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Ilya Rozanov, captain of the Boston Raiders and fresh owner of a cup ring, was miserably hungover and incredibly maudlin, all things considered. He lay sprawled on a couch… somewhere, half-dressed and unbathed, a headache pounding behind his eyes and guts roiling. He’d been known to say that Russians didn’t get hangovers, but whatever mix of bullshit he consumed last night was proving him now to be a liar. He was briefly surprised his pants weren’t on fire until he remembered that he wasn’t currently wearing any.
He turned over, rolling to his side and curling up into as much of a ball as possible, hoping to settle his stomach and hide his face from the daylight streaming into the room. He’d worked his whole life for this moment. Well, maybe not this exact moment, but this general moment. Winning the cup had always been one of his goals, something to look towards, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that was his MLH career, and now… now he had achieved it.
What were you supposed to do when the future you’d been dreaming of was finally in your grasp, and it wasn’t everything you’d hoped it would be?
He’d lost so much, over the years, through it all. Most days he was pretty sure that he’d not felt true joy since before his mother’s accident, when the last person who loved him for himself left this world (her accident, he says, he repeats and regurgitates as if calling it an accident made it so, would allow him to forget that she “accidentally” swallowed far too many pills, that she “accidentally” went to sleep and never woke up, that he found her, found her body. As if calling it an accident negated that he was not enough for her, that he didn’t make the pain worth it, that he couldn’t save her.) On his worst days, even the love he shared with Svetlana seemed shallow and thin.
His father did not love him, not in any way that mattered. Maybe he had, once, but that moment had long since passed. Swept away in the river of time, rushed by grief and disappointment. His father only wanted him around to follow orders and be flaunted like a prize show dog, fetching medals and awards to measure against the sons of other men. Ilya was an occasionally useful burden to his father, and all but a necessary evil to Polina, who was barely older than him in the first place.
And his brother… They never had a good relationship, even in their youth. Alexei had always been his father’s son and Ilya a mama’s boy, through and through. The canyon between them had only grown wider with time and distance and the NHL salary that Ilya was pulling in, the details publicly available and the amount growing with each new contract. To Alexei, all Ilya was now was a cash cow, nothing more. He was a piggy bank for drugs and hookers and gambling, and yet he couldn’t manage to say no. He kept giving him money, even knowing where it would go, because what else could he do (what would happen if he stopped? He was already unloved, already alone. What would happen if he stopped being useful?)
He didn’t understand how it was Alexei and Polina and his father, and him, who were still here while Irina was gone. She should’ve lived, should’ve seen it all, should’ve been here with him. It was not fair that he was doing this alone, that she was not there to watch him, to cheer for him, to love him. It was not fair that he was condemned to walk through this world with no one at his side, at his shoulder. No one to lift him up and help him along and shine a light on his dark days (maybe that was how the scales balanced, actually. Because his light hadn't been enough to brighten his mother’s dark days, so he was forced to suffer through life on his own.) He wore her cross and carried her with him in perpetuity, but it was not the same. It was nowhere close to enough.
Even today, there was a cavernous ache inside. Yesterday, he captained his team to a Stanley cup, and for a moment, he could breathe. He kissed the cup and lifted it above his head, and for an instant, he was a champion, and he was happy. And then he passed the cup off and turned around and saw the rink flooded with his teammates and their families, and no one was there for him.
For a moment… for a moment he was happy, and for a second he imagined someone on the ice for him. His mother, yes, but someone else, too.
In that moment of weakness, before the bubble burst and reality came to knock him into the boards, Irina Rozanova and Shane Hollander were on the ice to congratulate him. He hadn’t even spoken to Hollander in months, not since the disaster at the Olympics, and yet… The Canadian had invaded his thoughts like a virus, and refused to leave him alone.
Hollander deserved better than him, better than this. What they had going on was a bad idea, no matter how much Ilya liked it, like him. It was risky and dangerous and stupid to put themselves in this position. It was stupid of him to put Hollander in this position. But when Ilya was with him, everything went quiet. Whether it was against him on the ice or in a locked hotel room, he filled every crevice of Ilya’s mind, tearing space away from all the darkness.
Ilya knew better than most people that death comes for us all, regardless of your actions in life. He knew that his actions were the only thing under his control, and that these specific actions were largely ill-advised, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret them. He’d barely been able to bring himself to stop and knew he would fold the moment he was alone with Hollander again. Ilya didn’t understand why he was the one still living, when the only person who loved him was dead, but sometimes he thought…
If there was a reason, if there was something coming to him that would make all of this worth it, he was willing to wait. He would wait and keep living in the meantime. He would listen to his father and pay his brother and play for Boston and maybe one day… Maybe one day he would feel joy again.