Chapter Text
When Ilya was 12 years old, he walked into his mother’s bedroom and saw her pale, still hand protruding over the side of the bed. Before he even knew for sure what it meant, he felt a deep ache settle into his bones.
In the weeks that followed, the ache lost focus. It got smudged together with the ache in Ilya’s stomach from being unable to eat, and the ache in his head from crying endlessly, and the ache of the cheekbone that fractured under his father’s fist when Ilya, after hearing too many condolences about Irina’s terrible accident, started shouting uncontrollably, over and over again, It wasn’t an accident! It wasn’t an accident!
Even after the immediate shock-sickness of grief began to lift from him, the ache in Ilya’s bones remained. In fact, it got worse. At night he would bite his pillow to muffle his sobbing as his growing legs creaked and groaned, stretched mercilessly on the rack of puberty.
It went on like that for the better part of two years. When Ilya outgrew his new school uniform within a few months, Grigori made him keep wearing it until the sleeves ended halfway down his forearms, the trouser legs clinging uncomfortably to his thighs and showing off a hairy band of skin above Ilya’s socks. It wasn’t until he was reprimanded by a teacher and sent home with a note that his father begrudgingly paid for a new uniform, vastly too big, and sneered at Ilya to roll up the cuffs.
Towering over his classmates, hiding was no longer an option, so Ilya embraced his newfound height. He made himself bigger, louder, cruder. He learned to grin through the pain, to translate the urge to scream into the bared teeth of a confident smile.
(The confidence was, admittedly, helped by the fact that his dick grew along with the rest of him. Like most teenage boys, Ilya was obsessed with his dick. If he was alone, chances are he would have a hand on it – either jerking off frantically or just kind of holding it for comfort, the way he used to hug the childhood teddy bear that now lay forgotten under his bed.)
It was in this state of being – huge, hurting all over, and horny as hell – that Ilya met Sasha Katkov for the first time. Ilya was the freshly-minted captain of his school’s hockey team, his eyes already laser-focused on a spot in the Junior Hockey League. They were in the first period of a game, absolutely thrashing the opposing team, when Ilya spotted a dark figure sitting next to Svetlana in the stands. He would soon have it explained to him that Sasha and Svetlana had been friends since before they could walk; their fathers had played on the same hockey team for the better part of a decade.
But, not knowing this yet, an instinctive burst of jealousy bloomed in Ilya's chest. Svetlana wasn’t his girlfriend, not really, but she was his. Ilya had seen her at her school, wearing heavy eyeliner and black nail polish and smoking behind the toilet block, but she had mostly just been part of the background until one day he overheard another girl spitting that Svetlana Vetrova was “a huge fucking bitch.” Ilya had been instantly intrigued. He’d bought a packet of cigarettes and smoked his first one faux-casually behind the toilet block, waiting for her to show up. She’d accepted his offer of a cigarette, and they’d chatted while they smoked, and Ilya had quickly discovered, to his delight, that Svetlana was a huge fucking bitch. They got along like a house on fire.
So, when Svetlana introduced Sasha outside the rink, Ilya’s first instinct was to square up to him as a rival. This plan was derailed somewhat by Svetlana jumping up into Ilya’s arms, wrapping her strong thighs around his hips, and planting a hard kiss on his mouth. Sasha was just a shadow in his peripheral vision, but Ilya was still on edge, so he slid his hands up Svetlana’s back and pressed her body closer, her tits squishing pleasantly against his chest.
Sasha just stood there and waited. And when Svetlana finally peeled herself away and Ilya looked over, expecting to see the mysterious stranger looking cowed and angry, he instead found him staring with dark, hooded eyes and red, parted lips, his chest rising and falling visibly under his too-thin shirt. Ilya was wrongfooted, confused, and then…
Intrigued.
They spent the next couple of years flirting – with Svetlana, with each other, with the caricature of a love triangle. At least Ilya wasn’t the only person touching his dick any more, thank god. Svetlana gave him hand jobs and blow jobs that took the edge off the raging fire of testosterone inside him. In return he fingered her and ate her out enthusiastically (and, eventually, with some degree of skill). She wouldn’t let Ilya fuck her, though she dangled the possibility in front of him. Sometimes, when they were naked and grinding against each other, she would let him brush the head of his dick against her slick, maddening, velvet-soft heat. But every time he tried to push forward she said stop and no, a teasing smile on her lips but the words hard and not inviting debate. And so, with gritted teeth, Ilya backed off.
