“No time for books, no patience. What good would they do? They don’t tell you how to survive.” “No, they don’t do that. They are reason, not tool.” Vadim smirked. “They hold more truth than Pravda. Politburo can’t lie in Pushkin. Pushkin was there before we became Soviets. It means…if we have past, we have future.” (…) “At least I know that there are many truths. It’s about learning to think different thoughts. Know things that you never felt. You could know what being rich feels like, or being in love, without ever getting real feeling.”

“You broke me up there in the mountains. You cracked something in my head, I don’t know. I have never been obsessed with another person before or after. You just drilled your way in and since then, I’ve been yours. You got to a place that I didn’t know existed ... and all that has changed me, taken the stuff away I thought was true about me. In some weird, weird way, started something that turned me into more than a goodlooking bastard.”

“Hey, comrade,” Dima said, tone, choice of words, everything exactly as it would have been in the eighties, in that forsaken country.Vadim peered at him in the mirror. “Yes?”“Are you guys in trouble?” Dima moved closer, stood within touching distance. “I don’t mean your little crusade a while back. I mean the rest.”Vadim inhaled and lowered his gaze for a few moments. “Life isn’t easy, Dima. That’s our set of rules.”“You know you can change them. If he’s fucking around….”“So am I.”“But you’re not happy with it?”“It’s just sex, Dima.”Dima looked at him for a long time. “It’s never just sex for you, though. Am I wrong?”“No. You’re right.” Vadim shook his head. “Rules, Dima. We’re a different case.”Dima reached out and took him by the shoulders, pulling him up and back against him, which made Vadim look at himself in the mirror.“It’s not easy. I wish it was.”

“Never realized how much you might have been hurt, or worried...you know. Others. Until I found out how fucking painful it is to fear losing you.' 'I never wanted anybody else after I'd found you. After I understood what it is we have. Didn't want any other man.”

“You’re seriously in love, you know that? It’s a great feeling, unless it hurts like a bitch.”

“You really do love him, don’t you?” she said quietly.Vadim blinked, then looked to the side, without seeing colours and patterns, but it helped him find words. Speaking about love without cliché, without borrowing somebody else’s well-worn words that were too comfortable. "Dan changed me in ways that stripped away the man I wanted to be, and the man I was made to be, and the man I was expected to be. He skinned me alive, and left only…..somebody who….” He breathed but barely. “…can live and die now, like a human being, not an automation, not somebody else’s creation. Dan took my fear of death. I can’t die now. I know I’m immortal.”“Immortal?” she said quietly, sitting still. “Your soul? Your being?”“I don’t believe there’s anything like a soul. But I believe most people are asleep. They aren’t even aware what they are, or that they are alive. And we are all scared to die, so when it happens we scream for our mothers and clutch our guts because we’re scared. I’m not. I’m not afraid of death. The only thing I’m afraid of is losing Dan.” But if that happens, he thought, Dan might just keep the promise and kill him on the way out.”

“Dan didn’t want to say anything, but the words were unstoppable. “I fucking love you. Don’t leave me. You’ve got to find me.” Again, fucking tears. Vadim shook his head, then pressed his face into the crook of Dan’s shoulder, hoped to hide his weakness and felt like a man condemned to die. “I will... find you. If it’s the last thing I’ll do, I’ll come back. Nothing will stop me.”