#fth 2026

But Shane doesn’t expect that at all – he never has, not in the quiet solitude of a hotel room just shy of two a.m. When limbs are tangled together and skin scrapes skin, moonlight flickering between the blinds in the rare moments of solitude they share.

But it’s irresponsible, really, for Ilya to want something more with him. He can’t be so selfish, ignore everything that’s gotten him to this point, lose the connection he has to the few people on the planet that give anything within throwing distance of a shit about him.

Seeing Shane in Sochi, the sprawl of the Olympic arena stretched out beneath them, a whisper of a dance of something real so close but so, so far away – it sours everything he hoped for.

His dad is waiting for him back at the house, vodka on his breath, disappointment behind his teeth. His brother too, always just behind his father, waiting in the wings with a look of malice Ilya’s gotten to know like an old friend.

More familiar and worn-in than the memories of his mom, starting to disappear in the wake of much worse.

They’d been quick to welcome him back to the motherland but only under the illusion of support. It’s expectation that drives them, shame that keeps them on his ass, worry about disappointing the family – disappointing his country – that holds the lingering smack of their lips and the distant flash of a toxic whisper hovering the whole time he’s in Sochi.

The loss hurts more than any other, and as soon as the buzzer runs out and they head to the locker room, Ilya keeps his jaw locked, tense, holding back frustration or fear, he can’t be sure. Nausea sits in his gut through the showers, the ride home, the verbal assault from his family, the fists that come with it.

Usually he can hide it well, the shape of knuckles against his ribs blossoming bruises that shift to greens and yellows as easily as his hockey injuries do. He explains it away with a dismissive wave every time, claims a sharp stick to the ribs or a puck to the shoulder. The rare times he’s sported a shiner or stiches across his temple; he laughs it off.

“Russia, you know, the snow is slippery and we like vodka,” he tells his teammates and coaches. “Drinking games are not for the weak there.”

They laugh and tease him, Marleau calling him a “Wild child” and nudging his shoulder with a cocky grin practically tattooed on his face.

He can usually avoid Shane seeing anything too damning, schedules so rarely lining up he doesn’t have to try that hard. They text and fuck, but Shane doesn’t ask too many questions, and Ilya doesn’t answer anything he’s not asked.

Russia, luckily, is short-lived, and after the Olympics loss, he’s back in the U.S. trying to steady himself in the form of routine and reminders that if he keeps his head down, hopefully he can make enough money to leave it behind him.

Eventually.

For now, the focus on the game is enough to bring home the cup, and the bruises fade by the time he sees Shane again, so he basks in the glory of a win for his mom, one of many soon to be under his belt.

That’s enough, at least, to get him back to Russia in the summer, if only to talk to her about it – to visit her grave with a picture of him and his team, his hands wrapped around the gold cup murmuring her name.

“Mama, I hope you know I do this for you,” he tells her when he sits down with her headstone, brushes away the grime and weeds and settles himself in the grass. He tucks a bouquet beside her name along with the photograph and tries to shove back the burn behind his eyes. “I want to make you proud.”

A brush of wind skates through his curls and the sun peeks through the gray, and the smile that finds his cheeks is the first one he’s found in Russia in months – years, if he’s honest, but it’s enough to remind him that she’s always here with him.

He dreams about her that night, fights nightmares and his traitorous heart thundering against his ribs when he wakes in a cold sweat. It happens twice more before he gets a full nights’ sleep, and every time he walks through the city, he’s bombarded with accusations of his failure.

“Rozanov! Can’t play like you did for the cup for your home country?” A man slurs outside a bar late one Tuesday night. “Traitor!”

His friends slump against him, the ember of the burning end of a cigarette dusting lazily into the street where they stagger against a lamppost.

“I think he did it on purpose,” another one accuses. “You even try, Rozanov? Looked like shit on the ice, my grandma could’ve played better!”

“You think you’re too good for us, huh?” the third chimes in, words slurring as he pulls another drag from his flask. “Leave for America and then hand over the gold medal?”

“Shit captain!”

“Shit Russian!”

Ilya doesn’t stop, doesn’t think it’s worth it to knock out three drunk bastards in the middle of the street on a weeknight.

Even if he wants to.

Instead, he heads back to the cold, lonely house he grew up in with a room that hasn’t felt like his since his mother died and a family that feels the same.

