Archive of Our Own

Artemy takes his time as he dresses. Careful attention to every button, every fastening, every roll of the sleeves. Hands and forearms bared in show of openness, covered everywhere else in the clothing of his profession, donned with all the solemnity it deserves. Deliberate, like a knight armoring himself for battle.

Last of all, he drapes the leather smock over his head, buckling it in back as always. He doesn’t wear it often these days, particularly not in the heat of summer, but today the extra heft of it is comforting: the weight of authority settling over him. The reminder, assumed as it sometimes still feels, of the position he has in this town—deserved or not, wanted or not. Someone to be listened to.

Perhaps it will give him the strength for what he has to do.

The smell of coffee wafts up as he makes his way downstairs, steps heavier as if that authority has already settled into his bones. As if pretending that it has will make it easier to bear.

Daniil is at the counter when he turns into the kitchen, still in his light sleep shirt and pants, bleary eyes peering at Artemy over the top of his mug. He’s up earlier than usual today, especially given how late he stayed up last night with the samples they’ve been analyzing, drawn from sleep as much by the early-rising summer sun as by the agitation they’ve been trading between them for the last several days. He stirred awake as soon as Artemy did, grim whispered suspicions on his lips instead of their usual good morning kiss, and traipsed downstairs to make the coffee while Artemy dressed. Now he greets Artemy with a waved hand towards the second mug steaming on the counter.

“Thank you, kheerkhen,” Artemy murmurs, but when he lifts the cup to his lips, his stomach turns over and he sets it right back down. The scent, comforting and familiar on any other day, rasps at raw nerves this morning; the promise of extra energy seems only to invite jitters.

Daniil’s eyes sharpen as he watches. Lowering his own mug, he shuffles over to Artemy to slide an arm around his waist.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” he says.

Artemy isn’t sure at all, but he shakes his head, leaning into the circle of Daniil’s arm as though to brace himself on that hold alone. “You still don’t have clearance to enter the Abattoir,” he says. “Vlad has been promising me he’ll change that, but for now…”

For now, it seems, things with the Bull Enterprise are more chaotic than ever. Since Big Vlad’s death a few months ago, the workers have been scrambling, his son unprepared to manage the business with the same surety and confidence. This will be a good thing in the long run, Artemy has to believe—a chance to finally work some changes over the way things are that the father would never have allowed—but in the meantime, it manifests only as disarray.

Disarray with consequences, if he and Daniil are right.

“For now, we don’t want to ruffle any feathers,” Daniil echoes Artemy’s own words of yesterday with an ironic lilt. “I know. Investigative work only.”

Artemy rolls his eyes, though the comfort of familiarity provides some grounding for his ragged nerves. Daniil has been here less than a year, openly in town for only about six months, and already he’s proven that his ability and willingness to ruffle feathers are as intact as ever.

Still, he only ever does it with cause, and if Artemy’s investigation proves their suspicions correct, there will be more than enough cause to go around.

“If you’re not drinking that can I have it?”

Artemy huffs and turns his head, finding Sticky peering over his shoulder with eyes fixed on the coffee mug. While still not of a height with him Sticky had shot up in the last six months, turning newly fourteen with the last of the frost and acting more the teenager with every passing day.

“Have you magically turned fifteen last we met?” asks Artemy, teasing.

“That’s a stupid rule and you know it,” the boy grumbles, turning on his heel and slouching to the study.

Daniil chuckles quietly against Artemy’s chest, shaking his head no doubt in anticipation of the conversation to come. The three of them have played out this argument many times over.

Sticky reemerges with his school bag caught in one hand. “Danya was smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and vodka at my age.”

“And I still don’t recommend it,” Daniil insists, sighing and pulling away, leaning against the counter. It feels like a piece of Artemy leaves with him—he holds back the urge to grab his hand, and turns his attention instead to his son.

“Everyone else does it,” Sticky is insisting, tugging on his shoes. “Murky!” he calls, voice cracking, and there is a shuffling sound from upstairs.

Artemy huffs. “I won’t facilitate addiction before your voice properly drops, and I think that’s perfectly fair.”

Sticky shoots him a withering glare. Murky’s shuffling becomes footsteps on the stairs and she shoots into the room at full speed, Cat tucked obviously inside a bag. It’s to be one of these mornings. Despite himself, Artemy welcomes the distraction.

“Murky,” Daniil sighs, “no.”

“But she wants to come with me!”

Daniil shakes his head and crosses the room in three strides, reaching into the bag and coaxing from it an entirely nonplussed lanky kitten. She chirps at Daniil and settles into his arms easily, grey fur shedding in waves as he strokes her.

Murky turns her face up to Cat and frowns. “Traitor.”

“Off with ye,” Daniil tuts, patting her head with first his hand and then with Cat’s. “Vanquish thy foes, and return learn-ed in the art of arithmetic.”

“Cat helps me focus,” Murky mumbles, but shuffles away towards her shoes all the same. Artemy watches as Daniil trails behind her, making sure she takes her actual school bag, which Artemy keeps stuffed full of all sorts of less alive less disruptive distractions. If he allowed Cat to tag along to school with her, Lara would never forgive him.

The children clatter out of the house in a mess of complaints and a wave of halfhearted goodbyes, Daniil shepherding them all the way. Artemy stands rooted in the kitchen, watching them go. His heart is beating steady, now, in a way it hasn’t since he woke.

If nothing else, there is this. It is a reminder that whatever awaits him outside, whatever duties and responsibilities rest on his shoulders, their home is a place of safety, a refuge from the world outside. That it will remain so, will all still be waiting for him when he comes back.

And it is the very safety and comfort of his home that requires him to leave it now. Because for others in town, this has been a season of sickness and fear, their domestic refuge disturbed, and Artemy must ensure that it doesn’t happen again. That those responsible know what has gone wrong, and that they never make the same mistakes again.

Daniil returns to him with Cat draped over his arm in her usual perch, legs splayed on either side of his forearm until she dangles like a living yellow-eyed handbag. “That’s the children sorted,” he sighs. “Do I need to usher you out the door next?”

“No, I’m going,” says Artemy heavily. Still he pauses for another few breaths. The Abattoir is close enough to his home that he won’t have the comfort of a long walk to steady himself. “And you? Planning to wait for me here?”

Daniil scoffs. “I promise I’ll get dressed as soon as I see you out,” he says. “I was going to head to the clinic, show Stakh the latest samples, and check them against the patient notes. I’m almost positive the problem is the meat, but it’ll help to have all our notes in order before we make a case.”

“Right,” says Artemy.

This three-pronged investigation has been going on for about a month now, ever since a strange new illness swept over the town earlier in the summer. It roused the same amount of concern as would be expected from a ravaged and traumatized populace, and Artemy and Stakh have had cause to be thankful for Daniil’s presence and analytical expertise as they rushed to determine the cause. It didn’t seem to be contagious—that was an easing of the mind early on—and mimicked some of the signs of foodborne illnesses. Signs which, after this last round of experimentation, they can nearly be certain were true.

Artemy didn’t want to believe it at first—didn’t want to believe that yet more woes could have swept over their town from the mismanagement of their primary enterprise. But if it is true, if the disease came from the meat raised, fed, and butchered at the Abattoir, then it is his right and responsibility as menkhu to determine the cause and remonstrate if necessary.

He is not going to remonstrate today, only to investigate. To ask careful questions and see if anyone might help him divine the cause. He hopes this is nothing more than another casualty of the recent turmoil from a change in leadership. He hopes—

But still, the suspicion curls low and dark like smoke in his gut. Past mistakes do not have to reflect on present ones, but will Artemy ever be able to trust the Abattoir and whatever comes out of it again?

“I’ll be with you when we talk to them,” Daniil promises. “And if you want to wait—”

“No,” Artemy sighs. He draws his shoulders back, rotates his neck. Daniil’s part of this work has been to analyze the infected samples, to determine the bacterial infection at play, and to help divine the suspicions. As hard as he has worked to integrate himself into town life, the handling of the people has to be left to Artemy. “Waiting won’t do any good.”

He kisses Daniil, scratches Cat between the ears, and follows the path of his children out the door.

The air outside is heavy and warm, fragrant with the scent of grass and delphinium. The houses of the Skinners district are letting out their children for school, a fact Artemy is immensely proud of. Fear of illness has haunted each and every household as more cases of sudden illness have struck. It has been nearly two years since the pest, and no one has forgotten it. While Daniil and Stakh have spent their days peering over microscopes, Artemy has spent his on house calls and in town hall; calming the public with his certainty at the lack of contagion.

The Abattoir rises to meet him. Artemy notes the distinct lack of its new foreman at its entrance. Big Vlad had appointed the butcher Ivan Sokolov to this new status in the year before his death—before he’d gone to the afterlife wheezing around an enlarged heart. Despite his efforts, Artemy had been unable to prevent the man’s death. He can’t say he’s lost much sleep over the fact.

The Abattoir is cool and earthen smelling as he enters. The usual clatter of machinery and bulls braying confounds the space, industry alive and well despite the sickness flooding the town. Some Kin, yet no butchers, had turned up sick at the clinic. Stakh had been the first to notice, and Artemy has felt his blood boiling since that revelation. Today he must keep all of that in check—a menkhu on his rounds is all Artemy can currently afford to be.

The herd paces at the very end of the Abattoir, tucked near the Gates of Sorrow for easy slaughter and letting out to the fields. The paddocks are all labeled and carefully kept apart, individual groupings of the animals assigned by long held Kin tradition. Today, Artemy steps inside them all. Butchers mill about the space, but none do anything other than nod at the menkhu.

The hulking animals are docile in their pens and under Artemy’s stare. One by one he feels along soft brown hide, peers into slow-blinking eyes, places his hands above heart and lung and stomach, feeling for anything maligned. The air smells of the beasts and of their sweat and shit and hay, though through the complex ventilation of the cave Artemy can also smell the summer sweetgrass, knows the bulls can too. They mouth at his fingers when he gets close, bump against his shoulders, bray at him like a friendly visitor.

Since his return Artemy has taken on his role with nothing but single minded determination, has led birth and slaughter and blessing as he’d been trained to as a boy. What he finds now relieves him, but is no less troubling: the herd is healthy. It is time to look for something more.

Artemy does not have to go far for this something more. As he exits the last of the paddocks he is greeted by a cluster of figures. Three butchers, young Vlad, and Ivan Sokolov stand before him.

Artemy exits the last paddock calmly, clicking the gate shut tightly behind him. He nods his head to the gathered crowd. “Hello, gentleman.”

