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My Haruspex,
I hope this letter finds you well. I hope this letter finds you at all. There’s enough alcohol in me that I feel like a bloated corpse, pale, malleable and waiting for you to start the autopsy – but in any case, I offer these words in Russian instead of Latin.
Already, I can feel my intent slipping away and thickening into desperation. Interesting how when the town was all around me, I was without, burning with a kind of pain I’d never felt before – but now that I’ve escaped you, the pain has changed into a deep ache. I am now without in a sense that transcends being without food or intelligent company. I am the sort of man that has left a part of his body everywhere he goes. I left my right arm in university, in the hands of Andrey and my professors who spoke to me in low tones. I left my eyes in the Dankovsky manor with my sister when I was a child. In the Steppe I left my beating heart. And please, Haruspex, would you give it back to me?
Every time the common flu and sickness wreak havoc in the Capital I pray someone, anyone, will mention the Sand Pest. That they will ask me about the Steppe people and the secret to death, to face down a biblical illness, a thinking, breathing beast that wants to decimate a population, to thrash in the arms of science and religion – I could talk for hours, if they asked. I would tell them about you. My foil, the man carved out of the mountainous stones that surround the town, with blood twinged sweet and earthy with twyre.
And finally, I ask how you see me. As the buttoned up to the throat, dandy and haughty Bachelor, or how I was when I was nearly all unraveled, plague-ridden and dependent? I see you as a killer, one I would have wanted as my surgeon partner back in university. Someone beside me, with broad, steady hands and whose only nervous tick is the tense muscles in his jaw. I see you as a butcher, in your blood-covered smock standing over the corpses of bulls and humans alike – a good butcher. My colleague, I admit to you that at my very lowest, late at night and never sober, I think of you as Artemiy Burakh.
See that when you read this, my memory and my words sink so deep into your psyche that you think of me half as much as I think of you. Once I slip this letter through the slot in my door, I will sit, head tipped back against it as I am now, in my shirtsleeves and a cigarette dangling from my fingers, and I will wait. I will start the autopsy for you, strap myself down to the slab – and I will wait.
Yours,
Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky
The Bachelor wakes up to midday sunlight streaming through his open curtains, his shirt riding up over his ribs, spit drying on the corner of his mouth and no recollection of the night before. He winces at the empty bottles of vodka and brandy that clink when he swings his legs over the side of his bed. His head aches and his back hurts from how he slept on it.
His desk is stained with ink, all his writing supplies strewn across it. Dankovsky tries to wipe up some of the ink, but it’s already seeped into the grain so he gives up and starts to sort his papers. It’s not unusual for Daniil to write under the influence, some of his colleagues allege that’s how he finished his thesis, but what he wrote wasn’t research. There are multiple drafts of a letter on the desk, all starting with some variation of ‘My Haruspex.’ Dankovsky scrubs a hand over his face and throws them all into his junk drawer, shutting it with a kick. He doesn’t read them.
Daniil has spent his years in the Capital after the Sand Pest quietly. Some of the men who work in his lab whisper about how much weight he lost, how he came back with a tremor in his hands and a rattling cough when the winter first freezes over. He’s heard that he’s a shell of a man, now, and he wants to snap. What kind of man they saw him as in the first place, he doesn’t know.
In university Dankovsky’s hangover cure was drinking wine in the Stamatin’s living room until he felt he could bear his philosophy lecture. Now, he dresses himself in black wool and red linen and walks to the outskirts of the Capital, to stare out at the fields and breathe in the air. It smells like burnt oil from the railroad tracks and fresh grain from further north. Daniil can’t see the crops, but he knows they’re there.
His coat flaps ominously in the wind, swallowing up his form and turning him into a pit, a speck of black and red in the great expanse that rolls out in front of him. Dankovsky scowls, and the sharp movement of his face sends stabbing pain through his head.
“I’m not the man I used to be.” Daniil speaks into the open air. His vocalization means nothing, but he waits, waits for it to echo back to him.
“I am a man of science. I am a doctor. I will face death, take him in my hands, and snap his neck.” This much is the same.
But now, Dankovsky has been relocated to a smaller laboratory on the other side of the city, with a dramatic cut to his funding from the university. He managed to claw what they would give him from his superiors after months of arguing in velvet chairs in expensive, dusty offices. At one point, he thought they would take the suit off his back, too, but luckily his wardrobe had remained unscathed. He left with the little funding he now has stuck under his nails and a deep sense of shame in the back of his throat as he moved without help into the new laboratory.
Daniil could go home, write to his sister and have a cup of coffee. He could lay himself in the field and wait for it to consume him. But when he runs a hand through his hair, grown out in these last few years, it feels filthy and oily. He’ll write to his sister in the bath, then.
True to his word, Daniil does write a letter in the bath, but stalls for two weeks before sending it. He eventually relents when he swings open his front door to see his mailman already standing meekly outside.
“Bachelor,” The mailman says, ducking his head. He’s a tall man, stalky and covered in an ill-fitting uniform. “I don’t have anything for you, I apologize.”
“There’s no need for apologies.” Dankovsky replies, snappier than he means to be. He winces and hands him the letter that’s weighed down his pocket since he wrote it. “For my sister.”
“You’ve been busy writing these letters. Should I be back tomorrow?” There’s a glint of humour in his gaze as he looks down at Daniil, and for one horrifying second he thinks of the discarded letters to Burakh in his drawer. The mailman must sense his unease and shifts on his feet. “I’m only teasing you, Bachelor.”
Daniil shakes himself out. “You’re fine. I just didn’t catch the joke. If you’ll excuse me, then?”
In a distant sort of way, Daniil thinks that he was a third conspirator in the creation of the Broken Heart. It was in his nature to hop from seedy disgusting bar to seedy disgusting bar, and naturally he dragged Peter and Andrey along with him. They used to do coke in the marble hallways of their classmates' mansions, but with Daniil’s influence they switched to the back alleys of bars in the lowest parts of the city.
That’s where he heads now, to his current shithole of choice. It’s a building that leans almost impossibly far to the right, the foundation sunken into the peatland it’s built over. There’s a brothel upstairs every patron knows about but doesn’t speak about out loud. Daniil has never gone upstairs.
The heavy black door swings open and he slips inside, palming his coat pocket for his pack of cigarettes. He scouts out a secluded table in the back of the bar, far away from the stage where a woman in a long red dress dances burlesque. There’s a slit in the fabric for the men in the audience to catch a glimpse of her stocking-clad leg. Dankovsky sits with his back to her.
A waitress, clad in a similar dress to the woman on stage, floats by to his table. Her cheeks are ruddy and pink and she leans over to talk directly into Daniil’s ear.
“What can I get you, sir?”
Her words slurring into each other, high and syrupy. Something bitter forms in the back of Dankovsky’s throat and he swallows down on it.
“Vodka. Leave the bottle.”
The waitress laughs, her thin lips stretching over her teeth. Her eyes flash in the low light and she looks effortless, feminine, drunk. He waves her off as she leans back down to talk to him, and if it offends her she doesn’t let it show. A bottle of vodka and an imitation crystal glass is set down in front of him moments later.
Daniil pours four fingers of the drink into his glass and nurses it, surrounding himself in cigarette smoke and letting his mind drift. He’s only been visiting this bar for the past month. Before that, he had found a bar more outside of the Capital than in it, with waitresses that wore heavy makeup and even heavier perfume and a bartender that – in the low light of the bar, when he turned his head just right – looked like Burakh. He told Dankovsky last month, in no uncertain terms, that if he didn’t stop staring at him like that, he’d be asked to leave much less politely. Daniil left without protest and didn’t come back.
No one bothers him as he makes his way through the bottle of vodka and his pack of cigarettes. The ambience is fine, aside from a few bouts of loud laughter or glasses shattering, but the burlesque dancer never ventures out into the crowd and her music is nice but wholly unexceptional. Daniil leaves some rubles on the table, what he deems enough and then a few more, and walks out on unsteady legs. He does end up making his way home, collapsing into his bed still in his heavy coat.
That night, the Bachelor dreams. He sits in front of a large, intricate mirror, in a room lit by flickering candles. His face is bathed in an orange-yellow glow, softer than it is in the waking world. His stubble is so closely shaven it looks like it was never there. Shiny, straight hair cascades over his shoulders like black silk curtains.
There is a sharp-looking girl in the mirror, studying herself with a piercing, scientific curiosity. She doesn’t flinch. There’s nothing new to see, she’s seen this girl before. The Bachelor dreams that she’s looking at herself.
“Danya,” A rumbling voice calls. Something hot curls deep in her gut and she knows that it’s the Haruspex calling for her. “Where did you go?”
“I’m here,” She answers. Her voice is soft, high, and she speaks again to hear it better. “I’ll come back, just a minute.”
When the Bachelor stands, her shirt passes her hands and thighs, landing somewhere at her knees. The heat in her stomach strengthens. She pads her way through the halls with the kind of innate knowledge you have of somewhere you’ve never been but that comes to you in dreams. The Haruspex is leaned against the headboard of what she knows is their shared bed, looking at her with eyes blown black.
“There you are.” He shifts a hand behind his head, the muscles under his sleep shirt shifting. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“I just,” She falters in her path to the bed. Honesty wins her internal battle. “I had to look at myself.”
The Haruspex’s face softens and his head tilts back. “Danya, come sit with me.”
So she does, sliding herself onto her space on the bed, letting the Haruspex enclose her in his arms, hands wrapping around her hips and pulling her in closer. His breath is hot on the space between the Bachelor’s neck and ear and she shivers involuntarily.
“Haruspex.” She says, voice coming out higher than she means it to, but she doesn’t take it back. No shame bubbles up in her throat. He breathes out a laugh against her skin and it stokes the fire that threatens to consume the Bachelor from the inside out.
“You don’t have to get up and look at yourself at night. If you want, I’ll describe what you look like.”
“Haruspex.” She repeats, the word fully a whine. His hand skims the bottom edge of her briefs.
“Do you want me to?” The Haruspex is speaking into her neck and she tips her head back against his shoulder. He smooths her hair back with a big hand and rests it on her shoulder, over her shirt.
It’s wholly too much, his other hand sneaking under her shirt, sliding up her side and back down again. She squeezes her eyes shut and covers his hand with hers, the heat in her gut pulsing like a heartbeat. The Haruspex’s mouth has travelled up to the underside of her jaw, and she tilts her head to meet him, seeking him out in their dark bedroom, her mouth slack and blood burning hot.
The Bachelor wakes up in her apartment, sweating through her suit and coat she still has on, panting and horribly, achingly hard in her slacks. She takes off her – no – he takes off his coat in a feverish daze and presses a hand to the front of his pants, pulling a desperate noise out of him. It’s deeper than he wants it to be and it shocks a part of him that’s still asleep.
It doesn’t take much to get himself off, just the hand on himself that he bucks up into helplessly and the lingering dream. Daniil has had that dream before – not the same script, but he knew the setting – and the memory is so potent he can taste it. He casts out in his mind and tries to feel the Haruspex again, feel his hands and the broad expanse of his chest. That’s the humiliating part of this affair. Dankovsky thinks of Burakh’s breath on his throat, mouth dragging up to his Adam’s apple and grazing it with his teeth and he’s sent hurtling over the edge, coming with a strangled noise.
Daniil thinks that he is a man of science. He has slowly drying come in his trousers. He’s drunker than he thought he was. He drags himself out of bed with a thump and limps into the washroom, pulling the chord for the bare lightbulb and wincing when it flickers on.