“Oi,” Alexei shouts when the door clicks shut behind him. He only has another few days here, and the season can’t come fast enough, with the way his brother’s voice grates against Ilya’s nerves. “Where you been?”

“What’s it to you?” Ilya says, “On a walk.”

“Looking for a man on the street now? That’s low, even for you,” Alexei spouts. He’s been drinking too, Ilya can tell, the way his tongue is loose and his words are sharp.

There’s been an unspoken agreement, somehow, that Ilya sucks cock and Alexei knows about it, but they both keep their mouths shut in the knowledge they’d lose each other if word got out.

Despite the hatred he feels at the top of his spine every time he walks in the door, there’s still a piece of him, a part of his mother maybe, that wishes he could have something better with the guy. Alexei is his brother, after all.

Every year that passes, every loss that stings a little sharper, Alexei’s eyes burn with a different kind of ire. One that glows hot and rabid and twists Ilya’s chest with the terror that their unspoken agreement won’t last.

It’s that thought that reminds him he’ll never have something better with Alexei. He can’t be the brother Ilya wants him to be – the man he needs as a mentor.

When Alexei’s clenched fist drives into Ilya’s ribs and he sputters a ragged breath, the realization hits hard in more ways than just physical. Ilya doesn’t resist, doesn’t fight back for fear of making it worse. He’s still in Russia, his brother and his father are still police here. He’s not allowed to exist here.

So he makes himself smaller, takes every hit with clenched teeth, and ices his ribs when Alexei finally stumbles away in the dark shadows of the hallway. Grigori’s voice echoes in his head all the way.

“How are you not ashamed?”

“I am ashamed, Father.”

He makes it through the rest of the off-season hanging by a thread, texts with Shane and time spent with Svetlana the only things that make him feel sane.

It kicks up hope in the same way winning the cup did – a tether to his desires that caters so deeply to who he is, it keeps him standing most days. So much so by the time he’s back in the states, they’ve shifted into a new kind of pattern.

One that’s familiar and warm and so fucking easy that it makes Ilya’s chest ache in a different way. It doesn’t take effort, with Shane, the back and forth, the push and pull, both on and off the ice.

They spend time together when they can and learn about the shape of one another in an alternative pattern. Fierce passion sits with easy comfort and before he knows it, Ilya starts to see a future there.

He can’t let himself think that way, though, not for long. Stuck in a memory of something so incredibly normal and soft, it’ll be a bitch to pull himself out of it if he lingers.

It carries him through another off-season, though, the sting of violence softened between nights spent under the haze of club lights and the burn of cheap liquor at the back of his throat. Svetlana at his side, eyes gentle. Between that and the idea of someday with Shane, Ilya survives.

Barely.

His dad is deteriorating more, the constant care and oversight reaching new heights, and operating between time negotiated between him and begging Alexei to step in and help is overwhelming.

He can only throw so much money at it before the guilt burns at the back of his spine, the smack of Alexei’s palm as sharp as the disgrace that stings when he has to leave again. It’s not obligation, necessarily, but it’s not love.

In the shelter of his mind, Ilya pulls apart the image of his mom, the way she used to be and what she must have been like when she first met his father. All charm and delight and bright smile, eclipsed by the power and sharp edge of his father’s presence. She must’ve been willing to push, to tug and tease and fray the edges of his tough exterior. At least enough to have Alexei, to have him.

Moments shared with her before her death dance through his mind in nearly every dream, and every day he thinks of her, wants to do right by her.

But he has to leave his family behind again when the season arrives, the dull crack of bones that crumbled in his ribs at the start of the summer is finally healed, mostly, and Ilya can’t quite make it back to the states without a parting gift from Alexei in the form of his fists.

A gift he wishes he could return but one he doesn’t risk cashing in.

Not when Shane is on the other side of the world. He can’t gamble that, losing him, it would break Ilya.

There’s been something there, just under the surface, since they met, but it’s only grown stronger in the last couple of years. Ilya tells himself it’s casual. Convenient. A good friend and a way to get his dick wet during the season.

A reliable way to way to get his dick wet.

When Shane comes over one day, eyes soft, falling into Ilya’s arms without hesitation, something clicks into place. A wall crumbled, fear drifting to dust between the kitchen and the bedroom, settled into quiet solitude with Shane asleep in his arms.

