Chapter Text
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
Sonnet XVII, Pablo Neruda
Moscow - 4:30AM
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
Ilya felt his nose twitch in sleepy annoyance before rolling over onto his side and pressing his face further into his pillow.
Too late, too early, he didn’t know but the phone was annoying.
Buzz.
Ilya grunted, throwing his arm over his head in hopes that between the pillow and his bicep he could block out the annoying vibration rattling against the water glass filled with vodka on his nightstand.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
“Shut up, stupid phone.” He huffed into his pillow.
“Ilya?” Svetlana hummed, pressing her hand gently on his stomach.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
He grunted, his arm moving away from his head and swatting at her hand. “Sleep.”
“Your phone keeps going off.” She spoke quietly in Russian. “Must be important. It’s middle of the night.”
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
Ilya huffed, ripping off the covers from his body and rotating just enough to grab the phone from the nightstand. He propped himself up on his elbow, his thumb sliding up the screen and seeing dozens, dozens, of missed calls and texts from Jane.
“Fuck.” His eyebrows furrowed, flashing from the notifications to the time.
4:37AM, Moscow.
8:37PM, Montreal.
Something was bad.
37 texts, 14 calls.
Something was very bad.
They’d hung up after Ilya had confessed that he loved Shane in Russian. Had Shane remembered the sounds of ya tebya lyublyu and searched on the internet until he knew for certain that it was what Ilya had said?
“Ilya?”
“Mm, no.” He waved his hand gently to his side. “Minute, please.”
The brightness of the screen made his eyes strain as he opened the chain of messages from Jane, starting with the most recent.
You have to leave.
You’re not safe.
Wake up, wake up, wake up.
He wasn’t safe?
Well to be fair, Russia was not a very safe country, a fact Ilya was well aware off.
His thumb kept swiping down, bringing the text chain further up. Uncertainty began clawing through his throat. A notification from a small sports blog became a banner across the top of his screen.
Boston’s Ilya Rozanov pictured with unnamed male—- the preview cut off and Ilya felt just how unsafe he was hit him like he was facing off with The Russian Bear.
“Svetlana,” he said, jolting out of bed and reaching for the pair of joggers he’d discarded at some point on the floor. “Yebat!”
Svetlana had the look on her face that matched Ilya’s insides: panic, fear. His eyes zeroed in on her phone in her hand, just making out the blur of himself and Sasha back when they were young and stupid and thinking that such photos would never see the light of day.
Fucking internet.
“You have to go. You have to leave.” She said quickly in Russian, ripping the blankets off of her “Go, go.”
Ilya grabbed the necklace on his throat, one he’d worn for so long that it felt like it was a limb on his body but now just felt suffocated by the weight of Mother Russia and the things she did to people who were other.
“Ilya, Ilya. You must go. Go now.”
He nodded, his eyes seeing everything and nothing at once. He dropped his pendant from between his fingers and rushed around his apartment bedroom for items he needed to get back home.
Shit. To Boston.
They were not friendly people but they were kind.
“Svetlana, I—I, yebat.”
“I will stay. I will get you a flight. I will see you soon, okay? Okay? Be brave.”
She kissed him the way she’d kissed him hundreds of times, lightly, there one moment and gone the next. She was shoving a sweatshirt at him, grabbing his passport from the small safe beside the tv cabinet in the living room.
His fucking Russian passport.
“Yebat!” He yelled, shoving the document into his pocket unceremoniously.
He tripped over a pile of his shoes as he searched for two of the same, foregoing socks because there was no time. No time.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
His phone vibrated in his pocket, ringing constantly, the short buzz of text messages boiling the ice in his veins into adrenaline.
You’re not safe, you’re not safe, you’re not safe.
He could hear the pretty boy with the beautiful freckles say those words in his mind as he ripped open the door to his apartment, his head looming both ways for any of his neighbors or police.
Would he be arrested? Did anyone in Russia know yet? Would they be looking for his car? Waiting at the airport?
His car in Russia was not as nice as the ones he kept in Boston, showy still, but less so. His foot hit the clutch, his hand on the shifter seconds after his bag was tossed into the passenger seat.
Airport. Airport. Airport.
“Yebat!” He yelled, slamming his open palm into the steering wheel.
Svetlana’s name flashed over the screen of his car and he answered quickly. “Sheremetyevo.” She said in place of greeting. “Gate C.” Ilya could hear rustling on her end and knew she was putting the rest of his things together. “New York. Okay?”
“Da.”
Ilya licked his lips, his eyes flicking over the terminal numbers for North America. The ticket Svetlana had bought for him as he fled his fucking home country was already added to the pass app on his phone. There was no room for being picky when it came to getting out of Russia—the first flight out to a safe country for queer people was important, but fucking New York?
They hated him there.
Easy enough to get to Boston from New York though. Cannot be picky.
He stopped at a duty free store that was open all hours and plucked a ball cap from the top of a stack and threw roubli at the young girl working the counter. “Spasibo.” He said in thanks, pulling the ball cap on and pulling the brim down low over his brows.
He pulled his phone from his pocket once he got to a seat in the terminal, finding many more messages, each one more frantic and pleading than the last.
