Archive of Our Own

When he wakes up, he does so with a lingering dream of wading through marshland. He feels heavy, like his mind is full of fog, and it takes a good minute for Artemy to realise he’s not still in the swamp behind the Factory.

It still feels like he’s covered in water, his mind confused why he’s laid down in the river, but when he opens his eyes there’s a grey-coloured roof above him. He’s dry, and warm, and not in the Gorkhon at all.

The memories of the night before start trickling in, and the situation starts to make sense. Of course. Fucking morphine. At least it makes for a good night’s sleep, because for as sore as parts of his body begin reminding him that he is, once the initial confusion passes, he feels well-rested and alert.

Alongside this alertness comes the realisation he’s not alone. There’s another body on top of his, pinning him to the mattress with a pleasant weight, and that would explain the heaviness. Beside him, bachelor Dankovsky lets out a long, sleep-hoarse breath against his neck.

“Morning,” Daniil mutters. The hand he’s got splayed out over Artemy’s chest runs a few fingers over his collarbone, opening up far more memories in its wake.

He echoes the greeting, distracted by a long string of images in his mind. The chase, the aftermath, how he’d limped his way back to the Lair bleeding, Daniil—

Daniil. Shudker, Daniil. Giving him morphine, stitching him up, yelling at him, getting on top of him. As his body fully starts coming back to him, Artemy feels his pulse go up, remembering hands on his body and an insistent mouth on his, demanding before pulling back and leaving him yearning.

As the male body has a mind of his own, it doesn’t take much for a reaction to set in, shocking him wide awake with the realisation he has quite a situation to deal with.

Not just the fact that bachelor Dankovsky is all but entangled with him, face in his neck, arm over his chest and one of his legs in between Artemy’s own, but that his mind is occupied by dissecting every moment of the night before in minute detail.

Between his legs, there’s a familiar warmth pooling. He’s quite awake now, and needing to make a rather quick decision, he thinks. But when he turns his head to the side, Daniil looks up at him with sleepy eyes, and he finds himself pinned to the spot with another kind of want instead.

“Daniil,” he whispers, not wanting to disturb the air with anything louder. Those eyes remain calm, if a little hazy, and he can’t look away.

“Artemy,” the man responds, voice still a little hoarse from sleep. The thumb on his chest runs over his skin. It feels like electricity. “How are the stitches?”

Oh, right. Artemy almost forgot the dual stabbing, which is a sad testament to his current mental state. His cheeks grow warm as the throbbing in his side makes itself known, but in truth, it isn’t as bad as it could have been.

“Not great,” he admits, because he’s not going to start the day off with a lie. “But I’ve been through a lot worse. It seems your stitches are doing their job. Thank you again.”

There’s a hint of a smile on Dankovsky’s face, and while he’s not moving his head off Artemy’s shoulder, he pulls back a little bit to better be able to look at him. “I think you would have had to thank me once, in order to thank me again, Burakh.”

He frowns. “I thanked you yesterday.”

“Did you?” Daniil is fully smiling at him now. The hand on his chest is moving, fingertips delicately tracing their way up his neck. They leave goosebumps in their wake, and Artemy gets the sneaking suspicion he’s being teased. “I can’t seem to remember it.”

It’s tantalising, borderline taunting, although he can’t say how much of that is a result of his own mindset and how much is intentional. Either way it makes him want to close his eyes, so he does, and his reward is having the back of bunt nails dragged over the skin of his throat.

“Then one of our memories is lacking,” he breathes, trying not to frown, and failing. He still tilts his head away from the touch, towards Dankovsky’s face, in an attempt to coax those fingers into continuing. He wants more, and at least that he knows for a fact is a memory. There’s no argument on Earth to be made to the contrary. “Daniil.”

“Yes?” It’s barely a whisper, a breath of a word. He feels the warm air of it against his skin, over his lips and his cheek from how close they are, and it’s so easy to move forward.

When he does, Daniil is there to meet him, and while the initial meeting of their lips is slightly clumsy and off-centre, he quickly pulls his head up to fix it.

With Dankovsky’s mouth against him, soft and chaste in the early morning air, Artemy’s hands remember themselves. One of them has been holding onto his bachelor’s waist, he realises, pinned under his weight, but the other one is free to move as it pleases. He pulls that one up, pushing fingers into Daniil’s hair and then using that hold to pull him in closer.

Neither of them are moving much, other than a finger starting to trace circles onto the spot where his neck meets his shoulder, but Artemy turns the long press of their lips against each other’s into a series of smaller kisses. Every time, Daniil feels the same, warm and soft and willing, and when he dares to make a gentle nip to his bottom lip, his mouth falls open ever so slightly.

When he makes a soft nose at the feeling of Artemy’s tongue against his lips, a barely-voiced breath he lets out, Artemy tells him, “I said I’d show you.”

“Antagonising me already, Burakh?” Daniil mumbles, moving his hand to the side back of Artemy’s head to hold him in place. “And here I thought you were giving up on your sharp edges for the morning.”

“Who said anything of sharpness?” Artemy counters, running his hand through black hair as if to prove his point. “I only mean you need not worry for morphine anymore, bachelor.”

“Ah, yes,” Daniil breathes before pressing closer to push his tongue into Artemy’s mouth, sliding against his own. It sends electricity through his chest, down into the pit of his stomach and further south still, and he finds himself gripping onto the fabric of Daniil’s shirt behind his back. “As if we’d be here if there was a worry in my mind. I’ll have you know, I didn’t appreciate your insistence last night – despite your convictions, you were in fact given the regular dose, although you seem to have forgotten the impact your size would have on its effects.”

He's not sure if that’s a height jab, or if Dankovsky is calling him fat, but either way it amuses him enough to draw a snort out of him. “Seems like you forgot about how proper dosage works in relation to body weight, then, bachelor Dankovsky.”

Their kiss ends, and a hand on his jaw tilting his head back makes Artemy open his eyes. Above him, Daniil is watching with an amused expression on his face. It’s tantalising, which is almost wild, because he’s fairly certain it’d have driven him mad on any other day. “Are you trying to tell me you’d have appreciated it if I gave you enough to pass out?”

Almost wild, because Artemy has come to accept that he’s a moron, who should have accepted the truth of his own desires a long time ago. Oh, if he was written into the classics, he could lament the time he’s wasted. Weeks he spent entertaining this rivalry, when he could have had Daniil like this, in his arms and in his bed.

