God, how I've wrestled with this chapter. I've finally reached a point where I'm happy with the quality but have recently been in two minds about whether to post it at all. Ultimately, I decided I needed it finished. I've changed the name of the vehicle that Rose and Dimitri are travelling in to the 'Mammoth', because it no longer feels right to call it the other thing.
The blizzard came out of nowhere. One minute we were driving into the rapidly falling dusk, the next, we were blinded by snow driving straight at the Mammoth's windscreen. Dimitri immediately hit the brakes, and we came to a grinding halt.
"Looks like the storm's caught up with us." His voice sounded funny, and I realised he was nervous. Not like first-date nervous, but we-might-die nervous. It was a shocking contrast to his usual calm demeanour, and my mind rebelled against the possibility that he could be right.
"We can just wait it out. We've got plenty of supplies."
"Rose, if we try to run the heater without the engine on, we risk draining the battery. And though we've got enough gas to get us to the next town, we don't have enough to waste on keeping the car running when we're not actually moving and we don't know how long this will last."
I'd been so worried about falling into the river, I'd forgotten freezing to death was also a very real hazard out here.
"It's fine… it'll be fine. This thing is pretty well insulated, right? Plus we've got warm clothes and a few space blankets. Good for body heat." Good god, what was I talking about? I shut my mouth before I could make any suggestions on how to generate extra body heat.
"You're right." Dimitri either hadn't noticed my lapse, or was graceful enough to ignore it. "We can go into the back of the Mammoth and close the door. The biggest heat loss will be through these windows, so if we keep the door shut, we can avoid the worst of it."
If that didn't work, we could cuddle for warmth. And if we still ended up dying, well, at least I got to hold him again first.
It worked great, for a while. We set up what was basically a blanket fort in the back of our vehicle and climbed in, pretending we were doing it for fun and not to potentially save our lives. Dimitri brought out some chips and chocolate he'd been saving for me, and we sat side by side in the orange glow of a camping lantern. Rather than feeling haunted by memories of when we'd done things like this when we were together, I embraced them. I even allowed myself to pretend, for a minute at least, that we were still there.
Dimitri must have been doing the same thing, as after a bit of companionable silence, he asked, "do you remember that one time we went camping and almost got eaten by a mountain lion?"
It was the first time either of us had mentioned 'before'. A little of the pressure that had been constricting my chest since coming to Russia lifted. "Duh. I'll be having flashbacks of that until the day I die."
"It was your homemade jerky that did it."
"Christian's homemade jerky, and yeah, I know. What can I say, that big scary cat had good taste."
"That stuff was vile," Dimitri scoffed.
"No, what was vile was the roast possum you had in that crappy diner on the way home."
"It definitely wasn't possum."
"How would you know unless you'd previously eaten possum for comparison?" This was an argument we'd had many times. I'd never been happier to rehash a fight. I tucked my chin down into my scarf to hide the stupid grin that I just couldn't fight.
"It tasted like chicken."
"Everything tastes like chicken. People taste like chicken!"
"How would you know, unless you've eaten people for comparison?"
"Touché." I laughed. "I think I'd rather have the possum over that fish at Mason's lake house."
"I think it was still raw. I felt like Gollum eating that."
"I know that's a Lord of the Rings reference, but I'm not nerdy enough to really get it," I teased, as if I hadn't fallen asleep to Dimitri's favourite movies- even the corny westerns- when I found myself missing him more than I could bear.
"Your loss," Dimitri said with a shrug, but he seemed distracted. "You know, I didn't think you'd remember that."
"The fish, or the Lord of the Rings thing?"
"Either. Both."
"I didn't just delete every memory that has you in it. Even if I could, I wouldn't. As if I'd forget the best summer of my life."
Dimitri smiled, a little sadly. "Me neither."
Then he turned away from me and began laying out his blankets. I took that as a hint he was tired and done talking for night, so I quietly did the same. We'd only been on the road a couple of days, but I was already desperate for a shower and a change of clothes. I knew it would get worse before it got better.
