Chapter Text
Zhenya tried to hire eight different design firms to build his house in Moscow before someone called him back. He thought it was pretty rude, honestly, and he didn’t understand it. Money wasn’t a problem for him. He was down-to-earth but high profile, so doing any sort of work for him at all should have been a dream come true for anyone. He was open to suggestions and wanted to collaborate, having considered himself something of a tastemaker and innovator, and the people he called were recommended as the same.
Property wasn’t an issue either. The first summer he had moved to Moscow, he’d bought an old yellow brick building with boarded up windows and a crumbling foundation forgotten between the Golden Mile and Garden Ring. He had never maintained it, and now it smelled like piss and old bonfires and was littered with garbage, but he planned to gut the whole thing and start from scratch anyway. If he built his bedroom on the top floor facing south, he could see the Moscow River only two blocks away, and the new Tretyakov Gallery glowing blue-white at night on the opposite embankment. It was a very cool location, and Zhenya felt cool about owning it even at 40. To anyone else it should have looked like a blank canvas on prime real estate. Those who truly wanted to establish themselves should have been fighting to build something for Zhenya.
Maybe they were scared, he considered. It was one thing to build a home for someone of his calibre that would no doubt feature heavily in double-page spreads and on the covers of architecture and design magazines, but the other side of that coin was irreparably fucking up and wasting Zhenya’s millions. Even that seemed unusual though, because Zhenya didn’t think he was asking for much.
All Zhenya wanted was this: a home built for a family; large, but practical. He wanted something industrial to show his roots both in Magnitogorsk as well as Pittsburgh—his suggestions included reclaimed wood, exposed brick, brass and copper furnishings—but he didn’t want his home to look like a renovated loft or warehouse, which he thought was gauche and overdone in 2026. He wanted something classic and ornate that spoke to the Neo-Byzantine revival that influenced the prestigious palaces of Russia’s empire, but with modern angles and structure that eschewed old-fashioned symmetry, with a geometrically satisfying and compelling silhouette similar to the contemporary mansions he stayed at last summer during his long-awaited tour of Japan. He wanted an indoor pool with garage doors for windows and heated glass. Or maybe a rooftop pool with a bar! He wanted his furnishings to be a mixture of seventies chic and soviet kitsch, familiar and bright and worn-in, with hints of Russian Suprematism but without sacrificing elegance. He wanted a billiard room that belonged in a speakeasy, and thirteen bedrooms that reflected thirteen of his favorite paintings, and a nursery for a baby he hadn’t met yet, but maybe would someday soon. He wanted something big and loud, like the family he wanted, but also quiet and secret, a place that could feel secluded even at the heart of a city.
“It sounds like you want the Winchester Mansion,” said the sixth or seventh architect with a laugh. Zhenya didn’t appreciate any reference he had to look up, and he appreciated it even less after he did. But he still tried to hire the guy, because Ilyukha recommended him highly, and Ilyukha was the tackiest motherfucker Zhenya had ever met in his life. How could someone say yes to Ilyukha while saying no to him?
Maybe it was a political dislike of Zhenya himself, he thought meanly for a moment.
His mouth screwed on its own, angry with the thought. Just like that, it was easy to tamp down the old, worn-thin shame at the idea that no one would build anything there as long as it was for him, an eccentric old queer who was too broken for the one thing he was good at. It was a stupid, self-pitying ghost of a thought that came from a different time and the boy that Zhenya had been, not the old man he was.
He was going to build something here, beautiful and new. He was determined.
And then finally, the ninth firm called him back.
Seryozha arrived in Moscow on a balmy afternoon the week after Zhenya signed the statement of work, just in time to celebrate Zhenya’s birthday. They had seen less of each other since Zhenya decided to play in the KHL and his subsequent retirement. In that time, Natalie had gone away to college, and Seryozha had grown sentimental about it, choosing to stay stateside almost exclusively before Victoria did the same. Zhenya understood it, distantly, but he was also selfish and missed his friends. When they were younger, they had dreamed out loud frequently about retiring to the same city together.
“It looks even more horrible in person,” Seryozha said, sweeping Zhenya into a hug at the Aeroexpress station. He was unsurprisingly talking about the hairplugs Zhenya had received in the Spring, and grabbed a thick tuft to make a point.
“Your eyesight must have gone in your old age,” Zhenya replied. He had missed Seryozha so much.
Seryozha laughed, and squeezed his arm pulling away. “Just blind with jealousy. You look good.”
“I know,” Zhenya said, and Seryozha laughed again.
They caught up as Zhenya drove them back to their old shared building, talking about the weather first; Moscow was unsurprisingly refreshing compared to the oppressive Dallas heat, but Seryozha griped about how Pittsburgh has been in the late Spring too. They argued about the upset at the United World Cup, with Seryozha rubbing Zhenya’s nose in more pictures he’d taken from the Houston and Miami stadiums, and they complained about drone food delivery while Zhenya ordered chebureki for drone delivery from someplace on the other side of the river. Zhenya bragged about his newest car, and Seryozha spent eight minutes badly describing the plot of a new movie. They did not discuss anything important.
The chebureki drone was already tapping at the apartment window when they arrived back at the unit. They shuffled in with Seryozha’s suitcases between their knees, and Zhenya opened the window to grab the plastic bag from the drone and tap a lazy signature onto a smart screen. When he turned around, Seryozha had his hands in his pockets and was staring at the ceiling.
“Not much longer in this place, huh?”
When Zhenya thought about moving someplace new it felt he had lived here for a thousand years and a single day all at once. He still owned several properties around the world, but this had been a singular constant for twenty years while the rest came and went. And the next place was going to be entirely his own. There was a heaviness in the move.
“It depends on the paperwork,” he said out loud. “Just hiring a design firm was hard enough. I’ll probably die here at eighty before that place is finished.”
“If it takes that long, you’ll just die on a beach in Miami surrounded by ass at some place with good bottle service,” Seryozha replied, never one to tolerate Zhenya’s mopey bullshit for a second.
