Chapter Text
Ilya entered the hotel lobby with confident strides, head held high. But his breath felt too shallow, too quick, his palms unusually sweaty. He rubbed them against the inside of his pants’ pockets, focusing on the friction of the fabric against his skin.
Breathe. It’s just him. You have talked to him a million times.
Yes, and how did that work out?
You are different now.
He searched the lobby, the reception area, people checking in, clustering at the elevators. To the side, a middle-aged man stood close to the sitting area, pretending to study the abstract art piece on the wall.
Ilya hadn’t seen his brother for nine years, but there was no mistaking him. The shape of his body, the rigid set of his spine, the terse tilt of his head. Ilya felt his shoulders tense and draw up, bracing for impact. He pushed them down again.
Relax.
He stepped closer and Alexei turned around. Their eyes met, and Alexei’s dark gaze bore into his. Ilya held it as he strode up to him, hands still in his pockets.
They just looked at each other over the sitting arrangement for a few moments. Deep, comfortable leather chairs were spaced around small coffee tables. Ilya had felt more relaxed before a playoff face off.
He exhaled slowly.
“Alexei.”
Alexei blinked.
“Ilya.”
At the familiar sound of his brother’s voice, Ilya blanked out for a moment.
Fuck. This is real.
Why did I want this?
Suddenly he was grateful for the distance, the furniture between them. Lounge chair, table, lounge chair.
Last time they had been this close, they had been at each other’s throats. Ilya could still feel Alexei pushing him into the wall, Ilya pushing Alexei into the wall, his fist in Alexei’s face. His hands clenched at the memory, but he had promised himself that he wouldn’t let it come to that, this time.
“You look... good,” Alexei said, his reproachful tone turning the words sour.
“Well… you look like shit.”
The years had not been kind to Alexei. His skin was pale and blotchy, with tired eyes and dark, swollen bags. He had become pudgy, his cheeks even more round than before. Maybe alcohol, or drugs. Suddenly Ilya was thankful for Shane insisting on a healthy diet.
Alexei only shrugged and stared at Ilya in challenge. His narrowed eyes were unchanged, still as sharp and piercing as ever.
“Jetlag.”
“Oh, your flight was not good?”
“It was ok.”
“Ok. So... where is she?”
“With the host family.”
“Ah.”
Ilya let out a long breath. He would not be annoyed that his brother was withholding his daughter from him and treating her like a bargaining chip. For... for what actually? Ilya had been the one to invite Alexei here. He would have talked to his brother regardless. Although it was starting to seem like a bad idea.
He would have preferred his niece over his brother.
“I want to see her,” he said, more aggressively than was maybe sensible.
“And I wanted to meet you before.” Alexei retorted in kind.
Ilya took his hands out of his pockets, spread them slightly.
“Ok. I’m here.”
Alexei released a deep put-upon sigh, and rubbed his fingers over his brows, as always when Ilya had annoyed him. Ilya’s jaw clenched in response, and something old and bitter rose in his chest.
“What do you want me for?” he asked acidly, “Warn me off her? Check that my queerness is not infectious? ”
Alexei blanched and glanced over his shoulder.
“Don’t worry. Here, it’s fine. It’s not a crime.”
Alexei froze, then pressed his lips together.
“Why must you always be so difficult?”
Ilya had expected accusations, but maybe not so soon. He let out a dark laugh. “I haven’t even started being difficult.”
“You’ve always been difficult!”
“I’ve been difficult?”
“You asked me to come here. What do you want from me?”
“You are my fucking brother! Why can you not- “
“What? Suddenly you care about family again?”
“I’ve always cared! You - ”
Ilya suddenly realized that they were both moving forward, hissing at each other, gesticulating, moments away from making a scene in the hotel lobby. They were only saved by the lounge chairs blocking their way.
This was not going even remotely according to plan. It had taken all of two minutes for all of his carefully laid out plans to fall apart. Everything going back as it always has been. A quarrel, Ilya the little brother defending, wanting things he could not get. Ilya could feel the tears prickling in the corners of his eyes and realized he was breathing hard, chest heaving like after a hard shift on the ice. He hadn’t even moved. Fuck. He didn’t want everything to fall apart, to fall back into his old self now, here. He turned around and leaned against the back of the chair, his head dropping back, as he looked at the ceiling. Slowly, his trembling arms steadied.
In the background, the receptionist welcomed a new set of guests. The elevator doors chimed. Alexei’s heavy breathing was becoming less pronounced.
Alexei cleared his throat.
“Ilya...”
Ilya ignored it.
“Hey.”
Reluctantly, Ilya turned back.
“What?”
Alexei had taken a step back and was running a hand through his thinning hair.
“Can we?” he asked, “Start again?”
Ilya straightened. “Yes.”
Alexei’s jaw worked as he visibly clenched his teeth.