Girls were still mostly a mystery to him, but Svetlana’s reckless baiting of a hormone-crazed boy who could easily overpower her actually made an odd kind of sense. She didn’t want to be raped, obviously, but perhaps there was some strange thrill in flirting with the danger of it. Ilya knew that danger-thrill well; he felt it whenever he leaned his face close to Sasha’s to light his cigarette for him, letting his cupped hands brush Sasha’s wind-chapped lips. He felt it after he got drafted to the very JHL team that Sasha’s father coached, and Sasha started showing up to watch him practice, slouched laconically in the stands. He felt it when he caught Sasha’s eye from a distance and dared to tip him a more-than-friendly wink, the risk making his heart pound underneath his chest protector.
It all boiled over one day when he was hanging out with Sasha and Svetlana in the warm, dimly-lit cocoon of Svetlana’s bedroom. She had a large four-poster bed draped in a black veil of netting, and the three of them liked to lie on it, limbs casually intertwined, like shipwreck survivors riding a raft on a churning ocean. Ilya was lamenting with exaggerated wails that Svetlana wouldn’t let him fuck her, and Sasha took a drag from the joint that they were sharing, looked at Ilya through his eyelashes, and casually said, “You can fuck me if you like.”
Ilya felt the danger-thrill most acutely the first time he actually fucked Sasha. They were in Ilya’s childhood bed, in a room that smelled rank with untamed testosterone and unwashed socks. Grigori was out of town, but Ilya’s brother Alexei was downstairs getting raucous and drunk with a group of his friends. Ilya couldn’t even put on music to drown out the sex noises, because he needed to listen in case Alexei wandered upstairs, so he was forced to tremble silently through the ecstasy of working his way into Sasha’s body. Ilya couldn’t take it, shuddered to his climax in just a couple of minutes, Sasha’s sweaty hand plastered over his mouth to keep him quiet.
Afterwards, while Ilya was still lying wet and heaving like a beached whale, Sasha straddled his chest and jerked off onto his face, painting his cheeks and lips and chin with cum, shooting some of it up Ilya’s nose and laughing when he snorted like a dog.
Ilya came to appreciate those funny little moments. Sasha was kind of… fake, when they had sex. It was definitely not a dealbreaker (few things are for teenage boys) and the sex was still hot, obviously. But Ilya did sometimes cringe at a particularly artificial whimper or moan, or at an especially clunky bit of dirty talk. Afterwards, though, when they lounged around in the afterglow, Sasha was soft and raw and unguarded in a way that made Ilya wonder if this is what he really wanted. Perhaps the sex was just a means to an end for Sasha. Perhaps what he truly craved was just to be held with this casual affection.
If so, Ilya was happy to provide. He was bursting with repressed affection and glad for somewhere to put it. This was a warm, golden bubble of time: Ilya Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova, and Sasha Katkov lounging and partying and fucking each other in various combinations. They were young and relatively rich and effortlessly beautiful, even with their acne-pocked skin and gangly limbs. At parties, a cloud of hangers-on would form around them, stealing glances and longing to be invited into the tiny inner circle, craving the comfort and bliss of it that they could sense even from the outside.
One time, when they were lazing around in a local park, smoking weed and discussing the latest MHL hockey season (Svetlana ranked the players by skill, Sasha ranked them in order of who he’d like to fuck) Ilya found himself gazing at the two of them with a silly grin and realized that this was the first time he’d felt truly happy since his mother died.
Then, one day, Ilya packed a suitcase and headed to Canada for the International Prospect Cup, and the bubble burst.
Ilya returned to Russia, triumphant, to be greeted by Svetlana with a triumph of her own: an acceptance letter to Tufts University in the United States. Even though Ilya himself would be leaving Moscow at around the same time as her, heading back to Canada for the draft, the news still hit him like a punch in the gut. He plastered on a smile and hugged her tightly so that she couldn’t see his face, his heart hammering as he realized that he was about to lose all of this. No more Svetlana. No more Sasha. He wouldn’t be Russia’s homegrown hockey hero any more -- the crowning glory of the JHL. He would be a foreigner in a country where he knew almost no one and was still struggling to master the language.
For the first time, Ilya's bond with Svetlana and Sasha felt like a burden instead of a liberation. He should have had no qualms about leaving Russia. He had been planning this since he was twelve years old. It meant putting half a world between himself and his horrible family. It meant freedom and fame and money of his own. But now Ilya had something to lose, and he wasn't ready to lose it.
Even without seeing his face, Svetlana picked up on this right away. “Tufts is near Boston,” she murmured in his ear. “And the Raiders are having a shitty season. They will not make the playoffs. If they get first pick in the lottery…”
“There is no guarantee. Don’t jinx it,” Ilya whined.