“I’ve outgrown Miami,” Zhenya sniffed. Seryozha laughed and passed him toward the kitchen.
“Tampa then.” Zhenya could hear the cupboards open and close, the sound of Seryozha grabbing plates. “Los Angeles. An early death after eating too much poorly-prepared pufferfish at some fancy sushi place.”
He came back in the room and handed Zhenya a plate. Zhenya wrinkled his nose.
“Well, now I’m not hungry.”
They ate with plates on their knees in front of the TV, because Zhenya’s dining table was long covered in unopened mail and magazines and old birthday cards and other shit. Seryozha showed Zhenya more pictures from his phone; he and Ksusha had just taken the girls to Costa Rica after Victoria’s school year came to an end. Before that had been a playoff run with the Penguins that ended with the Eastern Conference Final.
“Sid was disappointed of course,” Seryozha said, his finger sliding one distantly familiar picture of Pittsburgh to the next, intercut with pictures with the team, videos from practice. “He wasn’t playing, but you know how he’d take responsibility for weather if he could. And obviously he wanted to go out on a high note.”
He stopped on a picture he had taken toward what was probably the end of the run. Sid was dressed in a dark navy suit and a shirt colored the same underneath, tie to match, looking impossibly handsome against the stark white wall near the end of the tunnel. His beard still looked like garbage, more streaked with silver. His head had gone full gray.
“He stopped dying it?” Zhenya took two fingers to zoom in on his hairline so he wouldn’t have to look at Sid’s crooked smile.
Seryozha laughed. “Not everyone is as vain as you.”
Zhenya scoffed and Seryozha put his phone away. They finished the chebureki watching TV.
Seryozha licked his fingers and wiped his hands on his shorts when he was done.
“Are you excited to see him in November?” There was a commercial on TV. Zhenya didn’t look away from it.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “It’s been a really long time.”
Zhenya took no part in planning his fortieth birthday. He left it up to the handful of the friends who were most desperate to tease him, which turned out to be a couple dozen of them. Sasha came over shortly after Seryozha arrived, bemoaning how Zhenya was abandoning him to build a mansion and marry some guy two decades his junior and never be seen again. They made several toasts from a bottle Sasha brought, and then the three of them caught a Yandex to the first of several clubs.
“Going to find you a husband,” several of his friends said, toasting him over the loud music already blaring. Everyone was trying to be overly accepting these days to the point of intrusion. They all wanted him to know that they knew and didn’t care.
“How am I supposed to find a husband? I can barely hear anything,” Zhenya replied. To which his friends answered similar sentiments of there not being time to talk or listen when you were too busy fucking. They were being supportive and Zhenya was drunk, so he was only mildly annoyed.
Max arrived later than most after flying in from a camp in Sochi and was almost doubled over with laughter seeing Zhenya for the first time since last Winter. “Zhenka! How many men did you have to kill for a full head of hair! What happened!”
Zhenya was already a few deep, and pulled Max into a tight embrace, pressing his mouth wet next to Max’s ear. “Shut up or you’re next.”
“You know I love to tease you,” Max said fondly, kissing his cheek. “And at least now you’ll be presentable at the Hall of Fame, huh?”
The Hall of Fame. Christ.
“You talk to Sid about it?” Max asked.
“No.” Zhenya hadn’t. He and Sid still messaged in passing sometimes, mostly for birthdays or holidays. Sometimes Sid would send him something he thought Zhenya might like, or something that reminded him of Zhenya. But Sid was a busy guy twelve months of the year, and Zhenya didn’t want to be an obligation. He had always been terrible at keeping in touch with people who didn’t aggressively keep in touch with him, like Sasha who lived in the same building, or Seryozha who called him more often than his own flesh and blood brother. He didn’t know what there was to talk about. “I sent him a quick congratulations, he sent me a quick congratulations, ‘looking forward to seeing you,’ the usual things.”
“In English?” Max asked. Seryozha overheard a few people away and turned to give them a weird look.
“What else would it be? I can still speak English fine,” Zhenya replied. Max’s face was screwed up like a question mark, confused.
“Are you talking about Sid?” Seryozha pushed through their friends to stand between Zhenya and Max.
“Yeah,” Max said. “Just asking Zhenya if they’ve talked about the Hall of Fame. I wanted to know if Sid was practicing his Russian.”
“Russian?” If Zhenya had been taking a sip of something he would have spit it out.
“Yeah, he started learning Russian this year. You didn’t know that?” Max asked.
“No.” Something curdled sour in Zhenya’s stomach.
“You have to hear it, his accent is terrible.” Max seemed delighted about it, like it wasn’t a big deal. Seryozha also smiled briefly, looking fond, but he tracked Zhenya’s reaction and seemed to understand.
“I think Zhenya’s mad because Sid never learned Russian for him,” he said, gripping Zhenya tight at his shoulder and giving him a good-natured shake. “He started learning Russian as part of his concussion recovery. Don’t take it personally.”
Zhenya tried to shrug it off. It was always strange to be faced with the reality of Seryozha and Max still being active in Pittsburgh; time passing without him in the places he left behind; Sid becoming someone he no longer knew.
“I’m not,” he lied. The ice in his drink had melted down into almost nothing, and he looked down in the glass as he swirled it before taking a huge swig.
They arrived home early in the morning, the sky already blooming pink and gold over the Moscow skyline. Seryozha produced some cigars from his luggage after Sasha went home, and he and Zhenya sat out on the balcony to watch the sunrise. Zhenya poured them two glasses of a nicer whiskey he kept to accompany the cigars and keep his head from aching for another hour at least.
“You know,” Seryozha said, clipping the ends of each cigar carefully. “I’m always surprised you and Sid don’t stay in touch more.”
