Chapter Text
Was it on purpose?
Sveta had asked that question maybe fifteen years ago now. Was it on purpose? She had taken a drag from her cigarette in the ensuing silence, Ilya remembered.
Was it on purpose? Not that time, Ilya didn't think. This time he wasn't so sure.
He dreamed of Shane often; of his mother, not so much anymore. Those had stopped some time ago, after the wedding, after the honeymoon. Maybe several months after Arthur lost his first tooth.
Shane lived in his dreams now. He relished the dreams, even ones where Shane's face was split open, cracked, and his skull crushed in, the pink spaghetti of his brain spilling out. Hayden had talked to the doctors, said that Shane had died on impact, hadn't suffered badly. Ilya had placed his hands on Shane's face and counted the missing freckles taken by the split skin of his face. One, two, three ... eleven. Twelve. Fourteen. Seventeen. Nineteen ... twenty-three. His nose was broken, dried blood caked on the skin beneath the nostrils. His skin was soft, too soft. Ilya remembered his babulya on her deathbed. He had reached out, fascinated, to touch the wrinkled skin of her face, and recoiled at the squishiness.
Tonight Shane was whole and holding Ilya's face in his palms. He cradled Ilya's jaw, and stared down at him. Once he had come on Shane's face and accidentally gotten some in his eye. When Hayes asked about the pink eye, Shane went as red as a tomato. Moy pomidor, Ilya had teased, before saying, Pike's kid has it and got it on my Shane. Hayes frowned. Arthur did not have pink eye, Hayes had known this, but anyway he hadn't questioned it.
In Shane's eyes Ilya could see himself reflected. He looked gaunt and exhausted. He was gaunt and exhausted. Every night he wanted only Shane by his side; every day he woke and found Shane's side of the bed empty. "Ilya," Shane said. Ilya stared up at him, drinking in his beautiful face, the smattering of freckles in the center, the freckles on the forehead. He had freckles on his chest, his elbows, shoulders and knees and calves and thighs. There were clusters of them all over his back. Ilya's chin was level with Shane's soft cock.
"I miss you," Ilya said plainly. "Where did you go?"
Shane smiled down at him, his pink lips curving up. Ilya wanted to memorize that smile with his hands. "Ya tebya lyublu," Shane said, in lieu of an answer.
Ilya frowned. He opened his mouth to bite Shane playfully, the cluster of freckles on his hip. When he fit his teeth in the skin—firm, not squishy, not hard—his eyes were closed. He placed the bite gently but tasted blood. He opened his eyes and found himself sinking his teeth harshly into the fat and tissue. It had the sharp taste of the metal of his mother's cross and then shifted to the bitter taste of Shane's favorite morning smoothie, the one that—no matter how many bananas Ilya blended in—never lost that un-sweet taste of herb and greens. After the taste of smoothie Ilya tasted blood again. He tried to pull away. His teeth were hooked in Shane's skin.
Shane's thumb brushed over Ilya's mole. Ilya looked up at him, tried to say, Sorry, sorry, with his eyes, and found the pink brain falling out. Ilya tried to shake his head. His teeth sunk deeper, and reached bone. Against his will he chomped down on the meat of it and chewed. It had no taste anymore, but it was tender and soft and Ilya was enjoying eating it.
"Shane," he croaked, once he had swallowed it all down. "Shane, moya lyubov. Shane."
Shane was still smiling, but his skin was beginning to drip, some parts even dried with brownish-red liquid, staining his skin. If Ilya reached up he knew his face would be too soft, too squishy. Velvety. He would recoil.
"Ya tebya lyublu," Shane said again, his red mouth stretching around the words. Ilya needed to touch him. He hit Shane's cock with his forearm as he reached up and found it was hard.
Ilya was filled with the urge to suck on it, make Shane come. Shane liked to work his cock up to hardness with his mouth. He could do that for Shane, or he would've, if he'd found his cock more worth notice than Shane's fascia and muscle and fat on his tongue from just a moment ago. His hands found purchase in Shane's hips, in the bite Ilya had taken from him as if he were cake. On the uneaten side the skin was too soft. Ilya pulled away.
Shane bent down, his face open. Ilya could see the white showing through the patch of his head that was caked with blood. His face was open. Ilya could see his skull. Strings of his brain were dangling out from beneath his hair.
"Ilya," Shane said. Ilya opened his mouth for a kiss from the red and broken mouth.
When he woke up his mouth was open. He closed it and tasted blood from how harshly he had bitten the inside of his cheek.
Was it on purpose? He'd felt this way when his mother had died, or at least something like it. He'd felt like he was drifting through everything then, too. His mother was dead: a new fact of life. There was no one who loved him more than his mother: an old one. He had thought that for a long time until he fell in love with Shane.
