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Ilya considers fucking the flight attendant. It’s a brief, idle thought that resurfaces every time she walks by or leans over with a polite smile or says What else can I help you with, Mr. Rozanov?
Another glass, please. Actually, no, just bring the whole bottle. Thank you.
She would let him, he thinks. They usually do. The flight is ten hours long and Ilya’s sort of convinced that part of him came loose at takeoff and detached when they left the ground, and now it’s stuck drifting somewhere between the Boston skyline and the Atlantic.
The pressure of takeoff never really leaves his body, keeps pressing him to his seat, keeps his hand around the glass like it might slide away otherwise. He’s not sure what he would do if he could move. It’s hard to remember what he normally does on these long flights home because he’s never taken one like this, alone, in the middle of the season, packed for a road schedule. He can’t really get his eyes to focus right. A dull throb sits behind them.
Ten hours. He didn’t really sleep much last night after the call; he hung up and showered and got dressed and realized at some point the whole locker room had gone silent, dead silent Americans like to say, then he left and spent a bunch of boring empty hours staring at the shadows scraping across the rough ceiling of the cheap airport hotel he’d been booked into last minute while the rest of his team flew on to Nashville. He doesn’t remember whether he ever fell asleep, just remembers laying there with his earbuds in to block out the piercing whistle of jets coming and going just a few miles away, waiting until morning for the call from the family accountant about the plane they’d chartered, also last minute, because death always has to happen suddenly even when the dying lasts for years.
Shitty timing, Ilya remembers thinking. In Nashville they were going to recoup the irritating loss to Montreal, and he was going to make good on an old bet and ride one of those mechanical bulls they have in the sports bars down there. He’d make a killing pretending to be drunker than he really was and take home the betting pool. Maybe he’d get one of the guys to record it so he could send the video to Hollander later. Say something about how he’d be good at it too, something about lots of practice, winky face emoji, whatever. Not that it matters now.
The armrest presses against the tender new bruising on his inner elbow. His brain feels bruised too. The first glass of vodka goes down fast and the next – third? – goes down slower. He keeps forgetting it’s in his hand. He’s not really doing anything, or seeing anything in front of his face. He’s probably run his eyes over the whole of the plane and it hasn’t made any impression whatsoever. They’re all the same anyway. The same engine whine, the same compressed air going stale, the same cramped bathrooms, even for private charter, even when there’s also a bedroom in the back. He thinks about going back there. Thinks about asking the flight attendant. She’s pretty enough, he thinks, watching her.
She notices, after a moment. Watches him back. Glances down at his half-empty bottle, lower to his spread legs, then comes over to him, leans in so her tits fill out the gap of her blazer collar and says, “Sir? Is there anything I can help you with?”
Can I help? Do you want me to make you feel better? Women often say this whenever something bad happens. Something that wasn’t supposed to happen. I can make you feel better. They’re always touching him too, which is nice. All slow and gently encroaching touches, hands running up his arm, leaning over, soft breasts pressing against him, tranquilizing touches soothing a path down to his waist, lower, I know what might help. And it does help.
Fucking always helps. It’s a quick fix, cheap and dirty. Ilya likes those.
“No, I’m good,” he hears himself say.
She blinks. “Apologies, Mr. Rozanov.” Straightens up. Smoothes out her skirt. Goes back to the script. “I’ll be by the bar. Just call if there’s anything you need.”
Ilya’s sort of surprised at himself. She would have let him. She wanted to, he knows. What, that’s bullshit, Shane had argued with him once, years ago, you can’t tell if someone wants to fuck you just by looking at them. Ilya had laughed, said, Yes you can, Hollander, is instinct, you are born with it. And then quickly gotten bored of Shane disagreeing and rolled back on top of him, had gotten into his sweaty, pink face, and said I know what problem is, you replaced all your sex instincts with hockey instincts. No, no, is okay, I will teach you–
He thinks now he might’ve entertained Shane’s protests a little longer, just to see that furrow in his brow he gets when he’s convinced he’s right, that pinch to his mouth that’s so easy to kiss away, and maybe Ilya could’ve asked him Can you really not tell? Sex is like a second language. It’s like reading the other players on the ice. Ilya can’t imagine not being able to. They’ve built their careers out of what bodies telegraph to each other. All the little ways that people give themselves away.
Lunch comes on its tray of sealed containers and so does dinner. They’re not enough, so between them Ilya works his way through the plane’s entire supply of tiny bags of salted mixed nuts. He bites through the oily bodies of cashews until his teeth get furry. His leg won’t stop bouncing. He's supposed to be on the treadmill right now. Most of his team is probably in the gym. A few of them are napping. Going over their rituals, getting ready for tonight’s game. Without their captain. Fuck, it’s going to be embarrassing if they lose. Someone else will have to give the pre-game speech. It was so quiet in the locker room yesterday. Someone needs to pick it back up, and Ilya won’t be there to do it.
We won’t release a statement right away, someone from the front office said, but if you’re missing a couple games there’s going to be questions. What are we going to call it? A family emergency?
Ilya had almost laughed. What emergency? His father is already fucking dead.
As the plane starts to descend, the static prickling under his skin picks up to a roar, like an old tv set after the last broadcast. He’s been drunk and half-hard and hazy for hours and now with the lights of home prickling against the windows, urgency is solidifying like a cyst in his gut. It’s too late with the flight attendant, she’s already strapping herself in, but if Ilya doesn’t get off now he’s going to have to do it at home, and even just thinking about it makes him feel like a zoo animal in a cage so he hauls himself up, ignores the flight attendant’s aborted Sir, you need to stay in your seat– and locks himself in the bathroom.
He jerks off silently while staring into the smudgy mirror at the straining muscles in his neck, pulse visibly hammering, tendons pulling taut. Teeth bared as he comes into his palm. Forget the zoo, he looks like something they’d put down.
Okay. Itch scratched. He washes his hands and splashes water on his face. Back in his seat, he watches the flight attendant’s knees gently knock together as they descend, the muscles in her calves shifting, her thighs squeezing together as she angles herself diagonally in the awkwardly-sized jumpseat.
When they deboard he takes the mostly empty bottle with him. Mediocre stuff, but no point in wasting it.
+
After-midnight traffic in Moscow looks the same as always. Ilya searches the city from the window of the private car. Wishes he were in the crowd right now, in some underground club, pressed against a bunch of other bodies, going loose with heat. He should call Sveta. The funeral’s in two days, or tomorrow, depending on how he counts the days, so they have time to go out and try to get lost for a night.
