Archive of Our Own

“Hold on. I didn’t get fired.” Mitya says, like the very idea is ludicrous. He waves his hand in some grand gesture. “That’s—that’s ridiculous.”

“But you are no longer working,” Valeriy says.

Mitya gives him an exasperated look. “It’s only a temporary measure. Until we figure out how to kill mmphhhhffffuck okay!” He frantically tugs the scarf away from his neck, gasping for breath. “I get it,” he says petulantly, like the scarf can understand him. “Can’t I even tell him?”

Valeriy ignores the way his heart leaps in his chest at the disappointment in Mitya’s voice. For just a moment it sounded like Mitya wanted to tell him. Perhaps like he’s the first person Mitya would want to tell about anything. He’d like that, of course he would like that, but—well. He steels himself and recites the same thing he always does. “If it’s classified, I don’t mind being kept in the dark. It may be safer that way, in case I’m targeted for information.”

“You really love your rules, don’t you?”

“No,” Valeriy says, which is the truth. “I see the merit in this specific rule, and don’t mind following it.”

Mitya looks at him through his eyelashes. “Tell me one rule you don’t agree with. I’ll wait.” And he holds up his hands in a preemptive victory motion.

Valeriy swallows. He can think of one, actually—the very first rule in the handbook for bodyguard duties. Do not form emotional attachment to your charge, it says, right there in black and white on page number one. This rule even deigns to explain its reasoning: If your charge is in need of protection, this means they are in danger at all times. They are likely to encounter harm. When this happens—and the handbook says when, not if—do not let yourself be emotionally impacted.

“See?” says Mitya, looking at him with his strange smile; so smooth that it’s almost sharp-edged again. “You can’t.”

Valeriy takes a deep breath, trying to collect himself. He doesn’t like thinking about the handbook. He’d thought, at first, if he followed every other rule to the letter, that it would make up for the first, most important one. But all this will I give thee; Valeriy follows every rule but one, and still feels like a failure.

Mitya ushers him through the doorway. “At least come in. It’s cold as shit out there.”

“I can tolerate the cold,” Valeriy mutters, but shuffles in through the doorway regardless. He brushes the light dusting of snow off his shoulders and starts shucking off his boots. No need to track sleet across Mitya’s expensive Sumerian rug.

“Just because you can tolerate it doesn’t mean you should have to. I’m getting cold just looking at you.” He hangs up Valeriy’s coat on an empty hook, right next to his own cloak. “Can I get you something to drink?”

Valeriy looks up from his boot laces, and what a change, looking up at Mitya instead of down at him. Usually he would decline, but Mitya has that look in his eyes like he’ll start running if he doesn’t have something keeping him grounded, so. “Tea would be fine.”

“Tea? Sarge, really,” he says, grinning down at him. His eyes seem to glimmer with amusement, or perhaps that’s just the novelty of the new angle. “I think now, of all times, you can afford a real drink.”

“I don’t drink.”

Mitya grins at him. “Sure you don’t,” he says angelically. He disappears into the apartment. “I’ll get the good stuff!”

Valeriy really doesn’t drink alcohol, and at this rate he’s starting to think he’s the only sober person in the whole country. A hot tea would hardly have gone amiss, actually—but now that Mitya’s got his mind set on it, he’s unstoppable. That’s the thing about Mitya: he may play at being lazy, but once he starts something, he’ll finish it or die trying.

Sometimes, in the quiet privacy of his own mind, Valeriy wonders which one Project Mistilteinn will be. If he’ll finish it, or…

“No need to take all your clothes off, Sarge. I’m not asking for a strip tease here,” Mitya calls from the kitchen. “What’s taking you so long? Any longer, and I’ll start drinking your share.”

Valeriy hurriedly pushes his boots into the hectic shoe rack and pulls off his coat. He finds Mitya in the kitchen, standing at the counter. On his side, there’s a half-drunk glass of something amber and shimmering. On the other side, the glass is full. Valeriy assumes this is his side—assumes they’re still keeping that invisible divide between them—and stands across from him.

Mitya takes a long, slow sip of the whatever-it-is. When he swallows, he closes his eyes, and because of this he doesn’t notice Valeriy watching his throat move with more interest than strictly necessary. Small mercies.

“You really can have mine,” Valeriy says, a little sheepish. He pushes the heavy crystal glass away from him. “I’ve never been a drinker.”

“In Snezhnaya, that’s like saying you’ve never been alive,” Mitya mutters, but he takes the alcohol without protest. As one last-ditch effort, he looks at Valeriy carefully. “You’re sure you don’t want it? You could start drinking. There’s no time like the present.”

“I’m quite sure.”

Mitya sighs. “You really are the perfect soldier,” he says, like it’s a bad thing, something no one would ever want to become. “Even when you’ve been laid off, you won’t drown your sorrows.” He clinks their two glasses together, one in each hand, with a wry smile. “Cheers,” he says, and drinks from the second glass.

“Laid off? I haven’t been laid off.”

Mitya frowns and sets the glass back down too heavily. It clunks against the counter. “Yes, you have,” he says slowly. “If I’m not working, then you aren’t, either. Right?” He looks at Valeriy with a strange, unreadable expression. “You’re not being reassigned to guard someone else, are you?”

Valeriy’s brow creases. “Of course not.”

“Then you’ve been laid off,” Mitya says. “There’s no laboratory to guard, no place to work, and no one to protect. Congratulations.” He lifts the glass to his mouth again.

“I’m still your guard,” Valeriy says. “In fact, that's what I came to talk with you about. I’m moving in with you.”

Mitya chokes on his liquor. “What?”

***

Two days later Valeriy brings three suitcases and one shoulder bag to Mitya’s penthouse apartment, puts them in the guest room, and busies himself methodically unpacking them.

“Don’t tell me that’s all you have,” Mitya says behind him. He’s leaning against the doorway, just watching him. “It’s only three suitcases. I could hardly last a week with that.”

Instead of responding to the obvious provocation, Valeriy sighs. “Are you just planning to watch me?”

“Did you want me to offer my help?” Mitya makes a sound halfway to a laugh. “Me? Sarge, you’ve seen my lab, right?”

Point taken. Mitya’s lab frequently looks as though at least one tornado has passed through it in the last forty-eight hours. Valeriy clings defensively to his precisely-folded shirt and slides it onto a hanger.

“Never mind,” Mitya says, slightly softer. He walks into the room, looking around like the place is brand-new to him even though it’s his own damn guest room. “I just… expected more, I guess.”

And isn’t that the story of Valeriy’s life: everyone expecting more. He was strong, but never a hero. Smart, but never a genius. Always a soldier, never a commander.

“A whole carriage full, at least,” Mitya is saying, and—right, they were talking about literal baggage, not the metaphorical sort. “Maybe some boxes. And wouldn’t you want to bring all your weapons here with you? I can just envision you polishing a twelve-foot spear on my dining table.”

Despite himself, Valeriy feels a laugh building in his chest. “My large weapons are all stored in the barracks, by my old quarters. Don’t worry about that.”

Mitya sighs dramatically. “And here I thought you cared about me enough to bring your real weapons. How will you protect me now?”

“With this,” Valeriy says, pulling out the knife from his concealed thigh holster.

Mitya yelps.

“Or this.” His hip gun. “Or this.” The sawed blade at his ankle. “Or this.” The brass knuckles tucked into his hollow shoulder pad. “Take your pick.”

“My god,” Mitya sighs, sounding faint. Valeriy finally turns around to look at him. He’s not in the doorway anymore, and in fact he’s much closer than Valeriy thought he’d be. He’s leaning against the dresser, looking pale. “I’ll never doubt you again, Sarge.”

Valeriy smiles slightly. He tucks all his weapons away again, safely concealed. “I should hope I’ll never give you cause to.”