Conversation flows easier when they share lunch, Ilya forcing himself to offer casually, afraid if he tips too far into something more even, he’ll spook Shane – or himself – in the process.

Ilya can’t help the gaze that traces Shane’s soft features, the way his mouth tilts into a smile when he tells Ilya he’s not lazy, the easy teasing that comes with understanding more about one another.

They’re falling into a rhythm that feels like a melody he’s known for years.

The call from his father shatters the moment as quickly as it came, his desperate voice confused on the other end, Alexei nowhere in sight. It’s a reality check in the worst way, a reminder of who Ilya has failed to be and who he can never become.

“How is your father?” Shane asks when the call ends, eyes so wide it disarms Ilya as he slumps into the couch.

“Ah, so you speak Russian now?” Ilya asks, voice teasing, barbed with an edge – a request to push ahead, past the discomfort of shame and guilt that’s circling his brain.

“I know the word for father,” Shane jabs back. The tone is taunting but fond, his hand a magnet to Shane’s skin, and he reaches out in a bid for shared space.

Shane falls into his lap easily, the intimacy they know so well making space where new intimacy fails to form words.

When he finally breaks, Hollander stopping where Shane starts, he hears his own name whispered between them and his heart stutters with the rhythm of his hips. It feels so right, so much of what he wants slotting into place inside his mind – a home together, a life together, a career with one another at their backs.

It’s gone. In an instant.

Shane’s off his lap, across the room, and by the time cum dries, sticky across his lap, he’s already gone.

The next two months only get worse. Marleau shows Ilya the headlines about Rose Landry, and the anger that’s been resting, heavy, in his stomach about the supposed family he has in Russia curdles with the new frustration of Shane with someone else.

The kicker is he can’t have Shane – not even if he wants.

The league and Russia will make sure of that, even if he clings to Shane kicking and screaming, even if he tries like hell to fight against it.

But the idea of him and Rose together, of them kissing on Shane’s couch, sharing a bed he’s shared with Shane, himself – all of it feels like rotten meat, flies grazing against the wound and prodding while he lays, flayed open, with his heart flapping in the wind.

Ilya hears enough from Marleau and Connors about his sour attitude, learns to bite back half of what he wants to shout in the locker room – or at least shouts in Russian so most of them don’t know what he’s saying.

By the time the All-Stars game rolls around he isn’t sure if he desperately wants to see Shane or desperately wants to avoid him. Hollander makes the decision for him, sidling up alongside him at the bar before he can even feel the tingling edges of a beer buzz.

He wishes he had more time.

Shane orders a beer and settles in with a smile that’s so warm, it feels like coming home. “So, what, are they out of ginger ale, Captain?”

Shane grins, “I'm feeling a bit wild.”

“So this should be fun, huh?” Ilya says, trying to pull his eyes away, not allowing himself the chance, the opportunity – the comfort – of tracing over Shane’s form. He looks so at ease, so soft under warm sunlight dripping over his cheeks.

“I've always wondered what it would be like to play on the same team,” Shane says.

Ilya nods hesitantly, “Have you?”

“Yeah, I have.”

They’re interrupted by the waiter and Carter Vaughn, and each word that skims past Shane’s lips pulls Ilya a millimeter closer, bit by bit like he can’t possibly resist.

Before he knows it, Shane’s grinning wildly, and Ilya feels his heart sling so hard against his ribs, it feels like it’ll escape. He’s talking about a stylist and not wanting to be managed, and stumbling into something Ilya hopes isn’t the pull of his imagination.

Ilya fights against his dad’s voice and his brother’s grasping at the back of his mind, and asks “So, uh, you and her are not...”

Shane looks up at him and shakes his head, just barely, “We're not.” He’s quick to add, “She's great, but, uh...We're just not...compatible, I guess.”

Compatible. Compatible.

He rolls the word through his mind, tries to pull up a time he’s heard it before but he can’t quite find it. They’re not a couple, not together, but the word is that much closer to the seed of doubt sitting heavy in Ilya’s gut.

The rest of the day is filled with laughter and sidelong glances, and the re-entry of images Ilya staunchly tried to avoid since that afternoon at his house.

When they part the next morning, it doesn’t feel quite the same. Doesn’t feel like ‘Goodbye’ so much as ‘I’ll miss you.’

