Chapter Text
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Intercalate - transitive verb
in·ter·ca·late | \ in-ˈtər-kə-ˌlāt \
-to insert or position between or among existing elements or layers, such as days into a calendar or molecules into a crystal lattice or geological structure.
***
July 16, 1987
Standing on the poisoned ground of Chernobyl, Boris and Ulana watch helplessly as the car drives away from the makeshift courthouse. They watch with their hearts in their throats and their stomachs in their shoes as the KGB drive away with their comrade in tow. Not "comrade" in the Party sense of the word. They'd perverted it. If telling a truth that potentially saved lives was punished like this, they'd perverted it. They perverted everything.
But what else was there to call it? They'd never dared name the strange shape that had formed around the three of them. Between them. Through them. A year in the crucible of Chernobyl had changed them inexorably, as the accident would change everything for kilometers around it and for years to come.
And now they were split asunder, just as cruelly as they had been fused together.
"Where are they taking him?" Ulana asks, staring up at Boris with wide, lost eyes. She looks shell-shocked. Horrified. I did this, her face says. I told him to tell the truth at all costs, and now he's going to pay. Just him. It should be me.
She's clearly expecting to be chastised. Boris knows that look. He's seen it in his subordinates before. And if he's being honest, he is angry with her in this moment. He does blame her at least in part for what happened, but he doesn't have the heart to lay into her. The fight is gone from him. He'd warned her before and that was enough input from him on the matter. And if the look in her dampening eyes was any indication, she would blame herself for this for the rest of her life.
Besides, it had ultimately been Valery's choice in the end. And it had been Boris who'd made sure he got to make that choice. They were equally culpable.
But what had she expected, anyway? What had either of them expected really? Adulation? Acclaim? Some shade of aghast horror that would lead to swift reform?
Clearly so. He hadn't been wrong when he'd called her naive. But then again… so was he. His deal with the KGB had been a colossal failure. So here they were. A matching pair of naive fools watching as their comrade was taken away from them.
"Boris?" She implores, her voice beginning to give and crack under the weight of her sorrow.
"I don't know." Boris answers with a hanging shake of his head. The truth is what she has always claimed to want so the truth is what she gets. Besides, Ulana can smell the truth a mile off. She had proved that when she turned up on their doorstep in Pripyat having sensed their every move all the way from Minsk. And besides, he has nothing else to give her anyway. "I don't know."
Her lip wobbles at that. Her fierce, bright eyes the color of the foam on the Black Sea brim and shine as they follow the tail lights of the departing car.
Boris decides that can't stand seeing her like this, and furthermore, he doesn't want her to make a scene. Everyone's going to be suspicious enough as it is without her weeping like the widow that she most certainly is after a fashion. They're both widowed in a way.
"Come on." He says tenderly, opening the door to the back of the car. Not here. he says with his storm-gray eyes and a hand pressed to the small of her back, lingering there only briefly so their driver does not see.
They are carried by car from Chernobyl to Kiev, and then from there they take an overnight train to Moscow, in the watchful company of a modest fleet of KGB agents of course. Ulana is silent all the while, and Boris too, until they reach the station in Moscow and they are told by their handler that they are both being escorted to yet another waiting car.
"Where are we going?" she hisses, hoping the noise in the station will cover the question.
"The Kremlin I'd wager." Boris answers, not bothering to keep his voice down and adopting a rather business-like if not down right dismissive tone. "After Comrade Legasov's stunt at the trial, the KGB will want to speak to us."
Ulana pales at that as she scurries along next to him, taking two steps to his one.
"Don't worry. We've nothing to be afraid of." He says, taking advantage of a sharp turn to touch her elbow unseen. Let me do the talking, his expression says. I'll keep us out of trouble.
Her breath escapes her, pressurized with anxiety. But she nods, squaring her narrow shoulders as they head for the street.
The Kremlin is an imposing place on the best of days and under the best of circumstances, but when one knows they have a date with the KGB, it's downright forbidding. Even to Boris, who's grown used to the hulking, overwrought place by this point in his career, it's still a place that balances awe and fear across the edge of a knife. Under the wrong circumstances, which these very much are, the white on white interiors shot through with strategic accents of blood red can be terrifying.
Exactly as intended.
They are led swiftly to one of the many conference rooms, and find that inside is none other than Chairman Charkov himself, wearing his usual placid, unimpressed expression that hugs the border between patronising and bored. Boris finds himself rather wildly wondering if it is frozen in place from overuse in interrogations.
"Good day, Comrade Chairman." Boris greets formally to cover the shock.
