All By Design: A Nikolai Lantsov Series

Chapter Seven: i can still make the whole place shimmer

this chapter's song: bejeweled

Contrary to popular belief, Nikolai Lantsov is not doing well at the moment. He might be the only person in the world who knows it, too. Nikolai has made sure of that. Every time he ventures out of doors, his appearance is perfect, his smiles are flawless. The reporters hurl questions his way and Nikolai answers all of them perfectly, even the curveballs specifically designed to trip him up.

By all accounts, Nikolai has never been better. Those who fall prey to this perspective should take in mind one very important caveat to their musings, though: they fail to get inside his head. Were they to actually get through to him, or, Saints forbid, get him to do a lie detector test and actually force him to shed his protective coating of lies for the first time in his life, Nikolai would be ruined.

That, at last, is the truth. Nikolai has spent so much time running from brutal honesty that he's scared to look it in the face now. If he stops pretending that he's fine for even one moment, Nikolai will realize that he is as far from okay as he possibly could be. All because he lost his girl.

It's selfish to refer to Y/N as his girl, Nikolai has enough self awareness to know that. She stopped being his the moment they broke up, if she was ever truly his at all. What they had was never actually real, and that means Nikolai holds no more claim to Y/N than any other attendee at one of Hollywood's Saintsforsaken parties.

He tries to put her off his mind. Running has always been Nikolai's best bet. There was that time years ago when he was certain he could leave it all behind, but he promised himself he grew out of that once Tolya and Tamar steered him back to reality. Right now, Nikolai has finally figured out that even that course correction was just temporary. Y/N has opened his eyes to how desperate Nikolai is for an escape, but he only knows now that she isn't there to flee with him.

They could do it, he thinks, if they really put their minds to it. Run away and never look back. He certainly considered it back when they were on their last legs before the ruse was up. If Nikolai had been just a little weaker, if he could have convinced himself that they would do it for the two of them and not just him, he might have actually done it.

Instead, Nikolai forced himself to walk right out their door and away from Y/N. It might be the worst mistake he ever made in his whole life. He's tried to cover up for it, of course. He bares smiles as sharp as knives towards any camera in sight and acts as if he isn't completely and utterly devastated by the love he no longer has.

He even tried to fall in love again. Nikolai soldiered through three weeks of solitude before he broke and begged Tolya and Tamar for something to make him feel like he wasn't totally alone. He asked how bad it would be if he got back together with Y/N. Evidently that wasn't what they wanted from him, so they not so gently guided him towards another alternative: Alina Starkov.

Nikolai wasn't counting on Alina. He doesn't think anyone was. The day the paparazzi snapped those photos of the two of them exiting a club, the world was sent into a headspin. Nikolai dating Y/N came out of the blue, but it made sense in some strange sort of way. This doesn't. Nikolai and Y/N were the same sort of hopeless case, bitter disaster that ended up killing them both, but Alina is genuinely good. Nikolai doesn't deserve that.

Alina also doesn't deserve to be alone. From what he's heard, she's just as far away from getting back the person she loves as Nikolai, so they agreed to a fake relationship. Nikolai holds her hand when they're out in public and tries to convince himself that what he felt for Y/N was just the same as what he feels now: the excitement of having someone to turn the lights on when you're away, a person to ensure that you feel the most crushing sort of loneliness you've ever felt in your life. It doesn't work. It never will.