“Well, don’t fret, Ilya.” (It was a quirk of their friendship, a kind of ironic inside joke, that they always referred to each other so formally, eschewing diminutives.) Svetlana took him by the shoulders and pushed him back to arm’s length so she can eye him sternly. “Even if you don’t end up in Boston, you’ll still play there sometimes. And you’d better come and visit me when you do. I will take you to all the clubs.”
Later that same day, they hung out in the lounge of her family’s lavish apartment. Svetlana’s father, once a famous goaltender, was rarely home. Her mother was a semi-famous American model, tall and ethereally beautiful, who had died when Svetlana was five years old. One of her headshots gazed at them from the wall, eyes large and shining, mouth unsmiling, head tipped back over her shoulder as if she was catching one last look at her daughter before leaving her behind.
Ilya would never admit it to Svetlana, but he found the photo a little unnerving. He avoided eye contact with it, focusing instead on painting Svetlana’s toenails, which were neatly separated by a foam spacer. Once, she had painted his toenails in return. Ilya had thought he would be safe, that he could keep them covered with socks, but the very next morning he’d wandered down to the kitchen sleepy and barefoot, and Alexei had spotted them and hollered for their father. That had been a very bad day.
“I could end up in Canada,” Ilya mused after a long stretch of silence. “Canadian passport would be good. Easier than American passport.”
“American passport is super easy,” sing-songed Svetlana, whose mother had blessed her with joint citizenship. “Just marry me.”
Ilya glanced up at her. Mischief was dancing in her eyes, but he could also see sincerity there. He grinned back at her, then returned his attention to her toes.
“I like Canada,” he said, casually. “I mean, is very boring, but…”
He made the mistake of letting that sentence hang in the air. When he looked up, Svetlana was peering at him with narrowed eyes.
“You met a girl there,” she declared.
Ilya’s cheeks heated up immediately. “No.”
“Ooh, is she pretty? Big tits? Come on, Ilya, I need gossip. Tell me about your pretty Canadian girl.” Her tone was teasing, but there was a mean, slightly jealous edge to it.
“There is no Canadian girl!” Ilya insisted, entirely honest.
But Svetlana was too clever, and knew him too well. Her gaze softened and she tipped her head to one side. “Did you meet a boy?”
Ilya’s hand slipped, smearing toenail polish onto her skin. He muttered, “no,” and hurried to clean it up. Svetlana didn’t press him further.
Ilya had met a boy.
His name was Shane Hollander.
They’d barely interacted really. Hollander approached Ilya while he was smoking. Ilya had his guard up, and didn’t trust his limited English vocabulary enough to carry on a conversation, so Hollander did most of the talking. Ilya could barely remember what he said. He’d been far too preoccupied in darting glances at Hollander’s deep brown eyes and the adorable smattering of freckles on his nose and cheeks. Later, Ilya had watched Hollander swooping gracefully across the ice in practice. They’d checked each other a few times in the Russia-Canada game, and Ilya had been quietly thrilled by the impact of Hollander’s solid, sturdy weight on his own body each time.
By now he must have watched pretty much every video of Hollander’s games that existed on the internet. At first, he clung to the excuse that he was merely researching a rival. Know thy enemy. But it was harder to justify the long minutes Ilya spent gazing at photos of Hollander, even doing reverse image searches to find higher-resolution versions of the photos, all the better to count Hollander’s freckles. At night, he replayed the memory of Hollander’s grin after Ilya mustered the courage to fire a chirp at his departing back. Ilya wanted to see that smile aimed at him again. He murmured the name, Shane Hollander, under his breath, anxious to pronounce it properly the first time he spoke it to Hollander’s face. He doubled down on his English language studies, desperately needing the vocabulary to have a proper conversation with Hollander, to wring all the smiles from him…
A pillow hit Ilya’s head, mussing his curls. He flinched out of his trance.
“You are boooring today,” Sasha sulked. He was lying on Ilya’s bed, his fashionably distressed shirt riding up to expose his stomach, one hand underneath the fabric and idly rubbing over his own skin.
“You are annoooying today,” Ilya sniped back.
Sasha usually liked it when Ilya was mean, but this time he scowled. He had been in a funny mood ever since Ilya got back from Canada. Perhaps it was finally sinking in that Ilya and Svetlana were leaving and that they’d be on the same continent, with clear goals and prestigious futures, while Sasha was… well. Ilya wasn’t sure what Sasha’s plans were.
Ilya readjusted his headphones on his head and started playing the next English-language scenario on his laptop (introducing family and friends). But it wasn’t long before he felt a warm arm snaking over his shoulder, a big hand dipping down the front of his shirt, grabbing roughly at the flesh of his chest, grazing his nipple. Ilya breathed in sharply through his nose and flexed in his chair, heat zinging down to his crotch.