“I don’t believe you held back for my sake,” Artemy tells him, daring opposition with a jut on his jaw, “but I’m glad you did nonetheless.”

“It still made you honest enough,” Daniil sighs, and now he knows he’s being mocked. He doesn’t take offence, though, because it’s having an effect on him that he thinks they can harness into something brilliant. “In vino, veritas. Do you even remember the things you confessed to me?”

In another situation, a sentence like that might strike fear into the heart of a man; it certainly has in Artemy’s, in the past, on days when his head had been pounding and his mouth felt full of foul-tasting cotton.

But this is Dankovsky, and he thinks he’s starting to get to know this man on a significantly more personal level — or maybe he always did, and was just too blinded by his own incompetence to see it. Regardless, he can recognise an attempt to rile him up when he sees it, but what he also sees is the soft but intense glint in Daniil’s eyes that hint at other intentions.

“What?” he responds, boldly moving the hand on his bachelor’s back downwards. Nothing gambled, nothing gained, right? As he continues, he pushes his fingers into the waistband of his trousers, loosened from the lack of a belt and being slept in. “How I haven’t gotten you out of my head since I first saw you? Or my insistence I’d still want to drag you to bed, come morning?”

He’s not quite grabbing Daniil’s ass, but he’s not far off, and the way it makes the man’s jaw works tells him it was an excellent choice. “I don’t see you dragging anyone anywhere, in your current state,” Daniil tells him, letting go of Artemy’s jaw to place his hand firmly in the centre of his chest. “You should calm down, Vorakh.”

“Oh, is this too much, now?” Artemy asks him. His tone might be teasing, but he does pause, stilling the one hand and taking the other out of Dankovsky’s hair to, after a moment’s deliberation, run the back of a knuckle over his jaw. “Last night made me assume…”

“If the answer was yes, do you believe I’d still be here instead of leaving in the middle of the night while you slept?” The question is asked bluntly. It almost makes him sigh, because it’s enough of a step away from the teasing to be able to calm the mood slightly, but he’s not that much of an asshole. “Metabolism nonwithstanding, you were out like a light, Artemy. I could have robbed you blind and you wouldn’t even have turned over.”

“Your pillowtalk skills are unmatched, bachelor,” Artemy tells him dryly. He thinks he can see a flush go over Daniil’s face, which he wants to revel in, so he lets himself grin with a shake of his head. “Come here.”

He tugs his partner down, thrilled when he goes willingly, but intentionally keeps their kisses soft still. Awkwardly put as it may have been, if it represented his true feelings on the matter, Artemy has no desire to go too fast. As much as he wants to, and the amount is high, they’ve already gone back and forth with arguments bordering on death threats for weeks; he’s fairly certain they won’t die if they take five minutes longer than they must.

Besides, there’s a part of him that’s enjoying this, the unspeakable thrill of the situation he’s in, Daniil Dankovsky in his bed, in his Lair, openly wanting him and slowly letting Artemy take what he’s offering. There might be a part of him that wants to rush to the end, to devour Dankovsky from the inside out to see the finale, but his heart and groin are thoroughly enjoying their slow build-up in the security of that knowledge.

“You’ve been stabbed twice,” Daniil mutters against his lips, which is such a mood killer of a sentence it almost makes Artemy burst out into laughter. “I’m not going to have you pull sutures just because of my desire to see you ad metam properate—”

“Are you suggesting we stop, then?” Artemy mutters back, before moving his head up to be able to slide his tongue against Daniil’s. The hand he’s got down his trousers demonstratively pushes his hips down, and the way it makes Dankovsky’s breath stutter tells him he’s not been imagining the hard outline he’s felt against his thigh.

It derails their conversation for a moment, because Daniil rocks his hips against him, and the drag of his erection against Artemy’s leg effectively shuts down any lingering words on his tongue. He grunts into their kiss, hand finally moving down the last few inches to be able to grab onto his ass, and the next roll of those hips is a mutual effort.

As Dankovsky moans into his mouth, low and needy, Artemy splays his hand out over his cheek to pull him in so close their lips end up pressed so hard together they almost can’t keep kissing. But he’s finding it hard to allow the other man to pull back enough to get anything properly done about it when Daniil’s own finger start trailing south, and it’s all he can do not to rock into the air with all the desperation of a teenager.

It’s been a long time since he was touched this way, longer than he’d like to admit, and it’s not taking long for it to drive him insane with want. Perhaps that should be embarrassing, but in the heat of the moment it’s hard to care, when there’s a hand quickly descending over his body. His skin feels like it’s burning as Daniil roughly pushes his fingers over his stomach, carefully avoiding the bandages over his ribs as he goes, and when he finally reaches his pants and cups a hand over his cock every thought he had left disappears.

“Khөөrkhen,” he whines against Dankovsky’s mouth, surprising himself by how desperate he sounds. The palm of the hand presses down on the head of his dick, going down over the length of him so hard it almost hurts. He’s been hard since he woke up, through their increasingly excitable morning it’s nearly turned painful, and going from nothing to this is almost too much. He presses his head back against the pillow to be able to breathe. “Fuck, Daniil, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” Daniil immediately responds, his own voice breathy and firm, which does unspeakable things to Artemy in the moment. He repeats his movement, excruciatingly slowly pushing the heel of his hand over Artemy again, and this time he can’t help but buck his hips into the touch. “Stay still, Artemy.” It sounds like a warning. His head is spinning. “If you can’t control yourself, I’m stopping.”

“What the fuck are you talking about,” he gasps, turning his head back for a kiss. When it doesn’t come, he opens his eyes, and the face that meets him is so intensely focused he’s stunned into obeying. Hips stopping, Artemy stares into Daniil’s calm face, mesmerised by the look in his eyes.

If the situation was any other, he’d say he was in trouble, but now it instead speaks of a promise that does absolutely nothing to calm him down. He’s never seen anything like it, focus so strong it almost borders on anger, while having nothing but desire around the edges.

Oh, he wants to know where that look is going to take him.

“Sutures,” Daniil tells him sharply. His hand hasn’t moved, but it’s not moving, staying still between Artemy’s leg like the worst kind of tease. “If you move too much, they’re going to tear, and I’m telling you this once: I will not lay with a bleeding man. Do you understand?”