At speed, the passing lights leave smears on his eyelids. The familiar neighborhoods come back to him all out of order. Ilya’s back at the old house before he knows it.
He drops his bag by the door. Kicks his shoes off, shrugs off his coat, wondering as he goes if he needs to rent a suit or if he can cobble something together from his old wardrobe. It only needs to be black, right? His father would never accept anything less than full dress. He’ll be screaming in Ilya’s head all day if he doesn’t wear the suit. Maybe it’ll be thrilling, now that he’s not alive. Like he’s still there in spirit. People love saying that about the dead, but it’s not true. Ilya knows. He’s been wearing his mama’s cross for thirteen years.
The fridge still has the pre-prepared meals for the week, labeled by date. Much like Ilya’s own fridge in Boston. It’s three in the morning and he can’t decide whether to eat the one for tonight or the tomorrow that’s already arrived, so he eats both. It’s fish twice. Healthy fats, no red meat. Not that his father would notice a repeat – would have, past tense. Anyway, it’s fine. There’s not much difference between nutrition planning done by trainers and by doctors, it just depends on what they’re fortifying the body against: the brain eating itself, or the muscles.
Ilya walks into the living room and waits for – something. Nothing happens because there’s nobody here. He’s alone in the house for the first time in years, listening to the specific timbre of silence he remembers sounding so huge and full of possibility as a kid. It sounds very empty now.
Alexei hasn’t lived here since Ilya was sixteen. Polina must be staying with her own family. Her parents, maybe. She’s young enough that they’re probably alive still. According to the framed photo on the mantel they were there when she married his father. Ilya wasn’t, he was in Boston. Hadn’t even heard about it until Alexei called him one evening, soused off wedding champagne and sniffing around for reimbursement on all the money he’d just spent impressing their new relatives. You move out, and now Dad’s got a new wife, he’d snickered, guess he missed you. Ilya had grit his teeth, standing on the porch of his billet while the host family inside set the table for dinner, trying to keep his voice down. That’s so fucked, Alyosha. Laughter down the line, at him, obnoxious and Russian in a way he’d really started to become aware of that rookie year, the very reason he was outside instead of in his little room with its thin walls. Being on the phone with his brother made him sound ugly to his own ears, let alone to paranoid Americans. His billet family, they were nice, yes, but Americans, Ilya had learned fast, get nervous when it’s not in English. They spook like horses in their own country, forget that everyone else has to understand them, not the other way around. English around us, bud, okay? Let’s try to understand each other.
Okay.
He’d spent that first year finding the parts of the city that felt the most normal: markets and restaurants and clubs with real food, real booze, old men with war stories and old women who scolded him for not eating right, while every call from home left him with the funny sensation of homesickness turned inside-out.
Somehow he’s feeling it again, now, in the house he grew up in. He doesn’t really want to stay here, now that he thinks about it, but the idea of calling another car to take him over to his own apartment feels like a monumental effort and he’s tired. He looks around for something familiar.
Finds the old leather Chesterfield. European import from before the wall came down. He and Alyosha used to watch VHS tapes and wrestle on that couch. His mama used to let him curl up there with his head in her lap. He learned to fuck on that couch. His father was sitting there last time he saw him.
There’s a dent in the leather where he was, and a bottle of his pills left on the coffee table. Ilya’s so used to seeing them that he forgets for a second they’re not supposed to be there anymore. Maybe they got left for him, he thinks, and that thought sweeps his mind clear. Blank white, like a silencing sheet of snow. He stares at the bottle and doesn’t think.
Thinks: it’s still more than half-full. Too full. What the fuck. Is this why? Because Ilya wasn’t there, to – to take care of things, to talk to the nurses, the doctors, to really look in their faces and see what they weren’t saying like he can with the athletic trainers when someone’s taken a bad hit, one of the really bad season-ending maybe career-ending ones. He hadn't been here. Had been ignoring Alexei’s relentless calls, hadn’t been sending over any money that wasn’t for an itemized bill, hadn’t wanted to stay on the line when his father called in a panic and then started talking about Ilya’s junior hockey game tomorrow, fucking keep it clean for the scouts, don’t embarrass yourself, your mother will have dinner ready. Had Ilya reminded him on the phone that last time, less than a week ago, Have you taken your medicine today? Ilya can’t remember and his father never can either anymore – couldn’t, past tense.
There are so many pills left in the bottle. It would be hard to swallow them all now, it would take too long, enough wouldn’t make it down before they started coming back up. It’s hard to get the amount right. To find the sweet spot between medicine and poison so the body won’t try to purge it. Most people find it by accident. That’s what the website on the state library computer had told him, back then, when he’d looked it up. Nowadays it’s so easy to look up the lethal dose of anything the team doctors give him. They’re so free with prescriptions in America, it’s insane. Opioids for everything. Not hard to sell, but Ilya’s not stupid, so instead he collects them in his medicine cabinet, which might be a different kind of stupid.
He drops the pill bottle, gives the couch a wide berth, and heads straight for his father’s liquor cabinet. It’s not locked like it used to be when they were children. All the best stuff’s gone.
To Alexei, no doubt. It doesn’t occur to Ilya to be angry about it. What else did he expect? Alexei took whatever he could get his hands on first, and he had a four year headstart. Everything’s a fight in their family. Everything. You know, he talked about you all fucking night, Alexei had accused, later, on that call after the wedding. It’s annoying how he can’t shut up about you. American hockey, big fucking deal, you keep losing. He’d sounded more resentful than annoyed. Ilya, nineteen on a newly-rebuilding team and already tired of this dead end fight, of his big brother’s bloodsucking animosity, had heaved a sigh. Okay? And what the fuck do you expect me to do?
Alexei had expected money, of course. That’s never all he’s wanted from Ilya, but it’s the one thing he knows he can get. Not fucking anymore, Ilya thinks viciously. Then remembers his niece.
So probably it will never end.
“Okay,” Ilya says, out loud to the empty house, in English. The sound of his voice drops like a stone into a pool of water.
