thanaticalism

[thanaticalism]

Please please more Danko stuff please please….would sell my soul to you if you could do anything involving him and cuddling or something similarly fluffy

you've come to the right place, anon! i've made this blog specifically just to talk about daniil (and the game, once i get some spare time to give it justice), so i'm happy to write your requests. no soul selling required! just feedback.

time barely stands still for daniil dankovsky, and he's become used to it.

of course, he'll always say that the fast paced life of an academic such as himself is exactly what he bargained for. time doesn't stand still because he doesn't want it to. he wouldn't know what to do with himself if the time just never passed. or if it did and he was stagnant for most of it; unmotivated, slacking, lazy. if anything, daniil dankovsky thinks there's simply not enough time, not enough life to contain his ambitions. that is precisely why he seeks to conquer death; humanity simply doesn't have enough life.

time only stands still once, and he suddenly understands notions like nostalgia, the human desire to live in the moment, and greed, but it's the desperate kind. the kind that is tender rather than devastating.

it was a particularly ordinary day for the bachelor going through the motions; the usual aches of research that the whole world deems as fruitless, lunch that went stale due to his attention being solely on the cultures he'd been studying for the entirety of the day, a thinly veiled threat to withdraw funding from Thanatica in a letter he grew too frustrated to read, and dinner with none other than you. he'd promised, and he showed up.

he lets you do most of the talking, but not to an extreme; he makes passing comments about the meal, about the waiter's bad etiquette, compliments your elegance that he "cannot help but be enraptured with"... his company is enjoyable, but not personal. but you give it time, you always do.

because once you get home, you notice the tension in his shoulders that hid beneath the layers of linen and silk alike as he undresses. the way he unbuttons his waistcoat is slightly uncoordinated, his eyebrows are knit together, and the clatter of his pin as he clumsily drops it tells you enough. all this while he's eerily silent, and both of you know that this, in itself, is talk. and he knows that there's no use keeping anything to himself, but he'll be damned if he hears himself say it.

you sit on the bed, and he almost looks offended that you didn't wait for him before he registers the beckoning look in your eyes, the call for him to make it all go away and he's immediately there, warm and so unbearably tense still, and you waste no time in wrapping your arms around him. daniil goes for your neck, face buried in the point that connects it with your shoulder and you count one, two, three in your head, before he completely deflates. your hand runs over his back in back and forth motions, as the other rests on the nape of his neck. that is enough to earn you a weary but content sigh into your neck, and your lips twitch in a small smile. his hands rest at your waist, just shy of your hips and you hold him like this until you feel his strength return gradually.

only then, does he look at you. he doesn't bother hiding the vulnerability in his eyes, but he is comfortable and content. he's still silent, but the need for words isn't something that you have. he kisses your forehead, then your cheek, then his hand finds yours and brings it to his lips, pressing a kiss to your knuckles then finally, your wrist. daniil seemed to chase your heartbeat wherever it was, kissing each pulse point that he could, every time. he puts his head on your chest, just above your heart, his hand still holding yours and time stands still, for once.

[thanaticalism]

daniil dankovsky's penmanship is excellent.

it's almost contradictory to the widespread myth that doctors write in runes, which he'll reject before giving explanations as to why that is sometimes the case.

but yes, the way he writes is in itself a pleasure to witness. precise yet elegant strokes on greeting cards, letters, prescriptions... even strongly-worded messages to those who love to oppose him seem like a love letter at first glance.

however, that is where his penmanship fails; love letters.

somehow, every language fails him when it comes to expressing what should come naturally to him as a human being; his hands fail him, his pens fail him, the paper fails him... all of which he considers a betrayal and an utter humiliation of his character. how can a mere love letter conquer him as such?

he presses the tip of his fountain pen to the paper a bit too hard on the word "Дорогой/я", leaving a large puddle of ink behind that almost seeps into the leather-bound blotting pad. he's too formal in his writing— when he manages to write anything, that is. most of the time he ends up discarding the letter, brows furrowed in frustration and ears scarlet.

then he gets up and paces, overthinking the stylistics of love letters, the methodology of expressing one's feelings. how much love is appropriate in a letter? how many lines should he dedicate to his lover? is "dear" too casual? it's just not precise enough for his liking, the whimsical nature of human emotion. this is a laboratory, for God's sake, he needs exact measurements! he's become too used to them.

after going through the agony of writing, signing and sending the letter, it reads like a classic of his. the usual structure is there and so is the flowery language. but upon further inspection, it's easy to notice the moments he had to pause and pull himself together. it's in the way the writing goes from raw, vulnerable confessions to self-chastisement: “[...] and i find myself ruminating over the shape of your mouth at the most inappropriate of times. while my benefactors await the news of a breakthrough, i am longing for a time you were all i could sense, everywhere. my dearest; this is, of course, no fault of your own. i ought to restrain this craving for you until i can deem myself a man of wit once more.”

and there's news of him and his research that read like a report, but with a pet name that he knows will catch the eye. despite his struggle to write a love letter, he does not lose his intelligence while doing so. he mostly loses his patience, and perhaps some of his pride. he wouldn't admit it, but he is gladly giving up his pride for this. there's only so much a lab can offer him, and none of it is warmth.

(inspired by this and the thread under it about him being unable to write a love letter).

[thanaticalism]

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