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Who: Ivan and Daniil
What: Ivan gets tired of waiting for Daniil to stop hanging up on him.
Where: Ivan's tracked down Daniil's current residence in Gidd, like a ninja
When: Newdi evening
Notes:
Warnings: None yet, but they're hideous men. Give them time.

Ivan does not have a lot of patience left. Between Ilde being gone... well, mainly Ilde being gone, but the militia attack as well, he supposes - he is out of sorts and disinclined to play at the charming persona he cultivates. There are only three people in Baedal who've seen behind it. He doesn't want to inflict himself on Njoki, and he wasn't over-fond of Mitchell's company before knowing he'd shagged Daisy.

So he turns up on Daniil's doorstep with an authoritative rap on the door. At least this way, he can't be hung up on.

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It isn't that Daniil doesn't want to talk to Ivan, or at least it's not precisely that; the wound of a friend's death had still been so raw when he'd arrived that he hadn't been prepared to mentally shift gears quite so fast. To go from mourning his death to confronting his presence in the space of only hours, that had been entirely too much to be expected from him.

He's just a bit shit at this, so he's avoided having to deal with it at all since, which would continue to work much better if not for the fact that when he opens the door, Ivan is...there, irritatingly.

"Vanya. I suppose you did call first." So droll.

"I did. Are you going to slam the door in my face too?" He sounds more resigned than actively giving Daniil grief, which may be a hint that he's not perfectly all right himself.

Daniil steps aside, wordlessly, to let him in. It's very likely no surprise to Ivan how quickly he's landed on his feet - it's as he's always done, one way or the other - or how typical of him the apartment's design is. He leads the way upstairs to the main floor and the salon, where it seems he's been spending the afternoon and evening examining the state of his spending and savings here thus far; there's a crossword abandoned beside it, because he's occasionally terribly boring even in the ways he breaks up the monotony of endless practicality.

Ivan takes in the surroundings, appreciative, but indeed unsurprised. The crossword, though, wins a small spare smile. "You and your domesticity. They could throw you anywhere, and you'd find a rich woman and a book of puzzles, like one of those pigs who sents out truffles."

Ivan missed him very much.

In the process of sitting back down behind the low table, Daniil glances up with a faintly withering expression that evidently comes by reflex. It's surreal, almost, how easy it is.

"You died in Bristol," he says, as though it were something Ivan had done to personally offend him.

"I know. It wasn't premeditated," he adds, after a moment. Ivan considers the room a moment longer before moving to sit as well. "A moment of insanity, as they say."

...no one was saying that.

It takes a great deal of self-control not to cite Daisy as evidence of the fact Ivan's moments of insanity tend not to actually be 'momentary'; best that he doesn't, though, given present circumstances. He's been biting his tongue on that subject for years, and it isn't the end of the world to do it now.

"Then, what happened?" Details had been-- sketchy, to say the least.

"How much did you hear?" Also because of Daisy, they hadn't been in close touch; Ivan isn't sure how far he needs to back up.

"I spoke to Carl." He assumes Ivan can deduce for himself both what was said and, likely, what tone it was said in.

"Carl would have wallowed in his own guilt all the way there if I hadn't distracted him." Where by distracted, we mean annoyed shamelessly the entire trip.

"Mitchell made a mess, after killing Herrick, and I was standing too close when things fell apart. Literally, in fact; there was a bomb." It's something that still bothers him, in some ways, but he shrugs it off.

Daniil clasps his hands loosely over his knees, considering that; it fits with what he was told, though it involves even less detail, thank you, Ivan. (Typically. This is why he worries like he's somebody's mother.)

"You should've known better," he says, finally, brusque. "Mitchell is forever making mess."

"Well, yes, but I thought it might be an interesting mess. I didn't realize he was going to try and get everyone else to go clean as well. He tried to get me to take over."

Ivan leaves out that he'd said yes, because he still thinks he probably shouldn't have.

There'd be no arguments here about that: Daniil pulls a face, for as much as he ever makes that much of an expression.

"He is self-flagellation given form of Irishman," he says, complainingly tolerant in the way of someone who has long since accepted that everybody in his extended social circle is balls crazy, always have been and always will be. But especially Mitchell, who is in and of himself one of several reasons why Daniil point-blank refuses to spend any significant period of time in Britain.

It isn't that he doesn't like him. It's only that he doesn't like being part of a blast radius.

"He's also here," Ivan says, deceptively mild. He'd never had many thoughts one way or another about Mitchell, before; he'd admired his early potential, but hadn't expected him to turn out as anything terribly interesting, given Herrick. "So enjoy that."

The realization that he's now trapped in a city with vampirism's most terrifying fuck up and schadenfreude's incarnation of earth respectively inspires a remarkable expression, the like of which isn't often seen on Daniil's face. Ivan is Daniil's closest and dearest friend; he is also an unmitigated pain in the arse and someone it pays to be able to take a break from, now and then.

He mutters something obscene.

Ivan laughs, then, despite himself and despite all that's on his mind. "If you're not dead, you could theoretically still get out, one day. Please tell me you're not, I'd be terribly disappointed."

"I am confident it is not." Even if he still hasn't quite mastered conversational English. It's not inability, it's lack of give-a-fuck, that, but regardless: he's sure he'd have noticed if he were dead.

And besides which, he'd have been far less surprised to hear from Ivan.

"That is one of the few reassuring things I've heard since arriving." Ivan is a ray of sunshine.

"He's seeing someone; Mitchell is. She seems lovely, except for being a hallucinogen." Because there has to be something. This is Mitchell we're talking about. "I think you'd like her, though."

Daniil raises an eyebrow. "I am hesitant to take your word on a woman, Vanya." ...well, look.

He grimaces, but says, "I'm not seeing her. And you'd have liked Helena."

Feeling that they're skating uncomfortably close to the subject of Daisy - a topic best left undiscussed by the two of them if Daniil likes not getting punched in the face, which he does - he waves it off. "Who is she?"

"Her name is Hasibe. I'll introduce you at some point, I'm sure." If nothing else, Ivan has no intention of abandoning the anti-Candlelighter activities just because Ilde is gone; that's a score to settle, and he can afford to be patient.

A beat.

"Hasi is seeing Mitchell."

...ah. So they're acquainted, then.

"Ah, you've met. Yes." He has no doubt Daniil can vividly imagine that without having seen it.

"Once elsewhere, and here. Yes." Daniil is currently trying very hard not to imagine it, because it's distressing.

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