Archive of Our Own

He’s been taking walks lately.

The house is too quiet, especially after the kids go to bed, and it’s uncomfortably often that Artemy finds himself feeling suffocated by the silence that falls over it on late nights.

Is he haunted? Possibly. After everything he’s seen, Artemy would not put it above the universe to decide to send ghosts after him. There’s still a room in the upstairs he refuses to open – he knows there’s nothing in there, no plague cloud, certainly not the dead body of his father run through by one half of an all-too-familiar horned helmet in rage, but that doesn’t stop his hands from going clammy if he so much as thinks about reaching for the doorknob.

Maybe there’s nothing in there, or maybe the spirit of his late father is waiting for the right moment to slip free; after everything he’s learned, Artemy is far from certain Isidor would be happy with the choice he made.

He can't take it, and steps out of his seat so fast the chair almost falls over, barely remembering to pull a sweater on before he heads out.

He pushes out of the door frantically, almost forgetting to lock it behind him before he half-walks, half-sprints into the streets of the Hindquarters. Not thinking above the need to just move, he lets his feet take him where they please. The air is cold, his breath coming out in clouds quickly evaporating behind him as he passes through them. It’s not quite winter yet, but it won’t be long until the snow starts coming in.

There’s a lot that ought to be done by then. He remembers what the winters are like here; years in Moscow may have softened him, but Artemy still has memories of snow storms and temperatures so low it’s dangerous to even open the door. Fuck, he’ll need to get ready. The kids need clothes, they have to stock up on food, and that’s not even touching the stocks he’ll have to get ready for the clinic.

His head spins a little, and he crosses the bridge towards the Chine in a jog. For a moment he considers stopping by Lara’s place, maybe to ask her about knitting Murky a sweater, before he catches himself. It’s the middle of the night, or at least close enough. There’s no plague going on, he can’t just bust into people’s homes anymore.

As soon as the thought hits, he realises he quite desperately would want to, actually. Taking a left towards the Backbone, Artemy tells his fucking heart to shut up and let his Bound be in peace.

No.

Friends. They’re not Bound to him, not anymore. He doesn’t have that relationship with them, with anyone, anymore.

Doesn’t he?

Then why does the weight of their safety still lie so heavily on his shoulders?

With his somewhat racing heart forcing him to slow down, Artemy lets his pace falter. His breathing is a little heavy, and he lifts his eyes from the cobblestone of the street.

He’s coming up on the Gut, and around the edges of a house he can see the towering shape of the Lump. As oppressive as ever, the building looms in the centre of the block, towering through the power of its occupants if not sheer size. He wonders for a moment how Capella is doing, if she’s asleep or standing by the window of her wing, looking out over the river and the Earth. She’d spent most of the epidemic like that, hadn’t she? The cramped houses can’t make for the most pleasant view, Artemy thinks sourly, but nonetheless she’d been looking.

It's her the children turn to, now. He knows this. It is how things must be. Maria had all but stepped into her role before Artemy even showed up here, their new Mistress of the Light needs her own subjects to rally under her wings if the balance is to be kept intact.

It left little room for a healer ten years removed from the Town, who after the dust settled found himself at the mercy of the opinion of townsfolk whose tongues had started to share the rumours they’d heard.

As it turns out, menkhu privilege or not, cutting open bodies to do god-knows-what with people’s organs isn’t the fastest track to popularity once the lawlessness of apocalypse no longer looms over people’s heads.

He walks past the Lump without sparing it a second look.

After that, he stops keeping track of where he’s going. His feet end up bringing him back to the Earth, if for no other reason than familiarity; Artemy knows these streets like no other, remembers running through them as a child, chasing his friends around corner after corner in relentless games of tag.

Those memories are being supplemented by others, of sprinting from house to house, mask tight over his face and his body aching from the cocktail of drugs, pain and hunger that was his existence those two weeks in September.

He thinks about what a fucking miracle it is that he’s still alive, and his chest tightens again.

The problem with survival isn’t the here and now, Artemy is beginning to realise; that’s easy. Here and now, what matters is taking another breath, is pushing through whatever is happening into the next moment. Doing what you need to get done when your life is on the line and, by proxy, the lives of countless others, isn’t the hardest part.

That is what comes after, when you’re no longer gasping for air, when there are no longer singular moments to gather your thoughts but an endless stretch of time ahead of you with no more looming disaster to take your mind off of the future.

Now, that’s where he finds himself; in the future, inside that vague notion of hope he was clinging to for weeks as he sprinted across town, plague clouds chasing his heels, herbs and bottles and raw human organs jostling around in his medic bag, dead bodies left in his wake. The whole time, the future was on his mind, getting himself and his children and his friends to it, and now it’s here and he doesn’t know what to do when he’s stopped running.

People still need him. They show up to the clinic him and Stakh set up in his dead father’s house with their headaches and sprained ankles and feverish children, but he knows that when they look at him they see two men.

The doctor in front of them, patching up small ails and looking at sore throats with the mundane routine of a doctor going through the motions, practiced and calm – and the man half of them thought, half knew, was a ripper, who sliced up dead corpses to brew tinctures with their organs which he then fed to the survivors to give them a chance at seeing tomorrow.

Artemy can’t fault them for their lingering hesitance. He wouldn’t know how to deal with himself, either. That’s why he walks through Town instead of sleeping, obsessively going over the past again and again instead of resting through the night like the responsible new father of two recently un-urchined children ought to.

Every now and then, he thinks about the moment he talked Rubin out of joining up with the military. At the time, Artemy had thought he was doing the man a complete service.

Now, he sometimes wonders if maybe they should both have gone with Block. He didn’t leave the army with a glowing recommendation, but good field surgeons are hard to come by. They’d have let him back in, no questions asked, and he could have spent the rest of his shortened life still running from emergency to emergency without having to spare the future another thought.

He thinks about the children, and Lara. Even Grief, and for a few moments, another man.

No, he couldn’t have left.

He knows this in his heart.

That doesn’t make the fact that he chose to stay easier to bear.

When someone so startingly suddenly shouts at him from behind it makes him jump out of his skin, Artemy is almost relieved for a moment. It passes quickly, though, when the “hey, bitch!” is followed by rapid footsteps, and suddenly it’s like no time has passed at all.

Turns out robbing and looting, once set loose on a place like this, isn’t as easily cured as the plague.

Artemy sets off without a second thought, immediately breaking into a sprint like he never stopped running from bandits at all. The man behind him, whoever he is, gives chase, and within seconds he’s being hunted through the Hindquarters like a deer from a dog. Or maybe a pack of dogs, he can’t tell, but the prospect that there’s more than one set of feet behind him isn’t making him want to look over his shoulder.

“Shit,” he curses under his breath, regretting it instantly, because he realises he doesn’t have a breath to spare.

“Get back here,” the man unhelpfully shouts at him, and Artemy wishes he could roll his eyes.

He thinks about going towards the Crude Sprawl, but that’s not a very good idea, so he takes a left into an alley. If he remembers correctly, there’s a backyard full of junk not far from here, and if he remembers the route through the mess of bricks and discarded furniture littering it he should be able to lose them.

But he needs to get there first, heart pounding in his chest like it’s trying to claw its way up his throat, and it needs to be before his pursuer gets within stabbing distance, because he doesn’t even carry a knife on himself anymore.

Why the fuck isn’t he carrying a knife anymore? Artemy has never felt so stupid, he thinks in the split-seconds drawn out into hours by adrenaline as his old boots make rough contact with the stone under his feet. He should never stop carrying a fucking knife.