“It’s hard.” Zhenya wrinkled his nose and considered pouring himself more whiskey, or stealing Seryozha’s back. He hoped to leave it at that, but Seryozha looked at him expectantly, and Zhenya shrugged. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
“I don’t think—” Seryozha started to say, but he could see that Zhenya knew what he would say and also wouldn’t believe it: I don’t think you’re a burden. I don’t think Sid would ever consider you a burden. He sighed and handed Zhenya his cigar, holding up a lighter. “Well. Regardless of what you want to believe, I know he’ll be happy to see you again. And I’m pretty sure he wanted to surprise you with his terrible Russian, so pretend we never told you about it.”
Zhenya took a few quick pulls of the cigar and watched the end cherry to life, trying not to feel raw and old, like he was the one left behind and not the one who left. He looked at Seryozha and Seryozha looked back seriously, kind but unsympathetic in a way that told Zhenya it was time to stop feeling sorry for himself. Thick smoke rolled out of his mouth for a second, considering. “Yeah, okay,” he said.
Later he read through the dozens of birthday texts on his phone as he crawled into bed, or tried to anyway. Sid had texted in the past hour, probably right before going to bed at a normal time all the way in Halifax.
Happy 40th G. Excited to see you in November. Don’t be a stranger.
The hangover from Zhenya’s birthday lasted for two days, and the out-of-town friends who came to see him stayed for another three beyond that. Then it was back to the routines of regular life: coaches meetings with CSKA, meetings with his agent, meetings with his lawyer, meetings with his accountant, acting as a human punching bag for Sasha’s son Makar, who at age 11 already had fewer real teeth than his father, while playing video games over at their condo and eating their food. The design firm he had hired to build his dream house were dragging their feet with the planning, wasting their time instead with endless safety inspections and site preparation. He was restless waiting for the season to start and he knew it, but still hung up angrily in the middle of a call with the contractor who was trying to tell him what realistic expectations looked like.
Maybe he could go to Miami. Maybe he could go to New York. Maybe he could go to Halifax and find Sid and ask him to his face why he didn’t tell Zhenya he was learning Russian. He spent five minutes looking at Sid’s hockey school website, which was still going on even though Sid was no longer helping on the ice this summer due to post-concussion syndrome. There were still plenty of pictures of him signing autographs for campers marqueeing at the top of the page. Sid’s hair looked like a silver-bristled sponge, and the lines at his eyes looked like river tributaries. Zhenya closed the page.
Why not Spanish or German or Finnish? He wanted to ask. Why not French? Is your favorite food still pizza? Are you still afraid of heights? Do you ever think about me?
The design firm finally wanted to schedule a meeting to go over the first draft of remodel plans on Sid’s birthday. Zhenya still had a years-old calendar reminder in his phone that popped up next to the meeting reminder when he woke up that morning. It felt like a sign, something auspicious that made Zhenya’s heart turn over delicately in his chest like a crepe.
Happy birthday! See you couple months )) he texted Sid, before making a hasty retreat to the shower where he wouldn’t have to worry about waiting for a reply, or replying to a reply too quickly if one came. Sid had texted back by the time he was dressed and heading out the door, a quick Can’t wait! that required no response as far as Zhenya was concerned.
He called a Yandex to meet the design team at his future home and distracted himself through the drive responding to tedious work e-mails he’d been putting off. When he arrived at his property and let himself through the old iron gate facing out toward the street, he was pleasantly surprised to see much of the garbage that had littered the courtyard had been cleaned up and the concrete outside was sprayed down to remove years of neglect and shit that had caked onto the pavement.
Mikhail, the lead contractor on the team, was waiting for him in the open entry archway where two old doors had been pulled from their hinges and now rested against the walls outside. He waved when he saw Zhenya looking around and smelling the air. “Welcome home!”
Zhenya waved back and smiled. “Looks ready to move in.”
Mikhail, who had been smiling, stopped. “Please don’t joke about that,” he urged.
Zhenya hadn’t spent much time actually inside the building he had owned for 15-plus years, and Mikhail was quick to point out the decades of graffitti, the unstable staircases, floorboards that had rotted through. The electric wiring and plumbing were Soviet relics and long disabled, and all the copper had probably been torn out of several exposed walls in the nineties for a quick payday. The amount of asbestos in the building was no doubt a world record.
“Okay, fine,” Zhenya said, which was apparently the wrong thing to say. Mikhail looked appalled. “I’m paying you to fix it. So fix it. Can I see the plans?”
He and Mikhail had another car called to take them back to the firm’s office to meet with the team architect, Zoya. Zhenya was vibrating with excitement as he received tea in their conference room and Zoya laid out an extensive design spread she said was put together to encompass all of his needs.
It was perfect. Restored dark wood floors with white brick and shiplap walls, elevated ceilings, exposed beams. The cabinets and fixtures were muted pastel blues and oranges that reminded him of his childhood home refined.
His mind for what felt like the thousandth time that day went out to Sid, and between mock-ups of each room Zhenya remembered his second year in Pittsburgh, when Sid had come back after a summer of building his own home in Nova Scotia. He had sat with Zhenya on their first media day going through hundreds of images on Sid’s digital camera showing each room coming together and the lake in back, his new dock stretched out into the open water. At that point Zhenya was already the proud owner of three homes in three cities, but he’d felt suddenly insignificant staring at Sid’s one.
“Maybe next summer you can come up. We could spend a few weeks training, fishing, you know,” Sid had said, elbow catching friendly enough in Zhenya’s side; an invitation.
Zhenya at that time had no interest in suffering through a summer keeping pace with Sid, and he’d been nursing a crush like a third degree burn for months. He entertained the thought of himself and Sid on Sid’s dock forgetting about fish to make out for a second, and then gently closed that door in his mind to return to when he was alone.
“Too lazy, training summer with Sid,” he’d admitted at the time. “Maybe I build same in Moscow, you come visit me.”
“Yeah, okay,” Sid had replied, before showing Zhenya twenty pictures of his new weight room.
