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Alexei was four when Ilya was born.
Ilya was tiny, wrapped in a dotted blanket and cradled in Mother’s arms. Alexei stood by the foot of the bed, his gaze flickering between Mother, Ilya and the doctor talking to her.
He clutched the blanket covering Mother’s feet in his hands, unsure where to go.
“You want to come say hi to your baby brother, Alyosha?” Mother asked tenderly when the doctor left the room to talk to Father outside. Alexei nodded.
Slowly, he rounded the bed and walked up to her. Ilya looked weird up close. Wrinkly and shiny and soft.
“Go on, sweetheart.”
Ilya was awake, bright blue eyes staring straight at Alexei. He was quiet; the only sounds coming from him were soft breaths. Alexei’s heart clenched. When he reached out his hand, his fingers touching Ilya’s palm, the small hand closed around them.
Immediately, he looked up at Mother. Her eyes sparkled, a smile on her lips. Her bangs were wet, plastered onto her forehead and she looked tired, but he had never seen her smile so brightly before.
It made him smile too, a laugh tearing from his chest as the tiniest fingers he had ever seen dug into his own finger.
“What do you think of him?”
“He’s small," Alexei said.
Mother laughed, a twinkling sound that drowned out the hum of the loud ventilator and the sound of footsteps in the hallway.
“He is. But he’ll grow bigger. Just like you did.”
Alexei wasn’t sure about that. Ilya was smaller than most of his plushies, so how would he become someone as big as Alexei?
But Mother said he would, so maybe one day Ilya would be even taller than her.
Ilya was still staring at him. He looked like he would break if he were dropped. Alexei decided then and there that he would make sure no one ever dropped him, that he never broke like the teacup Alexei accidentally knocked off the table last week.
It had shattered into millions of pieces.
“Do you want to come up into bed with me?” Mother said, reaching out a hand towards him.
Reluctantly, he withdrew his hand from Ilya’s grip, meeting little resistance as Ilya’s hand opened again.
Taking Mother’s hand, he was pulled up into bed. She shifted, moving to the side so he could lie beside her.
She guided Alexei’s head to rest on her chest, right next to Ilya.
“You’re a big brother, Alyosha.” Mother started carding her hand through his hair, her long nails gently dragging across his scalp, sending shivers down his body. He loved when she did that. “So that means you need to look after your brother, your little Ilyshenka.”
“Mine?”
Ilya was still looking at him, and up close his eyes seemed like the sky on winter days with a few specks of green, creating a florid pattern Alexei couldn’t fully trace.
“Yes. Your brother.”
His baby brother.
“What if I can’t protect him?” He asked, suddenly afraid that Ilya would shatter like the teacup. His brother looked fragile enough. Squishable.
“I know you can.” Her hand was still warm in his hair. “I know you’re going to be a great big brother, sweetheart.”
Maybe it wouldn’t be hard to protect him. Alexei was the strongest in his class in kindergarten and the second fastest.
Ilya closed his eyes, his breathing evening out. Alexei didn’t know anyone could fall asleep that fast.
His baby brother. Alexei drifted off quickly after, warm and cozy and content.
It took almost half a year before Mother smiled like she did that day again. She was sad and tired most of the time, her eyes not sparkling like that day in the hospital for ages. Still, Mother was never more than an arm's length from Ilya, his brother attached to her hip. Father worked a lot, and he scolded Mother a lot for not being happy anymore.
Alexei didn’t understand why she was sad.
Alexei was impatient to play with Ilya. But Mother always said he was too small and too young, that he would have to wait a few more years.
So instead, he used to sit by Ilya’s crib, sometimes holding him with Mother watching over, and he would whisper stories into his ear because he figured it must be boring to not be able to play.
He told Ilya about great adventures and of brave tsars fighting grand battles with wolves and lions by their side. Told him about who Alexei was, just so Ilya wouldn’t forget.
When Ilya was five, Alexei started helping him to ride his bike without training wheels because those were for babies, and Ilya was five. He had gotten big, just like Mother said, but he was still smaller than what Alexei knew he had been when he was five.
“Don’t let go!” Ilya shouted as Alexei struggled to hold onto the end of the bike, his legs moving quickly to keep up with the pace as the road turned downhill.
“I’m not going to let go. Calm down!”
“You sure?”
Alexei was starting to pant heavily, but his legs kept moving.
“I promise.”
And Alexei didn’t let go — not until a rock got stuck in the front wheel causing Ilya to crash, taking Alexei down with him. His breath was knocked out of him when he hit the ground, while Ilya tumbled onto a lawn right next to the road.
But he never let go.
When he got his breath back, he prepared for crying from Ilya, but instead laughter filled the air.
He managed to brace himself up on his elbows and a meter or two ahead of him was Ilya lying splayed on the grass with his limbs every which way.
“Did you get hurt, Ilyusha?” Alexei asked as pulled himself up on his legs walked over, but Ilya was still giggling. He was dirty, a big scrape on his knee and palm but he was smiling so brightly.
“I flew!”
“Humans can’t fly, stupid.”
“I did.”
Two small hands grabbed onto his ankle and, with a surprising amount of force, dragged him down, and then Ilya was on top of him, grass in his hand he tried to shove into Alexei’s face. Ilya was still laughing, and as Alexei’s face became streaked with dirt, he found himself laughing too. He managed to get ahold of Ilya’s arms and shove him off, and his brother rolled down onto the grass again.
They lay there panting for a while, the early afternoon sun hot and the sky the same color as Ilya’s eyes.
The bike’s handlebar was bent and the steering wasn’t working, so they had to drag the bike the entire way back.
Father scolded them when they got back home covered in dirt and scrapes, and although Alexei’s cheek stung and reddened after Father was done berating them, he didn’t regret the day.
“Sweethearts!” Mother called, ”Come here and look!
“What is it?” Alexei asked as he took Ilya’s arm and pulled him along to where Mother was kneeling in front of one of her flowerbeds.
The early midday sun was half covered by white clouds. One looked like a rat, and one looked like a heart. Ilya said one looked like a star but Alexei had disagreed.
“Remember last year when I planted flowers and told you two little doubters that they would bring a lot of butterflies?”
Ilya nodded his head quickly, and Alexei tried leaning around Mother to see. She turned her body and gestured with her hands.
“Looks like your Mama was right,” she said smugly.
On the flowers were more butterflies than Alexei had ever seen at once.
Bright colors and fluttering wings.
Gently, she grabbed their hands and pulled them down next to her.
“Wow. They’re so pretty, Mama,” Ilya said, trying to touch one and then frowning when it flew away to another flower.
“You know what this means?” Mother whispered conspirationally, lowering her head to get close to them. Ilya and Alexei leaned forward.
“What?” He asked eagerly, and Ilya echoed his words.
“This means…” And then she poked at their foreheads with her muddy hands. ”That you shall never doubt your very wise Mama ever again.”
Ilya laughed as she started tickling him, and then Alexei joined until Ilya was kicking and rolling away.
“Let’s get Mama, Ilyusha,” Alexei declared, and Mama laughed before she stood up, brushing off her knees.
“You have to catch me first!”
After a few minutes of running around, laughter making him pant harder with every step, they managed to catch up to her.
She fell down dramatically on the grass, dragging them down with her, and then Ilya and Alexei tickled her while she laughed and laughed.
“Where are my little princes who help their Mama instead of tormenting her?” She complained afterwards, her flushed face matching Alexei’s and Ilya’s.
His throat ached from how hard he had laughed.
“I’m still here!” Ilya exclaimed, climbing up in her lap, and Alexei rolled his eyes.
“Sell out!”
Mother stood up with Ilya in her arms, spinning around a few times until Ilya was giggling again.
“Is my little prince hungry?”
Ilya nodded, her face now serious. ”Super hungry.”
“How about you, Alyosha?” She asked, and Alexei grumbled for a second just because he could.
“Maybe.”
Ilya was playing with her hair before grasping the cross dangling from her chain, and she hummed contemplatively. At an awkward angle with Ilya still in her arms, she managed to get her hand to her face and tap at her chin.
