Chapter Text
When Ilya Rozanov was still smaller than his mama - when he was still mostly only called Ilyusha or Ilyushenka - he learned that he and his body were different things.
His older brother, who Ilya still called Liosha, was the one to point it out in words, though their father had been doing so with his looks for longer than Ilya had realised.
Ilya was tall for his age, six and seven and gangly with joints that stuck out like the creaking ones in Mama’s childhood doll.
He loved to skate. On days he did not have school, his mama took him with her in the mornings to the rink closest to their house and they skated together like dancing. When they were tired they would tie their skates together and hang them over their shoulders and walk home by the bakery to get a warm snack before they went back indoors. Skating was something just for him and his mama, and it made her smile and laugh, and she would talk to him so much, telling him stories on the ice, and singing him songs on their walk.
Liosha did not come to the rink with them. He was too old to hang on their mama’s apron strings is what their father said. While Ilya was at the rink with their mama, Liosha was often out with their father on his patrols or just at the station. In the evenings Liosha would complain to Ilya that he didn’t know how lucky he was, that some of them had to be grown up and didn’t get to go play fairies on the ice with mama.
Liosha didn’t say this to him meanly, he was only teasing and he would still race around outside in the growing dark with Ilya with sticks they pretended were swords or guns or light sabres.
When the big kids at school call Ilya a fairy it is not in the big brother way. Some of the big kids skate at the rink in the mornings too, Ilya hadn’t noticed them because he went to the rink to be with his mama and that was all. They told him - six of them in a loose circle around him, his back to the brick wall behind his classroom - that they skated for hockey practice, for speed trials, for endurance training. They told him that they saw him with his mama and his hand in hers, and the way he twirled on the ice like a little ballerina. Sometimes his mama called him a ballet dancer, she said he was elegant and beautiful. They did not say it like his mama said it. They said he looked like a fairy, like a girl. They called him words that Ilya had not yet understood other than the fact that when his father said it about someone it meant he was angry and the someone was bad and useless.
Over the shoulders of the circle of big kids he saw Liosha approaching. He was the same age as these big kids. He was in their classes. He heard what they said to Ilya. Ilya had seen his Liosha fight before. Scraps in the dirt outside the school walls. Knuckles against skin in the alley between the bookshop and the supermarket. He had stood up for Ilya before, standing up from his group of friends when he’d seen another kid trip Ilya. He had strode after the kid and shoved him hard enough from behind that he went down to his knees and scraped the skin off his palms.
Liosha did not start shoving here. Instead he looked at Ilya, hard, his eyes holding tight to Ilya’s. He said; “Don’t just stand there,” he said. “This is where you fight back, Ilyusha.”
One of the other big kids laughed, and while some of the others jeered, the biggest one spoke again, clapping Liosha on the back. “Dumb and a girl,” he said, eyes alight. “Aleka, I don’t think you have a brother, this is obviously a baby sister. What is she going to do? Cry at us? Put on her frilly pink tutu and dance at us?”
Liosha had shoved a little then, but only to push his way into the circle, and then to shove at Ilya’s shoulder while hissing; “Fight them. Hit them.”
“I don’t want to,” Ilya had whispered back. He did not cry like the big kids said he would. No one in their house was allowed to cry.
“You are not a baby, Ilyusha,” Liosha chided him. “You are big, tall boy, and if you don’t show that you are tough, they will do more than tease you.”
Ilya was big and tall, in his own class. He was head and shoulders above everyone except for one girl who was very sullen over her height. His mama said it made him even better on the ice, said he was graceful.
The biggest boy leaned in to put his face closer to Ilya’s. His breath was all garlic and sausage. He opened his mouth to say something else that Ilya could tell would be cruel; based on the sneer on his mouth.
He had watched Liosha throw a punch, and take a punch. Had seen his father throw punches. Had seen how they put their weight into it, how they leaned in. Liosha had shown him once where you were supposed to put your thumb - only after Liosha had broken his throwing a badly formed one.