“Fuck, I can’t do this sober. Drink?”
Ilya nodded curtly and they were both on their feet in an instant. Ilya was about to turn to the bar, but Alexei caught his gaze and nodded towards the elevator.
“I have vodka.”
He turned.
Ilya considered for a moment whether it was a good idea to go Alexei’s room, but his legs started moving on their own.
And just like that Ilya followed his brother. Three steps behind like when he was four and his brother eight and took him to the playground when their mother was lying down with a headache or sadness.
Ilya pushed the door closed and felt the vibration of the latch catching.
There was privacy here, but also... no escape.
Alexei toed off his shoes and trudged over to the small table, carefully set two glasses on the dark wood. The room was relatively spacious, for a hotel room. Ilya had not skimped on the quality of the hotel, even though he had shortly considered to book his brother into a shitty motel, just out of spite.
The door handle was cool metal under Ilya’s skin. He wondered whether they should have stayed in a public area. But when Alexei opened the mini-fridge and brought out a bottle, Ilya froze.
The bottle.
Fuck.
Alexei filled both glasses, without looking at Ilya.
Ilya recognized the shape and the label of the bottle. It brought him back. To the first time they had gotten drunk together, the first time Ilya had gotten drunk when he maybe had been far too young for this.
He released the door handle and stepped into the room.
I guess we are doing this.
Alexei’s gaze followed him as he approached the table, and took his glass. Ilya stopped at the other side of the table, took the other glass.
Wordlessly, they tossed back the drink.
Ilya’s throat burned with the familiar ache of vodka. It was good, but not cold enough. It was also perfect.
They sat down on opposite sides of the table without words, neither of them saying anything for now, drinking whenever the silence got too unbearable. Ilya started to feel warm, a tingle spreading through his veins.
Maybe they could just sit and drink forever and pretend they were brothers and cared?
Alexei shifted in his seat.
“She wanted to contact you already last year.” he finally said. “I forbade it.”
Fuck.
He wished he could have hidden his flinch better, because Alexei frowned in response, eyes twitching.
“What did you think? That I could let her meet you officially? That I can be seen to endorse this?” He gestured at Ilya. “My own daughter?”
Ilya had expected something like this, of course. His brother lived in Russia.
But by god, it hurt.
And Alexei just continued, his voice suddenly off. “I might as well quit my job altogether, thanks to you.”
What?
“Me?” he felt the leather of the armrests dent under his deathgrip, “It’s me who makes you fail at your job? Not the coke? Or the - ”
Alexei’s composure broke and he pushed himself to a standing position, his voice rising.
“Yes, you! You being fucking vocal about everything! How seriously do you think they take me? With a brother who abandoned the family! And then tells the whole world about mother...” Alexei’s eyes glinted wetly. “And then the... the... rest!” he gesticulated wildly with his hand, encompassing Ilya.
Suddenly he froze, then he closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. “Fuck...” he mumbled, and retreated to the window, still breathing hard.
Ilya retreated to the other side of the room, as far as possible until he hit the wall.
The rest. His whole life. Shane. His love. His marriage. All of it, compressed into two words his brother could not even bring himself to say out loud.
His eyes burned, and he wished his husband was here. His steady conviction, his sure and quiet hands, his love even when Ilya was a mess. He leaned against the cool wall, closed his eyes.
Clothes rustled on the other side of the room. The fridge opened. A bottle lid was being unscrewed. Liquid pattered into a glass. Stopped. Liquid pattered again.
Ilya opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times until his vision cleared.
Alexei stilled, caught, with the bottle in his hands.
“You really think I did this to spite you? Because I don’t care?“ Ilya leaned his head against the wall and looked to the side, anywhere but at his brother.
“I cannot even visit her grave anymore.”
His voice broke, and he could do nothing.
The room was far too still for a few moments. Then Ilya heard a sharp draw of breath.
Ilya blinked his tears away before they could fall. He wasn’t ready to cry in front of his brother.
On the other hand. What was the point?
Let him see.
He turned and wiped his eyes with his sleeve, staring at Alexei defiantly.
Alexei drew back, but met Ilya’s eyes tiredly. He looked smaller, the bags beneath his eyes more pronounced than ever.
Ilya studied him for a moment. Considered what to do. In the end, he decided to see it through. He felt too raw, too young to walk out now. One more time, he would try.
He returned to his chair.
“So, can I see her or not? My niece.”
Why are we even here?
Alexei’s hesitated. He took a sip of his vodka, and when he looked back at Ilya, the challenge and the judgement were gone and what was left was something between acceptance and defeat.
“Can I prevent it? From either of you?” he asked quietly.
A thread of relief slipped in, easing the knot in Ilya’s chest. He leaned back, let the soft chair catch him. He might see his niece after all. If this was all he was getting out of this meeting, it would have to be enough.