“Oh, fuck you,” Artemy groans, entirely on shortsighted instinct. “I’m not going to die from—”

Now the hand is moving, and he finds his jaw being grabbed again, Daniil squinting down at him. “That is a perfectly reasonable boundary to have, Vorakh,” he says, “and if you’re going to challenge it, we’re pausing this until I take the stitches back out.”

The threat leaves him at a crossroads; he can choose to argue, which he knows would be stupid, because if there’s one thing Daniil isn’t known to him for, it’s empty threats. On the other hand, not arguing would feel like giving in, and Artemy doesn’t like giving in.

So he settles for what he thinks is a middle ground, which is sourly saying, “if I’m not allowed to move, how exactly are you thinking this will happen?”

What he doesn’t expect is for the question to be met with a smile. Or is it a smirk? He can’t exactly tell, but combined with the kiss to his cheek that comes next, he’s left blinking in confusion.

“I’ll show you,” Daniil tells him calmly, seemingly perfectly happy again, “but only if you do what I tell you.”

“That sounds an awful lot like blackmail,” Artemy points out. His bedpartner laughs, and now he’s fully confused, if admittedly intrigued.

“Oh, dear Haruspex.” It’s a sigh, spoken against his ear as Dankovsky leans in close, and if the shivers weren’t enough to keep him silent, the nickname surely is. He only thinks he’s called him that once before, and it was when he was trying to make the hardest decision in his life. The contrast is stark, and it takes him out of himself for a moment. “I think there is a lot you could learn.”

With that, he places a kiss to Artemy’s throat, while the hand on his jaw goes back to the button in his trousers. Artemy doesn’t know what to say, so he stays quiet, trying to get his heart under control. Dankovsky is mostly undressed, by his standards, but he’s acutely aware of the fact that his own clothing situation is very unequal.

Inexplicably, it sends a thrill through his body. There’s something about it, Dankovsky making quick work of the button and zipper of his pants while still wearing a full outfit, that sends a jolt through his stomach. He imagines what it’d look like if he doesn’t stop there, stripping Artemy out of his last pieces of clothing, leaving him naked while he’s still in a decent state.

He’s never been drawn to something like this before, but now he is. Daniil doesn’t even manage to unzip him before Artemy finally pulls his arm free from under the man to push his trousers down. He chickens out at his underwear, but it doesn’t serve much of a purpose.

Pausing for only a moment, Daniil lets out a short, “oh,” and then he’s moving. Pushing himself up, he doesn’t waste much time before hooking his fingers not just into the waist of Artemy’s pants, but his boxers as well; so much for courage, Artemy thinks, as his bachelor unceremoniously pulls his final pieces of clothing off of him. Thank the heavens he slept without socks on, because that might be the only thing that could have made him feel more naked.

It happens so fast he doesn’t really have time to think, suddenly he’s just in his bare skin on the bed, Dankovsky on his knees by his feet as he discards the garments on the floor, and when his eyes unashamedly travel all the way up his body he feels his face flush. Up until this point he hasn’t felt nervous once, but this is a lot, and it’s only starting to sink in.

The only thing he’s wearing are the bandages on his upper body, and it allows Daniil a perfect view of every part of him; from his toes to the top of his head, not to mention where his cock is still hard against his stomach. Artemy isn’t normally a self-conscious man, but he’d consider himself insane if he didn’t find the situation at least a little intimidating.

So he quietly says, “Daniil,” hoping it doesn’t sound pathetically needy, but he needs this moment to end and he isn’t sure how else to do it.

Eyes snapping up from where they’d been tracing over his thighs, that same focused look is back on Daniil’s face. “You’re going to drive me to madness, Artemy,” he says, and then he’s moving, and Artemy’s heart is going to pound out of his chest.

Because he isn’t coming back up to him, but pushing one of his legs out to settle in between them, and the only warning he gets for what’s about to happen to him is a cool hand on the base of his cock before Daniil wraps his lips around it.

It’s unexpected, and hot, the warm, wet mouth around him giving him no time to adjust before Dankovsky runs his tongue over the head, squeezing him with one hand while pushing his hips down with the other. It’s a lot, too much, too fast, he’s too sensitive after the last half an hour of kissing and petting and feeling himself ache for any kind of touch, and he ends up almost arching off the bed.

Pulling his head back as fast as he’d gone down, Daniil tells him sharply, “stay still,” like it’s an order.

“Fuck, emshen,” is all Artemy can tell him in response, hands scrambling for purchase against the course linen of the bedsheets. One of them grabs onto the pillow, a white-knuckled grasp doing its best to distract him from the overwhelming urge to buck into Dankovsky’s mouth. “Fuck, yes, sorry, I promise, I’ll—”

Cutting himself off when he’s once again taken in mouth, he bites down on his bottom lip to hopelessly try to suppress the groan attempting to escape his throat. Daniil is good, he brokenly realises, using the flat of his tongue to push Artemy’s cock against the roof of his mouth as he goes down properly. It makes every part of him surrounded, every inch of skin coming into contact with wet, warm, soft heat, and every movement draws increasingly desperate noises out of him.

He wants to reach down, grab onto Daniil’s head and hold him in place so that he can rock his hips into the feeling, to get more, but he knows he can’t. That knowledge isn’t helping his rapidly unravelling mental state, because it’s dangling his own desire in front of him on a stick that will pull away if he so much as twitches in its direction.

The man has called him stubborn, but it’s nothing compared to the absurd level of determination inside his bachelor, and Artemy is well-aware he doesn’t do empty threats. Right now, if he doesn’t do what he’s told and keeps himself from moving enough that Dankovsky is happy he’s not going to make his injuries worse, this man — this stupidly principled, infuriating, captivating man who’s currently sucking his cock like it’s the next step in his life’s work — will probably walk back out and not return for days out of sheer spite.

He could laugh, if Daniil wasn’t bobbing his head and groaning around him, and instead he ends up letting his bottom lip go to let an open-mouthed moan into the air. “Daniil,” he begs, arms trembling from where he’s trying to hold on, lactic acid starting to make his whole body ache. “Daniil, please, shudker, noukherne, khөөrkhen, please—”

Pulling his head back up, which is the exact opposite of what he wanted, Dankovsky asks him, “you’ve called me that before. What does it mean?”

