A/N-
Dunno why, suddenly had a huge burst of inspiration... and now it's 1am in the morning and I have school today; yaaaay...
caffine: my bff
anyway, hope you enjoy, please leave a review! :3
—ACT ONE—
• sun kissed dreams •
i — • only for tonight •
Things are harder here at the orphanage.
Anastasia had expected it, obviously, but even things like waking up to the noisy clambering of feet in mornings is new.
Blankets are thin and she could feel the skeleton of the bed under her while she slept—like Princess and the Pea. The two dresses Anastasia has been given—thrown—are scratchy and awfully plain, nothing like the familiar pressed thread of her own yellow one. For breakfasts they eat porridge and at dinners they dine on stale bread and preserve—sometimes, rarely, on meat too.
But she doesn't complain. Not once, no matter how she wants to—she doesn't complain.
The orphanage's children have formed mostly four cliques. First split into older and younger groups, then into girls and boys. With amusement, Anastasia allows herself to be assimilated into the gaggle of young girls who compliment her hair and her skin and her eyes, full of an exaggerated air of gossip that suggests they are trying to seem older than they are. They call her 'Ana' without so much as permission, but Anastasia supposes she could get used to it.
And with the experience Anastasia has in playing games such as these—and with those so much more subtle and matured besides—she finds that it is no chore to indulge them. She wishes for no enemies this early on, after all.
But they giggle and shriek as if Anastasia cannot see the hungering jealousy simmering behind their eyes as they ask about what it is like to come from a noble family. They tell shameless lies about being born from noble blood too, about utterly believable connections to the Queen of England herself, and so of course they already know what it's like. But nonetheless they preen under Anastasia's own praise with all the air of an unseasoned servant or a slothful wife hungering for a husband who will provide her with everything she could ever want without her having to lift a finger.
It seems, she thinks, and not without disappointment, that children are the same in and out of the confines of nobility.
They are, however—and she hesitates to call them useful—but they do help her understand the unspoken rules of the orphanage, if unknowingly.
There are many, ranging from staying away from Madam Cole when she is drunk in the evenings, to being cautious of one Tom Riddle.
Anastasia learns that Tom Riddle is the name of her rather rude roommate, but as the girls continue to whisper his name with forked tongues, telling of his 'freakishness' ("bad things happen around him.") and his 'demonic eyes' and his innate evil and—"Ahh, I feel so sorry for you Ana, oh my gosh, imagine having to share with him-!"
Well, she thinks in the quiet spaces of her own mind, frowning ever so slightly as she hums along noncommittally to the group's condemning insults.
Perhaps it is no wonder Tom Riddle is so rude then, if this is what he faces each day.
(and in the deepest parts her mind, the spat 'freakishness' rolls around over and over again, denying her reprieve)
One of the numerous things that is so frighteningly new to her is sleeping with somebody else in the same room. She had wondered what it would be like, that very first day where she'd had hours to wonder. Would she perhaps not be able to sleep at all, disturbed and perturbed by the raspy breathing of somebody else in a deep slumber beside her, so close by?
Tom Riddle is a silent sleeper though.
A very silent sleeper.
And it isn't until a week later that Anastasia finally notices the stiffness of his back and his tightened shoulders, something that would be impossible were he actually sleeping at all. So that night Anastasia keeps watching well into the chime of midnight, curious—worried even, she didn't mind admitting, if only to herself.
He does not relax into sleep.
At first, Anastasia wonders if it isn't her that's the problem. Like she thought she would've been, perhaps Tom Riddle is merely unused to sharing a room? It is odd, really, she muses, so little space in the orphanage and still the boy had apparently managed to somehow keep his own room before Anastasia came along.
"Tom?" She gathers the courage to ask quietly on the third day of this… thing of hers—and it's not actually creepy, is it? She's just concerned, after all, right?—and she hears more than sees him tense, blankets crinkling and his near silent breaths stilling. Anastasia sits up slowly on the edge of her bed, worrying her lip, "I, um, know you're awake." Silence. "Are you okay?"
She will not receive a response.
And so, upon earning nothing but a nasty glare the next morning, Anastasia decides that perhaps it would be better if she just left him alone, as he seems to demand her do—after all, if she were the problem, surely all this Riddle-watching couldn't be helping.
It is just hopelessly ironic, she grumbles mentally to herself, turning in the bed later that night, that she cannot seem to fall asleep now that she actually wants to—and that Tom Riddle, on the other hand, is fast asleep. It is all the Riddle-watching, she decides dryly—it has messed up her entire sleep schedule.
When she finally settles, looking up into the shadowed roof of the orphanage and eyeing each crack of the plaster, wondering idly, like she had so many times now, just when the roof would decide to suddenly give up and collapse on her.
This is when Tom Riddle awakes with a start, jolting the bed. Anastasia stiffens instinctively, shutting her eyes as if guilty of having done something wrong when she'd, in actuality, done nothing of the sort. She listens, unwittingly, as he rides the crest of a breathy, shuddering gasp that is quiet despite piercing the air and hanging there like a guillotine.
Then there is a loud swallow of silence, the boy stilling as if able to sense her wakefulness. A shuffle of blankets and a careful creaking of bed springs later, Anastasia realises that he has rolled over, facing away from her—and then she wonders somewhat hysterically when she had become so good at reading bed ticks.
Swallowing slightly, Anastasia chances a flutter of eyelashes, relaxing when she sees that Tom Riddle is indeed facing away from her. Only to freeze again when the moonlight filtering through the paper-thin blinds illuminates, if only faintly, a patch of glistening wet on the part of his cheek visible to her.
She licks her lips, but still doesn't dare move—doesn't dare bring any attention to it. Or should she? Is that what you're supposed do?
(mother, she thinks helplessly, what would you do?)