"Good day, Comrade Shcherbina. And, Comrade Ulana Khomyuk? I don't believe we've had the pleasure. Though I've heard so much about you." He smiles and holds out his hand to her as if shaking his hand is the most benign act in the world.
Ulana visibly hesitates before she takes it, looks nauseous when she does, and by some heroic feat of will, doesn't wipe her hand on her dress when she withdraws it. Boris doesn't blame her for her reaction. Not after what she's seen of the KGB. She claimed that they never laid a hand on her, but Boris knows that they can do far worse than physical harm. And she never talked about what happened to her while she was in lockup. Never. Not even to Valery as far as he knew…
Valery...
"I suppose there's no point in further pleasantries." Charkov continues in his infuriatingly unaffected voice. "It's not as if you don't know why I called you here. Please, have a seat."
They do, and he does not. Charkov remains on his feet, calmly and cooly pacing the room and not looking at either of them as he speaks. Rather, he stares off at the portraits and the crown moulding over their heads. All of it is part of the design of course, just like the decor of the Kremlin itself. Meant to make them feel small. Talked down to. Unimportant and easily dismissed, either by the wave of a hand or the firing of a bullet.
"Your colleague, Comrade Legasov claims the two of you had no prior knowledge of his plans for his testimony." Charkov says.
"That is correct, Comrade Chairman." Boris replies. Ulana opts to merely nod.
Charkov's beady reptilian eyes flick between them briefly. "And yet I find it interesting that you, Boris, insisted… nay, interrupted a trial by the State, so that he might conclude his testimony with his slander of the Soviet Union." He blandly purses his lips as if he were chastising children for breaking a window or stealing from the neighbor's garden.
Boris doesn't answer that. He feels Ulana's eyes on him, keenly intending to follow his lead. I'm waiting for him to ask an actual question. He wants to tell her this, but he hopes his silence is message enough. Keeps me from talking myself into a corner.
When neither of them take the bait Charkov blandly shrugs. "Ultimately, it's of no consequence whether Comrade Legasov was telling the truth about you two, or whether he was lying," he goes on, resuming his pacing. "The outcome is the same given his other actions. He will be stripped of his duties at the Kurchatov Institute. He will be stricken from the record of events in Chernobyl, and his influence credited to other people."
Boris feels Ulana bristling next to him and, while he's never been a religious man, he prays at that moment to something. To anything that she can bite her tongue in two until this is over. They can't help him. At least not right now. Not from here. And certainly not by mouthing off to the Deputy Chairman of the KGB.
"You will have no contact with him." Charkov continues as if he can't hear their teeth grinding. "Comrade Shcherbina, you know that usually under these circumstances, there would be rather swift and unquestionable outcomes for the associates of someone like Legasov, such as yourselves. Perhaps I'm getting soft in my old age, but honestly I think I'm just getting more practical. You're all dying. I'd rather not waste the bullets."
"Then what is to be our punishment?" Ulana asks with cold and defiant primness.
Boris nearly breaks a tooth trying to bite back a noise of complaint.
Shit.
Charkov actually smiles then, though it seems to be more an eager baring of predatory teeth. Pleased that at last he'd antagonized a reaction from one of them. He'd been lying in wait for it. "You don't think this is sufficient?" he asks, a cruel sort of pleasure glinting in his eyes from behind his thick glasses. "No, your lives will continue uninterrupted for as long as you have them. Everything will go back to the way it was before you were uprooted from your lives by your duties to the State. You'll go back to your institute in Minsk, Comrade Khomyuk, and Comrade Shcherbina will continue his work here at the Kremlin. And neither of you will ever speak to Valery Legasov again. You'll never speak about him again, if you know what's good for you. Not to each other. Not to anyone else. He is no longer a part of your lives. And he is no longer part of the story of Chernobyl."
Ulana opens her mouth again and Boris grabs her fingers under the table, forcing her to swallow her statement.
But for a man like Charkov, the question is as good as asked. "If you do not comply," he says, his tone turning icy. "I'll have Legasov brought here to the Kremlin, and I'll force the actual truth out of him. And then I'll have him shot. His death won't serve any purpose. I won't really have any use for the information and it will be a mess to clean up in the public eye. So please don't make me do it."
Ulana merely gapes, silent and stunned as surely as if Charkov had slapped her across the face.
"We understand, Comrade Chairman Charkov." Boris says, before Ulana can make a sound.
