Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Daniil's earliest memories are of himself on his knees.

He despises both the inherent memory of such, and the fact he is far from abnormal in this type of early recollection. The average покорный—that is to say, in Latin script, a submissive—maintains most of their early life on their knees, head bowed, and voice subdued.

A neutral stance, an instinctual one the body falls into without the life experience and personality to choose otherwise. (One that brings comfort—research states that eight of ten submissives will choose to kneel over sit, should they be offered the choice.)

A position so ingrained it exists not only in the mind's preference but the physical body; knees padded with surface fats, and the early development of thick thigh and back muscles have long been childhood indicators of dynamic, just as the sharpened adult canines and final stature of their Dominant mirror images mark them.

And Daniil's knees are so very padded, and his back so very rigid. There really wasn't any doubt to what he'd grow into—spending the time that a Dominant would've spent learning to run, instead kneeling on rich velvet cushions by the fire, listening to stories his mother would read.

(The doted upon only son. Spoilt rotten and ruined to tart adult submissive—maybe that's why his outward effect became so intolerable.)

Those early memories are not lifelike nor visceral, in fact, he remembers very little before his teenage years. Through an overly dull childhood, or personal fault, he supposes only God shall know.

But what little he remembers is as reliable in its dipped viewpoint as the sun rising each morning. He recalls—well, rather humiliatingly—the beetles rather well. But before them, there were the butterflies. As a boy their beautiful colours and iridescent shimmers had enamoured him, locked away within the wood and glass displays of the living room and study.

Once he hit double digits, It hadn't been all too difficult to convince his mother to take her sweet submissive boy outside the city to the semi-wild meadows and forests beyond it. He was allowed to butterfly hunt during the very few warmer months of their Eastern inclines. A vintage hand-me-down catching net placed into his gentle hands within the fields of grasses and springtime flowers—from grandfather to father to son.

It hadn't lasted long, was the thing, so he remembered none of its actual use. He can imagine youthful exuberance making the chase a thrill.

But butterflies are fragile, was the thing, too delicate for the killing jar—the scales of their wings sloughing off like storm-beaten roof tiles when hitting glass container sides.

No, butterflies are killed with bare hands.

Their abdomens are crushed—their wings flickering and spasming as their exoskeleton crunches under the miniscule weight that now ends them. Fragile, small, things—now dead and still in his hands.

Daniil was on his knees when he did that too, the first time. Then the next, and the next, killed dried and positioned to rote. Advancing his observation of natural forms in sketches and diagrams of varying quality and interest.

That latter part he'd normally do at home, on his knees, facing away from his mother between her legs. Her dress a warm comfort on his back; she brushed through his hair with neatly carved ivory. (A common submissive-to-submissive bonding activity, especially prevalent in parental-to-child interactions, it's said that the brushing motion lightly stimulates the glands on the side of the young submissive's neck, inducing a state of emotional availability for bonding.)

(Daniil can believe it, somewhat. For the hours he spent with pencil and paper that would pass with no awareness to time.)

She'd made a curious noise at his motions once he'd closed his notebook; lining up small jars of butterfly's in precise, accurate rows, going back and forth—making sure each aligns perfectly, the creatures within almost forgotten until she'd asked to see them more explicitly.

He'd shown her the prettiest one, the newest one in the collection, displaying it above his head for her to see through thick-warping glass: Favonius orientalis, its green wings (though in natural sunlight they would lean closer to blue) shimmering as it helplessly bashed against the glass.

He'd screwed off the lid when she'd taken her fill, returning to brush through his thick black hair—he took after his father, in that matter. One hand over the jar opening, the other quickly caught the butterfly between his fingers, his mother whispered requests for him to be careful; don't lose it, don't hold too tight, Danchik.

Its wings beat against his fingers, fluttering so fast they almost buzzed—caught against sensitive skin. (It'd set his nerves on edge.)

The comb slid through his hair, repetitious and lulling.

He'd crushed it dead like all the others—upsetting feminine submissive sensibility in a single shocked gasp. He'd pinned it carefully and with great focus, preparing for it to dry out with its wing spread alluringly.

Daniil hadn't noticed that the comb no longer ran through his hair, because that shall be the last butterfly you pin! No, no, no, such an activity is far too much for a growing submissive!

Look at how it makes you callous!

(Both his father and grandfather were Dominants, born and grown in warfare and guts—heavy territorial nature a Dankovsky regular. It's really no matter the only son to the patronymic is a submissive; it's not wrong, it's not unnatural, he's just built of different stuffs and holds a different nature, you see.

He must be treated carefully, his personality grown and tended to like Oriental bonsai, clipped in the correct places to be beautiful at year twenty (unlike Dominants who can be bullish and aggressive, who are cheered when they rough each other up in play fights in the dirt.) (Boys will be boys will be Dominants.)

The beetles, he remembers, came about only as a compromise to stop his tears and meltdowns—easily caught, thick and sturdy things—as long as he kept his fingers from their jaws. Unlike butterflies, they can be trusted and admired, cupped within thin submissive fingers. They are killed within chemicals and cold, isolated and alone, slowly falling into a dreamless slumber (if it could be argued that beetles dreamt at all.)

His father dealt in the nature of their deaths, their jars handed over in silence and natural submission—hands clasped and head down-turned and demure. A Dominant killing an insect for preservation and art is a small ask, and his father seemed happy to alleviate the sensitivities of his submissive son in doing so. (Though fascination persisted, what happened behind those closed doors? What exactly stilled them so?)

The beetles slowly died while he was within the care of his mother, his hair brushed and his nerves soothed. She taught him to knit, to darn, to still his hands to needles and thread and train his body to patience.

The beetle slept dreamlessly by the time he pushed a pin through their thorax into the corkboard, labelled them in calligraphy their Latin identifiers. 'A beautiful display, Danik,' his father complimented.

His mother taught him to cook and clean and how to best provide for his to-be Dominant. It's suffice to say he was devastatingly poor at it, though his mother tried to improve his spirits by saying a Dominant cares more for the meaning of the attempt than the result (as long as it's edible enough, by the end, he supposed).

The beetle was cold and still as Daniil pinned it, coaxing fragile wings from its thick carapace into full spread. It's beautiful, in its stillness—just like father said.

His mother taught him to dress himself appropriately, how to walk in the half-heels suitable for submissive men (full heels for women), how to buckle his collar without the aid of a mirror, letting it ride up and settle above his maturing throat's apple, gentle on his designation glands below and behind his ears.

(They only become more sensitive with age—the pressure to them no longer stirring feelings only of pleasant, floating happiness but something far more… hot, throbbing, and adult. Hormones that trigger the submissive drop—a biological necessity that marked the line between childhood and maturity—housed within them, kneaded and pressed, the mind slowed and made compliant, simple. The indulgence of sensations that need to be protected—privatised by layers of soft wool and thick leather.)

His father gifted him the beetle of the day, then taught him to dance, not his role: the leader, the brave, the bold, no. Daniil's role was the follower to any Dominant suitor, small and lithe and pretty as the half-dresses—flowing fabric over trousers and a slightly cinched waist to match half-heels—twirled at his refined and practiced steps.

Year by year, taller and taller (until his body gave up on that endeavour entirely), his back straighter, his jaw stronger, shoulders broader as he grew and was drip-by-drip fed in testosterone that not even submissiveness could completely restrict from the male body. Year by year, reverent hands brushing against the gun-callouses of his father's as he's given dead beetles like gifts.

They remain beautiful and perfect—rot does not stain their impervious exoskeletons.

Dull—still and to never move again. Bleak, deathly dull, one might say. They were much the same as his initial future—hardly a chance in Hell of becoming anything but a Dominant woman or man's submissive plaything; cooking, cleaning, staying quiet and tending to children (perhaps not even his own—his father was abnormal in judging his work done at just one. A submissive of the same sexual dynamic is basically a glorified nanny—Dominants are God-willed to shop around you see, and their kin is theirs alone).

His mother stated that the traditional kohl of an of-age submissive around his eyes makes him look devastatingly alluring—no Dominant shall ever overlook him, placing him aside as a mere home-warmer. That's a good thing, perhaps, an increasing of the worth of his dowry another.

Then the country marches in the thousands, sets up its dress-rehearsal to usurping a monarchy and stealing its golden goose and crown. Political parties fall, new ones rise—Daniil's new future was to be of the military, a tradition of the men of his family now no longer limited to only those who is said could withstand it.

No more dowry, no more marriage unless he wished for it; his father aglow with pride, wishing for his equality. More women in the army, you see, young spitfires perfect for partnering with such a virile submissive. Like a mammalian flytrap! Allow them to smell your scents and circle you like carrion to vultures, letting them pick at your skin!

'I wish submissives would do that for us; fall at our feet begging. But I suppose you love the chase as much as Dominants love the hunt.' His father knew his son had not been hunted, no matter how desirable his mother complimented him as. He never understood the statement.

Maybe it was never meant for Daniil—wanting a better wife, wishing for a Dominant child. Not that Daniil-the-elder would see it that way for a while, blinded with dogged-determination that his kin shall see battle and blood and gunfire, putting all this Western nonsense of 'weak submissives' to rest. His educational development was his father's largest pride; grades soaring and professors noting his clear intelligence and sharp wit (if a tendency to trust too freely and take things too at-face).

(He would hopefully grow out of it once he experienced more of the world.)

(He wouldn't.)

Literature, chemistry, physics, mathematics, he never left the top percentile of study. Biology it is claimed he came top in the entire testing range, if they published grades in such a way, that is.

Not such a dreary future for a poor submissive, now is it?

While his father pushed for his enrollment in the military, Daniil wrote his plight in letters to university staff, to educators, to professors, to men with doctorates—I am worth your while! He wished to study medicine, to become a doctor in the whole sense and not just honorary.

It took a few short for months and only a minor telegraph chain to find himself accepted into the Capital's most prestigious university, housing given post-haste at his only small amount of begging. He promised to be back soon enough to his family—yes, of course in time for enlistment! With that he flew the coop and made on his effort that the next time they see him—if that shall ever be—he will be successful on entirely his own merit.

It's the university housing where he first met Serafima and Platon (amongst the many others among them); a submissive cohort assigned to them, or perhaps them assigned to it, because it's one thing to state Dominant and submissive equality, but it's another thing to house the pretty and vulnerable canaries with the prowling cats.

It didn't help much, of course, because submissives do what submissive must: submit.

Submit while a Dominant cares for them, a nature embedded within human genetics—primed and begging for thick cocktails of dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins. Daniil knows his body needs the release to function—submissives are all born addicts; afflicted with a three-week withdrawal window. Again and again. Round and around.

He studied, he drank far too much alcohol on young and loud outings into the city; he researched and collected new data; he bought a new fashionable collar with black dyed leather and white stitching; he wrote extensive papers and defended them into their publishing.

Daniil captured and pinned his own beetles, watched them choke and die in the glass jars once denied of him—this is sick, this fascination, you know? But he can't stop himself.

Daniil danced during the nights in half-heels and half dresses and eyes thick with kohl and body at the bottom of the bottles alongside everyone else. His collar gently unbuckled as he was laid back on his bed—or their bed—by Dominant hands and strong forms, teeth bitten to the sides of him, his body hot and begging as his gland was rubbed in a circular  motion    and     his      thoughts

slowly

dripped

away…

Like a good submissive.

Gentled and comforted on his knees.

On his knees where he belongs.

His head bobbed up and down, petted and praised and ducked lower to swallow. His body satisfied and so very hot and full.

Again and again, round and around, the pin cracked through the beetles carapace and into the aged cork of the display. Nights with his hands behind his back, face pressed down and purrs muffled, pinned to the bed and admired, submissive and thoughtless and empty.

Beautiful and still. Every other weekend on the dot.

Just enough. Gasping for more.

And eventually, eventually, the scalpel was put in his hand in the theatre, and the white sheets pulled back to reveal the pale, freshly deceased corpse of a woman—mid forties he noted aloud, submissive he marked as he ran his thumb over her glands to judge their size; on Dominants they're reduced and vestigial.

He autopsied the dead before him solely and without any further guide, exceeding expectations in the same manner.

Trusted with death itself—to handle them with care, to lay permanent marks into a body that no longer heals and can no longer resist. Gentle and empty.

It felt religious. Reverential.

He pursued thanatology.

People stop asking if he's that man, if he's the submissive son of that ladies military General. Daniil Daniilovich, your father is asking for you. Daniil Daniilovich, your mother is worried. The head of Thanatica cannot spare the time away from his fight for you! Don't you see! Come back later, when I have finished changing the world.

And then that world was destroyed.

Shredded and obliterated, because these are matters of life and death, Bachelor Dankovsky! And yet you toy with them like a marble game to bet on! Just him and his followed cohort again when the banging on the door started, when the tears threatened to escape him at the sound, slamming into the back of his head.

Back where it all started and you have to go, you have to go. (His eyes lingered on the blues of butterfly's, at the black shine of his beetles that found their way even here.)

Take this gun, you were taught to shoot, were you not, Daniil Daniilovich? Your patronymic speaks so to it.

But I haven't, I haven't, I haven't-

Daniil fled to the train station, an empty and gifted revolver hidden under his snakeskin jacket and the notes and tools of his life's work in a single carpetbag. He stood there, tapping his foot and controlling his breathing as he forced himself into the middle of the platform's crowd.

Safety in numbers, he ground stunted canines together for the tolerance it took.

The scents of them invaded his senses, cloying perfumes and the thick subconscious pheromones of irritable Dominants his submissive nose was well-attuned to—their touches as their toes caught his heels and their shoulders his own, their sounds as they growled and whimpered and whined and he had to press his eyes closed and thank the powers above that both his hands were full—under his coat on the gun, at his side on the thick bag handle—so he could not press them to his ears.

So many people, too many people. Dominants with smaller submissives in arm. He balled the train ticket in his fist to hide its shaking and soon enough the metal encased engine of a passenger train screeched to the platform, wheels locking, screaming in agony, Daniil gasped when its bulk was finally put a stop to, the heat of metal brakes creaking and groaning as it settled.

He opened his eyes, time to make greetings to the end of the line.

Within the train he say with his bag on his lap, a woman with a young child in the window seat he attempted dearly to ignore the crying of, re-reading the correspondences between himself and one Isidor Borislawovich Burakh as the train pulled away (and still trying to determine if that foreign surname, written varyingly in foreign script, was meant to be pronounced as a Cyrillic В or a Latin B. He'll go for Cyrillic as the safest bet).

It would take over a week to arrive at his final destination, his route detouring to avoid all possible blockades and the Okhrana that would be alongside them—the secret police that carry out the orders the government (of course) don't send—hidden at expected transfers once they catch wind of his to-the-left-of-legal high-tailing.

He was run ragged by day three, watching his pocket watch tick-tick-tick away, its silver arms sharp on its black backing—waiting for the rattle and screech of bulky passenger carriages to open to embarkation. His fingers almost numb at the grip on his bag.

It's days before the end even starts to arrive in sight, sleeping for handfuls at a time upright as his core scratches his diaphragm in its unsettled state—submissives aren't meant to be alone, (was there a speck of truth to those claims after all?) Their—his—country a massive behemoth that strains under its own size and weight, its bloat shall burst soon enough; his idle thoughts as he watched the lights of civilisation wink out by the hour.