He makes another turn, through a narrower alleyway with nothing but dirt and gravel on the ground — oh, Lara, I wish I could have left you a better Town — and it seems to buy him enough time to get the head start he needs when he gets into the improvised dumping ground. There are cabinets strewn around the little square, old tables and kitchenware inexplicably thrown out in heaps on top of piles of dirt and discarded brickwork, but behind one of them is a fence with an opening in it.

You can’t see it looking straight ahead, but Artemy had discovered the shortcut one day when he was hunting children’s caches, and miraculously it’s just big enough to fit him. He hopes the idiot trying to kill the town’s doctor isn’t savvy enough to know, and barrels through the yard to squeeze himself through the opening before they see where he’s gone.

Once he gets through to the other side, it’s a struggle to overrun his instincts and stay put, huddling down in a bush with a hand clasped over his mouth to muffle the sound of his own breathing. If they figure out where he is, he’s as good as dead, because his lungs are all but wheezing and his left side is starting to cramp up.

Not that they’re willing to give up – they (and he’s certain there’s more than one, now) come into the yard making enormous ruckus, shouting at each other and slamming into furniture looking for their lost mark. Artemy’s pretty sure they’re looking through the cabinets for him, and he would be amused by the visual of himself trying to fit into one of them if he wasn’t scared for his life.

The pain in his side grows, and he’s becoming aware of the old familiar ache in his knee, and he knows just how close this might be to the end.

But it doesn’t happen, and his pursuers angrily and loudly give up, cursing at each other as they apparently make their way back to where they came from.

Good riddance. Artemy hopes they tear into each other like a pack of ravenous dogs. He’s heard of the fresh graves in the cemetery keeping Grace busy.

He needs to start carrying a knife again.

It’s a pair of unsteady feet he makes himself get back up on, because more than a knife, he needs to go home. There are two children asleep in his house, and in the morning they will count on him to be there despite their protests to the contrary.

This cannot be the time he lets guilt cram a foothold into his stomach, so Artemy pushes any lingering thoughts down and forces himself to limply make his way back to the streets. However, it seems the universe has still more in its plans for him tonight, because it doesn’t take many steps before another, this time thankfully familiar, voice calls out to him.

“Burakh? Are you all right?”

Not that it makes him happy. In fact, bachelor Daniil Dankovsky might be the last person he wants to see in this moment, for reasons that are… Complicated.

Artemy doesn’t know how to qualify the relationship between them. It was always tumultuous at best, caught in the mess of never-ending chaos of the plague weeks and their non-stop butting of heads that almost ended up costing them both their lives. He still remembers receiving a written warning from Clara, hasty and scribbled, and wondering what the fuck his life had gotten to, and if she’d sent one to Dankovsky as well.

But there had been other moments, as well, of them taking turns looking at a particularly hopeful vial and Artemy waiting out the bachelor’s judgement in a surprisingly comfortable bed in the Stillwater, when it had seemed they could be more than adversaries.

And then he’d convinced the general to shell the Polyhedron into atoms, Daniil had looked at him with so much vitriol Artemy felt the ground sway under his feet, and the rest was history.

Or an absence of it, perhaps, because they haven’t seen each other much since.

But now, as if playing a prank on him, the man himself is walking up in that self-assured, impatient way of his, and the furrow between his brows is distinctly one of concern. Artemy wants to lie down on the ground and die.

“Are you hurt?” Dankovsky demands, already reaching for the bag he’s still carrying with both hands. Of course he’s still carrying his doctor’s equipment with him, what else would become of their bachelor of Medicine? “What happened?”

“Not hurt,” Artemy sighs, although it’s likely unconvincing with how hard he’s still clutching his sides. “Got chased. Bandits. I think. They didn’t catch me,” he pointedly remarks when Daniil furrows his brow even more, “but the chase took the wind out of me.”

“You look like you’ve been beaten up,” he gets told, and that’s a jab to his pride. “Let me look you over.”

This is the most bizarre interaction he’s had all week, and he laments the fact that he can’t acknowledge it out loud.

“No thank you,” he says instead, giving Dankovsky a dismissive wave of his hand. “I told you, they didn’t catch me. What you’re seeing is just me being unfit.”

“Your limp is worse than usual,” Daniil says, squinting at him. “Are you sure you weren’t stabbed? Sometimes the adrenaline—”

“I know what being stabbed feels like,” Artemy argues, his own brows twisting into a frown to match the other man’s. “I’m telling you I’m fine. Leave me alone.”

“And you’re telling me you just got chased by robbers, in the plural,” the stubborn idiot argues back, “as though that is not even a slight cause for concern!”

If he’s gunning for a punch, he’s doing a remarkably good job at it. “They chased me. They didn’t catch me. And now I’d like to go home.”

In front of him, Daniil has the audacity to look bewildered. Despite his words, Artemy doesn’t go, crossing his arms over his chest and peering down at the man like he can make his disapproval translate without words.

“What are you even doing out here?” He asks, feeling like he’s owed an explanation. Daniil never had much reason to come to this side of Town when the plague was happening, unless he was looking for Peter or attempting to wring another favour out of the Saburovs. Artemy can’t see him having any business in the Earth these days, unless he’s just aching to mingle with the common folk.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” Dankovsky tells him, voice so dry it might catch on fire soon. Artemy bristles, “but there’s this pub under the old factory. I happen to know the man who owns it, an old colleague of mine, and he’s been having a really hard time lately. See, his brother recently lost his reason to live—”

“Oh, spare me,” Artemy groans, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

Blue eyes glare daggers at him. “Why should I? It’s not like you’re taking responsibility for the damage you’ve done, so someone must.”

“I’m sorry, I thought I was speaking to the man who left a child to die?” He steps closer, not thinking, cocking his head at Daniil in a sarcastic mime of not being able to hear him properly. It achieves the intended result, which is making the man clench his teeth so hard his jaw squares up. “Something about this five-year-old not being worth his precious attention?”

Dankovsky matches him, coming nearer with a finger raised towards Artemy’s chest like he’s chiding a child. “You know,” he spits at Artemy, “that is a gross misrepresentation of events. The boy was dying, there was nothing I could do.”

“Well, if that’s the case!” Throwing his hands up, Artemy incredulously looks around the lot they’re in. “I guess leaving him to fucking suffer and telling his friends nobody should even bother was completely fine, then!”

For a moment, Artemy thinks Daniil is going to shove him. He’d welcome it, honestly, if it meant he could follow it up. He imagines getting to punch the man right in his furious jaw, and the way he’d probably go to the ground in a second, and the visual is so satisfying he’s almost preparing to do it just to be able to put Dankovsky flat on his back. Just once. Please.

“I was trying to save this godforsaken place!” Daniil shouts at him, so close Artemy can feel his breath on his face. He thinks he might be getting small droplets of spit on his skin, but he doesn’t want to step back. It feels good to finally be able to get in the bachelor’s face. Maybe they should have done this a long time ago. “You out of all people should understand that, although maybe I’m expecting too much of you, as always!”

“Remind me again,” Artemy tells him, in a low voice contrasting Daniil’s screaming. He wants to curl his hands into the lapels of that goddamned coat and shake him. “How did that go for you? What happened with the vaccine you were making?”

“If you’re going to mock me for my failures, Artemy Burakh,” and it sounds like a warning, like Dankovsky is a snake, hissing at him to get away before he snaps.

Artemy doesn’t think he will. He’s keen to see how this plays out, wants to see what happens, and if it’s childish he doesn’t care. He knows he’s stronger, he has the combat experience. If Daniil wants to escalate this, Artemy will not be the one regretting it.

The knowledge makes him bold, and he puts his hands on his hips, a dare and a challenge matching the finger poking into his chest, but they don’t reach the next part in their fight.

In hindsight, he should have known shouting wasn’t a good idea. It’s not like the bandits would have even had the time to get far, if they’d ever had the desire to.

