(russia)

They had three days.

At least he had experienced this before dying - at least he hadn't waited that long - but part of Ivan couldn't believe now that he had waited as long as he had, that he had once vowed to remain pure until his dying day, his personal oath to God and Saint Vynas the holiest and most pure, that he would be like the people he had read about who loved romantically but not sexually (ah, how he'd envied them!).

But it made sense. This wasn't a distraction he used to ignore the rawness of the wound dealt by a betraying friend (one mustn't cheapen it like that!), it was something altogether metaphysical, his soul the spirit bird of the heart, ascending thermals to the heavens, his wingspan locked in inertial perpetuum. How amazing that, even before knowing the concept of what it lacked, his soul sought this, sought this other one, like him, found him out in the black night! Like magnets, like instinct. Instead of having stumbled across him by happy accident, as passing trains, their windows barred, a momentary tunnel, Eduard felt like a part of him he had recovered, unearthed, within himself. He had been there all along, and Ivan never knew! He mined his soul expecting coal and finding diamonds.

So Ivan opened up, laid himself bare, let his soul be subsumed by a passion too deep to dwell on and too profound to question, for if he did that, it would be like driest tinder in the hot sun - all it would take was a single spark and he'd erupt in thick smoke, but how it hurt. How it burned.

Could he possibly express his feelings with words? with tears? Neither, it was incomprehensible! And so instead his spirit laughed maniacally within him as they renewed their messy, disgraceful, addicting and undeniable union; it sang inside, in a manner without tune or lyrics, in a manner that could only be abated with the touch, the scent, the warmth of someone so cherished.

(Ivan felt like he finally understood the couplet in his rodnaya's old poetry book, which, loosely translated, wrote, This is the true religion; all others are thrown-away bandages beside it.)

He marvelled in the anticipation, in emptiness, now full now empty now full now empty again and again and again - don't stop, he said, don't ever stop - because there was a place inside that Eduard touched, whose embers were stoked, and the craving began in Ivan's body and spiral-accelerated upwards to the crown of him, where he ceased to crave only carnally. The best Ivan could do was to press them together, and despite a physical reality in the way he came to understand why so many lovers would do these absurd, crazy things with each other, with each other's bodies, especially when the ecstasy overcame Eduard. His senses heightened but not overwhelmed, Ivan methodically categorised each and every twitch and reaction and engraved it on his heart ... and then in turn allowed Eduard to quite totally obliterate the last of his logical faculties with unstoppable, irrational passion.

The joy of submission, he found, suited him well - after all the power Ivan had been handed, how happy it made him to hand it off again! To let someone else take the reins and steer him as they liked, and at this, he would admit Eduard's expertise was astonishing. To sell his innocent confusion and buy with it a satisfied bewilderment. The pupil drank from the fountain of the master, prostrated at his base, became the well full of water so drunk on his spring and swallowed the echo of his voice in a place where only Ivan could hear it. He was the itch and he was the soothing balm. He was pain, and he was what cured pain. What a fool was he, that he thought he knew peace.

Why bother with sleeping when he knew he would lose consciousness for months to come at the thought of this perfect silence? No, Ivan could not sleep like this. He staved it off as much as he could and lay awake to watch and listen, silent at the artistry moving through him. He immersed himself as much as possible in the other and in kind, allowed Eduard to leave the deepest imprint he could on his own body, on his own soul (for his heart had already been claimed), until at the end, they were like well-steeped tea, diffused into each other, and had completely ceased to be two different substances.

To complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, his blessed scriptures read - set me as a seal upon your heart, for love is strong as death. I would drown in you. He held Eduard closer; Eduard mumbled sleepily into his chest.

Ivan would swear he had never been so happy in his entire young life.

.:.

They had three days before the day of the auction and Toris' planned attack. It still felt like only hours had passed when Arisha knocked on the door to his chambers and asked for him, instead of letting herself in discreetly, setting down food and water, and leaving once more like she had recently done.

He donned a robe and reluctantly left Eduard's side in the bed to answer his handmaid.

"I didn't want to disturb you," Arisha said, when he cracked the door open. "I know you're ... well. It's not my place. But it's nearly noon. Your time is almost up." She handed him a single manila envelope and told him, "Here. For the bondsman."

Ivan opened it to check that everything was in order. It was. "For the freeman, now," he corrected.

"Yours to do with what you want," Arisha replied. "I don't pretend to understand it."

"Haven't you ever been in love?" he cajoled, and became sad when she shook her head.

"How you could love an object, love it like ... like that, it's beyond me," she explained. "But you asked me not to tell. So I haven't told, and I won't tell."