“Artemy,” says Vlad, nodding at him jerkily. “Menkhu, that is.” He seems jittery, agitated, but then, Artemy has rarely known him to be anything else. Even when they were both children, brought into one another’s orbits by their fathers’ work and by a shared expectation that should have bonded them, they never felt quite easy around one another—and Vlad’s unease has not slackened since being forced out of his father’s hulking shadow. “Can we—can I, that is—help you with anything? Or have you just come to pay a visit?”

Artemy pauses, searching for the right words. The lack of visible illness means he must tread carefully here; he needs to enter with curiosity rather than accusation. At least for now. He wishes, abruptly, that he’d waited to come here after all—with no evidence of illness in the cows themselves, he’ll need the final proof of Daniil’s chemical analysis and Stakh’s patient notes to back up his questions with evidence.

Then again, no one here will know how to read the evidence presented, will have to rely on the medical knowledge of the town’s three doctors. Artemy can speak for them just as well on his own.

“I’ve come to check on the health of the herd,” he says, letting his gaze pass carefully from one man to the next for any signs of reaction. “The recent illness in town has made people anxious; I wanted to ensure that it hasn’t been infecting the cows as well.”

A twitch; Vlad’s eyes darting nervously to the foreman and then back to Artemy. Something clenches in Artemy’s gut, but he forces it down. Calm. Reasonable.

If he’s noticed Vlad’s gaze, Ivan doesn’t react. “Luckily, they seem to be safe,” he rumbles. “We do have measures in place for a quarantine if needed, though.” He gestures to a pen left empty in the far corner, smaller and more cramped than the others.

“Really,” says Artemy. “That certainly shows some remarkable forethought.” And it’s far from what he would have expected of Big Vlad, with his insistence on prioritizing profits that led him to clash with Artemy more than once over proper health and safety management. Could this be a mark of change for the better under new management, or something more sinister? “Have you had cause to use it yet?”

“Just once,” pipes up one of the other butchers. He’s younger than the rest; Artemy should know his name but can’t remember it. “For the experimental treatments.”

Artemy’s heart thuds, just once, against the hollow of his stomach. “Experimental treatments?”

Another glance from Vlad, jerkier and more nervous than before. The foreman betrays no reaction to the butcher’s statement, but speaks up. “The Böos, may his soul be at peace, had been experimenting with new kinds of feed after—last year.” If the pause before those last two words was intended to throw Artemy off balance, it works; his stomach churns at the reminder of the dwindling twyre, the shower of blood over their world, the choice he can’t regret but that will haunt him for the rest of his life nevertheless. “We selected a test group to treat.”

“A test group.” Artemy looks at the empty pen again, the other bulls, conspicuously healthy. “And what kinds of tests did you run?”

“It’s a new kind of feed,” says the young butcher again. “Imported from the capital, meant to stimulate growth. The kinds of experiments they’ve been doing are fascinating, really.” There’s a light in his eyes as he speaks that reminds Artemy abruptly of Daniil whenever he gets the latest medical journals now ordered through the clinic, whenever he wants to explain to Artemy whatever scientific advancements have been made all over Europe and the new equipment he needs to order right away to further his own experimentation. Forgivable when accompanied by the fluent gestures of Daniil’s wrists and the fervent lilt of his voice—and when the only person impacted is Artemy. Less so when it implicates the main food source for this town, as well as their livelihood. The pen stands empty, and Artemy can’t stop looking at it.

“And what was the outcome of your experiments here?” he says, his eyes locked on the foreman.

It’s Vlad who speaks now. “Unsuccessful,” he says. “We won’t be repeating them. Those bulls were ill, it’s true—but that’s why we kept them quarantined from the others. As you can see, it hasn’t spread.”

Artemy inhales through his teeth, counts to ten before he dares to speak. “So your father was conducting dangerous experiments with livestock,” he says. “And didn’t think to tell me?”

“It didn’t concern you,” says Ivan. He takes a tiny step forward now and Artemy’s eyes snap to him. It’s unreasonable, maybe, irrational, but adrenaline rushes through him at the sight; at the feeling of yet another of Big Vlad’s foremen challenging him like this. Is he really so wrong not to trust the goings-on here, especially when that distrust so often proves right? “The affected bulls were slaughtered and the others were not impacted.”

Artemy finds himself stepping forward, too, mirroring his motion. “I would say playing games with our town’s livelihood concerns me,” he says, his voice dropping into a growl.

“It won’t impact our livelihood!” says the young butcher again. “We made sure not to mix any of the affected meat in with our exports!”

There, finally, a reaction from the foreman. He tenses, his gaze darting away from Artemy’s for just long enough to throw a withering glare in the direction of his subordinate. “Alexei,” he hisses.

It’s enough. The pieces are falling into place, tumblers of a lock clunking one by one into alignment. Artemy stares into the foreman’s face once more, takes in the defiance and the knowledge he can’t hide, and the fury that’s been boiling under his surface erupts at last into his chest. “And what did happen with the affected meat?” he grits out.

The foreman’s mouth is a thin line, nostrils flaring. He’s clearly holding back something sharp, and Artemy wants to hear it. Needs to hear it. Will drag it out of him if he has to. He takes a step closer, and Ivan takes a half step back.

“No need to get upset, menkhu,” warns Vlad, cautious eyes flicking between the two of them.

Artemy barks a laugh. “Is there cause, Vlad? Is there a reason I should be upset?”

“Our exports are secured,” Ivan intones, “our numbers unaffected. Leave it at that.”

“Tell me what happened,” Artemy growls, “or Boddho help me I’ll—”

“We met our quotas. All of them.”

“And the affected meat?”

“Purchased,” spits Ivan, a shine to his eyes, “if you must know. The grocers jumped on the discount.”

“Artemy—” warns Vlad; but it has already begun.

Ivan’s breath is shocked from his mouth as Artemy grabs his smock and shoves him. “You fucking sold it?” Artemy demands. “To our own people?”

Ivan gasps and then growls, shoving back. “Yes, we fucking sold it to keep this operation on its fucking legs.”

“You knew it was poisoned.” Artemy’s head is spinning, his gaze darkening, seeing only Ivan’s face and red at the corner of his vision. His people betrayed once more by the industry meant to guide them, to protect them. His own people knowingly selling sickness to the town. Artemy’s fists quake. “You knew.”

“No one’s died, have they? And their bellies are full?”

“That isn’t enough,” growls Artemy. “I’ve seen three infants this week poisoned by their mother’s milk—bullshit no one’s died! You couldn’t have known!”

“Acceptable risk,” sneers Ivan, stepping back as Artemy advances on him. “You were gone too long, menkhu, sometimes a hard decision re—”

Artemy’s fist collides with the foreman’s jaw.

The impact catches the man’s face with a crack and his neck turns and his body follows clumsily after. The foreman falls a half step back, and then Ivan gets steady on his feet and he is swinging. 

Artemy dodges back, raises his fists. Ivan keeps coming. Artemy hears commotion all around them: Vlad’s weak cry for peace and the butchers calling for their foreman and he thinks he hears the high voice of Taya Tychik but no one interrupts him, no one dares tug the Ripper back from this fight. Cowards.

Artemy ducks a blow then splits his knuckles open on Ivan’s nose. The other man is slighter than Artemy but just as tall, a wired muscle in his arms and Artemy feels the strength in them as he catches a blow with his own nose, blood spraying from him. Ivan is on him, crowding him in and Artemy shuffles back, feels a paddock at his back. A paddock that had been experimented on, that had been poisoned—he shifts tactics.

Quick as a whip Artemy barrels towards the other man. Catching all the weight of him by surprise Artemy throws him to the ground and follows him down, glancing blows hitting at his ribs as he pummels a fist down hard to Ivan’s face. The man gurgles beneath him but his eyes are hard, his lip split and nose displaced and Artemy nearly stalls and pulls off him when a fist catches at his jaw and he crumples to the side.

Artemy’s ears are ringing, pain and fury swirling together into a miasma over all his senses, but instinct comes alive, hands shoving against Ivan’s chest even as Ivan’s hands seize his forearms. The world spins around him; they grapple, rolling over and over, the dull impact of the ground just a series of thuds no louder than the sick thumping of his blood in his head.

He wrestles his way on top, pinning Ivan to the ground with his greater weight—seizing his shoulders and grinding them down like so much meat against the hard stone. Like a butcher himself, slaughtering the poisoned meat that has made its way into his town. In this moment, he feels he could do it.

Beneath him, Ivan’s face is bruised and bloody, but still defiant. “Going to do it, Ripper?” he pants. “Kill me right here, rip out my organs in front of all these witnesses?”

Artemy’s brawling days are behind him—or, he thought they were—but he knows a ploy when he hears it. He tightens his grip when Ivan writhes beneath him, seizing his shoulders against the attempt to slip free and slamming him back down. “I wouldn’t dirty my fucking scalpel on your organs,” he spits.

Another jolt underneath him, a knee aimed up at his groin—this too is a trick Artemy knows. He rolls half to the side, releasing the weight on Ivan’s lower half just enough to twist out of the way, and catches the man’s leg with a sweep of his own as he tries to wriggle his way free. Tangled together, they roll again.

This time, Ivan manages a blow to Artemy’s chin with his own skull, snapping his head back and up. Artemy sucks in air despite himself, his teeth rattling, lower lip stinging. He tastes blood, spits a mouthful to the side, grasping for Ivan’s head in the effort to protect his own. Feels his fingers make blind contact with skin, scrapes his nails down whatever he can reach, clawing at his face even as he tightens the grip of his legs.

All sound around them has gone muffled, perhaps in the moment of impact, perhaps deafened by the unabated pulse of Artemy’s own anger. Or perhaps—

“What is going on here?”

The voice is clear and sharp enough to slice through the haze around Artemy’s senses, firm and solid and beloved. He finds himself grasping for it with every last shred of his sanity, reaching through a world overturned by betrayal (again, another) and towards the only solid thing he can find.

He reels. Against him, it’s as though the voice has reached through to Ivan as well—as though he too has been struck to his senses. They’re still locked together, balanced on the edge of a delicate stalemate, but neither makes a move to attack again.

“Bachelor.” Vlad’s voice is breathy with relief, almost plaintive, glad to turn to someone else for authority in this place where he is supposed to be in control. Where he cannot ever be allowed to be in control again, if he could either sanction something like this or stand by as it happened. “Thank goodness you’re here—can you talk some sense into—”

“I wasn’t talking to you.” Daniil’s voice could freeze the Gorkhon River to a standstill. He draws nearer, and with his returning faculties, Artemy can make it out: the sound of his footsteps, the increasing volume of his voice. Still he can’t look up, can’t allow himself a moment of weakness—but then Daniil is beside him, reaching down towards them as no one else would have dared to do. Leather gloves make contact with his upper arm, a gentle pressure against his taut muscles, urging the violence out of his too-practiced hand. “Artemy. What happened here?”