“That’s a twofer,” he hears behind him, and the sound of that same hoarse, rough voice from before instantly wipes his fight with bachelor Dankovsky from his mind.

He spins around, all but forgetting Daniil, and finally comes face-to-face with the — as it turns out — three men who’d been pursuing him earlier.

Fuck, he’s such a fucking idiot. If he survives this, he’s going to be furious, because allowing himself to get so distracted as to get into a screaming match three seconds after barely escaping his latest murder attempt is a level of stupidity even he’s ashamed of.

They’re approaching fast, he’s pretty certain they all have knives, and he’s acting on pure instinct when he reaches a hand back to push Daniil behind himself. “Stay behind me,” he hisses, like he wasn’t just ready to strangle the man. “I can take a hit.”

“Do you have a weapon?” Daniil asks, quick and to the point, which is at least one tick in his favour.

If there’s one thing he could never accuse their bachelor of, it’s cracking under pressure. The thought annoys him, not in the least because he has absolutely no time for this right now.

“If I had, I wouldn’t have been running,” he hisses, putting one of his feet forward in preparation. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Hand-to-hand isn’t his best skill, and he’s gotten used to having a knife, and there’s three of them, and he needs to protect the fucking Bachelor of Medicine that’s been a thorn in his side for weeks. Artemy is never going to forgive himself.

“Well, that’s inconvenient,” is all Dankovsky says. Artemy considers taking off and leaving him to his fate.

But of course, he’s not going to do that, so instead he stays put, feeling rather than hearing Daniil move away — he can’t decide if he’s happy or furious the man is trying to leave him here — as the three men come up on him. Their faces are painted white, a stupid attempt at anonymity, and as the adrenaline pumping through his veins makes time grind to a halt, Artemy tries to block out the fear that washes over him when one of the knives glints in the moonlight.

He’s got both his arms in front of him, hands half-curled into fists, eyes desperately flitting between the men to try to gauge which one will get to him first and where he needs to be ready to dodge. Wherever it is, it can’t be backwards, because Dankovsky is still behind him. Despite everything, he doesn’t actually want the man to die. At least not like this.

All of that happens in a split-second, he realises, but the moment they reach him, time speeds up brutally fast. It’s a flurry, and he misjudges, stepping left when he should have gone right, and one hand reaches his chest while a sharp pain goes through his arm, outstretched as it is to try to parry the blow. He’s pretty certain he’s quickly becoming surrounded, and he forgets where Daniil is, quickly backing up to try to get his back free. One of his fists hits something, he’s not sure if it’s a neck or a cheek, before another searing hot flash of pain goes through where he thinks he just got sliced across the ribs.

A hit to the face sends him backwards, and he almost stumbles. If he falls, he’s dead, and by a miracle he stays upright just long enough to see a white face descend on him, teeth bared in a grimace that ends up imprinting itself in his mind forever.

It might be because the following second, it explodes, and Artemy gets a front row seat to the sight of one of the man’s eyes bursting into a gross mess of blood, skin and flesh in front of him. It splatters across his own face, and only then does his body react to the loud crack of a gun being fired. Every muscle in his body twitches, for a second time he almost loses his balance, only regaining it in time to see the second man go down.

This time, the sound of the shot doesn’t get him, but that might also be because his ears are ringing; dimly, he sees his would-be robber fall forward, a hand going to his heart as he stutters out a wet cough. There’s blood coming out of his mouth, and he goes to the ground clenching the fabric over his heart.

The two rapid murders of his gang fellows at least makes the third one pause, knife still raised as he turns around in frightened bewilderment, and Artemy tries to gather himself enough to look around. It doesn’t work, and his eyes end up staying trained on the man who almost killed him – again – as he drops the knife and tries to run. Arms flailing, feet tripping over themselves, he isn’t fast enough, and it’s with devastating precision that Dankovsky cocks his revolver and fires the third shot.

Another spray of blood across his face, warm and heavy. Artemy blinks at the gore where an intact skull used to be, before the body that used to be a person slumps to the ground in a graceless pile. For a moment, he hears the dying breaths of the second bandit, wet gurgling sounds as he struggles his way through the last gulps of air he’ll ever take.

In front of him, Daniil is lowering the gun he’s just used to deprive three men of their lives. His face is hard, but when his eyes meet Artemy’s, they’re calm. He radiates nothing but stoic determination, from the wide, balanced placement of his feet to the way his long fingers extend into the hard metal of the gun. Of course he still carries a gun. Artemy isn’t sure why the thought never crossed his mind; bachelor Dankovsky is many things, but naïve is not one of them. He doubts there’s a man on Earth who knows the nature of human beings better.

The silence that descends is deafening, cut out only by the dull ringing of his ears, shocked to half-function by the gunshots. Artemy’s head is spinning, his heart is beating fast and hard, and he realises he’s bleeding.

A lot.

Fuck.

“Fuck,” he says, but it comes out in a wheeze, his voice thin and unstable. He goes to his knees without thinking, groaning when the impact against the ground sends searing pain through his side, and he needs to put one of his hands against the soil beneath him to stop himself from falling over.

“Artemy,” he hears, but it’s hard to focus on the concern in Daniil’s voice over the pain. It’s weird that he’s forgotten how bad it hurts to be stabbed, which is a thought so ridiculous it almost makes him laugh.

Just a few weeks, and he’s gone soft enough to be incapacitated by two mere slashes? Ridiculous.

“I do not see what’s so funny,” says Dankovsky, his voice suddenly very close. Artemy just groans in response, then curses when indelicate fingers press against his side.

“Boolesh, stop!” He shouts without thinking, because it feels like the man has just pressed gloved fingers into him, and his hands move on their own accord to shove him to the ground. “Sobolon boozarlakhaa, tenegh—”

“I’m aware you’re a stubborn man, but biting the hand attempting to heal is remarkably stupid, Burakh,” Daniil snaps at him. The hands, when they return, are nonetheless softer this time around. Artemy just groans again, a pained moan escaping him despite his best attempts to keep it down. “Stay still, and let me see.”

It’s not easy to accept, but there is little choice to be had, and Artemy reluctantly allows Dankovsky to pull his sweater up over his ribs. Lara had made it for him, he remembers, and feels guilty about the fact it’s probably ruined now. Not too keen about telling her the reason, Artemy wants to cry over the thought of how he’s going to explain not wearing it anymore.

Maybe he could fix it. His sewing skills aren’t perfect, but they made do during the plague, did they not? He can blame his clumsiness, and maybe she’ll never have to find out.

“Well, you’re not dying,” Daniil sighs at the sight of the wound. He’s dragged a thumb over it, not roughly, but the coarse leather against the split-open skin still makes Artemy bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from crying out. If he didn’t know better, which he does, he’d say it sounded like a sigh of relief. “Thank the heavens. We need to get you somewhere you can lie down, so I can stitch it.”

“I can do it myself,” Artemy hisses. In the silence that follows, he doesn’t need to open his eyes to know Dankovsky is looking at him with great disapproval.

“Absolutely not.” There’s no argument to be had, apparently, which makes him bristle. “You’re a good surgeon, Artemy, but the world is no longer ending. You’re getting this done properly.”

“I can do it myself,” he insists through gritted teeth. When he forces his eyes open to look Daniil in the eye, the man looks like he’s about to slap him. Which he might be, honestly, Artemy can hardly say he blames him.

Look, he can recognise that he’s being ridiculous, but it doesn’t mean he’s going to stop. He’s not dying, which means he’s not desperate, which means he has no need for Daniil Dankovsky to take him anywhere and patch him up. The Lair isn’t far away, and it’s still stocked, because Artemy is in equal need of a storage room and a place to hide when he feels like he doesn’t deserve to be in the vicinity of people, and he’s become intimately familiar with the process of sewing his own wounds back up. He’ll be fine.

