Just a Dream ♙ Fyodor x Reader

5: White Nights

When Nikolai and Fyodor leave you alone in the small room, cold seeping through the cracks, you stand on the dusted wooden floors with your cheeks burning in dumbfounding embarrassment. You had followed a man feeding you sweet, woven words that stuck so effortlessly like cotton candy, trusted him because he once carried your dreams in his songs and now you stood in his apartment abandoned.

For what? Fyodor never specified what you were here for, only claiming he'd save you, and you felt stupid for following along, drinking tea without caution and becoming an amusement for his...friend.

Nikolai.

Nikolai Gogol.

What an odd man. Beautiful, but there's something off about him.

In fact...

Your eyes glance at the door both men had disappeared through, then drop to the table and search for the papers Fyodor had chastised you for touching. You had felt unease as you skimmed over the written words in beautiful Russian writing, diagrams you hadn't been able to catch labeled intricately. Now you search for them desperately as that feeling haunts your mind.

It hits you as you search that you had followed Fyodor without a second thought, as if you had entered a dream you had so desperately wanted to believe, a fairytale beginning to your life you had gotten bored of and forgotten. As soon as you had the chance to fall back into something familiar from your past, you took it...

But this room was real, Nikolai Gogol was real, and Fyodor's real intentions were hidden amongst the cracks of the sweet illusions he was weaving for you. That had to be it. Right?

He took me for stupid, but I saw it. There something here...

The way Nikolai looked at me...there was something he wanted me to figure out...

Eyes searching as you quickly skim the papers, scattering them across the table with eyes wide, you notice too late as your elbow hits the cup of tea Fyodor had set for you, glass shattering on the floor and the hot liquid spilling all over, some of it falling on you.

The heat of the tea burns your hand, setting your nerves on fire. Holding back a yell, you become dizzy with pain, the whole room seemingly spinning, until-

"You haven't changed."

A cold hand pulls at your wrist, jerking you up with the sound of glass crunching under your shoes, and as a gasp escapes you, your eyes meet violet shades and all the pain you had escapes you, replaced by fear.

"This is why you will be the first I save. The world has made you into a sinful soul, and the one I promised to set free has been locked in too deep, dearest [f/n]."

———

Fyodor Dostoyevsky has always had a hold on you. You knew, from your days in the orphanage the way you clung to him, the way his songs made you feel like you were truly alive.

You knew from the way you'd imagine stares only he could manage to give with so much power.

There was a winter you were walking along the streets of St. Petersburg, the ice under your boots creating layers over the cobblestone like a second sidewalk, where the snow was so heavy you could barely see some metres in front of you. It was cold, but not insufferably so.

Russia only seemed more lonely that winter.

You recalled the way the street lamps stood tall over it all like feeble guiding lights, but most of all you seem to recall noticing a young man waiting under one of those street lamps in layers of dark clothing, standing as still as stone.