Chapter Text
Ilya hadn’t woken up that morning planning to die. At least not with any more commitment than he had felt for the past few months.
He had fantasized a lot about death since he saw the first pictures of Shane Hollander with his movie star girlfriend and it became clear that he was never coming back, but he had never bothered to do anything about it.
It usually came in the form of fleeting thoughts about crashing his Porsche into a tree on the way to the practice rink, or antagonizing a guy he encountered at a bar one night who seemed especially unstable, or crossing a street downtown when he knows full well a car is coming but choosing not to look.
Of course it would have to be an accident.
”It was an accident, Ilyusha. She was confused and forgot that she already took pills so she took too many. Do you understand?”
He couldn’t hang himself, or jump off a bridge, or slit his wrists.
Nothing where there is no other possibility than “Ilya Rozanov gave up and will be featured as a cautionary tale in the informational packets given to rookies alongside the names of guys who OD’d on pain pills or got brain damage until the end of time.”
All because it would be true doesn’t mean he wants everyone to know.
The guests at his mothers funeral had alternated between disapproving glares and willful ignorance, as if saying that she didn’t mean to do it enough times would make that true.
Sveta would realize of course, and she would grieve him. She knew how dark his moods could get and had asked him before to promise that he would never let it get that far. He didn’t like to touch that thought because it made him feel guilty.
He reassured himself that she had plenty of other people in her life to turn to and that she would be able to move on.
She isn’t like him. He never moved on. Not really.
Lyosha would know too, but he would not mourn. He would only care about the fact that Ilya had recently updated his will to ensure that the money would all go to the American Society for Suicide Prevention (let it never be said that Ilya doesn’t have a sense of humor) instead of up his nose.
His father would probably curse that he’s as weak and foolish as his mother ”stop being lazy and get out of bed Irusha; you have responsibilities” and forget within 5 minutes. Ilyas phone would fill up with voicemails asking when he’s going to be home from hockey practice within a week.
At least the dementia was good for something.
No one else would realize, and very few others would care beyond what it meant for the Raiders prospects. The world would move on without him.
Still, no matter how much he thought about dying, he never actually took the next step.
Even though trying to live without Shane was like trying to breathe underwater.
His commitment to his career and team gave him something else to focus on.
His game had become robotic, instinct taking over where there used to be genuine passion, but he was still able to pull out wins.
He was still good enough to get invited to All Stars next month, but the thought of seeing Hollander and Rose Landry together up close made him feel sick.
He had been trying to figure out how to ideally time a sprained ankle to ensure he would have an excuse not to go while missing as few actually important games as possible.
His relationship with his teammates wasn’t the same as it had been before, but thankfully they knew better than to say anything. He had never been one to share details about his life anyway so they knew better than to ask.
He had stopped bothering to go out when he wasn’t on the ice or at the gym after the terrible night he saw Rose Landry with her hands all over Shane at a club in Montreal.
It wasn’t like finding a woman or even a man to occupy his time was worth it anymore. None of them could compare to Hollander and he always left now feeling worse than he had before.
Instead, he spent his nights staring mindlessly at the TV and tormenting himself by scrolling through the Hollandry tag on Instagram and Twitter, looking at how happy Hollander was without him.
He always wore his best media smile, not his true one, and Ilya knew Hollander well enough to know that it was probably because any relationship he has with a woman is devoid of passion.
He was reasonably certain that Hollander was gay, and that he would fight against that fact to the bitter end because he was a good boy who knew what a hockey player was supposed to be, not a fuckup like Ilya who tried to have things for himself that weren’t allowed because he didn’t know how to just shut up and do what he’s told.
He had clearly decided that passion isn’t something he needs compared to the warm glow of public approval, as he showed up in paparazzi pictures nearly every day.
They went to trendy restaurants, chic street markets, upscale bars. On one particularly terrible night, Ilya had even encountered them at a club, a place that he never imagined Hollander stepping foot in.
All places that Hollander would never dare be seen with Ilya.
Ilya wasn’t even good enough to be allowed into his real home.
Of course being a more socially acceptable choice than Ilya wasn’t exactly a high bar to clear; he was hovering somewhere around “stripper with a meth problem” on the hierarchy of potential partners Hollander could bring home to his parents, and as far as the hockey world was concerned, the stripper was probably the better choice overall.
It still stung that he had somehow managed to get with the most popular woman in North America.
It was so Hollander to leave Ilya in for a woman and end up with the most impressive possible one.
He should have seen this coming. No one ever stayed with him.
Ilya was the kind of person who tried to fill the emptiness at his core with other people’s warmth, not someone who could ever provide that warmth to anyone else.
Lyosha had come to hate him when it became clear how far his talent at hockey would take him. Sveta had a new boyfriend who was taking up most of her time now, and Ilya didn’t want to get in the way. His teammates had never been the kind of friends he talked to about feelings. And his mother had chosen to die rather than stay with him a minute longer was long gone.