It was also getting a little cold in our blanket fort, so I tried to get lost in the memories of that magical summer. Our week at Mason's uncle's lake house had been scorching. We'd spent most of the time either in the water or on it. One night it had been so hot that Dimitri and I had dragged our mattress out onto the wooden jetty and slept beneath the stars with the water lapping around and below us. We'd woken at dawn and made love under the sunrise before cooling off with a morning swim. I think that was the happiest I had ever been.
"Rose, are you shivering?" Dimitri's voice startled me. I'd been so lost in memory that I'd almost convinced myself I was warm. My body hadn't got the memo- I was shivering.
"Do we have another blanket anywhere?"
"We used them all on the tent; dismantling that will let even more heat out. You're welcome to one of mine, though."
"Then you'll freeze instead. I'll be fine."
"We could share? Only if you're alright with that, of course."
Oh, I was more than alright with that, my traitorous heart shouted. I told it to shut up and acted casual. "Sure. Won't say no to the bonus body heat either."
I shuffled my blanket burrito a foot to the left where Dimitri lay. With some wiggling, we re-distributed our blankets to lie over the two of us, becoming one large cocoon. We lay completely still; two logs with arms by our sides, hardly touching.
I'd been wrong. This wasn't great. This was torture.
"Are you still cold?" He almost sounded… hopeful? I wasn't, but I said yes anyway. "You can come closer-"
I was rolling into him before he even finished his sentence. His arms came around me instantly.
Him. This. This was almost worth drowning in a frozen river for. Though I knew this was a totally platonic survival strategy, my heart sang. A thousand miles from civilisation, I felt like I'd finally come home.
I had also probably gone mad. I was fully aware that I was thinking like a crazy person, but between the adrenaline and the conditions and the company, I felt it could be excused. As I was drifting off to sleep, I even thought I could feel Dimitri running his fingers through my hair.
I woke up alone, but I wasn't cold. It took me a moment to notice that we were moving again; that explained the warmth. I crawled out of the blanket fort we had made last night and peered through the little plastic window into the vehicle's cab. Dimitri was driving, of course, and the blizzard had stopped. I could see nothing outside around us but sapphire blue sky and pure white snow.
To make the most of the privacy, I freshened up with some baby wipes and put on some clean clothes. It also took a little while to comb my hair. It had grown out a little in the last few months, but it still shouldn't have been this knotty. It hadn't been this knotted since-
I remembered the feeling of my hair being played with as I fell asleep. Dimitri had always been terrible for messing up my hair at night. Knowing he still couldn't keep his hands off it made my heart do a little flip.
Once I was looking presentable, I joined Dimitri up front.
"Morning," I greeted as I slid into my seat. "Thanks for letting me sleep in. Has it been this clear for long?"
"I only woke up about an hour ago, but the visibility has been perfect since then."
"Guess we got lucky and it wasn't the big storm after all." My stomach chose that moment to growl in agreement. "Hey, can we stop for breakfast soon?"
Half an hour later we sat on plastic bags laid atop a mostly cleared patch of ice. The little gas stove was set up with Dimitri working over it diligently. It took so damn long for water to boil, and I found myself wanting to fill the silence.
"I found my dad, you know."
That got Dimitri's attention. He cocked an eyebrow, seeming unsure how to react. "Yeah. The school finance people fucked up and sent me an email meant for him. Turns out he's been paying my tuition fees, not my mom. Didn't take a genius to figure out that Ibrahim Mazur had to be my dad."
Dimitri went back to stirring the pot. "So, what's he like?"
"Well, I Googled him, and I found out that he was in prison for most of my teens."
"Fuck." That seemed to grab his attention. "Are you handling that alright?"
"Yeah, he's not a like murderer or anything. He developed and sold performance-enhancing drugs which made their way into multiple Olympic teams. Still, I haven't got in contact. I can deal with him being a criminal, but I wanted to make sure he wasn't also just a shitty guy before I got in contact." Like your father hung unsaid between us. "I started being nice to my mom-replying to her stupid patronising emails and stuff- to work up to asking her, but then… we actually started getting along? I don't want to screw that up by asking about my dad, especially if he turns out to be a loser. He could have reached out to me first, after all."