The crowd thinned at each stop and change-over, fewer ever seeking to come this far, run this fast. He slept the second to last train away—it only had one stop, and he was blissfully alone in its tiny carriage, at least until he was woken to a tap on his shoulder by the conductor, light bleeding through his corneas when he turned to the window, gathering his bearings. Daniil was told to get off in five minutes or fewer.

The morning orange and reds that stained him announced his final day of travel.

He thanked the man, good manners instilled in him, though his attempt at a polite, submissive, bow, were to the sight of thoroughly unimpressed epicanthic-folded eyes. (Do indigenous populations here request behaviour other than bowing for respect? He felt stupid for not having read on it beforehand.) Feeling thoroughly scolded, rude and forgetting of his nature, he disembarked before he could further embarrass himself to the Dominant.

He'd take the freezing, biting weather upon his face over the social strain—it dragged sharp nails down his cheeks and lips, forced his form smaller into his coat.

The final passenger train left an hour later with a shrill whistle and the screech of disengaged locks, the track-split sliding left—away from the route he needed. All he could do was button his coat and wait alone at the station's—more just a concrete slab—sad, singular, bench.

Home stretch, he supposed, cracking open the pack of cigarettes he'd saved so far—vile habit. He's been trying to ween himself off it for years and a fortnight, yet the stress keeps him crawling back, desperate to choke his lungs and mind. What would the opposite of homeward steps be? Further away from it than ever before, smoke making his eyes sting. Ambitious little submissive, aren't you? Away from housework and familiarity, it's not your natural habitat. You're not welcome here.

It's a two hour wait to the next train, his hands busied in flicking the lighter cap open and closed on its hinge, his mouth busied with paper and tobacco. Finally it arrived, aged and wheezing—freight carrying who knows what that Daniil frankly cared too little about to be nosy of.

He begged and bribed for passage across the final route—he was but a poor submissive! And he needed to make his way! The gun weighed heavy where his hand rested upon it under his coat—it was pointless in the end, the driver silently pointing to his half-filled cigarette pack. The break to Daniil's habit was thus decided, bribe exchanged for being shoved into a small storage cabin that appeared once designed for overnight driver exchanges.

He could only hope, with the lack of other men for a shift change, the final step shall not take that long.

He winced as the track lines thud fed opposite again, and the train shifting to the right as it got going.

Daniil watched the final signs of life drift away through the cracked and dusty tiny cabin window, the outer-factories swapped for miles of unbroken, empty, and completely untamed wilds.

The clear horizon made a painting of greys and overcast. He wouldn't be seeing blue for a long while.

The cloud cover swallowed the rest of the sky, after a time, before the sun itself retreated between cat-naps lulled into him with monotonous rocking. It let him see his own reflection clearly and unavoidably in the dark and very end of humanity's reach. There were no lights outside to break up the void—a cheap hanging lightbulb swaying above him blinding his eyes to any adjustments to make for sight beyond the glass.

He looked at himself in the window, famed thanatologist, lauded man of education, fleeing to the backwater steppes in what must surely be a fool's errand—a tax or benefit acquisition scheme that's ran too long and now he's all caught up in it, tangled in the rope so thoroughly it's now around his neck.

It's then, and only then—in the haze of thoughts that caused his eyes to drift down from where they gazed into himself—when he realised that, in his utter haste to flee, he'd forgotten his collar.

He rarely wore one in the private laboratories of Thanatica. Surrounded with submissives alike (and Dominant's who held him in the highest respect as to barely register it)—study was best done on comfort, and not a single submissive found their collar such a thing. His would still be hooked on the coat rack by the door between the labs and the more public facing area—the one he avoided to retreat to the winding back entrance.

Daniil reached a hand to his throat, his gloves within his bag, it's his uncovered fingertips that touch equally bare skin. He had that collar for over a decade and, despite not being the sentimental type, he actually found himself at a small loss to realise he'll now be without it.

How foolish of him.

His neck pale and bare, he realised without its form—both a fashion and a function—there's near nothing physical that marked him as obviously submissive, just connecting behaviour and social cues. It took five minutes of effort to spit on a handkerchief and rub away the last dregs of kohl remaining around his eyes—he had brought nothing to touch it up, anyhow.

Without the large black rim around his eyes, he looked… Older, somehow. And far less submissive—not about to pout and flutter his eyelashes to try and get what he wants in playful social back-and-forth with Dominants. (He fucking hated all of that, anyhow.)

An idea caught in his mind at that, and he could hardly stop its tumble into genuine consideration from there.

The Capital was more enlightened to designations, somewhat—where there's a strong, ever present need to prove oneself over the West. Where they balk and restrict half their populace to domestic work. The submissive men and women of Russia build guns and bombs and labour as hard as any Dominant—yours must just be weak and defective.

He opened his mouth to window-made-mirror, before forcing his lip up with a thumb to judge the length of his canines next to it. His fangs had always been on the larger-average for a submissive, their growth stunted late by designation-related hormones. Large for a sub, however, was small for a Dom, whose growth plates and secondary-characteristics are normally fostered well into their late twenties.

(Bit late to be pretending to be a young Dom, though. The start of thin crow's feet and lines around his mouth find their way back on his face when not contorted to judge himself. That's stress, you know, poor thing.)

The small shared range is good enough for him, however, he could certainly live with being on the- smaller end (his stance slightly under average even for a submissive—he blames his mother for that one, bless her heart). It's hardly as if small Doms don't exist, whether through genetic misfortune or disorder, there's no end of things to halt growth. Daniil had seen far too many in doctoral halls for regulated hormone injections during his residencies—had even carried out a few.

A Dominant in his situation would find it easier to speak in conversation, easier to demand respect, easier to walk the streets feeling secure—especially in this rural backwater, though he hopes the local indigenous cultures it edges are more tolerant than the average he finds in rural civility.

(And he hadn't exactly informed Isidor Borislawovich of his designation status—first out of genuine thoughtlessness; he's been asked for signatures before, fuck sake, everyone knows Dankovsky, the thanatology submissive. Then when he realised how accidentally arrogant that was, nerves about blowing a hole in the tenuous scientific relationship they'd tied together kept the admission being written in hard-wrought, neat calligraphy.

Dominant was the base assumption—the natural assumption. It would be best to not prove him incorrect when so much can be lost on this trip. Let all assumed views of Daniil be proven true.)

But oh, Daniil Dankovsky, you've never been good at acting as something you're not. Late thirties and not a Dominant suitor in sight—that's how offputting you are, how badly you play the romantic or interested act. (Easier to blame it on the work—who would want their submissive touching them an evening after finding their hands within putrefying organs and cold skin? Nobody, that's who.)

He sighed, thunking his head against the window and letting his skull rattle before retreating from it.

He supposed he's going to be put through his paces fast, though his mostly textual study of Dominant-to-Dominant social behaviour might find itself lacking when having to be enacted in reality. No matter.

It's only for a day or two. Not long at all, you can hold it all together that long.

What's easier than a bit of playacting for a temporary role?

Chapter Text

Let’s imagine two hunters: Daniil and Artemy.

They have come across a stag while out hunting in the steppe, but they can hardly claim to know one another yet. Artemy looks down at Daniil in his Capital garb, his class-accented voice, and the shielding wall of sharp wit and cold assessments. Daniil looks up at Artemy and wonders if the Dominant can even be trusted, a man capable of such intense violence, blessed with striking perception, and the social confidence to cut through the visages Daniil cannot even see.

Artemy's large form and bold steps might just scare the stag off by accident and ruin the whole hunt. Daniil's lack of knowledge of this wilderness and cocksureness will surely lead him to stepping wrong.

If either hunts hares instead of the stag, they secure a smaller but guaranteed reward, regardless of the other’s choice. But if the other has stepped wrong, placed that trust upon the other man to attempt the stag with him, he would come back with nought but humiliation.

Why would you ever want to put your trust in someone so unknown, when you won't starve on your own? Even if you yearn to fill your stomach with more, you're surviving well enough like this, aren't you?

Really, it's just the safer bet to choose the hare.

Common belief purports that submissives are in physiological requirement of a Dominant.

The actual reality is that such a statement hasn't been true for going on two decades now, at an absolute minimum. Probably even longer if anyone was going to be honest about it, but submissives are a new addition to history books and educational sectors, and are notoriously secretive about their personal needs and means, culture and wishes for privacy variable.

Daniil's need for privacy, however, is rather high. (Quite unfortunate really that his supposed 'new home' is now within a town of two cultures; one build on close-knit family ties, the other local gossip.)

Daniil thinks upon this as deft, medically trained fingers pull fabric thread through leather, where they'd really be better suited for suturing through split and bloody flesh. The leather is treated beautifully, aged and strong—though he'd expect nothing less in a town that reveres its bull so.

The trains were no longer denied entry to the town as of the previous week (two after the plague was finally brought to heel), but it will take an age and a half for any bureaucratic corrections to go through, especially after his own damn orders to abandon the—already delayed before he even got here—routes into Gorkhon. (To assure the quarantine and halt any escape routes. Physical distance maintained the rest. Any locals who tried their best would die in the never-ending wilds for the wolves, foxes, and eagles to feast on. (Would that even be a negative? What must they think of sky burials?)

(Where was he?))

The steam engines that will come are a distance away and still gathering delivery for a town that begs for everything and anything—a withering foetus at the end of the umbilical, he scoffs at the comparison previously so wonderfully presented to him.

They're coming, the letter back to him promises—connection limited to a week's ride there and back on horseback. The Kin know their way around equines far better than the townspeople, and for as well as Daniil can ride, he doubts his chances as a single submissive in the cold and lonesome. (No- no- city boy, you shall stay here.)

The route is at least carved into the land—like an iron wound, easy to follow to the root of the infection.

The trains are coming.

The trains are coming.

The trains are coming.

And they're not coming for you. You shall not be riding them back–

Fuck– sharp pain springs up at his finger—another prick on his index narrowly avoiding what's left of his nail bed. The blood tastes like hot metal in his mouth when he places his finger upon his tongue.

Wouldn't want to stain his creative endeavour with own stupid mistakes. Done that once before!

Not again.

Not again!

Smaller this time, a smaller endeavour.

A collar—padded and thick.

It's an average one for a submissive; wider at the sides than at the front and back, function fully over form; protecting sensitive designation glands under and behind the ears (his have begun to itch and throb, forcing his evenings to be spent rubbing circles into them attempting to stave off the lancing moments of pain.)

It didn't have the patterning of his own collar, his old one—black with white rows of stitching in looping patterns, framing outer strips of snakeskin to match the tailored coat commissioned at the same time. It was a gorgeous work of art—now burned in Thanatica like everything else don't think about it don't think about it–

Don't think about the fact it's all gone.

It's all gone.

It wasn't even by governmental order!

They just stoked the flames!

Spread the rumours!

Whispered the gossip!

And the frantic public terrified by the blasphemy locked within, stuffed rags doused with vodka into bottles that fit so neatly into their palms not even a decade before–

And that was all it needed in the end.

But it's fine.

It's all good!

And since he's staying here (for months? For years?), he needs a collar.

The seller had looked at him with observing eyes, watching his own pupil-obscuring near-black peruse the store's small section of stacked collars. (It's good for the economy, he'd argued to himself, to get money flowing through a decimated industry.)

He'd picked one dyed a deep maroon, pale beige stitching running along it in a neat row at the top and bottom, keeping two layers of leather and some sort of soft inner-fabric together. It reminded him of his cravat, normally tied around his collar in Thanatica to accent it– don't think about it.

The seller had sized him up like a fellow Dom, flashing hefty canines that threatened to protrude between dry lips as he smiled and informed the price.

Bartering is normal here—a different culture to the Capital entirely, where there's no greater insult than claiming a man's wares were worth less than what he asked.

This seller in the Town on the Gorkhon had seen his custom tailored coat and heard his refined accent and knew he was the Capital doctor. Not for discounts, of course, that would be too thankful to one of the men who saved this dreary place! But for fleecing. His first price had been an absurdly high one, and he was to be let down rather quickly that Daniil was not made of the money the remains of his high-life claimed to.

Daniil had offered back an almost insultingly low counter, looking at the collar within his hands like it was the most boring thing he'd ever seen. The seller scoffed, and then they danced, offers going back and forth until Daniil's gloved hand had shaken the man's clearly not work-shy ones.

A little less than half the initial price, which was probably still higher than its real worth. (Would've been nice to be let in on that fun little game before he lost all his rubles to fish and fresh meats weeks before.)

'For a dame o'yours?' The wares-man had asked, agonisingly counting each piece of change.

'Yet to be seen.' He'd left him with, pondering all the options that reply could indicate. None correct, of course, it was a dull and simple lie—the best he could manage that early in the morning, before the town's rabble found their way to the streets.

He used to walk boldly through the Capital, for God’s sake! And yet there he'd been, scampering around like a rat of the plague trying to avoid the public, counting rubles, and stuck in his own damn charade. Oh, yes! Let all assumed views of Daniil be proven true!

Idiot.

Ach- fuck!

The needle.

He's going to get more scars from this than anything previous and he knows at least a few deep bites mark his chest and hips.

Hopefully, the blood he spills will dry similar on the maroon, he's well past the point of caring.

One end of the collar is finished, its middle cut with Eva's borrowed fabric scissors, then stitched back into itself around a simple metal hoop once surely meant for a steer's nostrils. Its ends are rough and raw and the stitching far from straight—turns out it is quite different to sutures—but it'll have to do.

It'll have to do because he's getting irritable—more so than normal, he can tell. He hates that he can tell, fraying at the edges yourself hm, Bachelor? He's gone far too long without gentling, without letting himself slip into that perfect, hormonal bliss. The slightest sounds makes him bare his teeth, grinding blunt molars against one another. The simplest of questions make something within him boil.

When was the last time he'd been guided gently to his knees? They were always temporary partners, but most Dominant-submissive couplings are temporary. But even temporary—the stress of the Thanatica being shut down, the train journey, the fucking plague. The body can call a timeout, true, when the stress is simply too much, but it doesn't last forever and–

his hands are shaking–

–and a chill is settling over his shoulders and upper back, his saliva gathering his mouth like he's about to be sick.

Daniil pushes his hands through his hair, grimy from sweat and dust and the awkward end of too long. It's starting to curl at the ends as it escapes its style. What must he look like? Well, it really doesn't matter, does it! All anyone sees of him is a territorial, aggressive Dominant with a tendency to belabour.

He tightens his grip until the pain of his fingernails digging in runs through him like pin-pricks.

He's just a Dominant that clearly has no submissive and is taking the lack of control in his life—the lack of a rush from overpowering someone, sinking those Dominant canines into the skin below the collar, nipping at the leather and metal buckle that denies them until given permission—out on everyone else.

People see what they want to see—what they expect to see. He had no idea he'd play his role so well, his fun evenings play act now turning into his new identity in the only place left in the world he could remain.

Punishing the patients and townsfolk alike with his ill temper.

Just get a submissive, Daniil.

There's no end of them in the town, Daniil.

Just gentle Eva, Daniil. She's practically begging!

Well! He doesn't want to!

It was fun at first! When he'd arrived and been corralled into the Stillwater as the lauded Capital guest. Eva was a submissive through and through, her words kind and lilting, her collar a pale ivory and decorated with beautiful stitched patterns of steppe-flowers, her eyes bright and curious about the town's new visitor.

She was so easy to practise with. Too easy. He'd call it her fault if he was as awful as the town wishes to paint him as.

