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They fall into bed together for the first time only a few short weeks after—well. After everything.
It's wild and sudden, filled with grief and pain and more a release than anything else. Alina is still mourning Mal, the boy she had to kill to save the world. Nikolai is running from the demons at his heels. They both have such monumental responsibilities on their shoulders, the weight of it perpetually threatening to drag them down. Both of them want to just drown themselves in sensation and not think for a little while.
This is easy, at least. Nothing else Nikolai has to do these days is, hell even working with Alina most of the time is a battle in some way or another, but alone together in his tent, both of them just as desperate as the other—they slot together like they were always meant to. He meets her passion—fiery and light like he'd pictured she would be—with a well of his own, kissing her deep, grabbing her and holding her close.
He gives his all to this just like he does with everything else he does, but unlike with all the things he does out in the real world, here he feels like he actually accomplishes everything he sets his mind to.
(Alina certainly doesn't seem to have any complaints.)
After they've both come and are utterly spent, they sleep—actually sleep—together. Alina curls into his side and he wraps his arms around her, enjoying the way he can feel her heartbeat against his skin. It makes him feel—not alone, for maybe the first time in...a very long time. It allows him to fall asleep more easily than he has in years.
The morning after, he wakes before Alina. He carefully doesn't move, trying to bask in this quiet contentment for at least a little while longer. Nearly all of his life is constant action, motion, running and never stopping. Even now with the Darkling dead and the war over—the war will never be over, not for him. He's a soldier, a king; his war will end the day he's dead, and maybe not even then.
But here, alone with a girl more powerful than anyone in the universe and someone he is lucky to get to call a friend, he feels—okay, maybe. Safe. He feels like he can breathe. And he doesn't want to let go of it just yet.
He's not that lucky, though, and it has to come to an end eventually. Alina wakes up maybe half an hour after him, and then they...don't talk about it.
It isn't awkward, or anything, not that Nikolai would let on even if he did feel that way. No, Alina simply smiles at him, and kisses his cheek, everything about her gentle and sweet and making something in Nikolai's chest clench. She gets out of bed and gets dressed, rolling her eyes good-naturedly at the dirty joke Nikolai makes by rote. Then she comments on something they have on their agenda for the day, and then she's—gone.
Nikolai lies there for another half hour, staring up at the canopy of his tent, and tries to get the sight of her soft smile out of his head. Tries to stop thinking about how wonderful her mouth felt against his own. Tries to forget how he felt like he was on fire just to have her close to him for a few short moments.
Saints, he is so thoroughly screwed.
It happens again and again.
When Nikolai is less exhausted and thinking more clearly, he thinks of their rendezvous as two people who have been through a fuckton of trauma and just need to be with someone who gets it, who won't demand anything of them. Simple comfort between friends, between the King of Ravka and the Sun Summoner. Between Nikolai and Alina.
In his less put-together moments, when the world is weighing on his shoulders and it's just him and his thoughts, he pictures it all far less...generously. That he's an easy lay, a good fuck, a willing body. That he's someone who won't ask Alina any questions, who will help her get off and make her feel good instead of having her be the one serving everyone else. That he's someone who will always say 'yes' and give her whatever she wants, and demand not a single thing else. That he's useful, and so he's being used.
He can't blame her, if all of that's true. He is a good fuck, and for her, he is an easy lay. He's pathetic and lonely and will never turn her away, will never ask her for more than she's willing to give. There's nothing wrong with her if she wants to use that. It's not her fault that he is...feeling some different things.
Nikolai can't put a finger on when exactly he started loving Alina. It wasn't right away; hell it wasn't even all that long ago, he doesn't think. His initial proposal—proposals—of marriage really were what he said they were, a smart political move. He couldn't have cared less if she kept her tracker around, hell couldn't have cared if she didn't even sleep with him and ended up pregnant by Oretsev (like he's one to judge about claiming a bastard as an heir). She was a strong ally, a potential friend, and that was it.
Then she became his friend, someone he truly admired. Then his proposal started carrying with it an edge of longing—still not love, but the desire to share his life with someone who truly understood the burden on his shoulders. A partnership in the truest sense.
And then, somewhere along the way, somewhere between then and now...He started loving her. It was just too fucking easy to do. He loves her, and he will never have her, not in the ways that matter.
A part of Alina died with Oretsev, a crucial part that locked her heart away. And maybe one day she'll heal enough to find love again, maybe one day she'll be able to consider another relationship, consider building a life with someone other than the person she spent her entire life wanting. But Nikolai knows as clearly as he knows his own name that that person will not be him.
He's too wrapped up in all the bad things. Their relationship is too seeped in the horrible things they've lived through. There's an understanding between them, a deep bond for sure, but the door to romance is sealed shut. And he's not masochistic enough to try to pry it open.
So he settles for this, feeling sorry for himself but—grateful, too. Because Alina is Alina, untouchable and unreachable and otherworldly, seen as a saint to the entire world, and he gets to have a small piece of her. He gets to be the person she trusts, who has her crawl into his bed. He gets to touch her, feel her, move against her. And that makes him a far luckier bastard than anyone else.
(Sometimes he's hateful, too, though. Because she—she owns him, even if she doesn't realize it. Alina has him held in the palm of her hand, has him on a fucking leash, has his entire being at her whims. It has ruined him for anyone else, has made his life a thousand fucking times harder. He needs to find a queen, needs to form a strong alliance—but the idea of being with anyone else is like a knife to the gut. It has him putting it off, again and again and again. Shirking his responsibility in a way he never thought he would.
That's something he doesn't think he'll ever forgive her for.
Even when it's his own damn fault.)