Mitya’s face finally regains some color. He laughs weakly. “You’d think someone building a weapon would be better at—you know. Weapons.”

“That’s alright,” Valeriy says. “We both know who the killer is, between us.”

Mitya’s jaw does something strange. “Don’t say that.”

“You’d rather I lie to you?”

Mitya looks at him like he’s peering through cloudy glass, like there’s an invisible substance separating them which only he can see. He stays silent.

Valeriy goes back to hanging up his shirts. They’re all more or less identical, made by the royal uniform company. Each one is made to fit him perfectly, so long as he never changes. Stability and stagnancy have a lot more in common than he might like to admit.

“I’m sorry,” Mitya says eventually.

He never used to do that, before. Apologizing. Valeriy’s almost uncomfortable with it. “We’ve been over this.”

“That was then,” Mitya says, like this means anything. He makes a strange sound, like a laugh that died trying. “Never mind. Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

He has that look in his eyes again, the one that means he’s going to run if he doesn’t have something to do. “The bag,” Valeriy blurts, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind.

Mitya tilts his head.

“I have three suitcases and a bag,” Valeriy explains, feeling like an idiot. He always feels sort of idiotic around Mitya, whose river of knowledge and wit seems to never freeze over. “I’d like you to help me unpack the bag. It’s mostly my books, and a few decorations. You can figure out a place for them.”

Mitya looks at him like he’s gone crazy. “Really?”

“Do you want to help or not?”

Mitya huffs half a laugh. “Your funeral, Sarge.” And he begins unpacking.

Yes, Valeriy’s seen the lab, and he’s seen the rest of the house, but it can’t possibly be that bad. Surely he can’t do that much damage with just his books.

By the time Valeriy is done hanging up his uniform clothing, the books are scattered across his room like so many snowflakes. Somehow Mitya has also managed to hang one of his photos—his much younger self, still in military school, before he found out he wasn’t cut out to be the big shot everyone thought he was—not just upside-down, but horribly crooked to boot.

“Sarge, is this you?” Mitya says, looking at it delightedly. He leans in closer, somehow unbothered by the fact that the picture is inverted and poorly angled. “You’re so cute. How old are you here?”

“Eighteen.”

“Eighteen!” Mitya gapes. “Really? But you’re so short! And you’re—” He gestures vaguely at Valeriy-of-the-present. “Well,” he says, looking distracted. He coughs. “You’re certainly not short now.”

“That’s generally how adolescent development works, yes,” Valeriy says drily. “And I wasn’t that short. I was still much taller than you.”

Mitya’s eyebrows fly into his hair. “You did not just go there.”

Valeriy makes a show of looking him up and down, partially for dramatic effect and also partially because he’s nice to look at. “You must have been even shorter than you are now at eighteen,” he says, just to be annoying.

Instead of getting angry with him, Mitya just starts giggling. “Sarge, you flatter me! If anything I’ve gotten shorter since then. It’s been a long time since I was eighteen, but the years have at least been kind to my face.” He looks at Valeriy pointedly. “Don’t you agree?” he says, in a tone which makes it abundantly clear that if Valeriy doesn’t agree he’d best keep it to himself.

“I don’t know,” Valeriy says. “I didn’t know you when you were eighteen.”

“Good thing, too,” Mitya says, grinning. “If we’d met when I was eighteen, you’d have been too young to think I was attractive.”

Valeriy glares at him through his warm face. It’s not like it’s a secret that he finds Mitya—pleasing, but he’s trying to be discreet about it, at least. Trying not to shove it in his face, in case it’s unwelcome. Mitya has no shortage of admirers. No need to make him self-conscious about having another one.

Mitya’s smile only widens. “Ah, don’t give me that look! It all worked out, didn’t it? Look at us now.”

Valeriy frowns. “Hold on. How old was I when you were eighteen?”

Mitya raises his eyebrows. “Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a gentleman his age?”

“That’s for ladies.”

“You always ruin my fun. I’m older than you! You know my birthday; isn’t that enough? I don’t know your age, either!”

“I’m twenty-nine,” Valeriy says. “Also, you knew that already.”

“Ughgh,” Mitya says, flopping down onto the bed—Valeriy’s bed, now—but he’s only on top of the blankets, so it’s fine. Not that Valeriy would particularly mind having Mitya in his bed properly, especially if he were there to keep Valeriy company. “You’re too young to be such an old geezer.”

Valeriy blinks. He’d gotten distracted imagining Mitya in his bed and nearly forgotten what they were talking about. “I’m not old.”

“I just unpacked your books. You have crossword compilations. You have sudoku books. Next you’ll tell me you’ve taken up knitting.”

“I don’t knit,” Valeriy says. “I crochet.”

“Ohhhh my god,” Mitya sighs, throwing his hand over his eyes. “I can’t believe I live with a grandmother trapped in the body of a pretty young thing. Life is so unfair.”

“Pretty young thing,” Valeriy repeats drily. Those aren’t exactly the words that come to mind when he tries to picture himself.

“I mean.” Mitya sits up on the bed and gestures at him. “Yeah.”

Valeriy gives up. Mitya must truly be a genius; the workings of his mind are beyond comprehension.

“Look at you,” Mitya says, like there’s something obvious that Valeriy is missing. “You spend all day in uniform, chasing me down. But you’re not even thirty! You should be at the club!”

“The club.”

“Ah, don’t be like that. You know what I meant. You could be doing whatever you liked; going out, having fun. Me, on the other hand…”

Valeriy doesn’t know where that sentence is going. “You could go out if you wanted,” he says, which seems obvious.

Mitya blinks. “I could?”

“You have no working hours. Therefore, I have no reason to stop you.”

Slowly, Mitya stands up. “Oh,” he says weakly. Then, stronger. “Oh, my god. I can take you to the club. During work hours.”

It’s Valeriy’s turn to be caught off guard. “Take me?”

Mitya looks at him with a triumphant grin. “Isn’t it your job to accompany me wherever I go? It would be so terrible if I were to go out and encounter danger, and you weren’t there to keep me safe…”

Oh no. Valeriy sees where this is going. “Mitya.”

“So you just have to come with me.”

“…” says Valeriy.

“I’ve changed my mind about living together,” Mitya says, taking him by the arm with enthusiasm. “I think this is going to be great. I’m going to find you something better to wear. Take off your shirt.”

Tsaritsa help him.

***

So Valeriy’s here now, at some club. He doesn’t remember which one, only that it has too many mirrors in the hallway and that the music makes the stairs shake like they’re going to collapse as he walks down into the basement. That’s where they are now: the basement. It’s too dark and too bright and there are people everywhere and it’s loud and Mitya is really, truly gorgeous beside him.

And he’s not dancing.

“Why aren’t you dancing?” Valeriy asks, because he’s getting confused, at this point. Mitya’s sitting at the bar with him, drinking his fourth pinkish-orange abomination. He thinks it’s his third, but Valeriy’s been counting. He should, logically, be out dancing and partying and having fun, and instead he’s here with Valeriy.

“Are you serious?” Mitya says. He does something halfway to kicking him where he bumps their legs together and then forgets to move away again.

Valeriy can feel every point they’re touching like it’s a curse on his skin. “Yes…?”

Mitya says something with his shiny mouth, which Valeriy doesn’t catch at all because the club is too loud and he’s also busy staring at the way his mouth moves and thinking, in an abstract sort of way, about how it might taste. Like a mouth, probably.

“What?” says Valeriy.

Mitya heaves a full-body sigh. He leans in close, so close, too close, and puts his lips right next to Valeriy’s ear. “I said, I wouldn’t dance with someone else. That would defeat the point of taking you out.”

The vibration of his voice feels strange. Valeriy shivers. “I don’t dance,” he says, which isn’t strictly true. He dances at the yearly military ball. He doesn’t dance here.

