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Nikolai kicked the blanket away as it started weighing down upon his body with the cool damp feeling of freshly overturned dirt. Shivering and yet sweating all over from overheating, he sat up and turned to drop his feet to the ground, staring at nothing in particular, although a rather beautiful painting of a ship in a storm stood in his line of sight. The smell of wet gunpowder and the iron taste of blood lingered everywhere inside him, his nose, his mouth, his stomach, every pore of himself. He wanted to tear at his skin with his nails, and forced himself to get up and pull on a robe over his soft sleep clothes so he wouldn’t actually do it. His throat was parched and, remembering the water left in the main room of the royal suite, he set to get some, crossing his bedroom at a pace too frenzied for a man who had just woken up.
He froze in the doorway as the room was already occupied by someone, candles slowly melting on a desk scattered with papers, which had to be a fire hazard.
It wasn’t as if Nikolai forgot the Darkling too lived in this suite now, it was rather hard to forget he had, in a fit of madness, genius, or both, married the man who killed his brother and father and infected him with an otherworldly creature, but he had to wonder if the man ever slept at all. It had to be two or three in the morning.
It seemed like the other man hadn’t noticed him at all, but that sounded unlikely considering he probably just loudly stomped and opened the door none too gently. He just wasn’t giving him any notice, then. Good. He did not acknowledge him either and simply headed for the low table where the glass carafe full of water stood. He sat down directly on an ottoman and poured himself a glass, letting the silence settle back at last without all the noise he made.
Now he could actually hear the light scratching of the Darkling’s pen against the paper. He could only see his back from here, bent in the way of someone too engrossed in his work to pay attention to his posture, only the uppermost part of his shock of dark hair being visible over his shoulders. He wore a simple black shirt and loose pants, and although it wasn’t the first time, Nikolai still oddly felt like he was peering at something he shouldn't whenever he saw the man out of his kefta.
Living with him was surprisingly peaceful, considering… Everything. The war. The dead. The demon still lying in wait within his entrails. But this was for peace. To avoid tearing Ravka apart even more. To show a united front to their enemies who had ramped up the violence against the grishas.
“You need to breathe,” the Darkling’s smooth voice suddenly rose.
Nikolai snapped out of his thoughts, stunned to discover that although he had thought himself peacefully watching the other man, calmly drinking water, he had actually been struggling to breathe, clutching the glass for dear life, and merely forcing himself to focus on whatever —here, his husband— to fill his head with thoughts irrelevant to the terror in his bones. The realisation did not help him breathe, as the Darkling so helpfully advised him to.
The other man turned around, his eyes so pale they seemed to glint in the low light of the room, and assessed him silently. Nikolai expected a grandiose quote on weakness, or a reproach for his loud breathing.
“Hold,” was what he got instead. He blinked in confusion, then— “Breathe,” and again— “Hold,” Before he even realised what exactly the Darkling was doing, he started following his instructions, holding his breath and letting it out at the pace dictated by the other, his voice going quieter and quieter.
His madly beating heart slowed down. The waves of shivers rattling his body receded. His hands stopped trembling. Slowly, little by little, he fully came back to himself. The Darkling stopped guiding him, though he did not stop scrutinising him.
He didn’t need to ask where the General had learned suck tricks, or how he had so easily recognised the ill possessing his body. The man had lived ten lifetimes’ worth of war at least, and commanded a thousand times more soldiers than Nikolai ever did.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
“Does it happen often?”
Although they shared the suite, they did not share a bedroom, or a bed. Of course, being a royal couple, they could have got away with each living on one end of the palace, but Nikolai had wanted to keep an eye on him, especially at the beginning. It had given him many a sleepless night, feeling agitated both as a person and because his demon did not know what to make of its creator being so close constantly (one, it seemed to like the Darkling, two, it seemed afraid of him as well, which only fuelled Nikolai’s belief that the knowledge-hoarding-prick knew how to get him rid of the creature but simply did not want to do it). It also had clearly made the Darkling himself uneasy, to share his living quarters with another. But they had fallen into a routine of sorts. No longer jumping at the sight of each other in the common room, or avoiding presenting their back, or sitting in tense silences.
Except tonight, it seemed, because his mind was plagued by the nightmares of war.
“Sometimes,” he replied vaguely. They had gotten comfortable, but this was still admitting weakness. “More often since the civil war. Or perhaps it’s because I’m not on the Volkvolny anymore,”
The sea had been a balm over his heart after his time in the First Army. Soothing and murmuring in his ear, rocking him in his hammock until he fell asleep. So harsh and dangerous that he always fell asleep like a ton of rocks after a day of sailing and never had the energy for dreams of any sorts. Forcing him awake and greedily demanding all his attention to keep his crew alive in storms whenever his mind threatened to eat him alive.
The task of ruling Ravka was certainly exhausting too, but it was the kind of exhaustion that followed you into bed instead of forcing you in it.
“Do you?” he asked curiously, almost hopefully.
Does it stop eventually? Was his real question. Even if it took centuries, centuries that he wouldn’t live, if it had an end, then—
“I do,”
“Oh,” Nikolai’s hopes fell apart.
The Darkling stood like a long shadow unfolding. Nikolai thought this was the end of the conversation, but he walked toward him rather than the door.
“Recent fights. Older ones,” he explained. “Ones so ancient the nightmares are my most vivid memories of them,”
Nikolai feared that. For the nightmares to take over his real memories. If one day he might start associating the friends he had lost to death and terror, rather than to the things they had loved during their lives. He made sure to practise, occasionally. To summon the memory of Dominik as he passed a barn full of hay, recalling the long summer days spent splayed messily all over the bales, too hot and sweaty to do much more than talk and talk. His lost crewmates, when he looked fondly upon the many paintings of the raging seas he had started getting in the oddest places of the palaces, wherever he could get away with removing a portrait of his illustrious father. The young men and women under his command as a Major, the games they played back at camp, the things they laughed about.
