Work Text:
Ilya sits in the quiet dark, in an unfamiliar hotel room in Ottawa, holding an unlit cigarette between his thumb and index finger.
The loss was heavy, filling the empty room with a palpable feeling of dense; visceral self-loathing that began to suffocate him.
Ottawa, they lost to Ottawa. Badly. Four to One. He didn't even score the singular goal the Bears had to their name.
He hears his father's sneer in his mind, Though long dead he may be; he lives on in Ilya's mind, feeding on his sorrow and burrowing in his darkest thoughts.
He replays the game in his head, every shot he could have,
would have,
should have made. The bruises, like wine spilled across his collar bone, dripping to his side from being slammed into the boards - a physical reminder of his shortcomings. Ilya liked the physical reminders, the pain illustrated on his skin providing clarity -forcing him to confront his own failure.
He felt so childish, feeling so dejected after a bad game. Most people pick themselves up and say "well, it happens" and go get drunk with their team in a sad little bar in whatever city they just got their asses handed to them in. Most people don't feel this way.
"< pick yourself up, come on. I do not want to hear this whining from you. >"
Backhanded, nose bleeding. A red mark blooming across his cheek. A sniffle. But not a sob. Never a sob.
Was he going to feel this way every single loss?
Was he going to feel this way, always?
Like the walls were closing in on him? Like the air supply was cut, and he was desperately clawing at his throat as the asphyxiation took hold.
Every day felt bad, bleeding together in a congealed amalgamation of months. Strung together like beads of blood on the wire thin slit of a wrist.
Ilya was blindsided by the incessant push and pull happening in his head, the knife's edge he was poised upon. Was he going to do this?
It was a whim, he told himself.
A selfish thought supported by selfish reasoning. He was so selfish. The words tasted like expensive Russian cigars and his father's cologne.
He had no one. No one for longer than a night, who cared only until the light flickered though the drapes and they picked their clothes up off the floor and left. He had nobody left to care about the scars, to look dejected at the sight. To run their fingers gently over them, like his Mama once did to the contusion left by his father's wedding ring connecting to his adolescent cheekbone.
If he hurt himself he wouldn't hurt anyone. He wouldn't hurt anymore.
To stifle the thought, he opened the window beside him and lit the cigarette.
His hand, unoccupied, pushes the hem of his shorts up and trails gently along the thatch of scars, not exactly faded but no longer such an angry pink. More of a muted purple, a concession that the years between himself and his past provided.
He thinks about his father's reaction to those scars in their creation.
No matter that he had tried to hide it. A missing razor blade, a bloody tissue, a slight limp and stumble on the ice. A police officer would be able to discern these minute details easily. Ilya was foolish for believing otherwise.
The blood had pooled around his ankles in the shower, and the hot water stung his skin. When the bleeding stopped, he took every precaution to hide the evidence. But it was not enough.
He wanted it to be painful, for his father to see. He wanted his father's resolve to break. He wanted to be held again, even if it was out of the pure regret of a man who realized what he had pushed his son to do to himself. But instead his father screamed, in anger. Calling Ilya weak, disgusting. Real men do not do these things Ilya. Pick yourself up Ilya. Come on, I do not want to hear your whining. Ilya.
His fingers run over the raised tissue - old yet thick and mottled - over and over in a soothing motion. The scars bunch together, forming furrows that his fingers press between in order to ground himself.
His fingers ache, pressing into the grooves of the scars like the needle that reads a record. Would those scars tell him something new he hadn't already heard?
He barely registers that his cigarette is burnt down to the filter until the ash falls on the table. He curses in Russian, a good cigarette wasted in dissociation. He reaches for another, but doesn't light it just yet.
Leaning on the windowsill, Ilya lost himself in thought. About his Mama, mostly. He was becoming... like her, he was sure. He wouldn't have known, couldn't have - if she ever cut herself just to feel real - just to feel. But she took her life, so she would stop feeling. He doesn't want to feel, or maybe he does. Maybe he wants to feel, but not as much, or more. Normalcy, probably.
An ache forms in the pit of his stomach, a clawing, violent ache that threatens to tear him apart from the inside. A wolf clawing inside his ribcage, a burrowing emptiness that registers as sickness. A wrongness. He misses his Mama, he misses the soft way her hand would brush the tears from his cheeks after his father had screamed, he misses the way she would apply balm to his red skin after being stricken. At the time, Ilya couldn't help but resent her just a little. Why did his Mama leave, why did he have to brave the world alone? The cold, unforgiving hand of his father; the cruel bite of the sting of the skin he struck. At twenty six, after 14 years, Ilya can finally sympathize with her. He feels it, too, the ache she did.
Out the window, he stares into the night. He wonders about the lives of the people on the street below, and decides that he won't taint their days by jumping to his death. And when he finally lights the cigarette he savours it, feeling the tight burn in his lungs as he inhales. And when he feels satisfied, he presses it out on his forearm.