The smile returns then, snakelike and wicked. And yet somehow still dismissive. As if he's seen suffering like theirs a thousand times and had grown unaccountably bored of it. "No, I don't think you do yet." he says, fiddling absently with a button on his sleeve. "But you will. In time. You'll think at first you're doing him a favor by staying away, but time and loneliness will wear you down. Don't think my agents in Chernobyl were blind to your… philandering. It was merely not a priority to pursue at the time. But we knew. And because of that, I know that you'll miss him not only as one misses any comrade of war, but also because he was your lover. Both of you. I know that the two of you will feel the lack of him like a phantom limb. And you will feel that pain for the rest of your shortened days.
"And then... maybe in a week. Maybe in a month. Maybe years down the line, if indeed you live that long, thoughts of defiance will cross your mind. And perhaps plans even more desperate, such as sedition or defection, but you won't pursue any of them because you know Valery Legasov's life is what hangs in the balance should those plans come to ruin. And besides, he was the only brave soul among you, so those traitorous thoughts will only add to the cancerous rot that will accumulate until your shared condition claims you both." He cocks his head then, his expression gone cold and treacherous once again. "Is that sufficient punishment, Comrade Khomyuk?"
The pronouncement is gentle in its concussive violence. It's a flat statement. A prescription and a prophecy all rolled into one. And it does its job. It stuns her into silence once more before she manages to swallow audibly. What else can she say? "Yes, Comrade Chairman." she replies, her voice shaking like a leaf in late autumn.
"Very well." Charkov says, his icy demeanor vanishing like late spring snow. That damnably benign and blasé air is back. "You are dismissed. Outside you'll find cars willing to take you wherever you need to go." Then he flashes them a politician's smile, and for a brief second he seems nauseatingly affable. "Good day, Comrades."
There are murmurs of departure and chair legs scrape on the hardwood as Ulana and Boris beat a hasty retreat from the conference room and out the front door of the Kremlin. The sun is hot on their faces, but they crave and welcome the heat and humidity after the oppressive, artificial atmosphere of the white-washed rooms in the Kremlin.
True to his word, Charkov has two cars waiting for them. Ulana stands there on the steps, indecisively shifting her weight foot to foot. Anywhere she wants to go? She doesn't want to go anywhere… but...
She feels Boris pull on her elbow. "Come on." He says, and he leads her down to the sidewalk, past the pair of slick, black cars, and off into the bowels of Moscow.
"Where are we going?" She asks when they are finally out of earshot of their handlers and the Kremlin.
"Just another block or so. There's a cafe with the best sushki in the whole Soviet Union. The ones I had brought to us back in Pripyat." He tells her with a frail shell of a smile. "I tend to frequent them when I've had a rough day at work."
Ulana can't hold back a derisive snort. "This was a bad day at work?"
"No, Ulana. It's the worst day of my life, truth be told. And the last year and a half of my life has made that a difficult thing to say. So I want some time, and something sweet, and just…" He sighs heavily and pulls her to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. "If you need to get back to Minsk..."
"No." She says quickly, her voice gone soft. She looks somewhat chastised as she hooks her hand on the bend of his elbow. "Lead the way."
And she smiles. Or she tries to anyway. In spite of it all, she manages a ghost of a smile and it infects him too. And they walk to the cafe, arm in arm.
***
April 27, 1986
"We will have to take this to the Kremlin." Shcherbina said, hands stuffed into his pockets as he paced the length of the map-strewn work table.
"Why?" Legasov asked.
"Why?" Shcherbina parroted, more than a little aghast. "You're essentially asking to kill three people, Comrade Legasov."
"I know, but many more will die if-"
"It's still purposefully killing three people. Even I don't get to make those kinds of decisions. No one does outside of the military in times of war."
Legasov leaned back in his chair with a sigh. Maybe there could be another way… some way to... But then again, this was war. That's what this was going to be in the end. He'd known it as soon as he'd read Shcherbina's report. And the deaths would not stop at three… and furthermore, they were going to be culpable for all of them. Every single one.
He was a scientist. This was not something he was meant to be doing.
His eyes met Khomyuk's and he could see his own thoughts reflected there, but unlike him she wasn't flinching. She was made of iron, this woman, and she knew there simply wasn't any other way. Now that he thought about it, she'd probably figured that out on her drive from Minsk. She'd come prepared to suggest such a sacrifice. And she was clearly the smartest person in the room, at least when it came to engineering.
"Where's the phone?" Legasov asked, sitting forward and scrubbing one hand over the nape of his neck.
Shcherbina answered the request with a shake of his head, waving for Legasov to keep his seat. "It's alright. I'll do it."
"Boris." He knew that he shouldn't use it, but he could say so much with just his name.