“I try to… remember the things that made the people I lost… Them,” he said carefully, doubtful there was any advice he could give that the Darkling did not already know.
The other man sat down. Absurdly, Nikolai noticed his feet were bare. Well, it was the middle of the night, he supposed, his military boots probably weren’t glued on. Still.
“For some it’s already too late for me,” he murmured quietly, shocking Nikolai. “I will try, for those I can still remember fully,”
He fell silent and Nikolai wondered what he was trying to remember now. He knew the Darkling mourned, there was no doubt about it. Once they had been on a tight deadline, and councils had been particularly exhausting, certainly even more so for the Shadow summoner who was still —rightfully, considering everything— regarded with suspicion. Nikolai had entered the room while the Darkling was working at his desk, much like tonight, and the man had handed him a pile of papers, called him Ivan, and started ordering him to get them to the Minister of Finances. He had stopped in the middle of his sentence, stared at Nikolai, and abruptly stood up to deliver the papers himself. They had not talked about this ever again. Probably for the best, considering the circumstances in which Ivan died.
So the Darkling mourned. And he likely mourned many more who died a long time ago, or others who died during the civil war. Even those who still lived but had turned their backs on him.
“What are you thinking about?” he dared ask, at the risk of destroying this strange moment between them.
“Heat. Shadows,” in spite of himself, as he did not intend on prying at the Darkling’s intimate thoughts, a picture formed itself in Nikolai’s mind, of a small room that was almost unbearable to stand in, with a tile oven reddened from the fire inside, and a blind woman with her hands clasped around a cane.
He did not remember her final act, he did not remember much of the battle at the Spinning Wheel thanks to the man in front of him, but he had been told after the war. The Darkling’s impassive mask hardly concealed the grief in his eyes. Nikolai couldn’t imagine she had been a good mother, but he knew more than most that did not prevent one from missing her. Although his own was not dead, merely sent away by himself, likely never to be seen again.
“There’s a council early tomorrow,” the Darkling said, putting an end to the discussion, where already more had been shared than in the previous months of their marriage.
“Sounds like I’ll be going there with a litre of that Kerch brew in me, then,” returning to his bed sounded dreadful, he expected to walk into his room and see a trench waiting for him rather than soft pillows and duvets.
“You’ll need sleep, and you certainly should not consume any excitant,” he groaned, and the conversation was already a lot more familiar than whatever had been happening just moments before.
An impish smile curled Nikolai’s lips and he stood up, though he still did not intend on going to bed —and who did the Darkling think he was, ordering him back to his bedchamber like a child?
“Will you be holding and rocking me to sleep, then?”
“Would that help?”
He froze at the all-too-serious tone.
“What?”
The Darkling did not look like he was joking. He did joke, sometimes, or he did something where he made rather gruesome threats and it was preferable to assume it was a joke despite all the evidence that he was perfectly capable of doing good on those threats, but he really did not seem to be.
“Would it help you sleep to share your bed with someone?” the man reiterated slowly, like he was stupid, and not just flabbergasted by the offer. They didn’t even have a wedding night, as nobody was going to contest the marriage on the basis of non-consummation anyway (there were so many better angles for that), and if one of them decided to dissolve the union, it likely would end bloody, not in front of the Apparat explaining that they did not fuck.
At his lack of answer —weeks of war, months of marriage, and finally he had managed to make him shut up, and he wasn’t even celebrating it— the Darkling simply took his wrist and started dragging him back to his bedroom. Which should not have happened, because Nikolai should have resisted. With all due respect to the General’s military experience he was an absolute bag of bones beneath that big kefta of his, and he was pretty confident that if he had decided not to budge, he wouldn’t have.
But instead he just stumbled after the Darkling, the room completely dark as a wisp of shadow extinguished the candles on the desk, and he was almost surprised when they ended up in his bedroom, and his bed looked like a bed, and he just allowed the other man to walk him there.
He blinked back to reality when his back hit the mattress and the dip next to him indicated that his husband had not been kidding in the least.
“Is this a plot?” he blurted out. “Is this how you get rid of me?”
“Why bother when you’ll do it for me one of these days on one of your infernal flying machines?” the Darkling blew an exasperated breathe. “Have you never shared a cot with another soldier?”
“I’m usually not married to them,”
The silence that answered told him he had a point, but the Darkling settled comfortably next to him either way. The bed was warm and comfortable, and he soon felt the blanket being pulled over him, light and soft. No dirt, no smoke. He still stared up at the ceiling, but his left hand blindly reached for the Darkling, found a linen-clad arm and held it at the fore. The man naturally ran quite cold, but still warm enough to be very clearly alive.
Vaguely, it occurred to him that the Darkling had been up in the middle of the night too. Had seemed different too, not as in control of himself as he usually was, letting hints of his internal turmoils slip. And he probably needed the sleep too, they would both attend the Council in the morning, and the Darkling was allowed even less grace than Nikolai. He could not afford to be too sharp-tongued or distracted due to exhaustion.
Slowly, as if worried he would startle the shadow summoner even though he was the one who dragged him here in the first place, he turned around until he could face him, lying on his side. He pressed his face to his shoulder, breathing in the now familiar smell of cedar, of a crisp snowy night, that permeated and mixed with his own in the common areas of the royal suite. So far removed from the acre smell of gunpowder or the heat of smoke. A slender hand landed where his waist and his hip met and curved and no more words were exchanged.
Sleep slowly pulled him back into unconsciousness, more tender than it had been in years.