His hand is still on him, slowly stroking him from base to tip, where he slowly rolls all his fingers and his palm over the head before going back down again. Artemy has to lean his head back, eyes looking up towards the headboard for strength, because he thinks if he catches a glimpse of it he’ll burst into tears.

“It’s, ah,” he tries to speak, but then a tongue replaces the fingers when they travel back down his shaft, and the lack of a break makes him have to take a few panting breaths to collect himself. The heat pooling in his stomach is starting to coil, but he doesn’t want this to be over, so he tries to push the feeling down. “It’s. It’s hard to translate.”

“I want you to try,” Daniil tells him, like this is a normal conversation and his half of it isn’t being held around Artemy’s dick. He could laugh, and he actually does. It’s a surprise to himself, but it helps in pushing his rapidly approaching orgasm away, so he’s not going to complain.

“It’s— Noukherne,” he tries to start, but gets cut off with a groan when Daniil takes a moment to fully push his head back down his cock. Is it supposed to be some kind of retaliation? He doesn’t know, but it makes him brokenly whine out a, “Daniil, fuck, holy shit—” and screw his eyes closed.

It doesn’t help, instead appearing to just egg his partner on, because instead of stopping he continues down – and Artemy isn’t a small man, in several ways, he knows this. This isn’t the first time he’s hit the back of a bedmate’s throat, and it’s not the first time they’ve tried to push down further, even though that’s never something he expects or would ever ask for.

But Daniil is stubborn and determined, so he just pulls Artemy’s erection down with his hand to give him a better angle and in the next moment he feels himself push into the man’s throat like it’s nothing. Vaguely, maybe out of an obsessive desperation to last, he thinks of the anatomy of it – past the epiglottis, supraglottis, the parts of the larynx— surely not into the trachea, he’s not that full of himself, but fuck if it makes any difference to his mental state when he feels Daniil pull back, do it again, and then swallow around him.

It’s far too much, too much to even be able to moan about, and he ends up simply panting into the air. The hand that hasn’t twisted itself into the pillows by his head goes to the wall behind him, desperately clambering for purchase against anything solid as every muscle in Daniil’s throat — there are so many of them, strong from daily use, like the muscles in the jaw, the digastric and mylohyoid and why is he thinking about musculature — as he tries not to fall over the edge right then and there.

“Daniil,” he ends up gasping when he finds the wherewithal to, “Danya. Danya, please.”

He isn’t sure if he’s ever begged like this in his life, and he doesn’t even think about what he’s saying when slipping into nicknames they’ve never so much as broached before, but while all of this is happening his mind is haunted by the mental image of what Dankovsky looks like right now.

Knowing he could open his eyes and take a look any second isn’t helping the images disappear, but he’s fairly certain if he did, Daniil would look about as put-together as he always does. Red over the cheeks and wet around his mouth where his lips stretch over his cock, but the frown between his brows is probably the same as it always is and the hair hanging across his forehead may as well be from a particularly inconvenient gust of wind.

Artemy knows he’s got his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, and if he was still wearing his gloves and vest, bar their position, he could well be sitting at his desk with a microbial sample.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to know if he’s right, or that Daniil looking back up him even half as much of a mess as he himself is would do anything but send him crashing face-first into orgasm, but he doesn’t want to come yet, and so he cannot look.

Instead he makes his brain rattle off names of muscles and cartilage and the medical processes of swallowing, because otherwise this will end, and if it ends he might burst into tears even as he comes. “Danya, please,” he begs again, sounding terribly close to sobbing, when Daniil bobs his head again and Artemy feels the excruciating pleasure of his throat stretching out around him.

When he pulls back, all the way this time, until his mouth pops off Artemy’s cock with an incredibly indecent wet noise, the relief going through him is so strong it’s almost overwhelming. His breathing is still heavy, eyes tightly screwed shut, and he’s just now realising there’s a thin layer of sweat over his body rapidly working to cool him down.

It makes a small shiver go over him, and when he feels the bed dip as Daniil starts climbing up over him, he feels another wave of relief for the warmth coming off his body.

"Danya," Dankovsky repeats flatly. His cheeks would grow warmer if they could. Daniil's voice is a little hoarse, and his cock aches. “Don’t look like that. I don’t mind. Now tell me, what does it mean?”

Fucking hell, this man will be the death of him. “Noukherne,” he tries again, clearing his throat before taking a deep breath. He needs to calm down, and pulls his hand off the wall to scrub it over his face. “It’s like… Partner. I named my bull something similar, but it’s not… Noukher and noukherne is the difference between a partner and a close friend.”

It reminds him of something Daniil had said once, when he told Artemy the truth about Thanatica, and he hopes the meaning won’t be insulting. Above him, Daniil hums quietly, and when a knuckle runs over Artemy’s top lip, he opens his eyes.

Finally he gets to see what he looks like, and it’s a fucking lucky thing he hadn’t before, because he’s just as much of a put-together mess as he’d simultaneously hoped and feared. Lips swollen and red, like the faint and slightly patchy blush over his cheeks and nose, but Dankovsky’s eyes are as sharp as ever, framed by the rogue strands of hair hanging down over his forehead. Sweat has started to turn them wavy at the ends, and for a moment he’s shocked by learning a new detail about his bachelor’s appearance.

“And the rest?”

“Khөөrkhen,” Artemy says, not quite a whisper, but quiet and subdued. “Something like… Dear. You can use it as an adjective, if you want to say something is cute, but it’s more like… Darling, I guess.”

“Cute,” Daniil echoes, and Artemy isn’t sure if he’s calling him that or just repeating after him. “If I knew getting you into this state would bring out such praise, Artemy, I’d have done it long ago.”

At least his face can’t get any warmer, but he stays silent as Daniil moves his finger off Artemy’s mouth to take a hold on his chin. He wants to close his eyes again, and so he does, parting his lips slightly as his face gets tilted back.

“You look very good like this, Artemy Burakh.” The praise makes him want to groan, out of desire or bashfulness he knows not, and it escapes his lips before he can think. “Do you know how badly I desire you?”

How the hell is he supposed to respond to that? Dankovsky is playing games with him, he can tell, but while he’s not exactly an unwilling participant, that doesn’t mean he knows the rules well enough to play along. He wishes he did, that he could shoot something back to send the other man into the same state he’s in himself, but words fail him in regular circumstances. There’s no magical recovery to be found, here.

