Work Text:
"Our language," Rhoden tells him, "has no future."
Steinberg's hand holding the pen falters, smudging the umlaut on the last "ä" into a streak of blue ink. He looks up at Rhoden, his brow furrowing with concern.
"You shouldn't talk like that," he says. "I cannot presume to understand your pain, but this - this I know something about. Esther and I speak a language that has never had a homeland. And no matter how much the state wants to stomp it out, it lives. We sing lullabies in it, publish samizdat stories in it, use it for love confessions. For what it's worth coming from an outsider, I believe that Estlish, too, can survive."
Rhoden has lowered his head, his shoulders trembling minutely under coffee-coloured jacket sleeves. For a moment Steinberg is alarmed that he's driven Rhoden to tears; but when they look at each other again, it turns out that Rhoden is biting his thin lower lip to refrain from laughing, the corners of his eyes crinkling with mirth.
"My dearest Sasha," he says. "I am so very sorry I have not made myself clearer. All I meant is that Estlish quite literally has no future tense."
"Oh!" Steinberg exclaims, growing pinker than a radish. He drops his eyes to the pages of the grainy yellow notebook he's bought recently to record his progress in learning Estlish and begins bashfully doodling something in the margins.
Rhoden comes closer and leans heavily on the corner of the plywood desk, wiping his eyes with one black-gloved hand. "Oh, this never gets old," he says, with all the innocent delight of a schoolboy.
Steinberg's doodles are beginning to acquire a vague shape. Rhoden squints at them curiously and asks, "Is this a cat?"
Truthfully, he never does doodle anything else. When Fira was younger, they'd draw little cats for each other on scraps of newspapers, and since then that's what his mind automatically turns to whenever he needs something to occupy it.
The cat is nearly spherical, except for two tiny triangular ears. Its tail is so fluffy it's twice the size of its body. It has a little heart-shaped spot on its chest.
"This is adorable," Rhoden says, in Estlish. "You remember what it's called?"
"Kass." Steinberg memorised this one very quickly, mostly because Esther found the word irresistible and couldn't stop repeating it at the sight of the animal in question. And Reval has many cats - big and small, black and ginger, ones with fluffy tails and ones with no tails at all.
"Perhaps I shall get one, after," Rhoden says. "Estherke seems to like them, too."
Steinberg's heart skips a little at the implication. Rhoden truly doesn't wish to leave them, then. He thinks of them as a permanent fixture in his life rather than a source of temporary companionship.
"I do not wish to seem ungrateful for your reassurance, either," Rhoden continues, and the traces of laughter in his voice turn into wistfulness. He gives Steinberg's shoulder a squeeze and brushes an invisible speck of dust off his shirt lapel. "I am sure Estlish will live on in all of its beauty. Give me another year with you and Fira, and there will be two more people to join the chorus when the moment comes for us to sing."