That touch—gloved as it is, it is real to him as nothing else here has been. He slumps, the tension in his limbs releasing, letting himself be drawn back and away. Ivan seems to feel it, too; though Artemy has gone slack and unresisting against him, he makes no move to strike back. The fight is over.

Or has it only just begun?

“They knew, Daniil,” slurs Artemy. All the pain of Ivan’s blows seems to be descending upon him at once; his jaw is clumsy and his tongue heavy in his mouth. Looking up, he can make out his surroundings once more—the terrified butchers, the pleading face of Vlad, the children with hands at their mouths. What has he done—what kind of a spectacle has he made here—and yet, how can he regret it? How could he have done anything else? “We were right, it was the meat—but they knew it, and they sold it to the grocers.”

Daniil’s hand on him stills. Then, carefully, he grabs him with both and coaxes Artemy all the way off and away from the foreman, leaning him against the paddock and aside his own leg. Artemy tries to keep his bloody face away from his fine trousers, and is unsuccessful. Daniil hardly seems to notice, cupping the side of Artemy’s head against him in a grip that could appear absent, if the care of it didn’t radiate all through Artemy’s jarred and aching skull.

Ivan stays where he is, back against the ground, and spits and groans. “You’re fucking crazy, Burakh. Attacked me all for spoiled meat—”

“Enough.” Daniil. Artemy sways towards his voice, vision swimming. The solid weight of the other man’s leg against Artemy’s throbbing body is enough to keep him grounded, enough to get him talking again.

“It was more than spoiled meat, foreman,” spits Artemy, “and you know it. Both of you know it.” Artemy is looking to Vlad, gaze sardonic and face bloodied and he looks all the part of the Ripper, he’s sure. Let them remember their menkhu was a killer before he came to them. 

Artemy raises his voice, loud enough to be heard by all within the chamber, gathered butchers and children alike. “Vlad Olgimsky Junior and Foreman Ivan Sokolov experimented on the herd without my awareness or consent. When the bulls sickened they slaughtered them, and sold the bad meat in town without warning. The illness of the last month is entirely their fault, and was entirely preventable.”

Vlad’s face is paling at a rapid rate, his mouth and moustache twitching. “It wasn’t like that, we didn’t think it’d be bad enough to—”

“It appears you did not think at all,” Daniil Dankovsky says, and steps out from Artemy’s side. With the red haze over his vision beginning to clear, Artemy can see him more fully now: slim and upright as steel, dressed and buttoned in the fitted shirt and slacks that form his own armor, cravat red like a splash of blood at his throat. He is not quite a vision from the past—the snakeskin coat is gone, the hair longer and knotted at the back of his head—but he moves with all the authority and assurance he once claimed here. Pretended, then; now real and earned and undeniable. The Bachelor walks slowly to the center of their assembly, sneering distastefully down at Ivan like he’s worth less than the pooling blood beneath his boots. “Your actions have placed many people in great jeopardy, and all for nothing.”

Ivan coughs from the floor. “You know nothing you foreign bastard—”

“Amaa tat, khonzohon,” Daniil bites, the Kin insult rolling off his tongue easy as if he’d grown up with it. In the dark of the abattoir he looks all the part of a snake, dark and coiled and angry. Artemy shudders, then winces against the pain. Daniil’s head twitches. “I know enough. I know neither of you have a place here anymore. Mother Superior?”

Artemy follows Daniil’s gaze, looking upon the young and fuming face of Taya Tychik. The girl’s cheeks are red and she seems to be catching her breath. He looks to Daniil and notices he too has a flush upon his face beneath the furious burn of his eyes. She must have run to fetch him—it is known the Bachelor can be found within the Burakh house. 

“I recommend you keep your most trusted men about you, and remove these two from the premises," Daniil intones, bowing his head slightly. “We will reconvene with you tomorrow evening, as was initially planned, though perhaps with changed company.”

“We will,” declares the girl, eyeing the butchers who had been aside Vlad and Ivan at the start. Her gaze leaves them, sliding over to meet the eyes of Artemy. “Thank you for defending us, menkhu. And thank you, Uncle Bachelor, for coming when called.”

Daniil nods. His gaze sharpens on Vlad, who looks as if he might pass out at any moment, and then Ivan, who still has not moved. Artemy spits another round of blood. As if remembering him—though he knows there is no way he’s been forgotten—Daniil turns back to face Artemy, stepping unhurriedly to him. Artemy may have started the fight, but Daniil had finished it. The chamber is silent as the grave as Daniil stoops before him.

Taya Tychik rallies a call to her butchers, and there is noise again. Blessedly.

“Kheerkhen,” Daniil hums, a leathered hand wiping blood from Artemy’s cheek. Dimly Artemy wonders at him; they avoid such demonstrative displays in public, Daniil especially. But the bustle of the business seems to have swept around them, noise and chaos and motion swirling around them like a dust storm leaving them in a shroud of seeming privacy. “Can you stand?”

Artemy’s body is weak even as he leans against Daniil’s own; his legs tremble at the mere thought of supporting his weight—but he can stand; he must. The thought of leaning on anyone else now, of trusting anyone but Daniil with his unsteady legs, is unbearable. He nods.

Daniil raises an eyebrow, but offers Artemy his arm anyway.

The first effort is the worst, a shove of battered hands and knees against the ground to get his legs underneath him, then another push to lever himself upright. He sways dangerously, his legs threatening to give out, and Daniil’s arm encircles him, his shoulder solid beneath Artemy’s torso. A steel post of a man, determinedly upright; a brace holding up Artemy’s body and his world.

New pains make themselves known with every faltering step: a throb in his nose and cheekbone, the deep ache of bruised ribs, the pulse of blood in his scabbing lower lip. But Daniil leads him unerringly, picking their way in slow and careful steps past the interrupted and shifting steps of the butchers’ dance. Past Taya and her protectors and—

“Should we stay?”

He can barely form words, his face so stiff and painful that speaking requires extra effort; his body and his head are so heavy and he wants nothing more than to slump to the ground, but still—he shouldn’t leave Taya to this alone. He doesn’t know what the protocol is for when the town’s menkhu bursts into the Abattoir and physically fights the foreman, though at this point it’s happened to him often enough that someone should draw one up. He shouldn’t just walk out without doing—well, something.

“We’ll come back,” Daniil promises him. “But I don’t think our presence will do any good here now.” He rubs a hand gently along Artemy’s side, a gesture probably meant to be comforting, but it just makes Artemy suck in his breath at the graze against another bruise. “And I want to take you home and see to you first.”

“Home,” Artemy echoes. Yes, home sounds good. Sitting down, letting Daniil care for him, cleaning off the blood that’s gone tacky on his face—he doesn’t even know which of their blood it is. Abruptly the thought of Ivan’s blood drying on his face and hair makes his gorge rise, and he swallows back the urge to gag.

Outside of the Abattoir, the air is easier to breathe and he takes it in gladly, in deep cleansing gulps. Daniil steers him gently but firmly towards their house, opening the door onehanded and nudging Cat aside with one careful but uncompromising foot when she comes to investigate. Manhandles Artemy up the stairs and into the bathroom, easing him down onto the stool beside the tub.

Artemy groans as he lowers himself at last, as much from relief as from pain. To be here at last, safe in his own home, safe in Daniil’s hands—it’s almost enough to make him weep. He manages to blink back the urge; still, his throat and chest are tight with a tangled knot of emotion he can hardly begin to unpick.

Daniil kneels before him, those dark eyes steady on Artemy’s own, his hands ghosting up and down Artemy’s sides. “Are your ribs broken?”

Artemy shakes his head.

“You’re sure?” Daniil’s hands snake under Artemy’s leather smock for a better grip on him, feeling out the spaces between each rib. His eyes are downturned now, intent on his work beneath a veil of dark lashes. Artemy finds himself fixating on his face from this angle: the line of his nose, the shape of his lips, the wisps of dark hair straying across his forehead. Tracing the outlines of Daniil’s face as he bends before Artemy in service—the intensity of him, as devoted in this moment to healing and care as he is to everything he does.

“I’m sure.” It’s been some time since Artemy had a broken rib, but he remembers what they feel like. The light pressure of Daniil’s hands evokes the ache of bruises, but no sharp breath-stealing pain.

“Alright.” Daniil stands, then paces around behind Artemy to unbuckle the smock at last and lift it away. Artemy lets out a sigh as the weight leaves him, something of the pressure in his chest loosening as Daniil circles back around in front of him, then holds up a hand before his eyes. The leather of his glove is slightly discolored, tacky with blood. “How many fingers?”

“Two,” says Artemy, then, “Three,” as Daniil switches the configuration.

Daniil hums approval, tracing a line with one finger for Artemy’s eyes to follow. Finally, seemingly satisfied with the state of his brain, he opens the cupboard and retrieves soap and rags, a bottle of antiseptic. “This will sting.”

“I’d be disappointed if it didn’t,” murmurs Artemy, only half paying attention to his own words. At the counter, Daniil is stripping off his gloves: pale, slender hands exposed to Artemy’s eyes. The motion is efficient and precise, no effort wasted, just like everything Daniil does, and Artemy can’t tear his eyes away.

“You were brilliant,” Artemy blurts out, words spilling from his lips without his meaning to. Daniil stills, gloves dangling from his fingertips. “I mean the way you handled them, I just—thank you.”

Daniil raises an eyebrow. “I was brilliant?” he murmurs, bringing the supplies over to where Artemy sits in wait. Daniil leans against the lip of the tub and settles his tools on the side table, turning finally to Artemy, face to face. “I wasn’t the one who beat Foreman Sokolov to a pulp.”

Artemy cringes, looks down to their interlocking feet.

“No, don’t do that,” Daniil begins, soaking a rag in water and lifting it to his face. Its cool damp is a welcome reprieve on his skin and Artemy sighs into it, leans in to the loving touch. “Ivan well deserved that beating, and more. I only wish you hadn’t taken him alone.”

“Two on one? Hardly fair, Danya.”

“Two on one might’ve spared you this,” Daniil huffs, wiping away the last of the blood from his skin. He goes at his hair next, sparing Artemy the indignity of asking, then comes back to his face with soap.