“I’d be worried if your actions weren’t a signal,” is the best he can come up with. Over him, there’s a small laugh. Artemy suddenly hates the rules imposed on him, because he wants to flip Daniil over and push him into the bed, kissing him within an inch of his life as Artemy shoves his trousers—

“When you’re no longer in a state of healing from an attack,” Daniil says, and Artemy wants to laugh desperately from the kind of shit this man thinks are normal things to say. It quickly dies in his throat when he continues, sitting down gently on Artemy’s stomach as he does, effectively limiting his breathing to shallow gasps of air in a manner soft enough to not make him feel like he’s being suffocated. “I want you to pin me down and fuck me, Artemy. I know well how much stronger you are, and how much you must be restraining yourself not to do it already, but once this is over…”

Hands trace the outline of the cut to his ribs, gently over the bandages, and it’s not that the pain is bad, but his eyes shoot open nonetheless. On top of him, Daniil’s eyes are sharp again, hungry with something that’s making him ache between his thighs and in the pit of his stomach. He’s barely even clocking the words being spoken, too occupied by the fact he can get a proper look at the man, from the eyes intensely stuck on his face down to where his own erection is bulging in his trousers.

Once he gets there, he can’t look away, and he’s again struck by the significant power imbalance between them. Daniil all but knows what he sounds like when he’s about to come down his throat, and Artemy hasn’t even gotten to see what his collarbones look like. Now, his bachelor is talking about being held down and fucked, when Artemy doesn’t know what he so much as looks like naked.

It clicks in his head, suddenly, because when Daniil starts talking again, now that Artemy’s looking – because of course he was waiting for him to look – he moves the hand not holding onto his jaw to his own groin. Of course, of course, that’s what this is about, not just some weird adherence to rules, how could he be so embarrassingly naïve—

Daniil has power over him, and he’s relishing it, even though they both know Artemy is far more than strong enough to flip it around on him the moment he wants to.

He now thinks all those threats of walking out were - in fact - empty, but the realisation his own injuries have been used against him doesn’t feel like a betrayal. Not only because the boundaries were incredibly well-founded, but mostly because it’s led him to figuring out a vital piece of information about his bachelor.

“You’re doing well holding back,” he tells Artemy, softly tracing his fingers over the bulge in his pants. It makes his breath hitch, but only barely, and there’s something grossly satisfying about knowing just how turned on by his own behaviour he is. “And I promise you, next time, you’ll get exactly what you want.”

Now, he knows how to play. “And if I don’t want to wait until next time?” Artemy asks, ignoring how unsteady his own voice still is as he moves both of his hands to Daniil’s thighs. He does it slowly, looking up at his face, because as certain as he is, he wants to make sure he’s not misconstruing things. It would make for a real shitty ending to a so far brilliant morning. “How are you going to stop me?”

The raised eyebrows he gets is exactly what he wants, and he runs a thumb over the inside of Daniil’s thigh out of spite. “I’m going to stop you,” Daniil says, leaning in over him in a warning way, “by walking out of here. I told you, if you start bleeding, we’re not doing this.”

“I might be injured,” Artemy tells him slowly, jutting his jaw out in defiance. Dankovsky’s other hand hasn’t moved, and neither of them are bringing it up, though surely both of them are well-aware. It gives him the confidence he needs to keep pushing, giddily relishing the way it makes blue eyes narrow at him. “But you’re not a stupid man, bachelor. I could roll us over right now if I wanted to, and you wouldn’t be able to stop me. I could spread your legs wide open,” he says slowly, boldly pushing himself up on one arm as he does, forcing Daniil back as he sits up. It makes him sit on Artemy’s lap, and the way his ass presses up against his still-hard cock is all the egging on he needs. “And I could open you up, and fuck you, and even if you wanted to get away, you would absolutely not be able to.”

“Is that a threat?” If that hand wasn’t still between his legs, and thank all the Gods in the world it still is, Artemy would probably be backing away so fast he’d end up naked in the Steppe. But it is, and Daniil’s eyes are growing dark in a very gorgeous way, and Artemy feels himself fizzle at the edges with bold confidence.

“Of course not,” he says, huffing out a small laugh. His eyes go from Daniil’s eyes to his mouth, and then back up again. “It’s a promise, bachelor Dankovsky.”

“It’s a brute of a promise,” Daniil tells him. Artemy moves his hands, up from his thighs to his hips, and when he slowly pushes Daniil back against his cock, the sharp intake of breath tells him it was the perfect choice.

“Are you trying to tell me it’s not appreciated?” Artemy asks him, leaning in to speak directly into Daniil’s ear as he does. Between them, nimble hands are undoing a button, and the knowledge of what he’s doing makes Artemy grip onto Dankovsky’s hips harder. “Let me tell you, Danya, that just as much as I enjoyed you forcing me to stay down as you sucked me off,” and there’s a shaky breath at that, “I think you would enjoy being held down just as much.”

“A brute,” the repetition comes, as though Daniil doesn’t have a hand around his own cock listening to Artemy speak. It feels like it makes no sense that this is one of the most erotic moments of Artemy’s life, considering some of the things he’s done in the past, but the intoxicating knowledge that he has a man — not just any man, this man, this insufferable, dignified, never-losing man — on his lap touching himself from nothing but Artemy whispering filth in his ear, is doing things to his ego and dick in equal measure. “Would you want me to beg for mercy, as well?”

“No,” Artemy tells him, wincing at the hardness of it. They don’t need to go there, he wants to stay in this moment, so he nips at Daniil’s earlobe to try to cover it up, letting one of his hands move up to press the tips of his fingers into the loosened waistband of his trousers. “I’d like you to beg for more, though. I’m expecting you to fight me on it, because you’re a ridiculous man with ridiculous rules about things, but if you’re trying to tell me you’d say no if I pushed you back and got on top of you right now, you’d be a liar and you know it.”

As he speaks, his hand travels lower, pressing into the cleft of Daniil’s ass insistently. The hand that was previously holding Artemy’s chin in place has moved to his hair, and then goes to his neck, Daniil holding on in seemingly any way that he can under the attention.