Liosha at his side Ilya knew that he had been given a chore to do. Liosha always pursed his lips the same way when he told Ilya to go get some wood in for the fire, or to do the dishes, or to go stay quiet in his bedroom. The older and bigger he got, the more chores he was given. If you did not do your chores you got hit, or yelled at, which Ilya didn’t like, but he understood it.
So he understood this too. It would not be his father hitting him or yelling at him if he didn’t do this, it would be the big kids here, instead.
His first punch hit the boy in the side of his mouth, and he felt wet spit and then blood on his knuckles. Liosha joined in after Ilya had thrown his third punch, satisfied that Ilya had done enough of the work.
-
Ilya did not go to the rink with his mama anymore. Someone at school had said something to someone else and someone else had said something to his father, and his father had come home from work two days after Ilya had been in his first fist fight, and had looked at Ilya very seriously, putting his hand heavy on Ilya’s shoulder.
Ilya had expected to be told off. His mama had told him off the other day, more worried than anything as she cleaned his knuckles and his face and sighed about the bright bruise already blooming on his cheekbone.
His father did not tell him off. His father was pleased that his boy was so big and strong. His father had heard from someone who had heard from someone that Ilya was good enough on the ice that his parents should think about putting him into hockey.
-
During his first year of hockey Ilya learned that his body could do much more than he thought it could. He already knew he could skate fast and smooth, but he and his mama had never spent more than an hour on the ice. Now he spent hours every day just skating laps and skating laps and skating laps while his muscles burned and his mouth tasted bloody with every breath.
He learned that for the first time in his life he could be something his father approved of. When he came home bruised after a skirmish his father would clap him on the shoulder. When he was put into the class above his peer group his father told him good job. When he came home with the title of Captain of his team at ten years old his father gave him his first glass of vodka.
He learned that if he pushed past the point where it hurt he could land in a place where he didn’t care that it hurt.
His mama did not like it. The way he came home with bruises all over because the kids in his team didn’t like that their captain was younger than them. Or the broken fingers from dirty sticking in dirty games that no one would call anyone out for because sometimes a dirty game was the best way to learn.
He learned how to hold his face to hide the hurt, to make his mouth smile like he didn’t care about anything.
His body did this chore for him - taking a beating, painfully building muscles - and in reward he got his father’s approval. In much lesser reward he also got his mama’s worry, which, while he loved her care, he wished she would worry less. Wished she could see that he knew the way the world worked and he could fit into it. Wished she would not remind him that she loved her gentle Ilyushenka and that he did not need to hide, not from her.
Worst reward for all of this was Liosha becoming Aleka becoming angry all the time. Angry at Ilya for diverting their father’s attention and praise. Angry at Ilya for changing the shape of their day to day life because Ilya had to go to practices, and games, and away games, and awards. Angry at Ilya because Ilya was still growing so quickly and he was only eleven and nearly the same height as Aleka. Angry at their mama for everything. Angry at their mama for still coddling Ilya even though Ilya got everything and Aleka never got anything.
Ilya learned from his coaches, from his teammates, from the media that surrounded the games, that if he kept playing good, if he kept pushing his body into the place where he didn’t care about the pain, he could start earning more than approval and medals for it. He could earn money - real money, lots of real money. He could earn status, and fame.
If he could do that, make it worth it like that, he could make his mama see why it had to happen. He could take her back to the rinks to dance together, because he would have enough money and a big enough body that nobody would tell him he was not supposed to. Even his father would let them, if Ilya did well enough. Maybe his mama would laugh again, and tell him stories again, even though Ilya was too old to be told stories. If he had power he could have stories.
-
When Ilya was twelve he learned that the only thing he could count on out of giving his body to hockey was the chance to leave. When he was twelve he learned that sometimes, when you tried to push through the part that hurt, you couldn’t get to the part where you didn’t care about it. When Ilya was twelve, and he hadn’t danced on the ice with his mama for nearly half his life, he came home to an empty house that should not have been empty and found his mama as cold as the ice he had only just stepped off, half an hour previous. He had been taller than her by then. A whole head taller, he could put his chin on the top of her head. She had still always gathered him up in her arms, though, like he was still small enough to fit with ease. Had still pressed kisses to his forehead, and called him her gentle Ilyushenka.
