[closed]

[deservesadaisy]

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.

Comments

[deservesadaisy]

"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.

[dvoryanstvo]

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."

[deservesadaisy]

"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.

[dvoryanstvo]

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.

[deservesadaisy]

"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."

[dvoryanstvo]

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.

[deservesadaisy]

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."

[dvoryanstvo]

"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.

[deservesadaisy]

"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."

[dvoryanstvo]

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

[deservesadaisy]

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

[dvoryanstvo]

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?"

[deservesadaisy]

"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.

[dvoryanstvo]

A beat.

"Hasi is seeing Mitchell."

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

[deservesadaisy]

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

[dvoryanstvo]

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

[deservesadaisy]

"Elsewhere too? Interesting." There are all sorts of connections he hasn't seen yet, but Ivan likes putting things together. It's an annoying habit of his.

"I was introduced through a mutual friend. She seems intelligent. Interesting."

[dvoryanstvo]

"Not Mitchell himself?" The mutual friend, he means, sidestepping how he met Hasi for the time being; his fleeting experience with Xanadu is a low priority.

[deservesadaisy]

"No. Mitchell and I are on rather strained terms, at the moment," he says, succinctly.

[dvoryanstvo]

Daniil considers pressing - he has been a check and balance to Ivan in the past, whether Ivan wanted him to be or not - but doesn't, ultimately, letting it lie. He'll find out the rest of that situation eventually, inevitably, and there's no reason to push it now. Either one of them will tell him or he'll figure it out for himself; neither of them are so mysterious as they think.

"Familiarity breeds contempt, that is the saying, yes?"

[deservesadaisy]

"Mitchell breeds contempt," Ivan says, with a lazy smile. Something's bothering him, clearly, but it's not Mitchell - not really. "There's enough to worry about here without him, I just had to mop up too many of his messes recently."

[dvoryanstvo]

"And you people wonder why I do not to be in Britain," Daniil drawls in turn, lighting a cigarette and offering the case to his friend. "What occupies you?"

He could mean what else is there to worry about, he could mean why is Ivan being weird, it could go either way. Ivan can respond to whichever he likes.

[deservesadaisy]

"I don't know if you heard," he said, taking an offered cigarette. "There was a mess with our kind, a few months ago. On the surface, a religious group started a campaign to starve us out, and then someone laced the bagged supply with some sort of drug."

[dvoryanstvo]

"I heard a little," he grants, with a tip of his hand. "Mafaton." He suspects he'd have more of a problem living openly as a vampire in often-conservative Gidd if not for the fact that for the most part he can pass easily for human; he even braves the daylight without more than slight inconvenience.

[deservesadaisy]

"Yes. It was... unacceptable," he says, neatly clipped. "But on the surface, it's been swept under the rug and moved on from."