance wouldn't matter, whether its branches were sparse or full. Mostly, he's just surprised that she hasn't chosen one of the more robust-looking trees, the picture-perfect sort like he's seen in various illustrations and decorations and seasonal cards for the past few weeks.

And then her words sink in, and he's suddenly not thinking very much about trees at all.

"I wasn't aware I lived there," he points out, brow arching, his expression and voice both a bit wry, a bit bemused. There's probably an invitation to be read into such a statement, not least because of the way her cheeks color, suggesting that perhaps she hasn't just misspoken, but assuming that seems a little dangerous. It's one thing for her to let him into her bed on a regular basis; it would be another to openly live together despite being unmarried. He wouldn't be so presumptuous as to think that's what she wants, no matter what her wording implies. "But it's suddenly ours, now?"

"You weren't?" Anya attempts to play it coy, brushing her fingers along the needles almost affectionately. She doesn't want a stately tree. If she did, she would go admire the one outside of the city hall, too large, and too straight and too gaudy. She wants a tree that feels right. In her case that means one that has grander ambitions, but is a bit uncertain about how it will work or the rightness of it,

Carefully she walks in a deliberate circle around the tree, admiring it from multiple angles. There is a pretty sizable bald spot that she'll just turn toward the wall, but nothing horrible. It's sweet, almost earnest. Coming around the other side of the tree, she looks up at him expectantly.

"I've thought it was ours for quite some time now. I mean, it isn't practical for you to have to stay so far away. It's almost wasteful really, when it could be useful to someone else and you fit so well with me by the sea." Pausing, Anya takes a deep breath. "Don't you like the idea of it being ours?"

For Gleb, any hesitation — or even just any question about it — doesn't stem from whether or not he likes the idea of it. It's a big thing, what she's suggesting, and despite the ease in her words and demeanor, he's sure she knows it. Granted, he's been in Darrow long enough to know that such things don't hold the same weight here. Chances are, no one else would think twice about it if he moved in with her. It isn't as if anyone has given them trouble so far, and he's spent a lot of nights with her. Still, it's hard to shake off some vestiges of the time from which they came. Living together outside of marriage would be fairly scandalous. And he doesn't think she's suggesting any more than that. As far as he knows, she still doesn't think he wants that, and he doesn't know if he does or not.

She's hard to say no to, though, and she does, in a roundabout way, have a point about practicality. They don't really need two separate apartments. They'd pay less rent, and he wouldn't have to travel most of the way across the city just to see her. There's something that feels fairly incredible about knowing that she would want him there, anyway, that she would be willing to take that step despite all the reasons they'd have not to.

As far as he's concerned, he can't cross much more of a line than he has already.

"I didn't say that I don't," he points out, certain that she must understand what a serious subject is at hand here. "Just that no one ever told me that I moved in." And he hasn't, though he occasionally finds belongings of his at her apartment. It's just what she seems to be asking of him. He offers her a thin little smile. "Usually, as far as I know, that's a conversation, not something one person decides."

The proper thing would be to have a ring. For Gleb to ask her father for permission, for them both to sit with a patriarch and discuss what it means to be man and wife. But back in Russia, the wedding is more of a formality. If two souls had chosen to unite, then they were already one, bound up together even before the songs and the crowns. Her parents had always told her that she could marry for love, that much she remembers. That warm, fond way that they had looked at each other. It isn't dissimilar to the way that she finds herself looking at Gleb, often when he's not looking at her.

The comparison to her parents is one that Anya will keep to herself. They don't often speak of the tsar, but they were more than figureheads to her. They were her family and he knows that. But that's different from having it rubbed in his face.

She gives a little nod of acknowledgment. It certainly is typically a conversation, but she had decided that he was hers and she had said as much. She wasn't going to give him up and having him properly in her flat made so much more sense. "You are correct, but I felt that we could skip the conversation as we already know how it will end," she points out as she moves to step closer to him, tangling her fingers in his scarf. "I know it isn't proper, but I would be your wife in an instant if you asked me. I just want my home to be yours too as well as be practical about it."

[its beginning to look a lot like syvatki]

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