Archive of Our Own

MAY 2017, IBIZA

The dance floor is packed with a mess of bodies, sweaty and spilling over with energy, that’s like another chemical in the air to get high on. Hands are touching his body, running the planes of his chest, gripping his waist, venturing deeper beneath his shirt, squeezing the sides of his neck in desperation, and he doesn’t know who they belong to or how many there are, only that they give his mind something to escape in.

Red, pink, and blue, the bright lights change colors in a pattern his mind suddenly finds astonishing to fixate on. Different languages filter through his mind, but he can’t make sense of any of them. He can only tether himself to the effect the words have on him.

There are whispers, soft and feminine, like a soft hand cupping your cheek. Strong, aggressive yells register from somewhere far away, like a sucker punch to the gut, you know, on some instinctual level, you deserve. A sultry, confident voice passes around him, hot and heavy with an achingly familiar want Ilya remembers wearing himself for someone else far too many times.

It’s all a blur, the noise, the touch, the headache-inducing stench of alcohol, perfume, and sweat, until it all blends into one overwhelming mess of sensations, he welcomes with open arms. Anything to keep his mind stimulated enough so he doesn’t have to actually think.

It’s a kaleidoscope of emotions and senses. It’s exhilarating, it’s terrifying, and he never wants it to end. Wants his life to be a never-ending party where he can let it all go, a dancefloor he can move through, loose and unguarded.

“Take this.” Says a voice that sounds like it’s somewhere far, far away from Ilya. He looks around at the crowd of bodies around him, moving wildly, all the same blurry, hard-to-make-out shapes.

He squints his eyes and sees a hand extended towards him in offering, on the shaky palm before him rests some sort of pill, small, unassuming, an almost innocent baby pink colour.

“It’ll make the world melt away.” Says the voice again in a language he can’t quite recognize but seemingly understands.

But the world is already melting away. He’s already snorted something with Sasha in the disgusting, cramped club bathroom right after they arrived, and took something else he can’t quite remember the name of before that with the French DJ whose house he’s staying at, and spent the whole day drinking any alcoholic drink he could get his hands on.

He really shouldn’t. His bloodstream is already a concoction of foreign substances and drugs and alcohol, and it courses through his veins like someone took a match to a piece of dynamite. So, he should refuse. But he also wants to forget, to lose the last remnants of his consciousness. He wants to leave his own body, to escape his mind.

Live like it’s your last day on earth, because it might just be. Sasha’s words, ones he’s heard dozens of times before, echo through his mind. Wouldn’t that be nice? One last day.

He opens his mouth, and a pill lands on his tongue. He swallows it on instinct.

Then he continues dancing, even as the world begins to spin, even as his legs lose their strength and he collapses to the ground, even as the world slips through his fingers one slow blink at a time, even when the taste on his tongue turns from alcohol to vomit and then to the familiar taste of metal, of blood. Somehow, through it all, his mind stays on that dance floor, dancing and singing and wholly happy.

————

He awakes in flashes. His body is heavy, and he feels as though he’s sinking further and further into the mattress below him the longer he lies still. Slowly, he comes back to himself as the world around him stops spinning.

Ilya lifts his head from where it was buried in a pillow and is momentarily blinded by the light streaming into the room from the nearby window. He curses to himself and covers his eyes, the light leaving a scathing burn in its wake. He moves away his hand and lets his eyes slowly adapt to the sensory purgatory around him.

For a moment, he doesn’t remember where he is. The bedroom is modern and lavish and wholly unfamiliar. He squints and stares out the window. Slowly, a scene comes into focus, turquoise water, white cliffs, palm trees, and a clear sky that stretches into what seems like forever.

It comes back to him. Boston got eliminated from the playoffs already, in no part due to his terrible performance, so vacation came early this season. It’s the end of May, but here it feels like summer already. It’s always summer in Ibiza, maybe that’s why he loves it so much.

He loves the sun. Craves it in the way only a man who’s never had it can. How could he not when all he’s ever known is the cold, bitting and stifling? Now, with the pain pulsing in his head bordering on torturous, he somehow wishes for the first time in his life that he was in freezing, gloomy Russia, where he could escape the sun’s painful rays.

“You’re awake.” Someone says, and Ilya could have sworn that he was alone only moments before. It takes him a second too long to put a name to the voice. “Do you remember what happened?”

Sasha stands at the foot of his bed, and even though Ilya is sure he doesn’t look too bright himself, he can bet that Sasha somehow looks even worse. His eyes are bloodshot and framed by deep dark circles, he’s still in last night’s clothes, and he reeks of alcohol so strongly that Ilya can smell him from the other side of the room.

Ilya shakes his head because he doesn’t quite trust himself to speak yet. His throat feels raw, like it’s been rubbed with sandpaper, and there’s a nauseating taste of vomit in his mouth. He can’t imagine how drunk he must have been if he threw up like a teenager.

Then Sasha takes a shaky breath and sits down on the edge of the bed as if he physically can’t keep himself standing anymore. He looks awful, like he’s spent the entire night crying, and he seems scared in a way Ilya's never seen him. Who died? Ilya wants to ask, then thinks better of it.

“I don’t know what you took, but you could have died. You almost did, and I had to give you fucking Narcan, Ilya.” Sasha then says, choking on his words. “You were fucking convulsing on the floor and throwing up, and you wouldn’t wake up–” He suddenly stops.

