Work Text:
Dankovsky is far more affectionate than Artemy had assumed he would be.
Daniil. He guesses, now, that he should call the man by his first name; and Daniil seems very different, sometimes, from Dankovsky. Dankovsky works very clinically, detached; he smiles politely, holds gazes for three seconds exactly before resetting, and quotes Latin proverbs to reinforce the idea that he’s smarter than he really is. Daniil, though - Daniil doesn’t bother holding eye contact, letting himself stare off into space as he talks. He over-worries about the kids in the town, almost leans against Artemy’s body as he shifts weight uncomfortably between his feet, and mostly quotes Latin to get away with insulting the rulers to their faces.
Artemy catches the last one when they’re both called in to answer boos Vlad. And he catches it, because “up yours” is the only phrase he’d learned in class he thought might be useful later on. He makes a choking sound, and his eyes lock with Daniil’s catching a self-satisfied smirk that he could, for once, appreciate.
He thinks that’s when Daniil made his decision.
After their moment of shared understanding, a concept that still astounds Artemy at just how small a thing it was and how easy it would have been to miss, he notices that Dankovsky slips into Daniil more and more readily. At first it only happens when they’re totally alone in the hospital, and Artemy is able to write off his softer tone and careless words as exhaustion. He admits he finds the ruling families - even his own - difficult to talk to. He confides that he thinks they’re all lying to him and hiding something. Artemy finds himself saying, “They’re using your ignorance to try and sway you to their cause.”
He panics for a moment, worried the words will come back to bite him in the ass. But Daniil only removes his gloves so he can slide his hands through his hair nervously. He sighs, and says, “You’re probably right, but what else am I supposed to do?”
Artemy thinks the words, Come to me, but doesn’t say them, because at that point the suggestion feels too intimate. He hasn’t really learned to read Dankovsky from Daniil yet, even if the shift is easily recognizable. He still wears the coat and the gloves and stands apart from everyone else, keeping up a border between himself and the locals. So instead he says, “Get some sleep, emshen.”
“I will if you do,” Daniil retorts, already standing up to continue doing whatever it is he came into the hospital to do. “And it looks like you need it. You’re not just a pretty face, you know. We need your steady hands…well, steady.”
Artemy had grunted in response and started to move, catching onto the words only after too much time had passed for him to ask about them. He told himself it was just Dankovsky slipping into character again, giving out a backhanded remark to chastise him into taking care of himself. It was his odd way of showing that he cared, and thinking of it as anything else was just too much. Thinking of it for what it actually was was more than he could handle.
And he thinks its a fluke, that this is Dankovsky’s version of ribbing the way he’s used to interacting with Gravel and Grief and Stakh. Daniil’s version of it is just different because of where he’s from and his whole…thing, his whatever-it-was that made him establish his presence differently from everybody else. His Lines, Artemy guesses he could say, though he’s not even sure if that’s it. But he keeps telling himself that’s all that comment was - just teasing, just a different way of saying I’ve seen corpses prettier than you, not a real compliment and nothing to get hung up on.
He loops it like ambiance until he’s eating in the back of the hospital with Dankovsky and Yulia, lost in his mental to-do list and the status of his bound and the words it means nothing, it means nothing echoing until the actual words “You’ve got - never mind, let me -” break through them, and he realizes Dankovsky’s ungloved hand is brushing against his mouth, thumb lingering a little too long on his lips.
There’s a smirk there, again. But it’s not particularly smug. It’s more of a lop-sided smile, like his mouth has gotten used to the movement and it doesn’t know how to produce something less sharp to illustrate what he actually feels.
It’s in his eyes, Artemy think, that he sees it. That’s where he sees Daniil, and where he sees he’s not actually imagining things. It’s also in Yulia’s eyes - or, actually, in her eyebrows, quirking up, telling him It means something.
Even with all of the evidence pointing in this direction, it still takes Artemy a remarkably long time to make his own move. Daniil doesn’t seem to mind it very much; if anything, he seems to be enjoying every one of Artemy’s startled responses to his lingered affection. Each gesture is followed with a look that Artemy can never seem to memorize properly, staring at it until Daniil’s eye contact (seven seconds, they’re up to now, before he becomes uncomfortable and looks away) is pulled elsewhere. And he’ll pull these gestures out when he’s still Dankovsky, when they’re still surrounded, smiling that sharp smile until they’ve held gazes for a moment and it softens.
He doesn’t really know what to do with this affection. Most of it’s unspoken, unquantifiable and intangible. Which is not to say there’s nothing of this bizarre courtship to hold onto. No: Daniil also sends him letters. They’re written in cursive (which Artemy hates; pretty, sure, but completely useless), most of it poetry, and some of it in other languages. Not just Latin, either; there’s French and German peppered in. He can’t tell which pieces are original and which Daniil has just memorized. A part of him wonders what else Daniil would be sending if they weren’t in the middle of curing a plague.
