#nikolay.

[lndenmeres-a]

this is a small starter call for my sibling ocs maria (aka k) and nikolay (aka nik). i’m working on their bios but formatting is a bitch so long story short: they have the same supernatural power of manifestation, but were brought up in different households & learned to deal with their powers in different ways. nik is an artist and k is a petty criminal/all round Mess.

[ofcrimsonstains]

‘ you deserve better , you deserve so much better . ’ (freyja)

“You deserve better, you deserve so much better.”

A beat passed. The rain continued to hammer down his back. The shadows cast from the trees spin and bend, morphing his expression into a million fleeting emotions. Their target sat a hundred meters away reading a newspaper by candlelight. But the target is the furthest thing from his mind. All he can focus on now is her. On her words. He lowers his sniper rifle to his side, his eyes burning on her.

How many versions of the same line would she feed him? How long would it take for her to understand he isn’t leaving her? He couldn’t imagine ever not following her into the abyss. He couldn’t imagine ever not loving her. He would love her through it all.

The silence persists. But, there is a change in the air around him. It’s charged. With that same burning look, he threw the gun he had in his hand, the gun that had been his savior for so long, very deliberately to the side. “Don’t care ‘bout whats deserved.” His jaw clenches as his voice breaks the silence. He moves closer to her. The scent of wood and musk. Drops of rain fall down his cheeks and hers, her hair sticking to her face in wet curls as well. It was just him and her in the woods. No targets. No Russia. Them. And its like the dam finally broke. “I love you.” Words quiet beneath the downpour of rain, yet strong. “And I will always, always, fight for you.” Then lips. His soft, tender lips settling upon hers. His palms coming to rest on both her cheeks as he steps completely into her space and lips start to tremble against hers, his eyes stinging, his heart exposed. A heart he didn’t even know still beat. When he pulls back, only slightly, his left thumb slowly slides back and forth across her cheek.

“You’re part of me.” A whisper in the space between them. His breath mingling with hers. He tilts her head up, though, to pin her eyes with his own. To let her see the sincerity pouring from not only his voice but his eyes, too. “I can’t lose you.” If he ever did… He doesn’t want to know the person he would become if he lost her. Especially if he lost her to Bratva. He pulls her to himself then, arms wrapping tightly around her smaller frame. Nobody, not Bratva, not death, would take another person he loved from him. He wouldn’t survive if they ever did.

[ofcrimsonstains]

lostghcst asked: ❝ I don’t want to rob you of the joy of climbing a tree. ❞

What time is it in Moscow? What was the weather like? Was a chill still chomping away at spring’s attempts at life? It’s blooming here. Life is flourishing, and his attention has been caught by one of the saplings bursting forth from the dirt now. Just meters from a tree destined to rival it in size for years to come. He almost bends down to run his fingers along a tiny leaf sprouting from it, to touch life forming, but he doesn’t feel his hands that have brought so much death should. He moves to the tree behind it instead. Eyes quickly traveling up the trunk till the sun shining through breaks in the leaves started to dot his vision. 

He starts to bring his hand up to the trunk of this tree, too, but retracts it when he hears the snap of a twig behind him. He whips around, on alert. The Aguilar’s weren’t expecting any guests at the house today, let alone the grounds. When he turns to hunt down the perpetrator, however, he is stopped by the sight of the Aguilar’s daughter, Catalina. A vision of a girl. One he has the gift of even seeing at the moment. She must have used her powers to slip out and dropped them when she found him here. His shoulders droop, the tightness that spark in his chest like wildfire at the noise begins to unwind. 

“I don’t want to rob you of the joy of climbing a tree.” 

A laugh escapes. Quick. Too short. He still wasn’t used to laughing, or to having a reason to laugh. But, she always gave him one. “Never robbing. You bring it.” Waving her closer, he turns back around to face the tree. Staring at it as if it might wither beneath his gaze if he kept looking too hard at it. He was still refusing to touch it either. When Catalina joins him, though, an unknown bubbling stirs in his insides and he doesn’t let himself diminish his smile or stop himself from resting his hand on top of hers, squeezing it lightly as he brings it up to rest on the tree. His hand feeling only the heat from her skin as she felt bark, felt life. “Trees never bloom like this in Russia.” This tree was full of life; bountiful and too, too green. And he got to feel it through her. She gave him the gift of life without even knowing it, in more ways than one. “It’s beautiful,” he breathes, gazing at their hands then at Catalina. She was the most beautiful thing he ever felt. 