And Shcherbina clearly heard it. His stern face softened for a second. No less sad. No less haggard. But somehow lighter. "No, it's alright. Just… It's my responsibility to get you what you need."
"But…"
Shcherbina cut him off with another wave of his hand as he scooped up the phone from its cradle. Legasov deflated, but he never took his eyes off Scherbina, something like concern pinching his brow.
Khomyuk watched the exchange curiously. These two had barely been here 48 hours and yet… perhaps they knew each other before all this. But she doubted it.
"What can I-" Legasov started.
"You can help me by explaining why again." Shcherbina cut him off as gently as he was able. "I'll have an easier time with this if I can give them facts. A walk-through of the problem. The more complete the information I give them, the better our chances of a quick yes."
Legasov nodded, reaching for his cigarettes. "Comrade Khomyuk? You figured it out. Walk us through it again, please?"
Yes… tell them again how they're going to have to sacrifice lives, she thought. More lives. And this is, no doubt, just the beginning. Thankfully, both men seemed to know that. They both looked exhausted and worn, and she suddenly felt unaccountably guilty. Not for telling the truth, but for what it was doing to them. To Comrade Shcherbina in particular. This was not the first hard call he'd had to make, and she could tell that she was not the first harbinger of bad news they'd received. In fact, she'd found herself strangely welcomed into their circle with open arms.
Explaining herself is the least she can do. The literal least.
So she took a deep breath and began to lay out the situation and her proposed plan once again. She hovered over the blueprints, pointing and explaining in the best and most simplistic detail she could give. And she noted all the while that Shcherbina lingered close to Legasov now… like a parent. Or a lover.
Legasov, for his short stature and rather cramped posture, cast a long shadow.
~~~
The requisite calls were made and their proposal was accepted with astonishing ease by the Kremlin, so preparations and planning could proceed immediately. Shcherbina called General Pikalov to let him know that they'd been given permission to go ahead with the plan to open the sluice gates. But it was obvious that the Central Committee didn't quite understand the gravity of the situation, since Gorbachev had still insisted that the three of them come to Moscow the following day to detail the next phase of their plan. He would give permission in writing then.
Besides, it was necessary, after all, for the team in Chernobyl to tell them, in person and on public record, why the Soviet Union must kill three people. As strictures on something like that went, Ulana felt it too lenient and too strict, all at once. Time was of the essence, but should anyone ever be in a rush to sacrifice lives?
But there was no other way. It was three lives or millions, and roughly 48 hours to decide. How was that even a decision? And yet it had to be a decision. They had to decide… three people for millions. It was not the sort of math Khomyuk was used to doing and the same clearly could be said of Legasov.
Boris Shcherbina is good at this, she noted to herself as she listened to his half of the phone call to the Kremlin. He knew how to get what he needed, though it shouldn't have come as a surprise. Everyone who ever excelled at politics had this ability, though she'd never seen it brought to bear for something so… selfless. Not like this. Not the way Shcherbina did it. He wielded his clout and prestige with a swordsman's expertise.
And at Professor Legasov's request. She couldn't fail to notice that.
The way they'd looked at each other… Surely they must've known one another before now.
When it was done, Shcherbina let the phone fall into the cradle with a louder-than-necessary thud. "Come with me. I have something for us back at the work site."
"I'm tired." Legasov complained as he snuffed out another cigarette. The third in the amount of time Ulana had known him. She hadn't smoked since her assistantship years, but suddenly she just wanted to stand in the mantle of smoke that surrounded the man. Stand close and breathe it in...
She was tired too, it seemed...
"So am I," Boris replied, swinging his greatcoat about his massive shoulders. "But I have something for us back at the trailer. I was saving it for lunch tomorrow, but I think we should have it now since we'll be on a train in the morning. And it would be a good way to welcome Comrade Khomyuk and show her where she'll be working." He turned to her as she was gathering her things. "Or were you planning to do the smart thing and go back to Minsk?"
That drew an amused if not somewhat affronted smile from her. "Did you think I came all this way to give you bad news and then trot off to my lab again, Comrade."
"You could." Legasov responded rather seriously. "It's dangerous here."
"You're here." she replied with a quick little incline of her head.
"We don't really have a choice, Comrade Khomyuk." Shcherbina retorted, his tone gentled slightly at her resolve.
"Ulana." she said, seeing as Shcherbina clearly enjoyed chewing on the sharp edges of her name when it suited his mood. "And I feel that I can't propose a plan to avert disaster that costs human lives if I wouldn't be willing to risk my own. So I'll stay."
