victories
A quick fluff ficlet; glenya (obviously) and set somewhere after Crossing the Nevsky Prospekt
The compartment is fast becoming a home, even when Gleb pushes them to change trains at every major city. It’s less about the space itself than the sense of safety, the lack of need to pack up each morning and leave nothing behind lest Anya be forced to abandon it permanently, less about the cheap mattress and more about the steady company. The rocking motion doesn’t wake either of them in the middle of the night anymore, though they still wake to other, worse fears, but they take their victories where they can.
This morning, victory is Anya carding her fingers through Gleb’s hair while he attempts to read to her from a French novel they acquired. His accent is improving by leaps and bounds, but there are traces of Russia in his voice that will never unbind themselves. Anya might mind, if she wasn’t faintly jealous; she sounds perfectly French, with no hint of her homeland. So she lets him read with his head in her lap and threads her fingers through his hair and hums softly and almost misses the moment when he stops reading and stares up at her instead.
“A word?” she guesses, because that is what he usually asks about. He hates to be proven completely incompetent and prefers to ask her to read a word rather than suffer her laughter over his attempts. Anya wonders for a moment if it could be something else, something worse, because he hasn’t asked to leave her yet, but her life hasn’t allowed for many companions. Each day might be the day he tires of her company, realizes that she’s nothing more than a street sweeper no matter her birth. It’s not truth, but her fears insist that it might be, to him.
"A word,” he echoes, and she realizes he’s holding the book closed, that he hasn’t been looking at it for a while. “No, not --” He laughs, and tips his head up to watch her. “What are you singing?”
Anya cannot quite recall. It had been an instinct, older than memory, and it clicks in a rush of almost-embarrassment. It’s the lullaby her grandmother taught her, soft and thoughtful, and she isn’t sure how to share it without sharing the memories of her family and her old life.
Gleb cocks his head to the side, raises an eyebrow, and she gives up.
“It doesn’t have a name.” She shrugs helplessly and runs her fingers through his hair again. “My grandmother sang it to me when I was a child.” He opens his mouth, and she tightens her grip on his hair warningly. “It’s terribly Romanov; I know.”
The officer of the new Russia abates in his gaze and Gleb gives her an utterly content stare, as though he’d happily lie in her lap and listen to whatever Romanov nonsense she wished to tell him until they died of old age. Sometimes she thinks he might.
“It’s pretty,” he allows, reaching up to tuck a loose price of hair behind her ear and giving her a playful look. “Maria Feodorovna had to contribute something worthwhile to this world.” He grins, and it crinkles the corners of his eyes. “Besides you.”
Anya scoffs. “Flattery, really?”
“Is it working?” He watches her from under his lashes, like she might vanish again, and Anya almost laughs.
“It always works,” she assures him, runs her fingertips along his cheek and laughs as he trips over the next word of the book.