The headphones were tugged down from his ears as the cartoon character on the screen said, in English, This is my father and my mother…
Sasha’s tongue slid down the rim of Ilya’s ear to toy with with his earlobe, then his lips pressed warmly to Ilya’s neck, his teeth emerging from behind them to nip at the skin.
Ilya stood up abruptly, leaving his desk chair spinning as he grabbed Sasha’s smirking, victorious face by the jaw. “You are being a brat.”
“Mmm. I need to be punished.”
Ilya dragged his face closer (a strategic error, he realized as he was enveloped by a heady cloud of Sasha’s aftershave) and hissed, “Are you fucking crazy? My father is home.”
“He is not. I heard him leave.” Sasha pointedly tapped the headphones still resting on Ilya’s collarbones, tethering him to his laptop. “While you were busy being boring.”
Ilya cocked his head to one side, his eyes drifting as he listened to the house, searching for his father’s voice and heavy tread. Sasha noticed, and his lip curled angrily.
“You don’t trust me.”
“You are a brat,” Ilya reiterated.
But this time Sasha looked bitter and hurt, not turned on. “You think I would try to expose you to your father? You think that little of me?” He spat, suddenly and violently, in Ilya’s face. “You know what my father is like. You know what he would do me.”
Ilya could guess. Sasha’s father was a brutal, unyielding coach. He didn’t hold back from giving Ilya and his teammates a lumpy-knuckled slap to the back of the head or knocking their helmets together when he was displeased. More than once, Sasha had shown up to their group hangouts with concealer ill-disguising a bruise on his cheek or jaw. The thought made Ilya suddenly aware of how harshly he was holding Sasha’s face, and he softened his grip in apology.
“OK. I believe you,” he said apologetically, leaning in to kiss Sasha’s neck, relishing the forbidden scrape of stubble on his lips, the masculine scent of aftershave filling his lungs and making him a little dizzy. Generally Ilya preferred girls, but that only made his occasional attraction to men all the more exciting. The flatness of Sasha’s chest, the obnoxious protrusion of his cock, the heavier and taller presence of his body -- it was all so thrilling in its contrast to the smallness and softness of girls. And the taboo of it, the fear of getting caught in bed with a man, the vestigial sense of shame… god, it was fucking hot.
Sasha’s hands clawed into his hair, tugging and pulling, still punishing Ilya for the perceived slight. Ilya winced and gently slid his hands up underneath Sasha’s shirt, trying to soothe him. Sasha seemed to relent, dropping his hands down from Ilya’s hair, but then he shoved one of them unceremoniously down the back of Ilya’s jeans, beneath his underwear, the middle finger delving, searching, finding…
Ilya’s breath stuttered against Sasha’s neck. His hips twitched uncertainly, unsure if they wanted to flee from the invasion or press back into it. “Sasha…”
“Still a virgin here, Ilya?” Sasha murmured silkily, massaging the confused, resistant tissue. “Do you want me be your first, hm?”
No, was Ilya’s instinctive thought. When Sasha tried to wriggle his finger inside, dry and tight and no, no, no, Ilya ran from it, tucking his hips forward and grabbing Sasha’s arm, pulling it out of his jeans, rearing back to glare at Sasha’s wicked grin. He was about ready to call the whole thing off, but then Sasha, rebuffed at the back, roughly groped the front of Ilya’s jeans and then dropped gently to his knees to work on unbuttoning them. Ilya looked down at the top of Sasha’s head, sank his fingers into that silky mop of dark hair, and a sudden lightning bolt of arousal shot through him. In the low light, with Sasha’s face hidden… fuck, it could be Hollander down there.
Ilya immediately felt guilty for the thought, but unfortunately the guilt only aroused him further. He felt Sasha grin against the growing bulge in his underwear, and the treasured sight of Hollander’s amused smile flashed through Ilya’s mind.
“Fuck,” Sasha breathed, the puff of air hitting right where the fabric of Ilya’s underwear was now clinging to the head of his dick, tacky and increasingly damp. “You are so wet. Like a girl.”
If Ilya’s body wasn’t a boiling pot of teenage hormones, he would have ended things right there. But since it was a boiling pot of teenage hormones, he merely froze with shock and confused arousal, the comment conjuring years of insults from his brother and father and other men like them. Just last week, Ilya had scored a goal and done a little celebratory spin on the ice, only for his coach – Sasha’s father – to grab him by the helmet as soon as he was within arm’s reach and snarl, This is a man’s sport. You want to pirouette like a fucking girl, take up figure skating.