He was snapped out of his thoughts by Zoya going over the mock-ups of the bedroom: on the top floor, walls blown out for bigger windows to look at the Moscow River just as Zhenya had requested, with an ornate built-in bed frame that faced North.
“What do you think?” Zoya asked. She was switching between a few different color schemes, fabric samples with Victorian prints, several ornate knobs they’d picked out for custom furnishings.
Zhenya was thinking about waking up in his dream bedroom in his dream house alone, the neon blue lights of the gallery across the water illuminating the lonely, empty spread of sheets next to him in his king-sized bed. He was thinking about Sid in that space, like he had so many times in his youth, now gray-haired and wrinkled.
“Do you have something more simple? Like it belongs in a lake house," he said.
Mikhail gave Zhenya a timeline of three months to frame and gut the building before they could even start the real construction on the property. The timeline gave Zhenya heartburn. In three months he would be at the start of the season, grinding his teeth behind the players on the CSKA bench. In three months the city would be rapidly fading from fall into winter. Would they even be able to continue construction past December when there were little to no breaks from the cold and dark? In three months he would be in Toronto, giving several speeches in rusty English. In three months he would see Sid for the first time in years.
He ached thinking about it. Had he changed at all since he left to play for the KHL, since he had retired? He didn’t feel any different, just older. He had to wear his glasses more often now. He made less money. He still didn’t know how to cook. He was out openly, but that didn’t change much of anything for him, or anything about him at his core, because that was always who he was from day one. He had dated sparingly at first and more recently not at all. He hadn’t thought about marriage in years.
As if on cue, Ilyukha swept into town and kidnapped Zhenya as he and his family made their way to the Kovalchuk dacha up North through the end of August. Even with his pack of moody teenagers, Ilyukha’s friendship offered comfortable silence that differed from the unsettling quiet of summer and the lurking anxieties of fall that settled in Zhenya like pressure behind the eyes.
They went fishing every morning, enjoying the tundra summer twilight around them, and a little hunting too. Zhenya had always enjoyed the former, but he welcomed the way breaking down and cleaning an animal shut his brain up and let himself get lost in the motions of it. The boys came with them a few mornings, and Zhenya got to feel like the Cool Uncle showing Artem how to hold a gun and gut a fish. At night they played cards together and drank between rounds in the banya. Zhenya fell asleep reading his book to the sound of Karolina whispering over the phone to her secret boyfriend that Ilyukha definitely didn’t know about in the next room over.
It was a surprise then, knowing Ilyukha and enjoying the rhythm his family had established in the countryside, when Ilyukha accused him of being quiet.
“I’m always quiet,” Zhenya said. The kids were in bed and so was Nikol while they stayed up drinking and tying lures. “It’s part of my charm.”
Ilyukha laughed. “True. But you seem, I don’t know—I hesitate to call you anxious.”
“Good. Don’t.”
“You seem uneasy. The way I remember you when you decided to retire in Russia.”
Of all his friends, Zhenya would have thought Ilyukha the last to speak so directly about his retirement. At the time, Ilyukha had told Zhenya he was making a mistake and he was being selfish and stupid. “You do this and I’m never speaking to you again,” he had threatened. “You know how I feel. You know it isn’t natural and it’s an insult to Russia. I’m disgusted you would even try this.”
He had never minced words. At least Zhenya knew he could always rely on him for his honesty.
Now he looked uneasily away from Zhenya, concentrating too hard on his lure. “You know how I felt at the time, Zhenya. It was wrong of me, and I realize the things I said to you weren’t just said by me. You were very brave and I—“ he cut himself off, mouth twisting unhappily, “—I still struggle to understand you.”
“I know,” Zhenya replied, softly.
“But you were brave and you did it anyway and you continue to forgive me. You changed people. You survived it and now you’re still thriving on your own terms—“
He wasn’t, not necessarily. His return to the KHL was stipulated that they must let him play while he was publicly out as a gay man. It was the single condition he had, and they fought him for months over it, but it had been important to him. He took a huge pay cut his one year in Magnitogorsk before he finally retired. He lost all of his domestic sponsorships. People still refused him service in public sometimes when they recognized him, and he received many threats, and any respect the players with CSKA had for him now was earned with patience and hard, grueling work; things that didn’t come naturally to him. But the stigma and weight had become like a chronic ache, manageable, and he was free to live as himself more than he would have otherwise.
“—so what has happened recently? What’s going on with you? Are you in trouble?”
When he put it like that, Zhenya felt stupid.
“I’m not in trouble,” he said. He almost wanted to laugh about it. So stupid. “I’m being inducted into the Hall of Fame in November.”
“Christ, is that all?” Ilyukha finally looked at him, smiling. “You nervous about giving a speech in English, or what?”
“I’ll stick you with this,” Zhenya replied, gesturing at Ilyukha with the lure in his hand. Ilyukha laughed. “It’s been four years, Ilyukha. And I’m proud of myself for what I did, but sometimes I feel like when I left a big part of me stayed behind. I think about Sid a lot. When I was younger—" he had never said this out loud before, he realized, “—when we were younger, I had feelings for him. I liked the person I was with him, and when I left for good I missed him. I still miss him, and the person he made me. Even if it was never, you know—like that—I want to know I was important. I want to know I was important to those people and that team and to Sid. I’m afraid of going back and seeing how everyone has moved on without me.”
Quiet settled over them again, and they both looked away from each other at the work in their hands. The sound of Zhenya’s own deep, rattling breaths and the snores of someone upstairs were the only noise in the room. Finally, Ilyukha stood up and grabbed his empty bottle on the table.
“I need another drink,” he said. “Do you want anything?”
“Please,” Zhenya replied, and he stayed still as Ilyukha went to the kitchen to find more beer.
“Okay,” Ilyukha said when he came back in the room. “Like I said, this is a place I’ve struggled to meet you. Sometimes I think you care too much, and always about the wrong things. I just want to tell you to get over yourself. They’re inducting you into the Hall of Fame, for fuck’s sake. Of course you’re important.”