“You will absolutely not be fine, Vorakh,” Daniil tells him, looking like he’s just bitten into a rotten apple. “What is wrong with you?”

“My company, mostly,” Artemy tells him.

Dankovsky looks so angry he almost laughs again. But he doesn’t speak, simply gets to his feet, and just as Artemy thinks he’s about to be blessed with solitude, a pair of hands around his uninjured arm are trying to pull him to his feet.

“I’m going to treat you as a man delirious from pain,” he gets told curtly, “because the other option is that you’ve lost so much blood from somewhere it’s taken your mind with you, and that isn’t a thought I’m particularly happy to entertain at the moment.”

He could argue. He could certainly resist. Daniil, for as vigorous as the attempt is, isn’t strong enough to make Artemy do anything against his will, and if he wanted to he could just stay on his ass until the man gives up and leaves.

But he’s a grown man, and he’s acting like a child, which might be satisfying but objectively not very smart under the circumstances. Life threatening or no, he would actually quite like not having open wounds, and Daniil’s plan is objectively much better than his own.

Maybe he has actually lost his mind from the pain, he thinks, before immediately walking it back in annoyance. He’s not insane, or delirious. He just really, really, does not like bachelor Dankovsky.

“Fine,” he gets out through gritted teeth, pointedly pulling on Daniil’s hand as he slowly stands up. It makes the man sway a little bit, which is as satisfying as it is childish, but he at least doesn’t mention it. “The Lair. It has what we need.”

“Fine,” Daniil bites out, and they start making their way over in silence.

It isn’t fast, because Artemy’s still in a considerable amount of pain, limping his way forward by Daniil’s side, but neither of them mention it. He’s surprised, although he doesn’t really know how to explain why.

Beside him, the bachelor just matches Artemy’s slow pace. He’s not even reaching out to attempt to support him, which is lucky, because Artemy might just snarl if he did. Not that there’s much he’d even be able to do; he’s pretty certain the man would snap in half like the twig he is if he tried to take on any noticeable amount of his body weight.

“Is it unlocked?” Daniil eventually asks, once the looming building of the Factory begins to come up on them. Artemy, currently struggling to make it up the slight hill of the train tracks, takes a second to answer.

“No,” he hisses between his teeth, head dizzy from pain. Maybe he should’ve just allowed Dankovsky to help him back in the yard, at least asked if he’s got any morphine on him, but then that would have looked a lot like giving in, wouldn’t it? And he can’t have that. “I got the key. Just… Give me a moment.”

Not saying what’s clearly on his mind, which must be some version of ‘you look like shit and should let me be in charge’, Dankovsky just purses his lips and waits while Artemy takes a moment to hunch over and catch his breath.

It takes a few seconds, and some laboured breathing where he’s struggling not to do something embarrassing like moan, but he eventually manages to fish the key out of his pocket and thrust it in Dankovsky’s general direction.

He moves ahead, getting the large steel doors unlocked and shoved open while Artemy struggles the final few steps to the building. It’s almost cute, the way the man has to shove his whole body weight against the metal to get it to budge, which Artemy immediately catches as a wildly inappropriate and nonsensical thought to have.

He’s in a lot of pain. Not only his ribs, but his arm, and the spots on his face where he’s no doubt going to be swollen and bruised in the morning are starting to ache in time with the heavy beating of his heart. Fuck, how is he going to explain that to the children?

‘I fell over and hit my face on the ground’ might be enough for Murky, who has the social awareness of… Well, of a semi-feral child, but Sticky is neither inattentive nor stupid, and far too old for easy lies anyway.

There might be no other choice than to tell him the truth, which is a thought that doesn’t exactly thrill him, but even in this state he realises he doesn’t really have the mental energy to think about it right now.

Because he has stairs to get down, and if he wasn’t at least hardened enough for this, the thought could have made him cry.

“Can I help?” Daniil asks behind him, having gotten the door closed, and at least he phrased it in the least condescending way he could have. The very idea is still enough for Artemy to be able to muster then willpower to just make himself go forward, so maybe it ended up being a helpful question after all.

Once downstairs, he stumbles his way to his own exam table half-blindly, barely thinking before laying down on it. It’s one of the most relieving moments of his life, getting on his back on top of the cold stone slab and finally taking some of the pressure off the muscles around his injured side.

He goes down with a groan, but the relief of relaxation is blissful enough to make him not think of it. For a moment he just breathes, the lingering aches slowly drumming through him as his heart begins to slow down.

His side is covered in blood, most of it beginning to dry into a sticky mess, the wool fibres of his sweater sticking to his skin in a way that pulls and itches. The arm is bad, but not as, and for a moment he thanks Mother that neither of the stabs were puncturing.

To his side, he realises, Dankovsky is going through his bag. “If you need anything, it’s in the cupboard,” Artemy says, surprised how close to a slur his words are.

“Do you have any morphine?” Daniil asks, already moving. “I’m not carrying any on me, obviously.”

“How is that obvious?” It doesn’t seem it to him, and he doesn’t bother answering the question, because Daniil has found the ampoules before he could get to it.

He gets an odd look in response. “I would have offered it.”

Well, he doesn’t know how to reply to that. His ears burn a little, which he isn’t happy about, so instead he moves on. “Well, it’s there now. Would you…?”

“I need your shirt off,” Dankovsky tells him. And then he steps forward, like he’s going to help with the removal, and Artemy feels himself bristle.

“I can manage,” he tells him, not exactly snapping but certainly not happy. The man next to him lets out a frustrated sigh.

“You just got stabbed,” he says, throwing his hands up. “And yet you refuse any help! If you weren’t already suffering blood loss, Vorakh, I could slap you for your stubbornness!”

“I’d like to see you try,” Artemy tells him, forcing his body into a sitting position before struggling his way out of the sweater. It pulls on the edges of his wounds, and he tries not to wince. It’s a losing battle, and the smug look on Dankovsky’s face tells him as much. “If you’re going to talk to me that way, I’ll kick you out. Amaa tat, khonzohon.”

“I’ll give you your own words back,” Dankovsky tells him, bending down to carefully touch the skin around the rib cut. Artemy would like to bristle, but then they’d get nothing done, so he lets himself quietly stew instead. “Is there water—”

“Washbasin,” he curtly replies. The man nods once and then heads over, returning with a bowl of water and some of the washrags. Artemy lets himself lay back down, cursing the way his head spins from the pain shooting through him at the motions. “That morphine, bachelor…”

“Oh,” Daniil says, halfway through soaking the rags, like he forgot himself. “I’m sorry, of course, I— Here.”

Artemy wonders how the hell he could forget, and if he might be the worst doctor he’s ever met, but knows not to say that out loud. At least now, Daniil is focused; he produces a needle from his bag, quickly wiped down with some medical alcohol, and when he hears the ampoule get snapped open, Artemy closes his eyes. Administering a needle is different from being on the receiving end, and he’d like not to watch the procedure.

It feels odd, laying there, feeling Dankovsky work on him. He must have taken his gloves off, for once, because the fingers that wrap a tourniquet around his arms are soft and cool. It doesn’t take long, a gentle prodding around the veins in his arms, and there’s not so much as a warning before the sharp, precise sting of the needle pushes into his skin.

At least it’s a productive pain, he knows, and quick to boot; the second the tourniquet is loosened, Artemy can feel the familiar, numb warmth spread through his body. It’s no wonder Saburova has ended up where she has — a thought he has every time he’s experienced it, because in moments, the increasingly excruciating pain that’s been occupying his mind for the past half hour or so simply stops mattering to him.

