⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖~Aryfal~✧˖°

Lazy mornings are a rare occasion in your house spent sleeping off the late nights and mountains of work that come with running an orphanage, most of which falls to you to handle. The hands-on part is yours, your days spent tending bruised knees and petty squabbles over who gets which toy when.

You rise long after the sun for once, half stuck to your pillow and better rested than you ever have been. You have to convince yourself to leave your bed before you finally throw your legs over the edge and brave the chill of the hardwood floors against your bare soles. Standing on your toes to stretch hardly helps, though you don't settle until you hear your joints pop.

You step into the hallway and make your way toward the kitchen, where the telltale clatter of an unruly bowl greets you. You can never mistake the scrape of a wooden spoon against metal.

Arlecchino is in the kitchen, bent over the counter with a handwritten recipe you vividly remember scrawling out, though it must've been years ago that you did. She squints at the delicate strokes, struggling to make sense of something made only for your eyes and to sate the nagging of an acquaintance you can't remember the name of for the secret to your delicious tea cakes.

Arlecchino looks up at the doorway once she notices your footsteps, her eyes barely lingering before she's back to scouring for answers. "Good morning," she says, though it sounds like a mutter marred by her frustrations. You cross the room to her.

"Good morning, Peruere," you reply. To her credit, she seems to have largely gotten the steps quite right, though… "More flour, dear," you suggest gently, gaze falling over her shoulder at the bowl. Your fingers rest against her back as if steadying yourself with only your fingertips. "Looks a bit wet to come together properly."

She's still for a second, then nods. Sounds right to her. You watch as she reaches for the open drawstring bag and spares you a searching glance, wordlessly asking How much?, though you don't immediately answer, instead nodding back as if to respond Go ahead and I'll tell you.

Arlecchino takes a spoon and scoops a generous portion, shaking the flour free from the spoon more gingerly than you imagine she has done much of anything in her life. It falls in a delicate dusting, piling atop the mixture until you tell her to stop after the second spoon and offer to take over mixing.

You let her roll out the first few balls of dough before you join her, slowly working through the batch. You watch the way her technique changes as she watches your hands move, her misshapen lumps of dough slowly reflecting a more practised hand as her confidence with it grows. The kitchen is usually your domain, and you know it in the way her eyes fix on you, studying the circular motion of your hands as they craft perfect little spheres.

"So you wanted tea cakes?" you question as you work. "You could have woken me up."

"No," she quickly responds. "I wanted them, but I thought it would be less demanding of you if I made them than to wake you on your day off."

You nod, unable to help the small smile that sneaks onto your lips. "But you struggled with the recipe," you continue. "I admit it's not my best one…"

You make a mental note to rewrite it for her later, as you can only imagine what led to her confusion in the first place. Your measurements oscillate between exact and guesses you eyeballed as you went, which scrawls the page in a possibly confusing mix of instructions. 'A generous amount' doesn't translate well for someone who has never made it.

Arlecchino sets down the last dough ball, sets the tray of them to bake, and you spend the next ten minutes or so cuddling on the couch, exchanging your usual pleasantries that never seem to grow old. She finds you a pair of socks and slips them on your feet like Prince Charming brandishing Cinderella's glass slipper. She peppers kisses over your knuckles while you allow her to keep your hand held in her own, her nails scraping gently over your skin.

You mould against her like she was made to hold you, cocooned in the crook of her arm around you with your hand as her hostage to warm and squeeze and bathe in her affections. She pulls you closer, though you can get no closer than where you sit with your thigh pressed to hers, short of crawling into her lap.

If you did that, you may never remember to check the tea cakes.

Arlecchino forces herself to part from you as the ticked of the clock finally draws enough of her attention for her to notice the time has passed. She leaves you with another kiss and hastily straightens a blanket over you that she pulled from where it was laid across the back of the couch.

The fabric is rougher than you like and a bit worn, but you nestle beneath it like your protective shield from the cold all the same, your fluffy socks your excuse to stew in it, and a good enough one for your tastes.

You listen to the sounds of her in the kitchen, just shy of your view, where she collects the tray of tea cakes. It's too quiet for a few seconds, and attuned to the sound of noisy children who get up to mischief when they hide beneath silence, you feel a faint unease stir in you. Did something go wrong?

From the other room, you hear her hiss between her teeth.

"Are you alright in there?" you call out to her, propping yourself on your hands in preparation to quickly get up.

"I'm fine," she calls back, though there is no further explanation, as much as that would soothe your nerves. You don't get a chance to ask what happened before you hear her voice again. "Are they dusted with powdered sugar?"

"Rolled in it," you respond. "And be careful, they're hot."

You lie back down and listen to the sounds of her going about the last of the recipe, and it all rings in your head like a soothing lullaby of knowing that she's there, reminded each time she bumps the metal bowl and the spoon circles the edge, or you hear her footsteps few and far between.

Eventually, she reappears in the doorway and returns to your side, where she settles in with you beneath your blanket. Her hands are washed clean, but you notice a smudge of powdered sugar on her cheek where she must've wiped her hand by mistake, no doubt trying to brush her hair out of her face.

You let her get comfortable, her body pressed to yours, her arms coming to rest around you awkwardly before finding comfort in the dips of your form. Her head veers closer, as if to lay against your shoulder, though she stops herself at the last moment.

You reach for her, fingers grasping her chin to turn her face toward you, and then lean forward to press a kiss to the sprinkles of powdered sugar sticking to her skin. You taste the sweetness on your lips, catching specks of sugar as you pull away. You lick the meagre amount away with a swipe of your tongue, lick the pad of your thumb and wipe the rest from her cheek.

"You had something on your face, Peruere," you tell her with a grin.

You peck her cheek with one last fleeting kiss before flopping to the couch with her as your willing prisoner, arms caging her against you. You press her head into your chest, where she listens to the beat of your heart like a drum resounding from your skin into hers. You melt with her against the couch cushions and let her body heat seep into yours, legs entwining alongside your fingers as she squeezes your hand.

"What did you do while you were in the kitchen?" you ask after a moment, finger of your free hand curling around the strands of her hair. "I heard a noise."

"I touched the pan," she says simply. "It was still hot."

In your mind, you wince at the thought, bringing her hand closer to yourself with the lead of your own. You pepper kisses over her fingers just as she had to yours, your lips brushing over her fingertips as if you might heal her with only your might and the will of love. Even so, the faint sting in her skin fades with the softness of your lips.

"All better," you declare. In that instant, it becomes truth. "I can't wait to try your tea cakes."

Arlecchino smiles back at you, a subtle curl of her lips that's followed by her burying her head back against your chest where she practically smothers herself in your scent.

"I hope you like then," she responds, her words muffled but sincere.