Listen, I haven’t read the Shadow and Bone books and I’ve only seen the show once so I’m not going to write fic for it, BUT if I were to write one it would be about the obvious endgame ship which is Alina/Mal/Nikolai and it would go something like this:
Mal spends about a year at sea. Alina and Nikolai get together in the meantime but at the same time Mal’s absence makes it clear to both him and Alina that what they feel for each other is real. Alina isn’t sure how to resolve the situation without hurting one or both of them and breaking half of her own heart in the process, but once Mal gets back he’s immediately like “I left and lost my chance, you two fell in love, I get it, I’m stepping aside” while Nikolai is like “You’re childhood sweethearts, I’m not trying to compete with that, I get it, I’m stepping aside.”
And before Alina can jump in to suggest that maybe no one needs to step aside because she has two hands, Mal and Nikolai are in the middle of an almost-argument about which one of them is hotter and more deserving of Alina, both taking the other’s side. And as Alina watches them hurl compliments at each other while getting closer and closer until they are nearly chest to chest, memories replay in her mind and something finally clicks.
“Huh,” she says, realising that maybe no one’s heart needs to get broken after all.
Mal and Nikolai tear their eyes from each other’s lips to look at her.
“Sorry,” Alina says with a smirk, “don’t let me interrupt your flirting.”
Which finally wakes them up to how close they’re standing and what they’ve been saying, and they jump apart. Nikolai, who has been aware of his attraction for Mal since the moment Mal said “north is that way” but is convinced it’s one-sided, thinks he’s failed to keep his feelings in check and overstepped a boundary and starts apologising, he didn’t mean to make anyone uncomfortable, this was so inappropriate of him, it will never happen again, etc. etc.
Meanwhile Mal, who’s never even begun to process what he feels around Nikolai, is instinctively like “we’re not flirting” but Alina just raises her eyebrows at him and he realises, maybe they are. And he looks at Nikolai who’s still stumbling through what sounds like a love confession wrapped in an apology, and suddenly there’s only one thing he can do. He looks at Alina, who nods in encouragement, eyes shining, and then he grabs Nikolai’s face and shuts him up with a kiss.
And then the three of them live happily ever after, thank you goodbye.