“Oh my god, I'm gonna vomit. I can’t even think of it.” He covers his face with his palms as if to physically hide away from the memory. “I was so scared. I felt your heart stop. Oh god, Ilya.”

Sasha takes in a shuddering breath. Ilya lies there and tries to recall memories from last night. He remembers hands, and music, and bright lights and pills, but it’s all a blur. I almost died, he thinks, almost in wonder. The words don’t mean much, they feel far away, not quite real. More like a concept rather than something he can grasp in his mind.

“Did you…” Sasha speaks again, then trails off. He stares at Ilya intently for a few seconds. When he speaks again, he does so in a whisper. “Was it really an accident?”

Ilya thinks very hard, as if he rearranges and turns over the night in his head for long enough, the answer would suddenly come to him. The pause is enough for Sasha’s face to fall in disappointment.

“Yes, I didn’t know what I was taking.” A half-truth, meaningless words for Sasha to grasp onto. Something easy so Ilya doesn’t have to confront what the real truth might just be.

“So you just took some random drugs you were offered? What is wrong with you? Why would you…” Sasha trails off, a look of anger slowly painting itself across his previously sorrowful expression.

“It’s like you don't even care what happens to you. Sometimes I think youre not even trying to live, you’re just waiting to die.” He practically screams at Ilya, tears welling up in his bloodshot eyes. Ilya doesn’t like the way rage distorts his pretty features, least of all since he’s the reason why.

“You think I did this on purpose?” Ilya asks, feeling slightly offended.

It wasn’t on purpose, Ilya is sure. It wasn’t suicide. Because suicide would be taking a rope and a chair and hanging himself in his living room, or slitting his wrists in a bathtub, or taking a handful of antidepressants and lying in bed for your son to find your cold body on a sunny afternoon. Because she must have known, right? He always went to her room to check after school. She must have known, and she still–

“You really don't care, do you? About what happened?” Sasha breaks him out of his spiralling thoughts. He seems to have calmed down somewhat, seeming sort of resigned.

Ilya suddenly feels as if he’ll suffocate if he stays in the room for even a second longer. Sasha’s awful mood flows out of him in waves and creates an almost physical weight between them that Ilya can’t breathe through. He can’t think with the sun still burning into his retinas, and the calm sea outside his window seems as though it’s almost mocking him with its sereness.

He goes to stand up from the bed, but doesn’t get far before there’s a hand on his shoulder keeping him in place.

“Where are you going?”

“To smoke.” Ilya answers, though it’s a lie. The idea of a cigarette fills him with nausea. Sasha scoffs in disgust at the statement, and Ilya is suddenly hit with an irrational wave of anger.

“Sasha, any day could be my last. I could walk outside and get hit by a car, I could get knocked out during a game and split my head open on the ice, a fucking meteor could hit my house at any moment, and I could accidentally mix a couple of drugs that I shouldn’t and overdose.” Ilya rants.

“Shit happens, we move on. That’s how it’s always been, right? That’s how we've always lived, you and me. Live like it’s your last day on earth, because it might just be, you said that.” Ilya continues, pointing an accusing finger at Sasha.

And it’s true, of course. Snorting lines in between practice, and fucking in dingy club bathrooms and waking up in foreign places covered in alcohol and vomit when they were kids. Cheap and mean and high on a dream of a better future.

And then they were adults. Money, fame, cities that felt like little universes, models, and designer drugs. still mean, but the high of life had faded, and in set reality that you could now replace with chemicals. Sex became less fun and more just something to keep the adrenaline high, to keep the brain pumping dopamine.

But they kept on, because it was all they knew. So, why stop now? They were supposed to party till their most likely untimely deaths, and now Sasha’s looking at him in a mix of horror and worry, and it’s like they’re 15 again and Ilya is lining up their first line of cocaine, whispering it’s all right, this will make it all okay. Let me make it okay.

“Well, maybe I was wrong, because I can't live like this anymore, drowning in my own misery, the only thing keeping me going is some foreign mix of drugs in my system. I don't want to end up like….” Sasha looks away.

“Like me?” Like my mother.

“You almost die, and you don't care.” Sasha repeats, like maybe this time, Ilya will spare them the pain and deny it. Ilya doesn’t, because he has no more energy to lie.

Then Sasha moves his gaze away from Ilya and to the wall before him. For a few moments, he seems to be somewhere far away, maybe lost in his thoughts, or his imagination, their shared past, or their unsteady future. Ilya doesn’t know, but Sasha looks haunted.

“I had this nightmare yesterday. I was looking at myself outside of my own body, like a ghost. I was in this dark alley outside a club. I could feel the bass pumping from inside. And there we were, lying in this dirty, disgusting, abandoned street in some foreign city.” Sasha begins.

“Our skin was this awful, lifeless shade of grey, and there was a pool of dried blood around us, black and thick, and the stench, god Ilya. And there lay our bodies, bloated and decomposing, for who knows how long.” Sasha continues, and his whole body shivers at the memory.

“I couldn't move, I just sat there staring. And when I woke up, I knew that we’ll end up like that one day. I don't know how, but I just knew. It felt like seeing into the future.” He drones on. Ilya lies on the bed motionless.

“But we have a choice in how we live our lives, and that isn’t how I want to die. I want a husband, kids, and a house in Paris. I want to finish law school. I want to live. And it scares me so much because I don’t think you feel the same way I do.” Then Sasha finally looks at him, the look on his face unbearable for Ilya.