[ofcrimsonstains]

“ make me a promise that when the world ends, you’ll kiss me. ” freyja

“Make me a promise that when the world ends, you’ll kiss me.”

His hands cup her cheeks.

“нет.“ He whispers. The time bleeding slow as they stood there, staring, crickets chirping in the dead of night. No: he wouldn’t make this promise. No: he wouldn’t let the world end. No: he wouldn’t wait until then. “нет.“ He says it again, unable to pull his gaze away from hers. He would never make this promise. He doesn’t know what will happen between now and then. What if his fight has ended with him six feet under by then? What if they’ve drifted so far apart he can’t even remember the color of her eyes or the sound of her laugh? There were too many what ifs. Too many maybes. He wants her to be one of his definites. He wants her to be his present.

“The world doesn’t have to end for me to kiss you,” he says, low, for their ears alone. A secret shared. Then he pulls her in for a kiss. Soft, gentle, everything his being has fought against being since he came back to Russia for her.

[ofcrimsonstains]

Send “✉” for a text that WASN’T SENT.

NOT DELIVERED TO “сердце моя”: I miss you. Everyday. I want to hear your voice.

[ofcrimsonstains]

where: Athos :: Nikolay’s Bedroom — Balcony when: Returning from Russia who: open starter

The night is quiet. Midnight velvet, pure, stilled, and he is blanketed beneath it. The warm black hugging him. A comfort he lapped up after the frigid bite of Russia’s unrelenting winter. He exhales deeply, once; his stiff form loosens a notch. He needed this. The armor he carried, his unrelenting anger, it could only burn hot for so long before it melted away and all that was left of him was a heart that ached for home. So he surrendered to his heart, once. He slipped in under the cover of night and climbed the stairs two at a time before seeking refuge in his old room, untouched despite his being gone for months. 

[ofcrimsonstains]

where: Athos :: Mansion — Front Parlor when: Returning from Russia who: @lostghcst

He’s beaten. Tired, too. In a city of ice, snowing falling in his hair, he finally got his answers. And the weight of those answers splintered him into thousands of pieces. All the hope he carried was expended. The fears he fought devoured him. He was theirs. He will always be theirs. Even when he thought he got out, Bratva found a way to bring him back in. And for what? To protect all he held so dear by leaving them in the past. 

Could he even say it was worth it? All he saw was slivers of himself dissipating as those harden lines return to his face. All those mornings of gentle laughter with soft light pouring along smooth skin was replaced by a chattering teeth and fresh scars. And now, standing here in the parlor, the door creaking behind him the only noise filling a space once full of chatter spikes a jolt of discomfort in him. He did this. He stole the joy from every crevice of this house, and now he can’t even take another step in. He stays rooted by the door, the breeze blasting against his back from the small crack of a door still not fully closed. He should just go. He almost does; turning back to face the door and curl calloused fingers around the edge of the door, its jerky movements from the wind ceasing. But he finds himself caught between going and staying. From escaping back under the pale moon or snaking his way back under the warmth of his bed sheets. That is, if he still had a bed. 

[ofcrimsonstains]

(x) continued from here. 

She takes his hand to place the palm of it flat against her cheek, and it quivers. Touching her burned hot and quick like whiskey on the back of your throat. It made him ache, made him feel as if she were slicing him open and squeezing his heart in a suffocating touch. He wrenches his hand away and takes twelve steps back. He needed distance, almost craved it. He needed to breathe as he took in what she was saying. He was loved. He was worthy. But, not by her. “Bullshit,” he says. A whisper of a word to himself. He didn’t believe her. Not after everything Nadiya said. Not after finding out what she sold her life for, or rather who she sold her life for. A person wouldn’t do that if they didn’t feel something. Nikolay takes a moment to look at her. Really look at her. She looks like Freyja, and yet at the same time like a dead person. The Bratva have already wrung out her girlhood and twisted her into this stony, less than human thing. He saw past the blank stares and dullness in her voice, though, because that used to be him. So, instead, he repeats himself, louder. “Bullshit.” The hand that was pressed to her skin balls up into a fist. “You are terrible liar, Volkova. Your actions say truth your mouth can’t.”