Mitya rolls his eyes. God, he’s wearing eyeliner too. Usually he puts on grey eyeliner, something to match his hair, but tonight he’s switched to white, which makes his eyes look wide and iridescent, like captured stars. It’s a minor miracle Valeriy is still breathing.

“What do you think?” Mitya says.

Valeriy blinks.

“Of the club.”

“Oh,” Valeriy says. This makes sense. If Mitya had been asking for his opinion on his lip gloss, he’d probably have leaned over and licked it off. He’s feeling a little dizzy. “Truthfully?”

Mitya laughs. “You never lie to me.”

“Okay,” Valeriy says. “I think I’d rather be at home doing a crossword.”

Mitya gives him a disappointed look with his star eyes. “If you won’t dance with me, I’ll keep drinking all night. Do you want to peel me off the floor and drag me home?”

“Yes,” says Valeriy, thinking about having Mitya soft and liquid in his arms, and getting to carry his weight. He’s always been fascinated by the way Mitya moves, especially when he’s drunk: so liquid and graceful that he circles his way back into looking clumsy again. It’s almost unnatural, the way he moves. Almost inhuman. Almost divine.

Mitya groans into his hands. “Yulia, a fourth one,” he calls to the bartender.

Fifth, actually, but Valeriy doesn’t say anything. He watches Mitya’s mouth move; he’s back to thinking about licking off his lip gloss. Hmm.

***

Mitya comes into the kitchen the next morning with bleary eyes and a gentle, sleepy smile that makes Valeriy feel like he’s just jumped off a three-story building.

“Good morning,” he says, through his three-story-jump heartbeat. He’s still falling, somehow, and hasn’t landed. “I’ve made you this.”

“Wow,” Mitya says dreamily. Then he actually looks down at the counter and shrieks.

Ah. There’s the ground. Valeriy winces. “What’s the matter?”

Mitya looks at the glass on the counter, then at him. Then at the glass. Then he points. “What the fuck is that?”

“Hangover cure.”

“No no no,” Mitya says, pushing it across the counter to him. “I don’t think I’d drink that even if it cured my back pain forever. That looks vile. Is that what they teach you in the military academy?”

Valeriy frowns. “No. My sister taught me to make them.” He’d put so much work into it, too. Mitya didn’t have any raw horseradish in his kitchen, so he had to go out and procure it at the market. He also didn’t have any teaspoon measures, so Valeriy had to buy those too. And he ground the seaweed in the mortar and pestle himself, which was no small feat.

Mitya looks a little green.

“It helps.”

“You don’t drink. You wouldn’t know if it helps.”

“My sister does. She always insists that I help her make one of these following a night of indulgence. I’m an expert.”

Mitya looks forlornly at the glass. “I think I’ll pass on your expertise. The headache looks preferable to that.”

Valeriy puts on his very best pathetic look.

Surprisingly, it’s extremely effective. Mitya gives in immediately. “Ugh, fine,” he mutters, and he takes the glass and tips it back like he’s taking a shot.

And immediately coughs and sputters.

“Shit,” he rasps, clutching his throat. “Wow. You could have just tried to kill me.”

“That’s the opposite of what I’m meant to do.”

Mitya glares at him. “Water,” he says, so Valeriy obediently fetches him a glass of water. He drinks the whole thing in one long, long sip, then wipes his mouth with his sleeve.

“You’re in your houserobe," Valeriy says, though it feels silly to notice it only now. He’s been wearing it the whole time. “Did you find the pajamas uncomfortable?”

Mitya’s face flushes slightly pink. “Oh. It’s—a habit.”

Valeriy frowns. “What habit?”

“Usually, when I have someone in my kitchen the morning after I’ve gone out…”

Then, instead of continuing, he starts playing with the ties of his robe and one of them comes undone and oh god it’s all bare skin, it’s all bare skin underneath, and he must do this when he has a lover stay the night, and Valeriy averts his eyes so fast he nearly gets dizzy and he sort of bangs his hip on the counter and shit that really hurts, actually. Ow.

Mitya laughs at him. His fingers are clumsy, graceless as he fumbles to close his robe again. “Sarge, I’m only messing with you. You know I’m wearing my pajamas under this, right? They’ve just got a lower neckline than the robe.”

Valeriy forces himself to breathe.

“If you want me to strip for real,” Mitya says, leaning over the counter teasingly, “make me breakfast, instead of a torture device in a cup.”

“Be grateful I made you anything,” Valeriy mutters, blushing something fierce. He’s busy thinking about Mitya wearing nothing but his houserobe and walking up to him with traces of white eyeliner still below his lashes, which is unrealistic because he knows Mitya would never go to bed without washing off his makeup. But a guy can dream.

Mitya sighs heavily. “At least tell me you bought something to eat.”

“…I did not.”

Mitya buries his head in his hands. “Never let me go out again,” he moans. “In fact, introduce me to the creator of the harra fruit martini so I can personally kick their ass.”

Valeriy busies himself searching the pantry for something to eat. Mitya’s dietary habits have always been strange. He’ll sometimes eat four meals in a day, and sometimes go days without eating anything. Once, he witnessed him dunking raw cabbage leaves in boiling coffee like he was cooking hotpot beef, and eating them expressionlessly. Unfortunately, his pantry appears no better than his real-life habits. Valeriy frowns and searches harder. “I thought you liked going out,” he says, to fill the space.

Mitya sighs, long and weary. “When I was younger, maybe. But it’s not—satisfying. Not the way I want it to be.”

Valeriy’s chest hurts a little. He opens another pantry cabinet.

“Do you ever feel—odd?” Mitya says, fragile. “Like everything you do is a cyclical march toward some predetermined outcome? Like your whole life you’ve been chasing something you can never quite reach?”

“Yes,” Valeriy says, too honest. “I’ve spent my life chasing you.”

Mitya looks at him so intensely that Valeriy can feel it without even turning around.

Valeriy discovers something resembling butter pastries in the back of the pantry. “Here,” he says, holding it out. “Eat this for now. The richness will help with your stomach. I’ll buy more suitable foods for lunch and dinner later.”

Mitya doesn’t look down at the pastry tin. He looks right at Valeriy, with his soft, makeup-less eyes; his dark circles are more pronounced than ever, and some of his hair is caught in his long eyelashes. “I don’t think I’m unreachable at all,” he says.

Valeriy sits down at the counter with him. Outside the window, the city is already awake, but the two of them can afford one more moment here, before they have to face the world.

Mitya bites into one of the pastries. He cringes. “What on earth is this?”

Valeriy leans over to inspect. “Ah. It appears they have… some type of green jelly filling.” He pauses thoughtfully. “It looks rather like the seaweed I ground in the mortar and pestle.”

“Oh god,” Mitya says faintly. His eyes start wavering, and he braces his hands on the counter.

“Are you going to be sick?” Valeriy asks, standing quickly. “Would you like electrolytes? Do you need me to hold your hair?”

Mitya throws up into the sink before he can respond.

Guiltily, Valeriy sits back down. So much for that idea. He refills Mitya’s water glass and hands it over silently.

Mitya takes it with a sigh. He drinks a third of it, then says, “Tomorrow, we’ll have a normal breakfast. No more of this, alright?”

“Tonight,” Valeriy counters. “We’ll stay in, and you won’t drag me out to a club neither of us particularly want to attend. No more of that, either, alright?”

Mitya’s smile is ragged. “You drive a hard bargain, Sarge,” he says. “Shake on it?”

Valeriy extends his hand, and they make their first promise.

***

Against all odds, they establish an equilibrium. Valeriy gets up, showers, puts out a tempting and conspicuous offering of cut fruit on the counter, and then drinks his tea by the window until Mitya wakes up. Then they go about their business for the day.