He'd pulled his shoulders back and squared his stance as he'd seen the Doms at the university and his Thanatica do on instinct. Making their presence large and prideful. When she'd smiled at him, he pulled his lips back to show off canines, rather than ducking his head down to hide them like she did.

He'd lower his growl of annoyance, bite back the sharp squeaks of surprise and the whines of alarm or worry that come so naturally to subs. So loud and emotive creatures, open and sensitive. Doms are far quieter in comparison, stoic and flattened.

Eva doesn't even question h, not for a moment, and the guilt seeps through him when the Haruspex mentions her interest offhand—in his own damn bed no less. (Poor lass stood no chance, she wasn't shaped to his pre-ordained preferences, whether he was able to pick up on another submissive's flirting or not. (A submissive and a submissive, what a fascinating thought, would couplings like that even be possible? An analogy of female sheep comes to mind.)

Artemy had chuckled at how he'd balked, throwing his hands up in mock defeat when Daniil had looked away from the bull's blood to where he sat on the bed.

'Pretty and blonde not your type, I assume?' the Dom had teased, canines flashing in a smile.

Daniil hadn't dignified that with an answer. Denying it would've been untrue, defending himself on it humiliating. (Oh, Artemy thought she was pretty, did he? Something that wasn't quite irritation had coiled in his gut, continues to coil even now, constricting tighter and tighter, he digs the needle in through leather.)

When he'd looked back, he'd tried to ignore the sounds of buckles being undone behind him. His eyebrows had knitted together at his own stupidity, hands tightening around the knob of the microscope, the sight it provides him long forgotten; of course the man would want to at least partially undress for his own comfort, of course he would feel comfortable doing it within the presence of another Dom.

Liar you are through and through, Daniil.

He had actually got work done that evening—pages of a notebook filled with scrawled results and further queries to follow a testament to it. But eventually, like a grounded child wary of his parents appearing in any moment should he abandon the corner, Daniil had found himself gazing away from his notebook, over to the Haruspex, and wondering.

He's a beautiful example of a Dominant, there's simply no other words to describe it. Taller than most, with a physique that shows he doesn't shy away from work. His hair had been streaked with a fine layer of grime, the dust that had speckled his nose and cheeks—hiding pale freckles—were a claim to his efforts throughout the town, and the epicanthic folds along the corner of his eyes to his inheritance.

Running himself ragged for communities that despise half of who he is (and you'd done nothing but add to those strains, Daniil.)

He'd laid perfectly asleep, so completely trusting of this random—apparent—Dom from the Capital. Perhaps self-assured that he could thwart anything Daniil could attempt (both an insulting and modestly attractive implication).

Passed out and mouth slightly open, the stress lines on his face had been evened out like that. Even with them, Daniil can tell the man is likely a decade his junior, if not more. His snide remarks telling Daniil to be careful with his knees as they clicked when he stood sealed the deal (he hadn't been so mature to avoid noting the man's own game leg. He'd got a playfully annoyed glance at that.)

There's a small thrill that shivers down his spine at the thought of Artemy's hormones, in his mid-twenties, still not having had their whole way with him. There could still be more to come.

More to come for who?

You?

Oh, don't be such a twit.

A Dom as handsome as that clearly has his pick of the lot, no need to peer into the barrel's empty bottom for submissive scraps; far too old for much use to any Dominant other than a single fun night of many, to be forgotten by morning.

Besides, such a thought and flight of fancy would have to be preceded by an admittance he's been lying about his designation this whole time. Apart from the deeper, even more embarrassing pit it would throw his emotional state into, he's seen how the Doms here are, what they can do, what they wish they could do if only they could get away with it.

(Soot and smoke burning his eyes and trachea. God, the screams.)

He'd pulled the blanket over Artemy, that evening. The man hadn't done it himself for Christ knows what reason, perhaps he didn't want to dirty it, how grossly polite.

But that's just who he is, nice—unless you were a Capital dandy, or otherwise vile, intent on riling him up—caring and so deeply empathetic—despite the walls of sarcasm he built, and his constant need to be on the move, always doing something, leaping before he looks—paternalistic and so very attentive and loyal. Taking one small and one mostly-still-small child under his arms or onto his lap as he saw fit, purring those deep comforting rumbles only Doms—true Doms—can reach, speaking to them with such apparent love.

He'd seen the solid and guiding hand he'd given to Spichka, allowing him near full-reign of the surgery like his inclusion was never even in question. The quiet supportive words he'd offer to Mishka, who'd follow him at her behest, tiny hand gripped into his before the world became too much and he let her retreat from it—from him—again. The surprise he'd felt when finding that a Dominant of his apparently desirable social status within the Kin—and surely just general—had no children to his name yet had made him tilt his head in curiosity.

These two children alone were the apparent rats that snuck under the floorboards of his heart. Maybe he didn't even want any of his own, despite the oddity.

(Perhaps a chance? No, best not to hope.)

(Despite their opposite status', their sexes unfortunately bar the production of offspring, and for the first time in Daniil's life, he had actually felt somewhat discomforted at the theoretical loss. He'd blushed at the thought of siring for Artemy, having that soft praise of his voice dripped onto him like stinging hot wax, feeling heat pool below his belt at the idea of- becoming full and gravid.)

Daniil had made his way to the curtains to the room with quick, quiet steps, face surely flushed deep and wine-like as he'd pulled them closed. He'd flicked on the low, warm light of a side-lamp and left Artemy with a note of the things he expected of him and from him the next day. He'd had other things to attend to in town, anyhow, and his presence would probably disturb the tired man far more than comfort and, quite clearly, his thoughts had been running away from him.

(He hadn't been able to bear sitting around and gazing at his soft, unguarded expression any longer. The way his eyes has tilted, mouth dipped into a loose frown. What must he have been dreaming, to make him so miserable even in sleep? His arms curled under his head, knees drawn up like a shield; his large form trying to fit somewhere far too small. What would he have looked like if Daniil hadn't resisted himself; had brushed his fingers over his nape? Would he have arched his neck in instinct to let him drag that tensity from him? Trusting his attentive submissive.)

Carefully, Daniil pulls a thin strip of cheap, raw leather through the two hoops he attached the collar's ends to, completing the circle of the collar and giving himself an easy hand-hold.

He pulls it, watching as it tightens and pulls the two ends of the collar closer—squeezing the neck if it was being worn. The constant pressure it needs to maintain this restricted form is a natural safety; it loosens smoothly the moment he lets go and sets it on the desk again. Safer still is the limit to which it will actually tighten, Daniil will have to pull it from behind his head, or it would crush his trachea, the position automatically restricting the limit he could pull it.

And even still, Daniil knows the measurements of his neck for collars—and those relevant to this little adjustment—he'd get a finger between the collar and his neck easily, even when tightened.

He's far from stupid about the little delights he takes part in as a submissive. (He saw enough self-induced asphyxia in his residencies to decide it would be far too undignified an end for the likes of himself.)

He ties a tight knot of leftover thread around the leather loop, securing it as one piece. It's a poor man's martingale—minor specificities adjusted to human, submissive anatomy—but it's more than nothing, and it'll be perfect for its intended use.

He throws it into a desk drawer before gazing outside, the sun high in the windows. It's time for his midday rounds—Artemy prefers the morning and Stanislav the evening. This is just a short, personal break from his work.

His time is hardly his own anymore, after all.

It's a week later when he ends up pulling the collar snug around his throat, its padded sides pressing a solid warmth against his glands—glands so hot and so desperate and now littered with angry, thin scratches from chewed nails.

(He'd wait as long as possible, but his skin is crawling with gooseflesh now, and he can barely keep a single thought straight. His hands had shaken when he'd buckled the collar on the second try—the once stable hands of a well-educated doctor now missing; noticed and noted at the surgery. (It would hardly do to cause suffering because their doctor is riddled with tremors, Daniil Daniilovich. Have you been sleeping well enough?)

His brain is fizzing like a chemical reaction gone wrong, his body rocking itself back and forth when he sat, when he wrote, when he read, anything to force his body to keep attention. His mind once sharp, soon distracted by thoughts no self-respecting man should have about his colleague– colleagues. (His brain had quickly become non-picky, no matter how hard he rapped his knuckles against his head to burst the bubbling desires in him.)

His breath hot in his chest, glands hard and throbbing, turned inward and swollen, pressing into his trachea (or was that just globus pharyngeus?) He wished three nights in a row he could just lance them both with a hot needle and get it over with, let his very essence drool from them in pus-filled globules. Anything to stop them beat-beat-beating in time with his heart.

Every second hour he stifled tears. Tears at nothing at all! Have you had enough yet, what week even is this, for such a poor submissive away from home. And yet you ask what there is to cry about, Danilka?

Nothing!

Everything!

Oh God, oh God, he wants, he needs. But not him, never him, no, the thing squirming beneath his flesh, surviving, fit and healthy and determined to make him do so as well. Like anyone wants his body, his teeth, his eyes—wants to own what makes him himself and make something new of it secondhand mixed with their own.

The tears slipped through his fingers as he'd covered his eyes from the world, then their sides forced into his mouth—between his sharp canines as they bit just short of drawing blood, muffling whimpering and wobbly sobs. He needs, he needs, he needs more and more, his stomach squirming and Artemy—everyone—looks at him as if he's sick.

(No Spichka, there are no lessons today. No Mishka, there're no beetles to prepare today.)

Vector to a novel disease, Daniil? How special. Ready to do it twice over?

The cigarettes didn't even help anymore—the cheap loose-leaf chews he occasionally nicks from Artemy, the expensive smoking brand alongside the dipping tobacco—he thought he'd sworn off of—now imported from the Capital. Oh, yes, don't you remember? The train arrived. You locked yourself in the Stillwater and chewed your nails to their beds when the rails started rattling—your heart a tenuto murmur.

(And then it left without you. But we knew that already, didn't we?)

His back to the Stillwater's locked bathroom door, face stained red and wet, his diaphragm spasming at every third breath. Everything crawls, his bones are filled with holes, teeth aching, and muscles squirming—insects must have infested him at some point, crawled in through his pores and settled into his lower gut. (They're starting to eat their way out.)

That's why his hips ache, why his spine begs to fold into lordosis, inescapable and primitive instinctual behaviour: vertebral dorsiflexion response. (Common for submissives who are desperate for any Dom that would touch them, the absolute height of sexuality—but not what he wants to be doing in public, triggered by Artemy's soft eyes rolling over him when standing at a table mixing saline solution.)

He yanks at his hair with enough to force to pull his thoughts straight and clear. The pain a beautiful focussing element, as he moves to wipe drool from the corner of his mouth and retrieve the collar from his desk drawer.

Thick and sturdy and soft and perfect perfect perfect.

The body can delay its need for a time—for a long time if needed, like women with her monthly cycles that become irregular under stress. That stress mutes the hormone build up that the natural process of subspace flushes out. It creeps through the body like carbon dioxide, more and more and more until the body begs for a single breath to free itself of toxins.

It's like drowning, in a way.

You can be forced under the water for a long, long time, if the air is the more dangerous option. Maybe longer than you've ever held your breath before, letting the world darken at the edges as instincts that should be triggered for your self-survival are repressed, waiting, biding time for safety.

But you'll always drown, if you don't get out, eventually you have the breach the surface and let your body-

gasp as he pulls the collar tighter around his neck, moaning at the perfect pressure on his glands—squeezing until his cock is hard and throbbing, his sight blurring in utter perfection. Daniil chokes out a filthy, unrepressed moan in the back of his throat as he breathes out, squirming in place as the pressure's let off.

It's not enough to restrict breathing, never enough for that—it's hardly the point of the pleasure. No, the padding of the collar is soft, and its form haphazardly adjusted to an aid pressing so perfectly into him but shy of restricting.

Edges squeeze the glands that a Dominant would tease, pattering fingertips into its throbbing heat, sending jolts straight through his spine, heat into his teeth, and drool from his mouth. Gooseflesh runs over him thinking about a tongue laving at the glands, soft and hot and sucking love-bruises around them.

He throws his head back where he's on his knees, exposing his throat to the Dominant of his mind, letting his throat's apple bob and entice. He almost cries when nothing touches him, when no teeth drag over the lines of his throat's arteries like his position demands. Gasps with moaning, high-pitched trills of a submissive's desperation escape from him, begging for attention from a partner that doesn't exist.

He squeezes his legs, focussing on the soft, heavy plush of the pillow between them, his mind slipping and tears pouring from the corner of his eyes. There's no Dominant here but—he pulls at the martingale again, eyes rolling back into sweet darkness, letting the ethereal touch of another run over him, cup his hardness, pet at his jaw.

Neck still tensed and head thrown back, saliva runs from the corner of his open mouth, trickling down his neck, tickling a cool line through the heat of the blood underneath.

His hips jolt without permission, bulge squishing against the fabric, pleasure tingling through him.

With his eyes closed and body shuddering, Daniil can imagine a Dominant—his Dominant—above him, strong and overpowering, taller and broader than him, passionate and attentive and loyal to him only. Calling him good and perfect in the lulling accent of the steppe, the bristles of his scruffy five o'clock shadow tickling the back of his neck as he nibbles at his nape, arms either side of him, his weight pressing him down, his knees boxing him in.

And when Daniil is too loud—because he's always too loud, too uncontrolled and greedy—the fingers of a large hand push past his lips—past his teeth like the sharpness a submissive has is barely a thought—weighing his tongue down and filling him up, silencing his moans and whines and keep him content, suckling.

He slips his own fingers in at the thought—to keep the fantasy grounded—and flexes the other into the pillow where he's desperate to dip it under the waistband of his undergarments, desperate to let it stroke between his legs and stain his own wetness on his palm, (he wants the hand of his Dominant to grasp his wrist and pin it down).

But there's no Dominant—he sobs at even the most minor self-control he must force onto himself to let this scene run its course, past basal pleasure to what he truly needs. Tears spilling from him—he forces the finger deeper into his mouth, letting drool gather around his palm as he rocks back and forth into the pillow.

Squeezing and releasing, grinding and throbbing, sucking and swallowing around his own fingers, pathetically muffling his sounds of pleasure.

Feels so good to be stupid, his brain slow and lethargic, imagining what others would think of him—what he must look like. So consumed, drooling and making a mess of himself, brought so low and used, fucked and filled and made lesser.

His forehead bumps into wooden flooring as he folds over, rutting into the pillow on all-fours, then even lower onto his forearms, rutting like a pathetic horny dog. Yes! His submissive brain gasps, Yes, nothing left of Danilka! Because that's what he'd be, Danilka, just a useless horny little pet, mindlessly humping a pillow.

The collar pulls tighter—the Dominant sucking bruises into him, owning him.

So happy to be dumb! He grinds harder and harder, the edge closing in, more more more his fantasies spin, words and phrases repeating as heat, molten hot, spirals through him. So satisfied, perfect for Dominant, perfect and useless, perfect and useless and empty and used and simple and dumb and horny-

Of course, it's at that exact moment he registers the front door of the Stillwater slamming open in a panic.

The one forearm keeping his body even slightly stable collapses the moment his eyes open and his mind returns to him, sending his forehead and nose straight into the cold wood of his bedroom's upper-level notch. And as much as he has his- fantasies, pain has never been a part of them.

Daniil hisses, letting the cold lance of pain work its way through him, hand dragged from the pillow to nose. (There's a miniscule win to there being no blood coming from.) His fingers had escaped from his mouth just beforehand, so he at least has little worry about gagging, though their spit soaked form makes him rankle as he pushes himself back to sitting on his knees.