“There’s a problem, however.”
Alexei frowned. ”Problem?”
“I only cook for princes!”
Ilya giggled and Alexei crossed his arms. Mother could be so annoying sometimes.
“But since my little Alyosha is so cute, I’ll make an exception.”
“I’m not cute!” He protested because Alexei was cool. Not cute. Cool.
“Whatever you say, sweetheart.”
A few days later Father was screaming at Mother. Alexei didn’t know why. Sometimes it felt like Father never needed a reason to be angry. She screamed back and then something shattered
Mother always told him to stay in his room when Father got like this.
So he did, and then she was crying, and Alexei pulled his knees up to his chest and prayed for Father to stop.
She had a cut on her forehead, just by her hairline, the next time he saw her.
It left a scar, a faint but sharply straight line.
Father worked a lot. Alexei was happy he did.
Him and Ilya played a lot together, and as the seasons changed, the games they played did, too. Snow pressed into each other’s shirts turned to soccer played for days on end during summer, skating on frozen lakes and watching the tadpoles by the crease turn into frogs early summer.
They fought sometimes, too.
“Give it back!” Ilya cried, but Alexei just held the plush bunny higher in the air.
“I’ll give it back if you can reach it.”
Ilya jumped, but Alexei was much taller, and he laughed as Ilya’s face turned redder and redder.
“Alexei!” His mother’s voice cut through, the use of his full name making him freeze.
“He’s not giving my bunny back," Ilya whined and Mother crossed her arms.
“Alyosha. Give it back.”
“He drew in my book!” Alexei defended indignantly.
“You still can’t take Ilyusha’s things. You’re being mean to your brother.”
Ilya jumped again after the bunny and almost got to it, so Alexei raised his arm higher.
“But he drew in my book! My favorite one. With black sharpie. It’s destroyed!” Alexei repeated with a whinge in his voice, because it was Ilya who started this, not him.
His arm started aching from being in the air so long. Ilya had stopped trying to get to the bunny, instead walking over to Mother, pulling at her skirt with his hand.
“I didn’t mean to,” Ilya said, his face still wet. ”I just wanted to draw the cat I was reading.”
“So you did it in my book? You have paper!”
Mother crossed her arms, fixing him with a stare. ”That’s enough. Give it back to him.”
She always took his side when they fought. Ilya was younger; Alexei needed to be more patient, needed to understand and be a good older brother, but that wasn’t fair.
It just wasn’t. And Ilya was the one who started it.
“Fine!” He shouted and threw the bunny as hard as he could. It hit the wall with a loud thud. Ilya choked on a sob before he let go of Mother and ran to it.
“Alexei! Apologize to your brother,” Mother scolded, and Alexei threw his arms out, his heart beating fast.
“Why should I?”
Mother walked over to Ilya, crouching down beside him, and took his face in her hands. Then she froze for a second.
“Did you hit him?” She asked loudly, just bordering on a scream, her voice cold, and Alexei paused. She almost never raised her voice at him.
“I pushed him and he fell. That’s not my fault,” Alexei said but he still swallowed, guilt uncomfortably coiling in his stomach.
“You better be grateful I’m not telling your father.”
Sometimes she threatened to, but she never did. The fading bruise on her face was still stark in the white light from the ceiling light. He knew no matter what, she always tried to get in the way when Father got angry at him or Ilya.
Sometimes Alexei wondered why she always said so when she would never do it. Still, it always worked on Alexei.
“Do what you want! I don’t care!”
Before he slammed the door after him, he could see Mother hugging Ilya, who was clutching his bunny in his arms, tears still streaming down his face.
“Bunny’s alright, Ilyushenka,” her voice carried softly. “It’s okay.”
No one cried when Father was home, and Ilya only did when he got hit hard enough. But when he wasn’t home, Ilya always seemed younger. Or maybe he just seemed his age.
A soft knock on his door after he skipped dinner.
“Alyosha.”
The book with the cat in it lay thrown on the floor.
“Can I come in?” Mother asked.
“Leave me alone!” He shouted but Mother still opened the door. Alexei rolled over on his bed so he faced the wall. The bed dipped down next to him when she sat down.
“We’ll get you a new book,” Mother said gently. She didn’t seem upset at him anymore.
“It’s not the same.”
Because that book he had gotten on his fifth birthday. He couldn’t read it by then, but the pictures were bright and colorful, and Mother used to read it to him at night. The spine was cracked and the edge creased.
“You always take his side,” he mumbled.
Every time they thought she always did. It was always Alexei who needed to apologize, always Alexei that got scolded by Father. Almost never Ilya. He didn’t understand why.
“He’s younger than you, Alyosha. He doesn’t know any better. As his big brother, you need to be more patient.”
There it was again. Patience. He always needed to be patient, but he didn’t want to.
“But he always ruins things!”
“He’s your brother, sweetheart. You’re the one supposed to look after him.”
“It isn’t fair!”
Her soft hand started stroking his back, her nails gently scratching at his skin, and for a second he closed his eyes and let himself enjoy it, but then he shrugged her off, burying his face in his pillow again.
“You can’t shove him again. That’s not okay.” Her voice was stern, and Alexei felt the same guilt from before emerge.
“Is he okay?”
Her hand touched his head, fingers through his hair, and this time he didn’t push her off. Alexei didn’t turn to face her though, still staring at the wall as his eyes watered.
“He is.”
Mother sat at the bed for a long while in silence. She sighed a few times, but it didn’t sound annoyed. She sounded tired.
Then she left and the next day a new book was lying on his desk when he got back from school.
He threw out both the old one with Ilya’s stupid cat drawing and the new one.
The next evening, Ilya opened his door without knocking. It closed softly after him and Alexei sat up in bed, rubbing at his eyes. He had just been about to fall asleep and his mind was hazy.
For a second he thought he had been dreaming because Ilya was just standing awkwardly in the doorway in silence, but then:
“I’m sorry for drawing in your book,” Ilya whispered into the dark.
Alexei didn’t respond, and then footsteps got closer, and a finger poked his leg.
“What?” Alexei scowled because he wasn’t going to apologize to Ilya if that was what he was waiting for.
“I’m sorry about your book,” Ilya just repeated as if he thought Alexei hadn’t heard him.
Alexei sighed, the irritation having lessened since yesterday. “Just don’t do it again.”
Ilya’s hand grasped the covers softy. ”I promise.”
“Can I sleep in your bed?” Ilya asked after a few seconds, so quietly Alexei almost didn’t hear him.
“No.”
“I had a nightmare.”
Alexei considered it for a few seconds.
“Is that the only reason you said you were sorry? So you could sleep in my bed?”
“No.” Ilya still wasn’t moving, still holding the cover.
Through the light streaming in through the curtains, he could just barely make out finger-shaped bruises wrapping around Ilya’s wrist.
He shoved a pillow next to him and pointed. ”This is your side, and this is mine.”
Ilya jumped into bed before he could even finish speaking.
Alexei thought that after Ilya grew big like him, Mother wouldn’t spend all her time with Ilya anymore, but she still did.
Once, when Ilya was nine, he kicked a ball indoors right into a side table with a large vase on it. The table was knocked over, and the vase shattered. Father used to tell them to never touch things made out of glass, to never touch anything that could break.
That vase Father had received from some man at his job, whose name or role Alexei didn’t know, but he knew enough to understand that it was important.
Ilya froze as horror passed over his face.
When Father got home, just minutes later, and they were in the middle of trying to get rid of the shards, he was absolutely livid.
“Which one of you did this?” Father said. He sounded calm now, but Alexei knew that was worse than the times he screamed at them.
Ilya was completely frozen, his still-so-tiny hands aquiver as they held one particularly large shard. They had thrown the ball through the window to the garden, but Father had caught them playing soccer inside before, so he must know what had happened.
Before Ilya could gather up the courage to speak, Alexei stood up with his hands folded behind his back.
“It was me.”
Father nodded once, his face still red and eyes steely. “In my study, Alexei. Now.”
Ilya snapped his head up to look at Alexei. His hand twitched, as if wanting to reach for him.