He finally takes his phone off airplane mode. Notifications bubble up immediately: emails, Google alerts, a flurry of activity from the Raiders groupchat and a separate text from Marleau, Instagram follows, comments, missed calls from Alexei, from the funeral home, text from Jane, Snaps for easy pussy in Boston and a dozen other cities on the other side of the world, texts from Sveta, an ESPN alert covered by the avalanche too fast to read, missed call from Jane –
Ilya’s chest constricts while his cock twitches. More notifications keep coming in, news from Twitter, the international service charge reminder from his provider, a missed call from the restaurant he booked from the hotel room last night because it’s his father’s favorite, who cares, Ilya’s not reading them anymore.
He leaves his phone on the table and goes to the kitchen window for a smoke.
+
When Shane picks up on the fourth ring, light from the phone screen reflects off the glasses on his face, obscuring his eyes, and for a split second Ilya thinks he’s called the wrong person somehow. Then Shane murmurs a sweet little hey, voice turning up at the end like a question, and yes, that’s him, that soft mouth, those pupils blown in the low light of his bedroom. The pool of vodka in Ilya’s gut is going hot. “You wear glasses?” is his first thought. He’s never seen them before. Has never seen inside that bedroom before, either. Shane looks warm in his bed. The living room of Ilya’s family home is no particular temperature.
Shane’s voice is low and cautious. Sort of fluttery like a bird at a window. He wants to talk, is already asking his regular series of infinite questions. Where are you? Boston? Are you okay? Is your father…? Yes, dead. Ilya does not want to talk. Ilya does not want to be asked questions. Ilya wants to fuck Shane’s pretty, glowing face. Splatter cum on those glasses. He’s never worn glasses himself but he figures it would make Shane’s vision go smeary like he was crying. If Ilya fucks Shane’s face he will probably cry anyway, mess on his glasses or no. Shane tears up so easily. Ilya likes the word for it in English, crybaby, it sounds cute. Uglier when his coach shouts it at the rookies – then it sounds more like the words Ilya heard growing up. Heard often, relentlessly, until the valve inside him shut off.
“You know, you can talk to me about whatever,” Shane is saying. “I wanna help, if I can.”
His earnest face glows like the moon in the little screen. Ilya runs his eyes over all of it, wishes he could touch him: hears a woman’s reassuring voice in the back of his head saying I know what might help.
He leans in. “Take off your clothes.”
Shane’s “what?” comes out fast and hitching, like he’s going to laugh then remembers halfway through to be shy.
Ilya ignores the hesitation, already moving to free his hands, thickening in his joggers as he drops to the floor and props the phone up against one of the bottles on the table. “If you want to help, take your clothes off,” he directs, because Shane often has to be told things directly.
It might not even have occurred to him, Ilya realizes, as Shane’s mouth parts and his head does an incredulous little shake. He might not have been thinking about sex at all when he accepted Ilya’s call. The screen goes briefly empty as Shane drops it on the bed to a rustle of fabric. Crazy, Ilya’s probably been thinking about sex his whole life. He strips his tank top off and settles back against the base of the couch.
When Shane’s face reemerges, it's bare, and his dark eyes are searching Ilya for something. Ilya immediately misses the glasses. They cover the line of his brow and it makes him look more… receptive, maybe is the word. Hiding the furrow that might be there, flattening the dark of his irises into two deep holes that watch Ilya, open and wanting.
“Glasses back on.” Ilya taps his cheekbone. His finger is cold from the bottle he was holding earlier. It feels like someone else is touching him, which is nice. He can’t pretend it’s Shane, though, because Shane has clammy hands, perpetually slightly feverish.
The thrumming that’s been rising under his skin starts to resolve into a pulse like the rhythm of his heartbeat as Shane fumbles them back on for the second time. Ilya’s blood circulates in a rush, his muscles pull tight around his bones, the room around him narrows to the small rectangle of his phone screen where Shane sits, small and waiting.
His lenses catch the screen, and Ilya can see his own hard stare reflected back at him. “Touch yourself,” he says, his mouth moving in the tiny pixelated mirror at a slight delay, “the way I do it.”
They’ve played this game before. Shane usually takes some more convincing, but now he’s being helpful. He nods, and his chin stays tucked toward his chest, eyes lowered. He can never look at Ilya at first. That’s fine.
Ilya watches his hand lift and cup his palm over the spot on his neck that Ilya had kissed that very first time in that hotel room all those years ago. Shane’s lashes flutter, something in his expression settling. He runs the palm down to his chest, rubs at his sternum for a second then slides left, thumbs at a dark nipple.
“Like this?”
Ilya tilts his head. “Shouldn’t you know by now?”
Shane’s nail must catch the skin as he pinches, because he sucks in a shocked breath and his body jolts. Ilya watches the beautiful roll of it, how his shoulders pull back while his chest heaves into the sting, and is quietly amazed at how the sensation can still take Shane by surprise like this. All these fucking years. Ilya can’t wait to get his hands on him again.
For now, he shoves his hand down the front of his joggers and gets a firm grip around himself. Shane’s eyes follow the motion.
“Again,” Ilya tells him, because he can’t tell through the phone screen if Shane’s nipples are perked up the way he likes them to be yet, so he’s going to make sure. “Harder.”
And Shane does, uses his nails again, sucks in a whining breath as his thumbnail carves in just under the bud, spine curling forward then arching again like it can’t decide what’s better, or worse, and Ilya realizes Shane would probably draw blood if he told him to keep going. He kind of wants to see it. He’s never been allowed to leave marks on Shane that don’t have plausible deniability, a phrase Shane always sounds like he’s repeating from someone else – but he could have this: Shane, marking himself, for Ilya. Because of Ilya.
“Does it hurt?”
Shane nods jerkily, glasses slipping down his nose. Ilya wants to bite the straining tendons of his neck. “Uh-huh.”
“I meant your cock,” he clarifies, and he can feel the teeth in his own mouth, and Shane’s eyes are squeezing into a hard blink and now Ilya can see the pinch between his brows, how it hurts, and Shane’s hips below the camera line are shifting a little like Ilya’s reminded him of it and now he can’t think about anything else. He clicks his tongue sympathetically. “Must be hard.”
“It is,” Shane sighs, missing the joke, already reaching down.
Then pausing at his navel, at the look on Ilya's face. Ilya’s not even sure what kind of look it is. Something that makes Shane’s eyes wide. He’s glancing down to the bottom of the screen, where the camera shows Ilya’s wrist disappearing into the front of his joggers. Looks hungry. Lips parted.
“C’mon,” he mumbles, still staring, “You would – you’d touch me like this, you would.” His gaze flicks back up to Ilya’s face. “Right?”
