WHAT: Nikolai has a proposal (or rather, Nikolai has the proposal) WHERE: Sutton Cottage WHEN: Late 2029/Early 2030 WARNINGS: Future Vallo warnings, fluff STATUS: Complete
Contrary to the dramatic, dashing figure he cut, Nikolai was not a romantic. Not in any appreciable way. While he’d had a much more optimistic view of relationships than his parents, and frowned on notions of them simply being transactional, as far as love went, Nikolai preferred to be grounded. Cautious. In control. The weight of being the Lantsov spare in a time of instability had prevented him from getting too serious about anyone, appropriate or scandalous. Alina had been an excellent compromise. Appeared on the scene with good timing, she was powerful and Grisha - he could unite the First and Second Armies under her - and, most importantly, he liked her. It had been a good match. Nikolai hadn’t been in love with her, not in the real way, but he had loved her, and that was nearly as good in his books, wasn’t it?
But of course, it hadn’t come to pass. He was fine with that. His relationship with Zoya burned like a half-smothered fire. It was inappropriate. They were too busy, she was his general, he was a monster, and his place as king of Ravka was tottering. They had been all words left unspoken.
And then he’d arrived in Vallo.
Edwin reminded him, ever so slightly, of Zoya. Enough that it hurt a little, the first few times they’d spoken. Most wouldn’t have seen the similarities: Edwin was bookish, cautious, while Zoya was extravagantly beautiful and aggressive, but in Nikolai’s sight, they wore armor in similar ways. Both had strong opinions, both shared dismal views of people but nonetheless would rise to save them. Both could get verbally sharp when annoyed. Both guarded their thoughts and their hearts.
Both were a lot of fun to annoy.
Nikolai had loved those early days of bothering Edwin, making him turn various shades of red as he sputtered. It was only later, when he knew a little bit more about him, that he realized that even the lightest jokes had Edwin waiting for the followup punch; the man was unused to being laughed with rather than at. He wasn’t sure when his interactions had turned softer. When Edwin had crept in. Perhaps it had been when he’d tried to help with the monster. Perhaps it’d been smaller than that, like the way he tended to follow the words he’d read by silently tracing a finger along the text of a book. Nikolai wasn’t sure when he’d actually fallen for the man, but he’d been well in over his head by the time that Interitus had emerged. He was comfortable saying “partners” by then. By saying “we” instead of “Edwin and I”.
The world was shit these days. Fine. It wasn’t what Nikolai had wanted, but he’d lived in a shitty world before, and he could do it again with the people he loved at his side. Before -- everything had gone sideways, he’d received the Lantsov emerald. From Vallo, one of those strange unexpected little presents from a former life. He’d stored it and tried to forget about it. It wasn’t the sort of ring he wanted to put on anyone’s finger now - too much baggage. He wasn’t king any longer, and the Lantsov legacy wasn’t really even his now that he knew his true parentage.
But still - the idea of the ring…
And so he’d had it redone. The emerald he popped out, traded for a better alloy to make up a band that would have to be durable, given the circumstances. When he was through with it, the ring itself was strong, difficult to destroy, the exterior dotted with tiny diamonds in the band itself. It was simple. Nikolai felt it matched Edwin far more than the Lantsov Emerald ever had.
And so one evening, after he’d come home from one of those leadership meetings that made him want to tear his hair out, Nikolai waited in the gardens outside Sutton Cottage for Edwin to join him, ring in his pocket.
Edwin had been lucky. He knew that. His first hit had been Gansey – the first friend he’d made in Vallo – and the loss of the library, and that had hardly been the end of his losses. But he’d had Nikolai at his side to keep his spirits up, and Sutton Cottage had proven itself to be remarkably resistant to Interitus’ energy drain. It had kept its magic, and had kept its warding, and, as far as anyone could tell, it kept them all in a blind spot from Interitus’ roving eye. Sabrina had started a garden on the unchanged grounds, and it had become one of the primary ways to keep the Rebellion fed. The library was well-used by those who needed it, and his guest rooms were frequently filled with people who needed a place to stay.
As far as the apocalypse went, it wasn’t such a bad life. It was busy and it was hard, but there was joy in it. It had stopped him from falling into the same fits of melancholy that had often gripped his mother – depression, he now knew, though he hadn’t had a name or a reason for it in his own time. Sometimes he could feel it clawing at him, especially in those first days, after those first losses. But he’d kept it at bay.
And it wasn’t hard to see why. Not when he could step out into the gardens, two mugs of hot mint tea in hand, and feel the breeze on his face, smell the fresh scent of the roses on the air. He quietly watched the profile of the man he’d come to love more than anything else. Watching Nikolai before he was noticed in return – or before Nikolai showed that he’d noticed him, at least – was a treat that Edwin allowed himself to indulge in as often as he could.