“I—”
“If people don’t care about you in the way you want them to, I want to say ‘fuck them,’ Zhenya. I want to say that. But I know it doesn’t work that way for you. So I’m still trying to think of how to tell you what you need to know in a way that you’ll believe me. How do I tell you that you’re going to be fine? You need to just go. Be there. I don’t understand how you can do so much in your life, sacrifice so much for a career in the NHL and Russia, and then you’re afraid that what? Sidney Crosby doesn’t love you?”
It’s not that, Zhenya thought meanly on instinct. Like a wounded animal, he wanted to lash out and tell Ilyukha how wrong he was, even if deep down there was an ugly truth to it.
“I mean, isn’t it a little late to worry about that?” Ilya continued weakly. “The boy you like in class not liking you back. Class is over. It’s been over.”
“He doesn’t have to love me. It’s never been about him loving me,” Zhenya said. “I’m afraid to see how he’s changed without me. I’m afraid he’s going to be someone else, better somehow, and I’m going to be the same.”
“So you’re selfish. What? It’s selfish. You should want the best for him.”
Zhenya scrubbed at his face, frustrated. “I know that! Trust me, Ilyukha, I know that. That’s the hard part.”
“Okay, well.” He paused again, quieted by Zhenya’s outburst, and shifted in his seat. Quieter, he said, “I worry about you.”
Zhenya sighed. “I know.”
He finished his lure and his beer and went to bed.
When he woke up the next morning to go fishing, Ilyukha seemed to act as if the conversation had never happened. Zhenya was grateful for him as a friend, and he was grateful Ilyukha continued to care about his well-being despite not always understanding him. But God, he thought, trying to actually talk about his feelings with Ilyukha was mortifying. Zhenya felt a pang of sympathy for his children, who no doubt had been victims of the same misguided, awkward talks with their father.
He stayed at their dacha through the last week of August until it was time to go back to Moscow, return to work, and continue building his home. He had to keep moving forward. For nobody’s sake but his own, he couldn’t stay still forever.
“Thanks for abducting me,” he said, hugging Ilyukha outside his building, luggage scattered at their feet.
“You’ll never get rid of me,” Ilyukha said into his shoulder, not letting go. ”And you know, for what it’s worth—I doubt he’s any happier. He had to retire after another concussion. I’m sure he’s miserable without you.”
Zhenya choked out a noise and pushed him away. “God, don’t say that! Are you trying to make me feel better?”
“Is it working?” Ilyukha asked, seemingly genuine. Zhenya rolled his eyes, and Ilyukha smiled. “Good luck in November. In Toronto.”
Zhenya patted his chest and tried not to be mortified on Ilya’s behalf at how bad he was at being helpful. He was trying.
The emptiness of his condo was as pronounced as ever when he stepped back inside for the first time in weeks. He was surrounded by two decades of his own history, unchanging. Would that feeling go away in his new home, or would his own awful feelings echo off the high ceilings and white wood paneled walls, louder than ever?
Early in the morning on the first day of September, Zhenya woke up to an unexpected text message: HHOF weekend is already filling up but I wanted to see you. What does your schedule look like? Let’s plan something.
It was from Sid.
CSKA Moscow’s Hockey season started out okay, but as always, they could be better. They were winning about as much as they were losing by November. Zhenya continued to earn the respect of the new players they acquired over the summer. He tried not to spare anyone any kindness, but he couldn’t help it. Deep down, everyone knew he was soft. Of all the coaches, his players called him the Good Cop.
His house continued the slow process of becoming a home. There were several construction nightmares, and nothing seemed to move fast enough for Zhenya. They had to level the entire foundation from underneath the building, and the glass panels for the walk in shower shattered mid-delivery, and when the kitchen backsplash tiles arrived, they were the wrong shade of blue. It had started to snow.
Nerves began to get to Zhenya two weeks before the induction ceremony was supposed to take place. He found it hard to eat anything, too nauseous to stomach much more than smoothies. He had written and rewritten his speech in English five times, had it professionally touched up each time, and still worried over every single word. Did he say all the right things, thank all the right people? Would there be laughter in the appropriate parts, or would he garble his way through the entire thing? There would be hundreds of people, not just his close friends and family, making fun of his new hair and his reading glasses. A video of his speech would go on the internet and then 200 years after his death there would still be an active comment section making fun of the way he mispronounced a word. He was a mess and felt like an idiot about it.
And then of course there was Sid. One week! he had texted the Friday before. When do you land? the next morning. Where are you staying? immediately after. I still have us for dinner Friday, that ok?
Zhenya had raw concrete countertops being installed with pewter sink faucets in both the kitchen and all bathrooms, as well as a smart home system named MISCHA on the same day he started the twelve-hour flight to Toronto. He was rich, but with the new house he couldn’t afford to fly privately, and as the plane taxied toward the runway he drank several glasses of champagne in first class and approved all the new caramel leather furniture Zoya recommended for his entertainment room on his tablet while trying not to freak out in front of strangers.
It was strange to think by the time he arrived back in Moscow, he might have a new place to come home to.
Zhenya landed in Toronto late Thursday evening the week before the Hall of Fame Induction ceremony. By the time he made it to his hotel it was closer to midnight. During the total travel time, he had managed to fully memorize his induction speech, watch two new movies he had been meaning to see for a while now, and make several more ill-advised furniture and art purchases, because he could never say no when he was stressed out. He was now the proud owner of several Velickovic paintings and a set of industrial nesting tables.
In his suite that night he stood at the window looking out over the glittering Toronto skyline. The CN Tower was blinking several colors back at him all at once, soothing and familiar. It was like no time had passed at all.
