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Dreams Of You - Nikolai Lantsov

Summary: Sleepwalking was not something Nikolai was used to, but he thought maybe it was the stress, and at least being back at The Palace should put an end to the way he somehow kept walking to your room. Except it didn't.

Prompt: "I Wish I Could Control Myself Around You." (Also 5+1? Kinda)

Content Warning: No Beta/Proof Reading. Vasily. More Specifically Vasily Being Presumptuous, Rude And Demanding. Some Suggestive Content, But Not Explicit And Not Overly. Unwanted Advances From Vasily. Teeny Tiny Mistaken Identity Trope If You Squint. Explicit Language. Questionable Behaviour And Intent When Sleepwalking. Not Beta/Proof Read.

Word Count: 5k

Nikolai Taglist: @hauntedenthusiasttragedy , @writingmysanity

The night is long and the ocean is unhappy, swaying more violently than you'd like as you drift in and out of sleep. You find yourself wishing morning would hurry in through the port windows so at least your restlessness would be justified. You turn, burying your face into an arm and hoping the tide of sleep might find you sooner than the tide underneath you. The Volkvolny is usually much calmer on the waves, and your sleep is often more forgiving, but something wants you awake tonight, and the Saint's aren't letting your consciousness slip into sleep. You try recounting the stars that should be overhead by now, mapping out the small burning lights in the sky on the wood above your head, as if you could see through the deck and into the dark blue night. When even that fails you, you consider freeing whoever is on deck from their duty, and taking over. But you stay still, your bed may not be calling you, but the bed is a comfort all the same. Not long ago you kept yourself in a hammock like a lot of the crew, but recently the tides have been changing in more than one way, and you find yourself laid on flat supported comfort, that almost reminds you of a home you never really found on land but imagine nonetheless.

The door to your room opens with a fumbling of the handle, just as sleep begins to take you. You blink in the dark, trying to figure out what is happening in the darkness. Your eyes adjust enough to make out the captains silhouette before you find him laying down on the bed beside you.

"Sturmhond?" you ask into the silence. "What are you doing?"

After a few attempts to get his attention, you realise, what likely should have been obvious from the sluggish movements, and the uncharacteristic quiet of him, that he is in fact asleep. You smile to yourself, amused at how he has found himself lain next to you on your bed, in the depth of sleep. You start rolling the jokes you can make at his expense through your mind as he moves to get more comfortable. You chuckle gently as you feel an arm reach for you.

"Careful," you warn him, gathering the warning might seep into his mind even in his sleep. But it seems to have the opposite effect as he reaches for you more eagerly. And it's not until you feel his lips brush your neck that you move urgently up and away. "Okay, no, that's enough of that, Sturmhond, wake up." He does not, and you grip a hand over his shoulder, shaking him gently. "Wake up." You're about to give up trying when he starts to whisper in his sleep, and barely any of the words register in your mind between your own tiredness and the low tone of his speech but it's enough to send you spiralling, so you break protocol slightly. "Nikolai, wake up," you aren't sure if it's the roughness of your voice or the use of his real name but he blinks awake. His eyes stare up into yours for a few moments while he adjusts, and then widen at the realisation that he is looking at you and wide awake.

"I am not in my..." he starts, voice all sleep soaked and charming.

"No, you're not," you confirm. "You sleepwalked, right into mine."

He gathers himself together, starting to scramble up. His apologies are all fumbled, and he stands, and in your fully awake state you can't help but noticed just how un-creased that white bed shirt of his is, and how he sleeps with far too many buttons undone. "Stop," you tell him, pulling your blankets back and nodding to the excess of space in your bed, "you're not going back to your room," you tell him.

"Why?" he asks, eyeing you.

"Because you might sleep walk again and you might be unlucky enough to find yourself in someone else's quarters, someone less understanding," you tell him. He doesn't argue with that, but is still hesitant as he lays back down, still reeling in thoughts of all the ways to apologize to you. His subconscious has betrayed him on a whole new level and he cannot even find the words to explain or excuse it, not that he would try, he just says he is sorry again.

"I can go back," he says. You just shake your head and push his shoulder down gently, turning you back to him.

"Just go to sleep Sturmhond," you mumble, gently mocking but mostly sincere.

"You don't mind?" he checks. Truthfully you don't, you doubt you will sleep worse with him here, you'll probably even sleep better. And there are quieter reasons why you don't mind, reasons based in desire that you keep tucked away. But you don't let your mind linger on that, especially when Nikolai deep in his sleep had tried to press his lips to your neck and you'd had to stop him.