Three years ago, Shane had shown Ilya he was willing to give up hockey for him; but Shane would have been angry if Ilya gave up hockey for him. The thought was shockingly clear, breaking through the fog in Ilya's mind.
A voice made its way through to his ears. Jesus fuck, Jesus fuck, oh my God, are we gonna get arrested? A distinctly American accent, Ilya noted.
There was something sticky dripping down the side of his face. Ilya wondered idly if his brain was spilling out.
Ilya did not drink much anymore. He simply no longer had a need for it. He had drank a lot and partied a lot in Boston, not so much in Ottawa, and then he had married Shane, and he didn't need to drown anymore. Also, Shane had said something, off-handedly, about the alcohol, sometime after a concussion Ilya had gotten. It'd be a shame if we got through all this just for you to die of cirrhosis. Ilya had had to search up that word. Cirrhosis. Liver disease, commonly caused by drinking too much.
He looked at Shane in the night and knew that he wanted to live long with Shane by his side.
The blood was still bright and sharp in his mouth. Ilya placed a hand on Shane's side of the bed—empty, it was empty—and pushed himself upwards. He went to the bathroom first. He pissed, flossed, noticed the crooked tooth in his mouth he'd always been too scared to get fixed by a dentist, even though Shane kept telling him dentists weren't all that scary, then mouthwash, then brushed his teeth. When he reached for his toothbrush, he noticed that he'd neglected to throw out Shane's. It was still new: Shane had gotten it maybe a week before that night. Ilya stared at it for a long while.
After he left the bathroom, he checked the time. If he left sometime in the next hour he would be early to practice. Wiebe had offered him time off, saying it was only natural that he get some time to himself. I wouldn't know what to do with myself, he had said, placing a hand on Ilya's shoulder. If it were me. Just think about it, son.
Ilya knew what to do. They'd never discussed this, what they would do if one of their careers ended. If one of them left too early. But Ilya knew. Hockey was Shane's life, probably he would choose it over Ilya. Would have chosen it over Ilya. So Ilya had to keep playing hockey and fulfill Shane's seven-Stanley-Cups-Rozanov-Hollander-dynasty-Ottawa-and-three-Stanley-cups dream, even if it killed him to see Shane's locker next to his every day at practice.
Hockey. That was the plan, now. Play hockey, win the Cup another ... four times. Yes. And then—and then, once he'd fulfilled those goals?
That, he didn't know.
He drank a little vodka. The good kind, the Russian bottle that Shane had gotten him for an anniversary. Probably, most definitely, it was a bad idea. Once he'd totaled his Ferrari after almost killing some deer. He'd never told Shane about it, only Sveta and his accountant. But it wasn't really a secret. He and his cars and the "risk-seeking-behaviors" (Galina's words) which had left him with his sports cars when he came to Ottawa and sold it all were old news, already all over the Internet ten years ago. Shane never said anything about it.
Usually by now Shane would have been blowing him. Or Ilya would have been fucking him. Something. Instead he was staring at the empty spaces in the cabinets where Shane's protein powders and smoothie ingredients and et cetera were supposed to be. He was naked and Shane should have been standing in the kitchen making his stupid bitter smoothie. Shane was not there.
He almost texted Wiebe that he would not be coming in today. He clenched his teeth, steeled himself. Shane would be angry if he stopped hockey because he couldn't stand to be in the house by himself, standing there and noticing all the little spaces in the house Shane was supposed to fill.
Shane would have been angry.
He was always fixing it in his head now. Shane is doing yoga today became Shane did yoga on Saturdays.
Ya tebya lyublu. Ilya.
Ilya shook his head. He took another sip of the vodka, one hand braced on the edge of the kitchen sink. Ya tebya lyublu. Ilya. He could tell it was a dream because Shane always mixed up the syllables of lyublu, always said lublyu instead. He always realized a moment later and grimaced. Sorry, he would say, in his Canadian way. Sorry, with the long o. Lyublu. Ya tebya lyublu.
His phone dinged, once, twice, and three times. He checked it and saw that the first two were from Sveta. Ilyusha, she had written. are you alive
The third was from Yuna. Hi, honey, she wrote. How are you feeling?
Ilya typed out, am ok to Yuna and David. yes, he wrote to Sveta. don't worry i would not kill myself without you. would not leave you hanging so
She replied almost immediately. not funny
Ilya pocketed his phone and drew his car keys from the counter. He would go to practice and he would play well and he would make Shane proud.