His parents flew in the next morning, as well as several friends who he helped get settled and had lunch with. There were events going on through the entire Induction Weekend, but Zhenya only planned on attending the ones where he was an invited guest of honor; Sunday was a media day with an event Q&A and several scheduled appearances, and Monday was the Gala itself. However, dozens of former inductees were in the area for the event, as well as hundreds of fans and media. He wound up getting stopped everywhere he went at a rate he hadn’t experienced since maybe his last Olympics. It wasn’t all bad—Horny was also in Toronto for the induction, and Zhenya ran into him and his family without meaning to. They spoke for twenty minutes before making plans to meet up again for breakfast on Sunday. Zhenya kept an eye out for Sid the entire time as well, even though they did have plans that evening, but Sid had always had a preternatural ability to hide in plain sight. If he was around, they didn’t see each other until the time Sid had proposed they meet formally in the lobby before heading to dinner.
At that point Zhenya was vibrating, feeling sick to his stomach. In a brief second of panic he forgot all English as he did his final once-over in the mirror before going downstairs.
He stepped into the elevator and tried to calm himself, pressing the button for the lobby. He breathed in deep and closed his eyes. The elevator hummed and an eternity stretched between each floor as Zhenya rode all the way down.
The doors opened and Zhenya stepped out.
Sid’s silhouette was instantly familiar. They were going somewhere nice, but he was still in dark jeans, ass undeniable and sticking out, recognizable as anything. He was probably wearing the same stupid black button up shirt that he wore whenever he went out during the last decade they had played together. His hair was short, styled, and had maybe twenty black strands left hanging on for dear life. He was reading something on his phone, but the second Zhenya stepped into his line of vision, he looked up.
“Hey,” Sid said, a little breathless. “Wow, look at you.”
Even the most traitorous part of Zhenya’s terrible brain could not deny how tender and fond Sid looked as he watched Zhenya walk over. Look at you. He had sounded like he had seen God, and Zhenya felt soft and shy and incredibly young.
He took several quick, long steps so he could sweep Sid into a hug.
“Hi Sid,” he said. He had missed saying it.
Sid hooked his chin over Zhenya’s shoulder. “Hi,” he said in practiced but clunky Russian, “I missed you.”
Zhenya immediately thought of Seryozha telling him Sid was probably trying to surprise him and that he should pretend to not know. His anger had long faded. “You speak Russian now?”
“I’m trying. The rehab specialist I’m working with says that new languages can help the brain recover from injuries faster, so. Russian. How did I sound?”
“Terrible,” Zhenya replied, smiling. “How’s head?”
Sid stepped back, deflating slightly. “You know. Short story: not great. But we can catch up over dinner, eh? I’ll tell you about it if you want.”
Zhenya greedily wanted Sid to tell him everything he didn’t know. The layers and layers of anxiety that had built up in his chest flowed out of him like water bursting through a dam, soothed by the instant ease of being around Sid. He tried not to sound over-eager, saying, “Then let’s go! Catch up!” taking off toward the lobby's valet station.
Sid laughed. “Patient as ever, huh?”
The valet brought Sid’s car around, because of course Sid had driven his own car. Zhenya made an approving noise at the 2026 electric BMW as it slowed to a stop in front of them. “This maybe like, most sexy car you ever drive, Sid.”
“Yeah? Uh,” Sid said, pink-faced and pleased. He tried, in Russian, “I also like. I think uh—how do you say ‘practical?’”
“Practical,” Zhenya said slowly.
“Practical,” Sid repeated, opening the passenger door for Zhenya. “Practical but uh—and how do you say, uh, ‘sexy?’"
“Sexy,” Zhenya said, and he winked, getting inside. Sid closed the door behind him, but Zhenya could hear him whisper practical but sexy twice to himself as he walked around to the driver’s side.
Sid asked him about his plans for the rest of the weekend, if he planned to go to the exhibition game or any media he wasn’t obligated to be a part of, which of course Zhenya immediately answered no. He asked if Zhenya’s parents were here, said he hoped to see them later, and then mentioned his own family had come with half the population of Cole Harbour, probably. His parents were well, and Taylor was married with a kid.
“Baby?” Zhenya asked, perking up.
“Yeah, just the cutest fucking baby, I’ll show you pictures as soon as we’re at the restaurant,” Sid replied, clearly excited about being an uncle. “The baby is probably the only member of my immediate family who isn’t here, but not because I asked. I think Taylor just wanted a break for the weekend. I’m actually a little bummed.”
The restaurant was a sushi place, because Sid clearly had Zhenya’s number after all these years. He was already pulling his phone out as the valet took his car keys to open up an entire album of baby pictures.
“She was born a couple months before I got injured,” he said, letting Zhenya take his phone from them as they walked into the restaurant to swipe through what amounted to seven billion photos. “Taylor and her husband were down in Pitt too, so I spent a lot of my better recovery days babysitting.”
The front of house host didn’t even have to ask for the reservation as they stepped in, just immediately guided them to a private table toward the back of what was still a very intimate, upscale restaurant. It reminded him of his pilgrimages to Masa back when he would visit New York with the Penguins. They were left with a drinks menu and the hand written omakase in fat traditional Japanese-stylized calligraphy that Zhenya didn’t even bother to read.
“What about Sid? No baby?” Zhenya assumed he would have heard or maybe received a wedding invite if Sid had a kid or a serious partner. They would probably have come along tonight.
Sid hummed and made thoughtful faces at the wine menu, shaking his head dismissively. “Nah, you know. When would I? With who? Especially lately. I can barely take care of myself. What about you?”
“No,” Zhenya said simply. “I’m start to build house though, like, if I’m have family later.”
“You’re building a house?” Sid asked, looking up, and the conversation avalanched into Zhenya walking Sid through his own pictures of the ongoing renovation, his stress purchases, a video of the remote control shades he tested out with Zoya two weeks ago that they planned on installing in his bedroom. “Wow, you just started in August?”
“It’s so slow, Sid,” Zhenya moaned. “You have like, whole house in Canada build during summer when I'm rookie.”
“Nothing like this, Jesus Christ.” Sid was zooming in thoughtfully on Zhenya’s painted kitchen cabinets. “Remember when it took me like, five years to build my house in Pittsburgh?”