Even though he knew it would happen, it still hurt more than he could say. He had lost the person he wanted by his side the most.
Earlier that day, he had seen a picture of Shane Hollander whispering something in Rose Landrys ear.
It was not so different from the hundreds of other pictures he had seen of them. They weren’t even kissing.
He couldn’t ignore the intimacy though.
Hollander was saying something for only Rose Landry to hear. Like she was the only person in the world who mattered to him.
Sometimes he had felt that way in hushed hotel rooms, Hollanders warm brown eyes on him, but he knew that he never would again.
Hollander was the kind of person who was loved, adored, worshipped.
Ilya was tolerated as long as he continued to win at hockey.
He grabbed his good vodka from the freezer. It was the only way he was going to get through the night.
It had been 3 months since he had smiled and meant it. Since it felt like he had a reason to live.
It was like he was 13 years old again, after he had lost his mother and the light had gone out in his life but before he met the beautiful Japanese Canadian hockey player in a parking lot in Saskatchewan who made the sun come out again.
The first thing he noticed was how her hand was hanging over the edge of the bed-
It felt lately like the sun had once again retreated behind the clouds, and this time, it would never come back.
He could only tolerate living in the darkness for so long.
The smell of vomit hung in the room. It was crusted on her face and in her hair.
Ilya drank in silence.
Ordinarily, he would turn on the TV or even a playlist, but he didn’t want anything to occupy his mind.
He wanted to be dead as empty as he felt.
He idly wondered why he kept trying.
This was something that he had thought about often recently.
For years, he had been angry with wondered why his mother had done what she did, but he was increasingly starting to understand her.
He was alone, and so, so tired.
Ilya didn’t even realize he was drunk until he tried to put the bottle down.
He must have used too much force, because it shattered against the counter and shards of glass embedded themselves into his hand.
He felt the burning of the alcohol in the cuts like it was happening from far away.
There was quite a bit of blood coming out of the wound. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be enough to kill him.
He grabbed a towel and halfheartedly pressed it to the cut. He didn’t want to have to explain why his kitchen looked like a crime scene to his housekeeper.
There was no blood, so at first he thought she was just sleeping. Sometimes she slept all day.
In retrospect, opening his medicine cabinet was probably where he went wrong.
He only intended to take out gauze for his hand.
Instead, he was face to face with a mostly full bottle of Vicodin he had been prescribed for a torn ligament a few years ago.
He had never liked pills, he didn’t realize she was dead until he tried to touch her and her body was cool so he tried to take as few as he could get away with.
This meant that he had 11 left.
He quickly calculated that it should be enough to die.
He would take a few just to help take the edge off of the pain in his hand.
He shook out a couple of pills into his hand and took a swig of vodka to down them.
A tingling numbness spread through his body. He opened Instagram to Rose Landrys account and saw the newer series of pictures of her and Hollander. He reviewed it regularly to remind himself of all the things he’ll never be able to have.
They were in a botanical garden. Ilya could almost feel the humid air, smell the perfume of flowers, and hear the bees buzzing. Hollander looked empty; he had never seen him so dead behind the eyes like one half of the perfect couple.
He saw a riot of pink and white lilies in the background and tears came to his eyes.
There was no way Hollander realized what those flowers were, nor that he would care if he knew, but Ilya did.
This would how it would always be.
He would never be able to escape him.
Everything would always remind him of Shane Hollander. It would be like it was before he came to Boston, when he would feel like a knife had been plunged into his heart every time he smelled Red Moscow perfume or tasted medovik.
For the rest of his life, every time he stepped on the ice, he would be reminded of what he lost.
Every time he saw an X Squad trailer, or was up for MVP, or crossed the fucking border into Canada, Hollander would haunt him.
He would see pictures of their wedding everywhere, and their children, Hollanders friends and family beaming in the background, and every reporter for the rest of his career would ask him how it feels to see Canadas golden boy live a perfect life.
Meanwhile he’ll be left with nothing but his money and his trophies and the random people he’s able to find to warm his bed for a night, the things that used to distract him but he had been finding increasingly pointless, and they will mean nothing at all in another 10 years when his career is over and he has to face the rest of his life alone.
The worst part was that he knew that he couldn’t fight for him. He was selfish, but not so selfish that he would deliberately ruin Hollanders perfect life.
Finding someone else wasn’t an option either. Even if it were possible to love another person the way he loved Hollander, and Ilya sincerely doubted that it was, it would end the same way. It was monumentally stupid of him to let himself get attached in the first place. He had nothing to offer, and every time he convinced himself that he could have more, he ran headfirst into that truth.
Some people never learn.
He was so tired and he couldn’t see an end in sight.