He avoids looking at the mirror while he strips, throwing his clothes into the bathtub and only turning to his reflection when he’s fully naked. Dankovsky doesn’t falter when he meets his own eyes. He splashes water on his face and smooths shaving cream over his jaw, picking up the straight razor lying dormant on the counter.
It’s a well-oiled routine. Daniil shivers in his unheated bathroom but his hands don’t shake while he glides the blade across his face. His stubble hasn’t grown out. He doesn’t let it. But once Daniil sets the blade back down, his face is raw where he’s shaved it and stings. When he moves his face in the mirror, tilting it back and around. He stretches his thin lips, v-shaped and pale pink, over his teeth and doesn’t see the brothel-bar's waitress in the mirror. It hurts.
The next week passes in a hazy blur. Dankovsky doesn’t dream, throwing himself back into the lab and avoiding his bed at home. He can’t seem to scratch the itch under his skin, and when he wakes up using his laboratory notes as a pillow he decides to drink himself under the table. Daniil wipes the lead markings pressed onto his cheek with a wet rag and pointedly ignores everyone else in the lab as he makes his exit. Everyone else is pointedly ignoring him, too.
Daniil makes his way to the bar and thinks about his sex. This isn’t out of the ordinary. He thinks about Andrey, so comfortable in his skin, long, pale and sharp. Dankovsky thinks that Andrey’s the only man in the world who’s more comfortable naked than clothed. He’s never been the same man as Andrey, always fully clothed while he fumbles with men in alleys. Being told that he looks at naked women like they’re slabs of meat and not finding it in himself to disagree. It’s only natural, given that he’s seen more dead women’s tits than alive ones.
He does make his way to the bar successfully, his boots scuffing on the hardwood floor. The same waitress from last week seeks him out, still stuffed into a too-small dress, face still flushed pink and eyes glassy. She brings him out a bottle of vodka when he waves a hand at her. She brushes past Dankovsky’s shoulder in a purposeful way and he feels her touch even when she leaves. He rubs a gloved hand over his face.
The bar is unchanging, though Daniil finds himself watching the staircase up to the brothel more than he usually does. He makes his way through half of the bottle and watches the slow trickle of men and women make their way up, the women leading the men by the hand. They have to be playing things up, Daniil thinks. This is their job. They play a role, and they get paid. Dankovsky doesn’t have many ways to get paid, these days.
An ashtray clinks down on the table in front of him. The candle flickers but stays lit.
“I brought you an ashtray,” The waitress says, redundantly. “You sure like to smoke.”
This is the first thing people notice about Daniil, now. He didn’t smoke before the Sand Pest. “I wouldn’t say I like it.”
She ignores his drunk admission with a practiced look of pity and a hand on her hip. She’s like honey, leaving a thick, sweet aftertaste in Daniil’s throat. “I saw you watching the upstairs.”
“Well,” He starts. He takes a long drag from his cigarette and lets the smoke surround him. “I understand the reality of this establishment.”
“I could take you upstairs.” Daniil looks up then, and she notices. Her grin widens, and she reminds him strikingly of a cat, lips shiny and eyes dark. A predator. “Would you like that?”
The waitress is plump, with long brunette hair and a medium complexion. Dankovsky can smell her, a clean scent cut through by the piercing smell of alcohol. He bets her skin is soft. He bets she’ll make it good for him, maybe even let him lay on the pillows like a dead weight. That might be wishful thinking.
Like she can read his thoughts, her eyes cast down to his gloved hand, resting uselessly on the table. “I’ll let you keep your gloves on. Or all your clothes, I don’t mind.”
Daniil twitches with his whole body. He’s drunk. When he casts another look at the waitress, she’s still standing over him, body cocked in such a casual, practiced way. This is her job. Something deep and ugly worms its way into the top of his chest, because he doesn’t know what to say. He’s thought about this a lot, more than he’d like to admit, but it’s never been like this.
The candle flickers again and taps the ashes off his cigarette, hands shaking slightly. Dankovsky chews his lip. He’s thinking about being in bed with her, running his small, pale hands over her body and being good at it. He can’t force those things to be true at once.
“I don’t have all night.” She speaks again, her voice pitching higher. The ugly feeling rises in Daniil’s throat again. “Will you come up with me, Bachelor?”
The ugliness catches in Daniil’s throat and pulls. It rips a chunk out of him, his whole body going cold and then hot. He tastes iron in his mouth and realizes blood is running down his chin, having bitten through his lip. She isn’t supposed to be here. Neither of them are.
“I can’t,” He croaks. “I don’t know my lines.”
He shoves his way to his feet, snakeskin coat whipping around him as he flees the bar. He doesn’t leave any money. He won’t be able to come back there. The open-mouthed confusion of the waitress burns behind Daniil’s eyelids as he squeezes them shut.
The streets are empty. The wind bites at his exposed skin and prickles at his eyes, watery and bloodshot. His face is flushed, he can feel it, the blush not helped by his aggressive razor burn. Dankovsky thumps up the stairs to his home, fumbling for his keys and thinks that he should have a cup of coffee. Take a bath. Throw himself out of his window.
Except – there’s a man in front of Daniil’s front door. In his drunken haze, he doesn’t find fear in his gut, but a deep ache. The man is twice as broad and two heads taller than Dankovsky, so it can’t be the mailman, unless the week since he’s seen him has really done him well. He staggers his way toward his door, trying to pull something out of his mind to say. Daniil manages a weak sound, horribly close to a whine, and the man turns around.
Artemiy Burakh is staring down at him, eyes strikingly blue even just lit by distant street lamps. He dips his head down, flashing Dankovsky a private smile. “I thought you’d be waiting at the door for me, Bachelor.”
Daniil reels as if he’s been struck. There’s nowhere for him to go – Burakh reaches out and grabs hold of his upper arm to keep him upright.
“Are you drunk?” He asks, not cruelly.
“No - yes, ” Dankovsky corrects himself. He feels like he’s in a confession booth, the light filtering through the wicker door compelling him to honesty. But even without a priest, he finds he can’t lie. Not when Burakh is close enough to smell the alcohol on Dankovsky’s breath. Not when Burakh is this close at all. “Come inside.”
His voice is a raw, cracked thing. Too earnest in its presentation. But Burakh lets his arm go, where his big hand was burning like a brand, and lets him unlock the door. Daniil tilts his head silently to call Burakh inside and they shed their things. Dankovsky watches Burakh set down a medium sized suitcase and gently place a piece of paper on the kitchen table as he sits.
“Bachelor,” Dankovsky ignores him, shuffling around with his suit and the contents of his pockets, trying to discreetly tell if this is all a mirage and he’s really been stabbed on his way home. Burakh clears his throat and knocks on the table. “Dankovsky, sit with me.”
Daniil is drunk. He is a spineless, weak-willed man and he turns on his heel and sits down at the table. He lights a cigarette and stares intently at the tips of Burakh’s fingers. He feels himself start to speak.
“Please, if you have any consideration for me left, don’t hit me against the walls. You’ll damage the pipes and if you don’t, my landlord will flay me.” Dankovsky wants Burakh to flinch. He wants Burakh to touch him again. He wants.
The Haruspex scoffs. He reaches out a hand and tips Daniil’s chin up to meet his eyes and rests his fingers there. “Hurting you would be a cardinal sin, Bachelor, no matter how much you want it. You look horrible.”
“Thank you,” Dankovsky says dryly. His face is red and blotchy and he feels sweat beading at his hairline, but he tries. He flutters his eyelashes and clumsily runs his tongue across his bottom lip. “Rest assured, my mental faculties have degraded too, not just my face. My colleague told me I was functionally deranged just last week.”
Burakh’s hand withdraws but he looks amused, unfolding the piece of paper gently. Daniil was trying for humour and he’s quietly pleased that it landed somewhere near it. “You don’t have anything kind to say about me now? Here, I found you were quite forward. My foil, the man carved out of the mountainous stones that surround the town, with blood twinged sweet and earthy with twyre. You could’ve been a poet.”
Daniil knows, in some cosmic or biblical sense, that those are his words. He chokes on smoke and thinks about the letters in his junk drawer. His voice is quiet when he speaks. “My Haruspex.”
“Oh,” Burakh is quiet in turn. “I’m glad you remember.”
“I don’t. Don’t read it to me. I have a headache.” He wipes his hands over his face and pushes his windswept hair behind his ears. Strands fall through immediately and hang over his eyes. “I’m going to bed.”
The lamps scattered around the room crackle and Dankovsky’s hands tremble when he takes off his clothes for bed. He leaves his undergarments and collared shirt on and casts a look at Burakh. He’s looking at him already, turned around in his chair, and stands up when their eyes meet.
“I’ll get a hotel.”
“No, you won’t.” Dankovsky sits down on top of his sheets. He didn’t bother to make his bed in the morning and he watches Burakh’s Adam’s apple bob up and down.
He works his jaw for a minute. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“I don’t have extra linens. Haruspex,” Daniil gently circles Burakh’s wrist in his hand and tugs him forward, just barely. “Doesn’t it just make sense?”
Burakh reaches out and fixes Daniil’s collar, and when his knuckles brush against his neck Dankovsky feels himself break out in a sweat. He wants to throw up. He wants the Haruspex in his bed. He swallows against the drunken panic surging up his throat and doesn’t drop their eye contact.
“You’re being very,” Burakh’s mouth twitches upwards at the corners. He starts to draw away and Dankovsky’s devastation must show on his face, so he reaches out and cups his shoulder. “Rational. I’m just going to take my layers off.”
He nods and slides himself under the covers, arranging his legs in what he hopes is a non-offensive way. He leaves his back turned to Burakh; listening intently to the sounds of his clothes hitting the floor. Daniil heaves a shuddering breath when the blankets lift and the mattress dips, the bed is small and there’s nowhere for Burakh to go than to press himself up against Daniil’s back.
He allows himself a private smile about it into his pillow and one last squirm, but Burakh slings an arm around his hips to stop him. He presses his face into Dankovsky’s nape at the same time and Daniil’s whole body jerks alive, his blood rushing in his ears when he feels Burakh exhale against his neck. It’s horrible, and he tips his head back to feel Burakh’s nose brush past his pulse point.
“Are you wearing perfume?” He asks, and Dankovsky feels the words more than he hears them.
He wants to say that a peasant boy on the corner would know the difference between the smell of cologne and perfume. Instead, in a voice barely above a whisper, high and cracked, he says: “Yes.”
Dankovsky wakes in the same position he fell asleep in and it’s somehow jarring. Burakh is still breathing deep and slow against the back of his neck and he shivers, a deep, painful shiver that makes the Haruspex mumble into the waking world.
“Are you alright, Bachelor?” Burakh’s voice is stone scraping against polished marble. He runs a hand up Dankovsky’s side and feels how the Bachelor is trembling under his dress shirt, probably feels how lean he’s gotten, too. In response, Burakh somehow manages to plaster himself closer to Daniil’s back. “You’re awake, I can hear it.
“I am,” says Daniil, his voice a croak in comparison to Burakh’s baritone. “I just get cold in the mornings.”
Burakh hums. His hand slips up under Dankovsky’s shirt and he would flinch if there was anywhere to go, but he’s trapped between the wall and Burakh at his back. He doesn’t say anything, just keeps his palm spread out over Dankovsky’s stomach.
“I go on walks in the mornings.” Daniil, again, feels himself forced to speak. He tilts his head back to try to see Burakh. All he can see when he cranes his head back is the curve of his browbone. “If you’d like to get up, we can go together.”