It’s odd that he can tell it’s still there. Pinpoint it, in fact: In his side, his arm, his face, and his knuckles. That last one, he hadn’t even noticed until now, but he suddenly realises how bad his hands hurt. Bruised, no doubt, from that one sizeable punch he landed. He really didn’t do well in that fight, did he?

As he raises his right arm to look his knuckles over, it’s pleasantly heavy. He feels softer around the edges, like he’s melting a little bit, the pain not mattering as much as the sensation of slowly merging into the table under him.

“Better?” Daniil asks beside him, putting the needle away onto a side table. When did he find the chair Artemy usually sits on when he works patients at this table?

Patients. He huffs out a laugh. The only patients he’s had in here are Sticky and Murky — some people had come during the plague, yes, but by the time he’d been able to see them, him and Rubin were already working out of Isidor’s house.

“I assume that’s a yes.”

Daniil has taken his coat off, which is a stroke of luck. If he’d tried to do stitches with it on… Well, Artemy isn’t stupid enough to think he’d still win a fight, not in this state, but he’d still give it a try. If the man insists on doing this, he should at least be able to move around properly.

The white sleeves of his shirt have been folded up, and Artemy realises this is the most he’s ever seen of their bachelor. Skin-wise, at least. His lower arms, pale from a lack of sunlight Artemy isn’t the least surprised by, turn into his hands via thin wrists. He has long fingers, clean nails, a surprising little collection of scars on them. Artemy wants to ask how he got them as he watches those fingers lay out a small collection on the little side table. Needle, thread, scissors, bandages, all in a neat line on the table.

By the time he moves back to the wash bowl, Artemy can’t look away from those hands. They stand out against the red of his waistcoat, the dark fabric of his trousers – he’s going to struggle once winter arrives, if he’s still planning to dress for city weather. Maybe he could ask around for some spare clothes, although the only person he knows who might be Dankovsky’s size is Grief, and… Well, he doesn’t exactly think their Bachelor of Medicine would agree with his fashion sense.

As he wrings a wet cloth out, the water runs over his hands, leaving little droplets behind. He looks so clean, Artemy thinks. Does he wash his hands so often, or is he just naturally like that? He’d believe that dirt shies away from Dankovsky, honestly. He’s not much of an earthen person.

“This might sting,” Daniil tells him, and it takes Artemy a moment to realise what he’s talking about. Right. He’s been stabbed.

“It’s okay,” he mumbles, tongue tripping over even just those two words. “I can handle it.”

“I know you can,” the other man sighs back at him. “Just being courteous.”

“Impeccable bedside manner,” Artemy tells him, then snorts at himself. Dankovsky doesn’t respond, just begins running the wet cloth over his skin.

It doesn’t hurt, actually. Or at least, if it does, it doesn’t bother him. Artemy knows the morphine is dulling his senses, but if there’s ever a time not to resist a good thing, this is it. He lets Daniil slowly clean the mess of blood off of him while looking up at the ceiling, the stained grey concrete bringing out odd memories in his mind.

“I had no idea my father had this place,” he says, as Dankovsky changes the cloths out. “Not until Vlad the Younger gave me the key.”

“Didn’t they set it up while you were away? That would explain why you didn’t know.”

Humming in response, because that would make sense, Artemy thinks about it. Yes, he’s pretty sure that’s how it happened, but he still has no idea why. “I just don’t understand what he used this place for. Or, I do, of course, but… I don’t understand why he needed a second laboratory. He had one in Town.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned of men,” Daniil sighs, carefully wiping the rag over the wound proper. It stings a little, but it’s not hard to stay still. Artemy still feels like he’s melting. “It’s that none of us truly understand our fathers.”

“What was yours like?” Artemy asks, looking over at the man. He’s frowning as he works, focused on the task at hand. For a moment he feels guilty, but he can’t tell if the small talk is distracting or a good way to pass the time. “Did you know him?”

“He died when I was young.” Oh. Well, now he feels bad. “I knew him the way a small child does, which is to say, not very well. I never got the chance to know him as a person, only as a father.”

“What was he like as a father?”

“Strict. Stop moving.”

He hadn’t realised he was, but then he catches his own hand where it’s reaching out for the bandages. Artemy isn’t sure what he was doing that for, feeling his ears burn a little. Fucking morphine. “Sorry. I don’t know what I was doing.”

It looks like Dankovsky might be smiling, the faintest hint of a tug at the corner of his mouth, which makes Artemy break out into a smile of his own. “What’s funny, bachelor?”

“The children seem to have had a profound effect on you,” Daniil tells him. Artemy’s pretty sure there’s mirth in his voice, and the smile grows wider. There’s nothing funny happening, why is this man laughing? “Stay still, Artemy. I know you’re capable of it, even in this state.”

“Are you saying I’m acting like a child?” Artemy demands, still grinning, as Dankovsky reaches for the needle and thread. “I think our actions tonight have been quite grown-up, actually.”

Like magic, it only takes one attempt for the needle to be threaded. Artemy is impressed, and makes sure to say it, which earns him a headshake.

“If only I knew morphine was the key to your good humour, I would have done this a long time ago,” he says, although it’s followed up by a sigh. The sound of it, slow and heavy, makes the smile fall off of Artemy’s face. “I’m going to start the sutures. If you want this to heal properly, don’t move.”

Artemy doesn’t know how to speak the feeling in his chest, so he quietly obliges. The sutures are barely a blip on the radar, not in the least because Dankovsky makes incredibly efficient work of them.

“You’re a good doctor,” he says without thinking, because it’s true and he wants Daniil to know it. And then, “I’m glad you were with me.”

The response is flat, not hostile, and makes something unhappy turn in his stomach. “I’m flattered to know my company was at least preferable to death.”

“I know we don’t get along,” Artemy tells him. He’s trying to make it sound pointed, but he has no idea how he’s actually coming across, so that might only be in his head. “But I don’t hate you, Daniil. You’ve pissed me off a few times, but you… I could never have gotten through the plague without you. Of course you’re better than death.”

The moments of silence that follows, as two new sutures get put in, are among the longest moments of Artemy’s life. When it becomes clear there’s no answer coming, he frowns. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes, and politeness requires me to act as though I didn’t,” Daniil informs him, which doesn’t make any sense. Artemy might not have the best grasp of reality, but even in this state, he can recognise an attempted olive branch when he hands it over. Does this man just want them to remain enemies forever?

“I’m trying to be nice,” he says, getting cut off before he can continue.

“In vino veritas, yes, I’m sure.” It’s another sigh, and Artemy’s frown is turning into a squint. “You should stop talking, Vorakh.”

“You know what my name is.” There’s something going on, and he needs to figure out what it is. In his head, the outline of a new mindmap is appearing; it’s all jumbled, though, unrelated thoughts and images with no clear connections. They must be there, though, because Artemy can feel the threads tying them together in the air. Invisible, almost like Lines, if only he can make out how it all goes together. “I’m happy you’re here, Daniil.”

“That is blatantly not true,” Daniil says bluntly, then shakes his head. “You’re right. I’m being rude. But I don’t appreciate being lied to, even like this, and while I can forgive under the circumstances, I advise you to stop speaking.”

“I’m not lying.” Being incapacitated like this is infuriating, because what he’d like to do is sit up and force them into eye contact, but doing that would be stupid for multiple reasons. Instead, all he can do is frown at a pair of eyes that are resolutely staying fixed on his ribs. “Daniil. I’m not lying to you.”

When that doesn’t get a response, other than a steeled jaw and a set mouth, Artemy reaches out for his arm, stitches be damned. It makes the man frown. “Stay—”

“You’re calling me a liar, and I don’t appreciate it,” Artemy interrupts him. Since no more suturing seems to be happening, he pushes himself up onto his free elbow to better be able to frown at the man. “Are you hearing what I’m saying?”

