Work Text:
-
-
Zhenya grew up in smoke, steel mills that ran seven days a week, the tang at the back of your throat that tasted of eroding metal that never really went away. Ponds were dark green, the ice full of dirt particles and algae, and the dirt got under your fingernails and sunk into the crevices of your fingers.
Zhenya would ride his bike home from school, past the frozen over algae-pond, and kick up the splintering steps to his house. His Mama always carried the smell of lavender and flour, her hugs were warm, and her eyes were tired. Their house was always in a state of almost-crumbling, his brother always thundering down scratched floorboards, his arms long and his voice teasing. His father always seemed hunched in, strong, smelling like the rest of the city, like steel.
The algae-pond used to splinter under his hockey skates, his brother used to yell Zhenyagetofftheice! and he used to have nightmares of falling through, of the weeds under the pond dragging his legs down. The local rink was old, the ice wide and black-dirty around the edges, but his blades would still cut sharp. His sticks were always taped in various spots, his pads just a bit too small for his growing shoulders.
The city became stagnant. Zhenya would ride his bike around the graffitied walls, the old propaganda posters still hanging on by yellowed tape, the smell of cigarette smoke and constant metal. This was a Steel City. This was home.
Zhenya turned seventeen and bought his parents a house. The air still hung with metal, the graffitied walls still made a collage of urban decay art, and Magnitogorsk was still home.
Home was his family, home was the smell of steel, home was Russian food and tongue, of wide ice and harsh winters, hot summers. Home was a vast continent that remained still like dust mites in a locked attic.
Russia was home.
When Zhenya turned eighteen, the USA called for him half a world away, and his General Manager spit and snarled like a angry snake, you don’t want to be
a traitor.
When Zhenya was nineteen-almost-twenty, he rescued his kidnapped passport, and locked himself in a dark-green lit bathroom stall in Helsinki. The color of the bathroom looked like the algae-pond, the nightmare of falling under the widening cracks in the ice. The bathroom became frozen.
At a payphone on an empty street in Finland, Zhenya dialled his agent with numb fingers. Every streetlamp was a shady figure, a not-friend-not-enemy come to drag him to training camp, to force his hand to sign another contract.
The recycled air of the plane to America bleached his nose. He could no longer smell steel and smoke. It touched down, and the air was warm, and the voices around him washed over his head. The algae-pond cracked around him. Someone touched his arm, Evgeni I’m so glad you got here.
The Lemieux house looked like a palace. There were no crumbling steps, no cracked walls, no graffitied walls, no metal tang in the back of your throat.
Sidney Crosby shook his hand, warm fingers curling near Zhenya’s wrist, and a tumble of English. Zhenya blinked, eyes heavy with exhaustion, and looked to Gonchar.
Nice to meet, Sidney said again in stilted, heavily slurred Russian, My name is Sidney Crosby.
Zhenya squeezed Sidney’s hand. The other boy shrugged.
He says he’s being practicing, Gonch supplied. Sidney grinned wide. His teeth are angled, his lips bitten red.
The air smelt like grass and frozen ice. Zhenya could only look at Sidney’s blinding grin.
Zhenya is nineteen-almost-twenty and that is how it began.
~
Zhenya becomes twenty.
Pittsburgh is also a Steel City. It isn’t Magnitogorsk. Metal doesn’t linger. Algae-ponds don’t freeze over in the suburbs.
The ice is longer and the players are rougher. They spit words, pressing along his side. They throw punches, they check him into the boards.
Sidney keeps him after practice, a bag of pucks, and passes to him over and over again.
Pittsburgh becomes black and gold jerseys, screaming fans, smaller ice, agony-pain in his shoulder. Pittsburgh becomes Sidney, ruddy cheeks and red lips set against white-hurt ice, English even though Zhenya cannot understand, bumping against him when the lights shut down after 10:00 at night. Pittsburgh becomes a ridiculous giggle that sounds like a car horn, and Zhenya laughs back at him, throat and eyes hurting.
He looks at the white ceiling of the Gonchar house. Replays English in his head. He yearns for metal, for smoke. For the rush of Russian voices. For home. Tears spring to his eyes. His heart aches.
His Saint Christopher pendant burns his collar bone.
Saint Christopher is the Christian patron saint of travellers, his mother had said, He protects travellers from the storms.
Zhenya is twenty years old and he is heartsick.
