Earnings Season #3
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing
of miseries.”
It’s Lili’s turn to groan. “Churchill, really? Do you have a hard-on for Thatcher, too?”
Aleksandr laughs, clear and loud. “I have a healthy respect for her.”
“Your view of the world,” Lili continues, pushing back on the warmth his laugh stirred. “This free-market faith—this . . .
neoliberalism. It still has an element of government intervention.”
“Yes, when justified and necessary, and always with the markets able to overpower it.”
“By markets, you mean people with money.”
“No, I mean the free market—acting as a constant referendum, a continually evolving collective agreement among all people.
Isn’t that honestly more democratic?”
“I don’t think I can actually stomach how much Hayek you reference,” Lili says.
“He has his uses, however limited.”
“How can you be a neoliberal if you don’t like Hayek?”
“Lili,” he reprimands. “You need to stop worshipping or rejecting thinkers in their entirety. You’re too wedded to the idea
of monoliths, holistic philosophies.”
“Intellectual consistency is important!”
“Soundness of thought, yes, but you don’t need to subscribe to one ideology for that.”
“Well—well, isn’t that somehow dishonest?”
“Why would that be dishonest?” Aleksandr frowns. His hand smooths over her skin, towards the hem of the sweater she’s wearing. “No one thinker has the answer.”
“You can’t just mix Marxism with neoliberalism.”
“Why not? Ideological purity is a disadvantage. We conflate it with focus.”
Lili sweeps her arms wide, trying to take control of the conversation. “At the end of the day, social democracy enables a
decent life,” she says. “Berlin said that. That’s it, after all the arguing.”
Aleksandr raises an eyebrow. “You’ve read Berlin?”
It’s not condescending, he’s—genuinely surprised; gratified.
She nods.
“What do you think of his value pluralism?” he asks.
Lili has always been smart. She’s always had people—teachers, classmates, friends—show interest in her ideas, however momentarily.
But Aleksandr’s interest—the way he looks at her, asks questions, then listens? She wants to keep it—hold onto it—more than
she has most things.
“Honestly, it’s a little disconcerting.” It feels like a risk to say what she thinks and admit uncertainty, but she does it
anyway: pushes back the knee-jerk reaction to provide some polished intellectualization just off-center of what she really
thinks. “The sense that there’s no absolute truth—nothing, deep down, that we can all agree on. It sort of defeats the idea
that we can ever arrive somewhere together.”
“Or perhaps makes it easier for us to coexist.”
She tilts her head. “How so?”
“Well, pluralism accepts the moral reality of different truths but rejects the idea that they can all be measured on a single
scale. If there is no single good, then there is no single form of analysis, no single political logic that can master all
ethics.”
Lili falls silent, considering.
It’s inconvenient when he’s intelligent.
“There’s this concept,” she says, after a few beats of thought.
“Back when I was taking more history classes in undergrad. Bloch, a French historian, had this concept of ‘understanding’—the idea that to understand an event requires us to release any one framework and to accept the validity of several frameworks simultaneously. Supposedly brings much less immediate satisfaction but a greater enduring achievement. I guess that’s an acceptance of pluralism, the same sort as Berlin. ”
His smile grows warm, not with triumph, but another, kinder pleasure. “Realism rather than reductionism,” he suggests.
Lili nods, agreeing.
There’s a sense of arriving somewhere: not compromise, but understanding.
She clears her throat. “Shame about the Thatcherism, though.”
“Please, don’t speak ill of the greats.”
Groaning, Lili kicks her leg out, intending to clip his shoulder. Aleksandr just laughs, grasping her foot and pressing a
kiss to her ankle.
Her breath catches.
At the sound, Aleksandr looks at her. The air shifts, teasing playfulness draining away.
Holding her gaze, he kisses her ankle again. Not hesitant, but steady.
Giving her space to decide. Room to run.
Gently, Lili shifts forward. She pulls her ankle free, moving onto his lap, and kisses him.
It’s slow, warm with wanting. Aleksandr holds her face as he deepens the kiss, parting her lips. Lili sighs into it, the warmth
of his bare chest under her palms unfurling a soft, gentle ache for him inside of her.
Almost hesitant, her hands move further down to the taut skin of his stomach, brushing over the cotton of his pants. She pauses,
drawing out of the kiss. “Can we . . . “
Aleksandr runs his thumb over the curve of her jaw. “Whatever you want, Lili.”
It stings as she sinks down onto him. The pressure, the heat, the sear of it, like an injury she’s testing too soon. Her fingers
tighten, nails digging into his shoulders. Aleksandr does not flinch.