Blood pulses in a heartbeat at his split lip, at his nose, at his knuckles. He’d say Ivan gave him less trouble than he’d been expecting, or more really, but Artemy can’t pretend to Daniil that he’d thought any of this through. There had been blood thundering in his ears even before he’d gotten them boxed in. They knew.

“I know,” says Daniil, and Artemy realizes he’s spoken the last aloud. “They knew. All that wasted time, and it was right under our noses—” he sighs, breaks off, sets the bloody cloth aside and looks into Artemy’s eyes. “You left him in far worse shape than you. Gold star, sweetheart.”

Artemy feels a bubble of half-mad satisfaction bubble up inside him, thinks he makes a choking noise at the declaration. Over half a year he’s had this man beside him, and still Daniil Dankovsky manages to be an unexpected delight.

A glimmer of a smile brushes into Daniil’s eyes. He leans over the space between them and ever so lightly presses a kiss to Artemy’s lips. The contact is there and gone—Artemy finds himself chasing it. Daniil pulls back fully, pressing a long-fingered hand to his chest. “Getting ahead of yourself, Burakh. You’re still bleeding.”

“Don’t care,” mumbles Artemy, though he sits back.

Daniil’s flinty eyes seem to assess him, flicking over him once, twice—he picks up the antiseptic and a clean cloth, begins his work again. “Taya found me quick. Said she needed the menkhu’s doctor on her side. And yours.”

Artemy hums behind the cloth, tensing at the sting of it over his split lip. “She trusts you.”

“Yes, yes. You too.”

“She’s a good kid.”

“She’s awfully young,” Daniil says absently, “for the work she does. Is she like you were, at her age? Running around mending things for adults who couldn’t act their age?”

Something in Artemy freezes, locks up. His jaw has snapped shut at the words and his teeth ring with it. At her age. Artemy thinks back at being ten, eleven, twelve—peering over Isidor’s shoulder as the man tended to the wounded, to the sick. He remembers textbooks and lectures, sickrooms and surgery suites overtaking the schoolyard the more he aged. He thinks back to the dark walls of the Abattoir, the way they seemed to rise so high they swallowed him; the iron soaked taste of sprayed bull’s blood let out in sacrifice. He remembers the tacky warmth of fresh red on small hands.

He thinks he was like Taya, yes, much like her indeed. “She does too much,” says Artemy, absently.

Distantly he registers Daniil’s slight frown. “Well, yes—I can agree to that. But it wasn’t her I asked of.”

His gaze is searching, somehow both too pointed and too tender for Artemy to meet his eyes. Not now, not with his heart as bruised as his body, all his shields compromised. He looks down instead, watching as Daniil lifts his hand and begins to dab the antiseptic across his battered knuckles.

He hisses through his teeth at the first shock of it, the sting a bitter slash across his knuckles—but it’s a clean pain somehow, bracing. Cutting through the noise of thoughts about betrayal and regret and responsibility, drawing his focus back into the moment: the stool beneath him, the smell of the antiseptic. His fingers gently spread and cradled within Daniil’s skilled hands.

“These hands,” Daniil murmurs. He sets the antiseptic aside at last but doesn’t let Artemy go, laying his right hand out flat over his own left palm and then stacking the right atop it, pressing Artemy’s hand between both of his own. “Sometimes I wonder if the others in town know how much they owe to them.”

Artemy hisses again, though the pain has faded to a duller throb. “Daniil—”

“Manu forte stat oppidum,” says Daniil, distant, almost reflective. “How many people owe their lives to these hands? And how many know to be grateful for them?”

“It’s not—” The words choke from his throat. “It’s not about gratitude.”

“I know,” says Daniil. He brings Artemy’s hand to his lips, presses a kiss to the unblemished back—clean now of blood and bull. “You’re too noble to crave that recognition. It’s not mockery,” he says, before Artemy can even open his mouth. “It’s what makes you a good man.” He smiles a little, somehow sharp and wistful at the same time. “You can’t want it for yourself, so let me wish it for you. I don’t mind a little stain on my good name.”

“Daniil,” he says again, and then doesn’t know what to say after it.

Daniil looks up at him again, his eyes sweeping carefully up and down Artemy as if cataloging him—as if coming to a decision. Nods once, decisively, though Artemy has no idea what that decision could possibly be. 

“Bedroom,” he says then. “I want to look at your ribs properly.”

Artemy shivers despite himself at the note of steel in Daniil’s voice. Lets himself be tugged to his feet, follows him meekly down the hall.

Daniil undresses him in the same brisk, economical motions with which he’d removed his gloves: undoing the buttons that Artemy so carefully fastened up—can it have been less than an hour ago? He feels a whole day, a whole lifetime, has passed since he dressed this morning for what he had no idea would become a battle in truth. Feels somehow altered, changed to his core—or maybe it’s just that his core was revealed. All the civility and decency he’s been trying so hard to cultivate stripped away in an instant, the respectable menkhu flayed away to reveal the ripper at the center, the butcher he has always been.

Daniil runs gentle hands over his body, up and down his back and sides. Despite himself, goosebumps break out over Artemy’s skin everywhere he touches. He finds himself leaning into the touch, chasing it, as though Daniil’s skillful doctor’s hands might be enough to sew up whatever has come loose in him. To stuff him back into himself, make him whole again.

When he’s satisfied at last, Daniil presses gently on Artemy’s shoulders, guiding him into a sitting position on the bed—and then he lingers there, his hands tracing muscle and bone, that same reflective look on his face.

“These shoulders,” he says, “bear so much weight every day.” He sighs, skimming his hands down Artemy’s arms and away. Steps back to look at him.

Something about the cant of Daniil’s posture has changed. Fully clothed, standing above Artemy where he perches on the bed in nothing but his undergarments, he looks at Artemy with the sharp, calculating stare of a scientist at a specimen. As if he’s determining the best way to take him apart.

Artemy shivers at the thought. Abruptly he wants nothing more than to be lying on Daniil’s exam table, beneath his precise hands and detailed instruments. Wants Daniil to take the measure of him, break him into his component parts, reduce him to a series of notes and observations. A thinking man no more, not a scientist, only his project. Only his prize.

As if reading his mind, Daniil steps forward once more. He cups Artemy’s face, hands so devastatingly careful against his throbbing cheekbone. “I want to take care of you, Artemy,” he says softly. “Do you want that?”

His voice has changed, dropped into a lower register. His eyes, always dark, are all pupil now. He looks at Artemy as if he is something to be devoured.

“Yes,” Artemy breathes. “I do.”

“Good,” says Daniil.

He takes Artemy’s hands again, folds them together between his own, and Artemy feels like something cherished, something treasured. “You take such good care of your town,” Daniil sighs, lifting Artemy’s fingers to his lips. “You’ll bleed for it, you’ll spill blood for it. You’ll give everything you have—everything you are—to take care of it.” He looks up from Artemy’s hands, his eyes sharp. Demanding. “But who takes care of you?”

Artemy can’t speak. His bones are loosening under Daniil’s touch, his stomach dropping inside him even as heat pools in his cheeks, in his chest. Something dark and sweet has begun to uncoil in his belly.

“Answer me,” says Daniil. Every word is enunciated carefully, every syllable plucking sweet sharpness in Artemy’s gut. “Who takes care of you?”

“You do.” The whisper is strained, barely a breath drifting up from his lips. Artemy feels he could follow the whisper up and out, disperse into the air. Give it all up.

“That’s right.” Daniil smiles, somehow even more dangerous than the tone of command. Kisses Artemy’s knuckles in reward, a throb of pain and a salve all at once. “And you’ll let me, won’t you, Tyoma? You’ll let me take care of you?”

“Please,” says Artemy, “please, Danya I—”

Daniil’s mouth is on his. He’s ducked into Artemy’s space, stooped to meet him, to surround him. Before long Artemy can taste antiseptic on them both. He wants his Bachelor closer, wants to hold him and—Daniil’s fingers gently encircle his wrists. Artemy doesn’t fight it.

When they break apart for air he gasps, “Danya—” then finds himself bereft. He’s near shivering with how he wants him, shivering in the leftover adrenaline and sore dregs of pain. Artemy feels a livewire, and Daniil the grounding pole that keeps him safe. He reaches up to hold him—is restricted once more.

“You’re injured, darling,” breathes Danya. “Let me make this easy for you, yes?”

Heat blooms in Artemy’s chest and in his groin. He finds himself nodding. He wants whatever Daniil wants for him, now. 

A kiss is pressed to his forehead, slow and soft. Painless. His wrists are tugged ever so slowly down until they rest upon his lap, just below where his underclothes are beginning to tent. Daniil’s hands cease their gentle hold and settle softly atop Artemy’s.

“Keep here for now. Can you do that for me?”

Artemy nods.

“Very good, Tyoma. Thank you.”

Artemy’s eyes flutter shut as Daniil lifts his hands from his. Daniil straightens and Artemy lolls his head back to meet him, blinking slow as Daniil cards his fingers through wet strands of hair.

Artemy thinks he must look a mess like this. He pictures himself a supplicantal worshiper, an herb bride sweaty and collapsed before Boddho in prayer. Artemy would dance for Daniil, if he bade him. He’d do anything.

Daniil asks nothing of him now but rest.

“You’re brilliant,” Daniil breathes, hands cradling Artemy’s skull. His mouth is warm and soft against his brow, and a hand works its way down from his head to his neck to his side. Slowly, Daniil feels once more along his ribs. The touch is calculating, firm, and tender. Artemy reaches to touch him before he can think better of it. Daniil’s hands are quick to meet his, clasping and lowering him down.

“I want you to rest,” Daniil breathes, and he kisses him on the mouth again firmly, finally. “You’ll keep your hands here. Yes?”

Artemy groans his affirmation and rocks forward to capture his mouth. Anything. His hands are leaden weights upon his thighs. Moaning inadvertently into the kiss he chases the taste of him, deepening it desperately. Daniil touches him everywhere there is bared skin, hot and seeking. Artemy clutches helplessly at his own wrists and begins to roll his hips, instinctually seeking friction.

When Daniil pulls off him they both are heavy-breathing, lips shining. “The only thing that matters here is you,” the other man breathes, bringing a hand to Artemy’s jaw. His dark eyes trace the whole of him. Artemy feels his face flame as Daniil’s gaze rests on where he holds his hands, at where his erection strains.

Daniil tongues at Artemy’s lip. Somewhere in their kissing the blood has welled up again, and Daniil licks at the copper seam, chases away the pain. Artemy will swallow more than blood if he’ll let him.