Anastasia feels terribly out of place. She remembers a boy who refused to shake her hand simply because of her gender, but her heart has always bled for others despite herself, and this time is no different. But last she knows, they have nothing in common—not even gender. And beyond that, she'd grown up alone, especially after her mother died when she was five. Anastasia had had a small army of maids and tutors, but certainly none who dared or cared enough to comfort her when she awoke from something as small as a nightmare or the like. And of course, her father's loving presence was decidedly non-existent.
("-nastasia, my darling, come in here-")
She debates letting it go, and perhaps—no, certainly, that is what Tom Riddle hopes for too…
("-now, was it a scary nightmare, sweethear-")
Her fingers clench around the skirt of her cotton nightdress, nails picking at the unfamiliar lint balls as indecision wages a war inside her. Then Anastasia swallows and—slowly—she rolls off the bed onto her feet, cringing at the obnoxious squeak of the bed. She sees his shoulders tense and she wonders why she is doing this- no, she knows why, but she wonders why she feels a kinship with Tom Riddle, of all people. (freakish, they whisper, always loud enough for the subject himself to overhear. evil, alone, strange)
With bare feet she tiptoes over to the other boy's bed, delicate fingers clutching the blanket and not allowing it to drag, dirty enough as it is.
Inhaling a silent breath as if to steel herself, Anastasia climbs onto his bed—one that is somehow even worse than hers—and layers her own blanket on top of them both, the part of her that is her father's daughter shrieking in her ear like a banshee gone mad. Tom Riddle makes a strangled sound that could really mean anything, as Anastasia curls around the boy, her head positioned at the nape of his neck and arms curling stiffly around his ribs.
He is very cold—no, not just cold, his skin, in the places she accidentally skims, in freezing. Honestly, she thinks faintly, is he actually a cold-blooded reptile in the guise of a human? It is what his apparently horrible circulation seems to suggest.
"What- What are you doing?" He asks, finally, choking it out with a flustered undertone she just barely manages to catch.
Now, this is all very awkward for Anastasia as well, of course. For all that she sometimes bends over defying it just for fun, she had been raised on propriety, and she knows very well that a boy and a girl don't just… share a bed together, even if they're siblings! Which, they aren't! And at the moment she wants nothing better than to find a rock and die under it, but- but she has made her bed and now she shall lie in it.
"Comfort." she mumbles mulishly into his hair—he smells like black licorice, funnily enough, and then she quickly turns her head away because, I'm not supposed to know what a boy's hair smells like! she thinks frantically. "Why, is it working?" She hears herself say, somehow sounding much more put together than she actually was.
And for the first time she can remember, Anastasia curses her mother and her beyond stupid ideas coming to haunt her beyond the grave, even if she knows it's hopelessly unreasonable.
"I don't need comfort." He bites out, rather harshly in her opinion, but a moment of rather stunned reflection later, she realises with some level of disbelief that he does not actually answer her question.
A declaration of guilt if anything.
Something in Anastasia melts at the semi-victory and she feels herself relax slightly, with the knowledge that her roommate will not just dropkick her to kingdom come—as she would have, now that she thinks about it, should a random boy just decide to slide into bed with her.
Extraordinary circumstances, her mind chirps, blithely in denial.
And with the loosening of tension, despite herself she finds a bout of mischief rise as well. She snuggles into the boy—or rather, the sheet happily separating them. "Well," Anastasia retorts primly, a small, cheeky smile quirking her lips where Tom Riddle couldn't see them. "Whoever said you were the one who needed it?"
And even a boy like Tom Riddle couldn't say anything to that, now could he?
He feels her breaths tickle the hairs on his neck, and they are warm.
She is warm. Every part of her. It seeps into the sheet between them and then ebbs into him too, filling him up with a… heat, but it isn't something he has ever felt from a fire before. It simmers impossibly from within.
And it is uncomfortably… nice.
A part of him has five consecutive heart attacks and wants nothing but to kick the girl out of his bed, for he has so few things he can truly call his own. But to his immense discontent, a much bigger part of him seems to long to savour this moment for an eternity.
He swallows, and then stiffens when he realises he has again relaxed.
It's… there's just something, something… about having somebody so close and yet not—hurting you. Her skin is really very soft, his mind unwittingly offers, like what he dreams velvet might feel like. And- oh god, her cheek is pressing against his neck; it- is she asleep?
Something about the fact makes him want to go still so as to not disrupt the girl—which is an absurd notion because when has he ever cared about things like that?
And he feels small, for some reason, with her curled around him. He doesn't like it—he doesn't like it—he hates that he wants to shut his eyes and fold into her warmth. Surrender to the smell of… something flowery and sweet.
She's just so… squishy? No, more… malleable. Bendable? It's- Her arms are wrapped around him, but they're just—just there, loose and, uh, wriggling? No. No, as in, he only needs to push a little for them to just give. It isn't a prison, but a… cucoon, instead. Of sorts. Wings, maybe.
Never has somebody touched him like this before, so gently, so… dearly—and without permission, his body shudders at the thought, as if wanting to cry, but he doesn't.
The memories of a creeping cold, of darkness and jeering and powerlessness fades away—and it isn't that he wants to reach for them, but he is more disturbed at the fact that they never go so swiftly. There is always a cold sheen on his brow and a lingering chill in his bones; a snarling humiliation and fierce determination that keeps him awake; the girl making a nuisance of herself shouldn't have changed anything, and yet now all he seems to want to do is…
is…
(and that very night, a boy who has never known true peace falls asleep dreaming of nice things for the first time he can remember.)
They wake the next day with discomposed, clipped excuses and the unspoken consensus to never speak of the night again: to pretend nothing ever happened.
And nor do any of the two say a single thing, when Anastasia ends up in Tom's bed again the next evening.