“Do you want that, Danya?” Artemy breathes, forcing his hand lower still, using the momentum to push his hips back again. It doesn’t do much, the awkward placement of his hand giving him little pleasure from the friction, but being rocked over his hips still seems to have an effect on Daniil, whose own slow movements seem to be speeding up. “Yeah?” He asks smugly, biting at the earlobe in front of him. “Would you like me to turn you over? Push you down and pull your trousers down? Tell me, khөөrkhen, were you offering to let me fuck you like I own you as a gift to me, or to yourself?”

“You’re presuming things you know nothing about,” Daniil tells him curtly, leaning back to meet his eyes. They’re half-lidded now, the slight redness over his cheeks turned into a full blush, and now the hair in his face is making him look deliciously dishevelled. “Careful, Burakh.”

“Why?” He asks, such a petulant question, but he follows the dare up by going all the way down, until his fingers reach the bottom of Dankovsky’s ass to press his fingertips flat against his hole. Daniil’s eyes immediately fall shut, and he groans under furrowed brows, and Artemy thinks he might fall in love right then and there. Not really, of course, he’s aware he’s just thinking that because he’s so turned on the rest of the world may not exist, but he’s in love with the effect he’s having on this man. “Would you like me to lay back down and let you get back into control? Or,” he says, leaning forward to steal a kiss from slack lips, “do you want to keep touching yourself on my lap until you come, while I tell you exactly what I’d like to do to you?”

Daniil laughs, moving his free hand back to Artemy’s face to push a thumb into his mouth. It’s an effective way to make him shut up, but not give in, and his response is to run his tongue over the pad of it. “You’re insufferable,” his bedpartner groans again, and then he rocks his hips forward into his hand and back into Artemy’s, and the next moan is shared between them.

He can’t do this anymore, so without thinking, he pulls his hand away to lift Daniil up by the hips. It clearly startles him, but Artemy defends himself mentally  with the fact that he’s only doing it so that he can put him back down in much the same place, just on the other side of his own erection.

It’s just a means to an end, but when he looks back up, Daniil’s eyes are alert, and the way he’d gripped onto Artemy’s skin to keep his balance doesn’t let up, and Artemy is pretty sure it’s not anger making him dig his fingers in.

So he throws whatever caution he had left to the wind, because they’ve talked enough about it at this point; he puts a hand on the small of his back to catch him, and the other in the middle of his chest, and he pushes Daniil back onto the bed without asking for permission.

He goes as expected, which is disoriented, arms flailing in a way that could be cute if it didn’t make Artemy want to devour him, and when he lands on his back his eyes are wide and unblinking. Not wasting any time, Artemy climbs on top of him, leaning down on one elbow to press their lips together before shoving his other hand into Daniil’s pants.

It’s rough, and completely inelegant, but it lets him get a hand around Dankovsky before he has a chance to say anything, and the feeling of smooth skin over hard flesh is so intoxicating he groans into the kiss he’s stolen for himself.

“Danya,” is what it sounds like, and then he says it again, because if he’s going to play at claiming this man as his own he may as well go all the way with it, moaning into Daniil’s mouth where he’s all but forced it open. “Fuck, Danya, my noukherne, you—”

Not about to play second fiddle, apparently, once he recovers from the surprise, Dankovsky’s response is fast and overwhelming. He whimpers, a noise so desperately needy it short-circuits Artemy’s brain and leaves him breathless, before wrapping both his arms around Artemy’s neck to pull him down.

He’s not about to resist, so Artemy pulls his hand away, pushing Daniil’s pants down like he’s wanted to this whole fucking day, and then holds him in place by the hip as he pushes down to grind their cocks together.

It’s largely inefficient, as far as friction goes, but that’s not what it’s about; it’s about the fact that Daniil is whispering his name into his mouth like it’s a prayer, and Artemy wants him to feel surrounded, smothered, like he has a promise to fulfil and an ego to satisfy.

Besides, he’s been teetering on the edge for a good twenty minutes or so, he’s not sure he could control himself further even if he wanted to.

That’s what leads him to start running his mouth, pushing his forehead into Daniil’s temple to speak directly into his ear while a hand reaches for one of his, pinning it into the mattress. That bit’s just for show, and he knows it, but he wants this to go well.

“Do you remember what I told you?” he says, low and unsteady from the exertion of keeping their momentum up, fucking Daniil without fucking him but still wanting to make it feel the same way on a psychological level. “Yesterday? You asked me what I was going to show you, and I didn’t answer.”

“Artemy,” Daniil says, sounding breathless, squirming like he’s trying to rock up into him without getting anywhere. His nails drag lines down Artemy’s back, snagging on the bandages for a second before going lower. “Artemy—”

“I wanted to tell you I’d show you how bad I want you to be mine,” Artemy admits. This isn’t the time for a big confession, but he needs to get it said, and hopes it comes off as intense as is befitting of the situation instead of just emotional. “Because you are, to me. You’re mine, khөөrkhen, minii khair. Mine, and I don’t care what you want, you can have it.”

“Artemy,” comes another moan, a hand holding onto his ass, egging him to push down more. He imagines Daniil begging him to go harder, and has to bite at his jaw for a moment. “Fuck, Artemy—”

“You want me to lie still, like I’m some good boy doing what he’s told?” Artemy hisses at him. For a moment, Daniil pauses and stills, and he can’t have that. Not now. “Next time,” he says, echoing Dankovsky’s words back at him, “I’ll get you some rope, and you can make sure I won’t move an inch, oynon.”

It’s like he’s managed to pluck this man’s entire vocabulary out of him, which he’ll be prod of later. “Artemy.”

“No. No, no, no,” he tells him, letting go of Daniil’s hand to tilt his head up by the jaw, glaring down at him like he’s misbehaved. “You heard me, earlier, noukherne. Don’t trick yourself into thinking I didn’t enjoy it. This is a promise, not an admonishment.”

Deciding he’s not going to risk this moment derailing them, he pushes himself up enough to be able to get that same hand back down between them, taking a moment to lick a wet stripe over his own palm, before wrapping it around Daniil’s cock without preamble.