“Go to your room, Ilyusha,” Alexei said, looking away and ignoring the quiet protest.
The walk to Father’s study was always heavy, trudging slowly as if heading to his doom. He liked to imagine that he was a hero in the books he read, going to take his punishment for the betterment of the kingdom, sacrificing himself for his people.
It never made it hurt any less, though.
They argued a lot as Ilya grew older. It was stupid fights, really. Who got more of the lemonade Mother made, who touched whom, and which channel they were going to watch on the TV.
They shoved at each other, Alexei banging on the bathroom door as Ilya hid inside after landing kicks on Alexei that would bruise.
He always had to hold back, however, because Ilya was sensitive, like Mother always said.
But no matter how much they argued, they always made up in the end.
Alexei wasn’t sure if something shifted, or if it had always been like that, when Ilya started getting good at skating. Because soon the attention on Alexei lessened and the attention on Ilya grew.
Or maybe it shifted long before — when Ilya learned how to read as a four-year-old, which Alexei hadn’t been able to do until he was seven. His brother was still so young, but it seemed everything Ilya did always outshone him.
Alexei was still better at hockey than him, but he wasn’t the best on his team. Wasn’t even in the top. He was the one spending more time on the bench than on the ice. He pushed himself to get better, but he never seemed to improve like the other boys did.
Would Ilya become better than him as he got older?
“You’re not staying?” Alexei asked with his heart in his throat as Mother stopped the car outside the rink and she made no move to open her door.
“Ilyusha has his yearly parent-teacher conference. He and I need to go to that,” she explained apologetically, but Alexei wasn’t having it. There was no reason to ask why Father couldn’t attend it, but–
“Can’t you just reschedule?”
“This is the reschedulement. Last time I had a time at the doctor's, and now it’s too late. I’m sorry sweetheart. I’ll come to the next one.”
She reached a hand towards him, going for his hair and he knew he would melt into it, so he ducked his head out of the way.
He had told her about the game a week ago.
“You said that last time too when you didn’t come because Ilya had his stupid game!” He huffed, crossed his arms, and pretended the anger would cover the hurt.
“You never watch my games anymore,” Alexei mumbled, words coming out more vulnerable than he had intended.
“I really am sorry. I promise I’ll come to the next one.”
Maybe it was good Mother didn’t attend the next one, because after he tackled a guy on the other team, he spent most of the time on the bench. Last game Ilya had his brother had scored two goals in a row.
Alexei was fucking cold when the match was over and his team won.
The match after that, she didn’t come either. She had one of her periods then, when she locked the door to her room and didn’t leave. Not even when Father unlocked the room with his key and hit her like he always did Alexei.
Mother grew more and more tired and Alexei had no idea what to do with that.
Alexei made friends at school once he began seventh grade, two other boys, and the need for Ilya as company dwindled. The three of them spent time at each other’s houses, and while their parents were strict, their fathers weren't like Alexei’s.
It was nice hanging around them, exploring abandoned buildings, and wandering through forests when it was dark outside.
It was nice, pretending Ilya didn’t exist during those times. Out there, there was no one-sided competition, no father who never was proud of him but sometimes was proud of Ilya, no sky-blue eyes and laughter in the grass, and no mother always watching Ilya’s games and holding Ilya’s hand.
“Do you wanna go ride our bikes?” Ilya asked one summer morning as Alexei was eating breakfast. “No. I’m meeting with Rodya and Luka in an hour.”
Ilya frowned, scratching the bridge of his nose. “How about when you get back home?”
Alexei stood from the table and went to the sink to rinse his plate.
“I don’t know when I’m getting back,” Alexei said vaguely, distracted because he needed to take the bus soon to get there in time.
“You never want to do things with me anymore.”
“How about you make your fucking own friends? Or go spend time with Mama, like you always do,” he snapped with more anger than he realized he possessed.
Ilya’s eyes widened, taking a step back.
It wasn’t untrue, Alexei’s words. It seemed the only thing Mother did when she wasn’t in her room was to be around Ilya, hugging him close, brushing fingers through his hair.
“Sweetheart, come watch this film with us,” Mother called as he trudged back home after the sun set. Father’s car wasn’t in the driveway, which always made his shoulders lighter.
She and Ilya were lying on the couch in the living room, Ilya’s head resting against her chest. She reached a hand towards him, beckoning him over but he stood unmoving in the doorway.
“I’m tired,” he said, and her face turned strained, and even from where he stood he could see the sadness taking over her features. She was still in her sleepwear, he realized. Her hair looked unbrushed and puffy.
“We can start another movie if you don’t wanna watch this one,” Ilya offered quietly, his blue eyes on him, and Alexei felt a little like he was four again, standing by the bed’s end, unsure of his place in all of this.
In the end, he wound up staying, sitting at the furthest edge of the couch, his legs pulled up against his chest as they watched some stupid kids movie Ilya probably was too old for by now. He was ten, after all.
The next weekend he sat just a little closer.
Rodya had gotten his hands on one of his parent’s vodka bottles, and together with Alexei and Luka, they had gotten stupidly drunk one Saturday night.
It was a weird feeling, Alexei thought, but then they did it again the next weekend, and again until Rodya’s mother came home early and slapped all three of them.
Ilya was smarter than Alexei. His grades higher, the teacher’s praises grand.
Alexei failed math and history, scoring mostly 2s and 3s in the rest of the subjects. Ilya got 5 in almost everything and 4 in a few, and he had just started getting grades last year.
“Where are you going to go in life when you lack discipline? Or are you just unintelligent, Alexei? Is that it? Do I have an idiot for a son?” Father asked, the cane cracking down on his back, catching at his shoulder blade.
“Do I?” Father continued, expecting an answer. Alexei gritted his teeth.
“No sir.”
“Then why do you behave like one?”
Ilya got disciplined by Father too, but not nearly as much as Alexei. Alexei got disciplined for merely existing, for merely trying his fucking best and subsequently failing. Ilya only got disciplined when he fucked up, like that time he spilled water on Father’s boss when he was over for dinner.
When that had happened, he had tried to take some pleasure in the cries later in the evening when the guests had left, but his mother was crying in her room and he felt like he was choking when he pulled his knees to his chest in bed.
“You should be more like your brother,” Father finished, putting down the cane on the desk.
Be more like Ilya. Like his younger brother, the perfect fucking human. Golden boy in both school and hockey, scoring goals and getting good grades like breathing.
Ilya didn’t even need to try, while at the same time Alexei tried not to cry as he stared at numbers and letters he barely understood, desperate to succeed, to not be an unintelligent idiot.
Ilya was fucking eleven, Alexei fifteen, and still nothing he ever did seemed to compare, nothing ever equaled or overshadowed the brilliance that was his little brother.
“Yes sir.”
“Sweetheart. Come sit down,” Mother said when Alexei eventually managed to choke down the tears and carefully put his shirt back on and ventured toward his room.
Ilya was looking at him, like he always did, his eyes bordering on horrified, Mother’s heavily bruised arms around him.
“Your father left. Come sit with us.”
She had tears in her eyes, her cheek was red, and he knew she had tried to stop Father, but she hadn’t succeeded. She and Ilya had probably heard it all, and she hadn’t fucking succeeded, and his back was burning, and shame sat too heavily in his stomach that he just continued walking to his room, slamming the door behind him.
Luka had an older brother who knew a guy who made shitty alcohol in his basement, and Rodya dated a girl on and off who brewed wine in her bathroom, so they didn’t remain without alcohol for too long.
It tasted absolutely disgusting, and one time Alexei had thrown up after only four sips, but the burning always dulled the bruises and washed away the ache in his chest that had started to become permanent, fueled every time he looked at Ilya nowadays.
Everyone was talking about the potential Ilya had, the talent so big in his still so very small body that got bigger every day. He was twelve going on thirteen this year and was so fucking great; all the adults fucking loved him.
Even their grandparents preferred him — but Alexei had been there first. It wasn’t fair.
Alexei had quit hockey one year ago, much to Father’s disappointment, but in the end it didn’t matter because Alexei wasn’t good enough to keep up with the other players.
