rezni: (Default)
re'b ravka ([personal profile] rezni) wrote2023-07-27 04:08 am

ic inbox.


Nikolai Lantsov, 24
DIABEL

CODE BY
sunmon: (pic#15382986)

[personal profile] sunmon 2023-08-18 05:42 am (UTC)(link)
"You're accruing quite the debt," she remarks, unable to stop herself from smiling when his lips brush her hand. There is something gentle about it. A kind of gentleness that she had not seen enough of in her life, and a kind that she wants to believe isn't entirely out of reach.

It does its job, fishing her out of the depths of her own self-pity and pessimism regarding Aleksander's plans and reach. These things are set aside in acknowledgment of the more immediate, pressing issue — their mutual confinement.

She takes her hand back reluctantly, looking past him to the table with a sigh. "I ruined your breakfast."
sunmon: (pic#14982500)

[personal profile] sunmon 2023-08-18 06:04 am (UTC)(link)
She watches him with a little tilt of her head, like some part of her is slotting the scene into place. The quiet intimacy of seeing him this way, and deciding whether or not she could make a habit of it. A long habit of it.

"You haven't slept," she says when she gathers herself out of that reverie. She'd thought he had when she casually stole from his plate and readied herself to occupy him. But he is still coming clean off the heals of a trauma so unpleasant that he'd seen fit to shield her from it.

She maneuvers past him, taking up the bread plate and the half-stirred porridge and insisting, "Let me take care of these."
sunmon: (pic#15367727)

[personal profile] sunmon 2023-08-18 06:47 am (UTC)(link)
This, too, draws a reluctant smile out of her. Alina makes room for him at her side as she clears the dishes off, handing one then the other towards him at the sink.

She should argue more. Offer to come back to them later, once he's asleep, and offer her company in the pursuit of a more worthy task like getting him there. But she too is reluctant to separate from him, for the company makes it easier to stave off the little fragments of misery.
sunmon: (pic#15367727)

[personal profile] sunmon 2023-08-18 08:42 pm (UTC)(link)
He'd kept her off the Duchess' pedestal and table. The answer seems obvious. Despite Nikolai's insistence that he is the one indebted to her, Alina can't help feeling like it's very much the other way around — even as the favors he asks include marriage and don't just save my country, but also fix it.

She hesitates, though, looking down at their hands.

"I'll consider it," she hedges. The hint of her smile doesn't quite tug the corners of her mouth, stays privately in her eyes and the little quirk of one eyebrow.
sunmon: (pic#14873917)

[personal profile] sunmon 2023-08-18 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
"Shall I sweep you gallantly into my arms?" She crinkles her nose, surrendering a little laugh. Alina releases his hand, then, but only to step nearer to him, to loop her arm through his. "I had already planned on it."

But it's good that he asked, isn't it? She hazards a sideways glance up at him. Her life has been full of unspoken things, little secrets she hadn't admitted to Mal, big secrets that Aleksander and Genya had withheld. It is only Nikolai who has been entirely honest in it all, forthright.

Honestly, it terrifies her.
sunmon: (pic#16525575)

[personal profile] sunmon 2023-08-18 09:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Alina is surprised when he stops in the doorway. His body blocks her chance at getting a look at how he's settling in, what fills the space of his room (and who else does). She comes up short, drawing her hand out of his arm with a little hint of surprise in her expression.

It softens into some kind of fond incredulity at his admission.

"You could start by not drawing attention to every opening I have to leave." The smile is there more solidly now, bemused if a little troubled. It reminds her of Dwight in a way—the anxiety without all the rambling. But she can see it threaded there in him. The sense that he's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Only then does it occur to her that it's not that Nikolai Lantsov is an anxious person, but that she in particular makes him nervous. Not the kind of nervous that comes with being intimidated, but the earnest kind that seeks approval. The same way she had felt nervous around Aleksander.

"Or inviting me in."
sunmon: (pic#16525058)

[personal profile] sunmon 2023-08-18 09:52 pm (UTC)(link)
The closing of the door draws her eye over her shoulder. It's a comfort, in a way. She hadn't felt ready to return to her own room, now that the boots and the kefta both feel different, the space less safe, knowing who had put her there. Here, however, she isn't alone with her pencil and her thoughts, and the door feels like a shield from the troubles that plagued them the night before.

"You don't have to entertain me," she tells him, eyes sliding towards the bed. "You can sleep. I'll stay until you do."

