I haven't written anything in years and years and years, so thanks for this (this: a self-indulgent exploration of grief in the way that i imagine ilya rozanov might experience it). I hope I remembered how!!!

He was familiar with grief. He could name it, now. He recognized its shape, its hollow ache, the crater that opened in his chest, the ringing in his ears he could quiet to a dull roar with a cold glass of something sharp, something with a bite, or someone who didn't talk too much. Grief was something to expect (please, come in, no, you don't have to take off your shoes) and for that, he was almost grateful. He could pretend otherwise, but he liked routine.

-

"I never want to come back here again."

-
When Ilya was ten, his mother would drive him to the rink every afternoon after school. He loved those drives, just the two of them. She'd stand at the gates to pick him up, her wool coat buttoned all the way to the top and her dishwater blond curls bursting out of the scarf tied around her chin.

"Ilyushka, hello little bird," she'd breathe, laugh, kiss him, and offer to take him by the hand. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to want to hold his mother's hand at ten, and so he would sheepishly pull away. It didn't stop her from offering each time.

Alexei had been the better skater, at first, if he was honest. More confident. When Alexei had turned fourteen, he'd decided with a huff that lacing up a pair of skates was Gay, and No—it had nothing to do with the shiner he'd brought home from school.

"What are we going to do with you?"

Ilya wasn't sure if she meant we as in his mother and his father (whom he rarely saw do anything) or, perhaps more discomfiting, her and Ilya. He exchanged a small glance with his mother, hoping there would be some answer in her look, but she just looked tired. The three of them sat at the dinner table in near quiet, Ilya turning to ogle the green and purple flesh on his brother's face, their mother holding a limp bag of frozen peas in a slender hand, Alexei chewing on his lip and staring at his lap.

"When your father gets home," she began, then trailed off, as though unsure herself where the sentence would go.

Ilya opened and closed his hands into fists, imagining what it would be like to touch that tender flesh around his brother's eye, to press until he flinched, until something gave way in the soft recesses there beneath his brow bone. He closed his eyes. He clenched his jaw.

-

By the time he was twelve, Ilya was undoubtedly the best skater in his cohort and had already earned himself more than a few shiners on the ice. Occasionally off the ice, too. He'd stopped attending the local school, and was instead tutored by the on-site instructors who also taught a gaggle of sour-faced pre-pubescent figure skaters. His mother called them the ducklings, amused by how they only traveled in groups, all long limbs and identical buns. She'd say, "Look after those ducklings," when she dropped him off in the mornings (with a thermos of tea and a packet of spiced cookies) and "How were the ducklings?" when she picked him up in the afternoons (another thermos of tea, another packet of spiced cookies waiting for him in the passenger seat). The corners of his mouth would twitch as she teased him.

"My own little bird is a pro," she'd laugh as he piled his bags into the backseat of her car, and they'd take the long way home, both of them knowing that the laughter would quiet as soon as they were through the front door. It didn't bother him, then, this secret he shared just with her; those short-lived car rides like portals to another world.

There was grief then, too, Ilya supposed now, even if he would have never dared to say so then. How desperately he wanted to protect her, to make her laugh, to see her in the stands at the rink. How it had always been Ilya and Irina on one floor of the house, Alexei and Grigori on the other. It was normal, then. Coveted, even. She'd lie in bed all day after church, reading, and when Ilya's father would come home (much later, after tea and cards at the men's club) Ilya would steal away into his mother's bedroom and lie at the foot of the bed, staring at the wall.

Ilya knew it was coming, like clockwork. Soon his father would storm his way through the house, crying out for Irinia to help him to the table, to make them dinner, or else to call her, "Weak. Lazy. In need of discipline." A crash would, inevitably, come from downstairs — a chair, maybe a plate, hitting the ground — and he'd turn to her. She'd shrug, roll her eyes, comforting him with a show of nonchalance at this routine. "You know how he is, Ilyushka. He will fall asleep in his chair downstairs, just you wait and see. You are good here." Then, with a small smile that did not reach her eyes, she would press her head into the pillows behind her, sinking into the soft rustle of the bed linens, and she would stare at the ceiling. Her hands would tent neatly on the front of her book, closed in her lap, thumb and forefinger together. The two of them would listen, and neither of them would speak.

-

"Dlja tebja, mama."

