Rahi almost makes the mistake of delving into deniability again, of shaking his head and claiming otherwise. They’re just blue, he could’ve said of Zed’s eyes, and as sad as I’ve ever seen them. But it’s not the whole truth, and he knows how relentless the chemist is when he’s right.
So Rahi does as he’s asked of and looks deeper — which is not so deep as it is simply past his own bias, that of which is sure that the worst parts of Zed are still galaxies above other people’s best.
That belief remains true even as he does catch onto their darkness, if anything urged by the man that owns it. It’s unclear whether Rahi sees it for himself, or if he does simply because Zed is saying so. He could have claimed the sky’s red and Rahi would have still checked the view.
His mind fights him, thoughts pulling him at every direction. If he does see something, so what? What would it change? Everything is deadly, in some way. Their own lives surround the very concept of getting too close to all things that may kill them: fire, explosions, chemicals, the engulfing void of outer space. Creation and destruction run too closely knit — just look at The Big Bang and all that followed. Rahi wonders if this is what it felt like.
Then, the whiplash. Rahi blinks a few times, trying to process all those heavy words, which until now he’d sworn off trying to read into. Of course he knew about the family and their suggested play at business; like looking at Monet from a distance, rather than the brushstrokes. In doing so, he’d just managed to miss Zed and Lev’s place in the picture. For a smart man like him, it’s not unfathomable to think it on purpose.
There’s no running away from it now however, and it’s bittersweet. Rahi’s tired, needs the break, wants to see all that his eyes had been forcefully made blind to — but there’s a fresh new fight waiting at the corner.
“Lev?” Such a small word, single-syllable, and his voice still struggles with forming its sound. Out of everything, perhaps that’s what Rahi had expected least. All of those talks of humanity and freedom and — “…And you? Do you…?”
He doesn’t know exactly what he’s asking, something to do with his place in this scheme, but if there’s any reasoning left in him, it’s gone as soon as Zed’s hand touches his skin, triggering goosebumps starting at his neck all the way down his spine. It’s the sort of thing he’d come to accept the absence of, so much so it takes Rahi aback enough to silence him again.
Of course he softens, leaning into it just so. A lifeline keeps himself still; not entirely succumbing to it. He needs to keep himself eloquent — for just a moment longer. “…Это не потому, что это твоя борьба, ты должен делать это в одиночку,” he says, much more quiet. “Если не бензин, то подскажите, что я могу сделать. Чем я могу помочь. Что-нибудь.”
Rahi had never meant anything as much as he does this. There’s a breath caught in his throat that might as well be vital, and even if it is, he’s willingly passing it onto Zed, letting go of all control as he allows himself to close his eyes through the motion — and kiss him back.
His mind is a whirlwind of chaos, a repeated cycle of aloe and burn. Rahi’s not ignorant enough not to think of himself as some sort of crutch, and perhaps even worse so, it doesn’t bother him if he is. It’s overwhelming enough that Rahi lets that thought drown itself out, and him too, for that split moment. It’s almost embarrassing how easily he could have just kept going.
Zed parts but Rahi keeps melting into him, the hand that had been static between his knees suddenly moving up to place on top of Zed’s as though to keep it there. Rahi shifts ever so slightly, burying his face half into his palm.
It’s how he listens to the rest of it, those damning words spoken in Russian, trying to get his absent mind to keep track of it all. Somehow, he’s still comfortable with the sound. Sometimes, Rahi thinks he knows the language better on Zed’s tongue than anyone else’s.
But he can’t stay like this all night.
Again, Rahi moves, this time bringing their hands down again, in that narrow space between their bodies. Gaze targeted down, he notices Zed hadn’t taken his shoes off; considers mentioning it, all those beaten-up jokes about how his ancestors would shame him for this, and all the skeptical looks that would follow. Throughout the years, all their ways memorized. Forwards, backwards, and inside out.