Sweat drips into his eyes from the position change, his shirt and under garments sticking to his skin like his pores are dripping honey, he huffs a laugh at that, common Dominant saying: submissive pheromones are sweet like honey- focus. If there is one thing to say about the Stillwater, is that it is not blessed with admirable insulation.

His surface-levels muscles twitch and shudder, panicking at the fast retreat of heat—of adrenaline that stopped the cold from breaking through his skin to the nerves that register it in his spinal cord. His body is still gasping, stomach spasming where it'd be scrunched and tense.

Daniil breaths deep—heaving the simple, cool air in and out, diaphragm expanding and his brain sobbing.

Blood that had jumped to the duty of stiffening him is slower on its frightened retreat—but it's a retreat, nonetheless. Whatever submissive moment he'd carefully lulled his body into has been thoroughly kicked from him like a horse's hooves to his chest. Sensitive—that's what submissives are, stupid little thing, this is why you need a Dominant—to grasp your jaw and wrench your face back to theirs and keep focus.

He sighs, breath finally catching in his throat again, and his shoulders drooping. There's little to be done about that.

God fucking damn it. He's exhausted.

He'd been so close, a little death left just out of reach aside, it's secondary to the true goal—just a few minutes away from dropping into a complete self-induced subspace that his body begs and cries for. Fucking addict. Fuck. Fuck. His fingers curl into a fist and he blames the lingering lack of control moments earlier for the lack of restraint when he slams his fist into the wood.

Tears dripping aside his palms accompany the second hit into aged wooden boarding. Lost that much control, have you? (His nails are still terribly bitten to his fingertips.)

It's incorrect to say he stands from there, more half-crouches, arms pulling him up by the bed frame before collapsing onto its thin mattress, hands beside him, curling in the soft fabric, forcing his body to stretch—untense and catch its breath. He's hoping the fact nobody has demanded his attention yet, that the flurry of panic below has either nothing to do with him, or can conclude without him.

(He hates to be forced to rely on Eva, hates to have what are almost surely his problems pass onto her. But needs must.)

He wipes the tears, sweat, drool, and other expulsions from his body with a corner his bed's blanket, folding it up and settling to wash it himself at first opportunity, because he's hardly that cruel to his wonderful landlady. He settles for similar with the pillow he turns over and sets beside it.

He does up the garters on his socks where it's pulling at the hair on his calf, and changes his shirt for something far less—filthy. He hopes by this point any redness on his face has subsided; steeling himself to gaze into the mirror—newly swapped out where he'd thrown it from the nook to smash onto the wooden floor below just a few weeks back, cleaned, now, thanks only to Eva—to check, pulling his hair into something presentable as he does.

Then, rather suddenly, he clocks onto footsteps coming up the many stairs of the Stillwater. Old building like this—the pipes echo and the frame itself groans early warnings like claxons.

It's two people. Eva he knows now, hearing the familiarity of her body's movement. The second is lighter and unfamiliar, but he can have a good guess that it's Spichka, he's the only other one with a key to the Stillwater—gifted from Daniil to stop him from sneaking in. (The boy would find his way in no matter what. Might as well keep the locks intact as he does.)

Okay, so whatever's happened isn't going to be solved without his input.

Stumbling to his feet—his knees only threatening to give out for a moment—he's rushing down from his bed's nook as quietly as he is quickly. (And he's become rather talented at making his way quietly and quickly of recent.)

The footsteps are getting louder-

Daniil pulls a notebook from his desk, opening it to a random page and almost spilling the ink pot as he pulls it to its position for writing—the pen- the pen, first drawer, second drawer, third down on the right, black and silver, another memory of the past.

The footsteps are getting louder-

He pulls his microscope out from where it's pushed against the wall, slotting a dish of culture into it from the box he'd carried from the surgery—to at least pretend he was working on what he'd stated he was.

The footsteps are getting louder-

And they're almost at the door when he remembers the collar—thick and padded and looking like no other collar. It would be one thing to be outed as a submissive, now that he could get over easily—past the embarrassment of being caught in his own charade. But no, this? This would be the humiliating admittance he'd fashioned himself a bona fide sex-aid. (He pushes down the thought of being witnessed in it to keep the flush at bay.)

It's unbuckled with shaking hands but rote motions, thrown into a desk-drawer and slammed shut and hidden away just in time for him to shudder at the knock to his door—frantic rapping, before being cut off by words muted to comprehension.

It's locked, of course, the key on a hook next to it, dangling mockingly in the lamp's light when he looks over.

His hands are shaking when he unhooks it and slots it into the door.

'What on earth is all the ruckus?' he snaps—or at least tries to—as the door's latch clicks and its hinges creak open. (Mostly, he's just rather chuffed that his voice is completely level.)

Eva meets his eyes first, she seems mildly panicked and somewhat flushed—makes sense, for the rush she'd made up the stairs. His eyes dip before he can consciously stop them to her neck—completely bare of a collar and showing off the two tiny bumps of glands behind and under her ears.

How improper, but then, his must be completely swollen by now—reddened and throbbing with a lack of attention and then attention denied. At least this sort of visual flush for Dominants means well, dominance alongside aggression, pumping thick pheromones that tickle the subconscious mind. But for a submissive, another submissive's pheromones are-

Eva's nose scrunches before she even realises, her head turning away and mouth closing to block her Jacobson's organ. Submissives don't get along well with others alike when under-hm, pleasureful duress.

Daniil grimaces, but avoiding looking at her causes his eyes to drift to Spichka alongside. His shock of reddish-blond hair is in complete disarray and the low, orange light seeping from Daniil's room makes the boy's many freckles appear like pockmarks over his cheeks and nose. He'd ran here, that much is clear, and he was in a Hell of a hurry.

Eva had clearly tried to hold him up, and remarkably enough seems to have actually managed it. But there's no determination like a pre-presentation boy (too young to clearly register the pheromones of the air, and too fixated on his task to note Eva's sudden silence and repulsion).

'Oh!' Eva pulls herself together enough to say, 'Danik, I thought you were- quite busy.'

She seems to almost stutter on the word. Yes, he supposes he did state he was going over collected cultures today and wasn't to be disturbed, in-between recording data entry to prep for damn accounting spreadsheets—been a while since he's done those instead of passing them off to a dedicated role.

Spichka finally catches his breath enough to speak, 'It's Artemy and Stanislav! The surgery!'

Well. It won't be a quiet night, clearly.

(All the work he claimed to be doing will actually have a reason to be delayed he can fess up to now without being forced to lie so transparently he'd sink into the earth, at least.)

He backs up and pulls on his coat from the rack, quickly tying its catches then looping his cravat around his neck, swallowing a hiss at its pressure on sensitive glands. Its soft fabric will be soaked through in an hour or two no-doubt, but until then it's an adequate shield, and his glands will hopefully have calmed by the time it needs removing.

'What on Earth has Artemy Isidorovich done now?' He demands, pulling his lips back to flash canines in annoyance as he sits down to tie the laces of his boots. 'And I've told you once before, it's Artemy and Stanislav Isidorovich to you when you're working.'

He pointedly ignores Spichka's loud, ugh! to collect his gloves from his desk's drawer, flinching to bodily block the drawer for the moment it's open when he realises he'd placed the collar right next to them. He glances to the cultures, untouched, and the singular, thin stack of paper still waiting to be filled with numbers. Eva's gaze (dutifully holding Spichka's scruff to keep him at the door) follows Daniil's and seems shockingly quick on the uptake—if he wasn't doing that despite seeming quite exhausted, then…?—and in a moment of embarrassment, he flicks off the lamp, forcing the room into a near-darkness.

He collects his—always full and prepared, see, not so paranoid now!—bag at the door as he returns, pulling the door to and locking it behind him in a restrained flurry.

He doesn't- not trust Eva. But, God.

'Artemy Isidorovich–' Spichka emphasises, completely oblivious to the adult's moment– 'told me to stop calling him that, told you even!'

Yes, asked to get on first name basis within work situations, how horrifically unprofessional, especially since he's the owner of the surgery and Daniil merely an- employee. If Artemy was crueller, he'd accuse the man of taunting him.

(Just because those two let Spichka get away with impolite, overly-familiar terms of address when he's—technically—at work, therefore in the chain of order, doesn't mean Daniil will. The little terror should have at least one adult in his life ready to pinch his ear and far be it the Dominants to be that, apparently.

Because they can run a surgery but can't keep rules straight for a single boy.

And the surgery, oh!

The surgery–

the surgery–

the surgery.

He's never heard the end of that damn surgery!

With the theatre's quarantine now shut down, and the land returned to terrible performances of ever ebbing artistic worth, Artemy—after convincing Stanislav his- adopted brother? Friend? (he really should get a straight answer about that) to stay—had decided, almost wholly without outsider input from the single man that actually knows how to run a practice, that the town needs a hospital.

'It can hardly be a hospital with only two doctors,' Daniil had stated offhand. 'A medical dropout and a man with no formal education, at that.' But despite his minor attempt, no real amount of contempt had made their way into his words.

They'd all been in the Broken Heart, lounging and soaking in the freedom from quarantine and distancing rules alongside the rest of the town—or least those left of it. A neutral ground, a truce between the Dominant that got everything he wanted and the poor little kicked Capital dog that has nowhere else to go—and very little else to spend his rubles on than drowning himself.

So, it hadn't been very hard to find the kicked dog, the surprising part was that Artemy and Stanislav had decided on it together.

He hadn't registered it at the time, he'd registered very little at the time—his body rather small, and the drinks rather strong—they'd told him it was a surprise to see him there (a lie) as they both corralled him on either side of the booth, calling for rounds each and covering Daniil's own. And, of course, him being himself who takes everything at face value until he himself is slapped, simply took them at their word.

(He really had to stop doing that, but he only ever realises well-after-the-fact. Can't teach this washed up old dog new tricks, apparently.)

'Well, it's a good thing it'll be three doctors, then, Oynon.' Artemy had responded, taking languishing mouthfuls of his- beer? Twyrine infused something-or-other, a local specialty far too bitter and intense for his sensibilities, and seemingly the distance hadn't made Artemy's heart grow any fonder of it either. 'As it appears the third missed the Capital train out.'

Daniil's mind had taken in the implication that they were, in fact, discussing him. Then it promptly chucked that realisation straight on over his head. 'With three doctors I suppose you could call it a private surgery.'

'A surgery? That's a leap.'

'Well,' Daniil had turned to the man wholly and really really tried to remember everything the gorgeous, intelligent Dominant had explained of his education, he knew it of course, but it was all just a bit twyrine-murky, 'it's your specialisation? Is it not?'

'It is, yes, and I'd like to think I'm rather good at it, graduation or not.'

And Daniil had had to admit, the town was hardly choosing their medical staff—more begging. Some education, no matter the source or extent of it, was better than none at all. And Artemy at least could see to the health of both the civil and native communities; fully accepted by neither, but for their uses, neither full rejected.

(Yes, rather, it had to be Artemy Isidorovich Burakh's practice. Daniil, run a practice here? We couldn't trust that snake to administer his own poison!)

'It may- may work, if your third is any good at surgery, that is. It's a specific line of education even within the medical sector. No point to asking a general practitioner to take part in laparoscopic surgery; they wouldn't be in their own plate, that's for sure!'

'The third didn't note that he's not adept at surgery, but now I'm thinking that might be an issue.' His fingers had rapped a rhythmic pattern on the wooden table between them, his other hand fiddling with the rim of his glass. Even Stanislav had seemed subdued at Artemy's tone, 'are you any good?'

Daniil had choked back a laugh, giggling with encroaching inebriation, the cloying sweetness sticking to his tongue. 'I specialise in the dead, dear colleague. All I've done for most of my career is research and autopsy; far more pleasant when the patient doesn't talk back.'

The drink had made him talkative, floaty (in ignorance of the two men that had deflated beside him). He used to be quite good at surgery, at least the very basics he needed for graduation—but the dead were far more fascinating to handle, no need to move from bodies donated to science to those that needed him to live at the speed he chose his specialisation.

He'd continued despite himself, his mouth moving without conscious thought. 'But I suppose if push came to shove—and I was given the time and resources to brush up on procedures—the anatomy doesn't change between the dead and alive, once you get under their skin, of which, might I brag, I was top in my classes of, however many years ago that was now.'

He'd laughed to himself fully at the triple entendre.

Yes, getting under the skin of everyone was a brilliant talent of his! Equal to his class results. Such a sharp and witty submissive, oh you bet the Doms hated such an intolerant braggart, it made their effort to get under his skin and their cocks into him all the more agonisingly hot. If you can't best him, fuck him! His university days filled with teasing and rejection—you'll have to try harder than that to get at my neck! The nights would go by in rough, Dominant displays, until he was throughly fucked out and used, filled with fantasies and memories that would fuel him when he touched himself for the weeks after.

It really was all downhill out of university, into a job, into his thirties where Dominants don't want wild nights anymore, they want children, and gentling where they don't have to get their dicks up or vagina's wet for you. Less a partner, more a pretty little plant—just feed and water and make sure they get the sun occasionally.

Care and keeping of a submissive really is quite so simple.

And him—so unlucky as to only be capable chase the tail of other male Dominants as he wagged his own. He wasn't even useful for siring children. He was the nanny; he was always going to be the nanny, the second-best, the one they settled for.

And his education! How dare he really, how dare he be smarter than the Dominant relationship pool? Daniil's position in Thanatica wasn't exactly titillating, if fact, more than a bit emasculating and undomineering for any partner whose status in society would almost certainly be lower than his for basic fact there were very few left above him. Dominants don't particularly want to marry up, he'd found—didn't want to feel threatened like that, and he didn't particularly want to lick the boots of politicians, no matter the favours a partnership would grant.

He used to be so desirable—so desired. (Daniil wishes he could pinpoint a single clear moment it all went so fucking wrong; the falling pebble that started the snowball.)

The world had been blurry, how many drinks in had he been?

Both Artemy and Stanislav had seemed slightly relaxed at his testifying to his skill, like he'd really needed to do so after these weeks! The insult! Well, no matter how foolhardily confident he'd been about it, he could at least state to know more than Stanislav and be ever such a good hand with forceps and following instructions.

Daniil had started on his next drink—fully intent on wasting his money and becoming absolutely sloshed.

It had taken another two rounds of drinks, and his voice to completely give way to slurring, for him to realise this was their not-so-subtle attempt at asking him to join them. They'd wanted him? Had they wanted him?

(Twyrine tastes much like aniseed; particular and bitter on the tongue as it makes it tingle. He finds the more he drinks, the more its tingle runs down his throat, the more bearable and even pleasant it becomes.)

When he'd finished a current drink in three, large gulps, it had barely been a moment before another bottle was placed squarely in his hand. How many had he paid for? How many had Artemy allowed him to poison his body with? Why?

The world had span.

(The why is obvious, of course. Daniil the submissive would have to be looked out for, cared for, his choices supported or gently questioned for what's best for him. But Daniil the Dominant? Oh, there's no greater insult than one Dominant questioning another outside an established heirarchy—one which, at that point, Daniil had still been trying his very best to place himself above Artemy on.

So, they hadn't even tried to halt is march to the destruction of his liver. They must have known the viper in him was in a terrible state—ready to bite the first obstacle in front of it.