Afterwards, Ilya’s father and Aleka only ever called him Ilya, like he was a stranger to them even as he sat around the table with them.
No one at his house would hug him now. He would come home from school, from practice, from games. He would come home wearing bruises and breaks and bumps. No one would fuss over him or pull him into their arms or kiss his forehead or gentle him into putting his head in their lap to have his hair stroked.
Ilya was twelve when he learned that when you couldn’t push through to find the part where you didn’t care about the hurt, you could distract from it instead. The hurt would stay there, but the distraction would be bigger and better until it was almost like not caring.
He was still tall for his age, and hockey made him bigger, stronger. He had to carry himself like he was older so that his teammates would listen to their younger captain. He had to smile like everything was fine because that was what you did. His coach’s son, Sasha, was only a year or so older than Ilya, but he was already so much more knowledgeable about the world and how to twist it until you could cover up the hurt.
They snuck into dance clubs together, dressed in clothes stolen from Aleka’s wardrobe and stores without good enough security to catch Sasha’s sticky fingers.
Ilya learned to kiss in those clubs. Plenty of girls there who were also too young for the club but still older than Ilya, who already knew how to kiss and were happy to teach him. Sasha told him that it was all down to Ilya’s heavy curls and his broad shoulders, how his body seduced people for him and he got to reap the benefits.
Ilya learned that when you made someone feel good, sometimes they would hold you afterwards. Sometimes they would hold you, and stroke your hair, and kiss your forehead. And it was a good trade. A good distraction.
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By the time Ilya is drafted to the Boston Bears, when he is called Rozanov more often than anything else, he has it to an art. The give and take, the trade that life is. He has already gotten so much from his body. He is in America, in an apartment he bought with his own money, in a job that he is so good at and even enjoys. He is away from his father, away from Alexei. He is beginning to have fame, even if it is mostly paired with Shane Goody Two Shoes Hollander.
He knows how to protect himself, on ice and off it. He has his friend Svetlana as a stand in for Russia. He can pick up women at clubs and parties and get as much affection as he wants.
He can drink until he’s numb, and then fuck until he can feel something again, and then wake up the next morning and play hockey. His body is good to him. Provides him with pain and relief in near equal measures.
He is in his rookie year, and the commentators are all saying it’s only up for him from here on out. They see bright things in his future.
One of the bright things Ilya sees in his future is the rivalry that has been made between him and Hollander by the league and the media. Especially bright because Ilya has already pressed his luck with Hollander, and discovered a new type of distraction. A distraction with freckles Ilya wants to lick, and now has, and a mouth that is eager to be on Ilya’s body. Hollander is like a rivalry all on his own, the way he is so obviously wanting and trying not to want. It makes Ilya determined to keep pressing all the buttons he can find so that Hollander tips further into the want of it all. He can see that Hollander understands it - the push and pull of life. He sees how uncomfortable Shane is under the eyes of cameras - something he is constantly under in his chosen profession - and how he pushes through for the reward of… Ilya is still not entirely sure what Shane’s reward is, given how obviously he seems to restrain himself from most pleasures. Hockey, probably.
Ilya looks forwards to any and every game that will bring him and Hollander into close proximity, any chance to try a new way under his skin or into his mouth. A new way to feed the rivalry.
He takes a bad hit in his first official game, takes a stick just under the eye. The team doctors says if he was just a bit less lucky it could have taken his eye out. But it didn’t. It didn’t even shatter his cheekbone. He gets away with a nasty cut and nastier swelling, and his team earns a power play and a goal out of it.
“Don’t let it put you off,” Marlow tells him after the game. He swings his arm over Ilya’s shoulder companionably, squeezing him against his still sweat stinking body. “The checks aren’t usually so bad.”
“I have worse,” Ilya replies, keeping his face in an easy, loose grin. Lets his head loll back onto Marlow’s shoulder. Marlow is big enough that if Ilya really leaned back, he could hold him up bodily. “Is game, I expect for hits. What we are paid for, yes?”
Marlow grunts, grins, scrubs his hand with relative care through Ilya’s also sweaty hair, like he’s a dog panting against Marlow’s leg. “We’re paid to play,” he says.