The warmth from Tampa carries him, floating along the inevitable high that comes with time spent next to Shane Hollander, until it all comes crashing down.

“What do you want?” Ilya shouts into his phone after a game, the locker room loud with tossed gear and dripping with sweat and musk of men who poured their hearts out across the ice.

It finally happened. In the depths of the worst part of his illness, when Ilya was across the globe hitting a puck over the blue line, Grigori succumbed.

He’s gone.

The immediate relief shifts quickly into guilt, the shame of something positive coming from his father’s death crawling up Ilya’s throat. The locker room fades, his skin sticky with cold sweat, and before he knows it Marleau is crouched in front of him asking if he hit his head.

“You good? You fall on the ice or something, man?” he says, dipping his head to catch Ilya’s gaze.

Ilya shakes it out, blinks through the burn of tears pressing at the back of his eyes, swallows back bile and clears his throat.

“No. I am…I need to talk to coach,” Ilya says before standing. Marleau’s brow furrows in confusion but he moves out of the way, knows better than to be in front of Ilya Rozanov when he’s this determined.

The league helps set him up a flight to Moscow that afternoon, and the next day he lands in a country that feels that much colder now that he knows what he has with Shane back home.

Home.

Not Russia anymore – not really. It hasn’t been since his mother died and his hockey career built a community for him in a city that looks nothing like Moscow. One that doesn’t feel like his brother’s around every corner waiting to tear apart his life.

A car picks him up at the airport like it always does, and his family’s home grows more menacing along the horizon as they approach. A family he’s failed, abandoned, left behind; his brother’s words echo in his mind, no matter how hard he tries to release them.

“Ilya,” Alexei says on his arrival. “Wish you had come sooner.”

The words are intentionally pointed, missed phone calls stacked in his call history like accusations. It doesn’t take long for them to move on, though, the next words out of his mouth the same as they always are.

“We need more for the funeral,” his brother continues. “And your niece has been waiting to get into a new school. Her mother needs another coat for winter.”

More. Always more.

Ilya gives. And gives and gives and gives until there’s no stone unturned, no spared expense.

The funeral is extravagant and baked with tradition. Svetlana dusts the sleeves of Ilya’s jacket the morning of the ceremony, brushes his hair into place just so. Having her helps, her constant strength and protection so ingrained in his life, she steadies him almost as much as Shane.

If he can’t be here, Ilya’s grateful Svetlana can.

Even if it’s selfish, even if it hurts, he craves comfort in a way he doesn’t get that often these days. He feels her strength like an extra body part, uses it to push ahead in the face of an argument he’s spent years holding back.

“Don't fucking touch me,” he grits through clenched teeth when Alexei follows him after dinner. Green lights cast across Alexei’s face leaving an eerie glow behind when he reaches for Ilya.

“Then tell me the fucking plan,” Alexei spits back.

Ilya scoffs, “Jesus Christ. I don't know yet, Alexei! He just died.” He paces across the narrow stretch of tacky carpet and dark shadows. “Can I get a minute to breathe?”

Alexei doesn’t hold back. “And me? What about me? Do I get to breathe too? Or is that just something reserved for rich faggots who abandon their families?”

Ilya can’t take it anymore. Can’t hold back against the slander, against the years spent giving and giving and giving – until he bleeds fucking dry. “Abandoned? Whose money do you live on, you piece of shit? Who puts food in your mouth and coke up your nose?”

Alexei’s jaw tightens as he moves in closer. Spit flies from his mouth through his gritted teeth as he spews defensively against the words. “I have a child, Ilya! And a fucking wife! And me, I've spent the last five months taking care of our dying father every fucking day–”

Svetlana interrupts and Alexei’s eyes dart to her. Ilya sees red when he calls her a whore, only stopping his own instinct to wrap his hands around Alexei’s neck when she pulls him back.

Instead, he breathes, settles.

He tells Alexei “You can have my apartment, and there will be a trust for my niece. She can have it when she's 18. And you will never, ever contact me again.” He can’t stop the words now, feels every punch from his past echo against his flesh, every accusation from Alexei’s lips flickering between the filter of his brain and his mouth.

He keeps going without pause, “If you do, I will use every piece of my fame and money and notoriety to make sure that you can't show your face in this fucking city without someone wanting to break it open. So take what I offer, shut your fucking mouth and walk away.”

