All By Design: A Nikolai Lantsov Series

Chapter Two: you don't ever say too much

this chapter's song: lavender haze

This has only been going on for a week and a half, and Nikolai Lantsov can already tell that it's not going to work out. Nine days; that's all it took. Anyone with a brain could figure that out from the start. He certainly did. Why in the world would dating Y/N L/N of all people ever be able to solve a single thing?

He's still infuriated about it, but at least he manages to keep his cool on the outside. Nikolai has long been used to following the script, sticking to the story until the words written for him become indistinguishable from his innermost thoughts, but this time it's wearing at him like nothing else. Y/N L/N. Saints, if he'd heard about this even a year ago, his past self would never have been able to let him forget it.

It makes no sense, this plan. The idea is decent, but the execution is terrible. A good PR relationship never hurt a soul. It's a classic tool, one that's been pulled out in cases of distress about a hundred times before. Nikolai's reputation may live and die as long as he's still around, but even millions of years in the future, there will still be celebrities faking love to keep themselves relevant.

After all, isn't that what Nikolai is doing? He grew tired of the way the headlines talk about him and he wanted something to change. He has always been Hollywood's golden boy, and the moment he started to fade towards something as secondary as silver, he couldn't take it anymore. It is dreadfully conceited, but at least one person in this fake relationship is thinking about the consequences of their actions. He doesn't think Y/N has cared what the press thought about her since the day she was born.

She's the polar opposite of Nikolai, to put it concisely. Few people on this earth were raised in the Lantsov household, he gets that. The first words he ever spoke were probably coaxed out of him with the sole purpose of being immediately sent to the nearest reporter. There are expectations that he has always met. His parents were famous in their own right, old world superstars who could never adequately deal with the changing of the times. They invested in Nikolai so he could handle the passage of the decades for them.

Ever since, he's been fighting a losing battle trying to keep his family name out of the mud. If the rest of the world were content to just prop his parents up on a pedestal and let them desiccate there forever, he'd probably be far better off. Instead, Nikolai has to run himself ragged trying to make enough good decisions that the press focuses on him instead of whatever has become of his parents' delusion of keeping the past alive.

Needless to say, it's a lot of work to keep his ledger clean. Nikolai doesn't know what people really think about him– do they hate him, for example, for trying so hard when they've given up– but he knows what they say, and that's enough. They praise him over champagne at crowded parties and curse him over wine alone at night. It is the only thing he has ever known and it will be the only thing he will ever know. His life will stay the same until the day his heart can't take the stress anymore and finally gives out.

Nikolai had assumed that the rest of the rich and famous would feel at least half the desire to keep his streets clean as he does, but he is quickly learning otherwise. If there was one person in the world who has an outlook on life as far removed from Nikolai's as possible, it would probably be Y/N. Of course, she's the woman he has to date for camera purposes. It's as if everyone wants them to fail.

In all honesty, they probably do. He can count on a few people in this mess, but not many. Y/N has her PR officer, that relentless weapon of a woman affectionately referred to as Zoya Nazyalensky, and Nikolai has his two agents. Twins Tolya Yul-Bataar and Tamar Kir-Bataar have been at Nikolai's side for quite some time. He doesn't know what he'd do if they were to abandon ship, but they've sworn to stick by him quite a few times, so that's at least one front on which Nikolai can rest.