[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

[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."

[dvoryanstvo]

"It is the local way." He's seen the video circulating of the Militia raid in Bonetown.

[deservesadaisy]

"True. But no less unacceptable for that," he says, very slightly harder.

[dvoryanstvo]

It's enough, in and of itself, to account for Ivan's mood; it's troubling enough to come into with only abstract and vague accounts, an affront, and offhand he doesn't need to press for anything beyond that. So he doesn't.

"No less," he concedes, through smoke. "What is being done?"

[deservesadaisy]

"Gathering information, first. It wasn't initially clear who was behind it. It's still not entirely clear what they wanted, other than a commotion to focus the city's attention."

Revenge would come, but Ivan has time.

[dvoryanstvo]

Not so simple when you don't just up and leave when something doesn't suit, is it-- Daniil keeps that thought to himself, they're both rightfully moody and turning an old bicker into a proper argument won't help matters any.

"It is always power, at base."

[deservesadaisy]

"Not untrue, my friend, but not specific enough to be terribly helpful. It's a big city, and one of the major pasttimes is being cryptic." ...pot kettle.

"I don't like being deprived of control," he adds, simply and probably needlessly.

[dvoryanstvo]

"Do we, any of us?" Which is as valid a point as it would be to note that Ivan isn't exactly the king of forthcoming himself, which Daniil is not doing because he is the bigger man, thank you.

[deservesadaisy]

"Neither of us, at least." He would argue that some people rather did. "Regardless, progress is going slow, but happening. I've been trying to decide how far I want to be directly involved, since being directly involved ended poorly in Bristol."

[dvoryanstvo]

He doesn't say 'I told you so' there, either, but Ivan has known him long enough to know when he's holding back that statement. It's come up often enough.

"You know I feel on politics." That they can fuck off, yes.

[deservesadaisy]

"I know. And I usually agree. But I also feel letting being poisoned pass is a bit..." He searches for the word he wants. "I can't just leave, and I don't want to set a precedent."

[dvoryanstvo]

Or, Daniil supposes, have it set for him. He can grant that. "You were poisoned?"