Dominant Daniil wants to drink himself into a stupor? Well fuck, if that's what he wants!

If that's what he wants…)

Artemy's arm had curled around Daniil's own, a semblance to a traditional Dominant-submissive position when walking alongside—it had been nice, to pretend for a moment that's what it was meant to be, and not merely the only thing keeping him up. Still, he'd drank.

He'd almost sobbed when Artemy's free hand came up to run through his hair, loose and untamed, and pull it out of its hang on his face. The viper hadn't had any obstacle; it hadn't known what to do if it had nothing to strike.

Are you that easily tamed? Far be it from how you met. Filled with venom and desperation, but even then they'd so easily seen through you, like your outer shell had hardly existed at all.

(He'd been searching for the supposed killer of his quarry—still reeling from finding out the death of the man that had so kindly spoken to him in letters—when he was pointed to find one Stanislav Rubin on the side for the pressing viral emergency, patronymic curiously absent at his introduction. He found the man's flat empty of life and unlocked, and after finding out the Kin sought him, was pleased to see the man was at least smart enough to head into hiding.

Where, however, he hadn't even hoped to guess in the valleys and crevices of the Town. He left for other matters; seeking the loose murderer for the answers that had been turned away from him elsewhere.

In the end, the success of the latter led to the completion of the former, and he didn't even need to work on it—Stanislav was waiting alongside another unknown man in the theatre-cum-quarantine. Very efficient, Daniilovich.

He hoped they'd acquired a key to the front doors—though from who he'd have no idea—and hadn't broken any latches. Could they have picked the locks? Is that a skill this dreary place might've fostered?

Stanislav Rubin was an extraordinarily tall Dominant, the only physical descriptor of note he was given, and honestly that's really all that was needed to identify the man now within his territory. Not tall in the manner Dominants mostly were, when compared to submissives, but tall. He easily stood a head-and-half above Daniil, and had to actively crane his neck down to meet his eyes.

(It would be an absurdity to deny it didn't make him feel slightly flustered.)

There was a small stand-off—a moment where Daniil forgot himself, and he was no longer the strong-willed, confident, and Dominant Capital man, but the submissive without the protection of even a collar. Stanislav's company had sharp blue eyes, obvious even in the poor lighting of the theatre—and they instantly locked on to Daniil's hand within his jacket pocket.

Gloved fingers wrapped tightly around his pistol, a weapon of murder with only two scavenged bullets to comfort his nerves, though he knew if ever asked to pull the trigger there was all the chance he would balk last moment. And if he did, and he missed, what then? Best not to even think about it, as nervous breaths rattled his lungs.

Instead of pulling it out and waving it like a crazed man who'd been cornered on a simple midnight round of the slowly dying, he spread his visible hand in obvious surrender, then—incredibly slowly—brought the pocketed one out empty alongside it.

Stanislav was a doctor, so he had to assume the other was similar—wonderful, two more helping hands! That's now only a couple hundred people in town per learned-man.

'Doctors?' His shockingly steady voice spoke, echoing under the high ceiling and near-empty ward, the dead carted out a short hour before nightfall.

'Doctor,' was the returned call.

There, see, all friends now. He said as much to the two Dominants, who un-tensed the instant the change in atmosphere allowed it. He walked past them both, bristling as he did and internally becoming annoyed at himself that he no longer had his half-heels to wear, not that he would be able to within the charade.

(He really missed those extra seven centimers.)

'Before we discuss the current matters; the patients. I assume you both know how to tend to them?'

'Of course,' the unnamed Dominant stated before he proceeded to start doing exactly that, seemingly somewhat annoyed to have his skills pre-judged. Oh, an ego, Daniil almost forgot that as a problem conceptually, what with every other pressing matter.

The three of them worked rather well together, he had to state, even once they got the white masks over their faces, hiding their expressions and forcing Daniil's eyes to theirs in flickers and carefully timed intervals.

They changed out bandages most of that night, pulling fabric from pus-filled sores upon swathes skin. The sight of mutilated and half-rotten flesh didn't even cause a hesitation—to either man, and Daniil himself had seen far worse states on the weeks dead.

Artemy knew where to collect water in this town, apparently, rough and low voice calling to the direction he headed to collect it when Daniil noted the difficulty in keeping the sick hydrated with such weeping wounds. (Daniil watched him go from the corner of his eyes—every second step his knee twisted and hip alongside it to escape an invisible pain. Far too young to already have chronic afflictions. It's a sad sight.) They'd need as much water as possible, the patients throats rough and raw with sobbing and groans of pain—equally needed as a solution for powders and pills to dissolve in.

(Daniil had started to carefully measure out the rations of morphine for those whose pain wouldn't quell even then. Stanislav had watched carefully as he'd pocketed some for himself, subtle, but not subtle enough. There are far worse things than a doctor indulging in his own supply, it's hardly a moral fault. (So why had he felt so vile doing so?))

'So, doctor,' Stanislav caught his attention with, carefully wrapping the forearm of a dosed and sleeping woman, adjacent to where Daniil was doing much the same. Their silhouettes obvious through the thin, fabric barriers cordoning off each individual. He scooted the chair he was on back to peek at Stanislav through the gaps in the curtains, finding the man had done exactly the same.

He met Stanislav's eyes, bristling before he could help himself and sliding his gaze to the right to focus on the man's ear instead. It felt like bugs running down his back, knowing even from the corner of his eye Stanislav's were still boring directly into his own.

(Distracting himself from the bugs in his ski—running his thumbs fingerprint over the roughage of leftover wrapping bandage.)

Daniil hated those masks, hated having to make them, hated having to scavenge their components, and most of all he hated looking into the men's eyes—he way their gaze would hunt his own when he fled them.

Is Stanislav noted his abnormal behaviour, he made no mention of it.

'I'll say you've been the talk of the town, but so far your name has eluded me.'

Oh, right, names. 'Yes, of course. I know you as Stanislav; I was told to seek you out for help with the state of affairs, but it appears you found me first, Daniil Daniilovich Dankovsky. I'd offer a handshake, but-'

Stanislav took it as a joke and not a simple observation of the currently problematic positioning, then chuffing an acknowledgement of both their status'. A very Dominant instinct but, alright, that works.

Daniil chuffed back: three short breaths out by his nose with a rolling rumble high in his chest compared to purrs and growls. His was not on instinct and was very much practiced when passing time writing notes alone at his desk, working out how to flex the nasal cavity muscles—unused in submissive—to obtain the distinctive sound.

Was that the icebreaker? That felt like the icebreaker.

They spoke a tad longer, about everything and nothing. How's the Capital these days? Better than here. Have you been doing this alone for long? No, I have a volunteer assistant, here but unfortunately the human body requires sleep. Not you? Not me, the strychnine is a miracle worker wouldn't you say, no point leaving it just to the greedy rats.

I've never tried it.

You should. You will. Soon enough.

Stanislav's assistant—friend?—returned quickly, two large pales of water in hand, ready for boiling in the samovar behind the stage—a fancy contraption found within his room in the Stillwater and quickly reassigned to duty. Even their evening's working mule let out a low whistle seeing it. Men and their toys, hm.

Daniil introduced himself again after the water boiled, and work began anew. The man simply hummed an acknowledgement, though something in his eyes curled at the submissive's voice—his accent, perhaps?

'So, doctor Daniil Daniilovich,' and he realised he'd handed out his name to the man without question and had still received none back in response, he really would've made a terrible fey, despite his extended family's claims to his being a tad touched, 'are you educated as a doctor, or this just your claim to fame and you're about to bore us to death with recounts of literature?'

Was that serious? Or was it a dig at him—no the man was smiling at the corner of his eyes beneath the mask, it's a joke of some kind, isn't it? Daniil held in a scoff, pulling his mouth into some poorly strained smile, 'I'm hardly the type to endeavour to some useless degree over partaking in my practice.'

He's being serious, but the other saw some hint of reciprocal comedy in his words, forcing a smile from him. Oh, his teeth. Large and gorgeous and so obvious between a pretty smile. Daniil forgot completely not to stare until their forms clicked together and were hidden away again.

The Dominant rubbed his nose, pinching his mask between his fingers as his eyes flicked between his friend and Daniil through the gaps in the curtains. Sizing him up? Well, he won't find much there.

The patients were all asleep by then, externally induced or their bodies escaping the pain on their own—their slumbers beautifully deep (some will not rise to see the morning).

Their words flowed more freely in the isolation. The calm. The quiet.

'I graduated in the top-percentile; specialised in thanatology quickly from there.' He automatically expected the judgement that came from that, a submissive granting themselves a life away from healing to- what? Tend to the dead and rotting? But for the first time it's not his status put into questioning.

'Must be giddy to find yourself in such death and destruction then.' His blue eyes really were unnerving, like the skies of better times, happier places, were trapped within them, if he was about to fall folly to romantic descriptions. Oh, yes, the statement.

'You think me that barbaric? There's no joy to be found in wasteful death, my study is academic and preventative. To defeat something you must first know and understand it.' Daniil hated how practiced and rote he sounded, when was the fight torn from him? A few days ago? Before the train? Sometime even further back without him knowing?

'Ignore Artemy,' Stanislav cut in, Daniil's head on a swivel from left to right between them, (finally, a name!) 'His wit is often sharper than his social judgement. I specialise is something similar; anatomical pathology. I have a stage for autopsy near enough here. It's a private location, should you ever require it.'

'Oh, that's wonderful,' but his voice was too flat, Stanislav's eyebrows were knitting, he didn't seem sincere enough- grovelling enough, 'we'll have much to discuss in the morning. And I will be taking you up on that offer.' There. Better.

Honestly, it felt too good to be true. A man who will know all about the minutiae of pathology and viruses in the middle of a novel outbreak! Perhaps God really is listening, at least this time around. He turned back to this Artemy, or perhaps, Artyom? It's hard to judge the relationship between the two and Artemy would be strange as a first name.

'And you?'

'Capital University: surgery.'

But no, that's not quite right, there should be more. 'What do you specialise in, or have you remained generalised?'

'General, but began a lean to vascular systems.' The man's quite literal purrs of pride reverberating through his larynx almost distracted Daniil from the devastating revelation he was about to dig up.

'Began?' Well, the man was young, Daniil supposed. And if Daniil wasn't completely mistaken, there was a hint of embarrassment in Artemy at the question. Must be a rather large hint, for Daniil to pick up on it. (That and the purring had stopped.)

'Would you believe I didn't finish my studies?' Stated with a light tone the revelation absolutely hadn't deserved.

'You didn't… Finish your studies. You didn't graduate.' Somewhat-studied-as-a-doctor is really no better than isn't-a-doctor, for all the difference it makes.

The mans face fluttered with emotions he wasn't able to discern.

He turned away, back to Stanislav and, pushing down the pitch in his voice of a nerve-wracked submissive, and with really a lack of anything else to produce from his mouth, asked 'I didn't catch your whole name?'

'Stanislav Isidorovich Rubin.' Ah, fuck, Isidor's son, accused murderer. 'Artemy may be a drop-out, but I'm just as trained as you are, if not more so in some matters, especially relating to this town.' Stanislav Isidorovich clearly spoke from a point of pride—Artemy seemed to almost shy away from it.

But, no, let us think about this.

A name he recognised in this dismal pit of a location, friendly so far, and highly spoken of in the letters from his father. It could be worse, two formal doctors, one over-eager volunteer, (however many non-eager volunteers they have under masks), and one university dropout. It's… Something.

'It's good to finally meet the son Isidor mentioned in his letters, though I say it's rather unique for a Dominant such as yourself to take his submissive's surname. Very forward of you,' he complimented.

'Oh, I'm not-'

But, whoops, Daniil had got ahead of himself already. 'What level of study did you attain Stanislav Isidorovich? Might I add I think this tale going around of you killing your father is completely untrue, but I do seek questions on the matter at a later time.'

'Well, that's… good. That's good.' The man's gaze flitters from Daniil's to where he knows Artemy's must be behind him, 'I learnt most of what I know under an apprenticeship.'

The words came almost before the thoughts could. 'You mean to say you have no real study either?'

'It's plenty real-' he retorted, mood flicking like a switch, spieling out all the reasons his absolutely not real level of education was completely respectable, actually. To his face, no less. To the face of a man who almost broke his back as a submissive getting through the entire system, then further to his baccalaureate.

Oh dear God, he's really alone here, isn't he? A dropout and a pseudo-doctor at best. Where were his damn cigarettes when he needed them? They would've been perfect as a quick excuse to leave, instead he was left looking between the two men with a sensation in his gut very similar to that of a snapping anchor being swallowed by the sea.

'I apprenticed under Isidor, Daniil Daniilovich, but I'll not be mistaken for his son, get that straight now,' Stanislav gestured to the man across them both, and Daniil couldn't help but follow the motion, the separators between them all now almost comedic in nature, 'Artemy, his biological son, and who you're no doubt after.'

He stormed off at that, spitting reasons that hardly matter. Artemy and Daniil both rise from their chairs aside the patient's bed in tandem, ending up standing next to each other in the aisle, watching him leave. Though, noticeably behind the curtains of the theatre to cool down, and not to the entrance to escape it fully.

The Kin. Their eyes were watchful, even at that time and in that light.

Artemy and Stanislav came here for a reason, one Dominant protecting another through the risks of a street now turned against them both. For him. To talk to him. To help, then offer further.

They wanted to help him.

Artemy wanted to help him.

It became a clearer picture: Artemy, the type of Dominant who accepted protection requests from others, even other Dominants, even as he was on the run from his own accusations. Daniil felt it hard to look at the man without a hint of admiration.

And that bled so easily across his mind, the turn of thought without conscious control has his mind noticed how attractively tall he was next to him and, unlike the other, how he had the bulk of broad shoulders to fill his stature out.

Daniil wanted to press his thumbs into his eyes for the assault of the thoughts—how long had he gone without submission at that point? Weeks for sure, his body had thankfully called timeout on its internal ticking clock as soon as the stress of defending Thanatica started to curl greys through raven-black hair. (Even so, when he looked to his side—he had to look up, and oh how that got him going. Fucking focus-)

'Artemy Isidorovich–' and ah, there was the difficult part, the surname written within a script that escaped him and looped around into Latin with varying spellings, no Cyrillic pronunciation guide to be found– 'Vtsyakh?'

It's not right. Later he would find out he was rather humiliatingly wrong.

To imagine that as the first meeting between himself and the man that would end up saving the town. It makes him almost want to collapse into humiliation. Daniil should have said how he was sorry for Artemy's loss—the man's father had died so shortly ago, and now he was being hounded for it! There's an empathetic twinge when he compares it to the loss of Thanatica; losing something that should've always been there.

He didn't.

The nights interactions finished with one, final question: 'I take this to mean Stanislav Isidorovich is not married?'

He's removing himself from the premises quickly from there because the whole back-and-forth fell apart to a degree even he—well practiced on forcefully powering through conversations—couldn't salvage it. (And without an answer to the question that struck a final nerve.) But he managed to ask this Artemy Isidorovich for a final favour. Acquire me a heart Haruspex, you started specialisation into the vascular sector, did you not? You'll find it worth your while, for me and the victims of this plague both.

'I will see what I can do, Daniil Daniilovich.' Artemy had grit out, fangs baring between rough and chapped lips. Even when folded back down, the size of the canines distends either side of his philtrim; it's almost erotic.

