Chapter Text
I should have kissed you.
Ilya’s fingertips fumbled against the phone screen, his vision blurred by a burning drunkenness and tears that refused to fall. One by one, he deleted each letter of the written text, knowing that he would have never sent it.
He should have been celebrating. He had everything that he had thought he ever wanted– a fresh Stanley Cup win and the coveted Most Valuable Player award. But, within him, an emptiness lurked beneath the surface, settling itself in the depths of his body like grains of sand on the bed of a swift river. He could not admit to himself that these achievements meant nothing to him, especially since he had spent the last two decades viewing them as an escape hatch into an alternate dimension- one full of unbridled joy.
Once I have this, he had always thought, then I will forget.
But, like the pull of an ocean tide, the high of his accomplishments would rise and then fall back as quickly as it had arrived, exposing what was always beneath.
I need you.
Hollander’s shaken words echoed in Ilya’s mind as he chewed on the end of an unlit cigarette, the ashen taste burning the tip of his tongue.
Nobody needs me, he’d thought, as soon as Hollander had finished speaking. Especially not you.
He had spent the moments before Hollander’s arrival continuously rejecting phone calls from his brother, Alexei. He was not calling to congratulate him, Ilya knew. In his family, another award meant another brand deal, which meant another designer purse for Alexei’s wife, or more bags of cocaine for Alexei himself. Undoubtedly, his brother had scoured the news sites as soon as the sun broke against the horizon in Moscow, his heart thudding with anticipation at the prospect of Ilya providing them with another luxury. Ilya had come to dread even his achievements, associating them only with another solicitation from his brother, or a blatant insult from his father.
“You are just like your mother,” his father would spit out, his Russian slurred from illness. “Weak.”
It had been years since Ilya had bothered to argue. Weak players do not earn MVP awards, he had wanted to scream, his voice hoarse from futile exhaustion and anger. But he knew, no matter how hard he tried to deny it, that his father was not talking about hockey.
He was weak. How many times had he made up his mind that he would finally end these sick trysts with his nemesis? The man who was perfectly bilingual, unlike himself. Who loved his family to the point of being unable to conceptualize that Ilya’s own father hated him.
Hollander would not understand, Ilya thought. He would tell me that I must be mistaken, that such horrors could not exist in this world. That fathers always loved their sons.
Ilya had only lasted six months ignoring the recurrent dreams of Hollander’s irises as they met his own on the ice, or the way that he smelled like lavender laundry detergent and pine. Hollander had said that he wanted him, months ago. In Montreal, against the quiet background of his solitary apartment, with Ilya hidden from the world and from the gnawing thoughts of his unworthiness. But how could Hollander want someone that he could not understand?
Despite this, Ilya could not resist him. One glance at his heat-stained freckled cheeks, one caress of the fabric of the suit laid taut against Hollander’s back, and his father’s statement rang true once more.
A piercing ring zipped through the silent room, illuminating the unfamiliar furniture in hues of muted blue. Alexei was emblazoned across the phone screen, in English. It was an attempt for Ilya to practice the language of his new country, by forcing him to comprehend unfamiliar words as they arrived in the form of email, text, or voicemail. But there was an unintentional effect, too– the gentle curves of the Latin alphabet forming the names “Papa,” “Alexei,” and even “Svetlana,” added an air of foreignness to them. As if it were not actually Alexei calling, his repugnant brother, but someone else entirely. Someone that Ilya could not quite conceptualize, who lived in a place that Ilya did not know, who spoke in a language that Ilya could not understand. As long as he did not pick up, these illusions could be true.
Another ring.
For a split second, Ilya prayed that it was the most unlikely person of them all– Hollander.
We didn’t even kiss, he might say, just as Ilya almost had. He grasped the crisp edge of his necklace at the thought, a habit of comfort for him. The sharp corners of the crucifix carved into the roughened skin of his fingertips, and he relaxed at the familiar rhythm.
But Hollander would never say that. If it was him calling, it was much more likely to be because he had forgotten one of his meticulously folded socks on the edge of the hotel room chaise– and that would never happen.
Another ring.
“What the fuck do you want?” Ilya snapped, the Russian words gliding off of his tongue in a quick, slurring succession.
“You know what I want,” Alexei quipped, his accent harsh and native. “You are starting to sound American. You play like one, too.”
“You’re a fucking asshole. Is this why you called, Alexei? To fuck with me?” Ilya’s ears thudded with the rush of blood, his fists glowing white from pressure.
“I called because I need my fucking money, fairy.”
Ilya rubbed the tips of his fingers between his eyes roughly, a gravelly exhale coursing through his lungs in frustration.
“I don’t have any more fucking money,” Ilya retorted.
“Bullshit, I see you won an award tonight. They must give those out for anything in America. Perhaps for breathing.”
“Alexei–”
“You want your fucking niece to starve?”
“I sent you $20,000 a few months ago! What the fuck else do you want from me?”
“I know that you have more than that. I have a family, Ilyushka.”
“Don’t call me that–”
“You will give me what I need, Ilyushka, or I will make sure the Moscow Police know your secret.”
“Don’t threaten me, Alexei. Papa is sick– don’t you get that?”
“The old fuck is fine. Fine enough to comprehend when I tell him that his youngest son is a fa–”
The line went dead abruptly, with Ilya’s thumb trembling over the disconnect button. But the silence did not last for more than a minute before Alexei’s texts began to filter through, the Russian phrases harshly translated by Ilya’s phone.
Alexei: You send money 50,000.