“I’m think you just like live with Mario too much,” Zhenya replied, and Sid gave his phone back mock aggressively. He still smiled tight and too wide when he was being teased, loving it despite himself, and Zhenya continued to ease into knowing that at his core Sid hadn’t changed into someone unrecognizable in the years they spent apart.
“You keep it up and I’m gonna make you pay for all of this,” Sid said, trying to sound threatening. “Speaking of, you feeling wine?”
Zhenya was feeling wine. He wasn’t sure if Sid was supposed to be drinking, but Sid had never been the type to fuck around and gamble with his body when recovering. He let Sid order them a bottle of white that was nicer than Zhenya’s palate deserved, and watched him swirl and taste and say some kind of bougie nonsense to the house sommelier before accepting it.
“I’ve mostly stopped drinking, but my neurologist told me a little would be okay when I saw him last week, and I feel like it’s kind of a special occasion.” He swirled his glass more as Zhenya tried to casually mimic his movements, before holding it up in a toast. “To the two of us, eh?”
“Two of us,” Zhenya repeated, clinking the rims of their glasses together.
Zhenya woke up.
He was in—He was in his hotel bed, in Toronto. How did he get here? He rubbed at the sheets at his side and tried to roll on his side, only to be greeted with a piercing headache. What the fuck did he do? He kicked out, and his toes connected with a naked, hairy leg that belonged to someone else.
He opened his eyes, but his vision was too blurry to make out whoever it was, now shifting awake.
Fuck fuck fuck. He tried to roll in the opposite direction to where, if he was lucky, he would find his glasses on the bedside table. Another lightning bolt of pain shot through him, an absolute ice pick to the skull of pain that he felt all the way down in his toes. He groaned.
“G.” It was Sid. Sid was in his bed, and his legs were naked. “G, how do you say ‘hangover’ in Russian.”
“I’m hungover,” Zhenya croaked out. It was still dark with the blinds drawn, but Zhenya brought an arm up to cover his face anyway. God, was he ever.
“I’m hungover,” Sid repeated. Zhenya could hear the sound of Sid’s guts protesting, and then Sid said, “Oh God, I’m gonna throw up.”
The mattress was so thick and plush Zhenya could barely feel him roll off the bed to stumble across the suite to the bathroom. There was a final moment of peace before Sid started hurling loud enough to wake the dead. Zhenya’s head throbbed with the noise, and after a brief second, he managed to roll out of bed to join Sid.
Zhenya ended up destroying the small bathroom trash can under the sink while Sid was wrapped around the toilet for a solid thirty minutes of puking. The only comfort was the press of cold tile against his balls, because of course he was naked. Chancing a look over at Sid in the dark, he noticed Sid was at least wearing boxers. Zhenya was hurting so much everywhere that he had no way to determine if any part of his body ached from the more satisfying mistake of a drunken fuck, and he stank with cold wine sweats.
“Sid,” he said eventually between heavy breaths, gazing over at the wide bow of Sid’s shoulders clutching his toilet. “Sid, what we do?”
“You let me drink too much wine,” Sid groaned into the bowl, voice echoing.
“I’m let?” Zhenya didn’t have the energy to be indignant, but if he did, he would laugh loud and mean.
“Yeah, I told you I wasn’t drinking much anymore, but then it was just good and easy, and then you wanted to drink more to catch up with how quickly I was getting buzzed and then, uh, I don’t know.” Sid’s body shook with violent dry heaves. He’d probably exorcised most of last night’s demons from the sound and look of it.
“Sid,” Zhenya said again, slow and serious. “Sid, we fuck?”
“What,” Sid replied, which meant probably not then. As many feelings as Zhenya had harbored on and off when they were younger, Sid had never given any indication that he would have returned them, or that he even liked men. But then he said, “no, I mean. We just went to bed, I think.”
“Okay,” The last thing he wanted was to ruin their reunion by making this weird. "You think?"
"Yeah." Sid rolled away to face him, pressing his back against the large jet tub at his side. “Why? Are you saying that fucking was on the table?”
Zhenya froze as much as his body was able through its own violent shakes. “I’m just check, Sid, like, I’m not wearing pants.”
Sid raised an eyebrow, and his entire face twitched. “We didn’t even kiss.”
It was scary sometimes how Sid could flip a switch and his features and posture would just be overcome with sober determination. He was looking at Zhenya now with purpose.
“You want?” Zhenya asked. He’d imagined this moment, dreamed about it for decades, but never in his wildest nightmares did anything happen between the two of them like this.
“It's not like I hung my hat on it, but you know. If you wanted,” Sid said. He grimaced again, curling up over himself. “If you wanted and we hadn’t spent the past half hour throwing up raw fish, yeah. I would kiss you this second.”
“Oh.” Zhenya couldn’t decide if he wanted to laugh or if he wanted to die. “Fuck.”
“Fuck,” Sid agreed.
“Maybe like, we go back to bed and like, wake up in few hours, brush teeth. Then we can kiss.”
Sid smiled, and Zhenya could see his own shy, earnest wants reflected back at him. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
But as quickly as it had come, Sid’s smile faded into concern. He looked around for a second, before wincing his way slowly up to his feet. “I need to see what time it is. Fuck. I’m supposed to meet a camera crew at ten.”
“Cancel!” Zhenya called after him, before closing his eyes and resting his head against the wall. He could hear Sid shuffle through what were probably a tangled mess of clothes and bump into something in the dark, cursing. Then it was quiet, and Sid had found his phone from the distant sounds of him click click click typing before cursing again. “Tell them you dead!”
Sid walked back toward the bathroom to lean in the doorway, eyes blinking closed and open as he twisted a kink out of his neck. “It’s like, nine-thirty. Fuck. I’m supposed to be with them all day.”
“What you doing tonight?” Geno asked. This was precisely why he planned to do the bare minimum, always.