"I think you're wise to put your relationship with your mother first, but that also means being honest- on both your parts. She shouldn't get mad for you asking about your father if you do it in the right way."
"Is that your way of saying I'm tactless?"
"Not tactless… just a little like a bull in a china shop sometimes."
"Hmm." I proved just how tactful I was by not giving that comment the scathing response that it was clearly due. Instead, I let myself enjoy the view while Dimitri doled out breakfast rations.
Fresh from the blizzard, the ground appeared to be scattered with diamonds. As beautiful as it was deadly, I was utterly in awe of the landscape around me; the one I was working so hard to protect and restore.
"There is something truly magical about this place."
Dimitri raised an eyebrow over his oatmeal. "That's an interesting turn of phrase for a scientist."
"But it is magical. I feel like Alice in Wonderland sometimes. I keep waiting to wake up in my dingy old flat and realise this was all just a crazy dream." Especially since you're here, I added mentally. "I worked so hard for so long, and against all the odds, I made it. Now I'm having a hard time believing it's real."
"You deserve to be here, Rose." Of course, Dimitri knew what was really playing on my mind.
"You really think I've fit in well?" His words were like aloe on the constant burn of imposter syndrome I'd felt since joining Arthur's team. "I've kinda just waiting for the day someone realises they made a mistake by choosing me, and I get replaced with the person who's actually supposed to be here."
"Nobody's going to do that. They chose you because you're the best person for the job. Nobody comes close to sharing your passion or your skill. Nobody compares to you."
"Speaking from experience, comrade?" The words slipped out before I could stop them. Suddenly I wished this were just a dream so that I could wake the hell up. We were finally at a truce, how could I mess this all up so easily? Maybe Dimitri was onto something about me lacking tact.
"Seeing you making such a difference here, and knowing how important our work is, I can't regret our decision." His words made my stomach drop, but then he turned to face me, and I was struck by the depth of emotion in those dark eyes. "But there isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish there had been another way. I just… want you to know that. Want you to know that I would have fought to keep you if there had been any chance it wouldn't have ruined both our lives. So don't ever doubt that you're exactly where you're supposed to be. I wouldn't have given you up for anything less."
Considering how I'd just felt my stomach drop, my heart was now in my throat. All my other vital organs seemed to be doing acrobatics too.
These were words that I had needed to hear for so long- not just from a friend who wanted to make me feel better, or another new graduate who was suffering the same bouts of insecurity, but someone who really knew me, my work, and what I was truly capable of.
Dimitri was looking at me the way he used to; all soft and sincere. I had missed that, missed him, more than I had ever admitted to anyone, even myself.
Lost in this moment, I closed my eyes and leaned in.
My lips met nothing but cold air.
I heard a sigh and opened my eyes to see Dimitri standing up. He took two steps away from me and ran his hand through his hair, dislodging the hat there. It fell into the snow, but he didn't seem to notice.
"I can't do this."
"What?" I sounded stupid, but I was struck dumb. "I thought that…"
"It would be a mistake. I know you have a boyfriend at home, and in a week, it's him you'll be going back to."
"Excuse me?" I was standing now too. My hood fell back and the icy wind bit my cheeks. "You seriously think I'd cheat on my boyfriend with you?"
"You just tried to kiss me!" Dimitri had to audacity to act like I was the one being unreasonable. "What would Adrian think about that?"
"How the hell do you know about Adrian?"
For this, at least, Dimitri looked a little sheepish. "I saw your graduation photos."
I hadn't put any pictures of Adrian and me from that day on social media. How could I, what with how it ended? It must have been through Eddie or one of the other guys.
My baffled silence gave Dimitri new confidence. "Everyone at the station knows how long you spend making international phone calls, and the walls are thin. 'You miss him, you love him', so why were you about to kiss me?"
My anger was burning so hot that I thought it might burn right through the ice we stood on.
"You've been stalking my social media and listening to my phone calls, and you somehow think I'm in the wrong?"
"It's not like that," Dimitri scoffed, "Seeing and hearing those things were accidental. Kissing me when your boyfriend is asleep on the other side of the world isn't an accident."
Adrian broke up with me because he thought I was still in love with Dimitri. Dimitri refused to kiss me because he thought I was with Adrian. How messed up was this?