He avoids Sasha’s gaze. They sit in silence for a few moments before Sasha suddenly stands up

“Sometimes you’re so fucking miserable that I can barely look at you.” He mutters half to himself as he makes his way out of the room in quick steps. Ilya thinks a little bitterly that he’s running away.

Sasha leaves Ibiza on an early morning flight the next day. They don't see each other again that summer.

JUNE 2017, ST. TROPEZ

He’s underwater. It’s calming here, no noise, no people, no wandering eyes or cameras or expectations. Just the lack of it all. Just the nothingness.

He could stay here forever, but since he had the misfortune of being born with lungs, he’ll stay just as long as they will allow him. Or maybe a little longer, just to feel that bite, and pain, and adrenaline. To remember he’s alive.

Drowning in water doesn’t seem too daunting, considering he’s been drowning in grief his whole life. Since he was a kid and found his mother, he’s been grieving. Sometimes in a small, always there pain thurming under his skin and sometimes in a life-ending overwhelming agony coursing through his body, but the grief was always there.

He grieved Russia, and the man he could have been, his asshole father, and his brother, who is still fucking alive. He grieves the shitty hotel rooms, and the cottage he never got to see, and stupid fucking Shane.

With their messages deleted, so was the remaining proof that whatever was between them actually happened. Now there was nothing, only distant memories. Sometimes when they’re next to each other at events, Shane’s cool demeanor convinces him for a moment that it hadn’t actually happened, that maybe it was all in Ilya’s head.

Then he comes back to earth to remind himself that it had. It was real. Regretful, painful, too short and too long at the same time, the best thing, the worst thing, but real. Always real.

His head breaks the surface of the water violently, like he’s fighting the waves themselves. He takes in a deep breath, then another and another until his head stops spinning and the blood rushes back into his brain. He coughs for long enough that he thinks he might cough up a lung.

Thankfully, he’s far enough away from the beach so that no one sees him. He returns from the water to lie on a sunbed beside Svetlana, who raises an eyebrow at his odd breathing. He flashes her his most charming smile.

He looks around to find a pretty blonde staring at him from across the beach. Her hair is almost white under the glowing sun.

“Sasha called me yesterday.” Svetlana begins. Ilya hums in acknowledgement, though his attention is elsewhere.

What could she be? Maybe German or English? North Italian?

“He’s enrolling in law school again.” She continues, and Ilya thinks he may mutter a reply.

No, something Scandinavian.

“He asked me how you were.” She says, and Ilya nods.

Norwegian maybe? No, Swedish.

“I asked why he wanted to know. He was silent for a while, then he broke down into tears.” She then says, her tone turning serious. Ilya looks at her for the first time during the whole conversation. “Why, Ilya?”

And maybe Ilya wouldn’t have answered so truthfully had the sun not been as bright, had the sky not been quite as clear, had they not been speaking in Russian, the language providing a blanket of safety and privacy.

“My mother was ill since I could remember. I can’t recall a day when she wasn’t.” He muses without much emotion behind it. He can vaguely feel Svetlana’s gaze directed his way, but his eyes stay on the horizon, lost in the never-ending blue.

“For days at a time, she wouldn’t get out of bed. She wouldn’t eat or talk, just lie there motionless. They took her to all kinds of different doctors and specialists. Gave her medication and treatments. None of it helped. In fact, it got worse year by year, until it eventually took her.” He recalls.

Svetlana listens attentively, though she already knows it all. Ilya keeps staring at the sky above.

“I think some of us are born with it. A flaw, terrible and incurable. The fate of people like my mother and me is written in our DNA, it courses through our blood. So, of course, it’s inescapable, it’s a part of me.” Ilya explains, and Svetlana’s breath hitches slightly, maybe in horror.

The sky is clear, not a cloud in sight, more blue than even the water below it. It’s beautiful, and it’s haunting, the way it spans into what seems like forever. There are no borders, up, left, right, wherever you look, only freedom.

“I didn’t do it on purpose, because I’m powerless to resist. It’s genetic.” He finishes. Ilya wonders if his mother is somewhere up there. He hopes she is.

Before Svetlana can answer, the blonde from across the beach stops just a breath away from them, a pretty smile on her lips. Ilya looks away from the sky and extends a hand in greeting.

Yes, he thinks, definitely Swedish.

————

That night, he finds himself at a restaurant. The food is good and so is the wine, the atmosphere is light, on the edge of romantic, and in front of him sits a Swedish model. He thinks many people would kill to be him right now. Either of them, really. Maybe even just to be a third participant.

Clara, as she introduced herself, is working as a part-time model while she studies Psychology back home in Stockholm. She spends her summers in the south of France, and around her neck hangs a normal person’s yearly salary. Her father’s some sort of CEO, though Ilya can tell it’s a touchy subject. She speaks in innuendos, references, and banter. Shane would hate it, he thinks before he can help himself.

“So you're a millionaire, a professional athlete, drop-dead gorgeous, and the most charismatic man I’ve ever met.” She pauses and narrows her eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

Ilya raises an eyebrow and takes a long drink from his glass. What a question, it’s a shame they don’t have the whole night, though that might not even be enough time to answer truly.

“I have a terrible weakness.” Ilya says instead.

“For what?” She leans in further across the table, eyes wide in interest. They’re a unique shade of blue, like a glacier. They’re beautiful.