And then what? She's not sure just yet, but she will find something to occupy her and keep her from needing to go confront her unease about her own quarters. Maybe she'd reach out to Genya about the apartment over the tailor's shop after all. It felt like a good time for it.
sunmon: (pic#14981254)

[personal profile] sunmon 2023-08-18 11:05 pm (UTC)(link)
She gave so many little pieces of herself to Aleksander. Things she would never be able to do without remembering that she had done them with him, first. Yet they'd never laid beside one another, had they?

It's a silly thing to think now because it's not like she is planning to tangle herself in Nikolai, not when there is no paralytic holding him back, not when she is still shaky from the earlier realization. (Or maybe she needs to reaffirm this for herself because otherwise she might.) And she and Genya slept beside each other for more than a month before Alina had finally skulked over to Nile's bed, ashamed of being rejected.

But it's different. It feels different because Nikolai had not rejected her. And when he loosens his tunic and takes off his boot, she remembers that she knows what is under these and the rest of his clothes. And this is the closest she has ever been to someone, really, except for those moments lying next to Mal in the meadow when she had told herself that they would lay like that forever.

"Of course," she hears herself saying. She moves to join him on the bed, sits a little awkwardly beside him. Wets her lips, waiting for him to make himself comfortable, to lie down that she might, in fact, lie beside him.
sunmon: (pic#16409528)

[personal profile] sunmon 2023-08-18 11:30 pm (UTC)(link)
When she'd first crawled into bed beside Genya, they'd already had the familiarity and closeness that girls cultivated with one another, and it lacked any whiff of sexual intimacy (at the time).

Not so with Nikolai. When he sprawls out, Alina's mind projects a solicitation to it that makes her flush. There is no way around the intimacy of it. She turns her face from him to hide the reaction, and there's not enough room to lie flat anyway, so she puts her back to him, carefully drawing her hair over her shoulder and out of his face.

She is careful not to touch him. As if she had not laid against his nakedness the night before. Then she tells herself that she is being too awkward about it all and does, in fact, scoot back towards him, to where she can feel the heat of his body and the folds of his clothes against her.

"Do you have enough room?" she asks quietly.
sunmon: (pic#16409527)

[personal profile] sunmon 2023-08-18 11:50 pm (UTC)(link)
She can feel his breath against the back of her neck. It prickles the hairs on her arms, making her keenly aware of every inch of them that is pressed together. It will be a miracle if he can fall asleep like this. She knows she won't.

"Yeah." There's a scratchy quality to her voice that she barely recognizes. She settles closer against him, then, seeking out more of the warmth. With one arm tucked under the pillow, she moves her other on top of his, welcoming a more solid embrace.

Her breaths feel bigger, louder, with him so close. Can he tell that she's nervous? Can he hear her heart, like she can?
sunmon: (pic#15382989)

[personal profile] sunmon 2023-08-19 02:10 am (UTC)(link)
It would be foolish and complicated to explain her nervousness. Not only would it give him a weapon, a way in which he could identify her inexperience and therefore twist it in some way if he saw the need (why would he? This is Nikolai, not Aleksander, and yet--), but it would also be silly and embarrassing.

What kind of person is afraid of a good thing? The giddy excitement shouldn't nauseate her like it does.

Some of the tension melts from her shoulder when he squeezes her closer. It's that little affirmation, more than his words, which seem to keenly anchor her in the moment instead of the abstracted anxieties that preoccupy her. She shuts her eyes, focuses on his voice.

"I'm here to comfort you," she reminds him, as she had in the castle. A task she keeps failing at because her own burdens have a way of sucking the oxygen out of the room. But there's a lilt of humor in these words. Like she knows how silly it is that they keep failing that.
sunmon: (pic#16525463)

[personal profile] sunmon 2023-08-19 03:44 am (UTC)(link)
"Far from it," she admits with a laugh that's one huffed exhale.

How could she be? Not just because it's late morning, now, and she had slept peacefully with no idea of the intrusion that she'd experienced. But also her breath is so loud in her ears. And when he speaks, she can feel his mouth, the soft brushes of skin against the curve of her shoulder. The shifting of his fingers against the cloth on her tunic makes her aware of his movement there, makes her ache for his palm to flatten out and search her properly.

She uncurls her fingers, flattens her palm against the back of his to encourage him to take up more space there against her abdomen. Swallowing the lump in her throat that tells her to be nervous about his closeness, his every movement. It had been so easy when he was a frozen statue, but now?

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