meraki.

Work, B*tch!

On Monday, December 31st, the pale sunbeans shining through the window woke Anna up, way before her alarm would've started going off. 

She had started to feel them a little before waking up, and in her blissful subconscious - naturally - she had tried to ignore them and turn her head away, on the other side, so the light would've hit the back of her head, instead of her face. 

But - and this was a sort of realization that had started to get to her a bit sooner each morning - she wouldn't have been able to do that; or, well! she could've done it, but only if she would've twisted her arm in an unnatural position, biting her lips together to avoid screaming out in pain and annoyance and keeping the noises to the bare minimum. All of that so that she wouldn't have woken up her newfound sleeping partner of the past 6 days, none other than her roommate and student: Harry Styles. 

As she opened her eyes, slowly, her eyelashes fluttering a little to allow her eyes to get rid of that veil of sleepy tears she had everytime she woke up, Anna stared at him, still fast asleep, laying on the other side of the bed. 

Slowly, her tired eyes scanned his face, the way his features looked in the pale December morning lights: the sunlight was only hitting the back of his head, creating shadows over the outlines of his face; the left half was buried in the pillow, because apparently he enjoyed sleeping on his stomach, half of his face buried into the pillow, one hand propped up next to his face, sprawled over the pillow. 

For the sixth morning in a row, Anna silently admired just how obscenely long Harry's eyelashes were - certainly longer than hers - and how they softly rested on the skin under his eyes; how his lips slightly curled when he let out a deep breath; how his messy bed hair actually looked so soft, despite being a mass of curls resting on top of his head, half of them matted over the pillow. And, lastly, Anna's eyes slowly moved to their still intertwined hands over the pillow barrier: the grip wasn't as tight as it had been the previous night, it always loosened during the night, but for some reason none of the two ever let go unless they had woken up - something that Anna wasn't particularly willing to do, on that morning. 

Everynight, before falling asleep, Harry had absentmindedly intertwined their fingers together, no matter what position she had been in: laying on her back, laying on her side facing him, laying on her stomach to understand why Harry preferred that sleeping position - she still hadn't understood it.

And for some reason, Anna had never told him to stop, to not do it, to let go of her hand, despite knowing that she should've done just that: things were already complicated as they were, and Harry holding her hand, sometimes swiping the pad of his thumb over her skin, would make her heart flutter in the most violent of ways. And the hole that Anna was digging for herself, trying to do it as slowly as possible, would only get ten inches deeper, with no chance of going back. 

But deep down she knew that she didn't want him to stop holding her hand, she didn't want him to stop moving his thumb in small circles over her knuckles. It was because she liked it a little too much, she lived off of the sensations that those simple and small touches ignited inside of her, those sensations that start in the pit of your stomach, slowly and sneakily, and then make their way up and all inside of your body, slowly asserting their undisputed realms. Those were the sensations Anna had yearned for, for too long; the sensations she had kept herself away from, to not feed that primal part of her body. And all of that to save herself. 

She sighed, admiring how Harry kept sleeping, unaware of the fact she had woken up - once again - long before him: it had happened every morning, for the past 6 days, so far. Anna had been falling asleep late and waking up early - way too early, for it to be holidays. For some reason, that year, the sun had decided to shine bright in December, making it impossible for her to fall asleep again.