“I’ve wanted you since the moment I laid eyes on you,” he reminds Daniil as he starts stroking him, fast and purposefully and without pause. “Don’t you talk yourself out of that, Danya. You’ve driven me insane since day one, with every fibre of your being you’ve managed to make me turn myself inside out over and over for you, and I didn’t even realise it was because I wanted to drag you into bed and devour you until last night. So don’t you dare think you’ve made a mistake, and give in, and let me—”

“I don’t think,” Daniil gasps, unlike Artemy free to rock against his movements, rolling his hips into every stroke of Artemy’s hand over him. It’s absolutely intoxicating, and he knows he’ll need to figure out a way to make sure it keeps happening, every day, until he dies. “I’m not thinking that, I— Artemy, fuck, I want—”

“Tiimel daa,” Artemy tells him, kissing his ear. It’s messy and disorganised, but Daniil still groans, so he counts it as a victory. “That’s it, let go. I want you, just like this, oynon, want you to come for me whining and begging—”

“You’re one to talk,” Daniil tells him, because of course the very notion of it would be insulting to him.

Artemy laughs, because how couldn’t he? “You’re such a bastard, bachelor.” Worming his way into grabbing onto Daniil’s jaw again, close to his throat but not quite there, he looks into his eyes with mirth and want. “But you’re still going to, aren’t you? You’re going to come, on my fingers, held down, here, chi sain khüü baina. Come on, khөөrkhen. Let it go.”

Closing his eyes, Daniil moans through his teeth, fingers scrambling against Artemy’s chest and over his back. Artemy sees it on him, and he doesn’t want to let that go, keeping his eyes on Daniil’s face as his jaw works around nothing and his hips grow increasingly erratic.

“Next time,” he promises, trying to find what he needs to get Dankovsky to fall over the edge, “I’ll pin you down and fuck you until you see stars, noukherne. I promise. Or, if you want to, you can tie me to the bed and keep me the whole day, until I forget what my name is and become a whimpering, whining mess for you—”

He isn’t sure which one does the man over, or if it’s the rapid switch between the two, but Daniil bites down on his lip so hard Artemy almost worries for him, his whole body tensing up over him before he comes in hot, slow waves over his own stomach.

Pushing their foreheads together, he strokes Daniil through it, whispering nonsense into his face until the man relaxes with a shaky moan breathed out through quivering lips. Then, he goes in for the kiss he’s wanted since Dankovsky first closed his eyes, and the juxtaposition of his own insistence and Daniil’s slack attempts at reciprocation is almost cute.

He forgets about himself for a moment, busy with Daniil and his aftershocks, and the seconds grow soft enough it’s almost enough to forget that he’s so hard it started being painful a long time ago. But he knows better than to be the one to broach the subject, so he forces himself to be patient, softly and slowly kissing his bachelor until his afterglow gives way to thought again.

“Artemy,” he eventually whispers, then lets out a soft little groan into the next kiss. Artemy just hums back at him, running his clean hand over Daniil’s cheek. There’s no rush, he wants to say, even though parts of him wants there to be a rush quite badly, please. “Artemy.”

“Yes?” he asks back, then occupies himself with sliding his tongue against Dankovsky’s until a hand on his shoulder pushes him back.

“You’re being quite the gentleman,” Daniil tells him, voice flat and practical in a way he’s been blessedly free from for the past ten minutes or so. “But I do believe I have a favour to return.”

“A favour?” Artemy asks, already feeling tired. He’s scratching every promise he’s just made about next times, and replaces them with a point one that is that he gets to finish first. He’s not a master at this, but he knows better than to talk about sex like it’s some kind of business transaction.

Daniil rolls his eyes, pushing on Artemy’s shoulder again. “Roll over.”

He goes with a sigh, trying not to think about moods and the ruining thereof, because his chest is still annoyingly fond of this man and his weird behaviour. Besides, it’s hard for a man in his position to think about that when Daniil takes his eyes off of his face to make his way back down Artemy’s body in a mirror of an experience he remembers very fondly.

“Last time, I stopped because you begged me to,” Dankovsky reminds him. The hand on his thigh pushing it to one side, making space for himself between Artemy’s legs, speaks of greater strength than he’s known this man to have. “I’m not going to, now. Got it?”

Artemy frowns at him. “In what world would I want you to, now?”

Daniil shrugs. “I was quite content for things to end there, I wasn’t sure what you wanted.”

That makes no sense, and he stares for a long second. “What were you planning to do next?”

Eyes that are far too calm meet his, and if this kind of whiplash is a part of the deal, he might need to seek out counselling.

From who? Rubin?

He would laugh if the thought wasn’t so tragic.

“I was going to sit down on your chest,” Daniil says, taking Artemy in hand as if no time has passed since he was last in this position, “and hold you still while I took care of myself. I think I wanted to come on your face, but that would possibly require some negotiation, so I hadn’t decided.”

And with that, like he hasn’t just dropped a shell in the conversation, Dankovsky wraps his lips around his cock and pushes his head down like it’s his job and he’s acting on routine. The moan gets stuck in Artemy’s throat, and he struggles for purchase before he remembers that he’s free to move, now.

If he was going to tear a stitch, it’s already happened. He’s not going to bother with caution when Daniil’s head is between his legs for the second time today, working the same tantalising kind of magic as it had before.

“Fuck,” Artemy groans. He doesn’t think he’s realised how much he talks during sex before, or maybe it just hasn’t happened until now. Regardless, he pushes both his hands over his face and lets himself moan, slowly rocking his hips to meet Daniil’s mouth, trying not to go too fast lest he hurt him.

It feels different, more like an incredible sense of relief than a desperate need, and Artemy surprises himself by how fast he feels like he’s going to cry from how badly he wants this. “Danya,” he groans, as Daniil rolls his tongue around the head of his cock, reaching one hand down blindly to run his fingers through his hair. “Danya, please, please, please…”

Not pulling back up to speak this time, Daniil just keeps at it, lets Artemy somewhat influence the pace as he moves his head and one of his hands in time. It’s unhurried and even, but still manages to drive him insane, if for no other reason than his own excruciating desperation.

“I never want you to stop,” he gasps, realising how unwise it is to babble in this position and still not being able to stop himself. “Fuck, Danya, please, don’t— Minii khair, I don’t want you to go.”

Daniil pulls his head up, and Artemy wants to wince. “I’m not leaving,” he says, stroking him slowly, evenly. “Stop worrying, Artemy. I don’t go to bed with people without thinking it through first. You have me, emshen.”

“What did you say?” Artemy almost laughs, but not from mockery, and he can feel the eyeroll on Daniil’s face when he goes back down. It makes his laughter turn into another groan, and fuck, he’s not going to be holding on much longer. “I adore you, Daniil, you have no idea.”