That same part of him lurches and drops when it occurs to him that he’s probably not even responding properly.
It’s been four days of casual, but warm touches and tender looks and poetry sent in pieces throughout the day when Artemy blurts out, awkward and clumsy, “I don’t know how to respond to you.” He does, at least, make sure that they’re alone in the hospital, or at least as alone as they’re going to get with dead and the near-unconscious.
Daniil isn’t looking at him at first when he smiles, but his gaze does direct upwards. “I don’t expect you to respond at all,” he says.
Which solves the anxiety telling Artemy that this has all been a joke, or maybe some sort of stress-induced hallucination. But it doesn’t exactly make him feel any better, because there’s no guarantee in the words that Daniil knows his efforts are appreciated. “Shouldn’t I?” he asks. “Considering…”
He doesn’t know how to say what it is he’s considering, but shakes his head, noise like a laugh rattling around in his throat, quiet. “You already do,” he says.
Artemy, of course, doesn’t know what the hell that means, or what kind of a reaction he’s giving that Daniil is getting what he wants out of it. But Daniil is giving him that look again, the one he keeps trying to see when he closes his eyes, and any other attempts at response shut off.
Maybe it shouldn’t surprise him that when he asks Daniil to stay, Daniil does. And maybe it shouldn’t surprise him that he clarifies, Stay with me. But it does, because that’s not a request he had been thinking of making. The words had left his mouth without him really thinking them through.
Those surprises seem dull in contrast to the one he feels when Daniil hums as he thinks about it, and then politely declines. Artemy feels large and clumsy and surrounded by so many fragile items when he asks, “Why not?” despite the truth of the matter being that he wasn’t actually prepared for that much of a life change in one go.
Daniil sways, slightly drunk, leaning on Artemy’s arm, and mumbles the words, “I’m not doing wooing you yet.”
It doesn’t really hit him why it all makes sense until now, when he’s kind of in a daze about everything and reflecting on the fact that it’s been an entire month and a half since the army left town. A month and one-half, and the slow pacing doesn’t feel so slow anymore. It’s only been a month and one half plus two weeks that they’ve known each other. Of course asking Daniil to stay with him had been colossally stupid.
There’s no one to notice his flush. Not because he’s alone; far from it. The streets have returned to their bustling nature and the kids are at home, but he isn’t there. He’s in a house in the Stone Yard with Daniil. Not in Eva’s, anymore, as he’s no longer a guest. And for the same reasons, Artemy has no issues pushing himself up from the bed and heading down the stairs to the kitchen. Maybe cooking will distract him from the memory of sheer lunacy that was asking a man he’d only known a week to live with him.
But his isolation doesn’t last long. If he were more poetic, he’d have some flowery way to word the fact that he’d never wanted it. Daniil wore his like protection, but where he normally distanced himself with at least a little bit of pride, Artemy’s otherness was a source of melancholy. Moments like this were never different. Daniil clings in his sleep, where he’s entirely Daniil and his guard is let down. He clings, too, when he’s just woken up, or when they’re alone together and the only part of Dankovsky the Bachelor left is his coat. The metaphorical clinging, the kind with his words, becomes literal in moments like this, and Artemy lets out a breath when Daniil’s arms go around him.
He wants to stop in his movements and hold him back, but there’s a reason Artemy doesn’t act on every impulse he feels. He reigns these in as he works on their food, feeling Daniil’s chest move in breaths against his back as he wakes up just out of sight.
Once he’s done cooking, he can turn around, no longer all that surprised at how strong Daniil’s arms are around his body.
Artemy stares down at Daniil, looking up his chest at him, and thinks about what he wants to say. He thinks about what he said, when he first came back home, to all this death and this trauma and his friends barely speaking; to his father’s death and the reason the disease came back; to not trusting Daniil or Clara or the Inquisitor or the Army and being scared shitless they’d all be killed. He thinks about how he said he wasn’t sure if he knew how to love, and there are still parts of him that think he doesn’t know how to properly. He thinks about his aborted attempts to write or research poetry and letters to send back and all the times he wanted to kiss first but felt too clumsy.
What he says is, “I made you breakfast.” He closes his eyes, and squeezes his fingers just tight enough to make his knuckles crack. “That’s not what I meant,” he says.
But Daniil, in a move so typical of Dankovsky, interrupts him, humming as he reaches around Artemy to grab a plate. “I know,” he says. “I love you, too.”