He was on the road for a little while before he remembered: Daylight Savings. He would be very early to practice. Shane would approve, probably. But he didn't want to be the first one there today. It was still early morning. He could maybe go down to Yuna and David, or to the cottage. The road he was on was the same as every summer when Shane drove them in his practical Jeep Cherokee. He was in the bright orange Porsche 718 Cayman instead of his Mercedes SUV, but maybe the Ducati would have been better, would have given him more of a thrill. It was nice to drive in his Porsche again.
He would rather be in the passenger seat of Shane's Jeep Cherokee, but it was nice to be in his Porsche again.
Maybe he would go down to the cottage. He didn't think he'd ever cleaned that out, just their home in Ottawa. In fact he had thought he would leave the cottage alone, never go back in the summer. It had nothing for him now, just glass walls he had fucked Shane against, the en-suite bedroom they slept in, kissed in, kissed in, fucked in, kissed in, laid in. Ilya could imagine the imprint of Shane in the bed, the covers rucked up around the place where his broad and freckled shoulders should have been.
Maybe he could skip practice to clean it. Maybe he hadn't cleaned it thoroughly enough last summer from their party with the Cens. He could call out sick if cleaning out the cottage of his dead husband wasn't reason enough to stay home.
Shane probably would not like that he was skipping practice. Well, Ilya realized, he had already passed the exit necessary to get to practice. And Shane wasn't next to him; wasn't driving his Jeep Cherokee (he'd never changed it from the one he'd driven Ilya in all those years ago to the cottage that first time); wasn't in the passenger seat of Ilya's Porsche or even the Mercedes SUV. Shane was in the grounds of their cottage, which wasn't really a cottage, Ilya thought to himself. When he said so to Shane, Shane blushed pink, embarrassed. Then Ilya sucked the embarrassment out of him through his dick.
So. Cottage. There was no one here to tell him no, and that was always dangerous.
He drove past the next exit, and then the next. By the time he realized that he had also passed the exit for the cottage, he had lost all sense of time and direction. The sky had gotten brighter, the clouds parting to let the sun shine through.
It was probably late afternoon. When Ilya glanced at his phone, he saw that it was blowing up with messages and calls. It buzzed with a call from Sveta, then, once that had finished, another call from her. After that Yuna called. Then David. Sveta again. Yuna again. Then Hayden Pike showed up on his screen. Ilya kept driving.
It felt good to do something that wasn't in Ottawa. He was away from the oppressive emptiness of the house, the well-meaning sympathy of the Centaurs, and away from everything that had led up to this. Away from the empty space in the garage where the Jeep Cherokee should have been, away from the plans Shane had been making for the curriculum of that summer's camp. Away from Shane's broken head and the white bone peeking through. Away from Amber calling out for her mother at her funeral.
Ilya was gripping the wheel with sweaty palms. That wasn't good. He didn't want to ruin the leather finish of the cover. He loosened his grip on the wheel.
The car veered right. Ilya realized he'd let go of the wheel completely.
Fuck, Ilya thought. He tried to control the car, but he had been going too fast, definitely over the speed limit. Had the roads been empty? Oh God, was he going to kill someone?
Was he going to die?
Hey. Hey, wake up. Wake up, man. Hello?
Does he have a pulse?
There was a thumb on the right of Ilya's neck. He could feel his pulse going thumpthumpthump.
I think so? Hey, hey, look, his eyelids are fluttering. Hey, are you waking up? Hello? Hello?
There was something sticky dripping down the side of his face. Blood? Ilya tried to move his hand, but felt it was trapped under something.
He's awake, said the American accent.
"Marley?" Ilya croaked out nonsensically. Marlowe was in Boston, Ilya was still in Ottawa.
With blood on the side of his head. When he tried to raise his hand something sharp bit into the thin skin there. The last he remembered was that he had been on the road.
The face of a girl came into view, round and button-nosed. "Hey," she said, her brows furrowed. "Is that your name? Marley?"
Ilya struggled to pull the words out. "No," he said roughly. "Roz. Roz," he said. He couldn't get out anything else.
"Your name is Roz?" the girl asked, pulling out her phone. "Roz ... Roz ..." Her face scrunched up in confusion. "I'm not seeing anything about a Roz except for hockey."
Ilya tried to nod. "Anov," he whispered. "Roz. Anov."
"Rozanov?" the girl asked. "Rozanov? Like the hockey player?"
"Yes," Ilya said. It was getting very hard to keep his eyes open, and maybe if he closed them he would see Shane again, like that morning. Even the white bone and pink spaghetti brains were welcome to him now, as long as he could dream Shane's hand brushing his jaw, the mole on his cheek.
He closed his eyes. Just to see him again. One more time.