“Of course, she wants to see you.” Alexei finally admitted, all fight gone, “That’s why she wanted to come to Canada, of all places. The famous uncle nobody in the family talks about.”
The uncle nobody talks about.
“Last year, she started asking. About family, my side, why nobody talks about the grandparents, about her uncle. And of course, she uses the internet, she finds you. Found out about mother, about ...you. And then she started.”
He leaned back and looked even more tired.
“Now she talks about generational trauma and therapy and I don’t know even know what she means most of the time..She says she hates patriarchy, she hates our family....”
Ilya was having a hard time mustering sympathy for his brother, even though he looked pitiful. She wanted to meet him. She was smart, not caught in the same old patterns.
He watched Alexei roll in on himself, shoulders slumping forward.
“It made me think ... remember...” he admitted, his deepset eyes glinted in the low hotel room light.
“I used to hate her, you know...mother.”
“You don’t? Anymore?”
Alexei shook his head, heavily, once. “Maybe for me, for my daughter, it was good that you told the world,” he mumbled so quietly that Ilya barely heard it.
Ilya swallowed around the lump in his throat. This was more that he had been expecting.
“It was not her fault,” he finally said.
Alexei sighed, “Still... I always blamed her more than him.”
Because it was easier. Ilya pressed his lips together. And you always took the easier way.
Alexei’s eyes shifted around the room, looking past Ilya, his face pale
“Sometimes I feel he is still there, a ghost in the room. Judging.”
Ilya’s heart beat faster. He would have been happy not knowing what Alexei meant.
“I exorcised that ghost years ago.”
Which didn’t mean he couldn’t see him now. But he had lost his power.
“Lucky you.”
“Wasn’t luck.”
Alexei frowned at Ilya with his best, no-nonsense “be reasonable, little brother” gaze, but Ilya was not impressed. He knew it was fake. He could see how tense Alexei held his body, how much it cost him to keep his leg from jittering. He might make his face show what he wanted, but Ilya knew him too well after all.
Alexei dropped his act and quickly drained his glass of vodka, put it back on the table, his jaw working
“I don’t want my daughter to hate me,” he admitted.
Ah.
I also don’t want to hate you. Ilya thought, quietly, to himself.
Ilya looked his brother straight in the eye and offered the only thing he could, and maybe the thing he had wanted to tell him since he was twelve, “Then don’t be like him.”
Alexei’s face twisted, “It’s that easy?”
Of course, you idiot.
“Yes.”
Alexei harrumphed, studying the table absently, his fingers drumming on the glass.
“He was a terrible father,” Ilya reminded him.
Alexei’s eyes snapped to his, widened with indignation, how a son didn’t speak about the father disrespectfully, the old tired reflexes. He quickly caught himself and huffed bitterly.
“Fuck, I want a cigarette.”
“Smoking is forbidden in here.” It gave Ilya a flash of smug satisfaction, to be the one saying this. Also, Ilya could hear Shane’s voice in his head, which was nice.
“This country is backward.” Alexei rolled his eyes.
“Well...” Might as well get it over with. “It’s my country now.”
A pained expression crossed Alexei’s face, before he set it in his usual stony facade. But it was a shadow of his old moods, as if he couldn’t quite muster the willpower to see it through.
“I heard. You’re Canadian now,” his mouth twisted, “I don’t understand... How you could betray your country like that?”
No, no, no. Ilya would not have this.
“Fuck, you know why. Our country betrayed me first.”
“But”, Alexei wouldn’t let up, more unnerved than aggressive, “Why did you do that?! All your ...” He made a uncoordinated circular motion with his hand. “You had everything! You could have been normal! Safe! You could have had a life!”
With a woman. Normal.
Alexei was suddenly breathing hard, a desperate shimmer in his eyes. He fell back into his chair, as if all his energy had been spent in this one outburst.
Normal.
It hurt. Even though, and this was unusual for his brother, Alexei hadn’t even meant for it to hurt.
“Normal... Hiding? Miserable? So I end up with alcohol, drugs, mistresses?”
Alexei looked like Ilya had sucker punched him.
What?
Ilya hadn’t meant much by his comment. Sure, a short reflection of all his brother’s previous... lifestyle choices. They were known, at least had been nine years ago. Never before had his brother shown any reaction or regret to him mentioning them.
Alexei’s gaze bore into Ilya’s and for a moment Ilya wasn’t sure whether he was being stared down or held onto.
“Fuck… I’m trying. For my daughter. For – ,“ Alexei stopped and restarted weakly. “For my family. To be better.”
He kept looking at Ilya, as if willing him to understand.
“Maybe you need to try harder,” Ilya said, not ungently, and watched Alexei swallow hard.