As Rahi listens, he keeps his attention on Zed’s hand, thumb lightly soothing over his scars. He’s so fixated he almost forgets to nod.
When it hits him then, he does it twice over, for safety’s sake.
“You know, the thing with—” It takes a certain kind of willpower to find his voice again. Zed had stolen it whole. “The thing with you not talking to me, for so long, is that… well, there’s a lot of downtime. So I’ve spent a lot of time just thinking… of you, what you’re doing, what you’re doing that you won’t tell me. Why you won’t tell me. All the things you possibly don’t want me to know. Be it about your family, or— Anything.” He hadn’t asked about any of Zed’s injuries, Rahi just now recalls. This one, from his hand and up his arm, he guesses to be domestic. An experiment gone wrong, rather than purposeful harm. Just then, he decides whoever would dare hurt Zed, should live only to regret it. “I figured it was bad. I hoped it was bad, because then at least there was a reason why you did it. And you know how imagination can be worse than reality, sometimes.” He swallows, hard. “So I’ve thought of you… doing the most horrible, unforgivable things. And every time, after considering it for long enough, I still forgave you.” Every. Goddamn. Time. “I’m not saying I will. You’re not pure by default. But let me decide how I look at you, Z. You owe me that.” He looks up then, catching Zed’s eye. A long beat follows. His voice then, merely a whisper: “…Ты скажешь мне, что ты натворил?”
For just tonight, is what Rahi’s really asking, will you let me in?
Rahi’s still sitting there, opposite him on the sofa. He’s not running, not reaching for something to protect himself with; no distrust to Zed’s intentions, no crossing of liabilites. Zed’s never been sure what to expect – never considered a moment quite like this; didn’t want Rahi to be subject to the twisted Vasile ideologies that put the chemist as the enemy on the Chicago lines. And Kumar’s looking at him like that, as though what he’s admitting is nothing more than the weather forecast that’s a little bit of light drizzle – if that. Zedekiah’s searching for something in the man’s gaze, a fault in his posture that gives away his thoughts so Zed can read them and understand what he thinks of him now.
He’s looking for that resentment, the shift that tells of how disgusted the other is of him; that his family name; what it means for the future. Waits for it to chill him to the bone. Recoil Rahi, run. He’s selfish because he will never lets those words be spoken, keeps them contained, trapped in the crevasses of the Vasile’s mind for him to retain only.
There’s patience, desperately waiting for the penny to drop and roll aimlessly, in no particular direction along the floor – it’s carpet Zed. He laughs, just once, to himself at the collapse of his own thought stream. What the new information means for them; that’s what he needs to know, braces for the worst scenarios despite how the younger man doesn’t show a shred of detrimental intent in his gaze. But he’s trained to remain calm in all situations; that’s what he does, to never panic in adversity, to very literally work under extreme pressure as if life and death wasn’t in the balance. Rahi’s good like that.
He should have prepared for his cousin’s name to roll of the other’s tongue. Another kind of burn. Zed’s put Lev in the firing line; albeit, left out the sickening details of his family’s entire dealings – the personal parts that don’t come on the first admittance. Though, the chemist would answer if the engineer ever asked, feels like he owes him that, considering the weight of truth that he’s left him to balance on his shoulders and not crumble to.
Swallowing, the corners of the Vasile’s eyes crease when he focuses his eyes on the other, the wrinkles of age evident on Zedekiah’s temples; he can feel the skin tighten. And there’s honesty; opinionated, very Zed-like in his offering of elaboration: “He’s never wanted that, Rahi,” not in the time I’ve known him; never expressed for it be his end goal. Zed has imagined himself that his death would be during Eli’s reign of the Vasiles, not Lev’s. But playing the hands they are dealt is something they have to do – know the tides of change too well from both his father and uncle and how their deaths came about.
It strikes Zed hard with how the history of men at the top have fallen – hates the idea that Lev’s carrying that burden, not for his incapability, but for the fact he’s better than that.