~
When you leave home, Zhenya, his mother had said before he left for Helsinki, before he left Russia without a word, Remember your home, but make something new. Find something to worship, to hold on to.
~
Sidney has bright eyes. They’re always sharp, always focused. It’s like a soft-focus movie, everything else goes quiet around him when he speaks, gently toned, his dark gaze like a lazer that pins Zhenya when it’s turned on him.
“We need to win this series,” he says earnestly, “For them.”
Them is a blanket word. Them is different people. Them is everyone.
Zhenya bumps his fists, taps on the spot where the “A” hangs on Sidney’s chest, just above his heart. Sidney’s eyes don’t falter.
Zhenya braces for the inevitable.
~
He knows that Pittsburgh is not ready. He knows that Sidney knew that as well. It doesn’t lessen the blow. It won’t lessen the blow next year either.
~
Russia smells like steel when he gets back, and he breathes it. Breathes in the smoke and the Russian voices and his Mama’s lavender and flour smell, his brother’s arm that wraps around his shoulders, his father’s tired, smiling eyes.
He listens for a honk-laugh, and is genuinely surprised when he cannot hear it.
He sits at the algae pond, deep and liquid in the warm heat, and wonders if it really is as deep as his nightmares used to tell him.
Russia is so powerful to him, a home that never changes. Home is constant.
~
You don’t want to be a traitor.
~
“Do you think I should take the C?” Sidney asks him during the season, sitting on Mario’s guest-house sofa, legs tucked under his body.
“Yes,” Zhenya says without thinking. There are many things that Zhenya questions about his life, about everyone else, but Sidney’s worth and leadership is and never will be one of them.
“They want me to take it,” Sidney says, “I don’t know. I’m really young.”
“You should,” Zhenya says, “You best for it.”
“You think so?”
Zhenya nods furiously, “Yes.”
Sidney takes the C. The responsibility of it all fits perfectly on his broad shoulders. The letter is stitched above his heart, the place that Zhenya taps before a game. The team is stitched directly onto Sidney’s heart.
Sidney’s heart belongs to the team, to the game. That is a constant.
~
Zhenya is twenty-one, and he knows the taste of Sidney’s skin, the soft spot under his collarbone and earlobe, the sensitivity along his hips. He knows the high-pitched sounds Sidney makes when he comes unravelled, writhing under Zhenya when he pulls the sheets over their heads. Their bodies touch all along, and they’re trapped under the stifling confinement of linen, and it’s only them in the entire world.
Zhenya tastes Sidney, and he tastes like pepper-milk and ice water. His fingers press bruises into Zhenya’s ribs, and his American nickname GenoGenoGeno sounds like a prayer on Sidney’s lips.
Zhenya is terrified he’ll become addicted to this. It would be so easy, like gliding along ice. It would be the algae-pond, gliding across the surface, knowing that a fall could be waiting underneath. It’s not his nightmares; not even close.
It doesn’t matter that this, this shared breath under white sheets, could ruin both of them. It doesn’t matter with the linen over their head and nothing in the world but trading oxygen. This could be a drug.
“Geno,” Sidney gasps, moving like water under Zhenya, “Move, c’mon.”
Zhenya thrusts and Sidney moans, and this-- this--
Sidney could be a religion, Zhenya thinks feverishly. The slope of his body, the white skin under Zhenya’s hands, the mould of his muscles and the sounds pressed from his lungs. It’s a cathedral, as beautiful as Zhenya’s ever seen, more than Kolomenskoye, more than Khram Spasa na Krovi.
The gold plated walls and colored-glass domes of the churches of home have nothing on Sidney, right here and now, under Zhenya in a bubble of them.
Afterwards, Sidney lax with sleep next to him, Zhenya murmurs something that could be a prayer into Sidney’s shoulder.
~
Zhenya is twenty-one, and discovers that constants shift. Home shifts.
~
He goes home that summer with an empty chest, Sidney’s handprints still pressed onto his body. The air feels thick when he steps off the plane, the Russian voices grating on his ears. It makes him curl into himself, clutch his phone in one hand until the edges make ridges on his palm.
“You’ve been depressed all summer,” Denis says, “You’re bringing me down, little brother.”
“Sorry,” Zhenya murmurs, and looks out over the algae pond.
“Is it about your girl?” Denis asks, “You should meet her in Moscow.”
Zhenya had wondered briefly about his girlfriend when he was in Pittsburgh, but Sidney had taken his attention wholly. It makes him sick. It makes him guilty. It makes him miss the clear blue skies of Pittsburgh.
