Chapter Text
“Are you ready to leave?” Malyen’s voice called from the living room. Aleksander hadn’t heard the elevator bring his brother-in-law into their home, but he certainly heard him yelling all around the place.
Malyen looked at him in shock when Aleks ran out of the kitchen, bewildered and shushing aggressively. “Shut up! Shut up!” he whisper-yelled at the young man in front of him.
Mal laughed in turn and headed straight for the first bedroom down the hall as Aleksander hovered carefully, ready to punch the idiot if he heard even a stir. “Saints, she’s pretty,” the other man said and closed the door carefully once more. Aleksander let out a thankful exhale.
“Prettier still when she stays asleep,” Aleksander sighed, rubbing his eyes and making sure his suit looked perfect before offering Mal a drink. They settled for coffee, which Aleksander was quite happy about, since he would be their driver for the evening. Not that he didn’t trust his brother-in-law to be responsible behind the wheel, but most people still drive after a glass of wine, and Aleksander would be happier to know his driver was especially careful.
“Oh, Mal, you’re here, perfect,” Alina said, walking into the kitchen on her tiptoes so her heels wouldn’t be too loud. She was clad in a black satin dress and was currently working to get silver earrings in. She looked positively edible. Aleksander wished they were alone until they had to leave so he could do something about it. “Where’s Stella?”
“Where do you think?” Aleks said smugly.
“You got her to sleep?” she asked excitedly, stepping closer to kiss her husband, “Oh, father of the century,” she cooed, sealing it with another kiss.
“What is it about straight people making babies and only enjoying having them when they sleep?” Mal wondered, “Shouldn’t you people be all…ecstatic about all their milestones and shit?”
“We are,” Aleksander said, letting Alina take a seat on his knee instead of getting her own seat. “But when you have a two-year-old whose current hobbies include endless questions of why this and why that, as well as temper tantrums, you tend to enjoy how cute she is asleep.”
“And silent,” Alina agreed.
“So no chance for a second one any time soon?” Mal asked, clearly teasing.
Alina barked a laugh, “Once they figure out how to make it painless, I’m all ears,” Alina rolled her eyes, mindlessly drawing circles on the back of Aleksander’s neck where she was holding onto him for balance. “Besides, I enjoy being able to fit into dresses.”
“You looked beautiful when you were pregnant,” Aleksander said for possibly the millionth time.
“You only say that because you have love goggles on,” Alina reminded.
“Have for six years. And refuse to take them off,” Aleksander promised, giving his wife his dopiest of smiles. Malyen was watching them with a raised eyebrow, but he was clearly losing a fight against a smile creeping onto his face.
“How long has she been asleep?” Alina wondered.
“Twenty minutes?” Aleksander supposed, “Risk it?”
Alina sighed, checking Aleks’ watch, “We do have to get going. Perhaps we should have rescheduled, like you’d said.”
“They’ll all wait for you,” Aleksander reminded her, “there’s no rescheduling Os Alta’s best artist.”
“Stop flattering me, I’ll grow an ego,” Alina warned playfully.
“Where’s the car seat? I’ll get her,” Mal volunteered.
“Are you sure?” Alina sounded surprised, but Aleksander had been watching Mal closely enough for the past two years to know he was actually a very good bit of help around both the Kostyk and the Morozova children.
“Absolutely. Uncle Mal for the win,” he said surely and went to find the seat himself, heading in the direction of what had once been Alina's bedroom. Aleksander could hardly recall such a time.
“Please don’t wake her,” Alina reminded her brother before turning to Aleksander. “You don’t leave my side tonight.”
“Stop stressing,” Aleksander whispered, leaning forward to kiss her. It still took him by surprise sometimes that he was allowed to do that. That he was blessed with the privilege of this woman in his life and in his bed, and he could touch her at a whim.
Not only that, but she had given him a family, she had made a home filled with laughter where it used to be him solemnly doing paperwork and sipping scotch. She had come into his world and turned it upside down, and he was utterly addicted to her, seemingly more and more each day.
When he’d found out he would be a father, he had nearly ordered fireworks over the entire city despite Alina making fun of the idea. He had entirely forgot it in the end, too enticed with his wife and what the two of them had been able to create.
For the following nine months, he spent most of his time between Alina’s legs, either urging lovely little noises out of her and making her pull at his hair, or speaking nonsense into the growing bump beneath her heart. When the baby started kicking, he had giggled like a lunatic, and Alina was still insistent, to this day, that it was her favourite sound.
The day Stella Morozova was born, Aleksander had wept into his wife’s hospital gown, peppering her with kisses and words of adoration for the seemingly endless hours of labour she had endured. The glow that came off his wife when she held their daughter for the first time, well, he could have it painted in oils like a renaissance masterpiece, and it still wouldn’t be expressive enough.
For the first few months, Alina would find him sat watching Stella sleep in his arms for hours on end. She would take the holding over then, claiming Aleksander as a hoarder. He never refuted. He was just as possessive over his daughter as Alina was. Aleksander loved every second of it.