"He's not an object!"

"Don't try and explain it," she advised, "I don't understand. I guess you're more like your sister after all." And then she laughed lightly, "But it's a strange joke that you choose to do this on the same day of the Decennial Auction!"

Ivan looked at the papers with a sad finality. A joke. Hah.

Then he told her, "Thanks for your silence. I appreciate it. If it does not make sense to you - you who have been my housemaid so long that it's difficult to think of anybody not related to me who knows me better - then I doubt I could explain what I feel for him to enough people to show them that it isn't hypocrisy for me to attack the bonds service trade and then take and - and use a bondsman. But it isn't using a bondsman. There's no bondsman here. There has never been."

Arisha shrugged. "Whatever you say," she replied, and closed his door as she left.

.:.

There had been a few last-minute cancellations on two of the flights out to Bast, so Ivan had reserved a seat on the first, which went to Vonnat. Taking one of their own airships would be suspicious. Vonnat upon Bast was a nice place - certainly warmer than Skuratchky, or most of the Empire Union - with temperate weather and a bland landscape, where nothing of note really happened.

Ivan hoped Eduard would enjoy it.

Nevertheless he walked Eduard to the front exit of the Duma's residential side, the one he had keys to, with regret and disappointment. "Krasimir of Bast is your contact when you land. He will be expecting you sometime in the next two days," he told him. "Short, pale, skinny fellow with messy dark hair; you can cab it from Iolac'h Border Control. There's some money set up in an account for you - he'll help you find a place to stay. I ... I do recommend you enroll in the local university. At least to keep yourself from becoming bored. But of course I did not take such liberties as signing you up for classes or anything."

And now he was rambling! "Anyway," Ivan finished awkwardly. He thrust the envelope forward. "Everything's explained inside this, with ... your papers."

Eduard stared at the envelope and didn't move.

"No, take them, please!" Ivan insisted, "You must. You'll ... you'll need them at the Border Controls."

"Maybe I could stay if you just hid me away like the past few days all the time?" Eduard asked hopefully.

"How would that possibly satisfy you? Or me?"

"Hah, I could think of a couple of ways -"

"Don't be so crude!" Ivan interrupted, but caught the sly smile playing at the corner of Eduard's lips and realised the misplaced levity was just nerves.

"Vanya ..." Eduard began, his voice soft, and his eyes sad. He set the light suitcase Ivan had insisted he bring on the ground. (It wasn't the largest suitcase Ivan had, but Eduard owned so very little and only asked for a few books, even though Ivan wanted to give him as much as possible to remember him by.)

How sad that the two inches between them seemed already like the vast space between Bast and Olyokin, which light took minutes to travel. (Ah, to be a beam of light. Completely ignorant of time and energy.) He wanted to tell Eduard to write him, but that would welcome suspicion; this mess would have to be properly covered up first, and how long that would take all depended on what happened today. Whether Toris would make a mess of his plans once he realised they'd all been discovered or if he kept his wits about him and did something awful like go into hiding and safeguard the terrible secrets he knew about Eduard and Ivan, waiting in the wings for blackmailers and extortionists.

It could be a year before Eduard could return. It could be five. Perhaps after five years Eduard would have moved on.

And yet, the way Eduard looked at him ... unlike Ivan, Eduard held his hand close to his chest and let nobody see the cards he played with. Perhaps Eduard loved him. Perhaps Eduard didn't even know.

"You had better leave," Ivan said, "I am sure the cab driver is getting impatient in the courtyard -"

"Damn the cab driver," Eduard retorted, and then he flung his arms about Ivan's shoulders and kissed him deeply. Try as he might, Ivan could not force his heart not to flutter out of control and even though it was doomed, even though this was an end, he wrapped his arms around Eduard anyway and held him close.

When Eduard pulled back, he sighed, looked at the envelope again and sadly plucked it out of Ivan's hand. "Thank you. For everything."

Ivan kissed him once on the forehead, murmured against it, "Go with God," and embraced him a final time.

With that, Eduard departed the Duma.

Ivan did not watch him as he left, scared that he might do something foolish like cry or break down while re-locking the door, but he did watch the airship a half hour later, when it took off. He watched it rise above Skuratchky, ascend to the heavens and continued watching until it faded into Olyokin's skies and became a tiny fleck of black that faded as it grew more and more distant until he saw nothing more at all.

And then, in the privacy of his own room where he could secure himself and keep the world out with five locks that only his handmaid had keys to, he cried.

.:.

a/n: this chapter never fails to kill me :')