Chapter Text
Moscow, January 27th, 2007
His breath turning to steam, Alexei Rozanov brushed the snow off his shoulders before placing his hand on the door handle.
Loud music was tearing the stillness of the night through the glass door, accompanied by laughter and the clinking of glasses. Taking off his gloves and placing them in his pocket, Alexei pushed the door, letting the warmth and light wash over him.
The Korozov was his favorite bar—as it was for a lot of people in Moscow as well. But Alexei could brag that the place had a little more meaning to him than to others. It was here, under the blinding lights and rather soulless music, that he had his first shot, his first cigarette, his first kiss, and his first time.
The Korozov bore the sole memories Alexei liked to recall. He enjoyed the saying that, there, drawn by the night and by the unknown, he could be all he wanted. Not the boy who flinched under his father’s gaze or shielded his face to avoid a hit. Not the one who tore his gaze away from his mother’s form in her bed. But the one who tightened his grip on his baton, and who hit, hit, hit, until the ache in his chest melted into anger, so bitter it blurred the corners of his thoughts.
But Alexei always had been afraid, and that was something no amount of alcohol could ever stifle. Sometimes, he was so drunk he couldn’t even remember his name.
"Lyosha!" a man’s voice ripped through the noise, and Alexei turned his head to the sight of his friends, gathered around a table with drinks in their hands.
Daniil, Boris, Oleg, Yuliy, Stanislav—a few of them were his classmates, some other acquaintances met while stumbling in the streets at night. If they crossed paths several times a week, they knew nothing of each other—apart from their favorite hockey teams and last hook-up—and Alexei liked it very well that way. Letting the corners of his mouth tug into a smirk, he headed towards them.
"Finally here!" Oleg exclaimed. He was the oldest one of them, his temples already beginning to turn graying. Under his coat, one could make out the "полиция" badge.
Police.
Alexei nodded in greeting before sitting down. His whole body slightly trembled as Oleg slapped him on the back—hard enough to make any man collapse on the ground.
"We have been waiting for you for ages," Stanislav added, his malicious blue eyes flickering at the snow on Alexei’s hair. "Where were you, man?"
Suddenly, every pair of eyes was on him. Alexei mumbled something about a "late night shift," that was quickly brushed off, and, minutes after, he was chugging a shot of vodka down his throat. After all of those years, the familiar burn had somehow become comforting. That night seemed to be like any other—drowning his bleeding heart under the light, music, and alcohol.
But, slumped into the chair, as the barman handed him another drink, Alexei couldn’t help but notice the girl sitting next to him. She had been there for some time, now, although all he had seen was her back, and the long, dark hair cascading all the way down her spine. The light reflected off it, casting luminous shapes on her hair, which danced with her every movement, and Alexei couldn’t tear his eyes away.
He needed to know her name.
"Lyosha."
Startled by the sound, Alexei whipped his head to his friend. Next to him, Boris was looking at him, the corners of his mouth tugged into a smug smile. He raised his eyebrows.
"You’re staring, man."
Alexei rolled his eyes, ignoring the slight burn in his cheeks. "Bullshit."
In the corner of his eye, the woman was animatedly talking to her friend. Light caught on her gold earrings, her tone so crystalline Alexei had to resist reaching out and turning her face to see if she was as beautiful as she sounded. To his left, Boris smirked smugly.
"Well. What are you waiting for? Go talk to her."
And, Alexei had never doubted his ability to seduce—people here were so lonely, so desperate, he could have his pick of anyone. But, somehow, that woman was different. Maybe it was in the way she slightly turned her head to listen to her friend, in the way she twirled her jet black hair on her finger, or in her posture that made her presence radiate. If Alexei didn’t admit it out loud, he knew it—the woman intimidated him.
He shook his head. "Later," he promised, and Boris sighed dramatically.
"You better."
Alexei smiled and emptied his glass in one gulp.
*
A few hours later, as the empty drinks began to pile up in front of Alexei, people began to gather on the dance floor. Alexei felt very light-headed—everything seemed to move in a blur of sounds and colors. Led up by his friends on the dance floor, he let alcohol direct the way his hands landed on the girls’ legs, hips, chest, neck. He let their bodies press against each other, their mouths intertwine.
Through the chaos, through the cacophony of shouts, laughter and music, Alexei felt the most at peace. No thoughts were begging to rip out his heart—his brain just felt empty. Thoughtless. The noise brought him more quiet than silence ever could.
"Wanna dance?" a voice suddenly whispered in his ear.
He knew that voice, he had heard it before. Soft, thin, and clear. Before he could even react, the woman had placed her hands around him—one sensually on his chest, the other around his neck. From the front, she was even more beautiful—dark curls framed her face, with blue eyes and full lips.
Damn right he wanted to dance.
