Chapter Text
Zoya skips class exactly one day per year. On March 22, like clockwork, she wakes up before the sunrise, gets in her car, and makes the three hour drive to Novokribirsk. When she arrives, she stops at the same flower shop, just as it opens, and picks up two bouquets. Something eclectic, colorful, and fragrant.
Then she drives to the cemetery.
The weather around this time of year is finicky - some years, Zoya’s still bundled up in a wool coat and scarf as she walks the familiar path to the northeast corner of the graveyard. This year, it’s temperate enough that she only needs a sweater and trousers.
There’s just one gravestone for the two of them - Liliyana and Lada Garin - with the same matching date beneath it. March 22, 2010.
And so as she’s done every year for the past eight, she lays down a bouquet of flowers on each side and sits in silence and remembers the truest family she ever had.
dream team
nikolai lantsov 🦊, zoya nazyalensky
zoya nazyalensky: could you send me your evidence notes from today?
nikolai lantsov 🦊: of course
nikolai lantsov 🦊: is everything okay?
zoya nazyalensky: i’m fine.
zoya nazyalensky: just not on campus today.
nikolai lantsov 🦊: okay
nikolai lantsov 🦊: should i still come over tonight?
nikolai lantsov 🦊: i can just bring the notes then if so
zoya nazyalensky: that’s fine.
Nikolai shows up at her apartment like clockwork, but this time, he’s got two to-go coffee cups in hand. One is a half-consumed caramel iced thing, and the other is a simple hot cup with the Thornwood logo printed on the side.
While he normally foots the bill for their food delivery orders, it’s somehow different that he’s picked something up for her unprompted.
“For you,” Nikolai says, holding the hot drink out to her.
She takes it and thanks him, taking a cautious sip from the container. A familiar mix of flavors bursts on her tongue - lavender, rose, and honey.
Her gaze snaps to where he’s already started making himself comfortable on her couch. “Is this - ?”
“The barista only made it for me once I promised her it was coming to you,” he answers.
She’s been to Thornwood with Nikolai exactly once - that very first meeting to prepare for the competition. And no doubt he’s clocked the many, many times she’s been walking around the law school with a cup in hand, but to remember this? A messy wave of emotion washes over her, one that she can’t quite parse out into something reasonable.
She cradles the cup in both of her hands as she joins him on the couch.
“Here are my notes, by the way,” Nikolai says, sliding a notebook in her direction. “Let me know if they’re completely illegible and I’ll do my best to translate.”
She takes the notebook, still silent. His handwriting truly isn’t that bad - maybe a little rough at parts where he was obviously scribbling to keep pace with the lecture, but readable nonetheless.
She’s not in the headspace to think about classes right now though. Instead, Genya’s voice rings in the back of her mind, her gentle encouragements shared in the dark.
“You asked about that painting once,” she says, gesturing to the three stars hanging on her wall. “Those stars… they represent my aunt and my cousin.”
Nikolai nods, taking the topic shift in stride. “The ones you moved in with?”
“Yes,” she answers. “They died eight years ago today.”
The loss hangs even heavier now that it’s been spoken aloud.
“I moved in with them when I was nine and they were killed when I was sixteen. Which means, as of this year, I’ve officially known life without them for longer than I knew life with them. And some part of me really thought it’d get easier over time to go on without them, but - ”
“It doesn’t,” Nikolai interjects. There’s a knowingness in his voice. It’s both painful and, oddly, a comfort.
“Who?” she asks, because that familiarity can only mean one thing. And since both of his parents are, albeit assholes, still alive, that means his loss lies elsewhere.
“The first boy I ever loved.”
“Oh.” She doesn’t apologize, or grant him any pity, because she knows how much she hates both of those reactions to her own grief. She doesn’t suppose words are necessary at this point anyway; there’s an unfortunate unspoken solidarity between two people who have lost someone so close so young.
Nikolai is the first to break the silence. “Do you want to tell me about them - your aunt and cousin?” he asks. “You don’t have to, but sometimes… I don’t know, sometimes it feels like it helps.”
She hasn’t had many people in her life to try that out with - with Genya, Alina, and Nina, there’s always been this sort of unspoken rule that they don’t spend too much time lingering on their lives before they met, and the three of them are more or less the only people with whom any vulnerability feels like an option.
And so maybe it’s the emotional weight of the day that has her usual walls so thin, but she finds herself taking him up on it. She starts with a simple memory, and one of her favorites. It was shortly after Zoya had moved in with her aunt, and Liliyana took her and Lada to the park, letting Zoya push the baby on the swing as she screamed with joy. Liliyana made her feel for all the world like she was just as much her daughter as Lada was, like she had somewhere and someone to call home.
In turn, Nikolai tells her about Dominick, regaling her with stories of their silly teenage exploits. They go back and forth like this for an unknown amount of time, melting towards each other on the couch until neither has any words left to say and it’s just the two of them in comfortable silence, her head tucked into his shoulder, his arm wrapped around her.
Nikolai, however, is hardly one to just leave things unspoken.
“Are we just… never going to talk about it?” he asks, breaking the silence. He doesn’t specify what he means, but Zoya knows, and she stiffens, pulling away from his embrace, her hand leaving its spot on his thigh.
“We - we didn’t last time.”
Nikolai shifts in his seat to face her properly. “This was different and you know it.”
“Was it?” she asks, aiming for airy nonchalance and slightly missing the mark.
The look he gives her is almost her breed of withering. “If it wasn’t, then it seems that you and I have very different ideas of the level of intimacy required of a one night stand.”
Flashes of moments come back to her - reverent caresses, locked eyes, that one impossibly tender kiss - and she knows he’s right. The meaningless flings she’s had in her bed have never felt like that. Something deeper than casual sex thrummed through every touch that entire night, a weight to it that she didn’t dare quantify.
She can’t bring herself to admit it aloud, but she can’t bring herself to lie to him either. So she gives him what honesty she can: “I’m not the relationship type.”
He cocks his head, almost puppy-like in his innocent confusion. “What do you mean by that?”
Zoya’s gaze shifts, no longer meeting his own. “I mean that I’m not built for that. There’s no softer, sweeter side of me that gets uncovered once you romance me enough. I’m not nice. This - this thorniness - is all there is of me. All there’s ever going to be.”
The bastard seated next to her has the nerve to laugh, and the shock of it turns her gaze back to him. “Well, thank god for that.” He leans back on the couch. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that… thorniness, if that’s what you’re calling it, is one of the things I like most about you. You’re ruthless and brilliant and wholly unafraid to call anyone out on their shit, most of all me.”
She considers that declaration, trying to cling to logic rather than let herself dip too far into emotion. “I suppose you did call me hot while I was in the middle of chewing you out.”
A faint pink colors his cheeks at the call-out. “I did,” he replies, owning up to it. He shifts in his seat, suddenly serious again. “Look, I’m not going to pressure you into something you’re not interested in. But I want to be with you, Zoya, if you’ll have me.”
And she wants that. She wants it to be that easy, to simply want him back and for that to be enough. For affection to come as easily as attraction. But she’s never been that girl, and it’s never been that simple for her.
And maybe it could be, with him, but now is the worst time to find herself suddenly experimenting with that. There’s just too much stress everywhere else in her life to tack something else onto her list.
“I just… I need some time,” she says, a weak response even to her own ears. “Can we come back to this after the competition is over?”
Nikolai nods. “Yeah. We can.”