Katya can feel herself hovering just above the hands of unconsciousness, gently pulling her downward with the softness of the mattress, the warmth of the air, and the steadiness of Matthew's ribs rising and falling beneath her ear.

Then a phone rings.

She turns her head into her partner's chest and groans, folding into herself under the covers to reclaim the haze of sleepiness that the real world is so rudely pulling her from. She can feel Matthew turn his head and hold his arm out to reach for the offending electronic harbinger of destruction, but she's still not sure if it's him or her that someone is demanding the attention of.

"I'm not answering it," she mumbles, her deep and languid accent likely making her words unintelligible for her poor Western boy, but she wants to make her agitation clear even if the ring doesn't belong to her.

She gets her response with a huff of laughter through Matthew's nose that breezes through Katya's hair and warms the skin of her chest with affection.

"Good thing it's not for you," he tells her with just a hint of humorous patronization that she feels he learned from Arthur, the same man who would scold Matthew for using it. She's noticed quite a few of these peculiarities among his family, not least of which is their ability to snark and wit each other's rhetoric into submission without so much as giving anyone any indication that they caused a crack in their armor, nor anyone delivering to another the fatal blow. She admires their sharp tit-for-tat while they maintain an unquestioning air to the world of their vows to one another, that the blood that runs between them is deep and thick and unwavering. She has no doubts, and never has, of the devotion that she shares with her own family, but putting the politics aside with each other has never been as easy – and it likely never will be.

Matthew is murmuring in French into his phone, so Katya settles back into the space between Matthew's chest and his stomach with her arm wrapped around his waist, thumb slowly swiping back and forth across the muscles that line his ribs. His fingers curl into her hair as he talks, twisting the damp tendrils at the back of her neck between his thumb and forefinger. The conversation he's having seems fairly one-sided – all she can understand is the loose strings of ouais and non – until he seems to make the decision to end the conversation, breaks in with something rapid and tense, then hangs up with a final bonne nuit!

The phone drops back onto the nightstand unceremoniously. Matthew moves the hand that had been twisting itself in her hair to trace the outline of her shoulder blade and she hums into his skin.

"Work?" She asks and glances up at him. His head is tilted towards her, but his eyes are closed – giving no indication that he's awake, let alone that he had heard her. She thinks that he looks so much younger with his wheat-colored hair untucked from behind his ears and his usual round frames folded on the nightstand, but Katya had made the very distinct decision to not dwell on such things like his age from the moment she started doing this with him. Or hers. Oh, my god – what's the respectable age difference among their kind, is it two thousand years? Or so?

"Mm, worse," he murmurs, and she can feel his voice from deep within his lungs, words strung together like a Francophone would. "Mom and dad are fighting."

Katya gives an amused huff at the choice of words, but she knows what he means and has no desire to learn anything more about it. She presses her lips to his chest as a sympathetic apology and he gives a soft squeeze to her shoulder in response.

There are a few beats of silence where Katya feels like she's almost returned to the edge of sleep, and to the very peaceful night of rest that surely lies below it, when Matthew murmurs something. She thinks he may be just talking to himself but she's not entirely sure, so she hums to ask.

"Just wait," he answers with something she recognizes instantly as the kind of long-suffering resignation that only a sibling can master. She's already smiling in sympathetic camaraderie before he even finishes the thought. "Al always has the best timing."

The nightstand starts vibrating. At first she thinks his phone is ringing again, but she realizes eventually that each vibration corresponds with an incoming text – text, after text, after text. Sometimes the first vibration alert doesn't even finish before the next one comes in. It is, quite truly, a magnificent piece of work by a serial spammer at their finest.

Katya sighs.

"I'm going to the restroom," she groans and lifts herself from the bed to move into the adjoining bathroom, but reaches over Matthew for her own phone before tip-toeing away.

It's well into the next morning back home, so Katya takes a moment of being swept up by a little bit of sentimentality to send off a few Valentine's Day wishes to her own siblings who are hopefully having a better start to their day than Matthew's own romantically-challenged family members. Ivan replies almost immediately with several GIFs of cats playing with toys shaped like hearts and a nice note hoping that she's enjoying her vacation (she is, but he doesn't need to know why); Natalia replies with a thanks, a picture of a bag of chocolate that she's already eaten half of, and a promise that if Katya comes to visit she can have the other half.

Katya knows that they'll likely never fully know, but she's not sure she could ever feel warmer and more in love with the ones that surround her than she does in this moment. And that her two little siblings, more than a hemisphere away, are the part of the reason why? A night, she thinks, that is worthy of bookmarking in her long catalog of nights, in her long stacks of years.

When she returns to the bedroom, Matthew is still typing furiously on his phone without much regard for his surroundings. She slides her own phone down on the table, face-down, and resumes her previous position without much struggle. Only a few deep breaths should return her to her former place of Zen. Or maybe after a couple deeper breaths. Soon, her mind begins to aimlessly wander without control and she starts thinking that the more she forces herself to relax, the further away she truly feels from falling into the long-lost hands of sleep.

So… maybe she should ask if there's anything she can help with? If for no other reason than to try to keep the touchscreens-from-hell quiet for maybe just a few hours.

Katya lifts her head and begins to address Matthew, "What's the matter? Maybe I- "

Then she stops. She doesn't know how she hasn't seen this before. She hastily moves her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. Then another giggle. And then she can't contain it.

Matthew pulls his phone away from his face to look at her – literally, pulls. He had been holding his phone a scant few centimeters away from his eyes and typing, very carefully, with an outstretched index finger. The phone is now in his hand, hovering just below his jaw where Katya can see the text conversation he is in is still considerably lively even with this participant leaving the chat to stare at his mocking accuser. Or maybe squinting, or more like cautiously looking in her general direction. Neither party is entirely sure.

"Are you laughing at me?" He finally asks, more confused than offended. The question makes her giggles blossom two-fold, like bells ringing in the air.

"I didn't realize you were as old as the seven wonders of the ancient world, maybe even older!"

Matthew scoffs and reaches for his glasses on the bedside table, pulling the round frames in front of his eyes and bringing Katya's childish glee into focus.

"I've told you I'm blind – I've told you this several times! It's not my fault Alfred stole all my nutrients in the womb!"

"Isn't he blind, too?" Katya laughs.

"Yeah, he's even worse than me, but he was pulled from a faulty gene pool – it's different."

Katya falls on her back and makes no effort to reign in her laughter. Matthew furrows his brows down at her.

"If you're going to make fun of me, then I'm going to ignore you," he tells her.

Katya grins up at him. "How ever will I survive?"

Matthew sticks his tongue out at her which elicits one last laugh before returning to his text conversation, which she is sure has moved on well past the point of his last interjection. He keeps his glasses on.

She makes a very solid effort of re-curling herself into the blankets without touching any part of him – it lasts five minutes. She quickly, completely involuntarily, moves back to her previously scheduled programing with her head below his ribs and arm wrapped around his waist. It takes all of thirty seconds before she feels his fingers move back into her hair, carding and twisting through her scalp.

Two minutes after that she feels a frustrated huff from beneath her and a renewed pace of furious typing on the screen of his phone. She smiles, amused.

Five minutes after that the hands of sleep pull her to meet them.

Y'all. I have,, no clue,, where this came from. I've just been really diggin' CanUkr for a little bit and this just came out of me in a single vomit even though I have other things I've been thinking about for years and, okay, ya know, oh well. Anything to give these two kids more attention and love.

Also, I'd like to say that Iryna is probably the more accurate name for Ukraine, but Katya is just more endearing to me. I hope that doesn't clash with anyone's groove, I can totally change it.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Valentine's Day!