"No," you assure him, "not if you can shut up, I know that is hard for you."

"If this is your seduction plan it's very verbose," he mumbles. The fact that he is half asleep and using words like verbose, still, makes you both want to throw him overboard and kiss him, and you cannot tell which urge is more prominent.

"Besides I think Tamar would be much less understanding if she woke up to you attempting to seduce her," you retort. He opens one eye to look at you, your back still to him.

"I didn't..." he starts.

"Please, like I'd let you get more than hand on me before I would wake you with a knife to your throat," you joke, "now captain, please, I beg you. Go. To. Sleep."

Nikolai was sure now that you were off the Volkvolny and in the palace, that the night trips might stop. It had become slightly worrying that waking up in a room that was not his own had become somewhat a normal outcome of going to sleep. But it had always been your room, and you had for all your jokes and teasing, been very gracious about the whole thing, so understanding of a situation you needn't have been.

He tries not to think about the strange comfort there is about waking up next to you. Because then he might have to address the feelings laying just below the surface and he cannot do that.

But tonight, the third night in the palace you are woken by the sound of the door catching on the lock as it attempts to open. You move to your feet, bare skin against the cold stone of the floor making you jump slightly, feeling more awake. You unlock the door and it gently nudges open, and for all the surprise you thought you might feel, you feel none when you set eyes on Nikolai. You do not bother to wake him. You let him find his way under the soft covers and you let him sleep. When you attempt to move he reaches for you, and that tugs at the seams inside your chest and you're fit to burst.

The ceilings of the palace are intricate, painted into woven patterns that tell stories if you look at them long enough, and you often find yourself looking at them. Your sleeplessness has gotten worse. You don't like to admit it, but you quietly wait for Nikolai to turn up, knowing the only time you really get any true rest is when he is beside you, which is a transient situation that you know could never be anything but temporary.

The softness of the bedsheets, has you spiralling, so soft, so endlessly welcoming, it all feels false, until you hear his breathing beside you, the thump of his heartbeat, and then the doubt slips away, and sleep sets in.

In your dreams you're chased by memories from your time on deck, how you and Nikolai played a game of convincing some of the crew you could grant wishes if they could beat you at cards, Tamar was the only one to ever manage, and you know she cheated. Nikolai could beat you, you knew this, but he never did, in your dreams you remember the conversation when you asked him why, and in the favour of the game he answered, "when I have a wish worth making I will come to you." You had thought of plenty of wishes worth making in the time since, but he had asked for none.

His eyes are glazed with sleep as he blinks awake, the sunrise seeping in and setting the room into a gentle glow. You haven't moved, his arm stretched over you as a silent request for you to stay close, a request you are far too happy to oblige, even if you know better.

"How many rooms did you wake up in before this one?" you ask, bringing a glass of water to your lips.

"Only my own," he says, voice groggy as he stretches. "I thought maybe whatever it was had left itself on the ship."

"Yet you find yourself here again," you say. "You should probably get back to your room, your highness, before they bring you breakfast and set off some type of alarm when they see you missing."

"I doubt that is a likely outcome," Nikolai yawns.

It happens twice before you start to get into a pattern of waking him up shortly after the bells ring out for morning.

You open an eye to see Nikolai as he slips into the bed beside you. "For a Prince you have terrible manners," you tell him in his sleep, "could at least learn how to sleep-close-my-door, if you can sleep-open-my-door."

He moves and you see a dark patch against the white of his bed shirt and your sudden alarm peaks as he leans close to you. "Nikolai," you say a little too loud, a little too snappish and he wakes up.

"Sorry," he starts his apologies, "I don't-,"

"No," you warn him, "you didn't, just hush, are you bleeding?"

Nikolai sighs and sinks into the comfort of your bed, and you lean over him, examining the blood soaking his shirt. "You're injured," you state. You gently tug the soaked fabric away from his body, to try and prevent it sticking to the wound. "Can I?"

"I wake up in your bed most mornings, I think we can skip the fake modesty," he says, smirking at you. You give him a gentle glare but roll up his shirt. His wounds were bandaged but in his sleep he seems to have gently pulled some of the fixings away.

"Nikolai," your voice is more hagridden than he is used to hearing it, usually you are more inclined to mock him in situations like this.

“I am fine," he insists. "Needn't fuss, it is just a flesh wound... a few flesh wounds.”