Today’s offering is a plate of grapes. Valeriy has cut each grape in half, leaving them perfectly split.

Mitya scoffs when he sees them. “Do you really think whole grapes are a choking hazard? Come on now, they aren’t going to kill me.” Of course, he then eats every last grape on the plate with delight. Hypocrite.

Valeriy has learned not to respond to him when he’s like this. It’s a victory that he’s getting Mitya to consume any vitamins at all; better not to push it. If he were left to his own devices, he’d eat nothing but cake and caffeine, and perhaps the occasional orange so that he wouldn’t die of scurvy like a goddamn sailor.

“So?” Mitya says, leaning over his shoulder to look out the window. “What’s on the agenda for today?”

“Finishing this sudoku.”

Mitya groans and dramatically takes the chair opposite him at the table. “Sarge, I know you think you’re funny. You aren’t.”

“This could be a two, or perhaps an eight,” says Valeriy, just to mess with him.

Predictably, Mitya falls for it. “You’re the worst,” he says, without much heat. “You are the worst ever and I don’t even like you. Isn’t there anything to do today? I mean real things to do.”

“Vodyanitsa’s just started performing a new song, if you want to attend the theatre.”

Mitya’s cheerful annoyance vanishes immediately. “No.”

“It’s her take on a classic Nod-Krai religious piece. It should be quite interesting.”

His eyes suddenly look about ten times heavier. “I said no, Valeriy.”

Guiltily, Valeriy stops talking. He’d thought that Mitya’s wariness of the theatre would wear off eventually, that someday he’d regain his usual passion for performances. But every time he brings up the theatre now, Mitya looks at him like he’s seen a ghost.

Not that Valeriy doesn’t know why. But he wouldn’t mind going to the theatre again; for him, the good memories far outweigh the bad. Mitya must be different, though. He remembers more, Valeriy knows that much. Maybe he got off easy, dying early. He had no say in his own death, at least. Mitya had to walk into the storm on his own. Had to choose his own death, rather than wait for it.

Like he said: Mitya’s the type to finish the job, or die trying.

“What do you want to do today?” Valeriy says, quieter. “Choose whatever you like.”

Mitya laughs, dry and humorless. “Can I tell the truth?”

“Please.”

“I want to go back to work,” Mitya admits, looking out the window. “Isn’t that ridiculous? I spend all these years trying to escape my work, and then the minute they let me go, all I want is to claw my way back in.” He exhales, steaming up the windowpane near his mouth. “I think I was meant to solve problems.”

Something close to sadness settles in Valeriy’s chest. He doesn’t know what to say.

“And I know I caused problems for you,” Mitya says, a little roughly. “Hell, I know I still do. I’m causing problems for you right now.”

“Don’t say that.”

Mitya looks up at him. His eyes glimmer in the crisp snow-white morning light.

Valeriy wishes he could deliver some kind of emotional soliloquy laying out everything he feels, something to explain the chasm in his chest whenever Mitya gets that look in his eyes, and the bone-deep desire he feels to keep Mitya from running away for real this time, running where he can’t chase. Instead he just sits at the breakfast table with his half-completed sudoku, and says none of that.

Mitya’s mouth moves up slightly, like he somehow understands it all anyway. “It’s a two,” he says, pointing at the grid.

Valeriy blinks. “It is?”

“There’s already an eight in this box, which forces the second eight into that box, which means that row will already have an eight. So it has to be a two.”

Valeriy fills it in.

Mitya sighs and kicks Valeriy’s shin under the table. “You’re making me feel old,” he accuses. “Not only am I doing your puzzles, I’m enjoying them. This is the lowest of the low.”

“I’m younger than you.”

“Ostensibly.”

Valeriy takes his puzzle book back. “If you want a problem to fix, we can ask the Adventurer’s Guild. The Traveler’s taking most of the combat commissions, so there may be leftover civil commissions for us to take.”

Mitya breathes in, long and slow. “Alright,” he says. The last of the running-away instinct leaves his eyes, and his eyes look like stars again, even without the white eyeliner. “Let’s give it a try.”

***

It’s something with lights and mirrors. Valeriy isn’t really keeping up with it, because the commission got technical very quickly. It doesn’t play to his strengths, but it does play to Mitya’s. He figures out the geometrically optimized layout to light the whole building from top to bottom, mirrors and angles and more mirrors and more angles, and his eyes are a little wild as they walk back.

“This could be revolutionary,” he’s saying, waving his hands. His bangs are sticking straight up, almost vertical, but he doesn’t notice at all. “Valeriy, the mirrors! If we set them up in larger buildings, they can reflect small amounts of light, conserving the energy used for lighting. Now, if we applied this concept to heat, imagine what that could do.”

“Okay,” says Valeriy, who has been lost for about two hours.

Mitya drapes himself across Valeriy’s arm. “Just let me be excited. I haven't felt this way in ages.”

He’s been doing that a lot lately—touching him more than he needs to. Valeriy suspects he’s doing it to make up for the lack of manhandling. Valeriy used to always be the one reaching out, the one touching, and now Mitya’s doing it all himself. It’s an interesting change.

He stays upbeat all through dinner, and doesn’t even complain when Valeriy steals the mint leaf off of his dessert. In fact, he’s so elated by the idea that he keeps talking about it into the night.

“Reflection. What a concept,” Mitya says, with his legs slung over Valeriy’s lap. He’s relaxed and loose-limbed like he’s been drinking, even though he’s sober. “What do you think of when you see something reflected? The image, or the reflection itself?”

Valeriy doesn’t quite know what he means, but he takes a guess. “…The image?”

“You don’t sound very confident.”

“Usually when I’m looking in the mirror, I’m looking at myself,” Valeriy explains. “I don’t usually draw a distinction between myself and my reflection in my mind.”

“Oh.” Mitya takes his legs off Valeriy’s lap and sits up to squint at him. “What do you look in the mirror for? It’s not like you do your eyeliner every morning. I had to do it for you when we went out.”

Valeriy coughs. He can do his own eyeliner, for the same reason he can make hangover cures—having a sister generally necessitates those skills—but on that occasion he had selfishly wanted to feel Mitya’s hands on his face. “Shaving,” he says, because this is also true, and so he’s not really lying.

“Oh.” Mitya squints even more. “Sarge, don’t tell me you have a beard.”

“Well, no,” says Valeriy. “I shave it. We’ve been over this.”

“But if you didn’t shave…”

Valeriy sees where this is going. “You don’t want me to stop shaving.”

“What if I did?” Mitya says, suddenly serious.

His throat feels thick, suddenly. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“If I asked, would you?”

Yes. Yes. He’d probably stop breathing if Mitya asked him to. “Don’t speak in circles,” Valeriy says. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want you to stop shaving,” Mitya says immediately.

Fuck. He must know he’s won, because he’s looking at Valeriy with a strange glint in his eyes. Valeriy sighs and rubs absentmindedly at his five o’clock shadow. “If you insist.”

Mitya gives him a look like he’s trying very, very hard to communicate something telepathically instead of having to say it out loud. His eyes do something that makes Valeriy think about kissing him, which can’t be related. But then he’s thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about it. And—

“I’m going to bed,” Valeriy says abruptly.

Mitya looks at him with his heavy eyes and says nothing. That night Valeriy dreams that Mitya kisses him until he suffocates with it, and he dies sitting in that chair, his head held gently between two hands.

***

“Holy shit!”

Valeriy raises his eyebrows. “What’s wrong?”

Mitya stares at him. He stares some more. “Oh, it’s you,” he says, sounding relieved. “I thought someone had broken into the apartment.”

He’s so ridiculous. How would someone have broken in? “The point of moving in together was to avoid that.”

“Yes, but—” Here Mitya gestures very obviously to his face. “You look…”

“Oh.” Valeriy doesn’t think he looks that different with a few days’ worth of facial hair, but he also hasn’t looked at himself in the mirror too hard lately. “What do you think?”