“Us, Bachelor, going on a morning walk,” The Haruspex muses. There’s irony somewhere in his tone. “If you’ll have me, I think that’s just fine.”
Daniil clears his throat and twists around, Burakh’s hold on him finally loosening. He finds himself being stared at by the Haruspex and fixes his gaze on his square chin.
“I don’t do much. If you’re bored, we can go drinking.” It’s always worked with Andrey and Pyotr, when they’d be knee deep in studies they didn’t understand and university colleagues they didn’t care for.
Burakh’s lips pull back in a smile. His teeth are big and straighter than most of the Steppe peoples’ were – he must have sought dentistry in the Capitol. “I didn’t come to be entertained by you, Bachelor, not really.”
“Why did you, then?” Daniil risks a glance upward to meet Burakh’s eyes.
“Because you asked me to.”
There’s nothing but honesty in his eyes when Dankovsky looks into them, even as he leans away to get out of bed. He’s in a thin long-sleeved shirt that stretches obscenely over his back and Daniil allows himself to watch the Haruspex stand up before he too makes his way out of bed.
The two dress in silence. Dankovsky takes a few minutes to shave before they leave. He doesn’t usually shave every day, but with the observant Haruspex in his space he feels the need to – a way to control one aspect of how he’s perceived.
Once the pair have left Daniil’s apartment building, bundled up in their coats and gloves, Burakh speaks.
“Begged. Not asked.” He says plainly.
Daniil chokes on air and fumbles in his pocket for his cigarettes. “What did I say, in the letter?”
“You don’t doubt that you begged.” Burakh looks at him then, out of the corner of his eye. There are few people on the street, and anyone passing by would just think the two were old friends. Two men out on a walk before their wives wake up.
Daniil scowls around his cigarette as he lights it and speaks out of the corner of his mouth. “I believe that I was uncouth. I also know that I was heavily influenced by alcohol.”
“You were,” Burakh pauses as a few people pass them, shifting so him and Daniil are in line with each other. “Maybe I’m not as beautiful with my words as you are. I can’t quite describe it.”
He frowns again but hurries to catch up with Burakh. They fall back into step with each other. Daniil is leading them to the overpass that leads out of the city, overlooking how the stone of the Capitol melts into rolling steppe. It’s little used and out of the way, overtop a thin offshoot of the Moskva River that’ll soon freeze over.
Cigarette smoke surrounds Dankovsky in the cold air of morning. It bites at him, nips at his ankles where his pants are too short, at the tops of his cheekbones and tip of his sharp nose where he’s already flushed.
Burakh looks affected by the city, the side of his jaw tense and his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his thick coat. He isn’t wearing his smock, but still, Daniil sees his butchery in the way he carries himself. He wonders if Burakh can still see the blood that stains Daniil’s hands. If he sliced him open across the collarbones and down to his stomach, he’d see what Dankovsky aches for.
The overpass sneaks up on Daniil, lost in thought. His cigarette has burned to nothing and he flicks the butt into the river below. “We can sit, if you’d like.”
Burakh stops and surveys the plains that stretch out so far into the sky that you can’t see where the two end or begin. It all scuffs together, the grass into the pale yellow of morning. Daniil tries to communicate this silently to Burakh while he lights his second cigarette.
The Haruspex tilts his head like a dog. “Does this place remind you of the Steppe, Bachelor?”
Of course it does. Sometimes, Daniil wakes and every bone in his body burns like the plague did, and he grasps desperately for the piece of himself the town on Gorkhon tore out of him.
Daniil inhales deeply. “Not particularly. Maybe the Steppe reminds me of here. I was here first, remember.”
It hasn’t felt that way, ever since the Sand Pest. A rebirth through dissection, a dissection of self – spirit and body. This Bachelor is more, less, changed at his very core from the before. It hurts as much as it frees.
“We should sit.” The Haruspex’s eyes are severe, his face the sheer drop off a cliff. Despite this, humour glints in the blue of his eyes.
Daniil shows him how he sits over the overpass, facing away from the street, his legs dangling over the edge. His oxfords are a full size too big and they threaten to slip off his feet and into the river below. Daniil wishes he was drunk to excuse the thought of losing his shoes to the water and Burakh carrying him back to the apartment.
When Burakh heaves his long legs to dangle as well, he shifts himself so his and Daniil’s shoulders are brushing. Daniil wants to pinch his thigh to make sure he’s not trapped in a delusion, or to lay his head on Burakh’s much broader, sturdier thigh and fall asleep for a midday nap.
“Your hair.” Burakh’s hand comes up to play with a strand at the back of Dankovsky’s neck, long enough that it swoops inward near his shoulder. “It suits you.”
No one else has said anything similar. Most say he looks shaggy and unkempt. When they’re feeling particularly cruel, they call him feminine.
“I thought you might offer to cut it.” Wouldn’t that be sweet torture, Burakh’s blunt nails over his scalp. When the hand in his hair moves, Daniil shivers.
“I wouldn’t want to, no,” The Haruspex is carding his hand through his hair, now, and there’s a smile playing at his face. “I like it like this.”
Daniil tries on a smile. It looks more like a smirk on his sharp face, the twist of his mouth a touch uncanny. He leaves ‘thank you’ unsaid – he moves closer to Burakh against the chilling wind. “The Ripper wants me to keep my hair long. How quaint.”
“You best listen to him. If you ask him to cut it, the razor might slip.” He moves his thumb idly over the side of Daniil’s neck. His face, when Daniil looks over, is pinched with focus. He’s not looking at Dankovsky’s face. He’s looking instead at the curve of his neck before it disappears into his collar.
When the Haruspex’s blue eyes flick up to meet the Bachelor’s, he thinks again of dissection. If anyone was to do it, he would ask the Ripper beside him. Because the Haruspex wouldn’t be afraid of anything he found inside the Bachelor’s chest cavity. If need be, the Bachelor wouldn’t ask – he'd beg.
The two become unlikely housemates in just over a week. Daniil goes to the lab after the first few lazy days with Burakh, sleeping in till the afternoon and going on long walks windingly through the city and over into the plains. There’s something surreal about it, spending so much companionable time with a man who, in Dankovsky’s memory, is still covered in viscera.
When Daniil comes home from his lab work or the library the smell of a home-cooked meal and the sight of a man at the table stops being surprising. He pours the two of them stiff drinks that they sip over the meal, and when a full stomach makes the Bachelor yawn into his glass they retire to bed, sleeping slotted together in the small bed.
A cold snap cuts through the Capitol with a vengeance, causing Daniil and Burakh to throw two more duvets over the mattress. The warmth radiating from Burakh that’s trapped under the blankets makes Daniil sleep like a bear, deep and hibernating. He wakes up at nearly fourteen-hundred hours and hurries to his laboratory without waking the Haruspex.
Daniil arrives back at the apartment when the moon is high in the sky and the clouds are low. The half dozen layers of clothing he piled on do little to stop his shaking. The warmth under the door of the apartment and under the skin of the man inside call for him. When he cracks open the door, the Haruspex isn’t waiting for him, dish towel slung over his shoulder like usual. He’s sitting at the table, head in hand, bottle of rum open next to him. Daniil recoils.
“Haruspex,” He calls, shedding his coat and scarf. “Are you well?”
“My Bachelor,” Burakh’s voice is slurred and hides nothing. Warmth seeps out of his tone, but a sadness lingers in his eyes when he turns to look at Daniil. “I made you dinner. I started eating without you. Drinking, too.”
“I stayed at the laboratory too long.”
“No. You didn’t do anything.” When Daniil gets closer, Burakh reaches out to touch him. “Nothing. Eat, please. I want to see you eat.”
Dankovsky snorts but sits in the seat next to him. When he reaches for the bowl of stew in front of Burakh, he frowns and gently pushes his hands away. Instead, Burakh reaches down and pulls Dankovsky’s chair closer to him and gestures for him to eat.
The Bachelor eats the meal in silence. Burakh doesn’t drink from the rum bottle again, but his arm lays heavy and possessive around the back of Dankovsky’s chair. It spurs him to clean his bowl.
Dankovsky stands up and takes the bowl to the sink. After a moment’s deliberation, he takes the rum bottle away from the Haruspex and turns back to his shoebox kitchen. While Daniil is on his toes putting the bottle away on his liquor shelf, he feels Burakh’s arms loop around his middle.
“My Bachelor. Can I plead my case?” He breathes out. His voice is tinged with the same sadness and his breath reeks of rum.
Daniil nods, even though he can’t see. “So plead.”
Burakh takes a shuddering breath. “Bachelor, me and Lara Ravel were very affectionate. Like this, like us tangled in bed. We were affectionate children, when you couldn’t tell us from each other. No matter where we’d been in the day, we’d seek the other out by the end of it. I’d kiss her hair and smell her, her scent not that different from my own.”
A deep jealousy flares in Daniil. He jerks away from Burakh’s chest but doesn’t get anywhere. “No, I won’t. I won’t listen to you speak – floweringly, lovingly – about Lara Ravel. Not like this.”
Burakh shushes him quiet, his protests dying down. Daniil keeps squirming because one should never surrender.
“I knew you’d act like this. But Bachelor, please. You’ll like where I end. Because we wanted to, we needed proximity and intimacy, and we acted on it without words. It reminds me of someone, but not completely.” The Haruspex scents the juncture between Daniil’s neck and shoulder. “It’s not the same, with you. It’s not a wanting of closeness and the one person who will give it to me – it's wanting you, every waking moment. It troubles me. How you could consume me, from the inside out, and I just have to keep waking up and seeing you next to me.”
Daniil holds his breath while Burakh pauses. He rubs the side of his face, his rough stubble, up and down from his ear to his shoulder.
“We sleep together every night. I smell more like your apartment and you smell like twyre. You aren’t tense when I hold you like this. So why can’t I kiss your hair, your neck? I’ve thought about it. I can’t be that bad at it.”
All of the fight drains out of Dankovsky in a rush. He melts, boneless, into the warm body encasing him. His voice is small and breathy. “This isn’t really what you want.”
“But it is, Bachelor, I’ve wanted more than anything, more than words or reason.” Burakh’s voice has gained some steel, now. He sounds more like himself. “So why can’t I have you?”
A shudder wracks through Dankovsky’s body, from the top of his hair to his bony ankles. “Have me, Haruspex.”
The Bachelor twists his face back as the Haruspex tilts his face forward. He’s still holding him, and the grip Burakh has around his middle tightens painfully before he leans in and presses his lips to the corner of Daniil’s lips.
“My Bachelor.” He murmurs. It’s sickly sweet in the air between them. His hooked nose presses into Daniil’s, his face bare centimeters away. Daniil can only focus on one of Burakh’s features at once, the cut of his jaw, the soft hair that falls across his forehead, the way his eyelashes jut out like spikes and fan out on his cheekbones.
Dankovsky dreams about Burakh more than anyone else. His profile, his wry smile, the shape of his body all burned into the very core of Dankovsky’s subconscious. A few times he’s thought about seeking psychiatry to tell him why this is – that even when it’s not Burakh in the flesh, it’s Burakh in another’s. A bull with pitch-black eyes, a stray cat slinking down an alley, the hands that baptize him in a lukewarm pond, it’s all Burakh. Even when it’s not his form, it’s in the air and itching under his skin, an ever-looming question of ‘where is Burakh?’
