New blood joins this earth
And quickly he's subdued
Through constant pained disgrace
The young boy learns the rules
With time the child draws in
This whipping boy done wrong
Deprived of all his thoughts
The young man struggles on and on
He's known
A vow unto his own
That never from this day
His will they'll take away
-Metallica, The Unforgiven
They should be in cinema now, or strolling around together, or maybe at the brothel already. Wherever, but they should be together, a pair of brothers in all but blood, celebrating Nikolai's acceptance into the family. Instead, Nikolai is gone and Kirill is alone, and he cannot go to see him.
Misha has told him what has happened. He has blamed it on Azim and suggested Kirill propose to his father to have the treacherous Turk punished, but Kirill knows better. He understands what has really happened.
And this is why he is where he is now.
His father turns his head as he enters, his expression perfectly neutral, and Kirill wants to strangle him for wearing that look. But he restrains himself, his fists clenched so hard that it almost hurts. All he says is one simple word, but he shoots it at his father with all the seething fury and burning pain inside him: "Why?"
His father shakes his head slowly. "What are you talking about?"
"You know it exactly!" Kirill shouts, unable to keep his voice under control any longer. It is either rage at his father or break down and sob, he feels. "You betrayed him! Misha thinks it was Azim, but it was you! It all was a set-up, the whole fucking ceremony was a fake! It was you who sold my brother to the fucking Chechens!"
"He's not your brother," his father says coldly. "He's just your driver. And he's still alive, so go to bed and leave me in peace with your fits of badly controlled temper."
"He could have died!" Kirill roars. "He almost did! And you can't send me away like a cur! Why did you do it, why?"
"Watch your tongue, boy!" his father thunders, but Kirill does not back away. "What gives you the right to question my choices?"
"What gives you the right to kill my friend?"
For a moment his father is thunderstruck, but he recovers very quickly. "So you would have preferred to die in his stead?" His voice is very soft now, soft and dangerous.
"Yes," Kirill says firmly, his fury carrying him on strong, swift wings. "If this is about me, set them on me. I'm not afraid to die." Yes, he would face death with his head held high, if he were saving Nikolai that way.
"You foolish boy!" his father bellows. "You have no idea what you are talking about, pampered little prince that you are!"
"Yes I do! I fucking do!"
"Now get out, and don't you ever dare to question my judgement again!"
"Try and make me!"
His father aims a blow at his face, but he dodges it just in time. "A couple of months ago in Hyde Park, when striking a bargain with Chernov's lot, do you know who saved my life when old Atanassov pulled a gun on me? He could have died, but he took them out, both of them! Without him, I'd be fucking dead now, and this is how you thank him for it?"
"Don't get sentimental," his father snarls, wearing a grimace of contempt. "And I hate to repeat myself. Stop questioning my choices. Now. Who the fuck do you think you are?"
What a strange contrast, it briefly occurs to Kirill, all the bookshelves in his father's room, and the antique desk that must have cost a fortune, the room of a cultivated gentleman. Nobody would expect a scene like this to take place here. "I'm your son."
"That is of no consequence," his father bellows. "I decide what I do with my men, not you!"
My men. My men! "Nikolai is my partner!" Kirill roars, wild rage clouding his mind with a red haze. "When you betray him, you betray me!"
"Oh yes?" His father's hand shoots out very suddenly and grips him by the front of his T-shirt. "Betray you? You're pathetic!" Before Kirill can tear himself loose, he already has violently pushed him against the front of a cupboard, and Kirill feels one doorknob digging painfully into his lower back. For his age, his father is surprisingly strong. "All you ever do is cause trouble! And then you come and complain, a complete failure like you whining about betrayal!"
"I do my job!" Kirill protests furiously, his father's insults feeling like a physical blow. "I'm out there handling it all while you sit in here playing the fucking mastermind, never endangering your arse one single fucking time!"
"I will not be spoken to like that!" Kirill should have expected it, but still his father's fist coming out of nowhere and forcefully connecting with the side of his jaw, knocking his head against the cupboard, catches him by surprise, but at least he manages not to cry out. "You do as you're told, keep that in mind! Or are you too stupid to even understand this simple order? Now I will hear no more of it!"
But Kirill will not back down. Not this time. His life does not belong to this old tyrant. Instead, he looks his father straight in the eyes. "You couldn't bear to have Nikolai around you because he is a better man than you, in everything he does!" he flings at him. The next moment, terror seizes him for saying something like this to his father, but he steels himself for the onslaught of wrath that is to come now. He is sick of cowering, and that time is over now; he swears to himself that he will cringe and duck no more.