-

Her slender hand at the edge of the bed, her book open on her nightstand, the breeze coming through an open window. He threw up in the upstairs bathroom and flushed twice before he told his father.

-

It was nothing but sharp shock at first, when his mother died. The pain was clearest then, as though he'd gotten the wind knocked out of him on the boards, crashing hard onto rough ice, all splinters and shards. It hollowed him out, and he knew it even at twelve: this was sadness, a pointed, jagged thing he couldn't hold for too long. It was urgent, a constant blaring sound, and it consumed him, too much at once. As the days went by, it was all he could do to stare out a window. Get to the rink on his own. His eyes wouldn't focus, his hands were always moving. But, like every other hot, sharp thing he had come to know in his life, it was temporary. That wound, once a gaping hole in his chest, slowly stitched itself together and became a bruise.

In a way, this pain was worse. What color was her favorite scarf? He closed his eyes. Did she take one sugar in her tea, or two? He clenched his jaw. That's when he started getting into fights, gloves off. "Come on," he'd spit at the other boys, begging them to push him, to start something, to feel skin on skin.

After, he registered it in others' faces before he felt it himself— a pair of downcast eyes, a tightening of the brow, his brother's lips drawn thin. For Ilya, it became a parade of simple facts: His mother was dead. He would keep his head down. He would play hockey (he was good at hockey, everyone said so). The house would be quiet. He would kiss a girl he was not supposed to kiss. He would kiss a boy, all hot hands and itchy fingertips, in the dark. He would never expect too much, he would never give too much. He would get out of Russia.

Individually, these facts didn't hurt — they were just true. In the space between them, parts of himself bubbled up and out in ways he didn't quite understand: how he grew withdrawn and mistrusting despite surrounding himself with more people, more food, more drink, more drugs. How his hockey got better and better, despite caring less and less about the sport itself. How he pushed himself just a little bit too far in everything, pressing up against the boundaries of who he was to see how far he could bend before he would break. Before he felt something other than empty. It seemed to take further and further each time.

He always did get upset about the wrong thing.

-

"I wish it could be different."

-

He left Russia in stages, but always feet first. Ilya settled into the routine of celebrated up-and-coming hockey player just fine. The money was good, the structure was better. Train, travel, play, win. Simple. The wound-now-bruise in the center of his chest never bothered him too much, unless he deliberately worked at the mottled flesh there, pressing a little too hard until his heart bit back. There you are, it whispered. There it is.

The other man (kid, surely—Ilya was sure he had never looked quite so young) was unexpected. Soft eyes, kinder smile, and everything else that Ilya wasn't: eager, open, jittery. They stood in the grey and the cold and when he offered out his hand (not once, but twice), Ilya wasn't sure if he was supposed to take it. There had already been so much English that day, so maybe Ilya wasn't hearing him right. He paused, hesitated, a second too long, but the other man either hadn't noticed or wasn't fazed. When their hands touched, Ilya couldn't mistake how their callouses mirrored each others'. And when he laughed, Ilya couldn't help himself. He smiled into his cigarette—just enough.

As the months went by, he tried not to feel resentment in the constant comparisons — Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, teenage phenoms with endless prospects. He wanted to scream, "We couldn't be more different, can't you see?" Instead, he looked away. He did not think about the freckles, the open smile, the sound of laughter. Two adoring parents in a hotel lobby. He clenched his jaw. There it is. There you are.

He had been as surprised as anyone when his father accompanied him to the MLH draft, but he hadn't put up a fuss. The man had always loved a show of pomp and circumstance. In a way, Ilya was almost grateful for his presence — a reminder to keep quiet. Not to ask for too much or expect too much, but to play hockey. To train hard. To win. To ignore the magnetic pull, the delusion, of imagining something different for himself. He ducked away from the painful thoughts — a reassuring hand between his shoulder blades, a knowing smile at an inside joke, a second cup of tea at the breakfast table.

He looked away.

-

"I need more, Ilya. More, more, more, more, more."

-

Grief took a new shape each he saw Shane, in a way he couldn't reliably quiet. Like a laugh that threatened to boil over, a lightness that came crashing down, and nothing felt quite so serious. Not unserious like when he pretended everything was fine with Svetlana and she (with a smirk) agreed to play along, or when he stumbled backwards into bed with Sasha, when he tried to forget something or quiet the roar in his ears. It just seemed more open. He felt freer, somehow, every time he opened the door.

There you are.

