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Chapter Twenty-Six

Dimitri

T he bus jolted over a pothole and I gripped the plastic handle tighter, trying not to fall into Petyr.

Not because I didn’t want to, but because I was too tired for one of our usual dances.

The kind where you lean a little too close and pretend it’s accidental.

The kind that leaves you aching for more, even as you pretend you’re content with crumbs.

He sat next to me, smiling faintly, like whatever secret he was keeping tasted sweet on his tongue. I didn’t ask what it was yet. I was still trying to catch my breath from our lost weekend in the country.

When he’d asked me earlier, “Wanna hang out after work?” I said yes before I even thought about it.

Of course, I wanted more time with him. But I’d known what that probably meant.

A dark alley behind some gray-bricked building.

An hour at Sanctuary, if we could sneak in unnoticed and find a private corner.

And then the quiet unraveling afterward.

When Petyr’s touch faded and the cold came rushing back in, and I’d walk home with guilt riding my shoulders like a soldier’s pack.

But I couldn’t say no. Not to him.

Night had fallen while we were still riding. Amber lights and shadows smudged the city outside the bus windows. People bustled past in coats too light for the lingering chill, heading nowhere fast.

I finally asked, “Where are we going?”

Petyr turned toward me, grin already blooming. “Somewhere different. You’ll see.”

That was his favorite kind of answer, something that made me both nervous and excited.

The bus hissed to a stop, and we got off.

I followed him through a narrow stretch of backstreets, past shuttered kiosks and peeling propaganda posters.

His gait was loose, light. I wished I could walk through life like Petyr, like I wasn’t about to be swallowed by it.

We turned a corner and came to a squat gray building with blacked-out windows and a chalkboard sign propped against the door. Painted letters read: LENINGRAD ROCK CLUB—TONIGHT: KINO .

“Kino?” I said.

“They’re amazing,” Petyr said, his eyes lighting up. “Been wanting to see them for months.”

He opened the door, and music slammed into me like a fist to the chest.

Inside, the air was thick with cigarette smoke, sweat, and something like electricity.

The crowd was a patchwork of shaved heads and spiked hair, ripped denim and leather, boots with no laces and girls in heavy eyeliner who didn’t look like they gave a damn about anything.

It was like stepping into another world. A louder, freer, angrier world.

He paid the cover charge, and we slipped inside.

I followed him toward the bar, dodging bodies and elbows, trying not to stare at everyone but staring, anyway.

I’d heard rumors about places like this.

Western, they said. Rebellious. Dangerous.

But I’d never believed they really existed, not here. Not in our gray kingdom of silence.

Petyr leaned close to my ear and said, “We still have to be careful. KGB monitors the place.”

I blinked at him. “Then why the hell are we here?”

He shrugged. “They monitor the blanket factory, too. They monitor the fucking water we drink. At least here we get a good soundtrack.”

I didn’t know whether to be terrified or impressed. Maybe both.

I ordered us vodka. The bartender looked like he belonged in a gang—scars and tattoos and eyes that didn’t blink—but he poured our drinks without a word. Petyr clinked his glass against mine. “To being somewhere else.”

I nodded and drank. The vodka was cheap and clean and did its job fast. The bass from the speakers pulsed under my skin, as if someone had hooked my heart to a generator.

We wandered through the crowd. Torn posters clung to the walls—western bands, Soviet icons defaced with lipstick, a massive charcoal sketch of some angry woman with snakes for hair. I could barely hear myself think. I didn’t care.

Then I saw him.

A man at the far wall, nursing a beer. Staring at us. I knew that face.

I leaned closer to Petyr. “He was at Sanctuary,” I said.

Petyr didn’t look, but I felt him stiffen. “Don’t react. Just enjoy the show.”

The lights dimmed further, and the stage lit up.

The band walked on. Four young men in black, one with hair down to his shoulders, holding a battered guitar like it was a weapon. And then the music started. Loud, raw, alive.

I’d never heard anything like it.

It wasn’t the polished bullshit that came over the state-controlled radio. And it wasn’t folk music with lyrics about tractors and wheat. It was fury and longing, every chord a punch and a prayer. My foot tapped before I realized it. My blood felt warmer. Like I’d just remembered I was alive.

I leaned up toward Petyr’s ear and said, “Thanks for bringing me here. I love it.”

The next song slammed into us like a train.

Fast, brutal, and beautiful in its chaos.

The crowd surged forward, a mess of elbows and boots, everyone suddenly leaping and thrashing as though their bodies had no choice.

I could barely hear the lyrics over the wall of sound, but then something broke through the distortion, cutting clean:

“We walk in lines / But dream in fire / The street is cold / But we don’t tire…”

A jolt ran through me. The words weren’t shouting slogans. They weren’t feeding us the usual platitudes. They were saying something real, something dangerous. Something true.