“I’m hearing the ramblings of a man under the influence of morphine.” Putting the needle down, Dankovsky finally looks up at him. His eyes are tired and annoyed, and it makes Artemy want to… He’s not sure. He’s having a hard time fully organising his thoughts, but he’s not so out of it he’s unable to think at all.

“It wasn’t that much morphine, and you know it. You were the one who gave it to me.” Daniil rolls his eyes, which is such a blatant provocation Artemy briefly wonders if he’s gunning for a fight again.

“You’re being ridiculous. I’m done with your ribs. Lie down or stay sitting, I don’t care, but stay still so we can get this done.”

“No.” He’s not having this. The cut on his arm is bad, but not so bad it can’t wait in favour of this conversation. “I’m tired of fighting you every step of the way, oynon. We’re talking about this.”

“Oh, you’re tired of fighting? Dicunt enim et non faciunt.” Leaning back enough to cross his arms over his chest, Daniil looks at him with a cold face. “Every time you speak to me, it’s to levy an accusation. I’m not saying I have a deep desire to be friends, but I will not sit here and listen to you distort reality in such a way.”

That— Unhappily, Artemy realises, that isn’t untrue. He would not personally phrase it as antagonistically, but it’s not like their many conversations tend to go well. When they’ve talked about specifics, concrete issues which need to be solved? Sometimes, they have been productive. Just as often not, but he’s glaringly aware that any non-pressing issue between them has mostly resulted in increasingly bad blood.

But he doesn’t hate the man.

“Meanwhile, it seems to me you’ve made it your personal mission to make our every interaction centre around how everything I believe in is nonsense,” Artemy retorts. It has the expected effect, which is that Dankovsky begins to pull back, but he still has a hold on the man’s arm and he’s not above using it to keep him in place. “Stay still, oynon,” he snaps, a weird role reversal. “We’re resolving this.”

“What is there to resolve?” Dankovsky demands, staying where he is despite his visible unhappiness about it. “You’ve not quite hated me since the moment you saw me, but you clearly do now, and since neither of us is particularly keen on changing who we are for the other, that is unlikely to change anytime soon.”

“What makes you think I hate you?” Equally as demanding, Artemy pushes himself up into a sitting position, legs going over the edge of the table. It makes him look down on Daniil, and he isn’t sure if it’s just the change in position or that he’s struck a nerve, but he looks angrier than before.

They don’t get far from there, though, because the cut on his arm starts bleeding again from the movement, and Artemy quickly lifts it to the ceiling with a curse.

Ever the practical man, Dankovsky doesn’t wait to act, standing up with bandages in hand in no time, pulling Artemy’s arm back down to quickly wrap the fabric around the injury in a tight bind. “This is why I told you to stay still,” he mutters under his breath. All Artemy wants to do is roll his eyes, if the slight pain from the wound wasn’t starting to come in.

It’s still incredibly easy to ignore, given the way his whole body still feels relaxed, and in the back of his mind he finds himself grateful for whatever low dosage Daniil had administered to him. It gives him enough mental wherewithal to be able to enforce this conversation, if nothing else.

“Daniil,” he says, not expecting to be snapped at.

“Since when are we on a first name basis, Burakh?”

And that’s just dumb. It’s all he can do not to look to the skies, but the feeling apparently translates anyway. He can feel the annoyance radiate off of Dankovsky, and it makes him want to prod him. Ignoring that impulse, he settles for a more diplomatic approach.

“I’m sorry for lecturing you,” he says, trying to sound earnest. With Daniil standing, their eyes are even, and it makes it easy to find his gaze. “It has been childish of me.”

“We all have made mistakes,” Daniil snaps at him, letting go of Artemy’s arm to lean both his hands on the table. It boxes him in, forces them almost uncomfortably close, faces so close he can almost feel the other man’s breath on his skin. Almost. “I’m not denying that. But having them held over me, as though you are an innocent and I a monster, is unbelievably unfair. You ask why I think you hate me? Because you seem to revel in tormenting me with my mistakes when, as far as I remember, you were a vital component in several of them.”

“I didn’t make you give up on Patches,” Artemy says, immediately wanting to kick himself. Is that not exactly what Daniil is talking about?

“That’s what I mean!” Yes, is the answer, and the hands getting thrown up puts enough space between them to visibly communicate how much that was the wrong thing to say. “I make one mistake, in the middle of an incredibly stressful situation, and you hold onto it—”

“I’m sorry,” he grits out between his teeth. He wants to shout back, but he’s earned this, and it won’t help. “That was stupid of me to say.”

“Oh, the train’s finally pulling into the station, is it?” Putting his hands over his face for a moment, his bachelor groans into the palms of his hands. “For two weeks, Artemy, I gave this town everything I had. Running from disaster to disaster, never being given time to think, because every time I tried to do the right thing there were people fighting me on it. The Kains, the Saburovs, your people, every single one of them consistently refused to listen to reason in favour of this petty squabbling, as though your small town drama was worth more than the lives I was trying to save. And then,” he says, incredulously spreading his arms out, a wild look on his face, “once it’s all done, and I fail, bested by a man who frankly had no business being able to figure out what you did, do what you did, you hold those failures over my head as though I made them intentionally! Oh, how I thought we could at least understand each other, because out of everyone in this place, you were the only one to come close to being able to know what it was like, but instead this is what I get? Scorn? And then you ask why I think you hate me, when you have shown me nothing but disdain unless there was something I was able to provide for you!”

It’s practically a monologue, Daniil ranting at him with wild eyes and anger in his voice, but Artemy can’t find it in himself to interrupt. There’s anger brewing, because some of the things he’s labelling as mistakes, Artemy would classify as callousness. But there’s something raw to the edges of his words, and maybe it’s the morphine still putting him off-balance, but Artemy finds it in himself to remain calm.

“People listened to you,” he says, trying to remain even.

The immediate response is a scoff, hands put on hips under a shaking head. “Oh, they listened to me?” Daniil laughs humourlessly. “Where was that listening when I was trying to enact a quarantine? Where were those keen ears when I wanted to open the Termitary and get to the people inside? Where, oh where, when Vlad Olgimsky wanted to knowingly infect women to see whether morphine works against pain, and I had to take on the burden for them? Where the fuck were the people who listened to me then, Burakh?”

Chewing on the inside of his lip, Artemy doesn’t know what to say.

He’s not a single-minded person. Certainly not a self-centered one, if he gets to say so himself; he cannot remember a single moment throughout those twelve days when his mind was fully on his own well-being, other than his increasingly desperate attempts to keep himself physically alive.

It isn’t that he’s coming to the realisation that he’s been horribly selfish, or that he hasn’t cared, but maybe that he’s been… Missing out on a larger picture, where their bachelor is concerned. That thought is bad enough, and he feels bad, but he isn’t sure how to walk it back in retrospect.

“And in the middle of it, there’s you,” Daniil continues, seemingly happy to continue ranting without outside input. “There was a conversation we had when you forgot what antibodies were. You once told me we needed to find a minotaur to cure this thing, and you decided that uninformed cannibalism was an appropriate healing measure to take in the middle of an ongoing plague — which, need I remind you, resulted in a fucking black market of human concoctions streaming out of the Termitary, lest we forget that little sidestep — and still, still…”

Watching him now, furious and babbling and starting to pace on the spot, but not moving away, Artemy is struck by the sheer amount of determination which exists within this man. It’s a little awe-inspiring, if not intimidating, to be faced with it, and maybe it’s the morphine, but he can’t stop looking at Daniil’s hands.

“I’m sorry,” he says, surprised by how much he means it. “I didn’t realise… I’m sorry.”