“It’s not about her,” Zhenya says quietly, and Denis shrugs as he leans back on the grass.
“Whatever it is, I hope you get over it soon,” Denis says, “You’re bringing us all down. Your sadness stinks.”
Zhenya punches him in the arm, and his brother laughs.
The algae-pond looks like crystal.
~
He touches down in Pittsburgh and welcomes the rush of English.
He doesn’t realize it until he’s outside of his Pittsburgh house and he waits on Sidney’s text; something has changed.
Something has shifted. The circle has been broken. Zhenya is twenty-two, and Saint Christopher hangs heavy around his neck.
~
He fucks Sidney in hotel rooms, covers his mouth to stop noises from leaking through paper-thin walls, and worships him like an altar.
Zhenya never does things by half. His mother has told him that. Sidney has told him that, awed expressions. He’ll never do something he loves half-hearted.
If Sidney is his, then he’ll be completely his. It’s painful. It hurts like a hammer to the heart, a constant throb under his ribcage that never goes away.
It leaves Zhenya with bruises, internal and external, and Sidney leaves with Zhenya’s mouth on his collarbone and neck. The others poke the hickies, laugh at Sidney’s sweeping red blush. Sidney never looks at Zhenya through this, but Zhenya never looks away from him.
Later that night, Zhenya will press his teeth into Sidney’s jugular, feel the thrum-throb of his heart under his mouth and hold him down until Sidney stops moving, hands flexing uselessly and nails dragging down Zhenya’s back.
They’ll do the same tomorrow.
It’s a dangerous game.
~
Flower and Tanger corner him one afternoon, in March, and pull him into a nearby trainer room. Zhenya considers texting Gonchar that he’s been kidnapped by French-Canadians.
“You’re going to break his heart,” Flower leads with, and Zhenya is left reeling.
“What?”
“What you’ve been doing with Sid,” Flower continues, “We don’t want to know details, but Sidney....”
“Sid doesn’t do things casually,” Tanger supplies, “Look at how he treats hockey. Geno, we know you care about Sid, but you’re going to hurt him.”
Zhenya feels angry, “You don’t know shit.”
“Look,” Flower says sharply, “One day Sidney is gonna wake up and be fully, stupidly, in love with you or something and you’re gonna destroy him. You won’t mean to, Geno, but you will.”
This is the stupidest conversation Zhenya’s ever had. He won’t hurt Sidney, he never wants to hurt Sidney.
“If you know this is gonna end like that,” Tanger says gently, “Then stop it now. Don’t drag him under if you can’t hold the weight.”
~
You’re going to break his heart.
~
“Tanger and Flower know,” Zhenya says to Sidney that night, lips pressed to his neck.
Sidney jerks minutely, “Shit. Were they…”
“Okay,” Zhenya says, because it was true. Despite the beliefs they had about Zhenya inevitably breaking Sidney’s heart, they were all in all supportive, “But think I’m break your heart.”
Sidney turns to look at him, “Will you?”
“No,” Zhenya says, almost-whisper.
Sidney smiles at him. It’s gentle, small, a fragile thing.
“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, G.”
Zhenya shakes his head and mouths at Sidney’s shoulder. He presses his fingers in, one by one, in the spaces between Sidney’s ribs, “Never break promise to you.”
“You promise?” Sidney asks on a laugh, and Zhenya huffs into his skin.
“I win you Stanley Cup,” Zhenya says, “Promise.”
Sidney giggles again, that stupid-endearing honk, and kicks Zhenya’s shin, “You better.”
~
Ballard checks him, and he flips head over ass, terrified for an extended moment. He’s fine, landing cleanly, but he can feel the impact-- a few inches more, a different speed-- and his neck would have been the only thing between him and the ice.
The crowd roars when Sidney lunges for Ballard, expletives falling from his lips. He gets his ass handed cleanly to him.
Zhenya tracks him down in the trainer room, and wraps an ice pack around Sidney’s hand, “Thanks. Even if take stupid penalty.”
Sidney waves him off with another hand, “I just… he could’ve hurt you. I couldn’t… I was scared, Geno.”
Zhenya pauses, looking at Sidney’s hand between his own, cold from the pack seeping through.
“Thank you,” he says quietly, and presses a kiss to Sidney’s hairline even though this is Consol and anyone could walk in.
~
Zhenya is twenty-two and he’s in love. It hurts more than he thought it would.