The words feel like a mountain shifting from his shoulders, relief that takes years off his age, that lightens the load of expectation from suffocating to something better. Something more real. Something he could have with Shane someday.

He leaves after that, tells Svetlana he’ll call her later, heads to his mother’s grave again and ends up outside a bar he knows all too well.

Instead of going inside, though, he pulls out his phone. Sees messages from Shane, reminders that he’s there to talk, a picture of him in his glasses that he must know would make Ilya smile. Wandering aimlessly, he calls, unsure of the time across the ocean but not entirely sure it matters much.

Shane sneaks into a stairwell where his voice echoes against the metal, the hollow sound of the concrete at odds with the soft care in his tone. He wants to help so much, Ilya can practically feel the tendrils of his fingertips across the country, under the sky.

He tells him to bear his soul, in his native tongue, and the remaining exhaustion that’s been sitting on top of him dims when Shane listens so intently on the other end of the line.

It dims more when Ilya tells Shane he loves him and Shane has no idea what he’s saying. He wants to say it all, to tell him everything, how he feels, what he wants, that he wants forever if he could have it.

But he can’t.

Not now.

Right now, he’ll sit in a dark tunnel off the road, listening to Shane’s steady breathing, picturing his eyes, adoring, gazing back at him. He falls back into familiar, teasing, toying with what they know – the physical.

But when Shane asks him how to say “I wish you were here right now” in Russian, Ilya can’t help but smile.

“I wish I was too,” he replies instead.

Shane’s voice is still on the other end, asking about Ilya’s niece, when Ilya turns around and heads back toward home. He’s still wearing a grin a mile wide, heart fluttering with the confession of love on the end of his tongue, when his breath is swiftly stolen from him.

A fist collides with his jaw and he jolts as another lands on his ribs. An elbow slings across his cheek and he’s kicked to the ground, sending his phone flying.

Blood, warm and tacky, trails across his temple but he only has a fraction of a second before another punch drives him closer to the cement. He coughs, choking on the coppery liquid, spits it out along with what he thinks is a tooth – or at least part of one – as he staggers backward.

Ilya can fight, he does it all the time on the ice, has made a name for himself as a playboy with an adrenaline junkie streak. He’s landed more tallies in the win column of bar fights than losses, but he was so surprised by the attack, he can’t find his footing.

Another kick to his wrist pins it in place and a shoe collides with his ribs again. He curls into a ball, wraps his arms around his head and tries to protect his skull.

Finally, after what feels like hours but could only be minutes, it stops. The attack ceases and the world spins unsteadily as he blinks open his eyes. Tension sits at the base of his neck, his head throbs with a dizzying thrum, and his breathing is ragged on every inhale.

Blood’s spattered around him, his clothes are stained with crimson, and by the time he looks up, spit lands across his cheek from the mouth of none other than Alexei Rozanov.

“Useless piece of shit, you’re lucky I don’t kill you here and now,” he grits as he sways slightly under the lamplight. Ilya can smell the booze rolling off his skin along with his sweat, swallows back the nausea that comes with the scent.

As he stumbles away, hopping into a car where cheers reverberate against the quiet night, Ilya tries to keep his eyes open. He tries to shift, straighten against the wall of the tunnel, tries to catch his breath.

Instead, he crawls no more than half a meter, reaching for his phone where it skittered away from the brawl, alight and shining against the muck.

The world tips again, darkening at the edges, and Ilya can’t be sure, but he thinks he can still hear Shane’s voice on the speaker as it disappears behind closed eyes, and he sinks into the painless dark that calls for him like his mother’s cradling arms.

When he was four, the world gave his family Ilya.

A tiny, red-faced little being that stole Alexei’s mother from him, that made his father’s eyes shine with a different kind of pride.

Cleaning the house, helping his mom, making sure he was in the kitchen on time to set the table, adding an extra space for his little brother. It all became routine. Expected.

He stopped hearing celebrations for following the rules. Stopped earning laughter from his mother when he swept crumbs for her in the dining room.

It was all pointed back at him. At Ilya. The youngest child, the most precious gift to the Rozanov name. At least that’s what Alexei heard time and time again.

“Alexei, I’m tired, I don’t have time for you to misbehave today.”

“Stand up straight, you look sloppy, boy. Is that any way to bring respect to our family?”