Have you ever told him that? He’s can’t recall, a man who usually prides so much on his mind, doesn’t know. Because he’s too lost in the present; Rahi knows who he is beneath Professor Vasile and Pharmaceutical Engineer and is staring into the eyes of Zed Vasile, Boyevik for the Russian Mafia. His jaw hardens with the thought, the way Rahi near stumbles over the words to ask after his role in it all.
There’s only blunt statements that come to surface and Zed stills, wonders if he’ll finish the inquiry.
But Zedekiah picks up the implication enough and the hand that’s ghosting the other’s flesh – feels the pinpricks of goosebumps under rough hands; years of chemical irritation leave them mauled really. He’s searching for something that doesn’t outright say I kill who I’m told to, Rahi. A clean assassin; abuses his knowledge of chemicals, manufacturing of such things that leave untraceable deaths across the city that steer well clear of himself and the Vasile name. Natural causes. It’s not for him to expand on his cousin’s role in it all, he’s there for himself like the loss; grief is being addressed in the poorest manner it could have been.
Because it’s becoming evident that Zed doesn’t deal with loss very well – and Eli, it’s different to his father, to Dimitri. It just is. It’s his brother. “Do I what?” it’s gentler than before, the grit that he’s been holding lost in the stiff jaw. “У меня есть звание?” Is that what you’re asking me? Do I give the death order? The Vasile doesn’t let go of the engineer all that easily; selfish.
Every next Russian syllable that falls from Kumar’s lips is almost having Zed question how the other’s man’s translation is, whether he’s genuinely meaning what he says – if without it being his mother tongue, something’s lost in between them. But it’s a futile thought, because Zed knows Rahi doesn’t make mistakes. He’s too clever – the smartest. The quiet is a type of communication between the men – complicated, yet entirely them. Zedekiah believes he can have Chicago crumbling; Rahi helping, the world couldn’t stop them.
And that, to Zed’s own confliction, terrifies him.
The things he would do – as though, he’s always possessed the capability to roboticise; separate from what must be done and what should be; what he’s capable of has never changed. But faced with the actual idea of it, staring him down in the rear of Kumar’s truth, countered with his own, because Zed realises that just as he would bring the city to its knees for the death of Eli. So would Rahi – for him. And he cannot admit that it works both ways; will not allow the other to keep him on the pedestal of greatness that clouds rationality.
Hypocrite now? “Это не твоя война,” and the sensation of skin on skin is exactly the fog that Zed’s just told himself he can’t lose himself in. But he has to. Because Rahi could turn around at any second and let the truth sink in, bury claws in a little deeper, puncture him and make him finally come to the harsh reality that there’s nothing good about accepting what Zed’s coming clean about – jeopardises everything. The fuck does he care in that moment. Lev’s wrath – disappointment, he can battle with later.
Why don’t you hate me Kumar? When he rears back, breaks them apart, it’s cold once more. He knows he doesn’t have to hide dark realities, that all cards are exposed – every sick little monstrous thing he’s done is open for interrogation. Rahi only had to ask.
Zed doesn’t enjoy weakness, it’s not a Vasile familial trait among them, and if his father could see him now – that hand wouldn’t be the only thing he’d lose. But like Eli – he’s not there. It’s just him, and the engineer. And hurt.
It’s like brushstrokes, such gentle fingertips that whisper over decades old scars that somehow manage to earn the lift in the corner of Zed’s lips, he doesn’t understand this. Every time he thinks he might, he doesn’t – self-depredation in how he’s failed in that. In the haze of anguish; sorrow that brought him to Rahi’s door to begin with, he’s able to find a way to redirect it to focus on the other man; you’re still using him, however you choose to justify it, Z. Yet, he’s listening, so hard, to all of it – every half admittance, every opening of expression. The kind of thing Zed can’t do himself, the closest he’s ever been to it being now. It’s still a laughable concept to think Kumar had been entirely clueless to it all, that the silence, the way it’s swept aside if something unanswerable is raised. He can’t stop thinking about the Gala and how maybe then was the moment that he’d already told Rahi everything, in the silence – in the way Zed had ordered Rahi to run then, away from him.