~
They win the Stanley Cup.
~
“We did it!” Sidney shouts in his ear, drunk off excitement and champagne, “We fucking did it! You promised me, Geno! You promised and we-we- fucking did it!”
His arms are wrapped around Geno, clothes wet from where Sidney had dragged him into the Lemieux pool. The Cup floats somewhere nearby, with a orange life-jacket strapped onto it. Everyone else is drunk out of their mind, inside somewhere where the thump-thump-thump of the music plays.
Sidney’s chest is warm where he’s pressed against him, heartbeat matching the rhythm of the music.
Sidney drags Zhenya underwater, and the pool is a dark-blue, illuminated by the automatic white pool lights. He kisses him on the mouth, the warm press of lips against the coldness of the pool water.
This is an algae-pond from Home, where the ice has cracked above him and he’s fallen in. He’s fallen in, and he can’t get back up.
Drowning, Zhenya decides, is not a peaceful way of dying. He looks at Sidney under the water, moving like a mirage, and it aches-stings-burns in the best way, the most painful way.
Sidney goes up for air and Zhenya stays underwater for a bit longer, watching the liquid move around him, freeze his limbs.
He thinks, no. He’s not going to break Sidney’s heart. Not if it killed him, not if the water filled his lungs and kept him under. It’s never going to play out like that.
He closes his eyes. Sidney grabs his arms and drags him surface wide, and he takes a breath of air. Sidney giggles, and Zhenya opens his eyes, pushes his hair out of his face. Sidney looks around them and leans forward quickly, kissing Zhenya again.
“You promised me,” he says delightedly, mouth tasting like champagne, “God, fuck yes, I love you. We did it.”
Zhenya’s nightmares used to be of algae-pond water freezing his lungs. His fingertips feel numb where they clench on Sidney’s arms. Sidney is still laughing and babbling, falling into Zhenya and splashing the water as the Stanley Cup floats by them without a care.
Sidney’s going to break his heart, violently.
Zhenya wants to brace for it, but in free-fall, you cannot.
~
Home used to be a constant. Russia was a constant, even when it called him a traitor and spat him back out.
Now it’s gone, like the continent fell apart under the water.
See, Zhenya is twenty-three and in love and home, home…
home is relative.
~
The Olympics come and go, 2010 comes and goes. Zhenya and Sidney shift like normal, fucking and kissing and resolutely not saying the words that Sidney cannot remember and Zhenya can feel drilling holes in his chest. The algae-pond ice is long ago cracked and fallen, and Zhenya no longer cares.
Sidney has begun to taste of home, of long nights and stifled moans, of years of this and many more, of seeing his Russia jersey stretched across Sidney’s shoulders, of feeling like nothing could be better and yet, yet,
Maybe Zhenya will never stop waiting for the bottom, for the landing. Maybe the sensation of falling, jolting him like he was half-asleep, will be his new constant.
That, and Sidney. Always Sidney. As unmovable as the cathedrals that pale next to him, that Zhenya paints him as.
Constant.
~
If Sidney was a religion, Zhenya decides, then he will be his priest.
~
Zhenya waits for the day that Pittsburgh becomes stagnant, like Magnitogorsk. Communism stilled Russia, made it frozen, and that was Zhenya’s home. Maybe it’s Zhenya, not the place. But Pittsburgh does not still. Pittsburgh always moves, fresh and clean-cut, and home is--
~
The room is pitch-dark, the drapes pulled over to block out light. It’s nighttime, anyway, but Sidney is extra-cautious about light. His head is broken, he says.
Sidney could never be broken, Zhenya knows.
There’s talk of a lockout, this year, and Zhenya is scared. Because a lockout means Russia, and Russia means no Sidney, and home has shifted, and everything has shifted, and Zhenya is no longer twenty and heartsick.
“I love you,” he tells Sidney that night.
Sidney turns to look at him, even in the dark of the room and--
“Why?”
Zhenya runs a hand down his side, “Because you my home.”
Sidney’s face is unreadable, but he moves closer to Zhenya, arms loose around his waist and sighs into his collarbone, “I love you too.”
Zhenya’s Saint Christopher medal is warm pressed between them. He pulls Sidney tighter into his arms, and sighs into his hair. Something loosens in his chest, but the falling sensation does not stop. But maybe, he thinks, he is not the only one.
He pulls the sheet over both their heads.
~
Zhenya is twenty four, and he’s home.