Ilya fisted a hand in Sasha’s hair and yanked his head back. Let’s see how you like it.
Sasha smirked up at him. He seemed to like it very much.
He seemed less enthused, strangely, when Ilya directed him to lay on his stomach, tossed him the lube, and told him to start opening himself up. Perhaps it was the conflict inside him, but suddenly Ilya was wildly, stupidly turned on. As he rolled a condom on he could see Sasha out of the corner of his eye, just a vague blur of dark hair and undulating muscles under pale skin. Ilya sucked in a sharp breath and gripped the base of his cock tightly.
As soon as he had himself back under control, he was grabbing Sasha’s hips and pulling him up to his knees. Sasha yelped a little as he was pulled off-balance, dragging his fingers out of himself so he could slam the heels of both hands into the bed.
“Ready?” Ilya asked.
Sasha hesitated for a beat, then nodded, his head dropping down, his spine dipping to form a sweat-slicked valley between his shoulder blades.
It wa all the encouragement Ilya needed. He lined himself up, pressed forward and… bounced off-target, sliding down Sasha’s perineum. He rubbed a bit more lube over the condom and tried again, bullying his way forward, but now it was too slippery and he skidded away again.
“Fuck!” Ilya exclaimed in frustration.
Sasha chuckled shakily. “Having trouble?”
By way of answer, Ilya planted a hand between Sasha’s shoulder blades and shoved his upper body down to the bed. It opened him up more, and the third attempt was a success. Quite a big success, if the noise Sasha made was any evidence. It was a sharp squeal, barely muffled by the pillow. It echoed in Ilya’s head as he relished the incomparable sensation of that first push in. Immediately he was chasing the dragon, surging and pounding into Sasha in search of more pleasure, frantic with it and spurred on by the sounds from beneath him. Sasha was yelping like a kicked dog with every thrust. Ilya had never heard him sound like that before. It sounded real.
Sasha’s right hand flailed, scrabbling against the bedsheets. He lifted his face from the pillow and gasped, “wait, hold on, just a second…” in a strained voice.
Ilya grinned and slowed the movement of his hips to a casual roll, enjoying the sound of Sasha’s hitched breaths and the way the dim light filtering in through the gap in the curtains dappled the pale, shifting landscape of his back. Sasha’s seeking hand finally found his discarded jeans and he fished something out of the pocket – a medicine bottle, maybe? – fumbled with it, then pressed it to his nose and sniffed, deep and noisy. He brought his forehead to rest on his forearm, breathed for a few seconds, and then nodded.
“Good?” Ilya asked, amused.
Sasha nodded again, so Ilya picked up the pace, hammering into him. He wanted to come already, but pride insisted on him making Sasha go first.
“You close?” Ilya demanded, trying and failing to keep the impatience out of his voice.
Before answering, Sasha took another deep huff from his mysterious little bottle. His free hand was clenched tightly in the pillow, knuckles bulging out like white stones, the skin around them flushed red. “Yes, close,” he managed at last, the words scratching like a record when Ilya redoubled his efforts. The bottle was abandoned on the bed as Sasha reached down to jerk himself off. A few seconds later he rasped, “I’m coming!”
It sounded… wrong. And Sasha felt wrong, too. Like he was clenching down on purpose instead of convulsing out of control, like he usually did. But Ilya’s thighs were burning and his balls were fizzing and he was tired of holding back, so he sank deep, threaded his fingers in Sasha’s dark hair, let his eyes droop closed and played, on a tape in his mind, the hard grunt that Hollander had made when Ilya checked him into the boards. He bit down hard on Hollander’s name as he came, mashing it into an unintelligible groan.
Sasha was uncharacteristically quiet, afterwards, pulling the duvet up over their bodies instead of lounging around nude like he typically did. He cast his hand around for the little bottle, checking to make sure the lid was fixed back on.
“What is that?” Ilya asked, feverishly curious.
Throwing him a sidelong glance, Sasha held out the bottle. “Sniff it,” he challenged.
Ilya hesitated for a moment, the sensible part of his brain telling him not to sniff unknown substances. But Sasha had been huffing it and he seemed fine, if a little grumpy, and Ilya didn’t like to back down from a challenge. So he put the bottle close to his nostril and took a deep snort, nose already wrinkling in anticipation of the sharp shock he was accustomed to getting from smelling salts. But whatever this was, it was underwhelming. Ilya just felt a little dizzy, like he’d stood up too fast. He shrugged and tossed the bottle back to Sasha.
“Poppers,” Sasha explained at last, setting it down on the bedside table. “Makes it easier when you’re on the bottom.”