Ilya smiles at him. Shane stares back like a caught rabbit. His chest is heaving, left nipple noticeably swollen. Ilya wants to see pictures later of the dent Shane’s nail carved into it. Maybe it’ll bruise. Maybe Ilya should make him do it again.
“Mm, I might.”
The gleam of the screen light on his glasses make Shane’s eyes look wet, or it’s possible they really are. “C’mon,” he says again. And then: “Ilya. Please.”
Ilya’s cock throbs in his palm. He wants to reach through the screen and flip Shane over and shove it into him, fuck into that tight heat and pinch at that nipple until there’s not a chance it won’t blossom into a nasty bruise and make Shane come without letting him touch himself. He thumbs the head. His voice comes out low: “Or I might not. Maybe I wouldn’t need to.”
Shane’s mouth drops open and then the image jerks, hard. “Shit,” Ilya hears him gasp. Everything blurs for a few seconds as he fumbles for the phone.
When the image steadies again Ilya gets a gorgeous view of the deep flush that’s settled into his chest and neck, enough to make the light freckles along his shoulders almost visible. He’s holding the phone a little closer now. And, oh, that pinched nipple is definitely bruising later. “Hollander,” Ilya starts, trying to hold back a laugh, “What was that?”
The phone tilts upward a bit more. Shane’s ears are bright red. “Nothing. Fuck off.”
“What, were you balancing phone on your dick?”
“No!” Shane yelps, and then Ilya does laugh. “Fuck off, I wasn’t – it was against my thighs, okay, not my fucking dick. Jesus.”
“Your thighs?” Ilya echoes, delighted. “Aw, poor Shane. Do they feel empty without me between them?”
“I hate you,” Shane hisses.
“It’s okay, I know they do,” he coos, and smiles when Shane glares at him. “Okay. Get on your knees.”
“Huh?”
“Get on your knees, I want to see you better.”
“But – my phone, where do I–”
“In front of you.” Ilya waves his free hand vaguely. “On the bed. Use one of your million pillows.”
He catches Shane’s little frown, and then the image is moving again. The microphone gets mostly fabric static, and a distant mutter of There’s not that many. Ilya bites back a smile. Palms himself loosely, anticipation simmering in his belly. Reaches out and angles his phone a bit lower, so more of his lap is visible.
Shane’s already looking when his camera straightens out. Ilya looks back, takes in the thick arm bracketing the side of the screen, down the length of his tight, hard body leaning forward on the bed. And pauses.
“I thought I told you to take off your clothes.”
Shane looks down at his briefs. “I – you did.”
Ilya snaps his fingers, impatient. “Off.” And Shane’s feeling defensive enough to roll his eyes, so Ilya’s gonna have to knock him back out of it again. Won’t take much, he thinks, watching Shane’s dick slap his stomach as he yanks his briefs down his thighs, then shoves his glasses back up his nose. The briefs get tangled up around his legs, fabric audibly sticky. The hunch of his spine reeks of embarrassment – blood in the water for people like them, who grew up in locker rooms, measuring bodies against each other. How did this kid survive, Ilya wonders sometimes. A younger Ilya would have crushed him into tiny freckled faggot pieces and laughed about it to his friends after.
Shane folds his briefs into a tiny square, maybe tinier than usual, and sets it aside, off-camera. He glances over at the phone, lips pinched. Mutters, “Alright,” and sits back stiffly onto his folded legs, cock hanging thick in the gap between them. His hands clench then loosen atop his thighs. Clench, loosen. Ilya waits. His own blank face sits in the corner mirror window of his screen. Shane’s shoulders pull towards his ears, and he takes a breath, then deliberately rolls them back, which leads to a full body squirm, and then he finally settles again, sitting a little lower, heels outside his thighs with the socks still on, easing back against the headboard.
“You look pretty,” Ilya murmurs. Waits for Shane’s mouth to twitch through a denied smile. Then: “Okay, now you start over.”
Shane’s voice cracks when he says, “What?”
Something hungry and mean in Ilya always licks its teeth when he does that. It makes him sound young. A little scared. Like Ilya’s forcing him to do a striptease of his own soft underbelly. He starts jerking himself off lazily, makes sure Shane is watching, and repeats: “Start. Over.” When Shane doesn’t move right away, eyes stuck on the covered movement of his hand, Ilya hardens his voice and barks: “Now.”
Shane meets his eyes. Swallows. His hand comes up and retraces its path: neck, then across his collarbones, down to his sternum, and pauses. Slides to the right this time. Cups his pec, pinches his nipple, digs his thumbnail into it. Gasps softly.
Ilya hums under his breath. He can’t really do much more than massage himself, palm a little too dry, and he’ll spit in a moment but he’s got an idea first.
Shane’s gaze keeps bouncing between his lap and his face. Ilya catches his eye and looks pointedly at his chest, prompting him with an eyebrow. Shane bites back a noise. Ilya can see the tendons in his forearm pull as he pinches himself harder. And harder. “Ah, fuck,” he mumbles after a beat and drops his chin.
“Now the other one.”
The chin comes right back up. “Huh?” Shane blinks hard, glances down at his reddening chest, and his expression twitches like he might cry. “No, but, I already…”
“I said start over. You are doing something new.”
“But,” he looks down again at where he’s already swollen, “you didn’t say–”
“Shane,” Ilya interrupts, voice low and soothing like he’s talking a rookie through the part of a new drill when they think they’re going to throw up, and Shane’s eyes lock onto his, trusting and shiny behind his secret reading glasses, and Ilya lets the smile curve around the next words in his mouth. “I said touch yourself like I would.”
He feels high as he watches it sink in. Watches Shane’s mouth drop open and his cock twitch against his thigh, leaving a smear against the soft skin that gleams in the light of the screen. Ilya wants to put his teeth there. Wants to be the one to touch Shane, pinch and twist until he cries. He wants Shane to cry. Wants to kiss it better afterward.
In slow motion, Shane reaches up and trails his fingers over his pec, circling the swollen flesh, closing his eyes to brace himself and Ilya lets him do it, knowing that’ll make it worse.
Then – god, the noise he makes. His torso jerks like he’s touched an open socket. That perfect arch.
“Harder,” Ilya insists anway, because he can, because it feels good to twist another kid’s arm and make his eyes water, because it would feel better to hurt Shane himself but he fucking can’t. “Harder, Hollander, don’t pussy out now. You think I go easy on you?”