Instead, he spent more and more time out of the house.
Every time Ilya wasn’t studying, he and Mother were at the skating rink together. Alexei watched them go sometimes, looking out his window as the car started.
He was invited, but he said no over and over because the pride on Mother’s face as Ilya skated and scored filled him with something repulsive and juvenile.
“Alyosha?” Came Ilya’s soft voice as Alexei had just managed to throw himself down on his bed.
He and Rodya had been fighting in the evening, the alcohol they had been drinking the majority of the day giving life to the unimportant spark that had started the argument, so he had stumbled back home after deciding not to stay the night.
Mother was more often than not in the periods where she never left her room and whenever she did, she wasn’t really there — which meant no one cared where he was.
“Get the fuck out, Ilyushenka.”
Years ago he had called Ilya that, the childish little nickname affectionate for someone so small, but nowadays it was almost mocking, one simple word that would make Ilya scowl every time.
And like expected, Ilya protested. “Don’t call me that!”
His head was aching, the taste of red wine from a three-litre, dirty dunk still disgusting on his tongue, and Ilya’s voice was making it worse. While the worst of the buzz had died out, he was left with the awful experience of being hungover whilst awake.
“What do you want?” Alexei asked just so Ilya would go away faster.
Ilya stood in silence for a while, maybe waiting for Alexei to say something else but bad fucking luck for him because Alexei wasn’t in the mood to talk to him.
“Are you…Are you okay? You stumbled when you got back.”
“I’m fine,” Alexei groaned, burying his face into his pillow because the window lamp was still shining, breaking through the darkness of night, and he should have turned it off but now he didn’t want to get up.
“Are you sick? Should I get Mama?”
“Don’t tell her shit, Ilya. Just turn off the stupid fucking lamp and leave me alone.”
He almost never called Ilya anything but nicknames, and it seemed to hit Ilya as hard every time because his voice sounded choked, quieter than before when he spoke again.
“But you sound—”
“Didn’t you hear me, you idiot? Just go.”
Muffled footsteps echoed in his room and then the light was turned off and his door closed gently. Ilya probably wanted to slam it and most likely would have if it wasn’t for the fact that their parents were asleep upstairs.
Alexei wondered for a few moments what Ilya had been doing up when night had fallen more than a while ago, but then nausea clawed at his throat and he managed to fall asleep before it got worse.
Ilya was upset the following few days, and Alexei was more than happy to ignore him.
They didn’t speak much before, but Ilya always had the habit of getting dramatically upset over shit that didn’t matter. Too sensitive for his own good. Every time he became like that, Ilya withdrew, didn’t talk, looked away when their eyes met.
That changed on the Wednesday three days later, when Ilya slammed the front door and Alexei wandered out of the kitchen to see what was up.
Ilya would probably be extra easy to wind up, and their parents were on one of Father’s work trips and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow afternoon. He had been itching for an argument, and Ilya seemed to be in the mood for one.
Ilya was kicking off his shoes in the hallway when he rounded the corner, one of his shoes hitting the wall and Alexei tilted his head, watching him. Ilya stood still for a few moments, his shoulders heaving, and then fetched the shoe and placed it on the rack.
Alexei snorted derisively, because of course Ilya was such a damn good boy he couldn’t even wait an hour or two before he picked it up.
Ilya startled, looking up and Alexei frowned the second he got a look at his face.
“What the hell happened to you?” Alexei asked, staring at the split lip, meeting only one eye as the other was almost swollen shut.
On his cheek a bruise was starting to form. His hair looked damp, some of his curls flat and plastered against his forehead.
It wasn’t Father, because he (mostly) avoided faces and hadn’t been home for two days and Ilya hadn’t looked like that yesterday night. But Ilya didn’t answer, just looked away and slung his backpack over one shoulder and started walking.
Alexei intercepted him before he got too far, and when Ilya tried walking around him, he grabbed his arm to stop him. He held fast even as Ilya tried to pull away.
“Let go!”
Alexei dug his fingers in until Ilya stopped resisting and only let go when Ilya lifted his bent head and met his eyes. Ilya looked even more like shit closer up. His hair was streaked with dirt, and his one open eye was bloodshot. Dried blood covered his chin.
“So?” Alexei prompted with a clenched jaw.
“Nothing,” Ilya said as he crossed his arms, one hand rubbing at the crescent indents Alexei had left in his skin. He should probably cut his nails soon.
“The fuck happened, Ilyusha?” Alexei asked furiously, and a look of shock passed over Ilya’s face as he bit his bottom lip before wincing. Fresh blood slowly started trickling down.
Ilya turned his head away, looking down at the ground.
“Who did this?”
When Ilya didn’t answer again, he grabbed at his hair and pulled his face up. Alexei was his brother; he could pull his hair and shove him, but fuck if someone else did.
“Get off me,” Ilya grunted out, his hands coming up to pull at Alexei’s forearm, but Alexei tugged at the strands in his hand until Ilya stopped.
“Names, Ilyusha.”
“Hey. Which one of you is Leonid Makarov?”
Three kids looked up from where they were leaning against a railing. They were playing with a lighter.
One of them nodded. “Why do you want to know that?”
It was him then.
“And these other two morons are Mikhail Lebedev and Vadim Petrov?”
“The fuck do you want?” Makarov asked, puffing his chest and Alexei rolled his eyes. While they looked bigger than Ilya, they were all a head shorter than him, Rodya and Luka who were just a step behind him.
He could hear the uncertainty in his voice. After all, some of them probably haven’t even turned thirteen yet.
They were at the edge of an old abandoned playground close to their school that Ilya said they used to hang out at — where they apparently had dragged Ilya after school, if Alexei guessed correctly.
“You know an Ilya Rozanov?” Alexei asked, and Makarov’s eyes widened before his gaze flickered to the side.
The other kids took a step back.
“I assume that’s a yes.”
“Why do you care?” Makarov said. None of the other two boys had said anything.
Alexei took a step towards him.
“I’m his brother.”
It wasn’t hard to catch up to him when he ran.
It was only after Makarov’s nose was crushed that Alexei stopped, his feet connecting with it with a loud crunch followed by a shriek. Alexei’s knuckles ached from a few moments earlier.
He crouched down next to Makarov, pulled his head up by his hair, tugging harder than he ever did to Ilya. From the few words Ilya spoke, it seemed Makarov was the kid who hit him and the other two fuckers who held his arms back.
“You touch my brother again and I’ll fucking kill you. And you tell anyone about this, we’ll fucking kill you.”
The boy was crying, nodded his head as best as he could with Alexei’s hand still gripping his hair, and then Alexei slammed his head down and stood up.
“You’re a man. Stop crying,” he scoffed as he kicked the moron. Maybe beating up a twelve year old wasn’t his finest moment, but according to Ilya, it wasn’t the first time they hit him, and no one but him (and Father) hurt his stupid little brother.
Next to the small playground was a brook, and early spring had melted the ice enough that he could hear the bubbling sound of rushing water. That must be where they shoved Iya’s head under water.
“And one last thing. Tomorrow at school, you’ll apologize to Ilya. Got it?”
When the boy didn’t answer, he kicked him again.
“I asked you a fucking question”
“Yes,” the boy sobbed, curling in on himself. “I'll say I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Please just stop.”
He looked over his shoulder, where Luka was sitting on top of one of the other kids and Rodya had his hand on the third kid’s face, forcing him to watch his friends get beaten, with a cheek that Alexei could see quickly growing a deep red.
All the fuckers deserved it.
“That goes for you two as well!” He shouted.
Hasted agreements followed, and then Luka and Rodya nodded at him and they let go of the boys.
“That was fun,” Luka said as they were walking back home.
Rodya knocked his shoulder with Luka’s. “Yeah, but my palm is fucking aching. What do they feed kids these days? Fucking stone face.”
The next day after school Ilya entered his room. His eye was still swollen shut, and he looked like shit, bruises blooming darker and ugly on his face.
Alexei spun around on his desk chair in the direction where Ilya stood. He lifted an disquisitive eyebrow, waiting.