"You of all people would understand the risk." Legasov said with a considering twist of his head.
"Correct."
The two men regarded her with hard, tired eyes, but ultimately the professor nodded to himself. Alright then. He looked to Shcherbina, his trademark utterly humorless and barely-there smirk pulling at the corner of his thin mouth. "Well. Let's go then."
What Comrade Shcherbina had stashed in his work trailer was a pastel pink box of sushki. Little rings of dough, boiled and baked and topped with poppy seeds.
"They might be a little stale. They arrived this morning with my things. There's a bakery down a few blocks from the Kremlin and I had my secretary swing by." he explained holding out the box of pastries for his frankly astounded colleagues. "I always treat myself when it's been a rough day at work."
"I suppose that's an understatement." Legasov said, blinking in surprise before picking out a few for himself as Ulana did likewise.
"It wouldn't be for some at the Kremlin." he opined.
"Not you?" Legasov asked.
Ulana was a little taken aback at the baldness of the question, but Shcherbina seemed unperturbed by it.
"Not me. I've… outlined some plans that had acceptable risks. Especially during times of war. And… well, mining accidents are a regrettable but common occurrence in the coal industry. But to flatly ask to kill three people? No. This is a first for me." he said, popping one of the sushki into his mouth whole.
"A first for all three of us then, I would imagine." Legasov opined, biting into his own pastry rather absently, but as the taste registers on his tongue he frowns in obvious appreciation. "These are really good, Boris."
"Agreed." Ulana replied, failing to hide her delighted if bewildered smile. "How in the hell did you get a box of pastries delivered to a nuclear disaster site all the way from Moscow?"
Comrade Shcherbina smiled then. He really smiled, the filmy light catching in his slate grey eyes. And both Valery and Ulana were enchanted by the rare sight. He looked proud. He looked confident. And Valery, not for the first time, felt better for having him there, rough and stubborn as he was. If he could get pastries delivered to an evacuated town in the shadow of a nuclear disaster, he could probably do anything.
"Well, Comrades, it's simple." Boris said with a proud smile. "I'm a politician, and I have been for over forty years. And you don't survive as long as I have, or have a place in the Kremlin if you're not good at getting what you want when you want it."
They all laughed then. Just a little and quietly, but it was there. A strange sound in the quiet of the empty work site. A stolen bit of brightness. A luxury, like the pastries.
Boris stashed the box in its hiding place again once they'd eaten their fill, and led them out of the trailer. Valery and Boris went first and then Ulana followed. She stumbled before she reached the ground, the heel of her shoe hanging on the lip of the stair. Reflexively, her hand flew out and Boris was there, elbow at the ready to steady her on her feet.
She looked out over the work site and felt as if her heart were suddenly being wrung like a dishrag. It was as if the shock of such a close call had lifted a veil and she was looking at her surroundings clearly for the first time since she'd arrived. She looked out at the dim outline of the mortally wounded hulk of Reactor 4, billowing smoke even darker than the night sky beyond. At the quiet trailers and the distant empty buildings. All silent. All silenced as the radiation seeped out and into the world. The iodine and the caesium that had infiltrated her lab. She was watching now as it roared up into the air to come down on who knew how many people. Even if they did their best, it was too late for so many people...
Until that moment, that instant of seething gravity-induced panic, it had all been blueprints and math. Her mind had its teeth in the problem from the beginning, but her heart was here now. And that was how she found herself frozen and dumbstruck, as if she only just now seemed to know where she was. It was as if the radiation had stolen her voice too along with the rest of Pripyat's. The pinch of her brow and the cessation of her breathing, if only for a moment, confirmed it. And then as she straightened and forced a gasp of air into her lungs, she looked up at Boris with those bright vulnerable sea-green eyes. He stared evenly back down at her with a look of… not pity. But a kind of miserable concern.
It was the first time they'd communicated without words, but they had a knack for it, it seemed. And Valery too. Right from the very start.
It's that bad? It's that… uncontained?
Yes.
Did I make a mistake in coming here?
Only if you fear death… but it won't come for awhile, so I'm told.
Her thin lips pressed until they disappeared for a moment. Then we won't face any of this alone. she found herself thinking.
No, not just thinking. Promising.
Her hand tightened on his elbow then, and she didn't let go until they were all the way back at the hotel. And Valery followed close on their heels, well within arm's reach but lagging behind, trailing smoke from yet another cigarette.
***
"I should head back to Minsk." Ulana says, blowing delicately on her tea as she watches the people hustle by on the sidewalk.