You shake your head at him, and reach for clean bandages in your bedside table, he doesn't ask as to why you have them and you don't seem inclined to offer an answer as you fix him up. "Nikolai, you're a prince again, not a solider, not a privateer, a prince, you cannot be getting all cut up," you tell him, soothing a hand over his bandages. He frowns and looks at the sheet of your bed.

"I believe that is my blood," he says, "my apologies."

"Only apologise for not keeping it in your body where it is needed, I will hear no apologies for the mess."

Once you're done you start to get to your feet. "Where are you going?" he asks, cocking his eyebrow at you.

"To close my damn door, is that okay your highness?" you ask, hearing the door click close. You'd wanted to close it sooner, but had gotten distracted. You should have closed it sooner, but how were you to know that Vasily would be wandering the halls, looking for a drink and would stumble a glance through your open door to see you and Nikolai. How were you to know that, you leaned over the second prince of Ravka, in your bed, your back to the doorway, whispering in hushed tones would be caught by Vasily. Had you known, you would've easily guessed the conclusions he must have drawn from the sight, but you return to your bed none the wiser, at least now satisfied at the locked door.

"Nikolai what do you dream of?" You ask quietly, not sure if he is still awake. His breathing pattern shifts slightly.

"I don't know," he lies, you know he is lying, but you don't call him out on it, "I don't remember my dreams."

Something felt wrong before you even had reason to realise it. You could hear the footsteps down the hall, and you wondered how late it was, or how early. It felt... too soon somehow. The sun hadn't been long buried by the gulf of the horizon. Usually it took more time passing for Nikolai to fall asleep, and only in the depth of that sleep did he find his way to you. But the footsteps continued to get nearer, and you knew there was really no other reason for someone to be down this way at this time of night.

You rolled over, letting your eyes fall on the curtains, knowing he will let himself in. You feel tired, but not because sleep is calling you but rather the weight of the day is pressing you into your bed.

The door opens and you don't bother looking up, even when it shuts again, even when the pacing of the strides seems unfamiliar, part of you is screaming something is wrong, but you've been thinking about that for a while, but this is a different type of wrong. Not the, we shouldn't be getting so comfortable, not the, we really need to address this situation, not the, you're catching feelings for Nikolai Lantsov, type of wrong. Not the, you're realising you've had these feelings for a long time and they've only just been getting worse with every night he spends in your bed, kind of wrong.

No. This is the type of wrong you can recognise with your eyes closed because of all those things, because you know all the little mannerisms of Nikolai, awake or not, you know how he moves, how he walks, fuck you know how he breathes, you are sure you could pick it out in a crowded room. And this, this wasn't right.

It's when he goes to kiss your neck that you know, that you're sure, but the words come out of your mouth before you open your eyes, "none of that," you say too softly.

"Why don't you let him kiss you?" Vasily asks. You knock him so hard and fast away from you, shoving him with enough force that he falls back off your bed. "Strong one, huh?"

"What, the fuck, are you doing here," all rage, any trace of confusion gone with the sight of those sickly lion eyes. You're not sure what it is about the king and his first born, but they have this eagerness, this entitlement that Nikolai doesn't have in those eyes. They think everything is owed to them, that by breathing the air owes them a debt. You think they'd be this way royal or not. And the way Vasily eyes you now is no exception, he seems to think he is entitled, and he is so many shades of wrong.

It might be the collision of body with floor, and the resounding sound that seems to echo in these walls, or maybe it is the tone of your voice and the sharpness of your words, but whatever it is, it jolts Nikolai from his sleep just before his hand lands on the door of your room.

"Come on," Vasily looks you up and down as if to say 'don't play coy,' and you want nothing more than to cut those eyes out. "I know you like a prince."

Nikolai snaps at that, it sobering him into a sense of alertness he hasn't felt from rising in a while. He might have grown complacent in this calmness, waking most mornings to the gently sound of your voice bringing him back to the world.

Nikolai has his brother by the collar before you can get another word in, and Vasily just rolls his eyes. "Don't like the idea of waiting your turn?" he mocks. You would curse him out, but Nikolai is steps ahead of you, holding his brother tighter and pushing him with more force than he should into the wall. Those eyes of Nikolai's look fierce even in the dim light. "Not eager to share?" Vasily asks, trying to keep the mocking tone, trying to show no agitation, "you never have been, but being protective of a whore is a little much."

"If you so much as look at them again Vasily I will commit acts of treason," Nikolai warns, his voice so steady, so pledging that it doesn't suit the words of heralding threat he is speaking.

"Brother," Vasily tries. Nikolai slacks his grip only to shove Vasily once against, shoulders first, against the wall.