Ilya crossed the room in four strides and hugged him. His other eyebrow rose as well.
Alexei had expected a thank you, maybe a nod, maybe an angry brother screaming that he could handle his own fights, but not this. It was at an awkward angle with Alexei sitting down, and it lasted only for a second, a muffled ”thank you” mumbled into his shirt, and then Ilya all but ran out of his room.
(It was the last time they ever hugged each other.)
“Good boy, Alyosha,” Father said as he patted at Alexei’s head a few days later.
Father never called him by his nicknames. He thought he had memories of him doing so when Alexei was a child but he was never sure if those memories were real or something he conjured up in his mind, birthed from wishful thinking.
His heart clenched at it, something warm in his chest and airy in his lungs.
“For what?” He asked, suddenly remembering he didn’t know why he was praised.
Then Father actually smiled at him.
“I know what you did. I handled it. Good boy.”
Mother never found out what happened. Ilya and Alexei never talked about it, and Ilya never returned with bruises again.
“Mama?” Alexei called out hesitantly, the threshold on the doorstep digging into his foot.
She had been wearing the same white nightdress she had been wearing for the last three weeks. It had coffee stains on it from the few times she actually drank something, but she never changed.
She was disconsolate a lot these days, Father was growing more frustrated and Alexei was almost never home anymore and Ilya was excelling at hockey, so Father left him be most times, which wasn’t a good combination for her.
When they were younger, she used to skate and dance and drag them to stupid picnics in parks, used to push them into the water when they went swimming and laugh when they emerged wet but she always let herself get dragged down by them.
Alexei couldn’t remember the last time she laughed or the last time the three of them left the house together.
She barely showed up to Ilya’s games anymore.
“Me and Ilya were planning on watching a movie.”
They usually didn’t do that anymore, but that usually worked to get her to do something that wasn’t staring at the ceiling for hours.
When she didn’t answer, the lump on her bed barely moving, he tried again.
“Do you want to watch with us?” He added on.
“You two watch, sweetheart. Mama’s tired,” she finally murmured, something despondent in her tone, her voice hollow and tired.
“Mama?” Ilya asked, picking his head through the doorframe, bumping into Alexei’s arm.
“Mama just needs to sleep, Ilyusha,” she said, and then nothing more.
Neither of them spoke during the movie, but their shoulders pressed together during the entirety of it.
He had no recollection of the plot afterwards.
“Is Mama sick again?” Ilya whispered, and Alexei swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
“Is she going to get better soon?”
Ilya grabbed at his fingers, and Alexei surprised himself by letting him. Ilya’s fingers were bigger than when he was born and were rougher but still softer than his.
Your brother. Your Ilyushenka, his mother's voice echoed, the sterile smell of the hospital room prevalent, Ilya’s tiny body wrapped in the dotted blanket.
“I don’t know, Ilyushenka.” He looked outside the window, the late spring’s sun setting, painting the sky a myriad of colors that Mother would have loved to look at. ”You should go to bed. Papa is gonna get back soon.”
(It was the last time he ever called him Ilyushenka and actually meant it.)
They always got closer when Mother became like that. Alexei didn’t yell and throw Ilya out when he wandered inside his room; he let him lie on his floor and do his homework. Watched movies with Mother when she every now and then left her room.
She would hold Ilya’s hand during it.
Bruises littered her arms, and Alexei had to look away and swallow down his infuriation.
Mother continued like that for a few more weeks until one day, she was back to normal; smiles aplenty and her hair smooth and shiny again. Alexei thought that now, maybe, finally, she was becoming happy again.
She killed herself a week later.
The last time he talked to her, they had been fighting. He had screamed at her and she had screamed back before she started crying. Alexei had left the house and stayed with Rodya for a few days until one day Father called and forced him home.
Father didn’t usually care where he was, not like he did Ilya, so it came as a surprise.
Alexei found out she was dead when he stepped foot inside the house and realized something wasn’t right. There was a car outside he didn’t recognize.
“Where’s Mama?” He asked.
Alexei had never seen his father look remorseful, never seen sorrow on him and he knew then that she was gone.
The fight had been over her crucifix, which she had given to Ilya the day before their argument, not him. He was the oldest, he had shouted, and he had asked why did she care more about Ilya than him?
He hadn’t even understood why she would give it away in the first place. He did now. He wondered how much of it was his fault. But then it got overshadowed by the knowledge that Ilya had been the one to find her and why hadn’t he gotten to her before?
She had been dead for 15 minutes when Ilya had found her, Father had said. 15 minutes. Ilya’s hockey practice had ended earlier, but he had stayed late while Mother killed herself.
Mother had died while Ilya was playing hocker, wearing her fucking necklace.
Nothing felt real. Alexei didn’t feel real. Maybe if he closed his eyes, he would fall back asleep and then eventually wake from this nightmare.
He should cry. Should scream. Should do something, feel something, but the only things were the loud thrumming of his heartbeat in his ears, the blurriness at the corner of his vision.
After he finished talking to Father, Alexei found Ilya sitting on the couch with his hands on his knees.
“Ilya.”
Ilya looked up.
His face was red, tear tracks highlighted by the shadows cast from the setting sun outside, but he wasn’t crying anymore.
Relief passed over Ilya’s face when their eyes met, respite in dazed eyes, but then the use of his full name seemed to catch up because it quickly faded away, replaced by something Alexei had never seen before. Something desolate.
“You found her,” Alexei said before he even realized it.
Ilya looked down on the floor.
“You’re not going to say anything?”
Alexei was incensed or insensible, or maybe both; he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that Mama was dead and Ilya had found her too late and nothing would ever, ever be the same.
“You should have gotten home earlier,” Alexei said callously, or maybe devoid of anything. Maybe both.
Ilya’s fists clenched the fabric of his pants, his shoulders shaking, but he didn’t make a sound.
Alexei went to his bedroom and stared at the wall in hope that reality would make sense again. In hope that Mother would knock on his bedroom door and sit down on the bed beside him and card her fingers through his hair.
He barely left his room for three days until one day after he finally answered Luka’s and Rodya’s texts.
”Sorry about your mom, Lyokha,” Rodya said as Alexei slumped down beside him on Rodya’s bed. Life still wasn’t real. Nothing was, and Alexei wondered if it ever would be again.
Six days ago he talked to his mother; three days ago she killed herself and he couldn’t stop wondering what her last moments were like. If she cried. If she thought about him.
She hadn’t left a note.
“Yeah. How’s it going?” Luka asked, rolling over on the floor to look up at him.
“Fucking shit,” Alexei mumbled, voice lower and softer than he had intended it to be.
“So when’s the funeral?” Luka asked, and Rodya kicked in his direction.
“Way to be sensitive, man.”
“What? My parents want to send flowers.”
Alexei just shrugged, pressing his head against the wall. “You got any kvass left?”
He knew last time they hung out he had stashed a bottle under his bed. Maybe it would ease the disconnect and replace it with another kind of disconnect, one that made life always seem easier.
“Sorry, we drank it last Friday," Rodya said, bumping his shoulder into Alexei’s.
“The two of you fucking lightweights? Wasn’t it a liter?"
“You were the one who passed on in the ditch outside Pavlovsk last time,” Luka scoffed but not unkindly, groaning as he stretched his arms above his head.
Rodya, seemingly in sync, stretched his legs. “Some guys were over. Remember the ones we hung out with sometime in March? Yeah, we met them outside the entrance to Yekaterininskiy on Thursday.”
“The hell were you two doing at Yekaterininskiy?”
He hadn’t realized how much he missed this stupid banter. In Rodya’s room, with Luka’s putrid cologne stinking up the entire space, there weren’t any problems. No dead mothers and no brother who barely spoke with unseeing eyes always fixed on his feet.
Luka shrugged, eventually sitting up and running his hand through his hair to smooth it down, which he never really succeeded with, his hair living a life on its own. ”Sightseeing.”
“My parents have some Sbiten in the fridge. We can microwave it,” Rodya offered, voice softer than before.
Alexei’s chest twisted painfully. “It’s the middle of summer. The fuck you have Sbiten for?”