“Can I be honest,” Mitya says. “I hate it.”

Valeriy’s so startled that he laughs.

“Stop that,” Mitya says, groaning. He reaches for Valeriy’s mug of tea without asking. “I thought it’d give you that rugged adventurer look. I had such high hopes.”

“I tried to warn you.” Valeriy frowns at the mug in Mitya’s hands. “Wait, that’s mine.”

“I think you’ll find that all of the dishware in this house is mine, actually. Since it’s my house.”

Valeriy looks at him disappointedly. “If you want me to make you tea, you should just ask. I’ll be happy to give you caffeine after you eat your fruit.”

Mitya snorts.

Valeriy’s frown deepens. “What?”

“I can’t take you seriously with that,” Mitya says, grinning. “You have to shave it off, oh my god.”

“Let me reiterate,” Valeriy says drily. He looks longingly at his own mug, which is still in Mitya’s hands, then looks back up. “You specifically ask me to stop shaving my facial hair, despite my warnings. After I bend over backwards for your whim—”

“It can’t have been that hard,” Mitya interrupts. “You actually have to do less work to not shave than to—”

“After I bend over backwards,” Valeriy continues, because he has a point to make. “You immediately ask me to start shaving again, because of the warning you ignored.”

“Yep,” says Mitya, unbothered. He takes a sip of Valeriy’s tea.

Valeriy heaves a sigh. This impossible man. He heads toward the bathroom, ready to shave already; truth be told, he doesn’t really like having facial hair either. “I bought strawberries. Eat them, and I’ll make you whichever tea you like.”

“Orange pekoe, please,” Mitya calls toward the bathroom.

Valeriy turns around. “You know that isn’t a variety of tea. It’s a grade of tea. If you would like me to make our orange pekoe tea, you can ask for ceylon, which is a variety.”

Mitya grins at him. “Orange pekoe,” he repeats.

Valeriy resists the urge to roll his eyes. He disappears into the bathroom to shave, but every time he thinks of Mitya for too long, he starts smiling, which is dangerous. He nearly cuts himself on the straight razor three separate times.

“Much better,” Mitya says, when he emerges again. He appraises Valeriy for a few appreciative seconds. “You know, even without the ruggedness you still look alright.”

That’s rich, coming from a man who once spent nearly twenty minutes complaining about his—and this is verbatim—youthful appearance and great bone structure. Valeriy crosses his arms. “Now you see why I’ve kept this routine for so many years.”

“What can I say? I’m a scientist,” Mitya says. “I always seek out change.”

“Some things are better off the way they always were.”

“Evidently,” Mitya murmurs, looking vaguely at Valeriy’s jaw. Maybe he’s checking for cuts. He clears his throat. “I ate the strawberries, by the way. Will you make my tea now?”

Valeriy looks at him pointedly. “Which kind?”

“Oran—” He must catch the look in Valeriy’s eye because his eyes widen and he switches tracks. “Ceylon! Ceylon.”

“Hm,” Valeriy says, pulling down the tin of tea. “Good answer.”

So things go back to normal again, and isn’t it funny—this is normal now, this thrown-together life they’re sharing.

***

“You could solve equations,” Valeriy offers one evening, as Mitya’s washing the dishes. He meant to help, originally, but now he’s just standing here watching him, staring at the back of his head. There’s a single strand of hair that doesn’t cooperate with the rest, and Valeriy is allowing himself to think about reaching out and fixing it, as an indulgence.

Mitya scoffs. “Is that what you think I do, Sarge? Be honest.”

He did think Mitya solved equations, actually, but now he feels like a bit of an idiot. “My job doesn’t necessitate being informed about your research,” he mutters, his face warm. “As a matter of fact, it might be safer if I don’t have any information. I’m maintaining your confidentiality.”

“I know you’re full of shit,” Mitya says, not without fondness. He flicks soap off his fingers. “Anyway, it’s fine. I’ll live.”

“You could read,” Valeriy suggests. “Do you enjoy scientific reading?”

“The only scientific journal I read is my own, and even that’s a struggle. And I wrote the damn thing.”

Point taken. Valeriy doesn’t like reading scientific journals either. He tried, back when he was newly appointed as Mitya’s officer and still starstruck at the thought of him. He wanted to impress him by learning something in advance. Of course, he realized this was futile about ten minutes in, when he realized he hadn’t absorbed a word. In retrospect, he should have researched theatre instead. At least then they could have talked about it.

“Cooking,” Valeriy tries. Maybe if Mitya takes a scientific approach to nutrition, he’ll start to realize how batshit insane his own diet is, and start eating fruit of his own volition…

Mitya snorts. “Nice try. That’s chemistry, and I’m a physicist.”

Damn. “Engineering jobs, then.”

Mitya turns off the tap, and the low hum of running water stops. “It’s not like that,” he says. “I don’t need to work. I just need something to think about. My mind is like—” He paces away from the sink without remembering to dry his hands. “Sarge, I’m crazy. I always have been. It’s just that most of the time I can use it to my benefit. It’s like—I need the framework of my research to make it look like I haven’t lost my mind.”

“You know what they say about genius and insanity,” Valeriy says.

Mitya’s brow creases. “I don’t, actually. What do they say?”

Valeriy doesn’t know either. He figured Mitya would probably know, though. “Never mind.”

Frustrated, Mitya runs his wet hands through his hair. “I need something to think about. I wish they had theatre shows that weren’t in the theatre. Or—or more mirror problems. I liked solving the mirror problem.”

Valeriy curses his past self for not paying closer attention to that commission. He’d expected that there would be a thousand commissions like it in the future, and that it wouldn’t be special. “You asked me about the reflection and the image,” he recalls. “Do you want to… keep theorizing about that?” It feels like such a stupid offer, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind.

Mitya gives him a look. “Why would I do that? No one’s asked for it.”

“I’m asking.”

This brings a small smile to Mitya’s face. “Sneaky,” he accuses. He finally notices that his hands are wet, and towels them off. “Fine. You said you typically think of the image, right? Not the reflection?”

Valeriy nods. “I was surprised you differentiated between them, actually. Is there a difference?”

“Of course there is,” Mitya says, like this makes perfect sense. “The reflection isn’t real, but it possesses the visual qualities to trick the mind into believing it’s there. The image is the real thing, but you’re not looking at it at all. One of them is real but intangible, and the other is tangible but not real.”

Valeriy doesn’t quite get it. “You mean how right and left are reversed in a reflection?”

“Well, no,” Mitya says absently. Then he blinks. “Wait. Yes, actually. Exactly like that. Holy shit, exactly like that!”

If Valeriy was lost before, he must be twelve feet underground without a shovel now. Are they still talking about mirrors?

“That’s it!” Mitya continues, snapping his fingers. “That’s the problem! They let the light converge toward one central point, but at the same time, the blade is reflected—and each reflection is its own separate entity, which fragments its power instead of concentrating it!”

Valeriy frowns. “The—the mirrors?”

“For the concentration of stellar linchpin power into the sword,” Mitya says, all in a rush. His hands fumble wildly with every single item on the table before they finally reach his notebook. “Oh my god. We’ve been trying to use the—well, they’re like mirrors, metaphorically—we’ve been trying to use them to conduct power into the sword. But they’ve been channeling power into the reflection of the sword, not the image of the sword. So it’s all backwards, when it reaches the sword itself. Oh, I have to—”

And suddenly, just as he touches pen to paper, his hand freezes.

This is even stranger than his sudden burst of inspiration. “What is it?” Valeriy says.

“No,” Mitya says, his voice faint. “No, no, no. Shit.” He looks at his beloved pen like it’s a weapon in his hands; then he hurls it across the room with uncharacteristic cruelty. “Shit.”