He opened the bottle and shook out the rest of the pills.
Her face was stark white and lips had a blue tinge.
He took the fistful and downed them with the remainder of the vodka from the broken bottle. The glass cut his mouth when he raised it to his lips.
It didn’t feel like a turning point, or a dramatic moment. It just felt like an inevitability finally coming to pass.
Ilya was never going to die surrounded by loved ones after a long, happy life. That just wasn’t who he was.
It was always going to happen on a cold bathroom floor with blood smeared around him.
He truly was his mothers son.
He took out his phone and sent one last message to Sveta. He figured that he owed her at the very least; he didn’t want her to spend the rest of her life thinking about what she could have done differently.
What if he had done something to try to protect her from his father instead of just hiding under his blankets and pretending that he couldn’t hear?
“I’m sorry. It was always going to be this way; it was not your fault.”
He vaguely regretted choosing such a dramatic and obvious way to go.
It would take some truly determined denial to pretend that he just accidentally downed a bottle of vodka and painkillers after mangling his hand and mouth.
His family would be angry at him for humiliating them like this. The thought of how much trouble he would make for Lyosha brought him a twisted sense of satisfaction.
”Of course Irusha found a way to make her death a spectacle.”
He was truly his mothers son.
As the numbness spread, he wondered how Shane would react. Ilya hoped that he would read about it on the news privately before being asked by a reporter at a postgame interview or hearing one of the Metros gloating about it in the locker room.
Ilya knew how important it was to Shane that no one ever found out that they had been anything to each other but rivals.
He knew that Shane had never loved him and never would, but he wanted to think that he had liked Ilya enough that hearing about his death would at least make him sad for a moment, and he didn’t want him to be put in a position where he has to explain that to somebody else.
He should have the chance to think before he releases his sterile, PR approved statement about mutual respect and what a tragedy this is for the sport and what a great competitor Ilya was and how he hopes this raises awareness about the importance of supporting the mental health of athletes. Maybe he would even make a public donation toward suicide prevention.
Certainly nothing about how Ilya used to fuck him until he whimpered and begged, but some truths were shameful secrets to be taken to the grave.
Ilya hoped that he didn’t feel guilty. Shane had made the right choice for himself, living in a way that would allow him to have everything he ever wanted.
He would be remembered as a legend and the prince of hockey, surrounded by loved ones and admirers, and Ilya wouldn’t be around to fuck up his legacy for him.
It wasn’t his fault that Ilya was broken.
Sometimes, he thought that it was because of what happened when he was 12, that if he had never entered that bedroom it was cold and dark, and it felt wrong from the moment he opened the door perhaps enough pieces of him would have remained that he could have eventually put himself back together.
Other times, he feared that he had been born defective, and that this was all inevitable from the moment he had first opened his eyes. Maybe Mama had known and that was why she-
He opened his thread with Jane and drafted another text. “Goodbye. I loved you. Don’t blame yourself.”
He didn’t know if Shane would even want to hear from him, but in his increasingly fuzzy mind, he figured that letting him know was the kind thing to do.
He tasted the acrid sting of vomit in his mouth. Dampness spread over his shirt.
He frowned. He didn’t mean to leave any more of a mess behind than he already had with the blood from his hand.
Speaking of kindness, he had one last step he needed to take before he let everything go.
There was no way he could leave his body for Marly or Sveta to find when he didn’t show up to practice.
It was January 16th when he found her. The same month as it is now. Like mother, like son.
He dialed 911 and waited for the operator.
“I’m calling to report dead body,” he slurred. He hoped they could understand him.
“What is your location?”
He rattled off his address. “Is my house. Door code is 2481.”
“Sir, does someone there need help?”
“Body is me,” Ilya reassured her. “I took pills. Is ok.”
His grasp on English was slipping. He hung up the phone before the woman could say anything else.
He hoped that he hadn’t ruined her evening.
He felt the darkness start to tug at him insistently.
He thought of everything he would want to remember at the end.
His mothers voice, her laugh, her hairspray that she used to keep her curls in order.
Sveta dancing with him at a rave in Moscow, lit only by glowsticks, her skin glistening with sweat and body glitter.
The feeling of scoring a hat trick and being embraced by his teammates. The eyes of the opposing team as they cursed his existence.
Shane writhing below him, so lost in pleasure that he’s unable to form words. Shane laying on top of him with a dreamy look, warm and solid. Shane across the ice with the determined look in his eyes that he gets when he knows what he wants and is going for it. Shane telling him to fuck off and calling him an asshole while trying not to smile.
Shane before he found Rose Landry and the life he was meant to have.
Ilya was so, so lucky that he got to have even a small part of him, even if it was only for a little while. It was the greatest blessing of his life.
He thought that he heard footsteps in his living room, but he ignored them.
It was time to go.