He smirked at her, and she did, too. The move sent a shiver down his spine, that he chose to ignore. Placing a hand on her lower back, they started to dance. Their two bodies moved together before their mouths did too, intertwining in a languid, passionate kiss. The alcohol weighed heavily in his head, and Alexei could have sworn that his whole body was on fire.
Within hours, clothes were scattered over the floor, and their bodies collapsed onto each other. Alexei moved as he usually did, fast and brisk, harsh and sharp, hands hovering over the woman’s body without ever touching it. Mind dizzy, he took what he wanted, as he always did, and it was always enough. For him, sex had always been meaningless. Trivial. A way to forget, to drown the noise in his head. But, this night, he couldn’t help but stare at the woman’s bright eyes, dark curls, and the way her hands curled on the covers.
He closed his eyes.
As the sunlight crept through the curtains the next morning, casting a warm glow on their naked bodies, Alexei’s eyes wandered on the form next to him. Then, gathering his clothes silently, he got dressed, and left—never lingering long enough to remember their names.
*
One week later, he met her again.
It was earlier, this time, and the shots hadn’t even started to pile up on the counter.
"You left," she teased him, a manicured hand on her hip.
She didn’t smell of alcohol, this time, and neither did he. Yet, when she smiled, coyly and smugly, Alexei felt as dizzy as if he had been drinking.
"I had work," he mumbled, in an effort to keep his tone disinterested. He had learned, over the years, that nonchalance was the best way to attract any woman. He feigned to sip the vodka in his glass to conceal the smile tugging at his cheeks.
"Oh, I see," the woman teased, resting her chin in her hand. They were sitting across from the counter, her blonde friend, thankfully, not in sight. Alexei twitched in his seat. "Was it more important than staying with me?" she inquired maliciously, moving her seat closer to his.
Alexei’s heartbeats fastened, and a weird feeling he couldn’t name washed over him. His fingers tightened around his glass. Where was this going?
He never had met again the women he had slept with—never even remembered their faces, if he was honest. He never looked. And he had no desire to know them, either—they were just people he had sex with. Nothing less, nothing more. In front of him, as the woman twirled her jet-black hair around her finger, his brain was rushing with several questions.
Why was she here?
"What do you want?" he finally asked, after chugging down a shot of vodka. The woman stared, and he forced himself to look at her in the eye.
She tilted her head, furrowing her brows.
"Well, we know each other now; I saw you and I wanted to talk," she moved her hands as if the statement was evidence, something so obvious that Alexei was dumb for not noticing it. "Isn’t that okay with you?"
Alexei let the question hang in the air for a bit. Talk? What for? They didn’t have anything to say to each other, did they? He shrugged, deciding that giving in was the best response to make her leave. Although he didn’t really want to—not that he was going to admit it, obviously.
"Yes, it is, I guess," he responded.
His answer seemed to please her, making the corners of her mouth extend into a smile that showed all her white, bright teeth. Alexei’s stomach did a weird twitch—probably the vodka. She extended a hand at him.
"Nadezhda," she introduced herself.
Alexei stared at her for a moment, after extending a hand, too.
"Alexei."
*
Nadezhda was very easy to talk to.
The coffee she had ordered had been cold for a long time, but that didn't seem to bother her, too absorbed in telling Alexei about her last concert, her dog, or the guy she had slapped because he had dared to whistle at her. Her chin resting on her wrist, she recounted events as if they were stories from a book, and Alexei hung on her every word, taking in the shape of her mouth, the way her hair fell over her face, or the wrinkles on her nose when she smiled slightly.
She didn’t ask about him, and Alexei shuddered over the thought that, maybe, she had heard about the disaster that was his family. Maybe she knew who his brother was—everyone in Moscow did. Was that the reason why she had approached him?
Oh, Lyosha, your brother has the same eyes as you.
His heart squeezed in his chest, the ghost of his mother’s hand suddenly burning his cheek. Bearing the same traits as his brother he had always despised had never been a blessing for him. Well, maybe it had, at first, for a very short time, when Ilya had been little. But as his mother’s attention had shifted from him to Ilya, the affection Alexei had once felt for his brother had quickly faded away.
"I wish you could disappear," he had hissed to the newborn, one time his mother had been asleep. His ears had been ringing with Ilya’s cries all day, making his mama too tired to go to the park with him. He had stared at his brother for a long time, wishing he could set him on fire with his eyes. He hated his brother. So, so much.
The hatred hadn’t faded away—it only got stronger as the years passed. His mother seemed to prefer him—Ilya was quiet and sensitive, and Alexei was amazed about how quick he was to cry. That was both a curse and a blessing, and, if he could make his brother suffer for a second, it also guaranteed to make Mama angrier at him.
"Alexei Rozanov, are you making him cry on purpose?"