Involuntarily, a flash of deep, dark eyes invades his mind. In this lighting, low and yellow, they’d look black, he imagines before he can think better of it. He takes another sip of his drink, as if it might drown out their image from his mind. It doesn’t. It’s like they’re burned into his retinas.

“Beautiful people. It destroys my life.” He says with a smile, but he feels dread in his stomach. She lets out a pretty little laugh, but a memory of a different one, gruff and low, suddenly drowns hers out, and he loses his appetite.

JULY 2017, CROATIA

Clara is stunning and fun and overeducated for him and for some reason wants to get to know him better. That’s how he finds himself on a yacht with her friends sailing across the Mediterranean.

They sleep through most mornings, awaking later in the afternoon, then spending their day sunbathing on the yacht’s deck, drinking cocktails way too sweet for Ilya’s taste, and chasing away the summer warmth by swimming in the cool sea. Their nights are spent in different clubs and cities, high on more than just the feeling of being alive.

It’s idealistic and fun, and Ilya spends most of his time in that perfect middle between tipsy and black-out drunk, walking around a multi-million dollar yacht practically naked with a group of attractive Europeans. He supposes he’s not allowed to complain.

The Adriatic Sea spans out before him, clear blue water, little islands as far as the eye can see, cliffs, and stunning beaches with tiny rocks and sand. He could just sit here and stare forever, and it wouldn’t be enough to take it all in. The water shines in a million shades of blue, spilling over into one another, like oil paint on canvas.

Every so often, they stop in a town or city on the Croatian coast, and he’s surrounded by a language that’s vaguely familiar but illegible. Walking their streets feels as though you’re walking through time itself, from the Roman Empire to the Middle Ages to now. It’s all a mosaic of bygone empires bleeding into one city, into a standing testament of human resilience.

Now, they’re in Split, which is breathtaking, but more importantly, it’s overcrowded during peak tourist season and perfect for slipping away from the group after a late lunch with the excuse of exploring the city alone.

He finds himself at a church on the outskirts of the city centre, one for locals, not the endless barrage of tourists to pretend to admire.

It’s a Catholic church, and his mother would have hated that, but she isn’t here right now, and it’s the best he can do before they make it down to Montenegro, where he can find an Orthodox church.

Maybe he has a wrong perception of god, but he thinks if god does exist, that he is everywhere. Not bound to archaic structures, built in a theatrical display of might by the overwhelming greed of people who call themselves holier than the rest, but live by none of their own rules. Not by walls and rituals and rules.

God is everywhere, the same, ever-present, all-knowing. The only place he seems to be absent from is Ilya’s life. Wherever he finds himself, Ilya feels his lack. So, even in this church, alone and on his knees and begging, he feels alone. He feels that lack, but he prays anyway.

Footsteps echo closer to him against the high walls of the church. Ilya turns around to see a priest. He says something to Ilya softly, which he doesn’t understand, although the words twist around themselves in an awfully familiar way to Russian. The man sees his confusion and smiles in apology.

“Excuse me, you are a visitor, yes? What is your name, child?” The priest says, now in English. Ilya marvels for a second at his mastery of the language. He’s probably traveled a lot in his duties to the church.

“Ilya.”

“It is always nice to see young people who are as devoted as you.” He praises.

“I don’t know if I believe in god.” Ilya answers in truth, because somehow it feels better to say those blasphemous words than to lie.

“But you were praying, just now.” The priest asks, not unkindly. He seems intrigued.

“I do sometimes, but only for my mother.” Ilya explains, finding it hard to meet the other man’s eyes.

“She was religious?” The priest asks and sits down on the bench Ilya is kneeling beside.

“Yes, very. She was a good woman. A bad Christian.”

“Did she live a life of sin?”

“No, not until her death. She was an amazing woman, prayed every day.” Ilya looks at the cross in front of him and thinks of the one hanging around his neck. One Catholic, one Orthodox, the same god, his mother gave all her love and devotion. The one she loved just as blindly as she loved him.

“She killed herself. So, even though I do not believe I come here to pray for forgiveness for her. Because that is what she would have wanted, what she deserved.” He explains.

It’s a ritual of sorts. Whenever he finds the time or a good church, he’ll go to pray. To ask god to forgive his mother, that her death was an accident, that she never meant to sin. He’s been lenient with himself lately, has lost sight of what matters. So, that’s how he found himself here.

“I’m sure your mother’s looking down from heaven proudly.” The priest whispers, but the words still reverberate through the large room. Ilya swallows the lump in his throat.

“I hope so too.” He whispers back.

“I will pray for your mother, and I will pray for you.” The priest puts a heavy hand on his shoulder. Ilya melts into the touch.

“I do not think I'm making it to heaven.” He jokes.

“I’ll pray for you anyway.”

“You would be the only one.”

————

Its their last night on the yacht. He and Clara sit side by side as the sun sets. Neither of them has said it outloud yet, but they’re both aware that the moment they step off the boat, whatever they thought they might have had will end. Nothing more than a fleeting fantasy of what could have been, had Ilya not given his heart away in a hotel room all those years ago.

It’s a horrible feeling, knowing that no matter how hard or how many times he tries to replicate the feeling of being with Shane, nothing will ever compare.