Despite the answer, it’s the same plot with the same characters to fill. When Burakh is a muscled bull, Danya will always be next to him, barefoot in the tall grain. When Burakh is a silent priest, Danya sings soprano in the choir with her sisters. She doesn’t need a psychiatrist to tell her what she knows to be true – Artemiy and Danya were written to not be separated.
Burakh stays in the apartment during the hours Dankovsky is out. He goes to the market and once, the tailors. He brought some money with him and insists on using it, even though Daniil argues he should be paying Burakh’s way in the Capitol. To Dankovsky’s knowledge, Burakh doesn’t go far into the city unless he’s led there.
He’s being led now, through the busy downtown city centre and into marshy farmland. It’s isolated, quiet, and the only sounds are their breathing and the squelch of their shoes in the peatland.
In between two farms, where an old path leads to a fallen stone wall, the Haruspex stops. He’s staring off at the wall. It’s surrounded by old bottles, the remnants of drunks trying to stumble home to their farms.
“We should shoot at the bottles.” The Haruspex speaks. “I taught myself to shoot pistols that way.”
A smile threatens to overtake Daniil’s thin lips at the image of a young Burakh fumbling with pistols in the Steppe. He tucks his chin into his scarf. “I didn’t bring my revolver. We could come back tomorrow, if I’m home when it’s light out.”
Burakh hums and shifts his coat to the side. Tucked into the waistband of his slacks is Dankovsky’s gun, the handle glinting ivory and engraved with his family crest. It’s the revolver he keeps tucked away in the furthest reaches of his cupboard – he moves it every four months to keep himself sharp. It’s the revolver Burakh has now taken out of his waistband and flicked the trigger guard off of, holding it up behind his head.
“Burakh, where-” Daniil reaches his arm out but quickly snatches it back, wanting to be spared of the embarrassment of playing keep away. The Haruspex is smiling down at him. “I shouldn’t leave you alone so much. You’re prying into my things.”
“What do you think I should do, instead?” Burakh coos. He tilts his head, dark blonde hair splaying across his forehead. “You won’t make use of a firearm, not here. Why can’t you humour me with this?”
Daniil pauses, his face still buried in his itchy scarf. It tickles at his face – no doubt pink under the offending fabric. He huffs into it and starts walking towards the wall. “Come on, then.”
The Haruspex sets two bottles up on the ledge. By the looks of it, there’s about a half dozen scattered around the area.
“I’m going first.” Burakh takes a few long strides away and turns heel a rough eight metres away. Daniil stands next to him, leeching off his body heat. “We have enough bottles to do a few rounds.”
“Do you even know how to chamber the gun?” Dankovsky asks. He turns himself closer to Burakh and tilts his face up to watch him. They’re so close in the fields they must look like one form, their coats swirling together in the cold wind.
Burakh draws six bullets from the inside pocket of his coat. He must have stolen them from Daniil’s stockpile under his bed, the bastard. He flicks the chamber of the gun out and Daniil is hit with the scent of gunpowder and smoke – not strong, as the gun hasn’t been fired in God knows how long, but there, nonetheless. Burakh doesn’t wear gloves, even now when cold has settled over the Capitol resolutely, and his thick fingers guide the slim bullets into their chambers. He smooths his thumb over the edge of one, removing a scuff of old powder or dirt, before slamming the chamber closed and spinning it experimentally.
“I think I have it figured out.” He says, cradling the gun in his hands. They’re broad, broad enough that the revolver seems much daintier than it is. Daniil furrows his brows but doesn’t look up.
“Hm?” He looks up when the Haruspex scoffs at him.
“You asked if I knew how to chamber the gun. Do you think I do?” His head is still tilted to the side, looking down at Daniil.
“You should be put to work, instead of lounging around playing with my revolver.” It’s easy to snap at Burakh. You couldn’t tear Dankovsky away from his side if you tried. “Just shoot.”
His shoulders move when he laughs, brushing against Dankovsky’s. Burakh raises the revolver away from himself, a thick finger on the trigger and another hand cupping it, and squints one eye closed. “Cover your ears.”
Daniil listens and covers his ears with his leather gloves, but not without a frown. His gun, well-loved, is swallowed up in Burakh’s hands, moving minutely to aim at the bottles. When Burakh shoots, his shoulders shudder back with the recoil and his eyebrow twitches involuntarily. Daniil isn’t watching the bottles, but he hears glass breaking. Burakh tsks.
“I’m not used to small guns like this. It’s throwing off my aim.” Burakh reasons, turning himself to Daniil with an unreasonably serious expression on his face. He smells like ash, now, the metallic scent of gunfire piercing through his usual musk.
“Hm, sure. You can always go again.” Burakh absorbs every bit of recoil, his tree-trunks of legs rooting him to the ground while he shoots. Daniil muses that he’s seen Burakh shooting a pistol before and wasn’t as captivated as he is now. Could’ve been circumstance.
He frowns at Dankovsky. “Don’t you want a turn?”
Dankovsky wants a lot of things. He wants to get as close to underneath Burakh’s skin as possible. He’d settle for tucked into his coat. He wants Burakh to lean down and clumsily press their lips together again. “I haven’t shot anything in so long. You might have to help me.”
A smile forces its way onto Daniil’s face. He can’t help it, he’s feeling particularly shameless, like a woman in the bar asking anyone to help her lace up her dress as it slips off her body. He allows himself to be moved by the Haruspex, the revolver lightly placed in his gloved hands.
“Your gun suits you, it’s nice and delicate. You’ll take to this better than me,” He breathes into Daniil’s hair. The sound Daniil makes in response is dangerously close to a sigh. He has one hand pressed onto Daniil’s shoulder blade, anticipating recoil. “You aren’t hunting. Just keep your eye on the target.”
Dankovsky misses his first shot. His back foot stumbles and Burakh’s other hand comes up to his waist, burning like a brand through the three layers of clothing between them. Compounded with the warmth of Burakh’s chest behind him – Daniil is close to purring like a content cat.
“Try again.” Burakh doesn’t seem to realize that he’s teaching someone who’s not all there. Dankovsky’s committed to missing every time he shoots, just to keep the Haruspex close enough to smell.
Daniil shoots once, misses high and over the bottle. He shoots again and the bullet pings off the corner of the stone wall, changing direction dangerously. He laughs once, a high, piercing thing – and in response Burakh snorts. The sounds in conjunction are like a symphony, soprano and baritone, however you’d put it.
“Oops,” he says, the sound of his voice edging on hysteria. He always gets like this when he laughs, an outpouring of raw emotion that unnerves. Usually this is when Daniil would excuse himself for a cigarette, but Burakh is laughing too. It’s emboldening. “You might have to hold me; I think my hands are shaking. It's cold, isn’t it, Haruspex?”
When the Haruspex does as he’s told, wrapping himself around Daniil and covering his hands on the revolver, Daniil stops laughing. His smile doesn’t drop, though, and he feels like a prey animal – baring his teeth when it’s caught.
Burakh stills their hands and takes a deep breath, his chest expanding and bringing the two impossibly closer. It’s such a wonderful feeling that Daniil’s blood rushing in his ears blocks out what the Haruspex is saying. When he finally registers his words as ‘shoot’, he’s already pulled the trigger.
The sharp sound of glass breaking startles Daniil out of his thoughts. Burakh exclaims, a sound that quickly turns into a laugh, and Daniil turns himself around in the embrace. The Haruspex has the gun, now, but that’s so far removed from Dankovsky’s priorities the thought is immediately disregarded.
“You did it.” Burakh sounds so painfully proud of him, his hand on his lower back clenching into his coat.
“I didn’t do much. I just pulled the trigger.”
There’s a beat of silence, of Burakh just staring down at Dankovsky. He worries then that he’s said the wrong thing, that he’s brought up a conversation about fault and agency that’ll end in a shouting match. The same kind of shouting match they’d have, sleep deprived and shell-shocked, knee deep in a plague.
Instead of calling him unjust and immoral, Burakh leans down and smacks a wet kiss to the side of Daniil’s face. He keeps going, kissing the tip of his nose and his cupid’s bow, leaving spit in his wake. A laugh rips out of Daniil’s chest, no doubt as unattractive as the last one. It’s made even worse when it morphs into a shriek as the Haruspex gives up all pretense of a kiss and just starts to lick Dankovsky’s face. He pushes at his shoulders but they don’t give, Burakh only moving away when Daniil forces a hand between them and covers his mouth.
“You’re disgusting. Like –” Burakh licks his gloved hand, he can feel the wetness through the leather. “Like a mutt. Did no one teach you manners as a child?”
“Your face is red. And your hair,” He reaches up and cards a hand through Daniil’s bangs. “The wind got to it. It’s sticking up in the back.”
Dankovsky scowls, in spite of his deepening blush. “You don’t have to be rude, too.”
“It’s very becoming. If you undid a button, this would be like my own personal burlesque. Will you do it for me?”
Dankovsky’s face twists again, and he feels the need to immediately free himself from Burakh, lest he start stripping in a field. “No. It’s too cold for any burlesque. We’re going home.”
“At home, then?” Burakh falls into step with Dankovsky, his hands in his pockets. “Just flash me a bit of ankle. I’ll go to sleep a happy man.”
He thinks about it. It’s true that Burakh vastly prefers when Daniil doesn’t go into another room to change. He doesn’t try to touch or ogle; it just seems to comfort him when Dankovsky puts his back to the Haruspex and undresses without ceremony. It makes him smile, like he knows how much Daniil is indulging him by not letting their idle conversation drop while he unbuttons his shirt. It makes Burakh go to sleep in a good mood, and when that happens, he’ll kiss Daniil, however chastely, on his way out of the apartment.
Dankovsky tsks and gently places his hand in the crook of Burakh’s elbow. With his other hand, he pats his pockets for his cigarettes. “We’ll see.”
Dankovsky hasn’t drank – properly, as in into a stupor – since the Haruspex turned up at his doorstep. It’s not something that makes him shake or seize, not like it did when he stopped doing coke. But it’s something that nags at him. If he’s honest with himself, it’s not so much about the drinking itself, although that is a hard habit to kick. It’s about how he allows himself to think and act when he’s half a bottle deep.
“We’re going to the bar tonight.” Daniil speaks. Burakh’s hands don’t flinch where he’s brushing imaginary lint off the shoulders of Daniil’s coat. In the harsh light of the entryway lightbulb Burakh’s browbone casts his eyes in shadow. “When I come back from the lab. Don’t go anywhere.”
Burakh’s hands stop moving. He recovers quickly and squeezes a cold hand on the back of Dankovsky’s neck. When he tilts his head upwards the light catches the blue of his eyes and hits his hair so it looks white – the image of him is so vibrant Daniil squints like he’s staring at the sun. “Where would I go? Of course I’ll be here. Do you want to eat before we leave?”
“Sure.” Dankovsky exhales, feeling something shake loose in his chest when he does. “That’s fine with me. I’ll see you then.”
He waits, throat clicking when he swallows thickly. Burakh’s turned his back to the Bachelor now, who’s thrumming like a live wire – he got a hand on the back of his neck. Burakh moved him around the kitchen with hands on his hips early in the morning. The Bachelor waits.
In a heartbeat Burakh smiles in a close-lipped way, like he’s trying not to laugh, and rounds back to him. He wraps his arms around Dankovsky’s back and dips him slightly, throwing off his balance enough that Dankovsky has to clutch at his shoulders.