“You’re so pretty for me,” Daniil hums against him, blood on both their lips. “You always are. Pretty and eager, aren’t you?”

Uh huh. It is all Artemy can do to breathe, to agree. Daniil’s hand snakes down between his thighs to where Artemy pulses against his palms. Daniil doesn’t tease, doesn’t deny, just rubs him through the fabric and causes Artemy to hiss his pleasure through his teeth.

“You deserve it, don’t you think, Tyoma? Shalzha?”

To be rewarded. The Kin tongue sounds natural in Daniil’s mouth and Artemy shudders. He doesn’t know what holy debt he must be owed to have Daniil before him like this, but he is thankful for it.

Artemy seeks a kiss but Daniil pulls back. “I asked you, Artemy. Don’t you deserve it?”

The words he should say are all stuck up in his throat. Artemy feels the abrupt beginnings of tears burn in his eyes and Daniil is close to him all at once, cradling him in a hug. “Darling,” Daniil whispers, and Artemy shakes with it. He feels carried in the narrow palms of Daniil’s hands, feels as if all of him is held, every last piece of everything he’s ever been: soldier ripper menkhu Artemy.

“Do you want it like this?” Daniil asks, chin in his hair, hands soothing circles at his back. His tone is cut low and precise, a diligent scalpel to Artemy’s fraying nerves.

“Yes,” rasps Artemy, and the word is true and wet and ripped from his chest and he nearly goes limp with it. “Yes.”

Daniil holds him close for another moment, then pulls back and studies him, dark eyes rigorous on every part of him. Finally he nods, leans in again, and kisses him: the lightest brush of lips high on each cheekbone, just shy of the damp hollows beneath his eyes. The touch awakens tender skin—he will bruise tomorrow—but does not pain him.

“How will you tell me?” Daniil says, drawing back to hold Artemy’s arms. “If you want me to stop?”

Artemy shivers again, all the way to the bones. He’s had this conversation before, but only rarely—never yet with Daniil, where a simple not now has always been enough to suffice. Both the promise of it—the intent behind what Daniil is asking him, the expectation of being pushed to his very limits—and the responsibility cluster beneath his tongue, too much for his muddled mind to bear.

“Answer me,” says Daniil, somehow coaxing and commanding all at once, an edge of pepper to the sweetness of his voice. “This is the last thing you need to think about, Tyoma. I’ll do all the rest, I promise. But this has to come from you.”

Tyoma. Daniil’s mouth seems to caress the nickname every time he speaks it; his hands, curved now around Artemy’s biceps, cradle him as the lover he is. Even now, half-melted under the heat of Daniil’s commands, Artemy can recognize the difference between what he wanted and what he sees now. He hoped to be a specimen on Daniil’s table, an experiment on the other end of his instruments—and yet he could never be that for Daniil. Whatever Daniil does to him now, it will be to love him, not to use him.

“Bachelor,” he rasps, struggling to form words past the honey-thick heaviness descending over his mind and his tongue. “If I want you to—I’ll call you—”

If I lose touch of you.

And perhaps Daniil can sense it, can read beneath the words the truth of what Artemy says, because a little smile tugs at his lips. “Very good,” he says. “I’ll be listening for it, all right? Now I want you to be good and still for me.” He traces his hands down Artemy’s arms, biceps elbows forearms and then the hands in his lap and —

And he doesn’t stop there, trailing his hands over Artemy’s thighs, guiding them a little further apart, and sinking to his knees.

Artemy gasps. Rocks forward instinctively, then catches himself. No. Daniil wants him to stay still, to be good. He can do that. He can—

“You didn’t answer me, before,” says Daniil. The tone is almost contemplative, but there’s still that edge to it, that insistent command. He turns his face up to Artemy, and for all his supplicant’s posture, there is nothing submissive about his voice, about the burn in his dark eyes. He looks at Artemy as if he could flay him apart. “Don’t you deserve this?”

Artemy swallows hard against the lump in his throat. His eyes are wet again.

Daniil waits. His hands remain where they are, on the insides of Artemy’s thighs, separated from his legs by the fabric that even now strains and stifles him. He wants it gone but is not allowed to remove it himself, and Daniil won’t do it unless he says—unless he brings himself to say—

Heat burns in his cheeks, the shame of want and admission hot and close in his throat, and still Daniil waits. He is a blur in Artemy’s vision, but he can still make out the lines of patient determination in his face. Unrelenting, even here, even on his knees in this posture of ostensible worship.

And it strikes Artemy all at once that this is how Daniil worships. Whenever he kneels to Artemy, he does so as if before an altar; his intensity is almost too much to be borne, sometimes, but—worship, for Daniil, is inextricable from study and seeking. When has Daniil ever met a deity he did not want to dismantle, a force of nature he did not want to shape with his own hands? While Daniil has not defeated death—it’s Artemy who’s put down his god—Daniil is well practiced in tying down the impossible, and he looks at Artemy now as if he is a divinity to be taken apart.

He doesn’t deserve it. He can’t possibly deserve it. And yet—Daniil is a man who knows what he wants. If he sees something worthwhile in Artemy, can he be so wholly wrong?

“Yes.” The word is high and strained, choked past the barrier in his throat. “Yes, I deserve it, I—fuck, Daniil, please—”

And at last Daniil’s hands are moving, pushing up his thighs and around to his hips, rolling the fabric of his undershorts away. Artemy chokes out a breath of relief as Daniil pulls the damp fabric off, then—without so much as a pause—swallows him down.

Artemy’s back arches, hips jumping off the bed and then slamming back down when he realizes he has no leverage. His hands leave his lap, scramble to brace him on the bed, on Daniil’s shoulders, anything against the hot wet heaven of Daniil’s mouth, that tongue curling around him in perfect suction, surrounding him, enveloping him. He reaches, unthinking, to catch Daniil’s head, to stroke his hair—

And Daniil pulls back and off, instantly. All that heat and pressure gone in a flash, leaving him bereft. A whine escapes Artemy’s throat; again his fingers stumble against Daniil’s head, begging.

“I told you to stay still,” Daniil says. “If you can’t keep your hands to yourself, I might have to restrain them.”

The next sound that presses free of Artemy is higher still: a long, drawn-out whimper wavering into a shuddering breath. He doesn’t know if he’s ever made such a sound in his life, didn’t know he was capable of it, but there is no room for shame. Daniil’s eyes are on him again, sharp with the expression he wears when he’s just made a breakthrough in his research. When he’s realized something that has been eluding him for some time.

“Oh,” he says softly, and closes his hands around Artemy’s wrists, fingers circling him like cuffs. “Would you like that?”

Artemy wants it more than heaven on earth, wants it with a flash of dark and quivering need. “Yes.” He chokes on the word, throat raspy with the tears and tension he has not released. If Daniil touches him again, if he makes him say—Artemy needs to be tied down for this. “Please.”

“Alright, Tyoma. Stay here for me.” Daniil squeezes his wrists and then lets off, rising slowly from his knees. Artemy raises his head, leans into his touch as Daniil caresses down his face once, twice, a soothing motion Artemy’s repeated on cattle, on children, on Daniil.

And then Daniil pulls away. He goes first to the door and locks it with a click. There is no one home and will not be for hours yet but—Artemy feels another wave of tension loosen, feels safe and kept by his lover in their shared and private bedroom. There is nowhere else in the world they can be like this together.

Daniil goes to the dresser next, rifling through his drawers. When he comes back across the room he holds three silk ties draped over his palm, red and blue and green. Artemy sits docile as Daniil holds each one up in turns to hang alongside his face, brow wrinkled studiously as if testing for the perfect match.

“Selfishly, I want you in red,” Daniil murmurs, setting the others aside. “It’s always been my color.“

Selfishly, Artemy wishes he’d taken off the crimson tie he wears already, neat and tight against his collar. There are no jewels adorning it, not today, the simpler yet refined garments he wears now less adorned than his old capital clothes. Still, Artemy thinks, he looks a finer gentleman than any he’s ever seen. He wants to see his skin.

“It’s only fitting I mark you as mine,” Daniil breathes, lowering himself back down to his knees before him. “You are mine, aren’t you? In a way none of them could ever have you.”

Artemy nods, his thoughts coming syrup slow as Daniil reaches up and tugs his hands out to the edge of his lap. Artemy strains and finds it in himself to blush, his cock weeping with a sheen of pre-come solely at his lover’s proximity. Daniil lovingly sets Artemy’s wrists together, placing them atop the red silk line of the tie. In slow and methodical motion he winds the fabric around Artemy’s wrists, binding him inexorably to his will. Artemy’s vision tunnels at the obscene sight of it.

“Not too tight?” asks Daniil when he’s finished tying, stooping to catch sore knuckles with his lips. “This isn’t meant to hurt.”

“It doesn’t,” Artemy rumbles, body hunching closer to where he’s tied. “It’s…I…”

Daniil waits for him to speak, and when he doesn’t, leans closer and kisses at the join of silk and skin, loose enough for comfort, tight enough to keep him still. And then he leans ever closer and encircles his lips over Artemy’s pulsing tip.

“Danya,” he begs, though he doesn’t know for what. His hips jump and his hands tug and he feels the shock of restriction upon him, of his hands pinned with the weight of Daniil’s chest and his pretty silk tie and Artemy is spinning with a dizzying pleasure, is heaving wantonly just for this—the simple touch of Daniil surrounding him.

Daniil pulls off him too quick and Artemy quivers around the lack of him. He reaches out to touch—cannot. The tie is a reminder. Artemy keeps his hands where they are.

“So good for me, Tyoma. So pretty.” Daniil moves to stand again and Artemy whines, despite himself, finds he can’t do anything but give himself up to it. “Shhh,” Daniil breathes, soothing. “I only want to get you comfortable.”

Artemy blinks at him, eyes wet. He feels more comfortable than he has ever been.

“Against the headboard, if you please.”

Daniil steps aside to fuss with the pillows, leans them against the wood with care. Artemy scoots back along the bed ungracefully, half on his knees when he can get them beneath him.

“That’s it,” Danya says as Artemy lowers himself down, “thank you.” His hands are at Artemy’s hip and shoulder as he settles, leaning back against the cushioned headboard. “I want you relaxed, that’s all.”

“I am,” mumbles Artemy, the words slow. “I’m so—it’s—I’m good, Danya.”

“You are.”

Daniil is pinning him with a stare. Artemy thinks the two of them are speaking of different things but finds he does not care; let Danya think well of him.