“Your brother needs you.”

He tried to settle the feeling that grew hard and heavy in his chest over time. The one that resented all the ways Ilya got what Alexei so desperately craved. What got shoved to the back of his mind at every opportunity.

No chance for creativity when the world expected him to fall in line.

It’s who he was born to be. His father’s son.

And Ilya belonged to his mother.

From birth they were destined for different paths, and it was that realization, the sinking feeling of dread and sorrow, that left him with the grim taste of envy on the back of his tongue year after year.

Hockey became a blood oath; one Ilya had traced through his DNA but tuned under the vigilant eyes of Grigori.

Watching him skate was magical, the way he embodied the game, the way he glided so easily around opponents, left audiences with their jaws lax and their eyes wide with wonder. Alexei too, and when he was forced to go to games through the years, there was always a sense of pride he didn’t realize he’d kept so tightly locked away.

That was his brother. Powerful. Delicate. A balanced act of every piece of himself Alexei didn’t dare let escape.

It still wasn’t enough, though, to write over the legacy of their father.

At 16, Grigori knocked on his bedroom door, so late the dark had started shifting to grays and purples, hazy with the threat of dawn. He’d whispered that something bad had happened and that Alexei must wake at once, must help him.

It changed Alexei, that night. The night he lost his mother. His father barely mentioned the incident, like it was nothing but circumstance and that the only thing that mattered was making sure their family stayed intact. That their legacy wasn’t tainted and sullied.

They’d rushed into his office and gathered paperwork, discussed how they would handle her will and the finances, how they’d make use of the time with family friends during the funeral. Alexei swallowed back bile and shoved down any emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. For her.

For Ilya.

He knew it broke his brother, finding her – gone. Alexei was already broken but Ilya didn’t deserve to be shattered so young. So, he’d taken notes and kept track of documents, tears rolling down his cheeks quietly that he’d brush away before his father had a chance to reprimand him.

He still thinks about Ilya’s face when he’d found them in the office, like she’d barely been worth the time it took to get her from the house to the morgue. Dreams about it sometimes, too.

When Alexei graduated high school, his name was already known. Through his father’s tight-lipped stare. His staunch support of the country. The way he raised his children.

But it was built in a way all his own, too. Every time he lost a part of himself to his younger brother, Alexei placed a brick in the walls of his foundation. Precision. Sacrifice. Expectation.

He gathered the grout of his father and grandfather and bloodline dating back, used it to pack the bricks together tighter. A structure so sound even jealousy couldn’t rattle it.

The military felt like home, in a way, so familiar were the words of his commanding officers, of admirals that were bred on the same battlefield as his father. It was easy, then, to climb the ladder, because of the familiarity of it ingrained in his bones.

Over time, his will grew stronger, steel-wrapped and lead-lined, protected with guns and distance from any emotion that didn’t serve him.

He met Anastasia after an ill-advised night of partying. One that started with vodka and ended with lines blurred on the sidewalk that barely guided him home.

She’d gone home first with him. With Ilya.

And he served her well, at least at first. She’d fallen for it like Alexei always did. The charm, the ease with which he moved through the world. The way his attitude carried him further than any effort did. They’d flirted with one another easily, Alexei saw it from across the bar. Ilya had bought her a drink and she’d asked him to dance.

She was impossible to miss, the way her honeyed hair traced over her cheeks, sharp and strong with the flush of alcohol and the heat of her body moving to the music.

Ilya moved easily behind her, his palms at her waist, shaping the way they flowed together, connected in more than the beat of the bass.

Of course she’d gone home with him, how could he have expected anything different? He’d bought her drinks, told her she looked radiant, kissed her lips gently and without the force of fear he’d gotten so used to feeling, skittering under his skin.

So he did what he always did. Escaped in the form of more booze, drugs, anything that would keep his mind pleasantly hazy, distant from the world around him.

The next day Ilya smirked when Alexei asked him about her, said she’d been just as beautiful under his lights as the club’s, filled a cup with orange juice and drank it in one go with a brow raised.

It made Alexei sick.

The next night he’d gone back. Tried to find her again, but she wasn’t there. He returned – again and again and again – until that spark of blonde flashed across Alexei’s vision. Her shoulders were drawn, dress draped over ivory skin, hugging each delicate curve of her body, each line of her beauty.