Edwin was, generally, good at stopping thoughts like Nikolai is too good for me from taking root. Nikolai was beautiful, intelligent, confident, and exuded a charm that was impossible to resist. Not impossible for him to resist, he already knew that he was weak to all of Nikolai’s charms. But for anyone else, too. He thought it was likely that ten minutes alone in a room with him would cause even the most hard-hearted person to warm up to him. He wasn’t always sure what Nikolai saw in him – though Nikolai had never been shy about telling him, even when (or rather, especially when) it flustered him – but he trusted that Nikolai had seen something that had kept him around, and more than anything else, he trusted Nikolai’s judgement.
He allowed himself another few seconds of indulgence, watching how the fading sun played off Nikolai’s hair, before he stepped up and took Nikolai’s arm.
“How was your meeting?” he asked, offering one of the steaming mugs to Nikolai.
“Is that mint? Saints alive. Thank you,” Nikolai answered with a dramatic sigh, accepting the mug and blowing across the top of it. He’d changed his habit for fine alcohols to teas during the apocalypse, because he found that if you drank every time you were sad here, you’d swiftly have a problem. Luckily, he’d taken to tea made with fresh mint just as enthusiastically, which was just as well considering there really wasn’t any alcohol that might be classed as ‘fine’ here any longer.
Wrapping his fingers around the warm mug, he hummed under his breath, nervy. Edwin wouldn’t know why, of course, but Nikolai being animated was luckily typical behavior for him. Especially when it had been a brutal day. “Everyone’s doing their best,” Nikolai began diplomatically, turning back to his boyfriend. “They really are. The problem isn’t that someone’s trying to screw another segment of the population over, or someone’s dropping the ball. It’s that we all have these very reasonable feelings and it’s difficult to navigate all of that and remain focused on what’s important. Much less agree on what tactics to take.” He sighed, his smile wistful. “It’s probably for the best I’m just a face in the crowd here in terms of leadership. Back home, I absolutely would have pulled the “because I’m king, that’s why” card, which isn’t the right approach more often than not. Anyhow.” He took a cautious sip of tea. “How was your day?”
“Sometimes I wonder if the reason we’re always so slow to react is because we have to reach something resembling a consensus,” Edwin sighed. He shouldn’t complain, not really. Having a single person in charge would have its own sets of problems, especially if the wrong person was put in charge. But it was frustrating when Interitus could react immediately to any threat he faced, whereas there was what felt like a months worth of meetings before the rebellion could take any sort of decisive action.
“As for things here, it was the same as it always is. I helped Sabrina with the gardens for a few hours this morning, and spent the rest of the day locked away in the library trying to find any more information about breaking Interitus’ enthrallment, but I don’t think I found anything especially useful. I forwarded the information on to the Windogasts regardless, but I don’t think they’ll be able to make much of it.”
Nikolai shrugged, more or less agreeing with Edwin’s assessment. The more people you involved in anything, the slower things went. It didn’t mean that people were awful, it just meant there were more opinions to consider. It was a task he generally liked, but some days - on bad days, when they’d lost someone dear - it was difficult.
“Eventually though. Eventually, you’ll find something useful.” Nikolai said it confidently. He wasn’t trying to make his lover feel better; he believed it. Edwin was brilliant, and Edwin was thorough - if there was a way forward, he would find it. It would only take the time it took.
Edwin flushed with pleasure. “If there’s anything useful to find,” he said, trying to stay practical, but it was hard not to believe that he’d find something useful eventually when Nikolai had such faith in him. Every spell had a counterspell. Not every counterspell had been created yet, but if he gathered enough pieces together, a picture would eventually form. He had to believe that, if nothing else.
Nikolai simply smiled, reached out a hand, and gave Edwin’s knee a squeeze. He could understand most magical theory - it wasn’t terribly dissimilar from engineering. There was a reason Grisha magic was called “small science”, after all. Edwin may have considered his abilities paltry, but to Nikolai they were the key that unlocked the door to the world.
He thought, perhaps it was time to nudge open that door, before they got mired down in talks of a disappointing, intricate and broken world.
“I’ve a question to ask you,” he stated, his voice light in a way that generally meant that the subject was anything but, and before Edwin’s ready mind could interpret that in a negative way he slid off the chair onto one knee, pulling the ring from his pocket in a smooth motion.
For a moment, Nikolai's tone filled Edwin with an instinctive and instant sense of dread, but it quickly dissipated into confusion.