Shane’s eyes slam shut. “You – fuckingasshole,” it rushes out of him in one breath. He’s doing it, though. “Jesus, shit, oh shit.” Ilya can see his fingers going pale. The tendons in his neck going taut. Legs trembling and the shine of his inner thighs getting brighter, wetter. He inhales sharply when he can’t take any more. Plants his hands against his legs and leans forward a little, panting, like he’s just come off a brutal shift on the ice. His hair hangs over his face. Ilya wants to pet it. Pull it. Yank Shane’s head down into his lap and fuck his throat raw.
“What the fuck,” Shane is muttering down to his thighs. His head snaps back up at the sound of Ilya finally spitting into his hand. Stares as Ilya shoves his joggers down just enough to pull his cock out and start fucking his hand. He inhales thickly. Easy for it. “Ilya–”
“Go,” Ilya tells him.
Shane’s grabbing himself and working his fist as soon as the word leaves his mouth. Slick sounds crackle in through the phone speaker. He looks radiant like this, gleaming in the low bedroom light, his hand a blur between his legs. Ilya wants to touch him so fucking badly his teeth ache in his skull. He wants to pin him down flat on that bed, crush him to the mattress, feel that entire powerful body beneath his, every twitch and jerk and leak. Bury himself into that willing heat and pour it all out inside him, and it would be easy, so easy. Shane’s so fucking easy for him. Ilya could fuck himself numb and Shane would take it.
His lower back is twinging from sitting on the polished hardwood floor so long. The world should be narrowing to this singular feverish channel between them, between his legs, but instead he’s untethered and falling backwards to that old place in the back of his head. It’s not supposed to be like this with Shane, not anymore, but –
But it’s not enough. He’s fisting his cock hard enough to hurt and there’s nobody touching him and it's not enough.
Shane’s gasping “Oh, shit, Rozanov,” down the phone from the other side of the world. It rolls off his tongue so naturally; it’s what he’s been saying for years, every time, an automatic babble of shit, Rozanov, from the first time to the last fuck two or three days ago depending on if its today or tomorrow, who cares, he was in Ilya’s bed then, face screwed up, freckles dark under his bright flush, Rozanov as he begged for it and then Ilya afterwards, sated and sweet.
Ilya should be there now, should be fucking Shane in his house – should’ve gone to Nashville and won and come back to Shane opening his legs for him, it should be his, he fucking deserves it, he does, he –
He wishes he could smell Shane right now. All he smells is himself, plane-stale sweat and salt, the lingering cigarette smoke, the sharp open bottle of vodka. He turns his face a little, eyes never leaving Shane, and then his nose is full of the old, familiar worn-leather smell of the couch. He loved that smell when he was younger. The smell of home. Loved how it mixed with the smell of sex. Would bring girls back and fuck them on the couch just for that, and because the risk of someone coming home to see it made his blood sing, made it feel like he was doing something worse, something truly dangerous.
He wants to fuck Shane on this couch: an impossible dream. The idea makes him nauseous.
Ilyusha you’re a pervert, his brother’s voice whispers in his ear. When he says it nowadays it’s with an ugly sneer but the first time he said it Ilya was little and Alyosha was smiling, teasing, because it was his idea, he was the one who told him about that stuff – not that it matters. They’re not kids anymore. And Ilya’s brother was probably right, had been, years before anyone else noticed, even their father. Which doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters now except Ilya’s stupid body going numb on the living room floor rutting into his fist like an animal staring at another man touching himself while his dad’s cold corpse is laying alone somewhere in this city.
Small and very far away, Shane gasps and closes his shining eyes and comes all over himself.
Ilya watches the image on the screen with a harsh static buzzing in his head and tries to hear the shocked-pleasure noises Shane is making and can’t tell if he manages it or if his brain is replaying an old memory. He fucks harder, squeezes, and comes into his palm thinking about very little. Almost nothing.
For a while after that the only sound is breathing and quiet sniffling.
“Hah, uh… okay, that was a little crazy. Right?”
“Mm.”
“Yeah, shit. Um.” Big inhale, slow release. Another sniffle. Did he cry? When Ilya refocuses his eyes, Shane’s got his fingers pushed up under his glasses, rubbing at his sockets, and he’s holding his elbows gingerly away from his chest.
He offers cautiously, “Not bad crazy, though.”
Shane smiles behind his hands, just a little. “No, no, it was – um.” Another big breath. No follow up.
Ilya wipes his hands on his discarded tank top, then remembers it's one of the few he brought. So much for going to the gym. He sits there for another few minutes rubbing his palms against his thighs, watching Shane stare somewhere off camera, vaguely hungry again, wondering how long he’s been awake.
“Is that… sunlight?” Shane asks abruptly.
Ilya blinks and looks over to the windows, where watery dawn light has started filtering through the voile curtains. Notices the whole room is lighter now. “Ah, yes.” He looks back over at Shane, at the lidded, puffy eyes beneath his glasses, and reminds him, “I am eight hours ahead of you.”
“Oh – right, right, yeah,” Shane mumbles. Ilya wonders if he’s ever really thought about it, in all the years they’ve been messaging each other; if he ever did the math when he saw Ilya’s half-drunk end-of-the-night sexts and frowned at the hour. “Wait, shit, did I keep you up?”
“It’s fine. My flight came in late.”
The glasses shift on Shane’s nose as the skin wrinkles. “You need sleep.”
“I needed to see you,” Ilya admits, and then, his bravery immediately faltering, adds, “Missed seeing the dumb face you make when you come.”
“I don’t–” Shane flushes all over again, then loses the fight to the smile tugging up the corners of his mouth. “Fuck off.” And then softer: “Me too. ‘M glad you called.”
Ilya feels the teasing expression he has calcify. This new sweetness of Shane’s, he doesn’t know what to do with it. The sincerity puts his teeth on edge sometimes. Makes him nervous. He sounds very far away to himself, even farther than Shane is, as he echoes, “Me too.”
Then: “Does it hurt?”
“Huh? Oh.” Shane ducks his head, brushes a slack hand over his sternum. “Yeah, I mean… yeah. Um. It’s okay, though, just… you know. Sore.”
He takes it as a question of care. Good, that’s probably what Ilya intended it to be. He should warn Shane how badly it’s going to bruise. He shouldn’t ask for pictures.
“Okay,” he says. “Good.”