“You were saying something about the… sword?”

“Metaphysical sword,” Mitya says tightly. “Stop talking. Don’t—don’t talk about it.”

This must be the weapon he’s been building. Valeriy would have expected him to talk about it more, actually, but he gets the feeling that Mitya’s been trying to distance him from Project Mistilteinn, purposely keeping him in the dark. He opens his mouth to ask about it, but—

—he’s dizzy. He needs to sit down. Needs to sit down. Needs to sit down somewhere and—

“No,” Mitya rasps. “God, no, no, I’m so sorry, I should—Valeriy, no—”

“It’s fine,” Valeriy says, but his voice comes out strange, half-underwater. “I’m just… tired. I need to sit down.”

“You can’t,” Mitya says, his eyes wide and wild and he always says he’s insane but now Valeriy almost understands; he’s losing it, losing it, losing it. “You can’t, you can’t, I didn’t even write it down, I didn’t do it, I didn’t mean to—VALERIY!”

The world goes red and black and red and black and white and Valeriy dies.

***

Mitya’s still dead when Valeriy wakes up.

It doesn’t look how he’d imagined. Not that he’d spent terribly long dwelling on how Mitya might look while he’s dead, but it’s a risk of the job, isn’t it? He’d always pictured Mitya would die with grace, would close his eyes gently and then sigh out one last breath and then he’d look peaceful and beautiful forevermore like he was asleep, only he wouldn’t wake up in the end.

Reality isn’t so sweet. Mitya is piled on the floor like a marionette with his strings cut, his fingers halfway to his pen, something dark under his fingernails. There’s blood covering the whole notebook page, like he’d died trying to cover up the words.

Valeriy feels sick.

It’s not like he hasn’t seen death before. He’s killed people, killed them and buried their bodies in shallow snow graves and walked away. But this is different. This is Mitya. Mitya, the star-eyed, not-quite-divine genius he’s been entrusted with. Mitya, who makes him feel like he simultaneously has everything and nothing left to learn.

His hands shake when he stands up—when did he sit down?—and his legs feel unsteady. But he can’t think of anything else to do, so he drags himself to the kitchen counter.

With nothing else to do, he stumbles through the motions of trying to make tea. There’s a vague, unsettled feeling in his stomach that has less to do with Mitya’s dead body and the bloodstains in his notebook, and more to do with his own memory. He feels like he’s missing something. Something older, that he should have already known.

His hands slip on the teaspoon he bought back when he’d first moved in. Twice as much tea as he’d meant to make falls into the pot.

Valeriy can’t be bothered to take it out again. He sets twice as much water to boil. Maybe he’ll drink it all, or maybe he’ll let it go cold. Who cares? He’s made his bed, and he’ll have to lie in it now; which is a strange thing to think about tea, but perhaps it’s about something else, and that’s what he’s forgetting.

The water boils for five minutes before he notices. He quickly pours it into the pot, and steam curls up around his face, comforting him.

He thinks, just then, of Mitya looking out the window. He remembers his breath fogging up the glass, his mouth soft and his eyes heavy, and his chest hurts. The sickness returns at full force. Oh god. Oh god. Oh—

“—Sarge?”

The tension vanishes from his body, like someone’s simply snapped everything holding him together. “You’re okay,” he says, the words rushing out before he can stop them. “You’re okay. You didn’t…?”

Mitya laughs, more wretched than amused. The blood has somehow made its way into his hair, and he looks terrible. His right hand is clenched around his left, so tight that his fingers are shaking. His left nails are dark with something that might be his own blood, might be ink from his pen, might be something else entirely.

Valeriy fumbles for something to say, and comes up empty. His legs are still unsteady, and he has the vague urge to sit down, but he won’t, he won’t, he can’t.

“Orange pekoe,” Mitya says, peering into the teapot.

Valeriy frowns at him. “It isn’t called that.”

“It should be,” Mitya argues, through his raspy voice. He clears his throat. “The tea is orange when you brew it.”

“It isn’t orange. It’s amber.”

Mitya looks up again. “You made enough for me, too.”

Oh. Valeriy supposes he did. “I didn’t mean to,” he says, which he realizes sounds ridiculous. He quickly changes tracks. “Dying isn’t an everyday occurrence. I think we’ve earned a tea break.” He lifts the pot and pours two cups, Mitya’s first and his own second.

Mitya looks down into his cup. His pale eyes swirl in the amber reflection. “Do you see now?” he says, barely above a whisper. “What I said, ages ago, about—killing people?”

Valeriy holds his teacup in his shaky hands. “No.”

A long pause. Mitya stares into his tea without drinking it. “It’s me,” he says at last. “On paper, it isn’t tied to any specific person, but it’s always me. I’m always the one who…” He inhales deeply, and looks up. “The numbers don’t lie. You think you’re a killer, but I…” His voice breaks, and he makes a choked sound.

Valeriy forgets all about their invisible divide and reaches out. He touches the back of Mitya’s left hand as delicately as he can, but Mitya still flinches. Valeriy waits for his breath to even out again, and then says, “Do you think I’m a bad person?”

Mitya inhales. “No.”

“And you know I’ve committed acts of violence.”

Mitya pulls his hand away. “I know what you’re doing. You’re going to compare us, and tell me that I’m not a bad person for—god, for causing the deaths of my own—” He takes a shuddering breath. “Even you.”

He’s getting that feeling again, like Mitya is eight steps ahead of him and he’s stumbling in the dark behind him. “That would have been smart. I was actually going to tell you about the first fight I ever started, but perhaps this isn’t the opportune moment.”

Mitya looks so startled that he actually laughs. “What?”

“Another time,” Valeriy says, embarrassed. “I misjudged.”

“No, no, tell me,” Mitya says. His fist is still clenched tight, but his nails aren’t digging into his palm so hard anymore. “I’d like to know. Who was it?”

“My sister’s boyfriend.”

Mitya nods eagerly. “Was he mistreating her? Cheating? Did you get his ass?”

“No,” Valeriy says. “As a matter of fact she liked him very much. They got married, and now they have three dogs and a mead-brewing business.”

Mitya gapes at him.

“Also, I lost that fight,” Valeriy continues. “He punched me in the face, and broke my nose. My sister was upset with him, so she broke his nose back for me. We got along quite well after that.”

“You’re telling me your sister owns a brewery. And you don’t drink.”

“…”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Mitya says, and for some reason he smiles into his teacup. “The more I learn about you, the less I believe.”

“You know I’m a terrible liar.”

“I do.” Mitya pauses for a moment, and looks at him with something strange in his eyes. “Hey. Thank you.”

Valeriy frowns. “For the tea?” He hadn’t even meant to make it. It was just instinct.

Mitya smiles again. “Sure.” He pushes his teacup away—when did he drink it? Valeriy was sure he was just staring into it, but it’s all gone now—and holds his own hand again, like he’s trying to contain it.

He must be going to the sink to clean it off. “Let me help,” Valeriy offers. “The blood’s starting to dry in your hair. I can wash it out.”

“My hair?” Mitya says, suddenly alarmed. “Do you know how much I pay for this dye job? And these goddamn curls?”

He sounds more worried about his hair than he did about actually fucking dying. Valeriy rolls his eyes. “Hold still. I’ll heat up some water.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Mitya says, crossing his arms. His hand tracks blood onto his shirt, but he doesn’t notice. “I got the perm done too recently to fuck it up. You’re washing it with my purple shampoo.”

“I’m still washing it?”

“You offered,” Mitya says. “No take backs.”

Valeriy frowns. He’s certain that Mitya can wash his own hair. In fact, he’d probably do a better job than Valeriy, who has never gotten his hair professionally treated in his life, and has no idea how to care for it. “Alright,” he says anyway, and goes to retrieve the shampoo from Mitya’s bathroom.