“Ah.” Ilya had already lost interest and was wondering where his cigarettes were.
“I thought maybe you’d want to try them,” Sasha muttered.
Ilya raised an eyebrow incredulously. “Ah, no. I’m good.” He slapped Sasha’s thigh through the sheets, hoping to lighten the mood. “Besides, you take it so well!”
Sasha just flashed him a tight, grim smile. “I’m going to shower.”
Ilya let him go, figuring that if his father and brother were at home they would already have rushed in and killed the pair of them. He glanced at Sasha’s dick as he strolled to the door. It was soft. Maybe he really had come? Maybe it was the poppers that made it feel different this time.
The condom was clinging, cold and unpleasant, to Ilya’s own softening dick. He eased out from under the sheets to begin the delicate operation of peeling it off without spilling its contents, but paused when he saw dark streaks left behind on his fingers. Ilya wrinkled his nose, wondering if maybe it was shit. He wasn’t too grossed out by the possibility – he knew what asses were typically used for, after all, and it’s the risk you take with anal, but…
But then Ilya turned on the bedside lamp and saw that it wasn’t shit on the condom. It was blood.
He froze instinctively for a moment, staring down at his bloody fingers. Then he peeled the condom the rest of the way off and lifted it up to the light. This wasn’t Ilya’s first bloody condom – he’d fucked girls on their periods before – but Sasha obviously wasn’t on his period. Besides, this was bright and fresh, not dark and sludgy like menstrual blood.
Ilya twisted at the waist to look behind him and threw back the duvet.
There was a small patch of blood on the sheets where Sasha had been lying.
Ilya dashed the back of one hand to his mouth. Most unfortunately, it was the hand holding the bloody condom, which slapped against his neck like a dead fish. He felt the cold, slimy smear it left behind and shuddered, hurriedly tying the condom off with fumbling fingers and tossing it to the carpet.
Disgust quickly gave way to a deep, gutting concern. Sasha was hurt. Sasha was bleeding and he hadn’t said anything.
Did he even know? Did he know that he was bleeding?
Ilya scrambled into a grey pair of sweatpants, not quite bold enough to walk around his family home naked, and darted out of his bedroom to the bathroom across the hall. He could hear the shower running. He hammered on the dark, heavy wood of the door urgently. “Sasha!”
There was no reply. The door was locked but the protruding knob of the lock was easy enough to twist from the outside. As a prank, Alexei used to unlock it and kick the door open while Ilya was trying to use the toilet, running away with a mean laugh while Ilya scrambled to cover himself. Now, Ilya used the same trick to burst into the bathroom.
Sasha swore and dashed the shower curtain back, eyes wide, alarm morphing into anger. “Fuck! I thought your father had come home and I was about to get murdered. What the fuck, Ilya?”
Ilya raised his stained, shaking hand by way of reply. “There’s blood!”
Sasha glanced at it and scowled, shrinking into himself a little. “Yes.”
“Your blood, Sasha! It’s on the bed too.”
“So wash the sheets? Cold water on the stain first, and salt to draw it out. Now, can I finish my shower?”
Ilya felt like he was going insane. Sasha seemed completely unphased. “Why… are you hurt? Where are you hurt?”
“Where do you think?” Sasha glared at him like a feral cat.
Heart pounding, Ilya asked, “Do we need to go to the hospital?”
“What? No, of course not. Idiot.”
“But, Sasha…”
“Look, it’s just a tear. It happens.”
A cold weight was settling in Ilya’s stomach, a dreadful realization creeping over him, crawling up his spine with chilly fingers. “A tear?”
Sasha nodded, putting his head back under the water to rinse off the last of the shampoo.
“I… tore you?”
“Yes.”
“I… when? When did it happen?”
“Right at the start.”
Ilya’s sharp, shocked squeal echoed through Ilya’s head. God, the way he’d screamed when they first started… All the details rearranged to form a new, horrifying picture. That wasn’t pleasure. That was pain. No wonder Sasha hadn’t come. He must have been in agony. The whole time, with every confident thrust, Ilya had been ripping him open a little more, tearing at the most vulnerable part of him.
The water slowed to a trickle and then to intermittent spattering drips. Sasha stepped out of the bath, meeting Ilya’s wet, red-rimmed gaze with wariness as he wrapped a towel around his waist. Ilya backed off, not wanting to tower over Sasha, and sat down on the lowered toilet lid.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Ilya managed at last. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
Sasha shrugged. “I thought you knew.”
“What?”