Shane’s lips twitch through another denied smile; up, down. He pushes up the bridge of his glasses, then reconsiders and takes them off. He’s studying Ilya again, with that same intent expression that the jumbotron catches when they get a close-up of him on the bench. Is he winning or losing, Ilya wonders. Or maybe they’re on the same team this time.
“Do you, um. Do you feel better?”
“Yes,” Ilya says, because it’s true enough in the moment, and Shane’s brilliant smile makes it feel a little truer. It won’t last, of course. But it’s nice.
+
He wakes up twelve hours later in his old bed, hard and sick to his stomach from some already fading dream: something about the old couch and a woman’s arms around him and his father’s milky eyes. He scrubs the sleep from his face, then scrubs the insistent swell from his cock into the shower drain.
He left his phone almost dead when he passed out, so he plugs it in with the old charger he leaves here and scrolls through the new wave of notifications: Jane, Raiders groupchat, ESPN, Alexei, the restaurant, Twitter, his agent, Sveta, Instagram, blah blah blah. He opens a few text threads and scrolls through them idly, wet hair dripping onto the bed.
[7:03]
Jane: Sleep well.
[15:19]
Jane: It bruised worse than I thought it would :(
Jane: [IMG_1881]
Jane: How the fuck am I supposed to change in the locker room like this.
[10:16]
Alexei: Hey the golddigger wants to know how many seats are reserved tomorrow
[14:42]
Alexei: Restaurant is calling me I thought you handled it
Alexei: Why do I have to fucking deal with this
Alexei: Where the fuck even are you
Alexei: Thought you flew in last night
[17:07]
Alexei: Did your plane crash or something you stupid cunt fucking pick up
Alexei: You always do this
[19:21]
Alexei: Are you serious
Alexei: Fucking drama queen faggot sorry dad’s funeral isn’t about you. Jesus christ
[0:22]
Sveta: are you staying at your apt bc there’s nothing in the fridge heads up
Sveta: i can come over tonight if you want
[9:34]
Sveta: when you’re done getting your beauty rest call me. we’re going out tonight
[18:51]
Sveta: bro where tf are u
He goes back to his text thread with Jane and opens the picture again, then goes back to the bathroom and rubs another out, thinking about fucking Shane on his front and pressing his bruised chest into the mattress. Texts back after: Sorry )))
He calls the restaurant back, confirms the details, texts Alexei what he wants to know. Sends a message to Polina too, even though she didn’t come to him about it directly. She never does. Their chat history is sparse and one-sided.
Then he calls Sveta, who answers the phone with “Fucking finally, Ilyukha,” and declares, “We’re going out, you better have something to wear,” and listens to Ilya root through his closet for something he wore as a teenager that won’t look stupid now a decade later, Has it really been a decade he almost says but that makes him sound old and nostalgic. He decides then that he won’t wear a suit tomorrow, he doesn’t have one here, he brought his best stuff to America and left it there and isn’t that how it goes with stories like his, and people hate him for it but they like the money, isn’t that how it always fucking goes.
“Remember when I wanted to get my ears pierced?” he muses, phone tucked against his shoulder as he pulls on some appropriately tight pants and finds a lone earring in one of the pockets. Given or stolen or forgotten, he couldn’t say now.
Sveta laughs. “I remember when you wanted to get your dick pierced.”
“I still could. I’m serious, Svet, they wouldn’t know unless they were looking except during medicals but the doctors are all pervs anyway–”
“–and then you couldn’t use your dick for months.”
“Ah, yeah. Nevermind.”
Her snorting laughter makes him smile down the phone. He’s missed her face, the smell of her million hair products, her skinny arms looped around him. She doesn’t come over enough anymore. They’re both busy and travelling too much and fucking other people but it shouldn’t matter, not with the kind of friends they are.
“Okay,” he tells her after the final mirror check. “Let’s go, I’m fucking starving.”
“I’m sorry, who just took forever picking an outfit?”
“Whatever, bitch. Where are we meeting?”
In the cab ride over Ilya watches the slick-scraped streets and shuffling streams of people with their thick coats and their heads down; the familiar sluggishness that always creeps in during the long late winter months. He hasn’t seen this side of Moscow in years. It’s different in Boston, more restless, like the people there forget each year that winter can go on for so long.
“You look beautiful, Svetka,” he says when he sees her, because she does. She tugs him down by the neck and lets him bury his face in her sweet-smelling curls, which is nice.
The restaurant she takes them to is solid, with a simple menu and an easy atmosphere. Usually Sveta has a knack for more global places, fancy new kitchens from other countries and immigrant-run holes-in-the-wall, but tonight she picked an old Russian place serving the kinds of meals they were raised on. Ilya quietly wonders if it was on purpose. It feels like a farewell of sorts.
They sit and kill an hour talking. Then they’re off. Roaming from club to bar to club. Most of the ones they grew up in are gone, or sold out to foreign investors, so they go to the newer ones that Sveta’s been finding and introducing him to every summer and make their fun there, dancing and laughing and swaying into people, insinuating themselves into groups of strangers and egging them on: to dance, to drink, to fuck, whatever.
All the same kinds of fun they’ve made since they were dumb young kids, running around slipping cash to bored bouncers and throwing up in back alleys to make room for more booze, cutting class the next day to go lay in the grass of some nearby park, hungover and soaking up the brittle sunshine. Bringing packs of cheap beer and overpriced soda to go skinny dipping in the summertime, ignoring the people staring at their beautiful still-growing bodies, letting them look. Shoplifting lighters, sunglasses, makeup, packs of gum. There was the week Ilya fucked his knee on the ice and they dropped some shitty ecstasy courtesy of Sveta’s shady cousin, Ilya swearing afterwards never again and then doing it again a few days later, Sveta’s laughter ringing in his ears as he staggered into a snowbank, Ilyukha, what the fuck, you’re such a mess, and then falling down on top of him.
And they’d learned how to hunt for a lay together after they learned to fuck: dancing together so other people could see how good they looked and because dancing was fun, kissing too, and sometimes it was just easier to fuck each other anyway. They were good at it and liked each other and everyone thought they were dating for a while so they’d play the game where Sveta would find him with new hickies and an unzipped fly and she’d grind her sharp little knuckles into his arm saying What about me, motherfucker? And sometimes the other boys called her things she wouldn’t have to repeat because Ilya heard them too when she wasn’t around, sometimes it was his friends saying it, and then she wouldn’t want to play around, just wanted to be held, and insisted it wasn’t because of that, just because, she’d say, it’s easier this way isn’t it, and Ilya, lazy, has always liked easy, so he always said, yes, yes, I’ll help you out, Svetka, baby, no need to thank me. When they turned fifteen she stopped visiting him at the rink even though she loved hockey just as much as he did. One of his seats in Boston is hers forever now, not that it makes up for any of it.