Rodya shrugged. “My grandparents were visiting,” he offered as if that explained anything.
The first time Alexei tasted alcohol was a few days before Christmas when he was ten. He and Mother were at a market she had dragged him to. The air had been cold, and snow drifted slowly. It was just the two of them.
She had bought steaming Sbiten in a brown paper mug from an older woman, and after drinking a few sips, she had crouched down in front of him at the edge of the market.
“Here. You’re old enough to taste,” she had said as she held out the mug towards him.
It was sweet and warm, but the distinctive taste that was alcohol soured it.
Mother had chuckled when he grimaced and taken the paper cup back. “When you’re older, you’re going to love it.”
Alexei had doubted that strongly.
Now he pushed the memory down and nodded, a lump in his throat.
“Sure. Let’s drink fucking Sbiten.”
They were standing in front of the microwave, all three of them staring as the fucking bowl they found and filled with Sbiten rotated on the plate, when Luka spoke.
“Does Ilyushenka drink?” He asked and Alexei had to focus on separating his from teeth biting down.
Rodya and Luka never disliked Ilya, but they weren’t close by far. And Alexei was pretty sure Ilya did actually dislike them, and the fact his friends insisted on calling him Ilyushenka because they were assholes and thought it was funny how Ilya always bristled didn’t help Ilya’s view of them.
Alexei shrugged. “Why does that matter?”
Rodya and Luka exchanged a look.
“You could bring him here. Maybe he’ll like Sbiten,” Rodya suggested.
They had never invited Ilya over before, and for a second Alexei almost agreed, before the resentment that had grown quickly at the knowledge of how Mother died reemerged: the lonely games, the praise Ilya always got, the fucking future he had ahead of him in hockey.
“No. He wouldn’t.”
The air got awkward. “You sure?”
“I am. Now can we get fucking drunk or are you going to keep saying stupid shit?”
Luka rolled his eyes, but the two of them didn’t push the matter.
Getting drunk off Sbiten was harder than he thought.
(He never drank Sbiten again after that day.)
Alexei was morose when he got back home. The slight buzz the alcohol had provided had died down enough that the indescribable grief weighed even heavier than before, but not enough that his mind was straight.
He made his way to Ilya’s bedroom.
Ilya was lying in his bed. His window lamp was shining a soft yellow, but his curtains were closed. Ilya looked up immediately when he closed the door after him. He pulled the covers higher, but his eyes followed Alexei.
Ilya would turn thirteen next week. The beginning of June had been warm.
“What?” Ilya snapped when Alexei didn’t say anything, but his voice was hoarse enough that it came out more like a croak.
On the floor lay books that looked like they had been torn from the bookshelf.
“You know it’s your fault she’s dead, right?” Alexei asked, and Ilya sucked in a loud, ragged breath.
He didn’t know why he said it.
Alexei walked towards him and crouched down beside the bed, coming face to face with Ilya. The words that he shouted at his mother the last time he saw her still echoed in his head.
“She’s dead and she’s never coming back. Do you get that, Ilya?” Alexei emphasized cruel and vicious and filled with heartwrenching bereavement that had nowhere to go.
He didn’t know why he said that either.
The yellow lights caught on the crucifix around Ilya’s neck, and all feelings of sadness and despair morphed into something ugly.
“I—”
“If you hadn’t stayed late, she would have been alive.”
Alexei patted at Ilya’s cheek harshly before he gripped his jaw tight and forced Ilya to look at him when he tried to bury his face in his pillow.
Ilya’s eyes were shiny, his bottom lip trembling, and Ilya didn’t get to be fucking sad, didn’t get to look betrayed, disappointed, or lonely — he didn’t fucking deserve to.
“But you have no idea how selfish you are, do you?” Alexei seethed, and Ilya’s eyes didn’t look sky blue anymore. Instead, they looked dirty and wrong. “Maybe she killed herself to get away from all of this. From you. She was happier before you came along; did you know that?”
Alexei knew it wasn’t true, that part. At least somewhere he knew it. But that didn’t matter anymore because Mama had killed herself and she was never, ever going to come back and Ilya needed to understand that, needed to know, needed to comprehend that life was going to be different, was going to be worse and it was never going to be good again.
The words hit, and Ilya’s breath hitched, and it felt so fucking good.
“She didn’t. She was sick,” Ilya defended quietly, and when he averted his eyes, Alexei shook his head roughly with his hand.
“Is that what you tell yourself? Is that what makes it easier to sleep at night? I bet the fucking body was still warm when you got to it.”
Alexei dug his nails into Ilya’s cheek, seeing how far he could push before Ilya pushed back, before Ilya tried to tear his arm away.
But Ilya didn’t.
“Alyosha,” Ilya said, like it was a plea, like it was a lifeline getting cut in half, like he wanted Alexei to hold him and never let go.
“Fuck you, Ilya.”
Tears spilled from Ilya’s eyes, wetting Alexei’s hand and he pressed his fingers so hard into his skin that his fingers turned white until he could see Ilya’s jaw and cheek start to turn red.
But Ilya still didn’t react, still didn’t move – just breathed ragged and breaking breaths as tears continued to pour. Alexei tightened his grip further
“You’re so fucking weak. Just like her,” Alexei spat before he let go of Ilya’s face with a shove.
“She wasn’t weak,” Ilya defended, a sob in the words, and Alexei turned his head.
“You killed her because you couldn’t get home in fucking time. I want you to remember that.”
Alexei slammed the door shut after him before making his way to his own room and sinking down against the wall.
If Ilya hadn’t had his stupid game and gotten the crucifix, then Alexei wouldn’t have fought with Mother, wouldn’t have told her what he did, and then maybe she would be alive.
Or maybe the last thing he said to her would be something nice, something he wouldn’t regret until he, too, died. Maybe then he would have lived with the knowledge that his Mama knew he loved her before she died.
Instead the only words that echoed in his head were ‘wish you were dead’
Etched into his mind was the horror on her face and the feeling of instant regret, but he hadn’t taken it back. Hadn’t apologized. Instead, he ran away to Rodya, and then she fucking killed herself three days later.
Now he would never get to apologize, never get to tell her he loved her, never get to hug her again, never try to be a better person for her.
It was all Ilya’s fault. He—
Alexei hadn’t wanted to say it. But Ilya was everywhere, the perfect child, and without him there Alexei would have been better, would have been good, and then he wouldn’t have said what he did, and Mama would be alive, would be here instead of in a morgue waiting to be buried.
He cried that night until his entire chest ran out of air. Felt empty and raw and full of guilt, and he mourned so much he never thought he would stop.
He wasn’t sure he ever did.
Alexei wondered if she regretted it. If she had wished Ilya got home earlier. If she cried. When she fell asleep, did she think of him?
(He never saw Ilya cry again after that day)
He considered apologizing to Ilya a few times, but he never did.
An accident, everyone got told, but when he looked at stony faces at her funeral, he knew that they knew.
After that, life spiraled. Ilya grew colder, Father grew rougher, and Alexei did, too.
The few joints he smoked before eventually turned into the harder shit. The guys from March and apparently Friday five weeks ago with Rodya and Luka started hanging around more, and they knew people who knew people, and they all started getting blasted during the weekends.
Father got remarried within a year. Polina never liked Alexei nor Ilya, and they didn’t like her in return. It seemed the only thing they ever agreed on was that dislike.
And Alexei's jealously grew branches and and leaves that stayed unmoving no matter the season.
Everything came naturally to Ilya, in ways it didn’t for Alexei, who had to fight for everything.
For Father’s attention, for respect, for a place in the world. Ilya’s path was fucking cut out for him with red carpets lining it, while Alexei got cut by thorns and tripped on snares in the path he had to trudge by himself and there was no mother to hold his hand or give him warm and sweet Sbiten at Christmas markets.
It wasn’t fair that Ilya got everything he wanted, everything Alexei used to dream about. Ilya fucking killed Mother, and he got to live his fucking dream.
Nikita was a boy in Alexei’s class. He was smaller than the rest of them, his only friend a girl whose name Alexei never bothered to learn. It was fun to pick on him. They had been for the entire school year now — started in August when they all came back for their last year. It was May now.