Marriage was never something Edwin had considered for himself. Not since he was a child, before he's realized that men like him could never marry. Even before he'd learned to stop wanting anything, he'd learned to stop wanting that.
He'd lived in Vallo for nearly a decade now, and while he knew marriage between men was not only allowed, but also commonplace, it was never a concept he'd thought of for himself. He'd stopped dreaming of marrying Prince Charming when he was a boy, and yet here he was, Prince Charming – or rather, Abdicated King Charming – in the flesh, on bended knee in front of him, in the middle of what most people were calling the apocalypse.
"Are you asking me to marry you?" he blurted out.
“Yes!” Nikolai answered back just as quickly with a nervy laugh, “so be quiet, let me do it. I’ve a whole thing prepared but--” But he was trying to get his feet underneath him, so to speak. Nikolai was great at rousing speeches, at inspiring others, but this was an entirely different animal. This wasn’t theatre; this was laying his heart bare. This was truth. He’d been truthful before with Edwin, but you were never entirely certain where you stood, were you?
But it was what he owed the man, and so he gave it, uncharacteristically clearing his throat as he spoke. “Edwin. My love, my partner, my consumer of filthy books, my clever friend. I’d have proposed on the steps of a great library by the sea, or in a castle garden filled with fat roses that I’d pluck for you with a ring on the stem, or even over a fancy meal that I most assuredly did not cook. I’d do all of those proposals in a heartbeat over this one: this one, in a world filled with so much violence and terror and tarnish, in a world where we’re losing our friends and we’re caught in a trap trying to figure if we can gnaw our selves out. But,” he continued, voice cracking, “this is our world. The one in which we met. I can’t disdain it, not even at its present state, because no matter how difficult it is to live in now, it gave me you.”
He popped upon the ring box, showing the plain, elegant ring, dusted as it was with tiny stones. “In another world, maybe, we’d have been more whole, fatter, certainly better dressed, but I might have never met you: wouldn’t have known how fastidious you are with your morning pastries, how thoughtful you are in every word you grant me, the heights of your kindness, the beauty of your eyes when they alight upon a sentence you find musical..” He paused. “How red you get when I’m embarrassing you and you want to maim me. All the things that make me love you. So I ask you, knowing other worlds, and knowing that this one promises us nothing yet has given me everything: would you marry me, Edwin Courcey?”
Edwin never came to a decision without carefully considering every angle. Some people might have considered it overthinking, but as far as Edwin was concerned, it wasn’t anything more than the bare minimum. Rushing headlong without proper consideration was how people got hurt, or, in this reality, how they got killed.
Edwin didn’t have to think about this though. From the moment Nikolai confirmed that he was asking Edwin to marry him, Edwin had known what his answer was. He had to clench his jaw to stop himself from answering right away; he wouldn’t ruin Nikolai’s moment. He was, in fact, ready to answer Nikolai before he even finished the question.
Except by the time the question came, Edwin had no words. He stared for a second, for five, before he jerked himself back to reality with a nearly startled, “Oh,” and rubbed at his welling eyes before the tears could actually spill. “Yes. Of course, yes, Nikolai,” he answered, once he’d found his tongue again.
He shot from his seat to wrap his arms around Nikolai’s neck to kiss him firmly, though he broke the kiss before he could let himself get carried away. The grass was soft under his knees, but he could have been kneeling on cement and he wouldn’t have paid it any mind.
“I don’t have anything prepared. But Nikolai you… I’ve never met anyone like you before. Even after all these years, you can still surprise me. You are the most amazing man I have ever met. When you walk into a room, everyone takes notice. And it’s not just from how incredibly handsome you are.” He shot Nikolai a teasing smile. “You have this way about you, this aura, that people notice. Like a magnet, or a gravitational pull. And I have never liked it when people have noticed me, but when I’m with you, I feel braver. Stronger. Like I can face anything. You help me be a better man. Given the choice of every world, I would choose this one every time, because this is the one where I was able to meet you.”
Sometime during Edwin’s response, Nikolai found himself leaning against his husband-to-be, forehead pressed against forehead. As if his body was made of noodles, as if every precise word Edwin gave him rendered him unable to conceive of a moment where they wouldn’t be together.
“Well,” he said after a moment, eyes red, lips curved into a smile as he refound his footing and slid the ring onto Edwin’s finger: “Then it sounds as if we’ve a fervent need to get married and throw a party, don’t we?”
“We could skip the party,” Edwin remarked, hopefully, but he was smiling. He didn’t expect that Nikolai would agree to that, and maybe, just maybe, this was a party he wouldn’t mind having.