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Alina Starkov was drunk.
Accidentally.
She had never had wine before, and hadn’t realized two large glasses would make her head spin as she stood. Mal had gone into town and bought strawberry wine for their twentieth birthday dinner. The children had gone to bed an hour before, leaving the dining room to just them. And he had warned her, but she waved him off with a frown. She had never had wine before, but she knew it was nothing compared to kvas .
She has been right, but also wrong.
Kvas was sharp and burned its way down her throat and into her belly. She only ever took small sips and stopped when she felt warm. But the wine didn’t feel like that. It was sweet and she drank her entire first glass before dinner was even served. She poured herself a second, and even a third, but couldn’t finish it because Mal took the glass from her.
“Hey,” Alina whined, reaching across the table for him. He shook his head with a sigh and also whisked away the bottle.
“You’re drunk.”
“I am not,” she replied, affronted. She felt nice and warm, but she did not feel drunk.
Until she stood. Then the room spun lazily and she blinked before sitting back down. Mal was watching her, his blue eyes light.
“I’m not,” she lied, because now she could definitely tell she was something .
She stood again and pushed back her chair, wobbling a little as she stepped away from the table.
Mal was grinning now, his arms crossed over his chest, looking beautiful in their plain dining room light. Her husband. She never got tired of hearing that or waking up next to him every morning, snuggling up to him at night.
“C’mon,” he said, walking around the table to wrap his arm around her waist. “Let’s go to bed. We can clean this up tomorrow.”
Alina nodded, blinking away the spinning room to flick off the light and let Mal lead her down the hall to their bedroom. The children were all kept upstairs, as were their classrooms. The downstairs belonged to the adults.
She dropped down onto their bed and watched Mal kneel before her, tugging on her shoelaces. He slipped her boots off her feet and stood back up, now reaching for her pants. When his fingers landed on the button, she trailed her hands up his arms, sitting up to press her lips against his. He tasted like strawberry wine and he hummed in surprise before gently kissing her back.
He pulled away and unbuttoned her pants, slipping his fingers into her belt loops to tug a little. She reached forward to kiss him again, to wrap her arms around his neck and bring him on top of her, but he caught her chin and smiled.
“You’re drunk,” he whispered and Alina sighed.
“Then what are you doing, Mr. Oretsev?”
He laughed and gave her a chaste kiss that was only a little frustrating. “Helping your drunk ass get into bed.”
“Oh,” she replied. “Fine.”
She abandoned any more advances and leaned back against the mattress, only moving to lift her hips so Mal could take her pants off easily. She was becoming tired, her eyes staying closed longer with every blink, her limbs becoming heavy.
“Is this what being drunk feels like?” she asked suddenly. Mal took her hand and pulled her off the bed. She leaned heavily against him, and decided she could stay like that forever, with her face pressed into his neck.
“What is it that you’re feeling?” he asked, using a free arm to tug down the blankets.
“Fuzzy. Sleepy. Were you planning on getting me drunk?”
He laughed again, beautifully, wonderfully and Alina pulled away to look at him. She loved his laugh, always had since they were children. She reached a finger up to touch the little crinkles that appeared beside his eyes when he smiled.
“No. I didn’t expect you to drink two full glasses of wine while I wasn’t looking.”
She smiled sheepishly and climbed back into the bed. When she opened her eyes again, Mal was slipping in underneath the heavy covers on the other side. She had missed him taking off his own boots and shirt.
“Happy fake birthday,” Alina murmured, wiggling across the mattress and shoving blankets aside to wrap her arms around him, tangle her legs in his.
“Happy birthday, Alina.”
“I love you,” she said, because she felt it so strongly, deeply within her bones. It was a constant ache that was always with her, and she wanted him to know. “I love you very much. You are my heart. My everything.”
Mal’s features softened and he pressed a kiss to her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks and, finally, her lips. “And you are mine.”
She drifted to sleep with Mal’s forehead settled against hers.
Alina woke with a pounding just behind her right eye. She blinked at the sunlight streaming in through her window before turning and pressing her face into her pillow. The light increased the pounding.
Sleepily, she reached out only for her hand to fall against cold sheets. Mal was already awake, as usual. He was always awake as soon as the sun rose, always happily helping with breakfast or starting classes early or giving out paint to the children while he supervised.
Alina sat up and rubbed at her eyes before carefully falling out of bed. She dressed slowly, making a mental note to buy curtains for her room. She could hear noise from the kitchen and begrudgingly followed it, shuffling her bare feet down the hall.
Mal was in the kitchen, handing out plates of pancakes and eggs to the children. A few of them excitedly called her name as she entered and the pounding in her head disappeared with her smile.
“Good morning, my gloriously hungover wife,” Mal greeted before planting a kiss on her forehead and handing her a tall glass of water. “This will help.”
“Oh, quite the expert,” Alina replied, but she sat down with the kids and drank her water, listening to their conversations. They were talking about dragons and quickly switched to apples since Mal had mentioned taking them to an orchard when the summer heat wasn’t so intense.
The children were soon whisked upstairs for lessons by the other teachers and Alina squinted her eyes at Mal.
“I didn’t mean to get drunk,” she finally said and he slowly smiled.
“I know. But I quite enjoyed you telling me you loved me very much,” he replied.
“Like I don’t say that every day.”
He shrugged as she stood and crossed the kitchen to wrap her arms around his neck.
“Drunk people speak freely from their hearts without a care. It’s nice to hear the same thing from you that way as well.”
He was blushing, which was one of Alina’s favorite things to make Mal do. She kissed him softly, sliding her fingers into his dark hair.
“Any time I say it, Malyen Oretsev, it comes from nowhere else other than my heart. Every inch, every deepest part imaginable.”
The corners of his mouth curled and it was his turn to kiss her.
“I love you, too.”
She took his hand and led him up the stairs, bringing up the apple orchard again. It sounded like a very good idea to her.
Hungover, a teacher in an orphanage, otkazat’sya. Alina felt happiness deeper and stronger than she ever had before.