"In the morning." Boris says. On the surface it's an almost dismissive command, but beneath that there's an unspoken plea threaded through it. Stay.
"You don't think they'll be suspicious if I stay?"
Boris just gives her a flat look. A desperate look. It hangs on his usually stern features like an ill fitting suit. They already know. Don't you leave me here alone like this. One night… please…
"Of course," she says. And she resists the urge to take his hand where it lies so invitingly bereft on the table.
They finish their tea in silence after that. Nothing left to say. Nothing fit for open air or daylight anyway. Grief in the Soviet Union is kept private. Especially strange, malformed grief like this, which shouldn't exist in the Soviet Union at all.
Boris's apartment is as sterile and empty as would be expected from someone married to their work. It hadn't dawned on Ulana until this very moment, but it's the first time she's ever seen his home. Or what passed for it. She'd been to Valery's apartment… papers and books everywhere and his spoiled little cat twining around her ankles. But she's never seen Boris's home. She moves to remark on it, but as soon as they're in the door, Boris's finger is over his lips and then pointing to his ears.
Ah. Of course. This old chestnut. Ears everywhere. Even now she has to be careful what she says. Probably. They will always have to be careful of what they say...
Because they will always be listening.
"I suppose we should have stopped at the store." Boris says softly. "I haven't been back here in a week and I likely don't have anything for dinner."
Ulana shakes her head. "Don't worry about it. I honestly don't know if I could eat anyway."
"Me neither, so you'll be spared my cooking." Boris says with a mirthless smile on his lips, heading towards the kitchen anyway. "But I can drink." He retrieves a bottle of vodka and two glasses, and heads for the sitting room with its expansive picture window. Ulana follows after him.
The view is impressive, Ulana has to admit. She's never seen Moscow from a perch quite like this. The bands of lights stretch out beneath them like dots of dew on a spider's web, and near the center stands the Kremlin, a pitch-dark spire in the gathering nightfall. She's never been one to be easily stirred to patriotism, but neither has she ever felt outright malice or derision for the State. She'd never imagined that the sight of the seat of Soviet supremacy could tap such a frighteningly deep well of black and noxious hatred in her heart.
Boris strips out of his suit coat before joining her at the window and proceeding to pour for both of them. They drink. Then drink again. And now they stand together, silhouetted against the skyline and the murky sunset, cradling their third round and slowly listing towards one another as if the vodka had dissolved whatever anchors kept them moored apart. Closer and closer they drift, until Ulana is tucked tightly against Boris' side. Then she downs her shot and turns, burying her face in the soft cotton of his shirt.
There is a space between them. Not a physical one. They are pressed together from knee to chest, and Ulana's face is hidden in the folds of his clothes. But there is a space.
A space shaped like a scientist. One who wore his too large glasses and untailored suit with a self-conscious slouch. With a cigarette in his hand, and a scattering of freckles on his cheeks that invited kisses the way the sand on the shore invites the ocean's waves.
"Borja" she moans his name softly into his broad chest. She thinks for a moment tears might come but none do. She's beyond that. Her face just feels hot and her stomach twists sourly around the vodka. She can't even properly cry. She cannot do anything but hide from the swelling shape of her guilt and her grief.
He drinks as well, setting their glasses aside before he gathers her to him. He actually has to stoop to set his chin on top of her hair.
"I know, Ulya." He whispers into the shadows of the room. "I know."
"I just keep thinking… they brought him back to Moscow. They must have." she whispers, muffling the words in his clothes so that the bugs won't hear. "He's here, Borja! It's worse having him so close."
"Would you rather have him sent to Siberia with Dyatlov and the others?" he asks, not the first barb in his voice. The question is gentle with his nose and lips pressed into the part of her hair.
She shakes her head. "No, of course not, Boris."
His arms tighten around her. "I'm sorry you were brought into this."
She lets out a cough of weepy laughter. "Now you try to be noble, Borja?" She looks up at him red faced and red eyed but smiling in spite of herself. "I showed up on your doorstep, remember? Got myself arrested to get to you in Pripyat with the information I had. And then I stayed."
"I could have sent you away." he says, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.
"No, you couldn't have. You needed me. You knew Valery needed me."
"If I had known…"
"Bah, if we had only known." she parrots disdainfully as she wipes at her eyes. She's still not crying, but they itch. "Isn't that what got us in trouble in the first place? The right people didn't know. Or didn't care to know. But we did know and we did care. That's what Valery was trying to tell everyone. We just didn't want to look. None of us did. Even when I was running the numbers back in Minsk. I didn't even think… I called Chernobyl because they might know something, not because I thought... not because I thought it was the source of the radiation. Who on Earth would think that?"
