All By Design: A Nikolai Lantsov Series

Chapter Five: did we lose sight of us again?

this chapter's song: maroon

They do not talk about the kiss again. Not after that night. Saints know Nikolai was questioned about a thousand times when the photos first came out. Tolya and Tamar were about to flip. It was good press, sure, but it made no damn sense. It was utterly unlike him to lose control like that, which was precisely why they were so concerned. If Nikolai is so caught up in the enigma that is Y/N L/N that he forgets who he is, a Lantsov with no care but to keep himself in check, then what is he supposed to do for the remaining few weeks of all this?

Nikolai denies all of it. It was all a part of the show, he claims, come on now. As if he would ever find someone to make him feel so crazy that he'd kiss her in the middle of an empty town. As if that someone would be Y/N. As if he wishes every single hour that he could do it again and again and again.

Regardless, he held down the fort during that meeting. Nikolai had shaken his head and promised that it was all just a stunt, no troubles there. It wouldn't happen again. They showed him a popular magazine with a photo of the incident blown up on the front, and it took everything not to break out into some stupid grin.

He knows the twins were just thrusting the picture in front of his face to make him realize his actions have consequences, but all Nikolai can think about is that, for the first time in his entire life, the paparazzi managed to get a photo of him when he was truly happy. In that snapshot, one of his hands is touching her face, his entire body angled to try to get closer to her. His eyes are closed. He looks like he's at peace. No other image has ever represented him better.

That's not what Tolya and Tamar want to hear, though, not in the slightest. Nikolai does his best impression of a sinner desperate for forgiveness and promises he'll do better. He has to, anyway. They're at the point in this little ruse in which he and Y/N are supposed to be dialing down their public displays of affection. They'll start swapping out lovesick glances for fights and arguments that will start growing more and more obvious. And after that? They'll be done for good.

See, it's sentences like that when Nikolai feels sick to his stomach. He'd forgotten about it while they were running for their lives down those darkened streets, but it's true. Their story has a time limit on it, a set quantity of minutes and hours and days that they have left. Nikolai can feel the seconds slipping past them like too many grains in an hourglass, but no matter how many times he tries to hold on to what they have, he can never completely stop the passage of time.

The longer they've been in the ruse, the quicker time seems to pass. Nikolai seeks her out more and more, trying to make their hours stretch into more than they really have, but it never works. He wakes up one morning and swears that a week has passed while he was asleep. Surely they don't have less than ten days before it ends.

He remembers how he'd felt at the start of this, how desperate he was to have it all end. Back at the beginning, Nikolai would have paid good money for the ruse to last two weeks instead of two months. Right now, he thinks that two years wouldn't be enough time. It never will be.

The worst part is knowing that none of this was ever actually real. They started as a lie and they'll end that way, too. What happened in between turned out to be really, really good, but that doesn't make it any less fake. Sometimes Nikolai torments himself with visions in which Y/N admits that she's been acting this whole time, that although he's deluded himself into thinking that she needs him just as much as he needs her, it's been in his head the whole time.

Then he meets up with her at her house, or at his, or in a deserted small town where nobody can find them, and he remembers. They're laughing in a car as they drive beyond the reach of anyone who knows their names, and above the din of the radio Nikolai learns every single thing about her that he can. Her favorite color, favorite book, favorite everything. He runs the choices over and over in his head. Someday, when this is over, he'll be able to hurt himself even more by pinning her to every single part of his life. He won't see a classic novel without hearing her say its title in his head.