“And I was already torn. Damage was done, right? I say stop and you stop, I still have a torn-up asshole. I say stop and you don’t stop, I have a torn-up asshole and I’ve been raped. So, better to say nothing.” Sasha’s logic was cold and calm, like it wasn’t the first time he’d made this particular mental calculation.
Ilya wanted to die.
The impulse hit him hard. He was already thinking about his father’s office, the gun in the bottom drawer of his desk. If he acted fast, Ilya could have a bullet through his skull in less than a minute. He could instantly put a stop to the way he felt at that moment.
Because Sasha had thought that Ilya knew he was torn, and carried on anyway. He’d thought all of that hurt had been intentional. He’d been scared to tell Ilya to stop in case Ilya fucking raped him. And Sasha didn’t even seem especially bothered by any of this. He looked simultaneously very old and very young as he grabbed another towel to scrub his hair dry, the strands turning fluffy from the vigorous attention and falling into his eyes. Ilya wanted to shove him out of the house, and he wanted to hold Sasha tightly in his arms and wring him dry of whatever awful experiences had made him come to see the world this way.
“I didn’t know,” Ilya assured him shakily.
Sasha glanced back briefly. “OK.”
“I didn’t, I swear, Sasha! I didn’t know, I would never…”
“I said OK! I believe you. It’s not a big deal, anyway.”
Ilya just stared up at him stupidly from the toilet, feeling hot and exposed like he had whenever Alexei pulled his door-unlocking prank. He didn’t know what his face was doing, but whatever it was made Sasha peer at him curiously, intrigued, like a child watching ants burn under refracted sunlight.
“Why are you freaking out? I’m the one whose ass got wrecked.”
Ilya balked. His mind flashed to the titles of the thousand or so pornos he’d watched on his ‘homework’ laptop, with titles like Slutty Ass Destroyed By Monster Cock. But this never happened in porn, no matter how monstrous the cock was or how rough things got.
“I’m sorry,” Ilya mumbled pathetically, realizing that he hadn’t actually said it yet. He looked up into Sasha’s eyes, pleading for forgiveness. “Sasha, I am so sorry.”
Rather than comforted, Sasha looked even more hostile. “Look, just shut up about it already,” he snapped, his cheeks flushing slightly. “It wasn’t even you, OK? I tore it a couple of weeks ago, with another guy. You just opened it up again. I’ve got some stuff at home to help it heal. Stop making it weird.”
Ilya recalled Sasha’s earlier hesitation, how he had pushed for them to switch positions this time. He realized aloud, in a hollow voice: “You didn’t even want to do it.”
“I wanted to fuck. Would have preferred to fuck you, but of course you think you’re too good for that.”
“I… what?”
Sasha turned away then, like he was embarrassed that he’d let too much slip. “I’m going to get dressed,” he muttered.
He opened the bathroom door, towel slung low around his hips, Ilya helplessly watching him go from his perch on the toilet seat. But Sasha paused in the doorway, the muscles in his slender back tensing. Ilya heard him swear under his breath.
Sasha backed into the bathroom again, slowly, and moved to one side, looking back at Ilya with wide, frightened eyes.
Alexei was standing in the hallway. The look on his face as he stared from one of them to the other made Ilya think of exposed sands on a beach before a tsunami; the first ripples of thunder before a storm.
The internet concurred with Sasha. Cold water and salt. Never start with hot water, which will cook the proteins in the blood and set the stain into the fabric.
Ilya was back in the bathroom, leaning over a sink full of soggy sheets, avoiding eye contact with the mirror. He knew his face looked bad, and knew that it would look worse tomorrow once the bruising and swelling set in. The worst of it had happened when he was focused on restraining Alexei, giving Sasha time to flee the house. Ilya’d had one arm wrapped tightly around Alexei’s throat, and as he watched Sasha stumble down the stairs with his jeans still unbuttoned, his half-on shirt billowing behind him, Alexei had taken advantage of the distraction and thrown an elbow straight back into Ilya’s nose. Hot blood had flowed down his face, spattering Alexei’s uniform.
They hadn’t really brawled for years, and Ilya had felt Alexei’s shock when he’d tried to shove his little brother to the ground for a beating and found him immovable. Perhaps Alexei hadn’t noticed until that moment that Ilya was now taller and broader than him, bulky with the muscle of an elite athlete, hewn hard by collisions on the ice. Adrenaline had rushed through Ilya’s veins and for a brief, cold moment he considered how he might kill Alexei to keep him quiet. Snap his neck? Throw his body down the stairs? Make it look like an accident…
It had been gone in a breeze, but it was there long enough for Alexei to see it in Ilya’s face. His own eyes had widened and he went to his knees, blubbering pathetically, “I won’t tell! I won’t tell! Please, Ilyushka. Please! I’m sorry! I swear I won’t tell. I didn’t even see… I don’t know anything! Please, baby brother…”
The display had made Ilya queasy. Somewhere deep inside the knowledge took hold that Alexei would never forgive him for this humiliation. Even if he kept his promise and stayed quiet, he would spend the rest of their lives hating Ilya for this and punishing him in every way he could.
