Kashentsovs

Winter in St. Petersburg is gray and slushy. Danya walked as usual: hands in his pockets, a defiant gaze, as if looking for something to pick on. A kid from the hood who doesn't care about propriety.

Ruslan followed, huddled in his down jacket, looking at Dani's broad back. He acted like a thug, but Ruslan looked at him with quiet devotion. He loved him without pathos, accepting all this "boyish" chaff.

Danya stopped abruptly under the streetlight and turned around. Snow was falling in large flakes, settling on his clothes. The light blazed into Ruslan's face, making his eyes almost transparent.

"Have you heard what they're saying around here?" Danya kicked a snowdrift, sending snow flying onto his friend's pants.

Ruslan had heard it. Skinny, weak, with the "wrong" music—he didn't fit in with the neighborhood. "Not straight," they wrote on social media, but was that really an insult? He'd long ago realized he wasn't drawn to girls, but to the guys in the locker room, to the dancers in music videos. He didn't consider himself broken. Unlike Dani, who usually mocked those types.

But Rus felt sad. Not from fear of rejection, but because he'd been noticing too many little things about Kashin over the past few months. Dania had become more than a friend, and how Kashin would react was unknown.

“In short... Even if you’re one of those, I won’t stop being friends with you,” Dania suddenly blurted out.

"Really? I thought you were against it," Ruslan muttered, hiding his smile in his scarf.

"But don't think I'll abandon my principles." Dania roughly nudged him in the shoulder. "And most importantly, don't fall for me. I don't need that."