Tonight, a few places deep, they’re doing a few rounds of shots with some beautiful people they run into, and Sveta mentions they’re going to a funeral tomorrow and it turns out these people have coke, too, and they’re willing to share. One of the beautiful women lets Ilya snort a line off her skinny chest in a back of the house booth and giggles when he, out of habit, stamps a wet kiss on her neck.
She keeps grabbing at his dick, excited by the blood pooling there. He snaps his teeth at her. Playfully. Goes back in for another line.
He does enough that his dick actually stops working, which he only realizes when he goes to the bathroom and on autopilot his senses narrow to the pretty guy who caught his eye and then locked the door, but his numb body doesn’t. Even as he walks towards the guy he’s not sure why he’s doing it. Follows him into the last stall and presses him up against the flimsy door and stares at the edges of the names carved into the plastic stall divider, the swarm of graffiti. The guy starts to look less pretty up close, pale face twisting, probably because Ilya’s fingers are digging into his shoulders.
All at once Ilya realizes how breathtakingly stupid this is. He makes his expression cruel and hard and says, “What the fuck are you trying to pull?” and steps back to let the guy yank the door open and scramble away. Stands there for a moment after, heart racing. Shifts on his feet and feels the soles of his shoes unstick from the tiles.
The dimly lit mirror is pretty unforgiving. He washes his hands, then glares down at his limp dick in betrayal. Too much coke, really?
He hasn’t done too much coke since he was, shit, what, seventeen? Right before he left. He’d been hooking up with an MSU student at the time, and she’d brought some to celebrate an exam, and he had a bottle from his father’s cabinet and a hand-shaped bruise on his bicep and ringing in his ears. Are you fucking serious? she’d said to the hollow buzzing between his legs. No, no, I can still fuck you, he’d promised, and he had, licking her out until she was shoving his head away and then fucking her on his fingers until she was gasping, tearing up, laughing, stop, no more, seriously, fuck off. She’d been studying to be a dentist, and dealt a little on the side to cover her share of rent on a student flat despite her mom living a few bus stops down because they couldn’t stand each other. Afterwards, sweeping her hair out from under her rumpled tshirt, she’d playfully murmured I’ll miss you. Not for real, of course; she had a boyfriend. Ilya had swiped a thumb through the last crumbs of coke on the coffee table, rubbed it on his gums, kissed her, and left. He doesn’t remember her name anymore.
When Ilya walks back out of the bathroom, Sveta’s at the bar nearby, eyes narrowed. She definitely saw the other guy come out before him. Doesn’t have to ask What the fuck was that and so doesn’t bother.
“They left,” she tells him instead.
“Boo, lame.” Ilya sniffs. Even numb, part of him still aches to fuck. A buzzing is spreading up his torso into his throat. “I need a smoke.”
They weave their way to the exit, Ilya parting the sea of bodies with his own. At some point Sveta grabs his hand, which is nice. She lets go when they slip out the door, cold air reaching in at the first opportunity to wrap around them and slip beneath their clothes. Their sweat will insulate them for a while, but the wind stings at their fingertips.
Ilya shakes out two cigarettes and passes one over. His lighter didn’t make it into these pants, somehow, so Sveta has to dig her own out of her bra. It’s warm and clammy in his hand. He lights up and inhales deeply. Feels the buzz recede a bit.
He’s pretty wasted. Sveta doesn’t say any of that stupid shit that he already knows, like You’re in the middle of a season or They could drug test you when you go back or Smoking is bad for you. Nobody is going to tell him that here. She steals the cigarette out of his hand and presses the cherry to the tip of her own. They breathe together for a while, side by side, bare skin pebbling.
“Back in?” she asks. “Or somewhere else.”
Ilya sucks one last lungful of smoke and drops the butt under his shoe. She does the same. He rubs at the sweat freezing on the back of his neck. “Somewhere else.”
The rest of the night fragments in his head. They’re in another cab, laughing, and Ilya is kissing Sveta’s neck and he’s leaning back against the window saying Sorry, sorry and his head is spinning like the car is crashing but it hasn’t caught up to him yet. And then they’re at the brightly-lit window of a street food stall, rich frying smells humid on Ilya’s face. He squints at a menu and the characters all swim around; he thinks for a brief gut-wrenching second that he’s stopped being able to read Cyrillic before he realizes it’s in Chinese, fucking idiot, he must be more fucked up than he thought. The jianbing is fucking delicious, he gets two more.
“You’re making a mess,” Sveta says, pointing at the shreds of vegetable on the ground at their feet, and then drops a bit of duck on her next bite. Ilya laughs at her until he almost chokes.
They’re stumbling into a corner store for Coke and beer to wash it down. And then they’re in a badly lit hallway where the poster-plastered walls throb with a heartbeat, and Sveta’s out in front of him, holding his hand again, her smile glowing in the dark.
“Death makes you horny,” a girl on the dance floor philosophizes with him. He doesn’t remember who she is, when they collided, what he’s told her. “It makes you want to fuck. You know, ‘cause you want to live.”
Ilya blinks sweat out of his lashes. “Do I?”
“Yeah, man. When my mama died, I fucked around every day for a month straight,” she’s telling him this at a half-shout over the music, shoulders rolling, a visible neon-lit sheen of sweat down her neck. “All I could think about was sex. When they found out I was skipping school I tried to fuck the teacher.”
“Same,” Ilya agrees, chest to her back, matching his breathing to hers. She says something that gets lost in the din and the wash of colored light. “What?” he asks into her ear. Her mouth smears against his jaw.
“Thought you said it was your dad that died?”
“Yeah, this time. Finally.”
“What?” she shouts. The music’s getting louder. Ilya presses his mouth to the nape of her neck, fits his hands over her narrow hipbones, and she sighs, throws her weight back against him, and doesn’t ask anything else. Which is nice.
They’re dancing and then they’re running down the street like little kids and jumping fences and he’s showing her a dumb trick with a stolen bike he learned years ago to impress girls just like her, back when he was younger and their boyfriends were older, which had made it harder, but it’s easy now. They end up in the park, on a cold bench, bike discarded in a snowbank, and Ilya wishes he had more than just a jacket on.