It was fun to see Nikita’s eyes water when they shoved him into walls, fun to see his face redden when they slapped him, fun to hold a lighter against his skin and after getting begged not to, to turn on the flame and see the skin burn.
The girl who was always around him tried to stop them a few times, but Rodya just pushed her away. There weren’t any teachers around after school, and even during school they never seemed to care.
(There was no mother to come in between, to bandage his wounds and hold him tight. No one would help him and they all fucking knew it.)
And no one else in their class ever tried to stop them.
A few guys joined sometimes; some laughed, some turned their heads away. But people respected them, people feared them, and Alexei had since June become a good fighter. It was a nice way to let out energy, training with Rodya and Luka as the last of the growing pains simmered away and the only thing left was stretch marks on his lower back from when he had grown half a head over one summer a few years back.
Nikita always knew no one would help him. In the beginning he had looked scared every time they approached and had trembled as he handed over the cigarettes they made him steal, but after a while grim acceptance just crossed his face.
His eyes turned emptier, their dull blue the exact same shade as Ilya’s.
And then one day they went too far and ended up in the principal’s office. Alexei was surprised it wasn’t at the police station, considering Nikita was in the hospital with a broken arm.
But getting caught meant that Father got involved.
“I don’t care who you beat up, Alexei. I care that you act like an undisciplined delinquent who gets caught. What if this got out? That my own son is a pathetic bully?”
“I have turned a blind eye to your hobbies. But this? You’re embarrassing me.”
“If you’re going to hurt someone, you make sure they will not tell.”
His lips split, his ribs bruised, and his head ached, his entire world turning blurry for a few seconds. There was no mother to pull at Father’s arm anymore.
He stayed on the hallway floor a few minutes after his father left, coughing, trying to catch his breath.
He looked up and met Ilya’s eyes in the doorway. Father barely hit Ilya, not unless he fucked up real bad. And while Alexei had fucked up majorly this time, Father still took out his frustration on him even without big reasons. A lot more the year after Mother died.
Ilya took a step towards him when Alexei’s leg almost faltered as he stood up. He turned fourteen in a month now, a head taller and shoulders wider than they had been barely a year ago. Alexei fucking hated it.
Ilya stopped when Alexei glared at him, taking a step back.
On his way past Ilya, he shoulder-checked Ilya so hard that his brother stumbled and barely managed to avoid falling over. While Ilya was bigger and older, he wasn’t fucking bigger than him.
They continued beating up Nikita two weeks after he came back, holding his head under water until he almost passed out. Then they shoved his head down into the mud, and Luca laughed as he cried when they stepped on him.
Alexei passed the playground on his way home one day — they playground where they had beaten the shit out of Ilya’s bullies a year ago — and he had to look away as his stomach curled uncomfortably.
He finished high school, barely able to graduate with his shit fucking grades.
Ilya turned fourteen, and no one seemed to care, just like when he had turned thirteen (just like Alexei’s birthdays). Alexei stopped outside his room in the morning, hand raised and when he managed to force himself to knock, the door swung open to an empty room.
Maybe that was better. In the evening Ilya smelled of smoke and alcohol as he stumbled through the front door. Alexei watched him struggle to take his shoes off, his shirt half open, and two of the buttons that actually were buttoned were buttoned wrong.
“What the hell are you looking at, Alexei?” Ilya shouted when he saw Alexei observing him, and Alexei scoffed and turned around, too tired for the fight.
The next day they had a fight, which ended up in Ilya leaving the house for the night, most likely running to Svetlana or Sasha.
“Polina’s a fucking cunt,” Alexei commented as he passed through the kitchen, Ilya sitting at the table, after Polina finished yelling at him over being disrespectful.
Ilya looked up. His jaw was clenched.
“She is.”
It was the one thing they agreed about, after all.
Mostly, however, it seemed the only times Ilya and Alexei talked was to argue and to insult each other. Ilya sometimes tried to talk about other things, to start conversations, his voice always cautious and hesitant and soft like Mother’s every time, and every time Alexei brushed him off.
Ilya looked more and more like Mother every day that passed, and sometimes Alexei wondered if he would walk in on Ilya dead with pills in his hand.
Father wanted him to join the MVD and follow in his footsteps. To become a police officer, to climb the ladder, to do his four years of study at the same academy Father had when he was young, to carry on his legacy.
But Alexei knew he would never be a colonel like he was someday. Too brash and unambitious to succeed in the sensitive game that politics and police work were.
Father didn’t hit him nearly as often anymore, but he berated him whenever he could. Told him he was lazy and throwing his life away and would become poor trash without dignity or respect.
Instead of listening, Alexei moved out. At eighteen, just as the year shifted and winter was at its peak, he got an apartment together with Rodya. It was small and shitty, and a month in one of the two heaters broke, and they had to walk around dressed in their thickest sweaters for five weeks.
Most nights they went out, and when they didn’t, other people came over. They smoked and got expensive fixes and did lines on whatever flat surface they could find, whether it was a bathroom sink or some girl’s stomach. They drank and talked and tripped over and over and over, and life became a series of flashes.
Alexei worked some odd jobs. Barely answered Father when he called. Attended a few family dinners, showed up for his paternal grandmother’s funeral, but he could barely remember anything from it. He talked to Ilya once, made an appearance at a gala Father’s job hosted.
He spent a year like that, high off his fucking mind, drifting through life in a fog.
Ilya was set up to join the junior MHL next year, his name was in newspapers, and he was loved by every-fucking-one in their lives, and Alexei spent most of his days lying on a dirty and sweat-stained mattress and destroying every organ in his body.
He wondered if Ilya was drinking as much as Alexei was. Last time they talked Ilya had smelled of alcohol.
Debt was starting to add up; it started to weigh heavy, but none of that mattered as long as the fog remained, as long as life was absolute dog shit and the only thing that made it bearable was vodka and coke and pills so similar to Mother’s.
“I don’t think this is what bathrooms are meant for,” a feminine voice said, and Alexei forced himself not to visibly startle.
He still did, however, and the woman’s laugh rang bright and joyous. He wiped at his nose and lifted his head.
“This is the men’s bathroom,” was all he managed to say when his eyes landed on her. Long, thick waves of brown hair so dark it looked black in the dim light of the bathroom and red lips slightly smudged that quirked slyly.
“So what? You’re going to force me out? Put your hands on me?” She drawled. Before he could answer, she continued, taking a step towards him. ”You could, though. I bet those arms aren’t only for show.”
Her tight dress barely covered her ass; it was far too cold for the early spring outside but fucking perfect in the club’s bathroom.
“They’re not,” Alexei smirked, his skin thrumming as he took a step towards her, getting into her space, and she tilted her head. “And I bet those lips can do a lot more than just talk shit.”
She smiled at him then, looking up through her eyelashes, all teeth and slightly crooked, and he had never seen anyone so goddamn beautiful.
“Depends on who they listen to. Maybe you can make them.”
His hands found her hips, squeezing as he pulled her close, pressing against her as her arms came around his neck.
Before their lips could meet, however, she took a step back and a pang of disappointment hit him. But then she backed up towards the sink, pulling her long, long hair behind her ears.
Alexei couldn’t even find it in himself to be pissed when she brushed the coke from the countertop next to the sink and jumped up on it. She leaned her head back, spreading her legs in invitation, which he accepted within seconds.
They ended up fucking in one of the stalls, uncaring for the people banging on the door and groaning at the sound they made.
They fucked again outside against the wall.
“Viktoria,” she moaned, one hand braced against the wall and the other covering Alexei’s hand that was groping her breasts. “My name. Viktoria. Call my name.”
They met again three days after that, and then the next day, and the next.
Viktoria made it easier. Made life easier. His bad habits started to lessen, and while the guys he usually hung out with complained she was taking all his time, he couldn’t give a shit. Rodya could whine all he wanted about having to listen to them fuck in Alexei’s room.
Viktoria and he drank together on the weekend, went out to every club they could find and always ended the night in one of their apartments.