"Those phone calls were to Lissa," I said dumbly, trying to wrap my head around what was happening here. Then I realised that I didn't actually care for the reason for Dimitri's misunderstanding; I was just going to set him straight.
"I split up with Adrian about three hours after those photos were taken, which you might have known if you'd asked me literally anything about my life to me since I got here."
"What?" Dimitri's face went slack.
I laughed bitterly. I'd made enough men's jaws drop in my time to be able to divine the reason behind it with ease. "Oh my God. Have you been avoiding me because you thought I had a boyfriend? Here I thought you were just trying to be professional. But underneath all that logic and responsibility you wear so proudly, you're just a jealous idiot like all the rest of them."
As I stormed away, I made sure to stomp directly onto Dimitri's woollen hat which still lay on the ground. Let it get cold and soggy- that would be the least he deserved. Then, I slammed the Mammoth's door behind me so hard that my teeth rattled. For a moment it was incredibly satisfying. I hadn't slammed a door in years, and that had been a spectacular encore. Then the reality sunk in.
We were still stuck in the middle of a frozen wasteland together, and I needed Dimitri to drive.
But hell if I was going to blink first. I pulled my hood over my eyes and pretended to go to sleep.
About half an hour passed before there came a tentative knock at the window. I waited a few seconds before turning to look. Dimitri's face was just visible through the frosting on the glass. Slowly he traced a finger on the glass.
It's cold.
Even written backwards with gloved fingers, the letters were perfectly neat.
A very small, very cruel part of me considered driving off and leaving him to freeze to death. Then, after a deep breath, I leaned over and unlocked the door.
The cold air that came in with Dimitri made me grimace.
"Thanks for letting me in," he said quietly.
"The back door was unlocked," I lied. "You could have used that instead of stubbornly freezing your ass off for so long."
"I was trying to give you space."
"Yeah, you're good at that."
Despite my snark, his response was gentle. "I thought I was doing the right thing."
"Because of Adrian?"
"Because it was clear you were totally blindsided by the fact I was working for Art. You'd just arrived at a very isolated base in a new country, and I thought that having me hanging around wouldn't be the best thing to help you settle in."
I almost said that it would have been the perfect way to start my time in Siberia, but I knew it wouldn't have been true. Instead, with Dimitri keeping his distance, it had allowed me to make friends on my own terms and establish myself as a researcher independently from his influence.
Still, as time had gone by, it would have been nice to have somebody to talk about home with. And those nights when Serena had gone to see Grant and I'd had the room to myself…
Rather than admit any of that, I settled for a petulant stare and picked at a hole in his story. "You haven't been avoiding me on this drive."
Dimitri smiled. "It's hard to do that on a road trip."
"Don't deflect. What changed?"
His head rolled towards me, hair all scruffed up against the seat. "We're not going to see each other until the spring, and you're going home. It felt… safe."
"Because you knew you'd soon be rid of me?" I scoffed. Stupid, stupid girl I was for letting this drive drag me into old habits. Sleeping beside him, reminiscing over the good old days- they'd just been ways to keep warm and pass the time. Stupid, stupid…
"No. Safe because I kept reminding myself that you were going home to Adrian, and I would have time to get a grip on my feelings before we started working together again."
My inner monologue screeched to a halt. "Your… feelings?"
Dimitri looked completely perplexed. "I kind of thought it'd be obvious by now that I'm still in love with you."
Everything that had happened over the last hour had given me conversational whiplash. But before we'd got into our fight, Dimitri had said something that had been the whole reason I'd gone in for the kiss;
There's not a day that goes by that I don't wish there had been another way.
I jumped out of my seat, climbed over the stick shift, and landed in Dimitri's lap. His hands came to my hips, holding tightly. His eyes were wide, but full of wonder.
"You're not gonna push me away again, are you? Like, there's no secret girlfriend I need to-"
Dimitri's lips answered that question without the need for words.
Good lord, this was everything. Homecoming. Release. Joy.
When Dimitri's icy fingers found their way under my shirt, I flinched away and gripped the cold fingers in mine. He looked like he was about to apologise, but halted when he saw the grin spreading across my face.