He pulled his eyes away from the other man's mouth, then flinched when the other's eyes said you've been caught watching. At least they're confirmed as coworkers. Omnium Rerum Principia Parva Sunt.

(But the hollowness of Artemy's cheeks, the shadow of his scruff, lingered in his mind. It betrayed only a tired, lingering want, for sleep, for the food, for comfort; there's very little to find attractive about a man dealing with loss from all corners. Daniil pushed aside his improper thoughts and remained professional for the rest of that long week. At least as best he could.)

Daniil had had one hand on his face during the twists and turns of his thoughts, eyes hazy and unfocussed. Artemy's teeth were still that large as he had seen that night in the theatre, perfect for violence—Daniil had been overwhelmed with the complete desire to see them puncture flesh, see the Dominant fight with tooth and claw, heat trickling down his spine as his mind had pulled away from him and into the drink.

And as his eyes had continued to lazily explore, he'd found a man no longer wanting, but nearing whole and healthy. His cheeks round with a healthy tone, his scruff an attractive side of neat, the deep purple pits under his eyes missing, the slight concave slope of his stomach now soft and full.

Daniil had wanted to pillow his head on him—run his hand over muscle, nuzzle his head into his collar, and wrap his legs around the man's thigh to stop him leaving; force him to pay attention to him. More than anything, he'd just wanted to be needy and submissive again.

'I havn' been fuck'd n'so long,' he'd almost sobbed, words melting together into a near incomprehensible sludge. Stanislav hadn't caught it—unused to deciphering his Capital accent at the best of the days—but Artemy had, face flushing before smiling weakly to the other. And oh! The teeth, they'd dig so beautifully into his throat… ah-

He'd squeezed his thighs tight underneath the table at the assault of heat between them, stubbed nails tapping against an almost empty bottle in a desperate distraction. He'd always loved it when Dominants had fought—over him most of all—like he was a precious jewel to be coveted. But really any fight had done it for him, the passion, the Domineering nature of it, ritualistic and show offish.

It was basal, completely unbecoming of him to like, and yet-

He'd really been long gone by that point, his spine wanting to bend—wanting to present. Only the spinning of the room had stopped him. He'd slurred out something else, something about the conquests he'd made for others, but it was all soup and drainage in his mind by next morning.

Whatever it had been, it was bad enough either in words or complete lack of comprehensibility, that Artemy had announced, 'I think it's time he goes home.'

Stanislav had concurred and collected the rubles from Artemy to pay off all their tabs. Then it was just Daniil and Artemy—Artemy and Daniil, just them together, just like before.

'N'body wants m'anymore,' Daniil had mumbled incoherently, knowing if he'd tried to say anything else it would've been asking Artemy to fuck him on the table in front of everyone. Artemy hadn't known that, of course, just hummed an empathic purr as his strong, perfect arms came around him. 'D'you wan'me?' The question slipping from him with barely any conscious recognition.

Completely ignored, he'd been corralled out the bar and into the open night within Artemy's arms.

Artemy had looked down at him oddly after that, he's sure that's what had happened, but at the moment Daniil- couldn't quite- remember why that would be—he'd been very fixated on the curls of blond hair along his forearms and over his hands, had that always been there? Had Artemy always been able to pull him around like a tiny dog on a leash?

What could Artemy have done to him—healthier, softer, padded, Daniil's legs wobbled under him. The drinks the only reason blood had not run south and left very little for whatever was left of his mind. Body and brain drowned in alcohol both.

(Blissfully, he'd passed out halfway back to the Stillwater. From sleep deprivation, from copious alcohol consumption, it didn't really matter—it had stopped him from saying anything that truly couldn't be taken back.

They hadn't discussed it from there. Daniil let Artemy think much of his night's memory was missing, which wasn't far from the truth—and if ever pressed, he would hardly be the first Dominant that flirted with anything that came his way, status ignored. Deep into drink, anything is submissive, as they say.)

He'd woken at home- at the Stillwater, in his bed and still fully clothed—bar his shoes—and the light of the morning burning behind his eyes and demanding his bruised brain conscious. Daniil had denied its demands, turning away from the light and pressing his pillow over his head. (If he was lucky, perhaps he'd suffocate before the throbbing in the root of his brain turned to pain.)

But not even the pain had managed to cease his thoughts, his well known affliction.

This place was no longer just the Stillwater, was it? A home for one before, now a home for two, because his flat in the Capital had surely been struck from his name; rent a month overdue and tenant evaporated into thin-air. He'd almost laughed that he was going to have lost his deposit.

His deposit- his Thanatica had been burnt down.

Simunya and Tonya—Serafina and Platon, he should use their full names out of respect, surely—hadn't returned any letters he managed to get Eva to post to the trains. He'd hoped (still hopes) it was an indication of them successfully going to ground and not-

Going into it.

Or having found themselves within the dust and rot alongside the burning tomb he'd created for all those under him. He'd struggled to even conceptualise it, the loss, the destruction, no- far easier to feel the rubles he'd handed over for living space now whisked away, that was within the realms of his capacity for emotional distress without it becoming so large he'd taste cold metal on his tongue. If he went back to the Capital, would even the shell of that wonderful building remain? Or will it have been swept up, repurposed and forgotten?

(He doesn't ever want to find out.)

There really hadn't been a reason to get up, so he hadn't, letting the sun's glare roll across the sky and eek out every edge of the windows. Somewhere between the dozenth bout of heaving and trips to relieve himself, Eva had finally had enough and made her way to his nook to ask him the matter.

Not unkindly, of course, never unkindly. (Daniil thinks she doesn't have an unkind bone in her body.)

Her hand had gently run down his back and over his shoulders, accepting of the small distance made between them by the blanket. Daniil's bleary mind had, for a single moment, wished terribly her form was that of a Dominant, and her hands the steady touch of a surgeon. What would he do to Daniil? So vulnerable, so torn apart and out of sorts. He'd wanted his hand bearing down on the nape of his neck, curling into overly-long hair then pressing a thumb behind his ears.

It was Freudian when he'd relaxed into her touch, rolling his forehead down to bare his neck. A submissive action, but the response still exists in Dominants when showing deference to others, no matter the status.

Eva herself had just teased him a with breathy laugh, letting her neat nails run lightly down the arch of his neck, making him squirm for a moment the sensation similar to if she'd dug fingers into his side, before settling the hand on his shoulder.

'I don't remember how I got here,' he'd mumbled into the softness of his pillow. The hangover at least imparted where he was before here.

'Not surprising,' she'd teased again, this time with her words, before becoming soul-crushingly sombre, 'Artemy was practically carrying you to bed. Why must you do such things to yourself, Daniil? I know you don't enjoy putting yourself into such a state, yet it's the third time this week.'

The third? Time passed so much slower in the town, yet faster the moment he turned to acknowledge it. He'd hated the drinking, hated the stupors, but long brushed off the twins attempts to provide help (and apparently dealing with one miserable fuck of a sibling was enough work to not take on a second when not ordained to by blood), and nobody else seemed interested in his pathetic state of affairs.

Tears ran silently from the corner of his eyes, staining white fabric and tickling over the bridge of his nose. But he was silent, his body barely shuddering at his breaths. Crying quietly instead of falling to hysterics was a longstanding skill of his, it worked him wonders during residency. Eva's attempts at comfort were submissive in nature; unhelping to a man desperate for a firm hand.

(He hoped she didn't blame herself, considered herself lacking for him in any way. Yet another affliction he may have pierced into her with just a simple lie.)

He didn't ask for anything, falling asleep like that, imagining her hands that of another's.

When she'd tried a similar move with her careful touches some days later, a simple action from a submissive to support a Dominant, his body forced him to flinch away, her nails a hair too close to sensitive glands now his mind was with them both. And oh, her face—her face when he'd done that, so utterly open and confused and caring, too caring, far more than he deserved.

And she hadn't even asked for rent. Hadn't implied she even wanted him gone. He tried his best, of course, he cooked, he cleaned, she's enamoured that a Dominant would do such a caring thing for her when in reality it was her station.

He told her she'd look beautiful in kohl—her wide, pale eyes framed and made to look innocent and alluring. She'd preened at the compliments but turned down the concept.

'That's more for Capital submissives, I think,' she'd laughed. 'A bit too high fashion for me.'

And he'd realised that nobody in the town wore kohl, a fashion for submissives he'd once thought immutable. (His eyes have remained bare and Dominant-esque for weeks, would he even remember how to apply it? Why does forgetting it strike fear in him? How far from home you are, little liar.)

He'd felt ill.

Why couldn't she just want him gone like the rest of the town? Why did he have to persist here, alive and hearty?

'You know I have nowhere else to go, Eva?' You know this is the end of the line for me, metaphorically—very legitimately. He'd wanted her to ask for rent, just for him to flounder and realise he had nothing left, no income, no worth, just so he could say he deserved it when he's cast onto the filthy post-plague streets. A poor, pathetic, submissive who'd had everything torn from him, and finally he'd be allowed to look it—finally allowed the privilege to give up.

'Of course I know,' she'd replied gently, like coaxing a stray puppy to feed from her hand. 'Why do you think you're still my guest?'

Eva and her guest read together in the evening more often than they do not. Daniil reminding himself of medical texts that may be dry to all others but had always kept his genuine interest and fascination, Eva finding herself nose deep in some no-doubt beautifully written—he'd looked over his book to where she'd knelt in front of the sofa, back resting against it and her temple delicately placed on Daniil's thigh, ah—romance.

Well, hardly be it him to judge another's textual tastes.

But she knows it's easier to jump him for conversation when both their eyes have strayed from one another. He's very easy to read like that. He hates it of himself.

'Artemy came by again today. He wants to know if you've thought more on his offer.' And Eva had still found herself ill-at-ease in the Haruspex's presence. He'd hated asking so much of her to continue turning him away in cowardly stead.

Yes, the son of Isidor Borislawovich Burakh had made him an offer. He'd been far too drunk the first time around so he'd sent his young lad as missive a few times before deigning his own presence to ask him of it.

My, Daniil had felt so truly desired.

It'd been an offer made in pity, of course, the position, the job at Burakh's Private Surgery. God, he can't even remember the last time he'd held a job with a wage. No head of Thanatica anymore, Dankovsky, no Thanatica anymore Dankovsky.

All gone—gone and dead and destroyed and now the Capital University dropout is asking to hire him- for a job- at his surgery. Out of pity. In a backwater fucking town that doesn't exist on maps for how truly inconsequential it was to the world.

'If he comes by again asking the same, see him out similarly.' He'd tried not to let the venom drip into his voice, but the light slap at his calf and quiet tut from Eva showed he hadn't quite managed it.

And the worst part was, a week later, and with Eva's gentle corralling—the type of subtle manipulation a sub tries to pull on a Dom with calm wiles and pure intention that's fully ineffective on him, aware of her machinations and biologically unswayed—he'd told Artemy Isidorovich Burakh, to his face:

I accept.

He'd accepted because there's little else for him to do, and his meager savings he still has post-plague had finally been running thin. He needs to eat, and he'd needed to stop doing it from Eva's hands, tired of the likeness to the stray puppy she so sees in him.

It'd been simple, really, to ingratiate himself. He'd worried his mind over the possibility they'd all been being easy on him—yes, Daniil Daniilovich, we shall do as you suggest, yes, Daniil Daniilovich, that's a good idea, we'll implement that tomorrow, have you had a good day, Daniil Daniilovich? Have you noted your overtime for payment?

It'd made his gut feel acidic. The worst part was he couldn't bring himself to demand they stop, for fear they'd ask of him to stop what? and he'd be there demanding they were- meaner to him. And they'd realise how truly fucking sad and pathetic he was.

So, he'd let Stanislav thank him for the new organisation system he put into place for the drawers and shelvings of medications, and let Artemy praise him for acquiring strong soaps and sewing together the three of their surgical garbs and a good handful of nose and mouth masks, replaceable coffee filter slotted within. Anything he couldn't make, he'd helped the two of them with formatting and filling out formal acquisition forms and payment cheques to send to nearby cities.

Not long ago, a form with Daniil's name written in print and then signed in looping cursive would have been a boon. Now, the two town local's namesakes—and Artemy's Capital bank account—would have to continue being enough.

The compliments gently placed upon him at his help had warmed his chest a hint; he hoped it didn't reach his cheeks, his fair complexion doesn't hide flush readily.

He'd received his first payslip a week later, not printed, or official, no. Daniil doesn't have his signature stamp anymore, so when he got his money the whitepaper stated he'd received, he'd had to sign his name next to Artemy's with a hand that tried not to shake.

He gave all the money to Eva first thing. Then after ten minutes of push and pull they'd settled for splitting it.

'It feels like you're trying to purchase my sub dowry,' her laugh tickled his ears, and the flutters he'd felt for returning part of his dues sunk like a broken anchor in him again.

Still lying. Still playing your little act.

'May I ask something of you, Daniil?'

The anchor lowered further, pressing into his bubbling intestines, threatening to burst cysts borne of stress. 'Of course you may, Eva.'

'Would you be amenable to referring to me as Evka?'

Oh, she considered them that close? A diminutive, friendly and soft, but its formation pejorative. A self name to refer with when amongst those of higher social status. The k it was formed with rang in his ears like faerie bells. He had no right to refuse her, did he? If she viewed him that way? No. 'I would, if you wish it. And you, Danik?'

Her smile had been the brightest thing he'd seen many, many weeks. 'Of course I would, thank you, Danik.'

(The smallest of respites hadn't lasted long. The new names slowly worked into both their tongues, and soon enough Daniil's body was alone again, gasping and desperate. How long has it been now, Dankovsky?

Can't deny your biology forever.

Your hands are shaking—so unbecoming of a doctor, how glad you must be that all your patients are dead—your stomach twists like echoes of illness, your teeth itch, and your neck aches in sensitive undulations beneath its skin. You know what this means.

Not long now, it whispers.)

Not long now, when Eva had rested the weight of her body against him, begging without words to gentle her, to care for her, to provide something he cannot give.

A sub cannot gentle a sub.

It just doesn't work. He'd apologised to her quickly and without the right words just like he always does, always wrong. She and him? They just weren't ever going to work.

She'd cried. She came back the next day and thanked him. He'd asked if they were still friends. She'd told him of course, like it was never a question, scolding him for even doubting her dedication.

He'd cried in his bed, a tiny alcove that's become all he is, in a tiny backwater town, with tiny people in control of their tiny corners—and Artemy, perfect, beautiful Artemy that made a place for Stanislav who'd tried to do nothing but hate him and still failed. Who'd made a place for the Capital outcast consisting wholly of sharp edges.

Artemy, a Dom that wishes to do nothing but provide, who'd tolerated Daniil's fake displays of Dominance and territoriality with a chuff and a wry acceptance, and only rarely, so very gently, pushed back—so aware of his strength when showing his teeth, using his weight and stance. (It made Daniil cover his neck as it pulsed—close his legs as something far lower throbbed with heat.)

Three Dominants within one surgery, constantly on top of each other's toes? Artemy should be so lucky that one of them had been a fucking liar, Daniil dreads to think of how it would've gone otherwise.

Artemy took his cowing to their witty back and forth's as deference to the Dominant higher within the hierarchy. Corralling him against the wall until Daniil promised they wouldn't have a problem. Churring and purring down at him when he'd tamed the rough little yapping Dom on his family's wage.

Daniil felt- paid for.

Provided for?