Nothing will ever be better, just cheap replacements, seconds-long dopamine hits. Just those little moments in between where his eyes are closed and for a moment the sensation of skin and lips and teeth blur, and the person in his arms turns into a memory, and Ilya is in a lavish hotel room in some American city, and he wants and wants and wants so bad he’s sure it’ll kill him.

And then the sensation passes like a light breeze on a summer day, and with it the memory of a person he’ll never have again. After that, the embraces and kissing, and touching feel like just that, body parts pressing against one another, like something primal, none of that larger than life feeling anywhere to be found.

Yet still, he tries, because maybe one day he’ll find somebody who can make him feel even a part of what Shane had, who will give him a glimpse of feelings of the past, and then he’ll stay. He’ll stay for that memory of love and nostalgia, and he’ll build a home out of lies.

But in the meantime, he’ll continue searching, and he’ll continue breaking hearts, and he’ll hate himself all the more for it. But he won’t change, because it’s easier to live in self-hate than to face reality and change sometimes. Just like it’s easier to live with a constant buzz of alcohol and drugs under his skin and the ever-present feeling of a problem looming over the horizon than to actually face himself.

Being an asshole is easy, but that doesn’t mean he enjoys it half as much as people think he does.

“Have you ever been in love?” Clara asks, and even though her face is only illuminated by the sliver of sunshine still peaking over the horizon, he can make out her expression clear as day.

It’s the same torturous mix of emotions he had felt that day in Boston when he watched Shane leave his home. When he knew it was the end, that there was nothing in the world he could do to make Shane stay, and that at the same time he was willing to give his life for even a moment longer of his presence.

Maybe he could have begged and apologized and laid his heart bare, right there on his living room floor, and maybe that would have made a difference. But he hadn’t, and Shane left, and maybe he would have done that either way. But maybe is a useless word, because the past can’t be changed and reality is still there even after his fantasies of what could have been evaporate.

“Yes, it was the worst thing to ever happen to me.” Ilya answers, a little like he’s admitting to murder. A little like a masochist.

Clara looks at him softly, lovingly, and Ilya hates himself for it, somehow. She looks out at the sea, and a small smile pulls at her lips. Her eyes seem somewhat sad.

“Well, I think love is wonderful, even when a little painful. Love reminds me that I'm human, that I’m capable of feeling something so large and beautiful. I think it’s amazing that you can find somebody you think is so great that you learn to give yourself to them fully. Besides, I think the world needs a little more love these days.” She speaks, then turns to lock eyes with him.

“I love you, Ilya, and you don't love me, but that’s okay. I'm so happy I’m able to love you, because it’s a wonderful feeling. Thank you for that, for allowing me to.” She continues with tears in her eyes, and she lets them well up in her eyes freely. Ilya is in awe of her, in a way.

They both just look at each other for a moment, Ilya contemplates her words. She looks away again.

“So who is she? She’s very lucky because I don’t think you give out your heart away very freely.” She asks.

“Her name is Jane." He says, and maybe had it been any other day, he wouldn't admit that, but his defenses are lowered, and it feels as though he owes Clara at least a name.

“She's from Boston?”

“Canada.”

“Did she break your heart?” She asks after a moment of pause. Ilya turns the question over in his mind.

“No, I left her.” He says, because it was true, after all. He was the one torturing himself.

“Why?”

“Because she made me weak, and that scared me. And we could never have forever. We would never get marriage, a big house, two kids, and a dog. We would never get that. So I wanted to walk away to spare myself the pain.” Ilya says, plainly, truthfully, painfully.

“Do you regret it?”

“Does it matter now?” He asks, and she extends her hand forward, her skin cold in contrast to the warm summer night. They spend their evening there, hand in hand, watching the sun set, knowing it’s all Ilya will ever be able to give her.

AUGUST 2017, MOSCOW

Moscow isn’t quite the same as the day he left it. It’s still cold somehow, even in the peak of summer, but the air feels different. Like a certain heaviness, a lifelong weight in the atmosphere has been lifted. It doesn’t feel as freeing as it maybe should have. Now there’s only an odd mix of nostalgia and grief.

It was all Svetlana’s fault. When Alexei reached out to her, Ilya had been furious. He wanted nothing to do with his brother, not after their last meeting. Still, she persisted, and he relented. Maybe a part of him wanted an excuse to come back. To see if it was really worth letting it all go.

Ilya walks into the bar he used to frequent with Alexei when they were younger, before their relationship went completely to shit. When he sees his brother, for a moment, he can’t quite believe his eyes.

He’s clean-shaven, making him look half a decade younger. There are dark bags under his eyes, and his complexion is even paler than usual, but he looks good. Lighter in a way. Their eyes meet across the room, and a knot in Ilya’s chest comes undone with it. Maybe they’ll be fine.

Ilya comes to sit down in the booth beside him, so they both look out at the bar in front of them. Ilya pretends to look at the menu, while Alexei gathers his words.

“I went to rehab. I've been sober for a month now.” He finally speaks. Ilya pauses and looks up at his brother.

Never in his entire life has Alexei been sober. There was always something. First cigarettes, then alcohol, then weed, then cocaine and ketamine, then anything he could get his hands on with Ilya’s money.

“I’m glad.” Ilya says with an even voice, even though he’s freaking out inside. Ilya doesn’t know what to do with the precarious kindness between them.

“I know you said not to reach out, but I wanted to talk, to say my peace. Because one day it hit me. Mother was dead, father was dead, and I'd probably never see you again.” Alexei continues. “Despite everything, we're family, and that has to mean something, right?”

