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The Broken Heart, usually packed at this hour, was empty. Andrey had closed it down early in preparation for his departure, and now the silence was so heavy it was almost tangible. He’d long since told Goose and the dancers to go home, and so he was alone, sprawled across one of the tables, staring vaguely at the ceiling and faintly dizzy, when Daniil Dankovsky swept through the door, fuming.
"Where the hell were you? Why didn't you come?"
Daniil's hand slammed down on the table, and Andrey winced, sitting up slowly.
"Pipe down, will you? It wasn't our fault. Some shithead patrolmen came here." He rubbed idly at a bruise on his cheek, expression sour. "They were tipped off. I managed to break an arm on one of them, but the others brought me down. The bastards hit hard."
Daniil stared for a moment, as if trying to discern whether or not Andrey was telling the truth. Then, his shoulders slumped. "Damn it." He kicked a leg of the table Andrey was sitting on. "Damn it!" He sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. "The others?"
Andrey lay back down on the table and turned over onto his stomach so that he was eye-to-eye with Daniil, half-propped up on his elbows. "They collared my brother at the bridge and made him come home," he said flatly. "Eva is unconscious. Slept through the whole thing."
After a pause, Daniil dropped his hands. "So, this is it, then," he said. "I'm stuck here."
Andrey shrugged. "Don't get too precious about it. We all are."
Daniil snorted. Somehow, in the tightness of his expression and the anxious tension in his hands, he looked almost afraid.
"All that fuss," Daniil said lowly, "for nothing. I never should have come here."
Andrey folded his arms on the table and sank his chin down into them. "Well, at least you got to see my pretty face again." He had meant it as a joke, but Daniil just nodded idly, a distant look in his eyes.
"At least there's that, I suppose."
Andrey flushed, suddenly glad that the lights were so dim at his bar. Daniil could be strangely disarming, at times.
"Too bad I'm not at my prettiest," Andrey said breezily, tone intentionally light. "You'll just have to stick around until these bruises fade. Those patrolmen have no respect for the finer things in life."
Daniil's gaze sharpened, zeroing in on Andrey's face, the left side of which was swollen and turning a rather unbecoming shade of purple. A gloved hand came up to cup Andrey's cheek, and Daniil's face was suddenly very close to Andrey's as the doctor inspected the bruising.
"Careless as ever," Daniil muttered. "How ever did you get by without me around?"
Andrey smirked. "Heaven only knows."
Daniil ran his thumb along Andrey's cheekbone, and he tutted disapprovingly. "Injured anywhere else?"
"I might be. Perhaps you should give me a proper examination and find out."
Daniil shot Andrey an unimpressed look, dropping his hand. "A 'no' would have sufficed."
Andrey laughed. "I've missed you, Dankovsky," he said, and his voice was just a bit more sincere than he had meant it to be.
"I haven't," Daniil grumbled, but he was still looking into Andrey's eyes with such intensity that Andrey almost wanted to look away. Almost.
But Daniil was the first to drop his eyes. "They're saying it'll be bad," he said. "Worse than I've ever dealt with, certainly. You were here during the last outbreak, weren't you? How was it?"
Andrey's expression darkened. "It was bad."
"How bad?"
"Bad, Dankovsky. People dying quicker than they could be buried, everyone terrified, everyone sick. It was like nothing I've ever seen before." Andrey scratched absentmindedly at a stain on the table, staring down. "Peter's never been quite the same since, you know. Maybe none of us have." His voice was quiet. Something about the dim moonlight and the strange emptiness of the bar made both men feel as though they ought to be whispering.
Daniil let out a half-sigh, half-sob. "Fantastic. We're doomed, then. My Thanatica is doomed."
"Hey, don't talk like that." Andrey punched Daniil lightly in the arm. "We made it through the last one, and we didn't have the illustrious Daniil Dankovsky with us, then. No need to throw in the towel so soon."
Daniil rubbed his arm and glared, but his expression softened in spite of himself. "Well. Perhaps you're right."
"I know I am."
Andrey leaned forward, then, wearing a strangely serious look, but stopped just a few centimeters short of Daniil's face.
Daniil's breath hitched, and his eyes flickered down, then back up to meet Andrey's. "Well, don't leave me hanging," he said softly.
Permission given, Andrey leaned forward and closed the distance between them, his eyes fluttering shut as he pressed his lips to Daniil's. He curled his long fingers over Daniil's hand, which still rested atop the table, and Daniil slipped his other hand around the back of Andrey's neck, sliding gently, familiarly, into his hair.
It had been said before, on occasion, that Andrey kissed like a dying man; indeed, Andrey did many things like a dying man. It was something about the way that he lived, something about his philosophy – Andrey lived frantically, frenetically, impossible to contain, as though he were perpetually being chased (as, in a very literal sense, he was). But this was different. It was different, now, the way that Andrey breathed into Daniil's mouth, the way that he pressed his forehead to Daniil's when he stopped for breath. This was not a desperate movement, but rather a careful, heartfelt sort of lingering. Andrey lingered in Daniil's space as though time was of no consequence at all, and for Andrey, that could only mean that time had already run out. There's no need to keep on running once you've been caught.
After a long moment, Daniil pulled away reluctantly, slightly out of breath, eyes still closed. "That bad, is it?"
"Don't be a pessimist, Dankovsky," Andrey said. But the shadows of his expression belied his words, and it would be a long time before they would have another moment like this – if, indeed, that time would come at all.