His body had seemed equally confused at the situation, coiling further each time his eyes had strayed, exploiting Artemy for his own visual feast. His hands shook harder, the edges of his vision blurred deeper. Not long now, his body had crowed, not long now.

(He'd bought the collar a handful of days later.

It's acceptance. In a manner.)

Spichka harassed him more and for longer in the short breaks between palpating stomachs experiencing sharp pains and carefully writing out medication dosages for individuals whom he's sure could barely read. Artemy provided no relief to the boy's curiosity and, in fact, had begun pawning the boy off on him whenever he passes an unsaid limit of questions.

Yes, yes—go bother the Capital Dandy. He'd find himself more angered if he didn't enjoy talking about his work, his education, and his specialities so much—found satisfaction in the honest openness Spichka followed his words, saved all his explanatory diagrams. He felt Christ-like within the boy's eyes, for the few short moments he let himself be read openly and honestly.

It's better than having him out on the street, running circles in the dirt with the rest of the uncouth children of town who have little hope for growing up into anything but manual labour. Daniil had seen the boy's hair tussled and knotted most mornings despite keeping him from the alleyways—the curls treated disrespectfully within unknowing hands. He had to quash the instinct to brush his hair out, preen him and make him pretty like he was his child. (That's when he'd realised he was too far gone. Getting hormonal? Daniil?)

The boy was rather useful for mail, and it got him out from underfoot, fixated and dutiful and paid in sweets. (The first few times snatched from Daniil's palms like he would taunt the boy with them, or retract the offering if not taken fast enough. Daniil had noted his favourite flavours and made effort to keep a good jar stock of them; treats work far better for training good behaviour into children than the horses his family had taught him to ride, he found.)

Dutiful mail-boy—that's the role he'd taken on when he'd rushed with Eva up the Stillwater's stairs, none the wiser to what he'd just interrupted.)

Eva's hand wraps around his wrist—unfortunately he needs that before he's able to head down the stairs.

'Are you alright to be heading out this late, Danik?' She asks of him.

Spichka instantly picks up on the use of diminutive, his eyes narrowing and trying to decipher the history and relationship of two whole people in the period of seconds. He's an irritatingly observant child so Daniil can't put it past him to actually come to a not-far-off-conclusion. (And not simply cry of a Dominant and a submissive, together? Blasphemy! Where's the marriage notes!)

Daniil proceeds to not improve the situation. 'It can't be helped, Evka,'

And he means it. If the surgery is in want of him, the surgery shall have him delivered to them.

He lightly pushes Spichka to the top of the stairs, letting him take initiative to make his own way down. He turns and locks his room's door in quick, automatic motions, only remembering Eva last moment and turning on his heel to her. Daniil takes her hand into his own gloved one before bringing it to his lips with a small bow. Perhaps far more traditional a Dominant-to-submissive farewell than current year requests, but she'd flustered at it before and left him to his business.

She doesn't fluster this time, just tells him to be safe and to not overwork himself.

'I shan't, my dear,' he comforts her with, 'I will be back either later tonight, or in the early morning.'

'Do you have your key, just in case I will not be awake?'

Daniil pats at the pocket of his coat—its permanent home, as an answer.

She's still nervous, but suitably satisfied with his responses. 'Please be careful; don't catch a chill.'

He assures her he won't, then turns and leaves her at the top of the stairs. There's not much else to collect—a scarf Artemy had gifted him once the weather had turned. A small Dominant like him will feel the bitter, dry cold easier, and a sick doctor is a useless one, nevermind the awful patients they make. Nothing more to read into (surely?)—before he's following Spichka out into the chill of the barely night.

He's given the quick run-down between the half-jog to the surgery, the Town's broken roading and thin layer of frost crackling and echoing loudly off the building's in the quiet emptiness.

Factory accident, the informal incident report starts off with, as all of them seem to do now.

Now that the Abattoir has started up again, Daniil thinks the town's working male population within it alone shall be keeping their private practice afloat. Blunt injuries to the hands and torso are most common. |Neither Artemy nor Stanislav seem surprised at the repetition. (Daniil has wanted to view the Abattoir's innards in a lively state for a time now, seeing the causes of injuries might help with recommended preventatives methods. If he would be listened to, that is which prior attempts has showed is a losing coin flip.)

The man this late night has broken the mould, however: his lower left leg crushed under a great weight, the skin torn asunder. Frightfully unlucky; only half an hour since the shift change from evening to night. Doctors are tragically twenty-four hours at work alongside.

'Broken bones?' Though the man's luck hadn't seemed to be with him yet, it had peeked its head to only snap the smaller fibula, according to Spichka, and not anything worse. 'Compound fracture?' Was the real clinch to the man's survival.

'Artemy Isidorovich said no.'

Good, the man might still see life by this time next week. 'Degloving?'

Spichka grimaced, 'there was a lot of blood, but Artemy said not really? It was just like,' The boy to proceeded to put his hands together, knocking knuckles and making a crunch and squelch sound with the corner of his mouth, looking up like he'd just finished a descriptive example.

Okay?

'Okay.'

'Then he sent me to get you; didn't think I was old enough to see it or anything.' His tone implies distinctly that he considers that the wrong choice. Folly of childhood, always thinking you're ready for everything.

'Be that as it may, what did they actually request my presence for?'

'More hands.'

Well, at least he can put more hands in his self-declaration of ability for his next job—should he ever get one—he reckons he'll be pretty good on that front.

The surgery wasn't a bustle of activity, though he hadn't expected it to be; he'd demanded nothing but complete orderliness, organising every inch of the small space and writing down in direct step-by-step instructions the actions to take in any emergency, remembering best he could the triage guides he was taught now many years ago.

Its harsh yellowed lights spilled out onto the street, its only sign of life.

Ominous.

He commanded Spichka remain in one of the front rooms, sitting in a chair meant for waiting patients and far away from the surgery in the backrooms. He complained, but when Daniil flashed his teeth and repurposed best he could a submissive's purr to a Dominant's growl, the boy swallowed anything else he wanted to say, and sat down like a good boy.

It's a long corridor to the surgery room, the wallpaper beginning to peel and pop from the plaster. He abandons his coat on the rack and bag beneath it before the final door, wrapping the—red! Chosen just for him!—scarf around a hook, and keeping his gloves just a bit longer out of the false sense of security they bring him.

Then Daniil opened the door to the surgery—and is assaulted with red and iron.

It's a familiar, cloying, sticky scent that crawls down the back of his throat, eating gooseflesh into him and making his breath stutter. There's a bucket of water right next to the door, towelling dumped into it—towelling that must have been white, once.

Shockingly, Spichka's wonderful reenactment of the injury actually does explain things.

Crushing injury, no exposed bone, the flesh and muscle torn from position and opened into a simple flap. The most frantic of the bleeding—the most pressing matter—stopped with a tightly pulled tourniquet, now speed and getting exposed internals closed up would determine the man's fate, as well as preventing infection.

Artemy gives him the barest of glances, face covered in a white mask, speckled and smudged with red, the same is sprayed down the surgical apron on his front and stains his rubber medical gloves. (What would the people crowing butcher! butcher! think now? Is a tiny thought he shakes from the back of his mind as quickly as it comes about.)

The sharp lighting above the operating table makes his normally rich skin seem pasty—washed out, and the small sliver of skin under his eyes still exposed by the mask, now back to a familiar, raw purple.

(Daniil had made all those masks, pandemic and after, the skills of sewing and working with cloth trained into him young used for something career relevant at last. All he needed was to have Artemy find more coffee filters to stitch in and pins for the pleats. Both of which he'd found dreadfully little of in his own attempts at scavenging, Artemy had supplied them to him for sterilisation and use within an hour.)

To Artemy's side is Stanislav, given a dual load he's barely keeping up with. His eyes are kept carefully on the rotameter, administering carefully a concentration of oxygen and nitrous oxide, filtered through a mask Stanislav holds above the patient's nose and mouth. A fanciful German contraption called in by Andrey on God-knows-what favours. It'd rolled off only the third train back to the town like an arriving angel and allowed them to put into reserves their stocks of chloroform.

(Daniil had been trained on the micromanagement of ether and chloroform alongside nitrous oxide—an emerging medical sector at the tail end of his last residency. It was easy to train Stanislav on the methods over a course of days and some level of testing—the flow meter made it even simpler to impart education.)

In Stanislav's other hand is a saline solution—a warm bottle of it with an attached tube running an almost constant waterfall over Artemy's hands, deep into the wound. Saline and the blood it washes away dilute together over a wide but shallow metal tub the leg is propped up on.

(It wouldn't do to have blood running everywhere.)

The man's unconscious. Hopefully, he was under quickly after being brought in, and will remain blissfully so for a while yet.

Artemy goes back to work after running his eyes quickly over Daniil, judging his presence in his surgery suitable, his surgical movements barely halting as Daniil rocks himself from the shock. Artemy's sharp, shining scalpel, continuing to slice away mangled and quickly dying flesh in debridement, careful hands making sure to save enough to pull back and stitch closed.

It only takes a moment for Daniil to scrub up, his black leather gloves swapped for his own made white mask, surgical apron, and ordered in stocks of medical gloves. ('This seems like overkill Daniil,' Stanislav had said. Artemy had concurred. It at least showed the University still hadn't made the idea of scrubbing up mandatory in their courses yet. Shame, Daniil had read research that it was the best method to reducing infection. He'd seemed to win them both over in the end, though, at least.)

Water sprays along his hands and down his forearms. He digs under his nails, rubbing until they sting from the iodine soap. The rubber gloving is cleaned similarly, the texture of it disagreeable until on his hands until his mind can move elsewhere than feeling the way it grips between his fingers.

'Stand next to me, Daniil Daniilovich,' comes Artemy's clearly somewhat sleep deprived voice.

Looks like Daniil wasn't the only one called out in the middle of something, Artemy had taken a few morning shifts too, of recent. He should buy the Dominant a treat- this isn't right, is it?

'Alright.' Daniil knows he should feel his feathers ruffle at the directing—only one of them here has proper credentials, and as much as Artemy throws his weight around in the surgery, it's certainly not him. But Daniil doesn't, just steps carefully forward to where he's directed.

He feels heat at the back of his neck, a coal burner is on somewhere in the building, defeating the freezing chills of a town just off the steppe. (Isn't it?)

Stanislav greets him with a friendly nod, then recounts the tale—in far more careful detail—of the man and how far they are through the surgery, the medications given and the amounts, and finally what Artemy's current plan is. The saline bottle is handed over to him, warm like a hot-water bottle and weighty in his arms.

Spichka's assessment of more hands isn't all that inaccurate; Artemy holds out gloved fingers, passing away large blades in favour of small ones as the work becomes more precise, excising dead and blackening skin, blood flow disrupted with no hope of saving, and removing any foreign matter left inside from the initial injury.

(Thankfully no glass. At least one medical nightmare has been removed from contention.)

It's easy to bend to the rhythm of pouring the cleaning solution whenever a new swell of blood bubbles up, then moving to take and swap Artemy's tools, its name commanded plainly and his hand reaching out, not even glancing Daniil's way. Efficient, it makes his chest burn, feeling the beat of his heart underneath. (This isn't right.)

Daniil follows his requests almost without conscious effort, taking forceps and moving them where directed, holding skin open as inorganic matter is cleaned away, wiping down the skin of fresh blood crying from the wound.

He feels he should be saying something, doing more things. He's never the lead in surgery—that's Artemy's job, but still heat is creeping down from the nape of his neck, wrapping around his throat and the back of his tongue. Slowly its tendrils crawl further—asked for another instrument from the tray, Daniil moves like his body is on wiring, the hand that passes it over seems alien—seems miles away.

Stanislav asks him something, he can hear it in his tone, then furrows his brows and tilts his head when Daniil doesn't respond. He tries, he really does, but his body is barely moving anymore. He shakes his head, trying to stop his body from swaying, his neck drooping. He hopes that's a good enough answer for Stanislav.

Even glancing down at the horrific wound—the flap of skin torn from the body, the blood Artemy is intermittently soaking with gauze sponges, doesn't trigger any recoiling response in him. (This isn't right.)

But he can't stop—handing hands over a smaller pair of forceps, his body automatic when ducking the Dominant's eyes. Submission clear, begging for comfort. He can see Artemy's jaw moving, biting his lip under the mask as his body remains concentrated and controlled. His rear carnassials lightly grind together—barely anything to powerful mastication muscles, what makes up almost the entirety of a Dominant's face shape.

Daniil's head tilts minutely, trying to get a better view, trying to let pressure off his glands. (This isn't right.)

The bottle in the hand is starting to run light, the ache in his shoulder barely starting to wane—he should've noticed it sooner. Daniil is pleased to find another bottle of saline solution it exactly where his organisation structure set it: in a rolling drawer underneath the operating table.

'Get more solution started, please.' He passes its heavy weight off to Stanislav with a restrained grunt from the both of them. It's best warm to clear out such a deep wound.

He takes the man's place when he departs, keeping a careful eye on the patient's breathing, the careful, lulling movement of the rotameter. His other hand still filled with gauze, and with the bleeding waning, Daniil instead takes a handful of careful steps towards Artemy, causing him to glance up, his eyes asking what he wants.

Ever so slowly, and broadcasting his every move, Daniil gently swiped it over the man's brow, folded together in a confused frown, but now free of sweat. It's not hot in here, not overly—but the man has been running on all cylinders for a while now, and he can tell.

Artemy closes his eyes when Daniil dabs at his temples, his eyebrows loosening and hands still for just a moment.

'Very considerate of you,' he says, his body almost vibrating in a purr. 'Thanks.'

Daniil doesn't respond. There's not anything to say, he makes his smile visible at the corner of his eyes instead, throwing the gauze away as they both quickly get back to work like there was never any pause at all.

Artemy starts to throughly clean out the wound, no more excising of flesh—now it's making it clean. He asks for the nailbrush—used now not for nails but open wounds—before noticing Daniil is at the other end of the surgery table near the man's head, sighing and collecting it himself, like it's a major ask to not have Daniil waiting on him hand and foot.

Absurd, absurd man.

Stanislav returns and it's on Daniil to swap spaces once again, taking the heavy saline solution—comfortably warm—into his hands. It's shared between him and Artemy, washing out the wound and leaving what was once ugly and reddened a soft pink.

It's monotonous work, a perfect rhythm. The heat has spread down his arms now, into his hands, into his chest, into the small of his back. His breath feels hot when he exhales. (This isn't right, but the thoughts around it are slowing, his brain inebriated purely on itself.)

'Daniil Daniilovich,' the voice rocks through him, and suddenly his eyes are wide and very much awake, the loose tilt of his body forced back into a controlled and straight posture, 'you're good for sutures, right?'

Sutures? Of course—he's done nothing but sutures of recent, the children in this town nothing but positively jumping at the ready to slice their skin clean through for his hands, picked of nails, to pull back to together. (And he'd only had to reference a medical textbook lifted from Artemy's private study a single time to jog his memory. (They're not all young with shockingly adept memories anymore.))

'Yes, I am. But you seem to be doing rather well.'

Artemy clenches and spreads his now freed hands a few times, working the muscles and joints. 'I've been in here for Boddho only knows however many hours; I called you in for a reason. Allow my hands a break.'

There's a sly comment to be made of that, Daniil is sure, but already his body is moving.

Artemy hands him the needle holder. His small smile is beautiful.