“You can’t just apologise and make this right.” Pinching the bridge of his nose, Dankovsky groans into the air, then stomps his foot like a child. Turning around on his heels and then back again, he looks at Artemy with a face full of anger, frustration, and something else he’s struggling to make out. “You can’t just apologise! That’s not what this is!”

“Then what is it?” Artemy feels very calm. Oddly calm. He can’t say why, because by all logic he shouldn’t be, but as he leans forward with his elbows on his knees, he’s not worried at all. Eyes now stuck on the edges of Daniil’s face, he traces the outline of his jaw, the edges of his hair, the slight piece of his neck he can see over his cravat. “I haven’t been able to get you out of my head since the moment I saw you, Dankovsky, so if you could tell me how the fuck we can settle whatever it is that’s wrong between us, I would appreciate it.”

For a few moments, Daniil blinks at him. “You— What?”

Artemy doesn’t know how to answer that. Fuck, he thinks, and sighs. He has no idea what he’s doing. “What was it you said? When we met?”

He’s frowning at Artemy now. “What do you mean? Prison?”

“No, not that.” Sighing again, he tries to remember the wording. “That the right and left hands had both reached for the head?”

“Realised they were two halves of the same whole.” He says it, but quietly, like he’s ashamed of his own words. “What’s your point, Burakh?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly, shaking his head. The silence lingers again. Artemy has a growing sense of dread, a feeling like he’s missing something vital. There’s a large, empty space in the middle of the mindmap, and he just knows it isn’t mere coincidence. There’s something he’s not seeing, and he can’t for the life of him figure out what it is.

“You don’t know,” bachelor Dankovsky eventually says. He sounds tired and defeated, looking over before gesturing at Artemy’s arm with a tired hand. “You’re bleeding again. Let me finish your sutures.”

Looking down, he realises he is. Not much, just two small, red spots on the outside of the bandage, but it stands out in sharp contrast against the white of the gauze. It feels odd to be wrapped up with proper stuff, and not torn-up pieces of discarded bedlinen. The luxuries of peace time.

Daniil is coming closer again, pulling the side table over before reaching for Artemy’s arm, but that’s not going to happen. Artemy can’t say why, but he knows he cannot let them go back to what they were doing. Fucking morphine. He realises he hates the stuff, and that if this happens again, he might rather just live with the pain than suffer this kind of dulling to his senses.

“Daniil,” he says, reaching out, and their hands end up brushing before he wraps his around one of those slim wrists. Then he doesn’t know what to say, and they end up awkwardly looking at each other, searching the other’s face for… Something. “Daniil.”

“Since when are we on a first name basis?” The question is repeated, but it feels like it’s a different one from before. It’s impossible for him to say why, what it depends on and what it means, but he knows with every part of his being that things are irrevocably changed between them.

“I don’t know,” he tells Daniil honestly, considering how far back it’s been Daniil in his internal monologue. Not always, at least he doesn’t think so, but for the life of him he can’t remember when, exactly, the change occurred.

Those sharp, determined eyes aren’t leaving his for a moment. “Then what?”

That’s another good question. How is he so calm? “I don’t know,” he repeats, expecting some kind of reaction.

It doesn’t come. Instead, Daniil remains where he is, which is close, the hand not being held still by Artemy resting against his skin. The fingers, slim, cool, nimble and precise, feel like a burn and a balm at the same time. A self-healing wound.

“You infuriate me, sometimes,” Daniil sighs. He sounds frustrated, but not angry, and while Artemy knows what he’d like to do, he needs this to come from Dankovsky. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to risk things blowing up in his face, good old-fashioned cowardice rearing its head, or maybe it’s from something more considerate, but he doesn’t move.

His eyes stay on Daniil’s, firm and unwavering, and he lets his hold on his wrist tighten ever so slightly. Yes, he thinks, admonishing himself for being such a bold idiot. That’s what’s missing, and it’s been staring him in the face all along, like the Urdugh and Oyun’s betrayal. Another missing piece truly only he could not see.

“And what do you want?” He asks. Vaguely, he’s aware of his own heart beating. In his version of the story, they’d both be clutching the chest.

“Artemy,” Daniil says, and it sounds like a warning. He doesn’t take the bait, just stays where he is, watching his bachelor struggle with whatever is happening inside his mind on his own. It’s not something Artemy can help him with, so he doesn’t move, remains an observer to whatever is happening behind those eyes.

A few strands of hair have fallen out in front of them. Loosened in his ranting, no doubt, the very ends curl in on themselves in a way that seems too soft. How has he never noticed that before?

“You’re possibly the most brilliant man I have ever met,” he speaks into the heavy silence between them. “I don’t think I’ve seen it until now.”

“Flattery.” It’s said plainly, so unlike the normal eloquence of this man, flat and blunt and still without a sharp edge. He would smile, if his insides weren’t full of nerves squirming like worms in his stomach. Instead he keeps his jaw squared and his eyes still, regardless of how intense it makes him look.

When Daniil moves forward, Artemy is ready, hands already moving to pull him in by the back of his head and his waist. When their mouths meet, he has a groan ready to go, let out against soft lips he’s already trying to coax open.

The resulting response is a hand curled into the belt loops on his trousers while the other gets an awkward hold on his shoulder, and oh, right, he’s still not wearing a shirt. This means that when he’s pulling Dankovsky closer, he feels the fabric of his clothes against his bare skin, and the soft silk and cotton sliding over him makes another groan spill from his lips straight into Daniil’s mouth.

It’s far too much of a reaction after only a few seconds, but there’s electricity dancing across his lips and where his tongue meets Daniil’s, hot and insistent and desperate, and he can’t make himself dial it down. He wants to get closer, and it feels like he’s feasting on his partner, trying to drink him in deeper by turning his head to the other side and making their noses brush against each other’s.

The hand on his shoulder has moved to being draped around his neck, and Artemy mirrors it by running both his hands around Dankovsky’s waist, one staying on the small of his back to make him arch his whole body into Artemy’s while the other holds him in place by the dip between his shoulder blades. It presses them together from their hips up to where their lips lock together, and it’s with a sense of drunkenness he realises he can strain his thighs and keep Daniil locked in place between his legs.

And oh, oh, once that thought hits, his whole brain spins out of control. The fingers in his hair scrape blunt nails across his scalp, sending shivers of the most gorgeous kind down his spine. “Üzesgelentei,” he mutters into Daniil’s mouth, not thinking about what he’s doing, and when he gets a low, deep noise in return, finds himself simply egged on. “Ta miniikh, tiimel daa—”

“Artemy,” Daniil says into his mouth, moans his name against his tongue, and how is he supposed to deal with that?

He can’t, is the simple answer, but he has to somehow, so on its own accord the hand on the small of Dankovsky’s back moves down to his ass to pull him in. As he does, he wraps one of his legs around the back of Daniil’s thighs, pressing them together, and for a moment he feels his cock brush up against an unmistakable hardness.

He promptly loses his mind, because this is Daniil, Daniil Dankovsky, under his hands and hot against his bare skin and the level of insanity he’s driven Artemy to over the last few weeks is only just settling in. “Daniil,” he mumbles back, wet from where he’s still trying to get more from their increasingly feverish kisses, “Daniil, noukherne, khөөrkhen, fuck, come here—”

“I’m here,” he groans back, tugging on Artemy’s hair, fingers laced through his curls like it’s a handle to guide his head to the side with, “you have me, damn it, Burakh, I can’t believe you.”

Pulling his hand back up, tugging Daniil’s shirt out of the lining of his trousers to be able to run it over soft skin, Artemy laughs a little. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He teases, nipping at Daniil’s lower lip as his hand hungrily explore the skin of Dankovsky’s chest. “What’s that supposed to mean, bachelor?”