"Do not call me that right now," he warns. And all that usual hybris and bravado that Vasily holds onto, that self importance drains from him in this shadowy dark of your room. Nikolai giving him a look that dismisses any doubts Vasily might have that Nikolai could not do him harm. He could, and he will, and that's a promise as much as a threat. "Get out."

Vasily shakes himself off, and pauses, as if to have another word, some quip, but a look of withholding in Nikolai's eyes makes him think better of it, and he leaves promptly, which you're confident is the only thing keeping Nikolai from violence. One more word from Vasily's mouth, the snarky tongue of that future king, and Nikolai might not have been able to hold himself back any further.

"Nikolai," you say, as if you calling to him might bring him back. His gaze turns on you, and it's urgent and desperate, searching you without a second thought, all impulsive and concern.

"I am so sorry," he starts with the apologies, you've gotten oddly used to hearing him say these words, but they've never been less needed.

"Vasily is not your fault," you remind him. He moves closer, wrapping his hands around your forearms, fingers tracing delicate circles, to calm down.

"He would've have come here if it wasn't for me, he..."

"He must've seen," you finish, "he made assumptions, wrong ones, but understandable ones."

"Nothing about accusing you of being a whore is understandable or forgivable," the protectiveness of how he talks makes you want to kiss him on the forehead and pull him in tight. You settle for a soft chuckle. "Why don't you lock your room?" He asks. It isn't an accusation, not a way to shift blame, it is just a question that has played on his mind and now he has a reason to ask.

"Why do you find yourself in mine?" You ask in return.

"Because you let me in?" he jokes, and there it is, amongst that boiling rage, that keeps him clinging to your arms to not run after his brother and commit those acts of treasons he threatened to commit, is Nikolai.

"Prince Nikolai Lantsov, Major of the Twenty-Second Regiment, Soldier of the King's Army, Grand Duke of Udova, and second son to His Most Royal Majesty, King Alexander the Third, Ruler of the Double Eagle Throne," you mock, "how many rooms did you try to get in before you found mine?" You're smiling, because you're trying to focus on him, and now, and forget the lingering feeling of wanting to drive the letter opener in your bedside table into Vasily's eye and watch him bleed across the floor.

He gives you rueful smile, trying to be here with you, focus on you, not think about his brother and the ways he wants to tear him to shreds for daring to come near you. "Only ever yours."

"Wake up," you whisper gently. You don't want to, you want to let him sleep, you want to let him stay in your bed because these moments are the only time you feel real lately. Everything seems to be happening around you, and to you, to Nikolai, and you feel like you have lost whatever semblance of control, or illusion of such control, you ever had. But especially since Vasily and that incident, things have been even more complicated. Vasily is too much of a coward to call Nikolai out for threatening him, or for showing him up. Vasily is too much of a coward to confront Nikolai directly at all. But he has been making things difficult. So you're being extra careful. And the idea that this, whatever it is, might be coming to an end all too soon, is not passing you by.

"I'm back again," he says, blinking into the day. He hadn't woken when he let himself in and you hadn't wanted to disturb him, so you'd shut the door and tucked him in and fallen asleep, forgoing any of the chitter chatter you both would usually have in the early morning. But even though the sun was yet to rise, these thoughts were keeping you awake, and your need to talk to him was outweighing it all.

"I changed room," you remind him. This was something else you'd taken to doing after Vasily. "How is it you always find my room?"

"Because I must be looking for you," he says. Those tired eyes, look at you and if you would let yourself consider it, you'd call the look in them longing, you know it must be how you look at him. Your gazes overflowing with the need and yearning that aches, your craving for him being near you worsened by every small moment.

"Is it time?" he asks. You move a small part of his sleep tousled hair back into place and the sound of his voice, the cadence reminds you of a few nights prior.

"Tell me to leave," Nikolai said.

"I won't," you told him. "Just rest."

"Not yet," you murmur, "you can rest a little while longer, I just wanted to hear your voice." The confession is out of line and you know it, but the lines are so blurred between the two of you now that they feel more like suggestions than rules.

"I thought you said I talk too much," he says, face turned part into the pillow and part resting on your shoulder.

"You do," you tease, "but I kind of like that about you."

"I am growing on you," he says, so close to falling back to sleep, "or you're going soft."

"Never," you taunt, "I don't do soft."