He tried not to listen — he knew it was just sex, and sex had never been a problem for Ilya. The sex was supposed to make things manageable. To demonstrate that there wasn't anything special about the other man, that they were just bodies in the dark who could be reduced to nothing if he followed the correct steps. But Shane was too earnest. So willing. The way he leaned into Ilya's touch, wanting so badly to get things right, to make him come. And Ilya wanted nothing more than to tell him he was doing a good job — a great job, frankly — but he could never quite form the right words. A dark part of him withheld the reassurance on purpose, to push him a little further when it was over. "See?" He'd think. "We aren't supposed to feel this good. This means nothing. The world won't always bend over backwards for you." He'd press his tongue to the back of his teeth and look away as Shane unfolded his clothes from the chair in the corner.

The sound of the hotel door would shut with a click, and he'd be left in the quiet again. A few seconds would pass, and then everything would hit him like a freight train—an inchoate mess of thoughts, none of them good. He'd rub the bridge of his nose and swear, uncomfortable with how he allowed himself to be so caught up in him again and again. He knew something was wrong, and couldn't tell which was worse: letting Shane close enough to be disgusted by this weakness, or letting it somehow (blissfully) continue all the while pretending that he deserved the way that Shane looked at him.

Something vibrated in his chest, and he pressed a hand flat against the hot flesh at his sternum, rubbing back and forth until the skin went red. He breathed in, out, clenched his jaw, and closed his eyes. He rolled his mother's cross between his fingers.

-

The routine of it, at least, would become familiar. A cordoned-off bit of himself he could return to— and so what if he chose to look the other way as the boundaries slowly shifted and he let those parts grow bigger.

-

"I wasn't there."

-

When he returned to Moscow that last summer (he didn't know it would be the last summer), he was struck by how small it all felt. How small his father looked. How plain and ordinary the chairs at the kitchen table were. How he felt himself boarding up the walls of his own heart as he recognized that his father was never going to come back (not really) and he would never know him. He had gotten so much older in just a few years, so much softer around the edges, but not in any way that mattered. Ilya realized that his father would never ask for his forgiveness just so that he could refuse him. Or grant it to him. Or feel like he'd made his father proud (which he didn't want so much as he wanted to have it just enough to disregard it). It made no sense. His head buzzed.

"These pills, Papa. You have to take these pills in the morning, see, here, where the note says 'Morning.'"

Ilya hated him, surely.

"Alexei is in trouble at school again. Irina is coming with those Pryaniki of hers, and he won't get a one."

Ilya shut his eyes in frustration, a flash of truth ringing in his ears: when his father was dead and his brother was gone, no one else would remember her. These two men were the only people he shared her with, and he both hates them and couldn't bring himself to hate them—not with his whole heart.

-

"I have no one, now."

-

He knows that the grief never leaves—like a dog at his heels, or the foot of the bed. Over time he learns that he can invite it in and wait it out. It never lasts too long, it comes and goes in waves. Once, it was his most reliable routine, like a bruise he could press.

The wooden floor of the cottage is warm, although the sky outside is a miserable ash color—the horizon line melts into the ground in the same shade of grey. Ilya stands at the window with his forehead pressed against the glass, staring at his feet. He wiggles his toes inside the wool socks Yuna had gotten him for Christmas, the pair with a stitching of a loon just above the ankle. It hurts, sometimes, to be with her. But the socks are nice.

"I'm scheduling the boat trips for 4th of July weekend— do you think Marlow's wife will get seasick again? Jacki might want to avoid a repeat, and take the wives to the picnic at the botanical gardens."

Shane looks up from his laptop, glasses in hand.

"You are Canadian, I am Russian, and it is January," Ilya says to his feet. "I don't think it is vital for us to have these plans for the 4th of July."

"Well, my mom is in talks with Rolex to do a whole thing around Wimbeldon again, and I want to say that I've already got plans—Cliff is American, isn't he?"

Ilya laughs and turns to look at Shane, eyebrows raised. "You do not want to be in Boston for this weekend, trust me."

"Oh, right."

Grief might have been Ilya's most dependable companion for a while, but Shane Hollander runs a tighter ship. He can still see it, of course, out of the corner of his eye: a shadow in an empty room, a breeze through a window in the quiet. He knows its ache, the hollow, the sound, the shape of it. But given enough time, he swears he can trace over it looking for constellations in another man's freckles.

thank you :)