Alexei: Or I tell Papa and passport is gone no more American hockey.
Alexei: You have today to make decision
Ilya: I do not need more time.
Ilya: You do not get an extra fucking penny out of me.
Ilya: You have enough for Papa. Do not ask for more.
Ilya waited a few moments for a reply, his heart uncharacteristically steady within his chest. When a return text did not come, he shut off his phone entirely and discarded it onto the nearby nightstand.
He was resolute in his decision. If fame and fortune had done nothing to alter Ilya’s internal suffering, he knew that a small piece of it would never be enough for Alexei. He figured that Alexei, too, was merely searching for the escape hatch to the dimension of joy– a dimension that, after tonight, Ilya was not sure existed.
Gentle beams of sunlight filtered through Ilya’s eyelids, shifting him into a state of reluctant wakefulness. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and instantly heard Hollander’s concerned voice in his head.
“You shouldn’t stick your fingers in your eye,” he'd said. “You could damage your cornea.”
“Damage my–what?” Ilya had responded, a tone of feigned annoyance draped over each syllable.
“Your cornea. It’s part of your eye.”
Ilya had laughed at him, somewhat harshly, as if Hollander’s comment was embarrassing to have made. But Ilya knew that, in reality, it was him who was embarrassed– embarrassed that he could not understand English in the effortless way that Hollander did. Embarrassed that, at any moment, Hollander could be conveying something to him, subtly, that Ilya had no way to pick up on or comprehend. Embarrassed that so many things within him were fractured, shattered like porcelain china against concrete, to the point that no amount of glue or attention that Hollander could provide would fix the way that he was. The jagged lines of past damage would always be there, glaring signs that he was not whole, not beautiful, not perfect. That he was not like Hollander.
Ilya reached for his phone, a heaving sigh escaping his lips that he did not realize had been held within his lungs. He pressed his thumb against the screen instinctively, waiting for the warm glow to appear in the same instant as his touch. But nothing happened. The screen remained black and unresponsive.
“Fucking fuck,” Ilya grumbled, the memories from the night before instantly hitting him like a freight train to a brick wall.
You will give me what I need, Ilyushka, or I will make sure the Moscow Police know your secret.
He is bluffing, Ilya decided.
He knew that Alexei had always hated him– or, more so, had always been disgusted by him. There was not a beating heart on the face of the Earth who knew of Ilya’s preferences aside from three people: his former coach’s son, his rival Shane Hollander, and Alexei Rozanov. Two of those people were grateful that Ilya was attracted to men, given that they received the direct benefits of it. But one, his brother, remained twisted in revulsion.
“Our mother died for this?” he’d asked after walking in on Ilya kissing Sasha, his coach’s son. He spat the words at Ilya like they were poison on his tongue. “I had a mother before you were born. Now she is gone just for you to end up a fucking faggot!”
“Don’t tell Papa,” Ilya had pleaded, his voice breaking in the developing center of his Adam’s apple.
Tears had streamed down his muddled cheeks, but he did not wipe them away. He hoped that, if he did not acknowledge them, perhaps Alexei would not notice that he was crying.
His brother shook his head, his eyes bloodshot and glazed as he peered down at the two young boys.
“You were not worth dying for.”
He had spoken the words as if they were undeniable truth, as factual as the sky being blue or the earth being round. He left no room for misinterpretation, no space for argument or defensiveness. It had been ten years since Alexei had spoken those exact words, but Ilya could still hear them beneath every sentence that his brother uttered, like a malevolent harmony accompanying each conversation between them.
Too often, Ilya wished to speak of that day, to force his brother to remember who Ilya was, and, ultimately, to point to an added detail that had blossomed from the seed of grief planted in Ilya’s heart:
I am not worth living for, either.
A sequence of soft vibrations reverberated against his crumpled bedding, signaling that Ilya’s phone had finally rebooted. A swift string of messages piled atop one another on the home screen, their subjects jumbled and too confusing to attempt to read at once. He noted, though, that none of them appeared to be from Alexei. Ilya was pleased by this; he hoped that, perhaps finally, Alexei respected the boundary he had set. He was not a little boy anymore. He was no longer in Russia, and they were no longer freshly grieving their beloved mother.
“I am safe now,” Ilya whispered aloud, cringing as he did it.
He had read online, briefly, about grounding techniques, something he’d needed as his denial about Hollander grew more intense and disorienting. Ilya had nearly had a panic attack the previous night, just before reuniting with Hollander, which had culminated in quiet, dry sobs in a public bathroom.
“I am safe now,” he repeated, this time in Russian. But, even in his native tongue, he could not bring himself to believe it.
Jane: You excited to head back home?
Hollander’s text message seemed to leap from his phone screen, implanting itself directly into Ilya’s nervous system.
No, he typed out, raking a hand roughly through his knotted curls. But, just as before, he deleted each letter one by one.
Lily: When do you fly out?
Jane: Tonight, 7 PM.
Lily: Let me see you again. Before you get on plane
Jane: We can't!
Lily: You can't. I can do anything.
A few minutes passed, and Ilya smiled cautiously to himself as he envisioned the panic strewn across Hollander’s features. He imagined Hollander typing out ten different texts before deeming each one of them not quite right, for reasons that only made sense to him.
I would never judge him, Ilya thought. In fact, I wish he would send all ten options. It would be more of him for me to see. Actually, I wish he would text me every thought that crosses his mind.
Ilya ignored the gnawing truth within him: that he only wanted to hear all of Hollander’s thoughts so that he could avoid his own.
Jane: I'll be there in 30 minutes.