All By Design: A Nikolai Lantsov Series

Just a Short Time Chapter Two: all over now

this time: Fate has a way of getting its strings crossed. Three times Nikolai and Y/N almost meet again, and then the one time they did.

this chapter's song: bigger than the whole sky

The first encounter was almost disastrous. Both parties equally miserable, detesting their surroundings and themselves equally, wondering if they could ever feel more unhappy than they did at that very moment. Forget the fact that only two brief months earlier, neither the singer nor the actor had known each other in the slightest. What absence had been there before would now go on again, and that painful solitude felt as if it would last forever.

It is worse, Nikolai decided, to know someone and lose them than never know them at all. It would have been best, Y/N scoffed, if she had put her foot down at the beginning and refused to go along with the whole fake dating scheme. She had a chance to say no, everyone knew it. Y/N L/N has always loved playing along; the game is her favorite competition, her preferred arena, but for once she regrets it.

In a place with gilded streets, chattering tongues, and snapping cameras, in a place like Ravka, there is only one clear solution for the weak-willed. A strong drink will ease any spirit, guide any soul. Y/N and Nikolai realized that around the same time. On the same day, actually. That's why they went to the same place that night. It was not on purpose. Few things truly are.

Few good things can be said about the place they went. It was a club. It was dark. No one there was happy. Of course not; happy people do not linger around the drinks, they do not throw their lives away over strangers, and they do not make for good business. This club knew that, and it reached out smoky arms to everyone passing by, whispering about how they would feel better if they just came inside. Would they? No one can tell for sure. The intoxication has a way of meddling with your mind.

Y/N and Nikolai came exactly thirty minutes apart, just enough time that they wouldn't see each other on the street and be convinced to go elsewhere. It was a large club, big enough that they could hide in throngs of closed eyes and shadowed faces and never be found again. No one's taking your photo if no one knows you're there.

Y/N saw him first. She has a habit of scanning the crowd for him, of searching every face she passes to check and see if it's her golden prince. Her heart leaps into her throat whenever she sees a shock of blond hair, and she feels her blood run cold again every time she realizes it's not him. It likely never will be, or so she tells herself.

Or, it wasn't until tonight. Y/N turned her head away from an offered drink, and then there he was, ducking under an outstretched arm near the door and making his way further into the club. Avoiding poison, she found only worse problems. It was crowded. No one would have blamed them if they had gone the whole night without bumping into each other, on purpose or otherwise. It was a small world. You find ways of getting what you want, and if what they wanted was each other, well, not even the densest multitudes could have gotten in the way of that.

Nikolai saw her second. He swore he heard a laugh somewhere over the din of the music and he had to follow it. He has not always been the one to drop anything on the smallest of sounds, the barest of hints, but when you're three shots in and the night can only get worse, you search for ways to make it better. He saw the quick flash of a politely caged smile and knew.

They started walking at about the same time. It is difficult to describe what might have happened had they actually met up at that moment, if the drinks had been strong enough that they could have spoken and maybe done something to regret or cherish. Perhaps it would have been enough to heal all wounds, fix all problems.

The world does not like it when its star-crossed lovers get away too easily, however. The DJ started playing a popular song, and a large group of people rushed to the floor. It might have been the remnants of a bachelorette party, or at least an overeager birthday celebration, but regardless, the effect was immediate. Both parties were torn away from each other, and in the aftermath, what could've been, what would've been, wasn't.