“Good,” Daniil repeats, his voice curling inside and around Artemy like potent smoke. “So good.” He kneels between Artemy’s legs, the bed bending at the shift of his weight, then adjusting. “Look at you—your body tells the truth, even if you can’t believe it.”

His hands skim over Artemy’s arms, then down his sides—his grip, then his gaze, combing over every inch of Artemy’s body. He bends, supple as a snake and shedding his earlier rigidity like skin, to press his lips to Artemy’s chest.

Artemy gasps at the touch of his mouth—warm and wet, the print of his lips slick-sticky with Artemy’s own precome—against tender skin. Daniil kisses him at the center of his sternum, then down and to the side, following the branching, throbbing path of his ribs.

“So good,” he whispers against Artemy’s skin. “Look at you—look at the wounds you’ve won defending your people.”

Artemy closes his eyes and trembles. He can’t risk looking down, can’t risk seeing the naked honesty in those dark eyes—the truth, justified or not, that Daniil believes what he is saying. He secrets himself instead in the dark cave behind his eyelids, where the only thing real to him is the low croon of Daniil’s voice and the damp trail of his mouth over Artemy’s skin.

“You’re a warrior, Artemy Burakh,” Daniil says. His lips have moved lower still; now his nose brushes heat against Artemy’s abdomen; his breath stirs his pubic hair and awakens new shivers of sensation. His thighs quiver against nothing, his hips stuttering against the bed now in tiny pulses of unstoppable motion. “Your town’s own protector. Lying here so beautiful and still for me.” His hands curve at Artemy’s hips, each fingerprint a defined mark of heat against his skin—a restraint as sure as the silk against his wrists: delicate, finely made, so much stronger than it appears. Artemy’s teeth clench around a moan as Daniil’s lower lip bumps the tip of his cock, a jolt shooting its way through him.

His eyes fly open just in time to watch Daniil’s tongue flick out, not soon enough to register the meaning of the action before he licks Artemy from base to head.

Artemy lets out a warbling cry at the sensation, hot and wet and tingling against sensitive skin. His hips arch up, seeking contact, seeking—

Nothing. Daniil is crawling forward again, stalking up Artemy’s body like a wildcat, leaning in again for a kiss.

Artemy opens his mouth for him and accepts the pressure of Daniil’s lips and tongue, the salt-bitter taste of himself. Daniil kisses him thoroughly and demandingly, his lips working against Artemy’s own slack mouth as though to feed him his own words. His lower lip throbs at the touch, lending its own insistence to the unspoken echo of Daniil’s rhapsody as though each pang might help them sink in further.

Artemy aches all over, his lips his ribs his cock. His skin craves more of Daniil; his mouth forms the word in feeble shapes against Daniil’s tongue but cannot force the air out to voice them: more, more of you, more. But Daniil presses deeper, as if he hears. As if he knows, without being told, what Artemy needs.

His hands lie still in his lap, the silk snug around them like an embrace.

Daniil pulls away at last, braces his hands on either side of Artemy’s body, cages him in. Artemy looks up at him: a vision of rumpled perfection, strands of hair coming loose from their knot, flush scattered haphazardly across his cheeks. His mouth is red with Artemy’s blood, and his tongue flicks out to lick it away, his eyes closing.

Again his hips strain forward; again there is nothing to press against.

“Not yet,” Daniil murmurs. “I think you can hold out longer for me, darling.”

Artemy groans, high and broken, and Daniil runs a finger over his lips, lingering just slightly on the cut. Artemy’s heartbeat pulses around his finger.

When he withdraws, he drags the tip of his finger down Artemy’s neck, over his shoulder, painting trails of his blood that he follows with his lips, back down Artemy’s ribs, back between his legs. He settles there again, kneeling as if he were always meant to be there, and flashes one last look back up at Artemy before lowering his head again.

This time, Daniil sucks him until he can’t bear it, long and torturous and not slow but not quite fast enough, lips tongue throat all pulsing together around Artemy in a rhythm designed to drive him to the brink of madness, until he is moaning and shaking and arching and heat is coiling between his legs and—

Daniil pulls his head up again, and the shock of cool air on wet flesh is enough to wrench away the last shreds of his composure, if he ever had any left to begin with. Artemy whines for him, hips thrusting in uncontrolled jerks, his throat tightening around the sound and drawing it into a keen.

Daniil is patting at his flank, at his stomach, at his hip. His lips press a wet and sloppy kiss into his mons pubis, so close to where he wants him and yet….

Artemy gazes down his own body. He is bruised and sweaty and straining, but his wrists are tied as neatly as when Daniil had first wrapped them. Daniil meets his gaze over the ridge of split knuckles, presses forward to them with a kiss. With his wrists tied Artemy can move his fingers only some, cramped together as they are, and as he reaches clumsily out for him Daniil catches them in his mouth and licks and twists his tongue around the digits. His lips are slick and soft and his mouth so wet and warm and—

“Artemy,” Daniil moans, breaking apart and breathing hard into his bruises. For all his part Artemy cannot think of why he might have stopped, at what might have provoked him—he hears a keening and supposes the sound must be him, a subvocal inclination. “You’re doing so well for me.”

Artemy pants as Daniil takes a hand to his cock, wraps his fingers around him and works him long and slow, licks at the leaking head. Artemy’s hands jerk in his lap and the immediate clutch of the fabric makes him moan, makes him draw his head back against the headboard and into the softest pillow they own, set diligently behind his head. The mattress shifts beneath them as Artemy digs his heels in, seeking leverage or purchase on something, on anything.

“That’s it,” Daniil says, humming to himself and leaning down to give him one last lick and then—he pulls off entirely.

Artemy’s legs are shaking. His chest is heaving. He can’t remember deciding to close his eyes. “Daniil can I please, Danya I need—”

Daniil shuffles up to meet him, kissing gently at the corners of his crinkled eyes. He places his hands overtop Artemy’s and asks, “Do you feel good, Tyoma?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You’re so good for me.” A hand leaves his and trails further down, skimming through stomach hair until those skilled fingertips come to stroke lightly up and down, a barely-there touch. “You deserve to come. Don’t you, kheerkhen?”

Artemy cries out at the endearment, head bopping forward, and Daniil presses his unoccupied hand to his forehead, soothing him, smoothing away the lines there.

“You deserve it, yes? I know you do. Tell me, love. I want to hear it.”

Artemy is a tensioned boneless shuddering thing, a trap of sensation and skin. Does he deserve it? He can hardly think. He can do only what Danya tells him to. “Yes,” he breaks, near-sobbing, “yes, yes I do deserve it I do—”

And Daniil’s hand on him is tight and soft and wet and he is licking at his split lip and breathing into him an endless litany of, “You do, you do, let go for me beautiful, you do…”

For a moment it is as if Artemy does not exist. He is a body betwixt the white hot edges of sensation, of Daniil, of an ecstasy that crashes through his head and upwells inside his groin and he is taken, utterly swept away inside of it. For a long moment there are no bruises on his body or tears upon his cheeks—just the silk around his wrist and Daniil’s lilting voice calling Artemy, Artemy, Artemy.

There is no telling how long it lasts.

When he does, Artemy comes back to himself in stages; he is slumped back and wrung out, sweating and rattling against the soft of the pillows. His legs have collapsed boneless upon the bed, his cock twitching still against his thigh with oversensation, tacky against him. When Artemy opens his eyes it is to the calculating face of his Danya, sitting in patient stillness between his thighs. He is still fully clothed, while Artemy feels he’s been ripped across the universe.

Daniil reaches out a steady hand to him, presses his fingers wonderingly to his bruised and salted cheeks. He’s leaking tears, Artemy realizes, in the passive sort of way a body on the fritz sometimes does. His Danya leans in close and tongues at the tracks of it. “You’re gorgeous, love. Thank you for that.”

Artemy’s breath is heavy in his chest. It takes him a moment to speak, to even register that he can. Daniil is patient with him, as always, holds his head and presses gentle kisses to his collarbones. When the pressure in his face recedes some and he can feel his lips again he croaks out, “You’re still dressed.”

Daniil huffs a quiet laugh at that, breath puffing against Artemy’s chest. “Yes, I am.”

“Why?”

Daniil smiles up at him and seems to take pity, shifts back just a tad to bring his hands to his tie. “It wasn’t important, is all. I’ve had you on my mind.”

Artemy endeavors to catch his breath as his eyes rake over Daniil’s slowly baring chest. Undress is not the term for what he is doing—Daniil practically stripteases for him, coyly looking up at him through eyelashes and taking his time with each button, red tie hanging long and loose around his neck. It’s a motion seemingly calculated to drive him to madness—a motion that would, if he could do anything more than pant and shake, hands bound together and the shattered pieces of him still spread limp across the pillows.

As it is, he watches: the lean muscle of Daniil’s chest visible in shifting shadows beneath the swinging drape of fabric; the dip of clavicle now exposed, now covered again by the loosened shirt and tie. Flashes of Daniil beneath the tailored clothes that armor him as surely as Artemy’s own leather smock.

Half-undressed like this, his visage seems to flicker back and forth before Artemy’s eyes: one moment he is the Daniil he remembers in dim flashes from the Abattoir an earth-shattering orgasm and a lifetime ago, rifle-sleek and just as dangerous, stalking into the space and taking command of it; then he is Daniil, loose-collared and laughing at their table in the home that they have made their own; then Danya, bare and close against him, his body fitting into the curve of Artemy’s own as though made to rest there. All the layers of the man, shifting and unstable, doubled and refracted off one another until Artemy can hardly keep his eyes on him. The only thing more painful would be to look away.

Daniil catches his eye as he undoes the last button, letting the shirt hang loose around his chest but making no move to shrug it off his shoulders. He reaches forward instead, index finger hooking under Artemy’s chin, thumb coming to rest on his lower lip just shy of the swelling split.

“Beautiful,” he says, low and hoarse, and Artemy wonders if he can see himself mirrored in Artemy’s eyes.

He’s not hard again, not yet; it’s still too soon—but still something twitches in him at that word, that voice. “Danya,” he says. All other words seem to have fled him.

“Tyoma.”

Daniil kisses him, long and slow and tender, his thumbs smoothing lines down along the curve of his jawbone, the sensitive skin just beneath his ear. His hands frame Artemy’s face in an unbreakable grip, pads of his fingers resting on the sides of his neck and controlling the motion of the kiss even when Artemy would tilt his head to deepen it. Artemy makes a tiny noise in the back of his throat and Daniil withdraws, leaning his forehead against Artemy’s own.