Watching his baby grow into an inquisitive little rascal was what he knew he would look back on when growing old with Alina, sat by a fireplace in the countryside property he bought when Stella was born. She was a smart, perfect little angel. His princess. Even when she misbehaved, even when she screamed their ears off, he was so endlessly and unconditionally in love with her, he would never want to change her for a calmer one.
She was wild and she was funny. She was her mother entirely, even if Alina insisted she got all her looks from Aleksander. His heiress. One of the three Morozova women Aleksander would give everything he had to.
“We’re ready,” Malyen said in a whisper, holding the car seat with his still-sleeping niece inside.
“No more postponing possible, right?” Alina sighed, earning another kiss from her husband.
They arrived at the gallery to a worker already waiting for them outside. Alina seemed to know her already and fell into a rushed conversation immediately. Aleksander scooped his sleeping daughter into his arms as Mal gathered the bag with her snacks, toys and diapers. He knew Genya would be excited to braid her hair once she was up. She was always happy to use her niece to experiment on, and Aleksander had to admit the intricate hairstyles always impressed him. Genya’s own boys were big enough to request their hair cut short, though she had clung to braiding their hair for as long as she could.
“Where’s my girl?” the woman in question asked as they entered to see just how many people had gathered to the opening of Alina’s exhibition. Alina herself was being pulled somewhere by the woman that worked in the gallery, and when she shot him the look of pure panic, Aleksander knew he had to take action.
“Got her?” he asked his sister-in-law, letting her happily cuddle Stella into her arms.
“Yes, go, go!” she shooed him away, barely looking at him, too enthralled by her niece.
“I’m here,” Aleksander said, and Alina’s shoulders visibly relaxed as she was being told the plan for the evening. She was supposed to meet a lot of important people, and Aleksander already knew she would dazzle them into oblivion, just like she had dazzled him and continued to do. All she needed was some encouragement – Aleksander knew that was his job and he was really, really good at it.
He instantly gathered a plate for his wife from the servers that had started circling the room, constantly making sure to be in Alina’s eyesight. No one would benefit from a hangry Alina Morozova, least of all herself. There were too many important people here to risk her in a bad mood because of a rumbling stomach.
Alina’s exhibition was breath-taking. She hadn’t wanted him to see the installation she’d been working on for weeks, and had only let him see a few of the sketches for the paintings, but nothing compared to the way his wife’s imaginative experimenting with light encompassed the room as if by magic, putting her art in exactly the perfectly mood-lit ambience.
Every single day she made him fall in love with her all over again.
It was hours later with only their closest friends and family left and merry on champagne, Genya’s sons chasing Stella around the room as she laughed in that squeaky way only children were capable of that Alina allowed herself to take a seat and calm herself. “I’m unbelievably proud of you, you know,” Aleksander said, “everyone here is. Just look around,” he said motioning towards their loved ones with his glass. Alina’s university friends were sharing a loud conversation, as they always tended to, Ivan and Fedya were laughing about something with David, and Genya seemed in a deep discussion with Ulla about whatever emergency they deemed most important at the moment, be it political or fashion. Aleksander had come to know Os Alta's most influential art critics by sight over the past few years, and could tell they 'd loved the exhibition.
Alina smiled to herself, allowing relaxation to seep into her bones as Aleksander placed his suit jacket over her shoulders. She took his glass as well, when Stella padded over, panting, but giggly, in search of her water bottle. She was going to be too excited to be put to sleep, but Aleksander could already see her nodding off the moment Mal starts the car to get them back home. “Hello, малышка,” Aleksander grinned at her.
His daughter huffed as she sipped her water, then shook her head. “Not little,” the tiny creature insisted.
“Big,” Alina corrected her husband dramatically and pulled her daughter into her lap. “So big and responsible. Didn’t break a single thing tonight.”
“Not for a lack of trying,” Aleks smiled, leaning back into the seat, his hand stroking lazily over Alina’s hip under his jacket, in utter awe and contentment with his life and with his girls.
Stella looked over at him, clearly sensing the meaning behind his tone and her big eyes narrowed as she glowered at her father in distaste. “Daddy’s being mean,” Alina whispered conspiratorially and Aleksander was taken by surprise when his daughter growled at him, drawing a chuckle from him. “Attack! Attack!” she urged Stella on and the tiny munchkin jumped onto Aleksander’s lap with a squeal, forcing the man into a fit of giggles.
He let her grip onto his neck and pretend to bite him as Alina watched from behind his abandoned champagne glass, the look of adoration on her exquisite features he knew well, because he felt it spreading across his own face so often since meeting this woman and then bringing a child into the world.
It was rare that he pondered his life before Alina came around, but whenever he did, it was with a huff of amusement at his own childish conviction of being happy in this solitude he had carved for himself over the years. Yet when Alina had been thrust onto him, bright and glowing and entirely brilliant, his sense of lonesomeness died out into fizzling embers. And when her family conjoined with his, be it with a band of loud Ketterdammers or a broody brother-in-law-turned-friend, Aleksander was surrounded by love now.
He had his girls, and he would never be alone again.