“Good Lord,” Daniil says under his breath. He means it to sound bitchy but it comes out rapturous. “I don’t know what-”
He’s cut off by Burakh’s mouth on his, more on his teeth than anything. He melts into it all the same, letting the Haruspex try again when his mouth is actually closed and land one kiss on his bottom lip.
“Were you waiting for this before you left?” He asks Daniil in the space between them. His breath is hot and he’s smiling just enough that Daniil can see his canines. He wants to lick into Burakh’s mouth and feel them scrape against his tongue, tasting his spit. It hasn’t worked out like that yet.
“No,” Dankovsky breathes, instead of confessing that he’d keep the Haruspex on a meter long leash if he could, to take him wherever he went. He’d twist it twice around his wrist to keep it taught. “We’ll leave for the bar soon after I get home, alright?”
Burakh smiles the same way, like he’s in on a private joke. “Fine. I’ll see you then, Bachelor.”
It’s been difficult for the Bachelor to concentrate in the lab. He finds himself staring aimlessly at his books, running the dusty pages under this thumb nail and willing time to inch by faster.
He takes hour long cigarette breaks where he hardly smokes. He thinks, mostly. Mostly about the Haruspex. Dankovsky doesn’t smoke because thinking about the Haruspex makes him slightly sick to his stomach anyways and the nicotine doesn’t help. The force of his desire, the thick way it sticks in the back of his throat when he swallows, it makes Dankovsky feel like an open wound.
It’s a wonder how he didn’t drown himself, before. Before the Haruspex moved in and Dankovsky let him. How he coped with this want that makes him salivate and tremble when he couldn’t go home and curl into Burakh’s side. When he couldn’t look at Burakh’s face for as long as he wants, drinking his fill of the man’s undivided attention.
Dankovsky forces himself to stay late at the lab so they go to the bar at a good hour, when there are enough people that the two of them can go unnoticed. Two men out at the bar, a night away from their wives. Daniil comes home just after dark and jogs the last few blocks to the apartment. It doesn’t matter.
“Haruspex?” He calls out before he’s even opened the front door, just to hear himself say his name.
“Yes? I have stew for you. If you want to leave now, I’m ready.”
Daniil laughs, the sound sharp and coated in hysteria. He doesn’t ask to take it back. “Of course. Of course you’re here. I’ll eat your stew.”
Burakh doesn’t ask where else he’d be, but the funny twist of his mouth when he brings Daniil his stew speaks for him.
“You shouldn’t be anywhere else. You should be at work with me, but I don’t think my colleagues would allow that.” It feels like he might be making a joke. “I don’t fully grasp what I’m saying. I ran here, I’m a bit out of sorts.”
“Why did you run here?” There’s a laugh in his voice, echoing the dry humour in Daniil’s. It’s like a shot of espresso, to be sharing in something Burakh thinks is funny.
Daniil blows on the top of his bowl of stew, eyes flicking up to meet Burakh’s. “Had to get out of the rain.”
The sky’s been clear for weeks, not a whisper of rain even though the sky has been threatening it. Burakh snorts then, shaking his head in disbelief.
He’s dressed himself better than he usually does, which means there are no mysterious wine-red stains around the stomach of his sweater. It’s always fascinating to Dankovsky, how Burakh changes his presentation when he thinks he has to act like a real boy. His pants are cuffed. It’s charming.
Dankovsky lets Burakh lock the door, standing with his back to the man and taking a few shuddering breaths. A hand between his shoulders spurs him into motion and the two leave in lockstep, Dankovsky leading them deep into downtown to a bar he has some goodwill left with. It’s not too loud, quiet enough that he believes they’ll be able to carry a conversation.
They don’t talk much on the way, the only sounds between them are their breath and the click of their shoes on the pavement. Daniil doesn’t mind, his hand pressing and pulling Burakh lightly from where it rests in the crook of his elbow.
The clattering of people drinking and talking hits Daniil as soon as he shoulders his way through the entrance to the bar. He can feel Burakh trailing behind him and turns to look up at him – the bar noise quiets when he bends down so Dankovsky can speak to him.
“Do you want a booth? I see one in the corner.”
He’s speaking a bit loudly but it’s not too bad when he’s shielded by Burakh’s bulk. Burakh nods, his eyelashes sending long shadows over his cheeks when he blinks. “Alright. Are you well, Bachelor?”
Burakh’s hair is flopping over his eyes, a little wet from the cold condensation outside. Daniil allows him a private smile, pushing him lightly towards the booths. “I’ll be just fine.”
They fight their way through the crowd surrounding the bar itself and squeeze into a booth, their legs immediately tangling under the table. They face each other, a small candle on the table and dangling lights draped in sheer red fabric turning the light bloody and low. Burakh leans to flag over a waitress and Daniil leans his head on his hand to study him.
“Er, vodka. Just leave a bottle, please. Two glasses.” Burakh holds up his fingers to say two, a stilted smile on his face. He looks handsome and sharp, like always, but his voice is meek and polite. He’s playing dress up, just a little out of place in the real world, his kind language too round and strangely accented. Daniil hides his smile in his hand. “And an ashtray for him, please.”
The waitress doesn’t spare a glance at Dankovsky. She smiles, showing all her teeth, and squeezes Burakh’s bicep.
“I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.” She says, her voice sickly sweet.
Daniil’s breath catches in his throat but Burakh doesn’t say anything more. He turns to Dankovsky and his face is open, his pupils blown wide in the low light. Dankovsky leans over the table to speak.
“You did well, Haruspex, I’m impressed. That’s what I’d have ordered myself.”
Burakh laughs, low and rolling – Daniil wouldn’t have heard it if he hadn’t leaned in. He lets the laughter hang in the air until the waitress comes back with the vodka and glasses. She opens her mouth, lips carefully lined with red lipstick, to talk to Burakh as she sets down the ashtray, but Dankovsky waves her off. She shuts her mouth with a dramatic click.
Daniil initiates a cheers once he’s lit up a cigarette, lifting his glass with three fingers of lukewarm vodka up over the candle. The Haruspex pours a little less into his but clinks their glasses together.
“God bless us, Haruspex.” Daniil says, sighing at the burn of the alcohol down his throat.
“Amen, Bachelor.” His voice has lost its uncanny quality. Burakh unconsciously does a poor imitation of a Capitol accent when he’s talking to everyone in the city except Daniil. Listening to him stumble through it is like watching someone beg – flattering but horribly embarrassing.
Dankovsky gets through his first drink and well into his second before he speaks. He surprises himself by how his voice comes out, kind in the intimate air between them. “Tell me something.”
Burakh swallows the last of his first glass and furrows his eyebrows. “Tell you something?”
“I wouldn’t mind. You’re young, you must have stories for me.”
“Don’t talk like you have one foot in the grave.” He scoffs, pouring himself another glass. When silence hangs for too long Daniil kicks him in the shin, which earns him a grimace. “I’m just thinking of something to say. I’ll tell you a story.”
Daniil’s content to watch Burakh’s jaw work while he runs his foot up and down Burakh’s ankle. He’s putting so much effort into thinking that Daniil wants to tell him not to pull something, but he clears his throat and interrupts Daniil’s thoughts.
“Before I left for university, my father insisted on showing me how to dissect an animal. I said that I knew how from watching him do it my whole life, that I wouldn’t need dissection in the Capitol, but he was having none of it – we spent a day, from sunrise to sundown, in the basement skinning a deer. He wanted to show me how to preserve bones, too, but I put my foot down and went to bed.” Once he starts talking he gains some confidence, bringing his gaze up from the table to meet Dankovsky’s eyes. “In my first few months of university I’d get sick with my need to go home. I missed everything about the Steppe.”
Dankovsky hums. It would be non-committal if it was to anyone else, but Burakh’s voice washes over him in waves while he starts in on his third pour of vodka.
“Then one day I was walking out by the peatlands. I found a lamb, out there, its back legs mangled where it was tangled in barbed wire. I helped it out of being trapped, but it was bleeding out, there in my arms, just off the side of the dirt road.” The Haruspex swallows thickly. “So I put it out of its misery. My father taught me to snap foal's necks when I was only ten – it's just muscle memory.”
He takes a heavy breath, shaking out his head like his hair is wet. “I’m not telling you the story right. It’s not meant to sound like this.”
“It doesn’t sound like anything, to me. I want to hear how it ends.” Dankovsky replies. Again, it surprises him how light his voice is, how his forgiving tone works and spurs the Haruspex on.
“In that lamb’s corpse I saw a way to feel connected to the Steppe. Feel connected to my father and everything he’d taught me. I smuggled the corpse into my school apartment. I lived in the basement so it wasn’t so bad, I hung it up from the cellar ceiling and left it until I could get to work.” Burakh smiles now. It looks like he doesn’t mean to smile, it’s pained around the edges, but he smiles. “Back in the Steppe we have ceremonial blades that cut through cartilage like it’s softened butter. At university I had two steak knives from the mess hall.”
Dankovsky brings a hand up to his mouth. He stifles a laugh with a cough. “Oh, Haruspex.”
“It would take my father a clean three hours to fully break down a grown bull. It took me three days to sloppily carve the lamb’s carcass. The cellar room I did it in was ruined, my clothes were so deeply stained I burned them afterwards. Eventually I gave up and started to move the usable meat to my room. No one saw me do it until I went to move the head.” He shakes his head again, an incredulous smile on his face. “I didn’t know what time it was, but it must have been well after midnight. I stepped out of the cellar and a girl saw me, doused in blood, haggard and sleep deprived, a lamb’s head hanging from one hand and two kitchen knives in the other. She screamed loud enough to wake up the whole building and I ran.”
“You ran. There’s no way that – how long was your academic probation?” Dankovsky feels like he’s shaking, but his hand is steady when he brings his glass up to his mouth to drink.
“They never knew it was me.” Burakh laughs. He’s grinning now, his eyes crinkling up at the corners and his sharp teeth flashing. “But, if you go down to the university district and ask around, you might hear a little bit about a goatheaded killer that roams the cellars at night.”
“I don’t believe you, Haruspex, not at all,” but the Bachelor does. He sees the image of a young Haruspex failing at a butchering and staggering out of the cellar, his confidence drained and face severe. It exists in her mind so clearly, like she was the girl who found him. She wouldn’t have screamed; she’d have stayed and helped him dispose of the carcass. She’s drunk. “You’re a good storyteller. You almost had me convinced.”
“It’s the truth, I swear to you. I shut myself into my room and left through a back door during all the commotion. No one stopped me because, well,” He considers his next words carefully, his expression souring slightly. “I didn’t make much of an effort to find people at university.”
“Oh, stop, you’re breaking my heart. I’ve changed my mind, I believe you.” Dankovsky says loftily, but she means it genuinely. “Don’t make that face, where you look pinched and upset like someone’s stepped on your tail.”
“My tail?” As if on command, Burakh makes the face. “Have you had enough to drink, Bachelor?”
The Bachelor has had quite enough to drink. Enough that she tilts her head where it leans heavily on her hand and smiles, allowing herself to believe that her awkwardly grown out hair that hangs in front of her eyes is effortlessly alluring. Allowing herself to believe that if you squint, you can see lipstick marks around the butts of her cigarettes and on the rim of her glass. The Bachelor’s had enough that she’s allowed to speak in these terms at all.
“I’ll go empty your ashtray.” Daniil hadn’t noticed it had been getting full. She makes a pleased noise and leans away so Burakh can pick it up. She tries to follow his form as he eases into the crowd, but he shifts his way through easily and disappears.