Wisps of Daniil’s hair brush Artemy’s brow, escaped from the tight knot he’s taken to winding it into every day, whisper-soft over sensitive skin. The noise works its way free again: small and plaintive, like a wounded animal.

Daniil draws back once more, moving those thumbs up to Artemy’s temples and stroking small circles at the corners of his eyes. “Your cares are coming back,” he sighs, then presses a kiss to the spot between Artemy’s brows. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that, hm?”

“Daniil—”

Daniil sets about working him up again with surgical precision, with a doctor’s knowledge of Artemy’s body and every point on it he can press. Nothing too sensitive, not yet; none of those places that are still raw with stimulation—but darting so carefully around each spot that it seems to light up in the absence of sensation. Dancing along Artemy’s Lines as if he can read them, as if he knows the workings of the body with the instinct of any menkhu.

No. Not any menkhu, not any body. Artemy’s.

Before long Artemy is moaning under him again, arching and writhing and aching, heavy between his legs and at the base of his spine. Still Daniil is mostly dressed, and the ends of his shirt keep falling forward to brush tantalizing lines over Artemy’s stomach and chest. He finds himself reaching up, hands restless again at last, to push it aside.

Daniil catches him by the silk rather than by the wrists, drawing him up short. “What did I say?” he says sternly. “Hands to yourself.”

“But I want—”

Daniil sits back between Artemy’s thighs, the fine fabric of his slacks nevertheless rough against his skin. He is kneeling again, his legs spread to nestle just inside Artemy’s own, and Artemy can see his arousal like this, the way he stretches against his own confinement. Still, he gives no sign of it as he presses Artemy’s hands between his own. “What do you want?”

“To touch you,” Artemy whispers. His hands strain towards Daniil, and again they are caught. “Want to see you—to give you—”

“Give me what?” says Daniil steadily. “What would you give me that I don’t already have?”

Artemy gestures down at the bulge between Daniil’s legs, at the strain of his slacks. “It’s your turn,” he says. “Danya, fuck, I—want to give it back.”

“Oh, kheerkhen,” says Daniil. “You’ve already given me everything I could ever ask for.” He kisses Artemy’s hands, still so heavy in their bindings, the fingers curling nonetheless towards Daniil’s where he grasps them. “All I want is to see you now. That’s the best thing you could give me.”

“Let me,” insists Artemy, voice gravelly, arching his wrists towards Daniil so he can unbind him. He wants to paw at his lover until the other man is sobbing, until he can undo him as permanently as Artemy finds himself to be. “I want to.”

A single finger comes to stroke along his cheek. “That wasn’t our deal.”

“I—”

“You said you’d let me, Tyoma. Or do you need to say something?”

Daniil levels him with an even stare. It is not challenging, it is not placating. He is just waiting. Artemy knows what he could say. He doesn’t.

Whatever he sees on Artemy’s face: slowly, precisely, Daniil leans back to undo his trousers. Artemy watches him, rapt. In the curtain-soft sunlight Daniil’s hair glints like onyx. He leaves his underwear on. But with his pants discarded and shirt and tie hanging from him and hand palming at his cock—his eyes land on Artemy, and he reaches to his hair and undoes the tie.

Loose black strands tumble down in inky tendrils, coming to rest in clumps just above Daniil’s shoulders. He is exquisite, like this. He is a man rebuilt. He is Artemy’s. With a sudden rush of affection Artemy slumps forward and Daniil’s hand is on his chest in an instant. “My, my, you’re in such a rush.”

Artemy whines.

“I want you here,” annunciates Daniil. He is pressing his back firmly against the pillows, Artemy’s once sitting position slouching ever downwards. “If you cannot control yourself at the sight of me I will take further measures.”

Artemy is hard again. He can feel himself straining near-painfully at his thigh, almost too soon for this, almost too much. Almost.

“You know, I think you’d like it,” Daniil coos, tracing patterns on his chest. There is no blood this time but Artemy feels it, the way his veins pool in accordance to the other man's touch. “And you’d make such a pretty picture, all tied up and blinded.”

Artemy blinks at him, cow-eyed.

Daniil raises his hands to his shirt tie. It matches the red Artemy is already straining against. It seems all too easy, too simple, for him to receive what comes next: Daniil’s hair falls in curtain around them both as he feeds the skin-warm silk behind Artemy’s head. He places a kiss to the slant between his brows. “I’m going to take you, Tyoma. Close your eyes for yes.”

Artemy closes his eyes and does not open them. The fabric is fastened over him and all becomes true dark. A kiss brushes at his lips. All at once Artemy is aware of his predicament: tied at the wrist and blindfolded, lying hard and aching and Daniil is above him touching and the world is dark and simple and there is nothing for him to do but take it. 

Artemy feels himself leaking involuntary tears, again. The silk catches what it can. It feels automatic; it feels unavoidable. Daniil has shrunk his world to the size of a pin and Artemy is too big inside himself for this, is bound to spill out. He trusts Daniil to catch him when he does. He is so tired.

For a time there is only their bodies touching, though not where it hurts, not where he swells. In the darkness Artemy grows peckish for his partner, strains up to him and Daniil’s chest warms in a laugh as he pushes Artemy down with his weight, settling delicately atop him. Their cocks are pressed together like this. Artemy gasps, his folded hands twitching where they’ve settled upon his chest. He feels good.

“I knew you’d like this,” Daniil is rumbling, breathy words half-puffed against Artemy’s throat. His hair tickles. He grinds his ass down against Artemy and they both are groaning. “I knew you could let go.”

All for you. All of it.

“You’re wrapped up like a gift for me, Tyoma, I can’t have asked for anything more.”

Artemy wants to give him more. Every inch of him is in offering, every breath and pore and bloody lip a sign of his submission. He is different, like this, a heavy liquid metal running rivers through Daniil’s steady fingers.

“If your ribs weren’t a concern I’d fuck you.”

Artemy chokes on the admission, twitches his head towards where he knows Daniil to be. “I, fuck. Yes.”

A hand draws a long line from his lip to his chest and to his weeping cock, to the place below where he is hot and sensitive and Daniil pushes at his perineum with reckless abandon, soothes the electricity of it with eased touch and sloppy kisses. “Not when it could hurt you. But you are lovely like this.”

“Please.”

“Don’t worry, Tyoma. You’ll take what you are given.”

He will. He must. Lying like this, bound and blinded, he is as helpless as he has ever been, body and mind all subordinate to the will of fate. To the will of—

No. Not fate. To Daniil’s will, trusted and abandoned, unfettered only as long as Artemy chooses.

He could make it stop with a single word but he won’t, not while Daniil is grinding against him and groaning in time with him, so warm and solid and real as so little ever seems to be. Not while he is held by Daniil’s body and his silk and the heavy, unrelenting promise of his care.

The weight disappears and all at once he is cold and alone in the dark, an open wound stripped of its tourniquet. Sudden panic constricts his throat, stretches a high, thin sound from the depths of him. He reaches out, eyes rolling beneath the blindfold, his bound hands searching for the pressure that made him real, gave shape to all the lines of him. “Daniil!”

“Shh, shh, it’s all right, I’m coming back.” There is a hand on his thigh, rocking gently against taut muscle. “I promise, Artemy, shh.” Lips, then, a kiss dropped between the splayed fingers. “Here, I’ll keep a hand on you, all right?”

Artemy whimpers through his nose, a tiny acquiescing noise, straining towards the trail of Daniil’s hand as it glides up his leg and his side. The weight is gone from the bed again but now he can hear Daniil beside his head, fumbling inside the nightstand drawer. True to his word, he keeps the other hand on Artemy’s body, each finger a point of heat that Artemy latches onto, tracing the shape of his touch as if without Daniil, his very outline will fade into nothingness.

And won’t it? The thought is half-crazed, comes from somewhere deep inside him, a place buried in the territory of nightmares and sleeplessness. There are times Artemy doesn’t feel real, feels as if the world around him might simply contract and collapse, his limbs and heart and everything that makes him alive sifted into sawdust. Like he never had any control over any of it, like there’s no use even trying.

But now the bed is shifting under Daniil’s weight again; his knees and calves nudge Artemy’s thighs further apart. Artemy strains towards him, back arching, and the gentle pop of a cork gives back the bounds of his world.

“Don’t worry, baarhani,” Daniil says, and oiled fingers are probing at him now, asking entrance to his body. “I’ll give you what you need. I promise. All you need to do is lie there and let me.”

Let him. As those fingers press into him, slick and skilled and filling, Artemy squeezes his eyes shut beneath the blindfold. Abandoned, to fate, to life, to reality, such as it might be. To Daniil’s hands, death-defying and persistent, striving to change the foundations of the world but settling, now, for changing Artemy’s. As if he holds Artemy’s past, present, and future all in his too-clever hands.

“Let go for me,” Daniil is murmuring, and Artemy trembles. Strains involuntarily against the bonds and slumps again at the reminder that he is pinned down, tied up, at the mercy of these hands that he trusts to hold him.

Let go.

All in a rush, Artemy remembers days of frantic fear, the sense of the whole world spraying between his fingers like a snatched handful of sand. He remembers the sight of himself in a lonely grave and the blood of the world seeping up beneath his feet, the desperate cries of the dying and the part of flesh beneath his scalpel. In a blur he sees flashes of classrooms and bedsides, sacrifices and dark rooms, the bubble of brewing twyre and the inside of his father’s study, all pressing down upon the edges of his blinded vision, the weight of an uncontrolled fate pressing on the edges of his temples and throbbing at the inside of his tender face—

and then gone, sucked away in a flash of white-hot sensation as Daniil’s fingers crook just so inside him. He moans, shudders, and Daniil’s other hand comes to cup his cock, lips descending to kiss the head, and he is held, trapped by Daniil’s body and the silk around his wrists and the building waves of his own pleasure, swelling again and again but never quite cresting, strong enough to sweep all his memories and all his fears aside.

“Daniil,” he sobs, “Danya, please, I need—”

“And you’ll have it,” Daniil says, the words barely audible against the pressure in Artemy’s head, each word breathed against Artemy’s cock before the seal of his mouth descends over it again at last.

That’s all he needs. The pleasure in him peaks all at once, the wave breaking in a shuddering climax that wrenches the last of the strength from him; he is bucking into Daniil’s mouth, swallowed and safe, and Daniil’s fingers are still inside him wringing out the last shivers of sensation, and reality itself shatters around him in a fracturing kaleidoscope of sense and he can do nothing about it.