Alexei moved alongside her at the bar, insisting on getting her a drink and inviting her back to his table. Always ready with closed off luxury, leather soft and supple on the cushions of a couch tucked against the wall, a bottle in the middle of the table with glasses lined around it.

She was perfect in every way.

Beautiful, soft, kind-hearted and mild. She laughed at his jokes and leaned in when he whispered in her ear. His brother was a distant memory by the time they made it home that night. She stepped inside with him that night and never left.

She was Alexei’s escape, in the beginning. Her smile was wide when they danced in the kitchen together, she’d tucked notes into lunches made just for him. Ones that said I love you and A house with you is never empty.

The bricks he’d stacked so high – the ones worn against the press of his thumbs, the beat of his heart, over and over as he tried to take them down – they held firmly in place. Even with her. Especially with her.

She needed him to be strong, to protect her, to care for her in every conceivable way.

It was a job he took more seriously than anything Grigori had assigned him. One she showed her appreciation for in the way she cooked for him, kissed him good morning, left him sated and satisfied each night.  

Before his daughter was born, he thought he knew love.

Thought he knew it in the shape of his father’s pride, in the quiet lullaby of his mother, in the first kiss of sunlight with Ana.

It wasn’t until his little girl arrived that he finally understood his mother. That he finally connected the pieces of his childhood and found meaning where he’d otherwise lost it. She was perfect in every meaning of the word, her hair golden like her mother’s, features soft and warm, with her father’s nose and Irina’s eyes.

Beauty didn’t begin to describe her.

When Ilya’s career took off in the United States, when he was drafted so young to such an amazing team, it was natural to assume he’d want some of what he’d built to go to his older brother. He watched from across the world and reasoned, with every goal scored and every game won, that he’d earned it just as much as Ilya. That it was what he was owed when Ilya abandoned them in Russia and only found time to talk through the tinny speaker of a cell phone.

He faced his father’s expectations. Carried on the weight of their last name, their legacy. He’d suffered, in so many ways, when Ilya had been nestled so closely to his mother’s chest, to his father’s heart.

Ilya had it easy, the least he could do was share what Alexei shared equally with him.

And when Ilya became an uncle, a proud one full of that laughter he missed each day from his mother, it was only natural Alexei thought that would add more. That he’d been owed, as his father’s keeper. That Ilya just had to smile for the cameras, float across the ice, bask in the limitless wonder of America and all it had to offer.

Arguments built, battles for meager rubles, bargaining and threatening and waging a war Alexei had no interest in fighting. It all put a strain on an already taut relationship.  Money Alexei knew that Ilya could spare, especially as his daughter grew stronger and their father grew weaker.

Time spent taking care of the old man was tossed in Ilya’s face whenever the topic came up – vile anger spitting through teeth that were crooked with frustration and the tight set of his jaw from birth – built and built until it fractured the occasional happier moments.

They used to share inside jokes, sometime in their lives, Alexei used to know the lyrics to Ilya’s favorite songs. Ilya used to grab Alexei’s favorite snacks from the shop on the way home after school. He’d help Ilya study for class and Ilya would help Alexei flirt with girls, left notes in a locker of his high school crush one spring bragging about how cool his older brother was and if she’d want to go out sometime.

When Alexei stumbled on Ilya stealing kisses with the coach’s son, he’d been shocked but kept it hidden. Didn’t dare speak a word of it for fear of losing the one person that knew him more than anyone else in the world.

As Ilya grew older and soaked in celebrity, laughter grew sparse, yelling grew frequent, and Alexei felt less like a brother and more like a beggar, a pathetic excuse for family that hid behind fear and anger that masqueraded as bravery.  

The apartment he shared with Ana and their daughter didn’t get bigger. Their food didn’t taste better over time, their love didn’t grow deeper with age.

Instead, Alexei became an even bigger shadow, a larger shell of a man he used to wish he could become. His father lost pieces of himself and seemingly left them branded in Alexei, and every time he looked in the mirror he stared less at a reflection of himself and more of a reflection of every soldier he’d gotten to know. In the military or with the police.  

Cold. Hollow. Longing for something better but stuck exactly where he always knew he’d end up.

And Ilya was still on the other side of the world living the life Alexei wanted but never got.

His mother’s son.

Alexei left behind in Russia with his father.