Things only got more complicated, like you knew they would, but you never could have predicted where you stand now. You're not far from Nikolai's coronation, and you're sat in the window of the latest room you've been housed in, wondering if tonight he will come to you, or if maybe, the last night was the last night. You knew there would be a last night, but this seems sooner than you ever thought it could come and yet each night always felt like you were overstaying a welcome, living a life that wasn't yours, taking something that wasn't yours to take. Even if it had always been and would only ever be, him finding him way to you.

But now more than ever, the finite nature of it all was staring you down and you couldn't look it in the eye. He was going to be king, he was engaged to the Sun Summoner, even if only in name and not in heart, it was still a fact as much as any other. You were never going to be the option he needed you to be, you aren't even sure if he wanted that from you. Since that very first time on the Volkvolny, he has not again asleep or awake tried to make a move to change the dynamic you two shared, this quiet longing, these warm arms that hold tight but are needed elsewhere by sunrise. You have no way of knowing what he wants, even if his sleep always brings him to you. And even then, wants are not always enough.

The door opens behind you and you turn around, it's early, the moon not quite where you'd expect it to be to be seeing him, but when you turn his eyes meet yours and you can see that he without a doubt, awake. "Moya tsaritsa," you say, "what do I owe the pleasure?"

"None of that," he says, he loves the attention, he loves the joke and the teasing of your tone, he even loves in his way that he will actual be king, but he is not yet king, and in this moment, with you, feeling anything but weary of the title feels inappropriate to him. "Not yet anyway."

"Fine, moi tsarevich, what do I owe the pleasure?" you correct. There is a distain in his glance that he keeps playful. "Now if you've come here under the impression I will be granting wishes, you are mistaken, I have long given up that business."

"I wish I could control myself around you," he replies, and that makes you still. "Is that a wish you can grant me?"

"Is that a wish worth making?" you ask, barely daring to move.

"I suppose not," he admits, "I don't think I would really want it." He moves the distance of the room to be beside you and you can feel his presence as it joins yours, as if it had been missing from you the whole time, like a part of you was simply returning home.

"You are awake," you say, no explanation is needed. He nods.

"I am," he admits. "As are you."

"I am often awake until you arrive," you tell him.

"And on the days I don't?" he asks. They are few in number, you'd both attest that since the first night his sleep based visits only became more and more frequent until they are almost all the nights, a night to every day bar one or two.

"I don't really sleep," you confess, after all, what is a tiny confession like that between the two of you now. You can feel his need to tell you something, the question that he isn't asking, and you want to make it easier for him.

"Ask me what I dream of," he says, "I know you asked me once, and I said I did not remember my dreams, but I lied," the content of the confession isn't surprising but the confession itself takes you off guard. "Ask me again, what it is I dream of."

You can't, you don't know how, the words escape you and the request that falls from your lips in their place might be equally as damning. "Tell me that I cannot have you," you say.

"What?" he asks, turning his head to look at you. You keep your eyes focused on the glass, and the view of the courtyard.

"Tell me that I cannot have you," you repeat, trying to keep the feelings bursting out of you from your words. "Is that a wish you can grant me?"

He says your name and you look at him, and that's it, the words come falling out of you before you can keep any of them down. "Tell me that you can never be mine. Tell me that you are going to marry Alina, or some Shu Princess because that is your duty. Tell me that you shall be King and I could never be more than your whore. Tell me I could never be your spouse. Tell me that you do not want me. Tell me I could never be more than a paramour. Tell me that too much is at stake for you to care about me. Tell me that all these nights you've found me in your sleep have meant nothing. Tell me you do not think of me. Tell me you do not dream of me. Tell me it's all some childish, fairytale fantasy. Ask me to ask you to leave again. Make me tell you that I could never be yours knowing you cannot be mine. Tell me you do not have feelings for me Nikolai. Tell me," your voice cracks, "please."

"I will not," he says. "I will not force myself to live with another lie on my conscience, not one this heavy. I cannot tell you any of those things because I have never wanted to make you anything other than mine. I will not tell you that lie even if it's supposed to be a comfort to us both, I cannot, I will not," he takes one steady breath, those eyes still on yours, and you see the puppy prince you once knew in the eyes of the King you've grown to love, "ask me to leave," he manages, "but not because it's right. Not because I am royal. Not because of duty or honour. Not because you think I should choose Ravka over you, as if those were my only choices. Do not ask me to leave because it's what you think you ought to do. Ask me to leave, if that is what you want me to do. I will never ask anything of you again. Do you want me to leave?"

"No," you say. You never have. You have never had it in you to want him to be anywhere but nearer than he is, closer, with you, always.

"All of my dreams," he says, moments before his lips meet yours, "they've always been of you."

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