He pulled the text chain with Jane up and felt a sensation he didn’t like or know how to name settle low in his throat, trying to suffocate him.
I am leaving now. At airport, he texted, his thumb hovering over the send button before pressing it.
Fuck. Thank god, Shane texted back in what felt like barely a second after the message read as read. Fuck. How did this happen?
Ilya pinched his lips, his tongue running over the front of his teeth. His eyes pricked and he took a deep breath in to steady himself.
Russians did not cry. They did not do that.
Is not new photo. If anything, Ilya needed Shane to know that.
I know. No bear.
Of course Hollander would know that it wasn’t a random hookup. Ilya had been young, too young, and if he was in his right mind he would know that that photo being circulated was a crime.
More so a crime than just being two men in Russia doing what they were doing.
But Russia wouldn’t care about such trivialities.
What are they saying? He sent to Shane, raising his crucifix to his mouth and biting down gently on the metal.
Nothing too bad right now. Mostly trashy sites and some low level blogs.
Ilya groaned.
Shane continued, the ellipses not doing the cute thing where they showed and disappeared several times before he committed to sending. TMZ has a short caption on breaking news. Said they reached out for comment.
“Yebat!” He grunted too loudly, an old woman in a headscarf startling in the corner, bringing her hand to her chest. “Sorry.” He said softer in Russian. “Bad news.”
A fucking understatement.
Boarding now, he typed as the announcement came over the speaker, Landing in New York. Only flight to America this hour.
Okay. Be safe. Let me know when you land.
Ilya sent a thumbs up emoji in response to stave off the raging terror that rushed through his veins and made his head whoosh with blood, ringing loudly in his ears.
Ilya didn’t feel like he could breathe until he was safely into international airspace, no longer in danger of Mother Russia recalling the flight. He wasn’t even sure if they could do that to detain a somewhat gay hockey player.
He’d stayed off his phone for most of the flight, leaving it mostly in airplane mode. He didn’t need to know what the people were saying when he felt like a sitting duck. No, it was better to try and think of anything else.
He wondered, as he often did when bad things happened to him, what it was that he had done to deserve it. His mother, his father, his fucking brother—
“Yebat!” He snarled, his fists clenching.
His fucking brother.
He held his palm over his mouth, letting a silent scream of frustration out against his skin, his breath making his hand hot and clammy. Alexei.
The more he stewed in his seat, staring out the oblong window of clouds above the ocean, the more he knew it was true. Timing was too coincidental. Cut off, the night they buried their father, the fight.
That he was done. His niece could have his apartment. That he would send them no more money.
No longer being able to hide the tears welling in his eyes, Russian or not, Ilya pulled his cap almost all the way off the crown of his head to cover his eyes. He shouldn’t be surprised or even disappointed. He knew how cruel his brother was, had always been, but he never expected such blatant outward sabotage.
He could have gone to prison for fucks sake. Wasted away in harsh jail just for being kind of gay.
Ilya wondered if Svetlana was safe—he knew she most likely would be, but he wondered if the police had come looking for him.
He wondered if Sasha was okay, if he knew, if Svetlana warned him to not go back to Russia. Before, it was not a great kept secret. Sasha was very flamboyant but was mostly safe in small dinners. Would not be so safe now.
He huffed out a breath, the cap holding the moist air against his face, and crossed his arms.
JFK — airport time
He hated New York City because Scott Hunter loved it and they loved Hunter and Ilya hated him. But desperate times and all that.
Getting flight to Boston. He sent to Shane as he waited in the customs line.
Traveling back to the US from Russia was always a long process because having Russian passport was like getting failing grade on a test you had no choice but to take. Ilya was used to it, had his passport and visa ready as he tapped his feet against the dirty, dirty floor.
He kept his ball cap pulled down low, covering mostly the top half of his face. He’d left his favorite sunglasses behind, no big deal, he guessed, in the grand scheme of things, but he’d have liked to have been able to lay low further.
Good thing about New York is that the people didn’t care about you unless you took too long to order bagel and coffee or loitered too far left on the escalators or fast walk pads Ilya didn’t have a name for.
He could respect New York for that. Almost like Russian hospitality.
“Next.” The bored woman said, not looking up from her computer.
Ilya grimaced through a smile, handing his paperwork over.
“Anything to declare?”
“No.” He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.
“Reason for traveling to Russia?”
“My father is dead. His funeral, yes?” He answered.
“Reason for your return to the States?”
“Work.”
On and on and on.
All said, not so bad. Could have been worse. She was very disinterested in him and he was very disinterested in the process and so it was not so bad.
Ilya slung his bag high up on his shoulder and trudged his way to the ticket machines situated not so far away from customs. He rolled his head over his shoulders, trying to loosen up the vestiges of travel from his muscles.
He felt bad but he felt safe.
He still had yet to check the slew of messages and emails and alerts on his phone. The only thing he’d done once he turned his phone back on from airplane mode was let Shane know that he had made it back to America.
His forefinger pulled at the little tear of flesh on his thumb as he scrolled through the flight booker to find the first flight to Logan.
He almost wanted to keep scrolling to find Montreal’s airport.
That’s dumb fucking idea, he scolded himself.