He sobs as he comes, and realizes only once the aftershocks have faded that he can’t stop. The blindfold is soaking, his face contorting around unstoppable gasping whimpers. He feels limp and heavy and unable to do anything for the shuddering of his body, the broken-up lump of fear and stress inside him flowing free in the tears he’s been holding back for what feels like years.

“Shh, shh, shh.” Daniil is withdrawing his fingers, slowly enough to be careful with him, but he wastes no time in crawling up Artemy’s body. Hands unpick the knot in the tie at his wrists, letting them fall slack to Artemy’s hips; then Daniil is at his head, sliding the blindfold from his eyes. Artemy still can’t see him, distorted by the blur of tears, but it doesn’t matter, because Daniil is pulling his head against his own shoulder and his tears are soaking into the collar of his still-open shirt.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” And he does.

Artemy presses his forehead into the hard line of Daniil’s shoulder and cries as he has never allowed himself to. His body wracks with the weight of the sobs, hoarse and gasped into the dark and blurry hollow of Daniil clutched tight around him, holding fast as Artemy spills and cracks and cries himself to pieces in his hands. 

“You were excellent. You’re so good, Tyoma.”

Artemy hitches a breath, heaves as another chokes its way out from his throat. Good. He is a writhing mess of flooded spastic nerves and twitches of release; a man at the end of his tether and still here is Daniil, holding the loose ends of him tight and calling him good. 

“I—I—” hiccups Artemy, but there is nothing he can say. Not yet. The tears have not slowed and his head is a hot and throbbing mess and he sniffs and watches blearily as teardrops drip down his nose. Daniil’s shirt is growing damp from him and Artemy paws at it, fingers searching, and Daniil shrugs the offending garment off easily.

Skin to skin at last. One of Daniil’s hands comes to cradle the back of Artemy’s head, the other wrapped around his back. Daniil is rocking them side to side now, ever so slowly. Artemy is no longer heaving but has collapsed shaking into him, arms loose and hands twitching against Daniil’s thighs. Distantly, Artemy is aware that Daniil is talking. He has not let up on his endless supply of tenderness, not even when Artemy has stopped responding to him.

Artemy squeezes his eyes shut. This is a brand of comfort he has never had. All the crying Artemy has ever done has been quiet and in private. In this, Daniil has utterly unmade him. 

Eventually, after a time, Artemy can almost breathe again. In the wake of tears and his second orgasm he feels heavy and wrung-out and slow. His mind is hollow, feels as smooth and uncomplicated as stone. He hears Daniil humming. There is no particular tune, just the buzzing feeling of his chest against Artemy’s forehead. As his body comes back to him in parts he feels it—Daniil’s erection straining between them.

Even like this Daniil wants him. Artemy is shattered to pieces and incoherent and still he wants him. No one has ever seen Artemy like this. No one else has ever dared ask. And Daniil wants him.

Artemy does not pull back from Daniil’s damp skin but he does drag his hand through his lap to rest his hand on him, on where he’s hot and leaking between his thighs.

“Tyoma,” Daniil breathes, pressing a kiss to his temple. “You’ve done enough, my love, don’t worry.”

“Want you.” The words are quiet and full of cracks.

Daniil brings a hand down to his cheeks, tracing over tear tracks and sweat, pushes his soaked hair back. “Can you look at me?”

With a trembling effort Artemy draws himself back. His eyes sting at the light as he cracks them open, threatening to flood again as he focuses on Daniil. His lover is staring back at him with what looks like awe. He is sure his own face is ruined but Daniil doesn’t seem to care. His pupils are blown and his cheeks flushed and lips kiss-bruised and despite his sturdiness in this Daniil looks halfway taken apart already, just from watching over Artemy. 

“You’re gorgeous,” Daniil breathes.

Artemy keens, just barely preventing himself from collapsing forward. He wants—

“You’ve been so good to me,” Daniil says, tracing his face. “If you really want it, you can have it. But I-“

“Kheerkhen,” Artemy sobs, trembles around the word and he surges forward and crashes in with clumsy lips, pushes his palm down for Daniil to grind against.

“Yes, yes alright,” Daniil gasps against him. His own hand goes to join Artemy and the two of them together grasp at Daniil’s erection. With hardly a break in it Daniil tugs his underclothes aside and then there is his skin, Daniil hot and wet and hard beneath him. For him.

“I want—you are—for us—“ and the words are tumbling out of Artemy now, bruising against Daniil’s lips but the sentiment is incomplete, fragmental, and he wants to tell him how much all this means but he can’t say it right, can’t get out what he means—

“Өөriy kheleer yar,” Daniil says hoarsely, guiding their slick hands up and down his cock where they are bringing him off together, rubbing against the spend on Artemy’s stomach. “Tell me, kheerkhen, use your words.”

Artemy’s mouth breaks against the language of his people, of his Kin, of his mother tongue. These are the words of his heart, it is all he ever used to think in and Daniil hears him, must understand him—when he groans in response Artemy floods the air between them with praise, with joy, with delight at how much he loves him. At how loved he feels in turn.

Daniil moans, throws back his head and Artemy chases him, mouths at his neck with wet lips and loose words as he brings his lover to the edge and over it. It is an inevitability when they collapse against each other hot and spent and ruined and Artemy’s eyes are closed and his heart is singing. 

They stay like that for long moments, damp skin on damp skin, entangled limbs strewn against the pillows cushioning the headboard. Artemy’s breath comes heavy and hard as if Daniil’s first climax were his third, his head cradled in the crook of Daniil’s neck and shoulder as if it belongs there. The skin is still damp with sweat and Artemy’s own tears, but he can’t find room in himself for embarrassment or regret, for anything except the contentment born of deepest exhaustion.

Finally, Daniil stirs. Artemy makes a final plaintive noise as Daniil inches away from him, supporting his head with his own hand as it sinks on Artemy’s wobbly neck. Daniil doesn’t go far, only draws back enough so that he can meet Artemy’s eyes, cradling his face between his hands.

“Are you all right?” he asks, soft and serious.

Artemy blinks at him. The question is so simple, and the answer should be simple as well—hasn’t he been asked this so many times, answered with a simple I’m fine or, in dire situations when he knows his conversation partner will understand, a never better that conveyed all he needed to say? He knows this script, knows the call-and-response of it, but suddenly with Daniil’s eyes fixed solemn and dark upon his own, it becomes the most complicated question he has ever heard.

Is he all right? After today, the reveal of rot still buried so deep in his town’s livelihood, of his own self-control teetering so easily on the edge of violence? The memories dredged up from locked boxes and cabinets in his mind, contents now strewn about in a mess he can’t even think about straightening up? Being so thoroughly and completely undone, his skin flayed away and the pulsing mess of his insides exposed—not only to Daniil, but to himself, as well?

And, more: If he has to answer the question now, honestly, with Daniil’s eyes peeling back the layers of his soul, will he realize how long he has been lying to himself?

His eyes burn again, but he has no more tears left to shed. He ducks his head instead, dropping it once more to Daniil’s shoulder—and, mercifully, Daniil allows it. “I don’t know,” he mumbles.

Lips against his hair, a series of pecking kisses trailing from his hairline to behind his ear. “That’s fine,” Daniil breathes. “That’s fine, you don’t have to know. We’ll keep it simple. You’re not hurt—any more than you already were, I mean?”

Even the thought of answering that feels like too much, but Daniil is waiting for him and Artemy can bring himself to do this one last thing for him. He closes his eyes and tries to think.

It is hard to take stock of his body like this: wrung out, every nerve stretched to breaking and released just before it could snap. But he can make out the throb of the split lip, the bruises forming already to nose and cheekbones. The pain in his sides—no worse than it was before—where fists and stone and knees took it in turns to batter him.

Everywhere else he is merely heavy, sluggish, impossibly tired. He lifts his head with great effort and shakes it, just a little, from side to side.

“Good.” Daniil rewards him with a kiss to the unbruised cheek, the sift of clever fingers through his hair. Artemy’s eyes fall closed, his head tilting back into the caress. “The rest we can deal with later.”

Artemy hums agreement. His head is sinking again, forehead drawn helplessly to the brace of Daniil’s shoulder, and he mumbles a noise of complaint when Daniil catches his head again and nudges him back.

“Not yet.” Daniil’s tone is so warm and fond that Artemy feels it might unlace his bones. “Let me clean us up a bit first, all right?”

That doesn’t sound good. It sounds like Daniil getting out of bed, and in this moment there is nothing Artemy wants less. He manages another noise of protest, low and garbled.

A low, honey-sweet laugh. “You’ll be glad of it later, I promise. I won’t be gone long.”

Ultimately, he is still too heavy and pliant to fight on this. Without further complaint, Artemy lets himself be nudged up onto the pillows, legs splayed limp and open before him. Daniil is gone less than a minute, returning from the bathroom with damp rags and tenderly wiping salt, blood, and come from Artemy’s face and chest and thighs—then from his own, motions much more brisk and perfunctory. When he’s satisfied, he tosses the rags into the hamper and crawls back into bed, pulling Artemy against his chest and tucking his head once more into his neck.

Held like this, still and quiet in the slanting sunbeams of the late summer morning, Artemy can feel the slow thump-thump of Daniil’s pulse through the delicate skin, practically in his ear. That sound has been a comfort to him ever since he wrenched Daniil from the jaws of death and back into his life, even before he knew how essential it was to his very being: how much he needed Daniil beside him. Now, it is a rhythmic lullaby, drawing him closer and closer to sleep.

“That’s it,” Daniil murmurs. “Go to sleep.”

Artemy manages a faint sound of protest, though his eyelids are weighted down with stones and he can hardly force his lips to form words. “The kids will be home,” he mumbles, “and—we’ll need to talk to Stakh—”

“I’ll handle the kids,” promises Daniil. “And the rest can wait a few hours more.” He smooths his hands over Artemy’s bare shoulders, a light trailing caress down his arms that seems to take the rest of Artemy’s strength to protest with it. “You can pick up the weight again when you wake, Artemy. For now, let it go.”

Let it go. It’s something Artemy has never been able to do—something he’s never thought he was allowed, even long after anyone remained who could tell him what to do. He’s kept himself accountable to his town, to his world, for so long that the thought of letting it go feels impossibly selfish—

And impossibly alluring. Daniil’s hands run down his arms again, those hands that bound him and blindfolded him and broke him down until, just for a few moments, he could forget it all. Ripped apart and remade, cupped and protected and sewn back together by those careful, precise hands. Hands he can trust to carry the weight for him, if only for a few hours.

The rest can wait.

He sighs, the words streaming away like water through a sieve. Safe in their bed, cradled in Daniil’s arms, he sleeps.