But tell me
Can you heal what father's done
Or fix this hole in mother's son?
Can you heal the broken worlds within?
Can you strip away so we may start again?
Can you heal what father's done
Or cut this rope and let us run?
Just when all seems fine and all pain-free
Jab another pin, jab another pin in me
-Metallica, Fixxxer
Your father doesn't need the bottles anymore.
It feels like a physical blow he has received, a blow that has caught him right in the face and sent him staggering backwards.
On the stairs, Nikolai's footsteps fade away, and then he hears the door close with a dull, final sound. He is alone again.
He hisses a curse, but it is not enough to express the storm arising in his chest, the hurricane of fury and shame, hate and self-loathing. So often has he tried to vent all his anger into curses, but no word is obscene enough to free him of this firestorm inside him, this mad seething heat that makes him feel like he could explode.
And he is not drunk enough to hurl the bottle at the wall, not yet, anyway. Soon he might be, he thinks as he takes another swig. Or he might drain the whole bottle and pass out, and maybe Nikolai will find him after he has died of alcohol intoxication, and then he will be sorry. Yes, he will. But it will be too late to apologise for being so scathing, and Nikolai will regret it for the rest of his life.
But what good would that be to Kirill when he is dead at that point?
Tears of humiliation begin to form once more, but this time nobody comes to comfort him, and he refuses to savour the pleasant memory of Nikolai's warm body against his, not after Nikolai has ganged up with his father and stabbed him in the back.
He hasn't, the rational part of his mind tells him, but he will not listen to it. He wants to believe Nikolai has betrayed him, because he wants to be angry with Nikolai, and not with himself for telling such feeble lies to make himself look good. He hates himself enough already without adding stupidity to the list of what is loathsome about himself.
He roughly wipes his eyes with his sleeve and starts pacing the room, trying to breathe evenly, but it does not help, as usual. He wants to break something, to destroy something utterly.
Something, or someone.
He wants to hurt his father, really hurt him, and he wants to stand over him and gloat. And he wants to hurt Nikolai.
But at the same time, he wants Nikolai to come back and hold him tight and stroke his hair and call him little brother. He wants to watch his friend's hard features suddenly growing lenient as he looks at him, he wants to see the fondness in his eyes, hear the tenderness in his voice, feel the affection in his touch. He wants to be loved no matter if he fails or succeeds, by someone who knows all his strengths and weaknesses and will still stand by his side, always.
But Nikolai will not. Nikolai would rather go and join his father.
He reaches for the bottle again and takes another swig, but the alcohol does not soothe him either.
A drunk and a queer, so Soyka has called him, right in his face. The memory still increases his fury tenfold. And now his father knows, after Nikolai has told him.
But it is a lie, a filthy lie. For from now on, Kirill hates Nikolai, and he will not get drunk again. Not one damn drop of it, he tells himself as he firmly deposits the bottle on a shelf.
Instead, he sits down on the piled-up chairs once more, but gets up again immediately. He cannot stay still. His rage fuels him and keeps him on his feet, and his rage makes him forget his overwhelming sadness for a while. While the fury burns, it will turn the waves of grief to bitingly hot vapour, but when the waves become floods, they drown out the flames and wash him away, and he is lost upon a shoreless sea of despair.
Come back, Kolya. Please come back.
No. Don't you ever dare to come back. Don't you dare to speak to me again.
This is what he has always wanted, Nikolai becoming a vor at last. But not like that. Not that way, with his father taking him away from him and Nikolai following another man's lead readily, using Kirill just to get to his father.
Why does this one simple wish have to become twisted and perverted when it comes true?
Again he lets himself fall down onto the chairs, but this time he pulls up his legs and wraps his arms around his knees, making himself as small as he can and wishing he could disappear into a hole, so that nobody would ever find him again. The position is uncomfortable, but what does it matter? At the moment, nothing is comfortable anyway.
No more comfort. No more.
The world would be so much better if there were no humans around, no humans at all.