Burakh seems looser. He gestured with his big hands when he told his story, expressive and open. Dankovsky knows it’s the drink, he’s had a healthy amount and even a man his size would start to feel it by now. But a small, nagging voice in the back of her mind says it could be the company. She frowns and drains the rest of her glass in one smooth, long swallow.
Time passes staggeringly slowly while the Haruspex is gone, and after a healthy dose of drinking alone, Dankovsky perks up when he hears his voice float across the bar crowd. He’s easy to spot, a head above everyone in the crowd. Almost two heads above the women surrounding him.
The Bachelor’s knuckles go white around her glass. Burakh is looming over the women, his mouth open in a smile, the ashtray hanging from his hand. She can see where his voice goes strangely rounded. The way his lip curls around his words when he’s talking to Capitol people. But it doesn’t look too off, it looks like he’s leaning into it. The girls are laughing with him. They flit around him and touch his shoulder, his elbow, the one stubborn piece of hair that refuses to get pushed back and hangs on his forehead.
They’re allowed to act desperate, let their shiny lips part and pout up at the Haruspex. Burakh can see them for what they are, for what they want from him.
Something horrible settles in the Bachelor’s gut. She heaves a breath and looks away, stares down at the floor and tries to focus on the blood rushing in her ears instead of the low tones of his voice. As he gets closer, Dankovsky can feel it, feel her body pulling towards him.
“The waitresses stopped me to talk.” Burakh says when he sits down, setting the ashtray down with a clink. He looks warm, a flush high on his cheeks. “I can get us another bottle, if you’d like.”
“We should’ve slept together then. During the plague.” She’s speaking without thinking. She can’t stop herself. “That’s what you’re supposed to do. This was supposed to be an animal impulse.”
The Haruspex stills. He forces out a humourless laugh. “Alright, we don’t need another bottle.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
Burakh wrinkles his eyebrows at the anger in her voice. “I don’t understand, Bachelor.”
“Of course you understand. Women-” Dankovsky cuts herself off, wiping a hand across his face. “Ravel, Aspity, bar maidens. They want something from you.”
“That’s not our situation.” He says. The sickness in the Bachelor’s stomach squirms, his guts threatening to burst out of his abdomen. “Because I want something from you, too.”
Burakh looks confused why he has to say it. He’s being honest, offering up his truth without reservation or fear. He should have reservations. He doesn’t know he’s speaking to Dankovsky’s womanhood, confessing to her instead of the man he sees. The Bachelor’s heart clenches painfully and he stands.
“I can’t-” Shame hits the Bachelor as soon as he stands. He feels like a fool for shaving his face and letting himself lean into Burakh – like it would come across how he thinks it should. Like his manhood isn’t in the foreground. “I’m going back to the apartment.”
He turns on his heel before Burakh can speak, before he can register his dumbstruck expression. The crowd doesn’t part for the Bachelor like it did for the Haruspex and he fights against elbows and hands tugging at his coat to leave.
When Dankovksy eventually breaks through and heads towards the entrance, his eyes are stinging and trained on the floor. He only looks up when two small, ring-covered hands press against his chest and stop him.
“Let me through.” He commands, his voice not kind or light at all. The sound of him is ragged, torn right from the centre of his chest, where the hurt lives.
The waitress purses her lips and doesn’t look at Dankovsky. She tenses and pushes him back when tries to move away, still looking over his shoulder in thought.
She blinks once and meets his eyes before parting her lips to speak. “You’ve been reading this romance as a tragedy, Bachelor. You’re missing a good story.”
Dankovsky is wholly too drunk for this kind of conversation. “What? Let me through.”
“Bachelor,” Burakh calls from behind him. The waitress slips away, her hands dropping as soon as Burakh’s hand comes down heavily on his shoulder. “Bachelor. You shouldn’t leave alone.”
He doesn’t shrug off the hand on him until Burakh awkwardly drops it, but the two walk out together. He trusts the Haruspex, an upstanding boy, to have settled the tab before he found Daniil.
Neither of them speak. Dankovsky can’t find anything to say. He’s still burning with shame, jealousy, hands wracked with tremors in the pockets of his coat. He stops under an overpass to light a cigarette for something to do with his hands. Burakh takes that moment to heave a breath and speak.
“I don’t understand why you’re angry with me.”
He sounds too controlled. Dankovsky’s thumb finally catches on his lighter and he’s able to take a long drag from his cigarette.
“I brought up Lara with you to tell you how what we have, it’s not like Lara. I’ve never felt any of this for Lara.” Burakh takes an aborted step closer to Daniil. His face is skewed up, his words coming out with force. “I certainly don’t feel any of it with barmaids, not even close. So tell me what to say to make it better, and I’ll say it.”
Dankovsky doesn’t even want to be smoking. He exhales. “I wish you’d hit me. I used to be able to rile you up enough that you’d grab me by the collar and push me around.”
“I can’t do that to you. Even if it would make it better, I don’t-” Burakh makes a wounded sound and steps away from the Bachelor to start pacing. “I couldn’t. Ask for something else.”
“But you could do it then?” Dankovsky’s voice is coming out shrill and indignant. He throws his cigarette, barely smoked, on the ground and stomps it out. “Enlighten me. What changed?”
“You said before this was supposed to be animal impulse. That was before, before you were whole in front of me.” Burakh’s frustrated, pulling at the short hair at the back of his head. “I’m not explaining it how I should. There’s a story I could tell, but it’s about Lara.”
Dankovsky relents. Burakh looks so anxious, his heart would have to be made of stone not to. “Tell me the story.”
“Me and Lara used to fight in the fields. For fun, just tussling. I never hurt her on purpose. But one day – I saw her as a young woman. I took her in and knew that I could never take the risk of hurting her again, because I was a young man and her a young woman.” He’s searching Dankovsky’s face for understanding. “It’s the same, from back then. That’s where the similarities between you and Lara start and end.”
“You see me, wholly.” Dankovsky says in way of a reply.
“I don’t mean to make assumptions.” He looks away, the muscles in his neck working. He’s still upset, probably more than Dankovsky ever was, and exhaustion is starting to hang on his shoulders. “I see as much of you as you’ve shown me.”
“Will you tell me how you see me?” Daniil lets his face and the line of his body show forgiveness, listing towards the Haruspex.
He won’t be reduced to a beggar, but he might come close. Burakh’s mouth forming the word woman echoes in Daniil’s mind. One day he saw Dankovsky in the same way he’d saw Lara Ravel, back then – as a woman. But reading between the lines and letting hope bloom underneath his ribcage is what’s gotten him into this mess in the first place.
“Another night. I don’t have the words.”
It’s a simple enough olive branch extended – Daniil holds it in his hands like it’s a delicate flower. “Let’s go to bed.”
Dankovsky, in an unprecedented act of maturity, lets his request sit in the air. He doesn’t pick at it, just tries to point him and the Haruspex back to normalcy. They’ve gotten themselves out of sync, just a second apart, pulling at the seams.
In the week after Daniil’s drunken outburst, he comes home from the lab at wildly different times. It feels like he can’t quite remember how he used to come home before, if he used to be better at pretending to work. Dankovksy gives up and leaves the lab at noon because he remembered how Burakh tongues the scar that cuts through his top lip.
When he steps through the front door his eyes flick wildly across the apartment until they land on the Haruspex, asleep for his midday nap. He’s twitching a bit in his sleep, and after a moment’s pause Daniil sits on the edge of the bed to be with him.
He’s sleeping on his back, mouth slightly open and eyebrows furrowed. Dankovsky wonders what he’s dreaming about – his mind immediately goes to the rolling hills of the Steppe. He’s reminded of how dogs twitch in their sleep when they think they’re running.
Burakh makes a sound and blinks awake, his eyes crusted with sleep. Dankovsky feels himself start to smile down at him.
“Bachelor.” He sounds far away, like he’s still half asleep.
“Good afternoon, Haruspex. Were you chasing wolves in your dream?”
Burakh sits up. Despite saying Dankovsky’s name he just now seems to register that it’s him, his eyes going wide and unblinking. “No, no, it was you. God, Bachelor, it’s you.”
“You were chasing me?” Dankovsky feels like he should laugh, but Burakh is fully awake now and looking at him with no humour.
“Of course not. Because I had you, because you were mine, Bachelor-” He licks his lips and smiles. It’s manic around the edges and full of teeth. “I dreamt of you. I have the words, now. I can’t believe hadn’t placed it before.”
“Oh?” Daniil’s heart threatens to burst out of his chest. Burakh is staring at him with a reverence he usually keeps for intimate moments. It’s broad daylight and Daniil still has his coat on.
“In my dream, we had an apartment, like this. It was a bit different, but not importantly so. I looked the same – I saw myself in a mirror, nothing of note. You looked the same too. I spent most of my time in the dream looking at you.” He says it all in a rush, but not because he’s embarrassed. He’s excited. “It was a fact, something I knew inherently just by living in my dream, just as I knew the layout of the apartment.”
Dankovsky is going to crawl out of his own skin – he's blinking owlishly, the Haruspex’s excitement making him shake. The Haruspex starts back up again after placing words together in his mind for a moment.
“You didn’t look any different, not the length of your hair, your smell, your figure. But when I leaned into your neck you were a woman, a woman laying in bed with me, you-” He heaves a shuddering breath. Burakh’s hands reach out to clutch at Dankovsky like a lifeline, pulling him awkwardly into his lap. “You’re a woman, in my arms now. I didn’t say it, and you needed me to say it, but I know now.”
The Haruspex isn’t looking for approval, he knows it to be true. This is how it was written, how it was supposed to be read. The Bachelor gives it to him anyways.
“Oh, Artemiy,” She folds herself into the Haruspex, blunt nails scraping against his neck and shoulders in an attempt to get the two as close to skin on skin as possible. “I’m so glad it was you.”
“My girl,” Burakh murmurs softly into the curve of Dankovsky’s neck. She’s overheating, her skin too small for her body, but he keeps repeating it, over and over: “My girl.”
He looks a bit drunk when he looks up, his pupils fat and face blotchy with emotion. Burakh licks his lips and considers her, a smile tugging at his lips.
“Artemiy. You should’ve been calling me that all along.” He fights back his smile and schools his expression into something more serious. “I’ll call you anything. Just tell me, and I’ll do it.”
“Danya. Not Daniil.” The Bachelor curls her lip. “Bachelor is fine, if formal.”
“Danya.” Artemiy says. He’s not bothering to cover the reverence in his tone – maybe he never has.
She opens her mouth to say something like ‘nice to meet you, too’, just to get the last word, but Artemiy cuts her off by crashing his face into hers. His hand comes up to the back of her neck, tilting her to the side. The touch is delicate compared to the way he’s kissing her – all spit and no technique, but he’s so earnest in his actions that Danya cups his face and kisses back.
They’ve never kissed like this, and it feels like a piece of Danya has been cored out. She’s always felt like Artemiy’s been holding Danya’s heart in his big hands, but maybe she’s been holding his, too.
Desire bleeds out of her and she feels like laughing into Artemiy’s mouth. Danya has no reason not to lean in, to try to eat Burakh in the same way he’s trying to eat her. It’s pointless to try to slow him down when she wants to go too, her entire body shivering like the train tracks when a train is pulling into the station.
“Danya, take your coat off, God,” Artemiy breathes into her. He’s feverish, clutching at her clothes and refusing to take his mouth off hers for more than a breath. “Let me see you. Please.”