He doesn’t go into Mitya’s bedroom often. Why would he? So he’s surprised to find that it’s unlike the rest of the house. Where he’d expected the bed to be a mess, it’s made neatly, the sheets almost hotel-perfect. The books are perfectly filed in place, and the floor is spotless. The bathroom shelves, too, are ordered alphabetically by product, like he’s trying to keep everything under his control.

It’s strange. The whole room is almost unnaturally perfect, not lived-in at all. No wonder Mitya’s always in the living room, or sprawled on the couch. He must not feel at home in this room, where everything fits neatly in its place.

He brings the shampoo bottle back out. Mitya’s scrubbing at his hand like a stain on a borrowed million-mora coat.

“Stop that,” Valeriy says, gentler than usual. “You’ll make yourself bleed again.”

Mitya grips his hand tight. He says nothing.

So they’re back to silence. Valeriy takes his hand, lets him flinch away from the touch before he gets used to it. Then he slowly directs it underneath the water, until the blood-ink-whatever-it-is begins to seep from him like machine oil, and eventually until it all washes away.

Mitya is uncharacteristically quiet as Valeriy works. He looks at his own hands like he’s watching everything happen to someone else.

“Your hair, now,” Valeriy says, afraid to shatter the silence. “May I…?”

Instead of responding, Mitya just nods. His eyes waver, and then fall closed.

The hair-washing is unwieldy, but Valeriy manages. He targets each of the spots of blood, which form the pattern of his left hand running through his hair. Slowly, he works the purple shampoo into each half-dried clump of blood, and washes it with warm water until it melts away and leaves his hair pristine again, pale and shimmering like pure snow.

As he washes the last of the reddish shampoo out of his hair, he thinks, oddly enough, of the first time they met. He’d seen Mitya before—everyone had; they put his face on posters for a while, back when his research was new and exciting. Before they implemented Project Stuzha. He always seemed larger than life in the portraits, like he could walk on clouds if he desired. But in real life he’s not infallible at all, and that’s what Valeriy is for, isn’t it? Keeping his fallibility in check.

He rinses the last of the blood from his hair. “Done. You can open your eyes.”

Mitya blinks his eyes open.

“What did you do to your hand, anyway?” Valeriy asks. “If it’s bleeding that much, I should take a look at it.”

Mitya recoils like he’s been burned. “No! No.” He inhales. “I’ll be fine. I don’t need anything. Don’t look.”

“You do not look fine.”

“I’m hardly going to ask you for anything else,” Mitya says, turning away again. “You’re already too good to me. I know it’s your job, but…”

“It isn’t,” Valeriy says, quiet. “My job is many things, but it isn’t this.”

Mitya’s hair drips when the laugh shudders through him. “You’re terrible,” he says, voice thick.

Valery knows he doesn't mean it, so he waits for the rest.

“Can I ask for something really, truly ridiculous?” And he doesn’t wait, because they both already know what Valeriy’s answer will be. He just continues: “Would you sing something?”

Valeriy falters. This hadn’t been on the list of things he was ready for. “What?”

“Anything,” Mitya says in a rush. “Just—I don’t care. Whatever drinking songs you learned in military school, or maybe something your sister likes. Anything. Please.”

He’s still larger than life, even now. Valeriy can’t sing and never could, but he hums some nameless tune anyway, something his brother-in-law played on the guitar back when they had matching broken noses. He thinks it used to be a love song, but somewhere along the way the message might have changed.

Mitya puts his head in his hands and cries.

Valeriy expects the tears to run red with blood, but they’re clear. When Mitya finally lifts his head, Valeriy sees the truth: the skin of his palm is smooth. There was never blood on his hands after all.

***

“Don’t go,” Mitya says, when Valeriy takes him back to his bedroom.

Valeriy turns back and looks at him, puzzled. “Where would I go? I live here.”

“You know what I mean.”

Valeriy does know. He breathes out into the quiet, and lets the space between them dwindle down to nothing.

Mitya breathes out with him. “You mean something to me,” he says, like it’s a secret or something. “I’d miss you, if…”

“I know,” Valeriy says. “You said that to me, the first time.”

Mitya laughs wetly. “It wasn’t the first.”

“Oh.” This makes sense, he supposes. He never thought to ask, but maybe this is why Mitya keeps him at arms’ length from his research. Not distrust at all, but something gentler, more round-edged.

They stand there in their strange, silent truce for a moment. Valeriy takes a breath, lets it out. He hears Mitya doing the same.

“I don’t want to sleep,” Mitya says at last. “Can we just…?”

It’s almost a relief. Valeriy doesn’t want to sleep either, not after that. “I could dry your hair,” he offers, although it’s mostly air-dried already.

Mitya shakes his head. “Sarge. Valeriy,” he says, his voice uneven. “Look, I—” And then whatever confidence he’d had left crumbles, and he gives up.

Valeriy leans closer, worried. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Mitya says. “Everything. I don’t know.”

Valeriy sits down next to him on the edge of his bed. “Try to explain it to me.”

Mitya looks at him, just briefly, then away again. “It’s not something I can explain.”

“Try anyway.”

“Okay, what the hell, sure.” Mitya exhales audibly, like he’s preparing himself for something. “So it’s like this,” he says, and then he hauls Valeriy in by the collar of his shirt and kisses him on the mouth.

Valeriy sits there, stunned, and fumbles with the sheets underneath his hands. He parts his lips with the vague thought of saying something, and then remembers that they’re still kissing, and forgets about everything else entirely. Mitya pulls his hands tighter like he wants to compress all the air between them into nothing. He kisses like he hasn’t done it in a while and has something to prove: slow, thorough.

When Mitya pulls away, his eyes are blown wide. The wet parts of his hair have dried incorrectly, and he looks sort of ridiculous. “Does that explain it?” he breathes, barely a question at all. “Do you understand now?”

He looks insane, and Valeriy likes it so much his chest hurts. “No,” he says. “Let me try again.”

Mitya beams. “I’m sure you’ll get it this time,” he says, with his stupid smile and his stupid hair, and Valeriy kisses him so hard that they topple backwards in sweet, domino-perfect unison.

***

He wakes up to something tracing along his hip, then wandering to his lower back, and it’s sort of comforting until the military training kicks in and he whips around and pins his assailant to the wall.

Mitya gives a sleepy, half-alert yelp. “Shit,” he mumbles, looking lost. “Uh, morning, Sarge…?”

Valeriy exhales and releases him. Relief and shame course through him in equal measure. “My apologies. I thought you were an assailant.”

To his surprise, Mitya’s mouth moves up into a small smile. “Hm! That makes us even. Remember? When you stopped shaving and—mmph!”

It isn’t even the scarf, this time. Valeriy puts his hand over Mitya’s mouth himself. It’s shockingly effective; he goes quiet immediately, and doesn’t even put up much of a protest. He just sits there looking up at Valeriy with his soft, sleepy eyes until he removes his hand.

“Okay, okay, I got it. No talking about that,” Mitya mutters. He combs his fingers through his hair. “How much of a disaster do I look like? Scale of one to ten.”

“Eight, but I expect it’ll be a ten when I’m done with you.”

Mitya looks highly impressed. “Sarge, you pervert!” he says delightedly. “I didn’t know you had it in you!”

“You’re one to talk.” He tilts his head pointedly at Mitya’s hands, the ones that were wandering across his back when he woke up. “What were you doing while I was asleep?”

“Oh. That’s—” Mitya coughs, looking faintly embarrassed. “Actually, I was looking at your scars here. They’re so uniform.” He runs his finger carefully along a single line on his lower back, just to the left of his spine.

“Stretch marks,” Valeriy explains. “I got taller on the late side, so they’re pronounced.”

Mitya hums. “I remember. The photo, from when you were eighteen.”