The question sits between them like a physical weight. Family, what a joke, Ilya thinks bitterly. He keeps it to himself, because he can’t break the odd truce that’s grown between them.

“Ever since you were a child, mother always liked you better, and don’t deny it. You were her golden boy, and I felt invisible. Father was so hard on you, and I never really knew why, but as long as it was you, I was safe from his anger. If I was on his side and let you take the hit I was spared, praised even.” Alexei muses, his grip on his drink growing tighter with every word.

“That’s why I never stood up for you, I guess. And I think that's why I never learned to love you either, because if I hated you, then the way everybody treated you felt like common sense. It felt deserved, satisfying even.” He continues.

Ilya knows that there’s always been something about his nature that made people hate him inherently. He doesn’t know what, only that he’s an incredibly hard person to love. It still stings hearing his brother say it, that he never really loved Ilya, despite knowing the fact to be true all his life.

“I hated that you were better than me, and I hated that mother loved you more, and I hated that you were a fag, and I hated that you got all the attention while I was left to rot, and somewhere in that hate I forgot you were my little brother.” Alexei says and looks Ilya straight in the eye, there’s sadness in his gaze, maybe regret.

Ilya’s throat closes, and tears well up in his eyes. And it hurts, and it hurts, and it hurts, and he hates it. It’s all he’s ever wanted to hear, it’s the most painful thing he ever has. He wants to run away, he wants to embrace his brother, he wants to cry, scream, and hurt Alexei as much as he’s hurt Ilya.

“I don't know why I'm telling you all this. It changes nothing. But I hope it brings you some closure.” Alexei finishes.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, listening to the noise of the other patrons around them. Neither gets up to leave.

“I’m leaving Russia tomorrow, I don’t think I’m coming back.” Ilya finally says. Because Alexei’s words had been a type of closure, painful and awful and weirdly freeing in a way. They felt like goodbye.

“Just promise me that one day I won’t hate to wake up to something like ‘Ilya Rozanov, hockey prodigy found dead of an overdose’ in the morning news. Promise me that.” Alexei asks, begs of him, maybe.

“What can I say, I've always been my mother’s son.”

OCTOBER 2017, MONTREAL

Summer bled into autumn, and with it took all its light and warmth. Their first game of the season is against Montreal. Ilya’s assigned roommate fell sick right before they were supposed to leave Boston, so he has the room all to himself. Small mercies.

His hotel room is nothing special, subpar compared to some of the other places they’ve been. But they always stay here when in Montreal, and to every wall and surface cling the memories of he and Shane. The moments replay before his eyes, reminding him of his own loneliness.

When was the last time he was alone in Montreal? The thought sickens him for a moment. But what is the point of wallowing in his own misery if it was he who ruined it all in the first place?

The game is tomorrow, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with the time he has before that. Every tick of the clock that draws the morning, and his subsequent meeting with Shane closer, fills his stomach with dread.

He doesn’t want to see him, doesn’t want to face the reality of his cowardice, and doesn’t want to pretend that it was all nothing. He wants to leave, far, far away from this hotel and Montreal and Canada and this whole fucking continent. Get as far away from hockey and anything that ties him to Shane.

Ilya paces around his hotel room, body bursting with restless energy. He wants to get out of this room, but his team has taken an early night before the game tomorrow, and he dares not face the wrath of Shane’s city by himself. He wants to get out of this torturous headspace, his mind, his body, this whole rotten fucking life.

It’s all too much, and he can’t stand it. His misery, his grief, his despair, it’s all like a physical weight crashing down on him. He can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t function past the hell of it all. He wants to get out of his skin, shed it, free himself.

He stumbles to his suitcase, which is lying open on the hotel room floor, yet to be unpacked. He searches around it like a madman, looking for an escape that comes in the form of a little orange bottle. Salvation manifests itself in small white capsules, unassuming and innocent. He clutches them in reverence.

The truth is, Ilya has been thinking about killing himself ever since he can remember. Sometimes in vague ideas and almost idealistic concepts of the act, and sometimes in detailed plans he’d never actually go along with. But it was always there, somewhere in the back of his mind, a quiet buzz, the background noise to his life.

Before any coherent thought can break through the mess of emotions in his mind, he opens the bottle and swallows a handful of pills, using the complementary water bottle on his nightstand as a chaser.

The thoughts in his mind suddenly come to a halt. He walks the steps to his bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror. His face is blotchy and red, puffy with the ghost of tears shed somewhere in his grave panic. An ugly sight. He looks away and sits down, his back to the bathtub, the cold floor a welcome contrast to his overheated skin.

For a moment, he sits there without a thought, waiting. For what? For the pills to kick in? For someone to find him? Save him from himself? He’s not really sure, and thinking is becoming harder and harder as his mind seemingly turns to mush, becoming more and more incoherent, ideas and emotions hard to make out.

Then suddenly, he sees a vision so vividly that he’s sure it’s real for one horrifying moment. He sees himself, just like in the dream Sasha described. Bloody, pale gray, lifeless body lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of its own vomit, small, pathetic, disgusting. Fear fills his body, and then he can’t see anything past the overwhelming panic and adrenaline that courses through him.

What the fuck is he doing? What the actual fuck is he doing?

