Archive of Our Own ^beta

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In a small, cramped apartment in the Lower East Side, Alina Starkov—overworked and underpaid personal assistant to Zoya Nazyalensky, of Safin, Nazyalensky, and Zenik Public Relations—is rudely woken up two hours before she can call herself a decent human being. She’s still in bed, hasn’t had her tea, and would probably hiss at someone like a feral cat if they approached her now.

In a spacious, luxurious penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side, Aleksander Morozov—the overworked and underpaid personal assistant to Nikolai Lantsov because Pyotr Lantsov’s nepotism handed the VP promotion at Lantsov Public Relations to his second son (though rumor is Nikolai isn’t even his) rather than the much more experienced and competent Aleksander—is dealing with something similar.

Instead, he sends the following.

Is he being petty? Yes. Does he care? No, because he hasn’t had coffee yet and he doesn’t get paid enough for dealing with Nikolai’s shit—even on work hours, but definitely not before the start of the work day.

Another message comes through.

Aleksander throws off his covers, sits up, and rubs his temples. It’s going to be a long day.

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Despite her downtown friends constantly calling her “sunshine incarnate,” Alina is fully capable of ripping someone a new one when necessary.

And she’s about to curse out the man in the suit who just cut her in the security line when she realizes he’s clearly trying to close the elevator door on her. She swallows her tirade and instead makes a run for it in her heels. And makes it just in time. She sees 18 lit up and stabs 13.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see he also held two coffees like she did and had his security badge clipped to his waistband.

She surreptitiously checked it, and then almost dropped the hot beverages on the ground.

He worked at Lantsov PR.

Fuck.

The universe had a really sick sense of humor. It was one thing to put the mortal enemies Zoya and Nikolai’s businesses in the same building. It was another for her to deal with someone from that company which seemed allergic to hiring anyone other than entitled straight, white, GQ-model men who had never heard no in their life. Assholes, the lot of them. No matter she hadn’t met this Aleksander Morozov before. You meet one asshole like Lantsov—any of them—you’ve met them all.

The ride up is silent, and she doesn’t say anything to him or look back before she purposefully strides out into the office. Having it out with him isn’t worth Zoya having her head for being a minute late.

A promotion is just on the horizon, and she won’t let anyone fuck this up for her. Not even the annoyingly hot guy in the elevator.

Aleksander curses under his breath when the elevator doors close and he continues up to his floor. Whoever that girl was—and she really looked like a girl, newly 18 if he had to guess—she clearly worked at Safin, Nazyalensky, and Helvar Public Relations. He didn’t particularly care about the all-female startup beyond doing his job to beat them out on getting prestigious clients. He didn’t have the same vitriol toward them that Nikolai seemed to have with Nazyalensky.

As far as he knew, no one realized that the feud started after a disastrous date between the two of them, but he wouldn’t ever reveal that to anyone. He worked in PR, for fuck’s sake. The last thing he’d ever do would cause a PR nightmare. Even if Nikolai deserved it.

But because of the girl holding up the elevator—which, despite being in an obscenely expensive midtown building, always had a weird stall after a button was pressed—he was now pushing on two minutes late.

He doubted Nikolai would notice.

But when Pyotr reviewed the security cameras, he’d care and nag him.

Aleksander barely resisted his eye roll. Saints save him from entitled assholes like the Lantsovs. But with another promised promotion on the line, he couldn’t exactly walk away from the company now.

If he can help land Jesper Fahey, Novyi Zem's playboy heartthrob of Zemeni Studios, as a client, Pyotr would have no choice but to make him COO, and he’d finally get to stop being treated like a servant just for not sharing his boss’ last name.

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An hour after running through the Zemeni presentation enough times that Alina is pretty sure her brain is bleeding out of her ears, Zoya finally dismisses her for a break.

She grabs her purse from her desk and grabs the elevator to go down to the bodega on the corner to grab a morning smoothie—something healthy but with enough natural sugar to give her an extra booth for what is promising to be a long day.