“Mike’s coming down and staying with me for the rest of the weekend. Shit, G, I—I never thought that we would, you know. If I had known there was even a chance.”
“You see me tomorrow at Q-N-A,” Zhenya said.
“Yeah, but it’s not like, you know. If it were just you and me for a minute, but I’m booked through Monday night.” He rubbed at his face. “When do you leave?”
“Monday after Gala.” CSKA wanted him back as soon as possible, probably to show him off while the overworked him. The irony of fate, Zhenya thought.
“Okay,” Sid said. “We’re gonna—this isn’t over. We’re gonna talk more about this, okay? I gotta get back to my hotel room, but I’m gonna call the front desk and get you some Gatorade and Tylenol from the store brought up. What’s your room number?”
Something with four digits, which was three more than Zhenya could handle in English right now.
“You know what, I’ll just tell them it’s for you,” Sid said, disappearing again. Zhenya listened to him pick up the room phone and try to sound put together, and distantly, muted behind a wall of visceral pain and nausea, he felt so, so, so thrilled as Sid asked yes please, for Evgeni Malkin’s room. No, he’s asleep, but if you could bring it by in the next five minutes, I can—thanks.
Sid came back to sit by him in the bathroom while they waited. He didn’t sit too close, which was fine, because Zhenya’s skin felt like a thousand pins on fire covered in ants. Just having him close was comforting enough.
“I wanna talk more, but uh. I just wanted you to know before I go, and I didn’t even intend to tell you this, but uh. Until you left the league I didn’t know. I didn’t know about you, and I didn’t know about—I didn’t know about me. And then you came out and G, I was so proud of you, but you left and I couldn’t stop thinking, like. Maybe the way I cared about you, the things I tried for years not to think about, that I pretended like, maybe everyone had these thoughts every once in a while—”
“Sid, I’m not understand what you talk about,” Zhenya said. He was so hungover and so tired and he and Sid were always better at hands on, physical communication over words anyway.
“I think I was in love with you for a really long time,” Sid said quietly.
There was a soft knock at the door.
Sid groaned. “For fuck’s sake.”
He left Zhenya on the floor again, and came back a minute later fumbling with the bottle of Tylenol and carrying a grape Gatorade under his armpit.
“When you think you can stomach it,” he said, and put both next to Zhenya’s head on the counter, Tylenol cap politely twisted off and ready. “I have to go now. But I would like to see you, you know, outside of the events this weekend. Just us. To catch up.”
"Catch up?" Zhenya reached out to grab his hand and pull it close, pressing a kiss to the soft curve of his palm. “Okay.”
Sid smiled down at him, radiant in the dark. His fingers grazed Zhenya’s high cheekbones curiously. “Okay.”
And then he was gone.
Zhenya didn’t see Sid again that weekend outside of the single media session they had together and the Induction Gala. He texted though, twenty times the normal amount. The rest of Saturday it was mostly variations of I’m dying and help me and wish you were here. But there were also more pictures of his niece, a picture of the receipt from the sushi valet after abandoning his car overnight, and an oddly flirtatious boomerang of Daphnee fitting him one more time for his Gala suit where he turned his ass to face the mirror with the jacket raised while she measured the inseam of his pants. Zhenya spent time accepting offers as they came up from friends and old colleagues to hang out, but turned down just as many on the off chance that Sid would find a break in his schedule and they could fool around in the dark like they were twenty years younger.
They finally got to say more than five words to each other in person when they were seated next to each other at the Gala on Monday to accept their awards. Zhenya realized he probably wouldn’t even be inducted this year, if at all, had Sid not been so special of a player that the Hall of Fame disregarded the three year rule for him, but also not gone to great lengths to make sure Zhenya was one half of his legacy. And while the thought had unsettled him initially upon getting the call, he was only thankful now, mingling with his family and Sid’s family and Sid, beaming at him like the entire room was there for Zhenya only.
“Ass look very good in pants,” Zhenya whispered as they took their seats.
“Thanks,” Sid replied, nodding toward a camera on the other end of the stage in front of them. “I have a mic on, by the way.”
Zhenya shut up, but Sid looked very smug, and he shifted in his seat so his and Zhenya’s thighs were pressed together.
The ceremony was, for the most part, boring. Zhenya was the second inductee to speak, and his hands and pits were so sweaty by the time he had to get up in front of everyone that he was afraid he was going to drown in his own juices. It had been a long time since he had given a speech of any length in English, and as far as everyone else was concerned, this was just one last opportunity for some assholes to put something stupid he said on a t-shirt. But he choked his way through it. Everyone laughed in the appropriate places. When he finished, there was a standing ovation. He would, like James Bond, die another day.
Sid was the last speaker, of course, and Zhenya was reminded of so many times in the past when he had leaned on Sid to be the more polished and well-spoken one. It was appropriate then that Sid was the anchor in their final stuffy speech relay, giving the speech that most people would google for this year, and watch, and rewatch, distracting from Zhenya’s ten minutes of nervous babbling.
But then, when wrapping up, all eyes were on Zhenya again at the front of the room, because Sid’s eyes were on Zhenya, and he was saying, “Finally, Geno—G. You’re one of the bravest guys I’ve ever met from the second I met you. Playing with you for so many years was what made me a better player, but knowing you was what made me a better person.”
Zhenya remembered back to August in Ilyukha’s cabin, drinking cold beer in the muggy heat of the night while worrying that Sid had moved on so easily from him while Sid had remained the best part of his life years later. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Here was Sid, saying out loud to the entire world that Zhenya meant to him what he meant to Zhenya; that they were their best selves with each other.
“Being able to play the game of hockey on a professional level has really been the only thing I ever wanted, and I’m so lucky to have had this opportunity for as long as I did,” Sid said. He hadn’t stopped looking at Zhenya. Zhenya felt pinned in place, cut open, examined. He never wanted Sid to stop looking at him. “I’m excited. Cautiously optimistic for the future. Ready for whatever comes next.”