“You’re insufferable,” Daniil laments, and Artemy breaks away from their kiss to latch his mouth onto the sliver of skin visible above his cravat, right where his pulse is closest to the surface. It’s soft and delicate, like so much of him, but he knows it isn’t true; his bachelor is strong, and resilient, and so stubborn death itself couldn’t win over him. And he’s moaning through parted lips because Artemy bites down on the skin below his jaw, still covered in blood from where Daniil had shot three people to protect him.

“You don’t seem to mind,” Artemy tells him honestly, moving his mouth up to Dankovsky’s ear. The hand in his hair tugs at it again, and he ends up groaning around Daniil’s earlobe, relishing the shiver it sends through his whole body.

“I don’t.” It’s a gasp, followed by Daniil leaning back to be able to slot their mouths together again. Artemy isn’t complaining, going eagerly where his partner leads him, parting his lips to let his tongue back into his mouth. “I truly don’t, but—”

No, “no, no, no,” he hurriedly mumbles, because nothing good can come after a ‘but’ in this situation. “Shudker, Daniil—”

“Morphine,” Dankovsky groans, like he’s lamenting again, and Artemy feels his following groan resound from his whole body. “In vino—”

“Trust me,” Artemy says. He might be laughing it if he wasn’t desperately wanting to put a stop to where Daniil is going with this, “that has nothing to do with any of this.”

“You may have the luxury to know that, but I don’t.” Despite his words, Daniil isn’t stopping Artemy from reaching up to run a thumb over one of his nipples, and if he’s truly planning to make this end after the noise he makes, he’s a cruel man. “I’m not going to—”

“If I told you that you’ve been on my mind since the second I laid my eyes on you,” Artemy tries, throwing caution and dignity out of the window in one fell swoop, “would that ease your mind?”

He gets a small laugh, which feels like a victory until it’s followed by a headshake. “Maybe that I’m not alone in being a fool thinking with the wrong parts of my body,” and how can he say that and still want Artemy to just pull back? They’re both morons. “But ethics still demand—”

“Fuck ethics,” Artemy tells him, feeling it with every part of his body. Daniil is unmistakably pulling back, mentally if not physically, so he does the same and ends up catching his eye. “Let me take you to bed, Daniil. I promise I’ll show you—”

“If what you’re saying is true,” Daniil tells him, and damn him for being able to stay collected in this moment. Artemy could kill him. “You’ll still desire me in the morning, and we can well resume this then.”

He feels like a teenager when the words make him bury his face in Daniil’s neck with an unhappy whine. Above him, Daniil is laughing. Despite his pride, he can’t really fault him, but it still stings, and he gently pinches his side in retaliation.

“Out of all the times to remember your Hippocratic Oath,” he grumbles, and knows he deserves the next bout of laughter, at least.

“I still haven’t forgotten you still need stitches,” Daniil reminds him. Artemy feels like he’s regressing into a child, because he’s horribly close to saying something along the lines of I don’t want to, which is what Murky would do.

So he keeps that to himself, but it doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it.

However, it’s hard to argue the laws of the human body; once the excitement has left him, like the adrenaline had, Artemy remembers it’s likely the small hours now, and so far tonight he’s been chased, stabbed and punched twice, had morphine injected into his veins, and experienced the stupidest but potentially earth-shattering revelation he’s had to go through in weeks.

He’s tired.

So he doesn’t fight when Daniil pulls back, allows him to unwrap the now considerably more bloody bandage around his arm, and as he slowly has his own blood cleaned off of him, seven neat stitches put in to keep his skin in place, and finally gets his chest and arm re-wrapped in clean, fresh bandages, the level of fatigue he’s under starts making itself known. By the time they’re done, and Daniil is stubbornly forcing him to sit still so that he can wipe the remaining blood off his face and neck, he’s struggling to stay awake.

Maybe putting a pause on things was a good idea, because if he had ended up falling asleep in the middle of taking Daniil to bed, he believe neither of them would ever have let it go.

But as Dankovsky cleans up his things, placing needles and thread back into his bag and tossing the broken ampoule and ruined bandages into the bin Artemy keeps under his workbench, there’s a lingering, nagging thought on the back of his mind.

“Daniil,” he says quietly, making the other man look over at him from where he’s working, “stay the night with me.”

The look on Daniil’s face immediately speaks a thousand words, and Artemy is shaking his head before he even speaks. “Arte—”

“Not like that. I promise.” Getting to his feet, and then feeling them sting from pins and needles, he ends up swaying on the spot for a moment. It takes half a second for Daniil to be there, hands placed on his sides to help him keep the balance, and it’s all Artemy can do to stop himself from attempting to relight their fervent kissing. It’s hard to resist, when his bachelor is looking up at him with equal parts concern and annoyance, standing so close, now that he knows— “For sleep,” he makes himself say, or he’ll get off track. And then Daniil will absolutely not stay, on principle if nothing else. “I heard you, and I accept, although I’m not… I promise. I just want you to stay.”

Daniil is blinking at him. His face is hard to read. “You want me to stay?” Voice coming out soft, Artemy sucks on his bottom lip for a moment as he tries to gauge the right way to move forward with this. Eyes flicker to his mouth, and he almost breaks into a smile.

“Yes,” he says instead, stepping closer. He’s looking down at Daniil now, and their proximity makes the man have to lean his head back to meet his gaze, so he keeps his voice as soft and low as he can. “I want you to stay with me, bachelor Dankovsky. For the night, if not…” He trails off, too much of a coward to continue.

“You’re making it sound like you’re prepositioning me again, Vorakh,” Daniil warns him, but it’s with a slow lick of his lips that betray him slightly. Not stopping the smile now, Artemy leans down to brush their foreheads together.

“I won’t say I’m not,” he teases, softly taking Daniil’s chin between his thumb and forefinger to tilt his head up further. It lets him speak against his mouth, not quite in a kiss, but close enough to make the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “But right now I’m only asking you to fall asleep with me. If you want to.”

“If I’m honest,” Daniil sighs, one of his hands coming up to Artemy’s neck, “I believe I want more than that. But if the offer is on the table, I’m not going to turn it down.”

The kiss is inevitable, and by stark contrast, it stays quite chaste. Daniil tastes like smoke and fish, and Artemy wants to map it out until it becomes one of his core flavours, like kashk or milk, forever in his bank of memories as instinctual as the smell of Swevery on the steppe.

“Then,” he says, “come to bed with me,” and when Daniil doesn’t argue, Artemy takes his hand and pulls him to the other room.

It’s a shame he doesn’t have more to offer, knowing the kind of sleeping arrangement his bachelor has in the Stillwater, but the thing he’s learned is that even the worst mattress in the world feels like it’s full of duck down when you’re exhausted. Besides, it really isn’t large enough for two people, so he ends up pulling Daniil down on top of him once he’s gotten his boots off and Daniil has stripped out of his vest and pulled his belt off.

The rest of their clothes stay on, and Dankovsky is careful to rest on his uninjured half, but it feels fitting that when they finally end up sharing a bed, they’re mostly clothed.

His wounds still hurt, but it’s a clean pain, and the lingering morphine still dulls the worst of it; he mostly just feels heavy, and not only because there’s the weight of another man on top of him. That is just a pleasant aside, like a blanket filled with soft stone, pinning him in place and grounding him even when his head starts to spin from the chemical cocktail his body’s been in all night.

“Tomorrow,” he breathes into the top of Daniil’s head, running one of his hands down his spine under the well-worn, heavy quilt they’re under, “I will show you I mean it, bachelor.”

“Mean what?” Daniil mumbles into his neck, pressing a lazy kiss to the skin there.

That I want you to be mine, he thinks, but can’t find the courage to say. He’s not pressed for an answer, and as he closes his eyes, it’s easy to drift away to a river of thoughts about the future.

It might not be so difficult to live through, after all.