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Alexander Steinberg is everything Iakov is not. Handsome, to begin with. Iakov is under no illusions regarding his own appearance; the sullen hunched boy with the beginnings of an underwhelming moustache that looks at him from the mirror every morning is hardly the stuff of anyone’s fantasies.
But it’s not just Steinberg’s soft freckled skin or his flame-red curls. There’s something righteous in him - some divine spark in his eyes that says, out of my way . Back in the beginning of the Revolution, there was a protest action just off the Haapsalu meteor belt: five people put themselves in the way of a combat cruiser. Steinberg is the kind of man who would do that, if he could. A dust mote against the full firepower of history.
Iakov doesn’t know if he admires him or envies him. Both, maybe. He wants to be Steinberg.
Doesn’t he?
***
It happened a couple of months after Steinberg and Dr Rhoden first came over. There had been nothing much between Steinberg and Iakov up until that moment - the occasional chat at the dinner table, a game of shatranj every now and then - but Iakov felt uneasy around him, somehow.
Maybe it was the knowledge of what he’d done, come to gnaw at him anew in the face of this reminder of the far-reaching consequences of his weakness.
Maybe it was something else. He’d catch himself staring, sometimes; at Steinberg’s hands when they picked up a shatranj piece, or at Steinberg’s lips when they moved. His breath would catch when the pink light of Reval’s nine moons would illuminate Steinberg’s freckles just so. For the most part, he tried not to think too hard about what that meant. He figured that he had enough problems as it was.
That strategy of wilful denial worked well enough - until it didn’t. That night, he was making his way through the service corridors at the back of the compound when he nearly bumped into Steinberg. Steinberg’s lanky figure had been obscured by the tangles of dusty wires and clusters of yellow diodes, and, like Iakov, he was doing his best to be quiet to avoid rousing Dr Rhoden and the rest of the family.
“Sorry,” Iakov whispered, jerking back. “I - didn’t realise you were there.”
“Iakov,” Steinberg said. He stopped and leaned one angular shoulder against the perlusteel wall. “What are you doing up?”
Iakov started saying something but stopped. Now that he could make out Steinberg’s face in the amber light of the diodes, he saw that Steinberg was looking at him with a strange expression of sharp, greedy interest.
They reached out to each other at the same time, Iakov’s hands seizing the collar of Steinberg’s shirt. Steinberg held his temples gently and tilted his head just so. Then he covered Iakov’s mouth with his own, and everything inside Iakov turned into hot quivering jelly.
It was a soft, careful kiss, but it felt like an explosion to him. When Steinberg withdrew, Iakov stumbled back, half-deafened by the sheer enormity of his own feeling.
“I’m sorry,” Steinberg said roughly, licking his lips. “We shouldn’t be doing this. You’re just a kid. And we - we can’t stay.”
“I’m old enough to know what I want,” Iakov objected. He was aiming for indignation, but succeeded only in sounding childish. “And why can’t you? Father wouldn’t mind.”
Steinberg watched him silently for a few long moments, his eyes oddly clear in the yellowed twilight. “Does your father know?”
“No,” Iakov said. He felt his own mouth twist with something complicated, bittersweet. “I doubt it would matter to him now, though.”
If Steinberg thought that now a strange qualifier to use, he didn’t show it. This close, Iakov could see that his lips, half-open as if midway through a sentence, were still wet with the kiss.
“Does Dr Rhoden know?” Iakov asked, at last.
Steinberg’s expression rippled at that. He looked aside, suddenly vulnerable. “No. No, he doesn’t.”
“Do you think he would disapprove of you wanting to sleep with men?”
It was a petty, vicious thing to ask. But everything within Iakov hurt and yearned, and when Steinberg recoiled from him, he felt a perverse sense of victory.
“He’s a good man,” Steinberg said. “He wouldn’t-”
But there was terror in his eyes. An abused child’s knowledge that no one is truly good .
“Even good men do bad things, Sasha,” Iakov snapped. He wanted to hit Steinberg. He wanted to kiss him again. Instead, he turned around and began to walk away. His knees were still wobbly, a heady mixture of adrenaline and endorphins coursing through his blood, and he stumbled a little over some crate or other.
“Yasha,” Steinberg called after him, weakly. Iakov didn’t turn.
***
He cannot remember why it was that he was so angry - why he wanted to hurt Steinberg so much. Was it the rejection? But he’d been rejected before.
He feels rotten inside when he remembers that night. He can almost feel his own viscera mould, curdle, layers sloughing off his heart.
It was not the rejection. It was that rot that had been eating at him from the moment Sgt. Zyablikov hauled him into the basement of a Third Section headquarters in Annelinn. It was his blackened heart next to the blinding, burning light of the unattainable perfection that was Sasha Steinberg.
“You!” Steinberg exclaims, when he sees Iakov descend into the dock. He, Esther, and Dr Rhoden are all packed; Steinberg is already wearing his IEVA, a thin layer of dark perlusteel obscuring his features.
Iakov fancies that he can still see his eyes, though, bright and full of accusation. Out of my way.
“Steinberg,” he forces himself to say. His lips are numb, as though he’s drunk a cup of ice-cold well-water. “I’ve come to say goodbye. And good luck.”
Steinberg’s hands in soft black leather clench into fists. Then they relax, slowly, in a visible exercise of will.
“Why?” Steinberg asks only, with a rough exhale through the respirator.
Iakov looks away for a moment, at the clusters of blue Asterian apples overgrowing the side of the dock. They’ll need to be trimmed this summer. The steel skeleton of the compound is rusted through as it is.
“I’m not you,” Iakov says. “I was afraid. I told them everything.”
Steinberg makes a sharp step towards him, and Iakov flinches back. “You don’t need to be me to do the decent thing! Afraid! And you suppose your father wasn’t afraid? And Dr Rhoden-”
There’s pain in his voice now, as well as anger. Rhoden’s suffering hurts him, perhaps more than his own ever did.
“Did you ever tell him?” Iakov asks.
Steinberg’s half-raised hand falls to his side. He stops for a moment, his posture uncertain. “Yes,” he breathes finally.
The world is blurry before Iakov’s eyes. Outside the bay window, the stars are large watercolour splashes of light in the infinite black. “I assume he took it well, then?”
“As I said,” Steinberg responds quietly. “He is a good man.”
Even good men do bad things . A coward’s platitude. What is goodness but a series of choices?
“I’m glad,” Iakov says. These are small words that will fix nothing, but they’re the kind thing to say. Steinberg nods once and turns around, already busy with checking the oxygen cylinders.
Maybe Iakov never wanted to be him. Maybe just being with him would’ve been enough. In a different life, somewhere, where Iakov made a different choice.