“Where’d you learn that?” she wants to know. He waves her off lazily.
It’s a question he gets a lot and rarely bothers to answer. Often in bars, or over cards, or after sex. Shane never asks him about sex stuff, because he doesn’t like hearing about what Ilya gets up to without him; he only asks about stupid English words, like Ilya is a dog performing tricks when he speaks in another language. Other people like to ask him about the sex stuff though. Hookups, teammates. When did you pop your cherry, bro? during some dumb drinking game his rookie year. After they rephrased into something less fucking gibberish Ilya gave them some equally dumb non-answer like When my balls dropped which got a good laugh, like it was supposed to, because After my mother’s funeral would’ve probably killed the vibe, and anyway he didn’t know the word funeral in English yet.
“I need to piss,” he tells this girl.
“I’ll help,” she says, and goes for his zipper.
“Woah.” They stumble towards a tree together in an awkward tangle. Her hands are fucking cold. “Ah, no, wait.”
“What?” She glares up at him. “You’re hard.” And he kind of is. Or could be.
“I have – someone,” he tries anyway.
“She won’t know.”
Yeah. Her hands are warming up now, and it’s nice, her touching him, it’s so close to what he wants, what he’s wanted for hours, days, but. But.
They end up on the ground because she doesn’t let go, scraping themselves on the bare tree roots and getting snow under their clothes, and it’s so stupid that it’s almost fun. After a while they’re laughing. Stubborn motherfucker, she calls him as he helps straighten out her dress.
“Sorry,” he says, “I know you wanted to help.”
She shrugs. “Hey, man, it’s your loss.”
They wander out of the park. Some dumb American tourists stop him and ask for directions. They’re loudly surprised when Ilya answers fluently. Like a fucking dog learning to talk. Put him on the news, call him Sharik. He tells them the wrong directions on purpose and mutters smugly to the girl, “Hey, how long before they notice they’re lost?”
But she’s disappeared and it’s some fucking kid who replies, asking him if he’s from around here. Ilya turns around. Who the fuck–? There’s a little huddle of them standing nearby. They can tell he’s got money and are probably trying to hustle him, and they’re kind of funny, actually, so Ilya lets them loiter for a while and bum a couple cigarettes from his dwindling pack.
He admits he’s sort of lost himself when Sveta calls him from a café and drops a pin for him. So Ilya dutifully makes his way over there, face to the wind, curls loosing from sweat, basking in the light of the city filtering in through his lashes. He ends up walking by the river for a while. The lights glitter beautifully off the water. Ilya remembers wanting to skate on it as a kid. His mama would have to pull him down whenever he started climbing the railing.
Here he slows, and then stops. Looks out from the railing which is so short now he could almost step over it. If the river ever did freeze this year, it didn’t last. He hasn’t seen it frozen in so long. Never did get to skate on it. If you want to skate, go practice at the rink, his father handed down. So he did. When his mama died he practiced more. Went to the rink every single day during the long gap between her death and her funeral, those weird drawn-out months of men in suits in offices and Alexei not coming home for dinner anymore and his father slamming all the doors in the house.
He met a lot of new people then, pretty older girls at the rink happy to talk to him while they waited for their boyfriends and distant relatives who kept saying over and over that it just was such a shame, that they hadn’t realized how sick she was. Ilya hadn’t either. When he said that the women always hugged him. Over their soft shoulders Alexei glared at him poisonously from the other side of the room. He was seventeen, about to enter the police academy, and nobody was hugging him. So Ilya told the girls at the rink too. They thought it was the saddest thing in the world. Sadder than their boyfriends not making the major junior league.
He went to the game a few days after the funeral with brand new skin stretched tight over his bones and a swagger in his step. Guess what? He felt his teammates looking at him differently. What happened?
No, thirteen year old Ilya insisted, you have to guess.
+
Ilya wakes up to the couch jolting savagely beneath him. For a second it’s his father standing over him and then the dream-memory image clears and it’s fucking Alexei. Looming, mouth pulled into a disgusted snarl, eyes sunken into his skull. Exhausted. He looks as sick as Ilya feels.
“Lyosha?” he hears himself slurring.
Light pierces through the gaps in the curtains in thick, swirling pillars. The room smells like it’s gone stale. Alexei’s stare travels downwards, and the mask of his face tightens further, uglier. For a second his big brother looks like he wants to rip his throat out. Instead he kicks the couch again, with those big heavy fucking boots, which sends another rolling ache through Ilya’s body and he looks down to see that, yes, he’s hard. Again. Still.
He groans and throws an arm over his eyes. Alexei talks over the throbbing pulse in his ears. “You’re such a fuck-up, Ilyusha. Right before our father’s funeral. Jesus. Fucking get up already, it’s starting in an hour,” he’s saying, vehement and loud, “Shit, you’re fucking lucky Dad isn’t here–” then stops.
Ilya peeks out from under his arm and sees Alexei’s gotten a hunted sort of look in his eyes. He’s already in his suit, plain and sober black. Ilya doesn’t have one, he remembers. He peels himself off the sticking leather into an upright position, curling around the throb in his briefs and shivers. Wonders where his clothes went. Where Sveta is. If she came home with him. Or anyone else. Fuck. He needs a shower.
“I’ll be ready in twenty minutes,” he promises, and notices a new scrape on his knee. How isn’t the skin there just all scar tissue by now?
Alexei is quiet for long enough that Ilya looks back up at him. His brother is shaking his head. “Nah, I’m heading out. Need to get the wife. I’ll see you there.”
“Alyosha–”
“I have a family to take care of. Not that you’d understand that.” And he sounds the same now as he did on the phone all those years ago, he talked about you all fucking night, like Ilya’s won something over him because their shitty dad hated him more. Loved him more. Whatever. He thinks he remembers a time when they were close, before all of this, but there was no before their father, was there. And now there’s – what. What’s after?
Alexei stops and looks over his shoulder in the living room doorway. Catches Ilya fixing his cross against his chest. Their mama’s cross. His hand tightens on the wooden frame.
“Must be nice, getting to do whatever you want.”
Heavy footsteps. Brief pause. Slam.
Silence rings through the house again. Dead silence. Ilya finds his phone on the table with a mysterious new crack in the screen. It opens to his text thread with Jane, where a long message is typed out, in Russian, unsent. He catches the word love in it multiple times. Deletes the whole thing.
Must be nice, he thinks.