After that, he stops talking, much like his partner had. Instead he's just focusing in on the feeling, the soft warmth of Daniil’s mouth and the alluring promise that this is only the first of a great deal of moments between them. Images flash through his head, of Daniil’s face last time he went down on him, or the look on him as he’d gripped onto Artemy’s jaw, or what he might look like coiling a length of rope around his hand like it’s a promise, and it serves as a very good backdrop in which to lose himself.

“Daniil,” he moans after a minute of his attentions, at which point he’s not even trying to appear to want to stay still, thighs trembling at the pace they’ve set together. He tugs gently on his hair, “Daniil, I’m—”

The response is Daniil pulling up far enough to only keep the head between his lips, and the insistence of his tongue around him is a communication well-done. One final thrill goes through Artemy, and then it’s only a few more strokes of those far too nimble fingers before he falls apart with one hand on Daniil’s face and the other pressed hard over his own mouth.

It doesn’t end up being an explosion of an orgasm, more like a final release that makes him feel like he’s falling through a tornado, tumbling around as his final bits of adrenaline leave him. He shivers his way through the aftershocks, groaning as Daniil swallows around him again and again, until the sounds turn into whimpers and he finds his legs twitching under the attention.

Then he’s let go, and by the time Dankovsky’s crawled up his body and slumped down on top of him, Artemy feels like he’s had a second dose of morphine.

He’s still in fucking pain, which he’d managed to block out while he had other things to think about, but his whole body feels numb and relaxed, like he’s just come back from a three-day march. On top of him, Daniil serves as a weighted blanket again, face pressed into Artemy’s neck like it had been this morning, and it’s an incredible pleasant return to the start of things.

It’s with some humour he realises he’s still the only one without clothes, and when he laughs, Daniil joins in, even though he hasn’t said what for. If he’s happy with whatever thought is on his mind, though, Artemy isn’t going to be the one to interrupt.

“If I rewrap your bandages and a single one of those fucking stitches are out of place,” Daniil mutters into his skin, and it makes his laughter last a few seconds longer.

“You will get to tell me you told me so for months,” Artemy promises. It feels deserved enough, he can give the man that much. He turns his head to press a kiss to Daniil’s forehead, slowly taking a deep breath, smelling the faint scent of his hair.

He has things he needs to do, he knows. The children, while more than capable of taking care of themselves, will wonder where he is. The fact that he’s going to come home bruised and cut up, possibly with a bachelor Dankovsky in tow, will likely not help. Lara’s going to be absolutely furious with worry when she finds out, and if he’s really unlucky – oh, he wants to walk into the Steppe just thinking about it – Saburov will use this as an excuse to do something spectacularly stupid. Maybe he should stop by Capella first, try to get ahead of things with the only person with power in this town who might listen to him.

The fact that he has to appeal to a fifteen-year-old to avoid a city-mandated killing spree is not putting him in a good mood.

But it’s also hard to be upset when he’s being held down by… Whatever Daniil Dankovsky is to him, now. Speaking of conversations he’s not thrilled about having.

He drags a finger over his side, rumpled linen making it a slightly bumpy journey, and Daniil takes a slow breath against his neck. “When do you have to leave?” he asks, as though he can read Artemy’s thoughts.

“Soon,” he reluctantly admits. “I don’t want to know what the time is.”

“It’s nine.”

Artemy closes his eyes.

“That’s not too late,” he sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “I don’t want you to think I’m running away—”

“You have children, Burakh,” Daniil tells him flatly, still not moving from his spot. It’s horribly endearing. “You were gone all night, and you will show up with two stab wounds and some spectacular bruises. I’m not going to accuse you of spousal abandonment for going to them.”

Artemy wants to laugh again, so he does, a snort followed by another kiss to Daniil’s forehead. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come with me,” he says with a smile. “To avoid the whole… Abandonment thing. But also to offer you breakfast, if you’re hungry.”

Daniil is quiet for a moment, and Artemy isn’t sure if he’s just not moving, or if the question made him freeze. “I thought the children hated me for what I did.”

Oh. That makes him feel guilty, because… Well, it’s true, but Artemy also thinks he’s contributed no small part to the fear. “I don’t think…” he starts, then chews his lip as he thinks of what to say. “I don’t want to say children are stupid. But they forgive easier than adults. Sticky adores you, by the way, so you don’t need to worry about him, but Murky… She might need some time. But she will tell me she hates me even as she’s coming up for a hug, so I wouldn’t…” He sighs again, rubbing a hand over his eyes as he tries to find a way to say this that won’t make him feel so fucking guilty. “I love her,” he starts, as if he’s making a point, “but she can be difficult when feelings are involved. I know the reason, and I’m going to be patient with her forever because of it, but you should know that even if she says she hates you, she probably doesn’t, and don’t argue with her but don’t ignore it.”

“That’s a lot of parental advice in a short amount of time, Vorakh,” Daniil tells him, and now Artemy just feels stupid. “I’ll try to remember it, but don’t get angry with me if I forget.”

It hints at something, pieces of last night’s conversation, and Artemy has to pull out from under Daniil so that he can look him in the eye. “I won’t,” he says, earnestly. Daniil’s eyes are even as ever, not giving away whether he believes him or not. He kind of hates it, but this isn’t the time to throw a tantrum because he can’t read this man. “I’m sorry. I feel like I’ll be saying it for some time to come, so I won’t go into it now. But I want you to know it.”

More silence, and then Daniil reaches for his face, tucking a finger into one of Artemy’s curls that’s fallen out of place. “You need to cut your hair,” he says softly.

Artemy leans in to press their lips together, Daniil softly runs his fingers through his hair, and he suddenly becomes full of the overwhelming feeling that they will be able to figure out a way to make this work.

He’s not under any illusion that it’ll be fast, or easy, but they’re adults, and despite what he would have thought this time yesterday – has all this really only happened in twelve hours? – he wants to believe they can do this.

It’ll be enough.

It has to be.

So he’s going to stay here a little while longer, kissing his bachelor like they have nothing on the calendar, until he actually does have to leave. Then he’s going to take him home, to his children, and make them all breakfast in an attempt at apologising for the mess he’s gotten himself into.

He’s going to figure out a way to make it all fit, and he’ll live through the future with some kind of hope, still.