“I will. You have to stop kissing me first.” Danya laughs, prying herself away from him. He tries to follow her, his eyes half lidded, but she rears back and bats his hands away to slip her jacket off her shoulders and toss it on the floor. “See? That wasn’t so painful. You, too.”
Artemiy wastes no time in scrambling to pull off his sleep shirt, almost elbowing Danya in the process. He makes up for it by all but tackling her to the bed, missing her mouth by a few centimeters and pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the corner of her lips. She positions herself so he can lick into her mouth, over her molars and her tongue, holding his face so he slows down. She wants to savour the involuntary noises he’s making in the back of his throat like his tongue down Danya’s throat is hurting him. It would take a small army to tear him off her.
“Artemiy, Artemiy, let me up for a second.” Danya says, gasping when Burakh finally comes up for air. “Have you done this before?”
Clearly Artemiy’s brain isn’t running at high capacity because he takes a moment to just stare down at Danya, his chest heaving and eyes narrowed. It’s a very flattering figure that he’s cutting, and Danya has an amazing view from under him.
“Yes,” he says finally. “Twice. I wasn’t completely isolated in university.”
Danya slaps his bicep, but it’s just for show. It makes her preen, that he couldn’t recall the other women, that she’s hearing about them while caged between Artemiy’s arms.
“Lay back on the pillows and take off your pants.” She says, her voice pitched down in an attempt to be soothing. It works fine, and Burakh settles himself on his back, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of his pants and pulling them down.
His cock is already more than halfway hard, laying heavily on his broad thigh. Danya forces herself to turn away so she can ease out of her vest and shirt. Artemiy makes a wounded sound from where he lays on the bed, and when she turns around to look at him his devastated gaze drops down Danya’s body.
“Oh, please,” He flops an arm across his eyes and whines. “God. You don’t know how many times I’ve thought about this. You can’t tease me like this.”
Danya pauses when she goes to unbuckle her belt. She speaks slowly. “I’m going to keep my briefs on, this time.”
“I’d want to fuck you if you wore a paper bag, really. Could you come back to bed, Danya?” Artemiy pleads, his voice raw.
How she could say no to him, Danya isn’t sure. She pulls herself towards the Haruspex on her knees. She plants one leg on either side of Artemiy’s hips and holds his face, tilting it up so he listens.
“I’m going to put my mouth on you, if you don’t mind.”
“If I don’t mind? You’re deranged.” Artemiy blurts. He twitches like he wants to take it back but Danya just laughs, stroking the rough stubble along his jaw. “Of course, please, I want anything you’ll give me.”
If she’s being honest, Danya’s thought about this too. But she never let her thoughts get this far, never let herself manifest a real, breathing Haruspex to have under her hands. It was always a gesture.
This Artemiy isn’t a gesture. Danya moves down his body, nipping lightly at his shoulders and once at his abdomen, just to see his stomach flinch away from her mouth. She presses a kiss to the same spot and feels Artemiy breathe in and out like he’s trying to keep himself calm.
When Danya gets down to his cock, it’s a jarring thing, to grasp it lightly in her palm and squeeze it, watching a bead of precome form. She leans down to get her mouth on the tip of it and Artemiy’s breath hitches, the muscles in his thighs jumping. He’s trying not to fuck up into her mouth, like a gentleman.
She’s trying not to smile around his cock but he’s making it difficult. Her other hand moves to wrap around the base of him. Burakh makes a strangled noise when Danya starts to move her hand – it must hurt a bit, Danya should have spit first. She takes him into her mouth, half as an apology.
“Danya,” Artemiy saying her name turns into a moan when she bobs down an inch or two, her mouth stretching out around the shaft of his cock. “That’s, yeah. My God.”
Danya moves down until she can’t anymore, breathing heavily through her nose and letting her throat click. When she glances up through her eyelashes, Burakh’s stomach muscles are so tense they’re twitching, his eyebrows knotted together.
When Danya draws back, a thin string of spit connects her lips and the head of Artemiy’s dick. His thumb comes up to wipe it off and she kisses the palm of his hand, moving the hand still on his dick up and down slowly. Artemiy moans outright, deep and rolling.
“Has no one ever blown you before?” She teases, leaning down again to kiss up his shaft.
“It feels like-” Artemiy cuts himself off as his voice catches, shifting his hips up into her grip. “Fuck. It feels like the first time.”
Of course he’s being honest. He’s tipping his head back like he’s close already, just from kissing frantically and the beginnings of a blowjob. Artemiy’s not alone –Danya’s hard in her briefs, and she reaches down to adjust herself before falling back down on his cock.
She goes slowly, taking a few inches in at a time and then pulling herself off at a glacial pace, because it seems to be working for Artemiy. He starts working his hips with her and they start in on a rhythm, a slow, grinding pace that lets her jerk him off while sucking marks into his thighs.
“I’m not going to last long. Can I put a hand in your hair?” Artemiy asks, gritting out his words because of how hard he’s clenching his jaw.
“Of course.” Danya hadn’t realized he hadn’t been using his hands. Like a good boy, not wanting to fuck her face or pull her hair. He takes her permission, and cards a hand through her bangs and cups the back of her head when she takes him down to the back of her throat again.
“God, Danya,” His voice is ragged, moans slipping out when he heaves a breath. He’s endowed enough that it’s been a bit hard, but Danya dares to say she’s done fine. “Will you look up at me?”
The hand in her hair tightens and she’s being pulled up, just lightly. She moans around his cock when she meets his eyes, half-lidded, mouth parted and shiny.
“Danya,” Artemiy croaks out, his eyes fighting to close as his orgasm hits him. He tries to keep them open, tries to keep eye contact with Danya as she tries to swallow. “Fuck, Danya, my God.”
He groans when she pulls off him, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She’s still gently working his cock and it flushes red in her hand as she pinches the head when she sits up, just to hear Artemiy make a noise like he got the wind knocked out of him.
She climbs back up his body and settles herself in his lap, pressing feather-light kisses onto his face while he breathes. “Was that alright?”
“Don’t be humble,” Burakh groans. “Of course it was alright. Perfect, Danya, incredible. Did you-?”
They both glance down at Danya’s crotch, where she’s clearly hard. There’s a small wet patch where her tip is and she flushes with embarrassment. “I didn’t- I didn’t. I can manage, you don’t have to do anything.”
Artemiy frowns at her. “But I want to do something.”
“You’re going to talk to me.” Danya replies. She shifts so she’s straddling one of Artemiy’s thighs and loops her arms around his neck.
“Okay. Are you-” She rolls her hips experimentally and he cuts himself off. “Oh. Oh, yes, I can talk to you. What should I say?”
“Why don’t you tell me about your dream?” Danya knows this won’t take long. She’s already leaking into her shorts, and the pressure against Artemiy’s hard thigh is making sweat bead on the back of her neck.
“I moved you with a hand on your jaw so I could look at your profile. You just let me, Danya.” Burakh’s fingers trace over her collarbones lightly and he runs his tongue over his bottom lip clumsily. “When you tilt your neck back your collarbones stand out, and in my dream I kissed along them and up your neck – it’s beautiful. You’re so pale, especially compared to your dark clothes, your dark hair.”
He stops himself when Danya whines high in the back of her throat. “Is this alright?”
“Artemiy, don’t stop.” She’s as much talking to herself as she is to Artemiy. Danya tilts his head to kiss him but soon gives up the pretense and just pants into his mouth. Her hips are working on the offbeat, jerking forward when the warmth pooling in her stomach sharpens.
“Your skin is cold, usually, but in my dream you were burning hot. I got that right. You’re just as soft as I thought you’d be, on the insides of your thighs and your stomach. God, Danya.”
His hands are flitting from her waist to her chest and thighs like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to touch her – or worse, he wants to take her all in like he won’t see her like this again.
Danya’s eyes are tightly closed but she blinks them open when Burakh brushes her cheekbone with his knuckles. She’s close, the pace she’d started at devolved to desperate rutting. “Fuck. Fuck, keep talking.”
“It wasn’t really about your body, Danya, even though you were spread out under me. I just wanted to look at your face. You’re so beautiful, like no one else I’ve ever seen.” He holds eye contact with her. “You’re such a beautiful girl.”
“Oh my fucking God, Artemiy.” All the air in Danya’s lungs leaves her in a rush. She comes with a high-pitched sound, like her throat’s been ripped out and it’s the last sound she makes. It might as well be. She falls into him, but Artemiy’s hands hold her up high on her ribs. “Oh my God.”
Artemiy folds his arms around her, palms spread out over her shoulder blades, and pulls her in so her face is pressed against his neck. He’s talking, words tumbling out of his mouth like he doesn’t fully know what he’s saying. It’s repetition – how beautiful Danya is, how good she is, and Steppe sentences mixed in that Danya lets wash over her.
“Can we sleep?” She croaks. It’s not a flattering sound but she makes it anyway, her lips brushing his neck.
“I’ll go close the blinds.” Artemiy says quickly.
They unclasp from each other slowly. Fingers pry off backs one by one, legs untangling like they’ll break. The air in the apartment is freezing compared to the heat of Artemiy’s body and Danya shivers, wanting to curve into him even as he gets out of bed to lessen the light streaming into the room.
When Danya accidentally wakes him up from his midday nap he usually can’t get back to sleep, so he’ll probably just lay in the dark staring at her. She squirms out of her briefs and tucks herself into bed, facing the wall with her knees bent.
The mattress dips when Artemiy’s knee sinks into it. He’s going to fit himself into her, his knees pressing into hers, their ankles twisted up in the sheets. He’ll notice that she’s naked but won’t say anything, keep his socks and boxers on so he doesn’t bother her when he gets half-hard in the night.
It feels sweeter, this time, when Artemiy’s body closes around hers. Maybe because she can say hers. She wriggles in his grasp until she feels like she can hear his heartbeat, like maybe his and hers will sync if she wants it enough.
A hand rests over her stomach and it’ll rest there when she wakes up. It’s a little bit novel, and when Danya tries to laugh it comes out as a dreamy sigh.
There’s an air to the Capitol that wasn’t there before. Danya doesn’t want to feel it, doesn’t want to tell herself that the city, that her life, has a different tint, now. She begrudgingly admits this to Artemiy one day when he has her backed up onto the kitchen sink and she can’t stop smiling long enough to kiss him. Just as she feared, his eyes crinkle up at the corners and his pupils widen.
“Danya, I’m so-” He’s cut off by her trying to force their mouths together, but he moves away and persists. “I’m so glad. I hoped it would, I feel it too-”
This must be very difficult for Artemiy, to have her legs wrapped around him and her mouth pressed to his temple and still be forming sentences. Danya sighs and runs a hand through his hair – she'll have to wash it sometime. It’s a bit darker than it should be, meaning that he isn’t using enough shampoo.
“I’m happy you told me.” Artemiy says. He’s trying to force the smile off his face because he thinks it’ll make him seem more genuine. The struggling is what actually sells it though, the way his muscles fight against him. He’ll always pull at his leash to try to please.
“I know you are.” Danya replies. She tries not to say anything meaningful in her clipped reply but it doesn’t come across right, devotion seeping into her words. “It just doesn’t come naturally to me.”
He frowns at her, the expression immediate. “Sometimes it troubles me how you can’t see yourself. Maybe you can’t find words for it, but of course it’s natural. It’s how you were meant to be.”
Danya scratches the crown of his head. “Maybe I can’t see myself. But you can. And you’ll tell me what you see, won’t you?”
“Of course I will.” He’s tugging on the leash again, listing forwards into her and clutching her waist a little tighter.