The deep, familiar ache had settled back into Ilya’s bones. His fingers went slack on Alexei’s torn collar, and his brother slithered from his grasp. Ilya had turned his back on him and begun trudging heavily back to his room.
Then, from behind him, in a voice that hissed like acid, he’d heard Alexei mutter, “Faggot.”
As Ilya began diligently scrubbing the sheets with a nail brush, the salt burned in the split skin of his knuckles.
Despite the length and intensity of their friendship, Ilya had met Sasha’s mother only once. She haunted Sasha’s house like a ghost, always hidden away in a dark room upstairs with a migraine, or out at parties with only the scent of her perfume trailing behind her. Sasha had eight assorted brothers and sisters, and all those pregnancies and years spent with babies hanging from her tits seemed to have left Sasha’s mother with a deep-seated revulsion of her own children.
So Ilya had met her only once, at Sasha’s sixteenth birthday party. Not the real party, which Sasha had thrown a couple of weeks later when his parents were out of town, inviting a whole army of raucous teens and hiring a DJ who came equipped with speakers powerful enough to shake the whole building. No, this was a sophisticated affair attended mostly by adults who probably weren’t even aware whose birthday they were celebrating. Sasha had arrived somewhere in the middle of the Katkov litter – neither old enough to be a serious heir, nor young enough to be the baby of the family. His family barely seemed to notice he existed, and his birthday party was just a thinly-veiled excuse for politicking.
But Ilya had been curious about Sasha’s mother, a painfully thin woman with her hair done up in a severe yet fashionable style, her pinched face stretched by botox, her neck dripping with jewellery. He’d turned on the charm with Sasha’s parents, humbly submitting to his coach’s insults about his lack of discipline. Ilya had made some kind of joke to lighten the tone of the conversation. Sasha, hovering at his elbow, had laughed, loud and braying, and his mother had shuddered, face pinching even tighter, and muttered into her martini glass, “Ugh, that laugh.”
Sasha’s posture had stiffened and his lips had clamped tightly shut. Freshly sixteen, his eyes already looked far older than either of his parents. Ilya’s arms had itched to hold him then, to shield him, to touch Sasha’s face and tell him that Ilya loved his laugh, and that he should laugh more often.
Ilya tried to make the most of his last few weeks with Sasha and Svetlana – to draw the strings of their friendship tightly together in what little time they had left. But they were already fracturing. Svetlana was preoccupied with anxiety over leaving her father, whose career as a goalie had left its mark on his brain. He suffered with mood swings, forgetfulness, bouts of depression and aggression. Svetlana was an only child, and she’d grown up keenly aware of how disappointed her father was to have been left with one daughter and no sons. Sometimes Svetlana seemed to be desperately striving for his approval; at others, she treated her father like nothing more than a roommate. Now, as the date of her departure approached, she vacillated violently between the two.
In the end, Sasha surprised Ilya by being the first to leave. He was going to France, he said; he’d met a talent agent in a gay bar who had told him he had the ‘perfect face architecture’ to be a model. The agent was so enamored with Sasha’s face architecture that he’d even offered to let him use his pied-à-terre in Paris, as long as Sasha didn’t mind occasionally sharing the space.
Ilya drove him to the airport. Sasha slouched back in the passenger seat, putting his shoes up on the dashboard and leaving a smudge of dirt. He fiddled with the radio, huffed when he couldn’t find any music he liked, turned it off and stared out of the window in silence. They hadn’t had sex since the incident. They hadn’t even kissed. They certainly hadn’t talked about it, though Ilya had caught Sasha glancing at the split skin on his knuckles more than once.
It was an early morning flight, and Sasha fell asleep on the drive. In the parking garage, behind the tinted glass of his car windows, Ilya indulged in gazing at him, trying to drink in every last detail. Sasha looked so young when he slept: hair falling in his eyes, his ‘perfect face architecture’ soft and slack, his lower lip pouting a little to expose the red skin inside his mouth.
Ilya puzzled over what exactly Sasha was to him. A best friend? A lover? The brother he wished he could have had? Or perhaps, though not a soulmate, a kind of soul twin. The person that Ilya himself might have become if he’d never experienced any kind of love at all.
There but for the grace of Irina go I…