One of the enemies that evening. What if I told you to run again tonight, would you listen? Calculation had consumed in the past – the team building of the smokescreen, unhindered by the same traumas as tonight’s. Zed had control; thrived in that, with his family in the wings. Here, in Rahi’s apartment, using the same man as some kind of answer to what he’s going through with the loss of his brother. A vicious cycle that a man with age and experience of his calibre should be doing better to govern.
I’ve thought of you, doing the most horrible, unforgiveable things. And every time, after considering it for long enough, I still forgave you.
He hangs onto it, clutches that so tight that his mouth’s opening by he can stop it; can’t possibly work out the logistics of the reasoning behind it. Is this philosophy Kumar? Unforgiveable by definition, the object of something that cannot be forgiven.
“Why?” There’s the harshness that he’d been shoving down like a chloroform rag on a traitors throat, the anger towards the idea that even the most despicable things Rahi would forgive him for. Zed’s shaking his head, rises to his feet, fast, like he’s suddenly been burnt by the same kind of hydrochloric acid he once was in chemistry class as a teen and something’s triggered in him. Stands in Rahi’s living room, lifts a fist up like he just needs to feel something sharp in his palm where his nails dig in. A momentary lapse of why Kumar, you’re the smartest, why are you choosing to look at me like I’m not a liar; the worst kind of person to associate with – you’re not like me.
You’re so much fucking better.
If it’s anything Lev would agree with Zed for – he hopes it’s that.
He stands over Rahi, doesn’t think much of the domineering position that reminds him that he’s walked in the apartment as a Boyevik to make a point; the side of him that seems to be a default coping mechanism for how to approach such a situation.
Ты скажешь мне, что ты натворил?
Maybe that’s what Rahi needs from him; what he has to hear to garner the response Zed deserves. Owes the things to him that would be enough to switch the light out of Kumar’s eyes; just the one that looks at him like he’s not staring at a murderer – a homicidal maniac who stands to watch others fall beneath the detriments of his own knowledge; the greatest weapon of all.
Rahi’s asking for that, and he’ll tell him everything – because he asked.
“All those things you pictured of me, those bad things – the horrible, unforgiveable acts,” he says it back to him, uses the descriptors so Rahi knows he was listening, but also so he brings those same imaginaries to surface when Zed prepares to confirm those manifestations for him. He’s looking right at the other, needs himself to see the shift in Rahi’s face when it happens, because it might all be justified if Kumar sees him the way he sees himself: “все это и многое другое,” a beat, a voice that’s hollow; emotionless where he figures it has to be; a snapshot of the man Rahi’s befriended who could sit up at four am and talk Electrochemistry until they’ve disproven some doctor’s theory and poked holes in it for hours. Will go to all the science conferences and cause anarchy like children; same wavelength – seen in an entirely different light when put into context that perhaps the threats issued to fellow scientists by the Vasile weren’t entirely empty. That they were meant because Zedekiah is more than capable of acting on them. The same associate that would plaster a smile on – genuine in Rahi’s presence and then would later clean blood from his hands in the name of his family; within the same day, hours apart.
Like it’s merely nothing.
Even past all that – all the monstrous things Rahi might have manufactured in his clever mind, is not surely the most horrific. Because if he admits to Rahi the real truth, the kind that places him in a different spot to where Lev stands; not rank; not philosophy vs. science – in a way. And perhaps it’s a psychology thing, maybe the engineer would know the answer to this one – or he wouldn’t, the one thing neither of the men might ever know. The part of Zed that has always been, even when he rebelled with the scientific pathway against his family’s wishes, the sliver of why he’s so good at what he does. And it’s sets him apart from Lev completely.
“что, если я признаю, что мне это нравится?”
Can you look at me the same now?