"A better man than me?" One corner of his father's mouth twitches. "Luckily your judgement is worth nothing at all, you fucking queer."
He has expected everything, but not this. The shock at such an insult from his own father leaves him thunderstruck, unable to form a word, let alone a coherent sentence. He just shakes his head numbly, unbelieving, too shocked and hurt to protest.
"See?" his father states coldly. "You don't even deny it. You're a disgrace to the family."
"It's a lie," Kirill murmurs tonelessly. "It's just a filthy lie."
When his father punches him in the stomach hard, he makes no move to defend himself. Blow after blow is raining down on him, making him cringe and throwing him against the hard wooden door in turn, but he hardly feels the pain. The fury is gone, seeped out of him like air escaping from a stabbed balloon, and all that is left is darkness and despair. Nikolai is gone, and his father does not love him and never will. Somehow he deserves the beating, he thinks, because he has truly failed at everything. He should be dead, dead and buried deep where nobody will ever find him, with nothing to remind the world that he ever existed. There is a grief so deep it cannot be put into words, a never-ending pain, a loneliness from which there is no rescue. He finds himself crouching on the ground while his father kicks him again and again, with tears streaming down his cheeks, tears he cannot stop, and all he can think of is that tomorrow the sun will still rise no matter if he is dead or alive. He is of no importance, and nobody will ever miss him, sacrificial lamb without a cause, waiting to die for nothing.
How can he fight when he is already broken inside?
"Now get out," his father says at last, and he sees the contempt written on his father's features, grotesquely blurred through the tears.
He manages to get to his feet, his limbs shaking, and stumbles out, bereft of even his pride. All he wants is to get away, to be alone, to bleed to death in peace and drown in his own blood. In his bedroom, he pulls the door shut behind him, his fingers almost too feeble to turn the key. He collapses on the bed, shaking with sobs that break out of him, tearing his chest apart.
Oh Nikolai, Kolya, my only friend, where are you now when I need you most?
But he is alone, alone in a dark crater with walls too steep to climb, strapped unto an altar under a starless sky.
There is a large plush lion on the bed, sitting beside his pillow, a gift from his father, a reward for bringing home top marks when he was a little schoolboy. The perfect gleam of the fur has faded, and the mane does not feel silky anymore, but Kirill will not give the lion away, he means too much to him. Now he pulls him close and nuzzles his face into the soft fur, caressing the mane. It is all the comfort he can get, a memory from days long gone.
If only Nikolai were here…
This is what his father wanted: punish the son for all his failures by killing his best friend. Kirill can see the cruelty of it clearly. And there is no way he can take revenge. He fails even at that.
But Nikolai is still alive, he reminds himself, hugging the lion to him tightly. Nikolai will come back to him.
And yet, to wait for him is unbearable. He wants him back now, and he wants him to hold him and comfort him, and to promise once more that he will never, never leave him.
The humiliation at his father's brutal words mingles with shame at this thought, shame at his own helplessness, and at his dependence on Nikolai.
If he could only go to see him at the hospital… But he has to be cautious, even if it drives him mad. A vor cannot visit a fellow vor in hospital; it is a rule, and he will not break those rules. It would endanger both Nikolai and himself, along with all the others.
But what does he care about the others? What do they matter to him? He hates them, and his father most of all.
And still he is a vor, and will remain one.
And still his father is his father, and there is no way to fight him.
Only when Nikolai is there to help him and give him the strength he needs.
No, he is no queer, whatever Soyka claimed, whatever his father says. He is no queer. And still Nikolai means more to him than anyone else, still he loves him more than anything else in the world. Yes, he loves him, he loves him so much that he can hardly bear to be separated from him, that it torments him to know Nikolai is wounded and alone and he cannot be with him.
It torments him that Azim is still out there somewhere, alive and well. That swine should be dead, dead and torn to pieces and scattered in the wilderness for all kinds of wild animals to devour.
As his father should be.
No. No, never. Not his father.
Yes. Both Azim and his father. Both.
But his father is his father!
Is this the way a father acts? Is this the way a father should treat his son?
And still a tiny spark of hope remains, the desperate hope that one day his father will love him again. He cannot extinguish it and turn away. It binds him, and it always will.
He will fight from now on, he swears, he will not let himself be humiliated again. But he knows that every time he tries his father will break him, again and again.
I need you, Kolya. I need you with me. I can't do this alone.
And then he whispers the fateful words, whispers them into the lion's soft ear: "I love you Kolya. I'm no fucking queer, but damn it, I love you."