When the door slides open, the guy from earlier is there, too.

He looks her up and down, clearly reading her security card like she did earlier, but doesn’t say anything as she enters this time. Instead, he’s typing away on his phone—with the keyboard sounds on like a Boomer who needs to hear every click to know that he’s doing it right.

Alina grinds her teeth, her misophonia rearing its ugly head, but she bites her tongue.

Again, she strides out of the elevator ahead of him, but quickly realizes he is following her.

She’s about to snap at him for stalking her when she realizes he’s pulling out his wallet and heading toward the same bodega as her.

Does the universe hate her?

Aleksander decides to let her order first. He can admit when he’s an asshole, and he was to her this morning. Hopefully this will make it up to her—not that he needs her forgiveness—but he’d rather not deal with this Alina Starkov yelling at him while he’s already well on his way to a migraine after correcting a million small, avoidable, and amateur mistakes Nikolai kept making this morning as he tried to wing giving the presentation after barely glancing at it once.

The kid was only lying to himself by insisting he “learned by doing.”

When Alina goes to pay for some fruity smoothie monstrosity that’s giving him a cavity just by looking at it—despite his crazy sweet tooth—he slides around her and hands his company card over.

She shoots him an incredulous look, but he cuts in with an explanation before she can tell him to fuck off.

“Take it as an apology for this morning.”

She nods curtly. “Thanks.”

He expects her to leave, but instead, she hovers by the exit while he orders, waits, and receives his black coffee with his usual three packets of sugar.

She holds the door open for him and they walk out together.

“That much processed sugar isn’t good for you.” She wrinkles her nose.

“And what about that?” he asks, nodding at her smoothie that has at least three fruit syrups in it.

“It’s natural!”

He snorts. “Maybe at a health store, but not at a bodega. They’re lying to you. I’d think a PR professional would be able to spot an advertising scam.”

She glares at him, but is now looking at her drink with suspicion.

“Well, you work for Lantsov, so I guess you’re used to lying.”

He pulls up short, and she does too.

“I could say the same to you. Unless you’re going to tell me Nazyalensky doesn’t do everything she can to pull one over on Nikolai?”

“Just because your bosses stoop so low that the Devil is pissed at them breaking through Hell’s ceiling, doesn’t mean that we all do.”

He takes a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down rather than make a scene in front of their shared office building, lest they end up in the news.

“Look, we don’t have to fight. I think we’re both just having a bad day. Am I right?”

She sighs and rubs her temple with her free hand. “Yeah. My boss called me in early for a presentation run through.”

What are the odds?

“Same,” he says.

And it’s probably for the same damn client, knowing Nazyalensky and Lantsov—always gunning against each other, even though there are more than enough clients to go around if they could just shake their tunnel vision and see the bigger picture.

“I swear, she needs to get laid,” Alina mutters, quiet enough that she probably didn’t mean for him to hear.

“So does he,” he says, agreeing.

There’s a pregnant pause. Then they both start speaking at the same time.

“What if—” he begins, but cuts himself off.

“We could—”

“Sorry,” he says, “you go ahead.”

“We could pair them up. Maybe if they finally fuck, they’ll get over their stupid rivalry and then we’ll actually get to have lives of our own.” There’s a dangerously mischievous glint her in her dark eyes now, and he can’t help but smile.

“I think that’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

“Then I look forward to working with you, Aleksander.”

She hands over her phone, and he only stares at her.

“Put your number in. We can’t have them seeing our business emails planning this.”

She makes a good point. With his free hand, he quickly types his contact info in, then hands it back.

She smiles, types something, and pockets her phone.

He feels his own buzz in his pocket.

That done, they now walk through security—her letting him go first this time, rather than him cutting her off—and he holds the elevator open for her.

They’re silent on the ride up, but they’re both smiling when she walks off at her floor.

When he’s back at his desk, he pulls open the text on his phone.

He smiles and puts his phone away. He thinks so, too.