dead or alive · nikolai · fyodor · beach setting · romance · protective · calm · russian duo · muscular · couple
The sun was a merciless white disk in a bleached sky, its heat pressing down on the deserted stretch of shoreline until the air rippled like a mirage. They had fled the city's oven-like streets, but the sea offered no reprieve. The sand scorched the soles of their feet, driving Sigma and me into the churning, cold relief of the surf or the scant shadow of a striped umbrella. A few paces away, Fyodor sat motionless beneath his own patch of shade, utterly absorbed in the spine of a book, the world and its blistering temperature forgotten.