It’s wrong, so wrong. His breathes quicken, and it’s like all the oxygen has left his brain. His heart beats a million kilometers an hour, and for an awful moment, he feels as though it’ll explode in his chest. He puts a hand over it, like he might be able to reach all the way under his flesh to clutch it in his grip and stop its frantic movement.

Ilya feels as though he’ll die right this moment, is completely sure he will, and he’s fucking terrified. And then suddenly, for the first time in his life, an overwhelming thought pierces through him. He doesn’t want to die. Not in a foreign hotel room in Montreal, not today, maybe not ever.

Frantically, he shoves two fingers inside his mouth, deep enough to gag a few times before he finally vomits in the toilet bowl next to him. Then he does it again and again until there’s nothing else in his stomach. He lies on the cold bathroom floor and cries quietly, his chest heaving with overexertion.

For what seemed like hours, he lay there weeping until his mind quieted and he was sure that tonight he wouldn’t die. In a daze, he stands and walks out of his hotel room and into the cold Montreal night.

Ilya wanders the streets for a while until he finds a church. An Orthodox one. Something his mother would like. He’s not sure why he’s here, his legs having taken him by their own accord, only that he’s never felt so desperate before in his life. Would he find salvation here, in scriptures he always thought of as lies?

He collapses to the floor right at the altar, the church empty save for him. Ilya stumbles his way through old prayers he can remember his mother teaching him as a child. The words are stilted, frantic, and wholly pathetic.

Still, he feels alone. Once again, he is left to stew in his own desperation, maybe on purpose. Maybe there is no saving him, no escape, no help, no great truth, and no salvation. Not for people like Ilya.

But he wants. He wants oh so desperately to understand why he’s here. Why couldn’t he do it? Why had the world taken his mother, sweet, too innocent for the world, but left Ilya alive? What does he do now, when everything seems to be slipping through his fingers?

“What are you praying for?” A voice echoes around the empty church walls. It startles Ilya, as they’re said in Russian.

He turns around to find a woman sitting on a bench on the far side of the room.

“Guidance.” He answers, his voice scratchy and raw around the russian word.

Ilya squints his eyes to see her better. Blonde hair, fair skin, fairly young, her presence a physical weight in the room. Something warm and achingly familiar. A gold cross hangs around her neck, identical to his own. How odd.

“You need to free your heart. Free yourself from your torment, from your past, sins, and mistakes. Only then can you find happiness. And you deserve to be happy.” She says, voice so awfully soft that it shakes Ilya to his very core. “You deserve the world.”

They stare at eachother, Ilya still on his knees. He looks at her, almost reverently. There’s just something about her that makes a certain part of him that he’s long thought dead fill with childlike wonder. Yet she is a stranger, isn’t she? She doesn’t feel like one.

He thinks over her words, of what they imply. His hands, that have thus far been raised in prayer, lower themselves to their sides.

Ilya turns away from the woman and stares at the cross above his head. How many times has he found himself desperate and on his knees, yet the only place he’s found salvation is not in a church, but in front of Shane. He smiles to himself wryly.

Ilya turns around to thank the woman, but finds the church around him empty. The cross around his neck burns with an odd warmth, not painful, more like a physical reminder of its presence. Soothing in a way. A strange comfort.

As he leaves the church behind, his chest lighter than it has been in years, he suddenly thinks that maybe somebody was praying for him after all.

————

Boston wins, and Ilya isn’t sure how, because he mentally clocked out the second his feet hit the ice. He has no recollection of how he played. The videos surfacing online after the game felt like watching a stranger.

Mentally he was still lying on his hotel room floor, and kneeling in a church, and sitting in a bar in Moscow, and lying on a beach in France, and dancing in a crowded club in Ibiza, and standing in front of his fathers coffin, and looking at his mother’s body as the blood pooled under her, dark and thick and awful and then it all blurred together into one overwhelming sensation of pure anguish.

He won, though, and in a way that’s all that matters. It’s the only thing he has left, really. Hockey, his stats, his goals, his trophies, and his legacy. But the cheers of the home crowd, his teammates’ embraces, and the public’s support felt awfully empty.

Ilya now stands on a balcony overlooking the Montreal skyline. He was supposed to be downstairs, making rounds around the event room, talking to guests, other players, and sponsors. Instead, he’s out here sort of wishing the railing he’s leaning on breaks and lets him fall all the way down, right on his face.

It would be nice, because at least if he were dead, he wouldn’t have to deal with Shane’s piercing gaze on him from somehow every angle of the room at once, every crevice and corner. Eyes that he can’t hide from. He’s spent most of the event avoiding the other, but even sharing a room has eventually become unbearable. So close, yet so far.

Very quietly, the door to the balcony behind him opens, and he almost doesn’t hear it over the sound of the wind howling around him. He turns slowly, dread filling his stomach, because there’s only one person it could be, and god is surely playing a cruel joke on Ilya if it is.

On the other side of the rooftop by the door, stands Shane. He looks the same, hair the exact length it always is, freckles all in their rightful places decorating his cheeks, his eyes the same deep shade of brown, even though they shine uniquely light under the moonlight tonight. He’s heartbreakingly gorgeous.

Ilya looks at Shane, closer than he’s had him in months, farther away than they’ve ever stood when alone. For the first time, he actually questions himself. Would it have made a difference if Ilya came to the cottage? If they had a week? He doesn’t think it would have changed anything that matters.