"But him."
"But him." she echoes, dropping her face against his chest and inhaling. He likewise presses his nose into her hair again, drawing the scent into his ailing lungs like incense.
They drift together through the mingling shadows and their joined gloom. There were no more tears. They would do no good here. There was no washing away this grief or this guilt. No excising it or drowning it. Only time would tell if they could all heal from it.
If they could heal from it by themselves.
"Are you sure I should stay tonight, Boris?" Ulana looks up at him, eyes asking the real question. With them listening?
He just nods, pulling her close again and squeezing her against his broad chest so tightly that she could scarcely draw breath. She almost doesn't want to. Every breath hurt. Every breath without Valery with them hurt, and that pain would never end. She knows it. And it made sense that she should feel the pain of Boris' affection in her bones as well.
"Take me to bed, Borja." She whispers against his shirt.
And he does. Bridal carry and all. She hadn't expected that, but then Boris could be indulgently romantic in the most unexpected ways and the most unexpected times. Back in Chernobyl, he'd always been quick with a treat for her, once he'd learned that her sweet tooth matched his. A cigarette for Valery. The French ones. How he got them, she'd never know, and like a magician he seemed to enjoy keeping his secrets. And Boris always had a smile for both of them. His real smile. The one that softened his face and chased the heavy clouds from his thunderous brow. Always, when no one else was looking, she'd catch him watching Valery. Or even watching her, and there would be that smile.
Her romantic Borja.
Their romantic Borja.
They would always be each other's. Even from far away.
Or not so very far away, which felt even farther.
He kneels as gracefully as his old frame will allow, and deposits her at the edge of the mattress before sinking to the floor. He removes her shoes, and then slides his hands up her legs, the pleats of her skirt flattening over his corded forearms. She spreads her knees to draw him closer, sinking her hands into his hair and drawing his mouth to hers.
She suddenly realized she couldn't remember the last time they had kissed. Had it been during their preparation for Vienna? Had it been that long? They hadn't had any time together before the trial. None alone anyway. The last time they were all three together and there were eyes everywhere. She hadn't even thought about it at the time. It was as if she'd been a different person… they were all different people when other eyes were on them. All thoughts of togetherness buried deep until they could be alone again. No wonder she'd been jealous of the two of them stealing a moment together outside when the court had been in recess. Though she didn't grudge them that reprieve now. She only wished that she'd gotten one… Just a moment with him before...
God, it had been too long. Boris was so warm, vodka still hot on his breath. And under that, the taste of tea and sweets. It was always how he tasted. Just like Valery always tasted of cigarettes…
Valery…
Valera…
It's then that the tears finally come, burning her eyes as he licks into her mouth. Of course it would be now. She moans against Boris' lips, prompting him to open his mouth to swallow her despair whole. He rucks her skirt up further, hooking his fingers into her underwear and dragging them down her legs.
"Borja…" His name is little more than a ghost floating across her lips. She doesn't dare be any louder. Not with them listening. Even though they know…
They shouldn't know, she thinks bitterly. Not about this. She isn't reserved out of any sense of propriety. Not out of any sense of shame or modesty, but because they shouldn't know about something this good. They shouldn't have any one as good as her Borja.
Their Borja.
He's still pushing her skirt up, baring her thighs to the dark of the bedroom. Her knees fall farther apart and his thumb slides through the curly patch of hair over her pubic bone and then down… down until she curls her pelvis to catch his fingers against the entrance of her pussy.
"There you are…" Boris whispers with a tenderness that rakes monstrous talons across her heart. "There you are, Ulya. Lie back and let me have you."
She does, tears spilling out of her eyes and onto the quilt. Her spine turns to water as she lets him hook her legs over his shoulders and lies back across the bedspread, hand still lightly carding through his silvery hair. Short as it is, it's so thick she can grab it by the handful. His mouth is on her in an instant, and he licks deep. No teasing. No testing. No hesitance. They're both too old and too familiar for such things. He licks into her like he's dying. Starving, even. He licks and sucks in all the ways and places he's learned over their time together. He had never been one for shyness or reservation.
What he wanted he got. Always. And what he wants right at this moment is her.
He coaxes her to the precipice of an orgasm in record time. Perfect pressure. Perfect application of teeth in all the right places. Perfect everything. It always was with him. Still is…
He breaches her with one finger, curling it as he draws it from her along with a moan thin and sweet as spun sugar. She bucks twice and comes. She tries to swallow the sounds as her pleasure wells up and spills over the edge, carrying her along in its current. Her fingers tighten in his hair as he works her through it with his tongue, drinking up her pleasure until she's still again.