"Do you think people have ever had sex in the Mammoth before?"
"Definitely." Dimitri used our joined hands to tug me closer, until his breath was warm on my neck. "In fact, I think it's something of a tradition."
"Then warm up those hands and join me in the back."
"Don't get up yet." I pawed at the spot where Dimitri had been dozing a moment ago, but in vain.
"I wish we had longer too, but we really have to get moving." He knelt beside me and brushed the hair back from my forehead. "We're already hours behind schedule, and I'd hate for us to freeze to death so soon after finding our way back to each other."
His words stirred something inside me, calling attention to nerves I hadn't realised I was feeling.
"So that's what this is? Not just, you know, 'lost in the wilderness' sex?"
"Of course not. Well, not for me, anyway." He frowned. "I meant it when I said I still loved you, but I'm realising now that you didn't say it back, so maybe..."
Didn't I? I remembered his confession, then kissing, then... huh. Maybe not. This time, I was successful in grabbing a handful of his sweater.
"Dimitri," I waited for him to meet my eye, "I am so in love with you."
Despite his earlier insistence that we get moving, we wasted a few more minutes tangled up in each other. Amazingly, it was me that stopped things before all his clothes could come off again.
"Don't we have limited fuel and a plane to catch?"
He sighed. "Yes, we can still make it to Yakutsk before our flight leaves if drive flat out." It could have been the cold, but I could have sworn I saw Dimitri blush. It was hard to tell, as he kept his gaze fixed on the floor. "Is it awful that a part of me hopes we get stuck in town for the winter? I don't want to say goodbye to you."
"You know, even if we make it out of Yakutsk, there's no guarantee I'll make my connection in Novosibirsk." Dimitri's eyes snapped back to mine. "Your mom always cooks too much food over the holidays, right?"
As soon as I re-entered the kitchen of the little Baia townhouse, tucking my phone into my back pocket, Dimitri's mom placed a truly enormous mug of cocoa in front of me. Olena was everything I'd expected her to be and more. Not only had she been cool with me dropping by unexpectedly for the holidays; she seemed genuinely overjoyed.
"I'm so glad you're here," she'd said over and over, "look at the smile you put on my boy's face." That, in turn, made me smile, until we were all grinning like fools.
"What did Lissa say?" Dimitri asked as I took a sip of my cocoa.
"Apparently, she knew I wouldn't be home for Christmas as soon as she heard we'd be taking a road trip together." Lissa had spent the last week weighing up the benefits of spending New Year's in St Petersburg or Moscow. My Christmas present would be flights for me and Dimitri to meet her and Chrisitan in whichever city they settled on. She'd been that certain we'd be back together by the end of our journey, and that I wouldn't be coming home.
"And she was okay with that?" I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn't just talking about the Christmas plans, but about the renewal of our relationship.
"She's only annoyed it took so long." I took his hand across the table. "No, seriously, she's really happy for me. For us. She's missed you, too."
The front door slammed just then, followed by a torrent of rapid Russian. A girl was shouting about how she'd run home from work to 'meet the girlfriend before Grandma scared her off.'
Dimitri rolled his eyes.
"Viktoria is home. I hope you enjoyed the peace while it lasted, because the rest of my family will no doubt be descending on us momentarily."
I thought of Mikhail, who had called while we were in Yakutsk to thank us profusely for getting him home to Sonya, who was on the road to recovery. I thought about Arthur and Tamara, waiting patiently until the spring when they would be reunited at the station. And I thought about myself and Dimitri, after all these years, finally back where we belonged.
Mug of cocoa in hand, I turned to Dimitri with a grin.
"Did you ever tell your family the story of how we met, Sleeping Beauty?"
Finally, it is finished! When I started this, I had absolutely no intention of it being more than a silly one- or two-shot, but it developed a plot out of nowhere. The style is a little different to anything I've tried before, and it took forever (obviously) for me to be satisfied with it.
I don't know what my next project will be, but I'm going to make sure I've finished writing it before I post, because we all know how terrible I am at reliable updates. Thanks for sticking with me anyway xoxo