Daniil takes it, dissecting forceps already in his left hand, he slots his fingers through the hoops of the holder and rests his index against the hinge, (noted only because Artemy prefers to palm it, its body resting inside his palm and index further down the hinge, the needle holder too small for comfortable use otherwise.)

How would their hands compare, if held palm-to-palm?

The thought seeps through him, rushing between the seeps and cracks left by the molten hot burning beneath his skin. It sizzles in his muscles, within his organs that bloat and beg.

He's not allowed to lose himself fully in the pondering—the Dominant stepping aside none the wiser, acquiescing his spot to Daniil.

Artemy's pre-picked the suture type and needle for him, clear as day when the man hands it over without a word. His other hand fingers at the wound, before closing it up and squeezing the edges together between his fingers.

'Start here,' he instructs, though likely knowing Daniil doesn't really need it, (he simply likes the sound of his own voice, perhaps), 'at the top. The lower sections are more stable.'

Daniil knows he should nod—should give any form of acknowledgement. But he just can't, his body moving with no real conscious effort, starting at the top just like the Dominant requests, his eyes half lidded and lips loose behind the protection of the mask.

There's so much, there's not enough—he grasps the surgical needle in the holder, pulling through the suture.

Artemy gazes at his hands as he works, the fixation sending shivers across his nape, curling around his jaw. He can feel it—feel it all, hot and cold and uncomfortable and orgasmic. Being observed by him, being judged by him. Daniil suddenly finds the concept of failing him near enough to making him cry.

A simple interrupted stitch will do just fine for the edges—he stabilises the wound's side, pink hue gone and now a throbbing, open red again, as his steady hand slide's the needle perpendicularly through undamaged flesh. It bites against deeper tissue, pulling the edges of the wound closed and secure.

Artemy hums his approval above him—Daniil's breath catches against the back of his throat, gooseflesh running tingles through him like ghosts of fervent touches. Tightly, he presses his teeth and lips together to muffle any sound his body could force him to make.

He ties off the suture, movement monotonous, his heart desperate to please:

He pulls the suture thread carefully—gently, Danik!—leaving a short length the further point from him. The dissecting forceps are placed aside on the surgical table, the needle released from the hold of the forceps into the grip of his left hand, fingertips delicately positioning it.

He pulls it over the end of the needle holder—careful Danik!—lifting its tip over the stitch in his left hand, grabbing its short end. He closes it on the free end of the suture, tightening the first throw of the knot.

Artemy is still above him–

Is Stanislav still here? The world is narrow and hazy.

He keeps his hands flat at the throw, that's an important part—or the knot will be wrong. He needs to do that to do it well. His lungs are shuddering but his hands are steady.

He opens the needle holder, letting go of the short end of the suture—soft pressure on the long end, or it'll all come apart right in front of Artemy—pointing the holder's end at his left hand holding the long stitch. Daniil pulls the suture over the top of the needle holder, reaching over with it to pick up the short ends of the thread.

Grab the short end with the holder.

Cross his hands. The square knot appears, beautiful.

Tighten the second throw. Artemy cuts the remaining thread.

Is Artemy pleased? He dares a glance from the corner of his eyes, Artemy's own are crinkling at the corners. He's impressed. Daniil's done well. His spine tingles as he starts on the next suture. Again and again, until he reaches the deep wound at the widest part of the laceration where some of the skin has been lost.

He can do better, he can do more. He needs to. (This isn't right, but the idea of stopping makes him want to heave. He can't—his Dominant is so proud of him.)

Artemy and he swap places so he can reach further up the thigh, the Dominant mopping up the blood seeping from the sutured wound as Daniil ties more together.

He lifts the opposing edge of the skin with the forceps, pulling the needle through the dermis, inside to outside, equal and neat, just like how he remembers being taught. Following the curvature of the needle is natural, easy, it slides though the skin so well.

He turns the needle away from himself, manoeuvering the forceps as he pierces it again, pronating his wrist and rising the needle and thread out of the wound. Release the needle, supinate, lift the opposing skin edge, slide the needle back through the skin to where he started.

Pulling the suture through.

Tying it off.

Doing it again.

And again.

Is this enough for Artemy? It feels so right. He's purring, so quietly, so low.

Back to simple interrupted stitches, round and around. Looping in and out.

Artemy calls his sutures neat, and he preens, gasping hot breaths through his mask, tying off the final suture. A neat knot. Artemy is so proud of him.

This is right… Isn't it?

Daniil feels cold. And hot. And impure. And perfect.

Did he do well?

He holds the tools still, watching Artemy wrap clean gauze around the wound. Stanislav brushes behind him, machines and gasses abandoned, the man left to the taste of oxygen, sickly sweet with his own blood, waiting for the world to rock him back into awareness.

Daniil places the forceps, needle, thread, and holder back into the tray for dirtied tools. The metal scratching against metal—ringing in his ears and making the edges of his nerves burn. It's a sharp sound, a sound that plays out in his teeth. He needs to move, wash his hands of blood, instead of gazing dull eyes down to the expanding pool of it at the bottom of the metal tray.

But he can't move. The heat has reached his calves, his feet, it wraps around his inner thighs, strokes the crease of his hips, curls over him—into him. His face burns.

'Daniil?' Artemy's voice calls from the other end of the room. Despite the tone running through him like a whistle to a shepherd's dog, his head moves as if leaded. He sounds underwater, but Daniil doesn't feel faint. He feels…

Far away.

Is he even still here?

Artemy scrubs his hands and arms with iodine and water, white suds dripping from muscle onto his clothing, a soft jumper with a high neck. Woollen and loose, now fully viewable without the surgeon's apron. Daniil's can't tear his eyes away from the man's neck, the way the collar rubs against his jaw, rough with stubble.

Metal rattles inside a single ear, making him turn his head. Stanislav is cleaning the tray on the table away, blood and saline solution sloshing in the container before it's taken away to be dumped—to seep back into the earth.

And there Daniil stands still, bloody. Artemy watching him—with those sharp sky-blue eyes, or at least, the sky of somewhere, not the Capital, choked with factory smog, or the grey overcast of the steppe.

They're beautiful. He wants to become lost in them, kneel for his Dominant and be allowed to think of nothing but Artemy Artemy Artemy. Perfect Artemy. Perfect Dominant.

This isn't right, what he's thinking. He knows it! He does.

He does.

He does.

But his body is so hot, his throat purring uncontrollably loud, and his mind slurring his words and concepts. He can't fight it, even if he wanted to, all complaints stripped from his mind. He is made fixated and simple.

He looked into Artemy's eyes for so long he almost forgot the crawling of his skin that comes with the action. The bug bites run over pale, freckle-filled shell, nipping hallucinations of love bites into him—but, mouth parting, half open—he can't look away. Purring laboured breaths under his mask, they watch him, mouths moving, their voices completely mute.

Daniil's eyes are half-lidded, and his body is tilting as the world feels soft under his soles—like he's sinking into it—a soft, enveloping tar.

His hands move slowly, folding around the loops of his mask, pulling it from his face and dropping it to the ground.

He rocks and sways, open-mouthed and heaving, the world flooding into him. Artemy is everywhere, he's everything—seeping into the walls, into his clothing. Pheromones wrapping its hands around his mind, digging its thumbs into his frontal lobe and slowly

pulling

him

apart.

Artemy's movements are slow, the world fuzzy and fluctuating—like a heat haze.

The sponge once scrubbing his skin half-raw swaps for clean towelling, running through the hair on his forearms, his jumper's sleeves rolled up past his elbows, muscles flexing at every move.

When had- he finished- scrubbing up?

When had- uhm.

When-

He-

Hm…

Daniil's mouth clicks closed, tiny submissive fangs—evolutionary hold overs, slotting alongside one another.

His glands throb to the beat of his heart.

Stanislav's looking at him now, too, he can register it from the corner of his eye. Artemy is too. Artemy- Artemy- he wants to speak, but language is stripped from his tongue, forcing him to hum mindlessly. Desperately.

What did he want to say again?

His mind is filled only with the Dominant in front of him. All-enveloping.

He feels like an insect—like a beetle pinned to a board, gazed up and down by two Dominants a head and half taller each than him. Both hard-working men—they'd carried the injured soul in here barely breaking a sweat, only remembered Daniil when he could be useful. He wants so badly to be useful.

But had it been them to carry him? His thoughts are slipping, becoming sticky and wet with the image of Artemy so easily able to move others to his whims.

He just can't help himself. Something is wrong with him-

Poor, weak, submissive Daniil—he wouldn't be able to do that, couldn't help like that. Shivers wrack his body before he can stop it, gooseflesh chewing at his skin, a tightness in his throat squeezing his trachea closed, the purrs cut out and the room dips into a complete silence.

It makes tears sting at the corners of his eyes. Why is the silence worse? Why does it make his lungs stutter—what's wrong with him, why he can't he stop. He wants to stop breathing, stop thinking, stop the tears that threaten to slip from him like an overfilled glass.

But he can't. He can't stop- he can't stop looking between them. Why are looking at him—why are they fixated on him, why-

Stop, please stop. Please stop, he wants to ask-

-but when he opens his mouth only the feeble click and whine of a submissive meet his ears. The initial trill escapes his throat as he swallows the rest of it down, gulping air and choking on saliva, his eyes wide and boring into the ground as he dips is head, one hand holding the wrist of the other in front of him like a barrier.

They know. They know. He's such a Goddamned liar.

He hadn't even taken the gloves off. The sensation of rubber makes him skin crawl, tears finally escaping his eyes, staining tear tracks onto him, curving along the line of his jaw before dripping. He must have done something wrong. He must have? But he followed his Dominant's instructions exactly, he's good at that, he knows he's good at that.

He knows he is.

He passed with top marks, followed demands written and verbal perfectly.

He'd good, he's a good doctor, he's a good submissive- Artemy is front of him. And this time he truly cannot withhold the whine, gurgling and drowning in the tears that continue to spill.

The Dominant's hands, so steady, so kind, so perfect, gently wrap around his own. Daniil is shaking, how long had he been shaking? Carefully the rubber is peeled from him, the gloves removed and his bare hands massaged with warm, careful circling thumbs, cupped and held.

Held so caringly. Tear-filled fingerprints lay sticky marks on his skin, and once he'd started, he can't stop. He can't stop. His breath hitching, getting worse, his silent sobbing becoming audible and pathetic.

'Did- hngg, please- did I do well?' Daniil can barely identify his voice as his own, constricted with the tightness of his throat and delivered with a ladle of anxious stutters and interrupting gasps. The taste of tears invades his mouth, soaking his tongue. 'Hah, ah- was I- good?'

The silence that answers him is worse than the idea of a loaded handgun pressed to his temple. Sobs turn to unrestrained bawling—his body shivering and alien as his hands release those around them to cover his face. What had he done wrong?

'Please,' he begs between his fingers, before moving them over his chest, so out of sorts the idea of begging doesn't even cause him to balk. What he's begging for, he couldn't ever put into words. Please look at me, please forgive me, please love me. Artemy- Artemy.

'I'm sorry, I'm-' his voice is pulling away from him, losing itself to warbling tones and misery. 'I just tried-' slurring, like a drunkard. They think he's useless. He did something wrong. He-

-suddenly has the arms of another wrapping around him.

He chokes on his whimpers, the tips of his fingers numbing alongside his tongue. His shaking hands reach up to the surrounding arms, gripping them tight. He needs them closer, pressing him in—shivering as he digs crescent indents to tanned skin.

He's bad. He's bad. He can't stop-

He can't stop apologising to the form now holding him close, his teeth rattling around each word. His knees are weak, and when they finally start to fail him, the arms hold him even closer, even tighter, like they'd heard his thoughts to act upon.

There's no struggle as he lists into the heat of the other, tears staining the fabric of his shoulder. It's wool. When he presses his face into the clothing. It's wool. It's Artemy, and he breaks- 'Please. Please, Artemy-'

But the position means the lips of the other are so close to him, so warm and kind when they speak, cutting off his pleading with the words his core pleads for: 'You did well.'

Oh.

'You did so well, Daniil.' Artemy squeezes him gently, moving a hand to the back of his head, running fingers through dark hair and gently pressing Daniil's nose into his collar bone—it's the closest he can get to his neck, with their stark difference in height.

The gentle touches ease something under his skin, the bugs calming and his hands pulling in. He feels- secure- safe- praised-

He curls into Artemy, bringing his hands and arms between their forms, grasping at the wool of his chest and making his small form smaller. Can he stay like this? Protected- calm–

Submissive feel-good hormones flush through him, forcing a gasp from his lungs and tears to escape him at the sheer sensation that tickles his every muscle. Rewarding him for such a baser satisfaction, such a pathetic and desperate show. Like a button that runs a straight-wire down his spine to cock, pressed and lit up again and again.

Good boy, his brain says.

Be calm, his brain demands.

His mind lost in the honey-comb drippings of sweetness, but even when the insect knows it's trapped within the pitcher—it can nary find the will to escape. He's falling and falling, pelvis positioned perfectly to grind against his Dominant's thigh.

'I did well?' His speech so slow, punctuated with a quiet moan. Artemy surely only heard him because his body was currently trying to melt into the Dominant. He's completely frozen where he stands, attention paid over Daniil's shoulder, hand escaping his hair for only a moment to motion elsewhere, twisting their bodies together to face away from the door.

There's clattering, a door opening and closing and his body wants to jolt, wants to turn and pierce the layer of subspace his body begs for, tearing it to shreds until he's left cold and crying yet again. But when he turns to look, Artemy's hand has already moved to the side of his face, pulling focus to look up at him—only him.

Daniil's can't stop his instinct to nuzzle against the hand, thoughts redirected so simply, so perfectly, to the feeling of his Dominant's callouses running over his cheek. A purr climbs the back of his throat as slowly- Artemy finally bends his thigh for better access, pulling Daniil into him. 

Daniil is almost on-top of it now. Grinding against its perfect height for him by simply existing, heat pulses through him, heat with no end- with no goal. The sounds forced from him somewhere between moans of pleasure and whines of desperation.

His legs forced apart, his mind forced down. Grinding out of a need for comfort, the need for ah- yes- please- that feels so good-

'You did very well,' Artemy had replied instantly to him, like a vital call and return as Daniil's brain drips away, distracted and muted. 'So very well, Daniil. I'm so impressed.'

Daniil lets a hot breath escape him, his body squirming under the praise. Every part of him is pressing into Artemy's now—the bulge trapped by his trousers tended to with soft rocking as he tries to contain blissful mewls. He feels his mind melting, the world his eyes see blurring into a kaleidoscope with a single fixated point: Artemy.

When a submissive overdoses—when the hormones pumped into their body overflows their every organ and cell, they fall-

Fall-

And fall-

Until their body is barely their own- flushed- hot- writhing in pleasure and completely gone. The eyes open, but brain so very hushed.

He doesn't want this. Not like this-

But when he sobs, sweet calming words from his Dominant flush through him again, and another bit of himself is lost-

It's too far gone now. He's too far gone now.

His body is craving release, demanding it. It won't stand for anything else, now. Neglected for so long and it's clawing its way out with nobody to blame but himself. His body moves to its whims, the looped wires of need and eroticism wrapping around his limbs, pulling him back and forth, flexing his spine, gripping his throat, telling him to take what he needs.

Because he's desperate-

And deserving.

And he doesn't need much! Promise.

Please-

Just-

Artemy-

Artemy!

Artemy…