She can’t take all of him, and her chest snaps fast with the pace of her lungs, body resisting. Under her sweater—his sweater—one of his hands settles on her waist. He steadies her; not pushing deeper, but letting her settle for a moment.
Taking an inhale, Lili tries to sink down further, but her breath hitches. It’s not that she’s shaking, just—
“Do you want to stop?” he murmurs. Against the slope of her neck, his fingers are so gentle she could cry.
“No,” Lili whispers. She rests her forehead against his. “No, I want this.”
Rolling her hips, she encourages her body to open for him, for her. She gasps, grasp tightening in his hair, as he shifts
a bit deeper. A wince runs through her.
“I’m alright,” she murmurs, before the concern in his eyes grows. “I’m alright.”
She spreads her knees wider. Each slow, careful roll of her hips lets her sink down more, brings him deeper inside her, a
fullness that feels like what she’s been looking for.
As she moves—slow, adjusting—there’s the warm press of his lips against her neck; the loose fit of her borrowed sweater pulled
aside; and the sense that he wants nothing from her but her. Her breath hitches again, instinctively wanting to shy away.
I’m okay, she thinks, trying to relax through it. I’m okay.
When his mouth finds hers again, it’s like he’s giving her air, instead of taking it. It breaks her a little—the thought that
she might want him to give her things, rather than only take.
Heat curls in her stomach. A whimper catches in her throat.
“Tell me what you need,” he breathes, against her lips.
It’s harder somehow: letting herself be soothed by gentleness, rather than roughness. But Lili swallows back against it, and
begs her body to stay soft, to relax, to take this chance.
“Just—just you,” she whispers.
There’s something, like tension, but closer to release, revealed in his eyes.
“You have me,” he murmurs.
Unsteady but sure, she finds Aleksandr’s forearm under her sweater. She presses his grip tighter into her skin—into bruises,
she knows—and rocks her hips forward.
Understanding, he starts to guide her, a slow rhythm that makes her toes curl—letting some of the aching in her thighs relax,
but tightening that pressure inside of her, building it into unbearable light—heavy, a shimmer of pleasure.
There’s a tremble through her, like releasing strain she’d been holding in her body for years.
Surrender, survival. Things that are hers, and in his arms, she feels both vulnerable and safe enough to look at them.
She feels the instinct to harden and shield, but perhaps for the first time, Lili wonders if strength waits for her in letting go, in welcoming kindness rather than brutality.
She leans into it. It terrifies her, unknown and bleached white, but she—she wants to trust something.
Wants to trust him, and it’s a quiet whisper inside her, growing stronger.
As Lili falls forward, forehead against his, gasping at the building warmth inside her—soft in the shiver of pain, release
rather than suffering—Aleksandr keeps the rhythm of her hips going, knows how to move her in a way that makes her feel bliss
in the arches of her feet, under her fingernails, the base of her spine.
Brightness begins to break. Clean, she feels clean—growing lighter, weightless but meaningful.
But in his shoulders, there’s tension. Under her hands, she can feel his restraint.
“Aleksandr,” she breathes. “Aleksandr—I want you to come, too.”
A furrow in his brow. “I don’t have to—”
But she sinks down further, pressing their bodies closer. She feels it—in the tightness of his jaw, the shudder in her own
body—when he’s fully inside of her, finally, and she kisses him.
“Please,” she murmurs, against his lips. “Please—”
Her words expire into a moan, as her movement over him, the deepening stretch of him inside of her, pushes that pleasure further.
It starts to wash away her ability to speak, to think, to do anything but want—but she wants this—wants him with her.
“Alright,” Aleksandr murmurs. Slowly, he starts to move her hips a little faster, a little harder; not enough to hurt her,
but just enough to make breathing steadily more difficult, the tightness coiling at the base of her spine warping into still
more. Lili wraps her arms around his shoulders, grasping for something—for him—as it builds, breaks—
“Aleksa—I’m close, I’m—Sasha, I—”
And he knows—he knows.
Pleasure empties her mind, a slow, burning movement through her that makes her bones melt, her breath fail, and it makes things so simple—this light, his kiss against her neck, a tremble that races out over her skin, a soft cry that catches in her throat, sore but healing, and there’s this glimpse of a chance—slim, but there—for space inside of her that allows both hurt and happiness, and she can breathe, she can breathe—and Aleksandr exhales hard, gripping her closer, and it makes her body tighten, him finding pleasure in her, the feeling
of him finishing inside of her, and she buries her face in his shoulder, and she does not want to let him go.