Boris smiles up at her then over the hem of her skirt. He looks pleased with himself. And soft. Ulana drags him to her, wrapping herself around him and kissing him deeply, tasting herself on his lips. Her hands busy themselves with his buttons. Far too many buttons. Far too much cloth between them. He's pulling at her clothes too. Unbuttoning her skirt and dragging her blouse over her head, tousling her curls into disarray.
She has to help him with her bra, the old clasps bent and twisted with wear, but his mouth is on her as soon as it's off. She loves that he worships her as if she's still a young woman, as if he can drink from her like a fountain. He did this with Valery too she remembers… kissing his freckles as if he could eat them...
Valera…
That spurs her into action. She practically tears his shirt from him by way of distraction from that thought, and he's got his pants falling to the floor as well. Underwear too, and he's chasing her up onto the pillows on all fours until he can collapse between her thighs.
"Ulya…" he growls the endearing name against her pulse.
She buries her face in the join of his shoulder and neck, kissing him and drawing him to her until hardly any space remains between them. She drags one foot up the back of his thigh, pulling him closer to feel the head of his cock nudge against her pussy. He needs no further encouragement and he sinks home, making both of them gasp.
"Ulya…" He moans again, frozen for a moment as pleasure fogs his brain like cloying, clinging mist. For a moment, there's only the sound of shallow breathing, and of skin slipping over skin, and then his hips began to stutter into motion.
Boris fucks her exactly like he politicks. Unyielding. Uncompromising. And with undiluted purpose. What he wants, he gets. And not only that, what he wants is given to him. Which is everything. And she does give him everything, with sighs and buried whimpering. To have that brute attention turned on her makes Ulana melt against the pillows. She clamps her teeth together and tries desperately to swallow every sound that escapes her.
They can't hear… they mustn't hear…
But she feels his strong fingers cupping her jaw, his thumb slipping over her lip which she realizes she's biting nearly bloody. She looks at him, wild eyed and flushed, her teeth snapping together to bite back the small sounds welling from her throat.
"Let them hear you." he whispers roughly. "They know. Let them know what they've done if they're so inclined to listen."
She can't hold it back then. She cries out on the next thrust, finding her voice in short bursts timed with the pistoning of his hips. He kisses her knotted jaw. Then the pulse of her throat. And finally her mouth, eating up the sounds that spill from her swollen lips like honey.
It's fast. And rough. And more than a little crude.
But it's theirs. And it's them. As it always was. As it should always be.
But...
Boris finds her clit with his fingers as his hips start to stutter and lose rhythm. "Ulya…" he groans again, her name cracked clean in half across his tongue and she cries out in response. Her nails bite into his back and his teeth into her shoulder. She tightens around him and they come together, everything turning slick and filthy and wonderful as their thrusting slows and grows shallower and shallower.
So wonderful, this togetherness… as long as it lasts.
He slips out of her and falls to his side, his great chest heaving. "Are you alright, darling?" he asks, eyes glassy in the dark.
Ulana rolls to him, tucking her body against his side. "Fine, Borja." She says, patting his cheek. "Perfectly fine."
She always has to reassure him. He's afraid of losing himself. Afraid of hurting her. And that fear wears him like a bad suit. She would soothe it if she could, but how can she? She's frightened herself, though of different things. Of deeper hurts…
Deeper hurts like the fact that she'd never passed a single night in Boris's bed before tonight... And their Valera isn't not there. It feels like heresy.
But despite all that, their sleep is untroubled, and the morning comes too quickly. Ulana lingers in his kitchen through two cups of tea, until she's nearly late for the first train to Minsk. Though he had seemed happy enough to have her miss the first train. But she knows she can't. Responsibilities await. Her old life awaits as does his. The same lives, but different people to live them now.
"Can I still write to you, Borja?" she asks from the door frame. "Even though we can't…" she doesn't say it. She's not ready to say it. She might never be ready to say it.
"Of course, Ulya. Just… know that they'll read it." No point in pretending they aren't listening, but no point in pretending they don't know that they are listening either.
She nods, shouldering her bag and smoothing the hem of her skirt. She's dressed but he's still in his underwear and undershirt. It feels wonderfully unbalanced… and unfamiliar. It was never like this back in Pripyat. Everyone parted ways fully clothed always. This was new… strange and lovely, and she wishes she didn't have to leave.
But the Soviet Union calls. As it always does.
And so she goes.
As she must.
***