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[reznikolai]

@volkvolny NIKOLAI LANTSOV

✉ ☏ 📷

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[reznikolai]

Improvement is a relative term. When you start at zero, the only place to go is up.

[underage]

Well, I certainly know what it is you see in Zoya, now.
Though Alina is still a mystery. How does that work?
Actually, don’t bother. She already told me.
Or showed me, rather.

Should we instead have a conversation about how we fuck all the same women?

[reznikolai]

[How many times had he heckled Mal for playing the part of jealous lover with such exasperating stupidity and predictability? And here he is, contemplating a dozen matchstick-quick comebacks that would only give the Darkling what he seeks: his composure, ruffled.

Sneaking quietly, treacherously through the back of his thoughts: Alina slipping out of the house one late summer evening not long after the Darkling's arrival in this world, evasive in her purpose, but he trusted her. He trusts her. He doesn't need to know who she's texting; they have so many of the same friends here.

The Darkling doesn't enter their conversation often, but what does that quiet mean? What do you think he's up to? she might say. And him, Crying into a bowl of soup, I hope.

This is what he does, Nikolai reminds himself with a staying breath. He manipulates and divides.]

Was this also in the dreams you claim not to have?

[underage]

No.
The aforementioned lonely visits.

( tempting, to rub their tethered bond in his nose. to speak of all the ways he knows alina, that nikolai will never compare to — and yet. doesn’t it feel sacred to him? one precious glimmer of untouched soil, his pretty little bond, to visit alina whenever he pleases. whenever she pleases too, so wayward is her heart. )

Don’t be hard on yourself.
Besides.
It’s the dreams I’m not privy to that garner my interest.

[reznikolai]

[The thought that Alina could still be lonely in spite of his efforts to make her feel loved — it barbs at him. He knows the Darkling has crafted this insidious suggestion, sharpened it to a point, with the sole intent to hurt him. He knows this.

But for just a moment, a stab of doubt lances his heart. Just as quickly, he brushes it aside. Alina knows better than to fall for the Darkling's traps again.]

Perhaps it would bother me too, if I didn't know you also lie with every breath you take.

[underage]

Ask her about it, then. Surely she'll tell the truth.

[reznikolai]

If I remember to drag you up in conversation. There are so many more interesting things we could talk about instead.