“Is it everything you dreamed of?” Shane asks. An echo of Ilya’s own words passes through his mind. An old hotel gym, small and stuffy, sweaty bodies. More, Ilya asks, and Shane gives. More, Ilya still wants desperately.

No, he wants to say, because there’s only one thing he’s wanted since he was 18, and as they stand here, he knows it’s the farthest from it he’s ever been.

Yes, I’m one of the best players in the league, I’m a multimillionaire, I never have to return to Russia, I’m wanted, I’m loved, I’m worshipped, what more could I want? He should lie, but he’s tired of lying and pretending and torturing them both.

Instead, he thinks of Alexei. How he spilled his heart that day in Moscow, for whose benefit, Ilya isn’t sure, but it was awfully brave. Saying his truth, leaving it all on the table between them, the good and the awful, the love and the hate, everything. For the first time in years, Ilya wishes he were a little more like his brother.

He breathes in the cool October air and breathes out all his fear.

“You know, I never thought I would make it past 18 or 21 or even 25, but I did. And then for the first time in my life, I could see a future. Close enough, real enough, like maybe if I reached out far enough, I could hold it in my hand.” Ilya says, his own voice distant to his ears, like it doesn’t quite belong to him.

“I wanted it so bad it scared me, and I could not do it. I was a coward, and I took what I thought was the easy way out. I wanted you so bad, but I was terrified.” Ilya continues, the words shaky in his mouth. He grips the railing under his hand tighter.

Footsteps echo closer and closer until they’re only a step apart. Shane’s hand reaches forward but stops just shy of actually touching him. “Ilya…” He whispers, voice choked up.

“I know you do not want to hear it, but I have to say it so I can breathe again.” Ilya says. He takes in a shaky breath and looks up to meet Shane’s gaze.

“I love you so much, I think it will kill me one day. It is like I have always loved you. When we were rookies, and the day I ended things, and every day in between. I regret a lot of what happened, mostly how I treated you. But I will never regret loving you. That has been the most incredible thing that has happened to me." Ilya confesses, carves his heart out of his chest, red, bloody, and beating. It feels like relief.

Shane’s eyes widen, and they shine with the tears welling up inside them. His mouth drops open in a quiet gasp. Quite a dramatic reaction for something Ilya is sure has been apparent in his gaze from the moment he first laid eyes on Shane.

“Yesterday was the lowest point of my life, so whatever you say, nothing can compare.” Ilya says, only half jokingly, bracing for a rejection.

“Ilya, you fucking idiot!” Shane yells out, his voice cracking on the last word, and then the floodgates open, and he sobs, his entire body shaking with the intensity of it.

Shane reaches out wildly to embrace Ilya, hiding his face in the other's neck. Ilya returns the touch by pure instinct, built out of a decade of yearning. It feels unreal, like just another dream, another fantasy. Yet, Shane really is here, his grip on Ilya bordering on violent. He never wants Shane to let go.

“You asshole, I thought you didn’t–” Another sob cuts off Shane, and then he only burrows closer to Ilya even though there is no physical space between them left, every point of their bodies touching like they’re trying to mold into one.

“I love you so fucking much, Ilya. I need you like I need fucking air. You’ve ruined me for anybody else. I’m yours. Fuck, Ilya, I’ve always been.” Shane says desperately through his tears.

When their mouths meet moments later, Ilya is sure no drug has ever made his mind melt quite as hard. His thoughts float away, and his heart beats so quickly it might as well carve a hole right through his chest. Shane tastes like salvation.

JULY 2018, QUEBEC

The cottage is surprisingly boring. Maybe because Ilya has thought about the place so much over the years that he’s accidentally constructed the property into an idea, something bigger than walls and ceilings and windows. A physical representation of their future, of everything they couldn’t have.

So when he stepped inside and realized that it was in fact just a building, as boring as its owner, he had been ecstatic. He knew then that it would find itself a special place in Ilya’s heart, that it would come to mean everything.

Ilya is enveloped in warmth, the sheets he’s lying under, the soft body sleeping half on top of him, and the morning sun spilling out into the room from the windows and kissing the skin along Shane’s face.

An unconscious smile graces Ilya’s lips. He’s happy. So, so happy that he can physically feel the emotion flowing through his veins and filling his brain, leaving him lightheaded. He’s sure he’s never felt this way before in his life, completely and utterly content. He wants to catch the moment in his hands and never let it go, keep it in a tight grip so it can never escape, never end.

Shane’s face buries deeper into Ilya’s shoulder, and he lets out a mumble. Ilya gently runs a thumb over his cheekbone. Shane smiles before he even opens his eyes.

They lay there for a while just admiring each other, like they have all the time in the world, because for the first time in their life, they do. Ilya’s smiling like a fool, but he doesn’t care. He loves the man before him so deeply and completely that he’s lost for words.

“Can I ask you something?” Shane suddenly breaks the silence. “What did you do last summer? When you didn't come to the cottage?”

Ilya continues stroking the side of Shane’s face lovingly, the stupid smile still in place. He realizes that it doesn’t matter. Nothing that has ever happened before Ilya discovered the ecstasy of their domesticity, the little piece of heaven he’ll never have after death. Nothing matters beyond Shane. So why drag up the cruel past?

“I tried to forget you.” He says simply.

“Did it work?”

“Not even for a moment.” Ilya answers, leaning closer so they’re only a breath apart. “You want to know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I'm weak, so very weak for you.” And then Ilya kisses him because after everything, he wouldn’t have it any other way.