Being called by his full name was never a good thing—he knew that. But it also meant that he had succeeded in his plan. Alexei lowered his head, in a failed attempt to hide his smirk. Beside him, Ilya’s bare leg still bore the mark of Alexei’s pinch.
"No," he had lied, the smile in his tone obvious.
If making his mother angry stirred something painful in his chest, it was the only way to wring a scrap of attention from her. God knows Alexei longed for some—not that he would ever admit it out loud. If only his stupid brother hadn’t been there. Alexei liked to think, with a touch of bitterness, that he, at least, wasn't as whiny as a girl.
If they shared the same eyes, they certainly did not share the same temperament. Alexei had been sure not to. He made sure to cross the road when the traffic light was red, to brush his teeth from the top and not from the bottom like his brother, and to never wear blue because he knew it to be Ilya’s favorite color. And now, Ilya was on the national hockey team, erasing his sorrows on the ice, and he was the best, and he was the fastest, and jealousy burned in Alexei’s throat, so hard that he wasn’t sure he'd ever be able to swallow it. He could knock Ilya down as much as he wanted, their mother wouldn’t come, because she was dead, and she would never come back, no matter how hard he screamed, no matter how much he drank.
But Nadezhda couldn’t have known. She couldn’t have seen the same moles on their cheeks, the same curve of their nose, and the same tiny green spot in their eyes. No, she couldn’t, Alexei assured himself.
Could she?
*
That night, Alexei stayed. And he stayed the nights that followed.
As talkative as she was, Nadezhda was also capable of listening to him. How long was it since someone had truly paid attention to him?
You never allowed it, sang a voice in his head. He ignored it.
Carefully, he let Nadezhda catch a glimpse of tiny fragments of his life—those that hurt the least. A bicycle accident when he was younger. Pushing a kid down the slide, though he actually had done that to his brother. The first time he had taken drugs, although he didn’t tell her that he was so high that his father had caught him and slapped him so hard that his cheek had borne the mark for a whole week.
Nadezhda’s eyes didn’t leave his own—if she had noticed that Alexei never mentioned a family member, she made no comment. She asked questions, at the right times, laughed at the right times, took his hand at the right times, making Alexei’s pulse beat too hard in his temple.
And he had never been kind or gentle, but, Nadezhda, with her soft voice and clear laugh made his heart ache. She reminded him of his mother, of everything that had been ripped away from him, of everything he could have had, and, sometimes, when he looked at her, eyes lingering on her sleeping form, his vision blurred, and he was a little boy again.
He hated it. He hated not being able to tear his gaze away from her sparkling eyes, from her shiny hair, from the dimples in her cheek. He hated the warmth in his stomach he felt when he was with her, he hated the way his cheeks heated when she teased him, he hated the lump in his throat when she wasn’t around, and, above all, he hated to think that she, too, would leave.
But Nadezhda was just seeking fun. She liked him, of course she did. She was alone.
Her parents didn’t talk to her—she had remained very vague on that subject. Alexei wasn’t seemingly the only one to shield his memories. She didn’t have any other family apart from them, and very few friends to none. Alexei was a stability in her fleeting life—but nothing more.
But to Alexei, she was everything, consuming his thoughts day to night. He knew she didn’t look at him the way he did. But, every time their bodies melted together, he couldn’t help but to hope. Could she ever love him the way he wanted her to, if he waited?
No, no, no. Alexei had to get away. Nadezhda was making him weak. Soft. From the moment he had uttered her first name out loud.
"Lyoshen'ka. Stay," she had whispered, her voice soft as honey, one night when the threat of seeing his heart escape from his chest had prompted him to go.
Leave, leave, the voice in his head had hissed. Leave before she convinces you. Leave before it’s too late. But Alexei had never been brave. He couldn’t bring himself to. Not when Nadezhda’s breathing aligned with his heartbeats, not when she looked at him with imploring eyes.
"Alright. I’ll stay."
The little charade continued for a month, until Alexei received a call, in the middle of the day. He had picked up, furrowing his brows. Nadezhda never called—she usually texted.
"I’m pregnant."
This time, her voice bore no trace of laughter.
*
And Nadezhda was only seeking fun, but he was so in love with her that he begged her to keep the baby, assuring her that it would be the most beautiful gift of his life—of hers as well. If Alexei had always despised children, a baby was a way to keep Nadezhda forever.
And, since she was pregnant, they had to get married. Otherwise, she would give birth out of wedlock, which would be frowned upon, and Alexei would lose his job, or perhaps simply his credibility, although he didn’t tell her that. In a matter of months, Nadezhda was introduced to his father, and, before her belly had even grown noticeable, she bore Alexei’s last name.
Overwhelmed by congratulations and wedding preparations, Alexei Rozanov had never been happier.