Valeriy nods. He’s never had much of an opinion on his stretch marks one way or the other. Nor his scars, for that matter. But Mitya looks fascinated, so he lets him continue staring. He doesn’t mind. He sort of likes when Mitya stares at him. “What’s so interesting about them?”

“Nothing,” Mitya says, too light to be the truth. Then, as he traces his hand higher, he says, “Some things are significant enough to leave a permanent reminder on your body. I just… I wonder which ones are important enough, and which ones aren’t.”

He’s clenching his left hand into a fist again, so tight that his knuckles have gone white.

It must mean something, but Valeriy doesn’t have the first clue what it could be. Maybe he’ll never understand this part of him. “I don’t think it’s about importance,” he says anyway. “It’s chance. If I had grown earlier, I’d be the same height I am now, without these marks. It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

His fingers curl against his palm. “You’re right,” he says, quieter. “It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

Valeriy reaches out and holds Mitya’s left hand in both of his. Mitya freezes in place, then slowly, so slowly, he lets go. His fingers uncurl gradually, until his palm is finally exposed again.

Valeriy slips their hands together before he can close himself off again. He doesn’t say anything else. Just holds his unmarked palm, and wonders vaguely what mark might have been there if things had been different.

Mitya breathes in, measured and deliberate. Then he says, “Thirty-five.”

Valeriy blinks. “What?”

Mitya sighs, exaggerated. “You asked how old I was.”

“I did?”

“A long time ago,” Mitya admits, sounding slightly embarrassed about it. “And not so directly. But you wanted to know, so. There.”

For how ordinary it is, something in Mitya’s voice makes it sound terribly important. “Okay,” Valeriy says, slightly lost. “I’m twenty-nine.”

Mitya huffs a laugh. “I know, you idiot. You told me already.”

“I thought it might bear repeating,” Valeriy says, feeling idiotic. “My age might have changed since you last asked.”

“I know your birthday.”

Valeriy supposes this is a valid point. He had just been trying to offer information of equal value, a habit from military exchanges. “The difference isn’t that bad,” he says instead, mostly to fill the silence. “Once my birthday passes, we’ll both be in our thirties.”

Mitya’s laughter vibrates through his chest and between their joined hands. “And somehow you still act older.”

Valeriy frowns. “If you don’t like my hobbies, you can tell me directly.”

“No, no,” Mitya says, still smiling. He squeezes Valeriy’s hand. “Actually, I think it’s nice. It makes you feel… I don’t know. Real.”

Valeriy gets the sickening sense that Mitya doesn’t have a lot of confidence in what’s real or not, these days. He sighs and lets go of Mitya’s hand at last; still unmarked, still bloodless. “Shall we eat breakfast?” he says. “I don’t have any more strawberries, but I bought mountain apples.”

Mitya looks at him incredulously.

“What?”

Mitya makes half a laugh. “You’re so,” he says, and then rephrases: “You know I was trying to talk about it, right? About—this?”

“What is there to talk about? I already promised you I’m not going anywhere.”

“Well, you’re supposed to talk about it,” Mitya says, like this should be obvious.

“Okay,” Valeriy says. “I’ve been in love with you for the last two years, and would like to be in a romantic relationship with you. May I cut up the apple now?”

Mitya stares at him, struck silent.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Valeriy says, and leaves for the kitchen, where apples await.

Moments later, Mitya comes sliding into the kitchen in his silly slippers and his pajamas, no houserobe. “Hold on! You can’t just say that!”

Valeriy doesn’t even look up from the cutting board. “Which part?”

“You know which part!”

“I think I can cut apples whenever I like.”

Mitya buries his face in his hands and makes a noise like a dying bird. “Oh my god. I can’t believe you,” he mutters. “Can’t you be at least a little romantic with it?”

“I’m making sure you don’t fall ill from a lack of vitamins. I think that’s romantic.”

Mitya groans and leans against the counter next to him. “I hate you,” he says. “I hate you and I want to keep you around forever and I’m also in love with you. I need a fucking drink.”

“See?” says Valeriy, sliding the apple slices toward him. “Yours wasn’t very romantic either.”

Mitya aggressively crunches into an apple slice. Valeriy sits with him and eats the other half of the apple, which he hasn’t sliced. He prefers the texture of whole apples to slices, but Mitya likes anything with effort put into it, so they share two different halves of the same whole.

The morning rolls over them slowly. Valeriy makes tea—not ceylon, this time, because he doesn’t think he’s ready yet. Better go with darjeeling for now, at least until his own ghost sitting in the chair falls further behind him.

“So what’s on the plan for today?” Mitya says eventually, once he’s done with his half of the apple slices.

“Mm. I started a crossword yesterday,” Valeriy says. “I want to finish it. We need to buy more conditioner. Later today I’ve got a meeting with my soldiers’ company to oversee their new training regimen. After that, I thought we could go out to dinner.”

“Those are the same things we always do.”

“Yes,” Valeriy says. “Did you expect something else?”

Mitya pauses. He looks slightly conflicted, but says, “I don’t know.”

“Do you want things to change?”

Mitya’s fingers tap against his left palm, but he stops himself before he digs his nails in again. “No,” he says, quiet. “No, I really don’t.”

“Then they don’t have to,” Valeriy says. He takes their plates to the sink, and Mitya doesn’t follow him.

“You really think—nothing will change?” Mitya says from behind him. His voice sounds odd, like he’s suppressing something. Like there’s something Valeriy still doesn’t know; something he forgot about a long time ago. “You’re sure?”

“I won’t change,” Valeriy promises. He can’t say the same for the rest of the world, but at least he can offer this. He’s worn the same uniform for three years. He’s sure he can wear it for a few more. If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s stability.

Mitya’s smile doesn’t quite have his heart in it. “I know you won’t,” he says, heartbreakingly fragile. “That’s all I can ask for, huh?”

He doesn’t promise the same thing himself. Valeriy knew he wouldn’t. He’s always running, running, and one day he’ll run where Valeriy can’t chase him, and that’ll be that. One day Mitya will run away, and he’ll finish the job, or die trying. Valeriy half-wonders if he should be scared of him. Half-wonders if it’s too late already.

“Never mind,” Mitya says, his eyes softening again. He leans over Valeriy’s shoulder, looking at the half-finished crossword. “What clues are you stuck on? Maybe I’ll know the answer.”

Valeriy thinks back vaguely to how this all began. What had Mitya meant, when he said Project Mistilteinn was on hold until—until what? Until they could kill—someone. He can’t remember. He doesn’t know if he ever did remember.

(But Mitya isn’t the killer, between the two of them. Right?)

“Hello?” Mitya says, waving a hand in front of his face. “Are you going to read me the clue or what?”

Valeriy inhales. He makes his choice.

“The man I want to spend the rest of my life with,” he says. However long or short that will be, he thinks privately, with a resolution so strong it’s almost peaceful. A soldier’s loyalty, given for life, given without reservations.

Mitya smiles like he’s just seen the sun for the first time in months. “Hmm,” he says, leaning closer. “How many letters?”

“Five.”

“That’s a damn shame,” Mitya says through his mirror-bright smile. “Because my name is actually six letters, if we’re getting technical. Hey, what’s that look for, Sarge?”

“Mitya.”

Mitya grins up at him. “Yeah?”

“Mitya,” he repeats. “That’s the answer.”

“You’re sure?” says Mitya, with an odd, significant look.

“I’m sure,” says Valeriy.

Mitya’s fingers uncurl from his left palm, and his eyes soften, just a little. “Alright,” he says, and reaches for his pen. He hasn’t touched it since he’d thrown it across the room, but now he picks it up with his steady hand and begins writing his own name, right where it belongs.

Ink drips onto the paper, permanent and damning. Underneath his touch, the letters bloom to life.