“Would you tell me something? Anything you see.” She’s open with her wording but firm in her tone.
Artemiy’s desperate need to please Danya and his difficulty with words fight behind his eyes. Her attention trained on him makes him relent.
“It’s sort of like silk curtains, I think. You’re outwardly very beautiful, and soft, I especially like the backs of your knees-” He clears his throat. “But there are so many more, er, shapes. Inside the silks. More than just a curtain. When the wind moves them they layer over each other and make more colours, you see more the more you watch.”
“I’m glad you watch me.” Danya echoes his wording and twists his short hair around her knuckles. “I want you to.”
Artemiy’s eyes are threatening to slide shut but he lets himself be tilted upwards and keeps eye contact with her as she leans in and kisses his slack mouth.
“That was just fine, Artemiy. You’re too sweet to me.” She kisses him again and swallows the hurt sound he makes.
That night Danya lets him push her legs apart with his broad shoulders, directs him in a soft voice how to prepare her and holds him when he’s fully inside her. She pets him gently while his chest heaves.
“You shouldn’t be comforting me. It should be the other way around.” He says wetly, and she wipes his cheeks, just in case. “I’m not crying, Danya.”
Artemiy feels like he’s burning her, inside, his hips so flush on the backs of her thighs that it feels like they’ll fuse together. Danya’s mouth fills with saliva when he hitches himself forward, unable to stop himself from fucking impossibly deeper into her body.
“I won’t tell anyone, if you cry.” She smiles and runs her hands down Artemiy’s ribs where she knows he’s sensitive. A shiver goes through him, starting in his arms – on either side of Danya’s head, elbows locked.
“Danya, I need to move. Can I? Will you let me?” Artemiy’s eyebrows are pinched, his eyes drawn low. There’s so much tension in his body that Danya’s muscles ache in sympathy.
“Of course I will.” She breathes back, dragging her short nails across his shoulders when he digs his heels into the mattress and lays into her.
Danya’s body accepts him, her cock getting hard even though he doesn’t know how to fuck in a way that’ll make her come, yet. He’s dripping sweat onto her chest, a red flush covering his nose and under his eyes. She wipes his forehead and pushes his bangs back while she thinks that she’ll teach him. Of course she will.
Danya starts following Artemiy to the markets in the day just for a reason to be around him. She doesn’t go into the shops, though, instead she stands outside the entrance and smokes a few cigarettes – if she did go in, Artemiy would ask for her opinion on everything he wanted to buy, and the whole outing would be a day long affair. It’s a scenario that borders on scarily codependent, but there isn’t much resistance on either side.
This means it isn’t strange for Burakh to barge his way into the bathroom while Danya is enjoying a hot bath. Most mornings he’ll sit on the lid of the toilet and read the morning paper to her, his low voice echoing off the porcelain. She likes to stay informed. It is, however, strange for him to immediately grab his collar to pull off his shirt and then start in on his belt.
“I’m getting in the bath.” He announces, stepping out of his trousers. Apparently he wasn’t wearing boxers today.
“No, you aren’t.” Danya says, alarmed. Artemiy barely fits in the clawfoot tub alone, the bathwater lapping dangerously at the rim. She pushes lightly at his knee when he steps into the water, hissing that it’s too hot for him. “Oh my God, Artemiy. This won’t go well for us.”
It truly doesn’t. Once Artemiy is fully seated, the floor of the bathroom is drenched in water that he promises to mop up, but ‘after’. Danya’s knees are tight to her chest and Artemiy is kneeling in front of her. He tried to sit back but the tap dug into his back and Danya refused to switch sides of the tub with him.
“I have to tell you something.” His eyes are glittering in the low light of the bathroom.
“And you had to be naked?” Danya says dryly.
Artemiy thinks for a beat and then nods deeply. “It can’t hurt, I’d say. I don’t know if you know the butcher. I don’t think you do because you never come inside, but me and him are sort of friends.”
One of the perks of following Burakh wherever he goes is that she gets to see him interact with the general public in his frustratingly endearing way. Of course she knows that him and the butcher are friends, Artemiy already told her with the curve of his body when he gets to talk about different cuts of lamb.
“When I went to the butcher this morning, you weren’t at the door, like normal. The butcher was putting my flank steaks in the paper and he asked me, Danya-” He cuts himself off with a forced exhale. He’d been talking a bit too fast. “He asked me where my wife was. He asked me if I minded how much my wife smoked.”
Danya doesn’t speak for a long moment. When she does, she cocks her head to the side and wills her hands to stop shaking. “Well, do you mind?”
“No. Yes. Danya, that isn’t the point.” He shakes his head firmly. “He called you my wife. I thought that would make you happy.”
“It does, I don’t want to stifle you.” She’s gotten the wind knocked out of her with the image – she wears floor length coats. Her hair is long enough in the back, it’s a reasonable assumption for a butcher to make at a glance. “You know why it pleases me, but you also have to understand why it’s a bit of a shock.”
“I know it must be, but I-” Artemiy huffs but his joy doesn’t waver. “Of course I had thought of you as my lover, my woman – but I had never thought of you as my wife. Isn’t that something, Danya?”
She doesn’t speak for a long moment. She tries to mull it over, to contrast how she thinks of herself with what Artemiy wants for them, and it falls into place too easily. So she runs it again from the top. Danya doesn’t go to many weddings, never been a part of a wedding party, but maybe Steppe weddings don’t have bridesmaids.
“Will you think about it?” Artemiy is reading her silence as rejection, his face more pinched than it was a moment ago.
She reaches out and places a hand on his shoulder to be soothing. “Of course. Don’t take my pause badly, alright? You shouldn’t. This wasn’t a very proper proposal, anyway.”
Danya is trying for a joke and her shoulders drop in relief when Burakh snorts, shaking his head. She hadn’t realized that she’d tensed up. “Oh, fine. Like you’d have done any better.”
The conversation pauses there, Artemiy’s plea for her to think about it hanging in the air. She washes his hair because he’s already fit himself into the bath, she might as well, and she runs her blunt nails over his scalp in tights circles until his eyes slide closed.
She doesn’t pick at the topic until they’re lying in bed together. Artemiy’s face is pushed into her clavicle, her legs wrapped around his waist. Her chest expands when she breathes in deeply. “What priest would marry us?”
“We don’t need a priest.” Artemiy says quickly – he tenses but doesn’t look up at her. “Maybe I wasn’t clear. It’s not about an Orthodox wedding, it just makes sense. Even if no one declares us husband and wife-”
He brings his head up then, and it doesn’t really matter that Danya can’t make out his eyes in the dark room. They still pierce through her, make her heart thump loudly in her ribs. “I’ll still think of you as my wife.”
Danya lightly pushes at his head to get him to settle back down onto her chest but he doesn’t move. She feels him pushing up on the mattress to look down at her.
“Take as long as you’d like to think, I don’t mind. But that’s my truth. Whatever you say, you’ll be my wife. I just ask that you take me as your husband.”
The second time Danya presses him into her he goes willingly, dropping onto his elbows a bit too hard, like his strings have been cut. She brushes her fingers through his wet hair and kisses his forehead while his breathing levels out, so he’s comfortable. So he knows he’s done well.
“If It’s not about an Orthodox wedding it’s about the ceremony itself, isn’t it?” Danya has her back to him while he closes and locks the front door – she hears him pause. It’s been a day or two since he brought up the wedding and the Capitol air is crisp and getting dryer, the cold changing from perpetual wetness to a deeper, subzero chill.
“Yes, that’s right. We’d go to the town – if that would please you, too. Anyone there would be our priest figure.” Artemiy sounds strangled, like he didn’t expect the topic. He still hasn’t closed the door. “You wouldn’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“I know. Please, you couldn’t force me into anything.” Danya laughs. While Artemiy locks up, she tucks her face into the high collar of her coat to hide her flush – of course a marriage also comes with moving into a real home together. A house big enough for kids, and situated in the town that weighs so heavily on Artemiy that it must be painful to be away for so long.
The town on Gorhkon is like an oppressive force, a place that cut deeply into Danya’s mind and body, a cut that's only just scarred over. But Artemiy is asking her there, where they’ll curl into each other in a bed that smells like the childhood stories he tells her when he’s a few drinks in and allows himself to be animated. Of course Artemiy wants to go home. He’s told her that in certain terms, but he clearly guilts himself for talking ill about Danya’s home.
Danya can feel herself relenting, but that’s not the truth. She relented when he first brought it up, the eagerness in his voice and expression won her over immediately. She was always going to say yes, she’s forgotten how to say no.
“Okay, we’ll do it.” She says on an exhale.
There’s a pause where all Danya can hear is her blood pounding in her ears and the wind whistling down the hallway. Artemiy makes a sound like he’s been struck. “Oh. Oh, my God.”
Danya frowns. Maybe he broke the key off in the door. She glances around to see Artemiy staring at her with wide eyes, his knuckles white where he’s holding Danya’s scarf for her, just in case she needs it.
“You’re saying yes? To me?”
Proposals are supposed to be a teary affair. Artemiy doesn’t cry, really, or at least he doesn’t cry in front of Danya. She’s being a bit blase for the situation, but she could probably make up for it by squeezing out a few tears.
“Oh. I didn’t-” She starts laughing at the expression on his face, really, like she’s hurting him. “Artemiy, forgive me. I’ll let you be my husband. I’m saying yes.”
Artemiy has her crushed in his arms in a blink, squeezing her so tightly for a moment that she feels one of the buttons on her shirt pop. “I can’t believe you. You’re my wife. My wretched wife.”
“Will you book us train tickets?” She says, gasping for air in his grasp and beaming, all her pointed teeth pressed into Artemiy’s shoulder. “I don’t mind wretched, jot that down for your vows.”
When they part, Danya putting a half-arm's length between them, Artemiy shakes his head and speaks with conviction. “My beautiful wife. Of course I’ll book us train tickets, for the first train – well. I’m sorry, I’m forgetting you’ll need to pack and deal with the apartment.”
“There isn’t much to deal with. Book the tickets two days from now, will you?”
Two days from now Danya will have packed her life in the Capitol, slim as it was, into three suitcases, left her laboratory without a word and given up her apartment. It’ll feel fine, not like a change at all, even though Artemiy will try to hold her hand through it. She’ll look up at him, pull his face down so their eyes meet evenly, and tell him in no uncertain terms –
“You think this is my home. You’re mistaken.” Danya speaks slowly so she’ll be heard and waits for recognition to flicker behind Artemiy’s eyes.
In two days time, she’ll feel more at home standing as close as appropriate to Artemiy at the train station than she ever did in her apartment. Their shoulders will be brushing through the layers of their clothes but she’ll still feel warmth spreading through where they touch.
She would ask him, when she’s threading their fingers together discreetly in his pocket, if he’d pack up everything to be with her, too. But she realizes then the story she’s refused to read into, the story that’s spun around them, renders her question redundant. Instead, she’ll say –
“I’m glad it was you. There was no one else it should’ve been.”
And Artemiy will answer, his jaw working like he wants to respond verbally. Maybe his romance paperback archetype is rearing its ugly head and he’s resisting the urge to sweep Danya off her feet and carry her into the sunset.
He’ll answer by squeezing their joined hands so hard one of Danya’s knuckles cracks with a concerning popping sound. They don’t move any closer while they wait for the train and they don’t move any further apart. As the passenger car rounds the bend into the station Danya imagines that to anyone looking out the window, her and Artemiy’s forms blur together to look like one form, that they wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.