Alexei was the first to look away, his gaze slid to the table, to the far corners of the room. Ilya wondered for a moment what Alexei had going on at home. That he wasn’t even fighting back. He just sat there, slumped in his chair, holding on to his empty glass.
The fight had left him, had left both of them.
Ilya’s breath came more easily for a moment.
“I’m better,” he finally told Alexei, “Here. As myself. With my husband,” he watched Alexei flinch almost imperceptibly, ”With people knowing about mother.”
Alexei deflated further, closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything, just held onto his glass.
The minifridge rumbled. Heavy steps passed by in the corridor outside, growing louder as they neared, then fading again.
He looked at his brother, still the same daunting obstacle, but the most defenseless he had ever seen him.
I wanted him to know me.
Do I want him to know me?
Ilya gathered his courage.
“I’m like mother...” he told his brother quietly. Finally.
Alexei tried not to, but Ilya could see him flinch again. He almost faltered.
“Depressed, clinically. I took medication for a long time, still go to therapy,” Ilya stared at his brother in challenge, ready to defend himself against the contempt he was sure he had coming. He refused to crack, he was not ashamed of his struggles.
But whatever Alexei was feeling, he did not show it. He just took Ilya’s words and ... absorbed them. He said nothing. It made Ilya nervous, and stupid.
He needed to fill the silence somehow.
Ilya could almost hear his father’s words.
“I know.... I was always the weak one.”
He had meant to say it in a sarcastic way.
It came out plain and honest instead.
Fuck.
He immediately wanted to take his words back.
Alexei visibly tensed and something like pain crossed his face. He rubbed his fingers over his brow.
“Ilya...” Alexei shook his head in a helpless gesture. His voice was an exasperated groan as if what Ilya had said something so stupid that it almost caused him physical pain. “Shut the fuck up. Please.”
Ilya’s mouth snapped shut, still embarrassed at his words. Not at admitting his depression, he had earned that, but at saying his father’s words, the ones that had come out involuntarily.
Alexei studied him, then something changed. He sat up straighter, his tired gaze becoming sharper. Clear, like Ilya hadn’t seen directed at him since before their mother’s death.
”You are such an idiot.”
Ilya flinched, but Alexei continued, his voice steadier than it had been all night.
“Father is dead. You don't need to believe his shit anymore,” he said. “We don’t have to believe his shit anymore.”
What?
Did he really just say that?
Of course Alexei had called him an idiot before. But never... never in a nice way.
He swallowed tightly, and looked down at his hands, gripping the glass, blinking hard.
Suddenly, he could not deal with it anymore. Not after this day, the vodka, his brother. He didn’t know how to react, his body and mind had just blanked.
So he did the only thing he could. He pulled up the corners of his mouth into a semblance of a smirk. It was weak, but there.
“So, how does that work for you?” he asked his brother wryly.
Alexei scoffed, but his lips twitched.
“Amazing, of course."
They quietly worked their way through a second bottle, mostly in silence. Every now and then, they talked of inconsequential things, people they had known, events from a time long past. Sometimes Alexei shared an anecdote about his daughter.
They didn’t talk about the future. But for the first time in probably decades, they were at the same table without bracing for the next fight, just existing in the same space. Ilya thought that maybe he would never really enjoy his brother’s company. But a sense of familiarity had settled over them that was not entirely bad.
The door to the room clicked shut behind him. It was late, the corridor was empty and quiet, only an emergency light humming. Ilya leaned against the wall, the floor tilting just slightly. His head swam, with vodka and everything that had happened in the last hours, his hand tingling where Alexei and his knuckles had brushed when they had said goodbye. He felt exhausted and sweaty, and more raw and open than after a therapy session. But underneath the buzzing was a something quieter, almost peaceful.
He took out his phone and texted Shane.
Get me out of here.
When he opened the door to Shane’s very practical car, he almost stumbled, but managed to land on the seat. He fumbled the seat belt closed on maybe the fourth try.
Shane watched him quietly, with compassion and an amused smirk drawing the corners of his lips up.
“How much did you have to drink?”
“Too much... Or too little....” Ilya mumbled, “He brought Vodka, from Russia.”
Shane nodded and put the car into gear.
“How do you feel?”
Ilya’s head fell back on the headrest.
“I am...no... will be okay...”
He managed a small, drunken smirk and caught Shane’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“But maybe tomorrow, I need a fuck in trophy room. To remind me.”
Ilya watched Shane’s eyes darken and then the needle of the speed indicator climbing a tiny fraction above the speed limit.
——————
It was couple of weeks later when Ilya's phone vibrated with a new message. It was from his brother, and for the first time since he could remember, he opened it without trepidation.
His brother’s message was a picture.
Of their parents’ grave. Pristine condition, a fresh flower bouquet, standing slightly off center to the left. Under their mother’s name. Nothing on the other side.
There was only one line of text.
I checked. He’s still inside.