“They tell us wait / But we ignite / Behind closed doors / We learn to fight.”

My throat went tight. I didn’t know if the song was about war, or the KGB, or love, or just being a person in this goddamned frozen world, but I felt it in my bones.

It was like someone had cracked a window in a locked room inside me, and fresh air was rushing in.

My body started moving before I gave it permission—just a shift of my shoulders at first, a bounce in my knees.

Then Petyr turned to me, laughing, already caught in the rhythm.

He grabbed my hand without thinking—just a moment, just a squeeze—and then we were both swept into the tide.

We weren’t holding each other. We weren’t even close enough to talk. But we danced.

I’d never danced like that before—not like the stilted, forced marches at youth functions or the limp shuffle at military canteens.

This was wild, joyful, violent, and free.

The crowd shoved and spun, arms pumping, hair flying, boots stomping, everyone grinning like lunatics.

No one cared who I was. No one cared what I was hiding.

Petyr yelled something in my ear but I didn’t catch it. I just laughed and danced harder. My shirt stuck to my back with sweat. The floor shook beneath my feet. I lost track of time. For a few blinding, perfect minutes, I forgot who I was supposed to be.

I forgot I was lying to everyone I loved.

I forgot that love could get you killed.

All I knew was this: the music was loud, Petyr was near, and I didn’t feel like a prisoner.

* * *

We’d danced ourselves raw.

My shirt was soaked through, plastered to my back like a second skin, and my boots felt like they’d fused with the soles of my feet.

Petyr’s eyes gleamed under the club lights, that same wild, reckless light I’d seen the night we first kissed.

His chest heaved with laughter and exertion, and his hair was damp, curling against his temples. We were both grinning like fools.

He grabbed my shoulder, leaned in close. “Let’s get out of here.”

I didn’t ask where. I didn’t need to. The places we went were never written down. They lived in shadows and back alleys, in overgrown corners of the city where no one looked too closely. There was no such thing as safe. Only away.

We slipped out into the night. The air outside was cool, metallic, heavy with the stink of rain and diesel. I followed him down the street, still high on the music, on the press of bodies and the electric pulse of the crowd.

“That show,” I said breathlessly. “God, that one song, ‘We walk in lines but dream in fire’? I’ve never heard anything like it. It was like...like they knew.”

Petyr glanced back and smiled, the corner of his mouth lifting like a secret he was sharing only with me. “I knew you’d feel it. There’s a storm in you, Dimitri. You just hide it better than the rest of us.”

His hand brushed my shoulder, grounding me and lighting me up at the same time. He nodded toward the side street. “Sanctuary moved again. It’s nearby in an old Orthodox church. Practically rubble, but nobody goes there. No one dares.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he said. “Come on. Might be the only place in the city where we can breathe.”

I let myself smile, even if just for a moment.

We rounded the corner and there was the church. Tall and broken, its onion domes cracked like eggshells, the stained glass shattered. The cross on the steeple had fallen long ago, leaving just a jagged scar of metal behind. The place looked like it had been abandoned by both God and country.

We stepped onto the sidewalk, and then everything collapsed.

There was a scream I didn’t recognize as my own. Bright lights. Boots. A fist in my gut. A baton across my back. The world spun.

“DOWN ON THE GROUND, PIDO!”

“Fucking cocksucking degenerates!”

They were everywhere. Six? Ten? I didn’t know. Faces blurred, red with rage. Someone slammed my head into the pavement and my teeth clacked hard enough to taste blood. My arms were twisted behind me, cuffed, yanked. I couldn’t breathe.

I looked up, dazed, and saw Petyr a few feet away—face down, one arm raised, screaming as a boot landed in his ribs.

“No!” I choked, straining against the hands gripping me. “Don’t touch him!”

“Shut up, you diseased little whore!” A blow to the head. Stars behind my eyes. Laughter.

“You sick faggots think you can crawl out of your holes and defile a church? In my city?” one of them growled, his breath hot and rancid near my ear. “You think the Motherland needs your kind?”

I went still. My mouth was open, but I couldn’t make a sound. My chest tightened, crushing in on itself. I saw my mother’s face—with her soft voice and her careful hands—flash across my vision like a ghost. I saw my father’s scowl. Heard his voice, so cold, so clipped: This is not how men behave.

Shame surged through me, hot and blinding. What would they think if they saw me like this?

My knees scraped the pavement as they dragged me toward an armored van.

My breath came in short, panicked gasps.

I can’t go in there. I can’t. The doors gaped open like a mouth waiting to swallow us whole.

Petyr stumbled beside me, blood smeared across his cheekbone.

Our eyes met—and for the first time, I saw fear in his.

Genuine fear.

And then it hit me, all at once.

This wasn’t a warning.

This was a punishment.

What were they going to do to us?

And would anyone even care if we disappeared?