And then the drinking turned into late-night talks and laughter in empty streets, which turned into fake wrestling in the woods when summer came with cake in stained containers waiting for them on a checkered blanket, and then those turned into snowball fights when winter arrived.
Ilya joined the junior MHL in late autumn that year, and Alexei couldn’t avoid his stupid fucking face in newspapers. He found himself sometimes reading the scores, reading about how he played, but each time ended with him throwing it away.
Viktoria cut her hair almost a year after they met, her long locks now ending at her shoulders, and she looked just as beautiful, her lips just as red. They had moved into an apartment even smaller and even shittier than the one he had shared with Rodya after only five months together and he loved every goddamn filthy inch of it.
Life was good like it hadn’t been since Mother died.
(Ilya had started to smell like smoke and alcohol the few times he saw him.)
Father didn’t approve because Viktoria was from an unknown name and living carefree and poor, without education or a stable job, but to Alexei, she was life personified. She laughed more than anyone Alexei knew, and each time it was genuine; even when he knew his jokes were bad, she laughed and laughed until he did, too.
Ilya met her once during a strained family dinner; Alexei had only agreed to join if he could bring Viktoria. Ilya and Viktoria had made small talk for a while. Alexei hadn’t joined, but he listened.
Ilya had nodded at Alexei afterwards, and Alexei pretended the approval didn’t matter in the slightest.
I’m going to marry you, he thought as he brushed a finger across her cheek while she slept.
They had been together a year, and he hadn’t even turned twenty-one, but he knew that fact like he knew his own name. No matter if it was in a church or town hall, if her dress was white and big or black and short, he would marry her.
And then one day he got back home early from work and found her in bed with a guy he didn’t know, and his entire fucking life shattered.
Viktoria had cried when he beat the shit out of the guy, held onto Alexei’s arm, and begged him to stop, and he had thrown her off.
“Alyushka, please. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry,” she pleaded, her voice breaking, holding his arm with both of her hands. The guy she had been fucking was gone. “It was just once. I– I didn’t mean to.”
“Don’t fucking call me that.”
Her face broke, twisted and broke again and Alexei felt like he could barely breathe. This morning they had kissed each other. Last night they watched some trashy movie and shit-talked it the entire time. They had chicken thawing on the counter for dinner.
“I love you,” she said.
He fought back tears and tore his arm back, clenching his fists so hard his short nails dug into his palm. They were sweaty, but he felt so goddamn cold.
“Get out.”
She reached for his arm again, and he took a step back. “Get the fuck out, you fucking whore.”
Viktoria took a step back like she had been slapped. And then her face changed again, and her lips pursed, and the tears stopped. She packed her things in silence only broken by her small sobs and hiccups while Alexei lit a cigarette.
“If you let me walk out now, Alyushka, I won’t return.”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t know if he could even speak anymore. Just took another drag of the cigarette and looked outside. A gleam of white remained on otherwise green trees.
“You know you need me,” Viktoria said with her bag in front of her feet. Her face was splotchy. Alexei’s face was stone.
“Fuck you, then,” she swore, her chest heaving, her hands twitching as if wanting to reach out. Alexei put out his cigarette on the dresser and shoved his hands in his pockets so he didn’t reach out to her.
Viktoria continued when he didn’t answer. “Good luck with your useless fucking life. Do you know how pathetic you were before me? I made you!”
Her knee left a bloodstain on the asphalt outside his apartment from where she scraped it when he shoved her out, her left palm bloody and skin torn when she took the bag he threw at her.
“Alyoshka,” she pleaded, her eyes watery and tears spilling over her cheeks again. He slammed the door shut.
Alexei had always wanted to be like his father, to get recognition, to feel as big as Father always seemed. Now he felt like his shoes fit him perfectly, the soles shaped after his feet.
It didn’t feel as good as he thought it would.
He thought she would call. That she would text. Plead to get him back.
Thought she would return for her hairbrush still on the bathroom counter, for her favorite t-shirt still in the laundry basket, for the tight, black dress that was the only thing she left behind in the closet. But she never did.
(He never heard from her again after that day.)
It took a year before he managed to throw them away.
Viktoria had been the only woman he had loved, and maybe it would stay that way.
Life went back to how it was before. Maybe even worse.
He emptied whatever money he could on loading, stumbling from apartment to apartment, from one party to another.
To call them parties was an exaggeration. It was him and people, some he knew and some were strangers, drugged or drunk or both, out of their minds with shitty music blasting in the background, smoke buried in the furniture, and pills scattered on the floor and tables that always made him feel just a little bit better about the fact that Viktoria was fucking gone and he would never know why she did what she did.
They went to clubs in basements, drank some more, women everywhere, and he couldn’t even remember half of the fucks that he had.
One day he overdosed, or at least that's what Luka told him afterwards. He woke up sweaty and shaky over the toilet — throwing up, with Rodya sobbing behind him, holding him up with arms around his chest and Luka’s fingers in his throat with Alexei’s puke running down them.
They stayed with him for three days, until Alexei didn’t feel like absolute shit anymore, and he threw them out because they were hovering.
After that day, however, Rodya started to pull back from the scene, from the parties, from the pills and lines — the only things that made Alexei not want to fucking off himself.
“I thought you were going to die, Lyokha,” Rodya had said when Alexei confronted him about how he never did shit with them anymore, that he turned down invitations without any good reason. “I can’t— I can’t do that again.”
“I was only once, man. Come on. You’re going to quit because of that?”
“Because of ‘that’? Jesus Christ, you could have fucking died, you piece of shit!” Rodya shouted. Luka had always been the loud one, while Rodya almost never yelled. It was strange seeing his face flush red with frustration. “Do you get how goddamn awful that felt for me?”
“Do you have to be so dramatic like some fucking girl?”
Rodya didn’t say anything and the look in his eyes, maybe pity, maybe something else, contorted Alexei’s stomach.
”Well, do what the fuck you want to then, you fucking pussy,” Alexei snarled as anger quickly thrummed in his veins again, the pills he crushed and snorted that morning making his skin anxious, his mood changing, making him someone so far from Alyosha that Mother would not have recognized him.
“You should stop this, Lyokha, before you actually kill yourself.”
(Alexei never stopped. He eventually slowed down, and it took a long while, but he would never fully stop.)
They didn’t talk much after that day.
“Where’s Viktoria?” Ilya asked during dinner they both had been forced to attend when late summer turned into early autumn.
“She left him. No wonder. Maybe now you can get your act together, Alexei, and stop being a disappointment,” Father said, and Alexei clenched his teeth.
“That girl was never good for you. From bad breeding, that one,” Polina felt necessary to add as if she was allowed to have an opinion on Alexei’s life.
Ilya was off to Saskatchewan in a few months, some city in Canada that Alexei had never heard of before, for the World Junior Championship. The town’s name had sounded rough rolling from Ilya’s lips. Alexei hoped he fucking lost.
“I’m sorry,” Ilya began hesitantly as they both lingered in the kitchen, Father and Polina in the sitting room, ”about Viktoria.”
“That isn’t any of your fucking business, Ilya.”
Ilya’s face hardened. “Why are you always such a piece of shit?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. You’re a fucking asshole and I don’t get why.”
“Of course you don’t. Well, poor fucking Ilyshenka that his big brother is so mean to him. You act like a damn child.”
“You always get like this, Alexei! You can never answer shit without turning it into your fucking pity party.”
“Well, excuse me, but not everyone can be as fucking great as you. What, Papa’s approval wasn’t enough, and now you need mine too? Nothing’s ever enough for you, is it? You have fucking everything, and you’re never satisfied! God, you’re so fucking selfish,” he ranted, shouted, accused maybe, words springing to life he had never thought he would utter.
He didn’t know why he said it
Ilya bristled visibly. “I never asked for that!”
“You sure seem to fucking enjoy it.”
“I can’t apologize for that! What, should I be as fucking miserable as you and get high to cope with my shit life like you?”
Alexei knew Ilya wasn’t happy. Far too like their mother for that, and for some reason that pissed him off even more.
Alexei’s life was absolute fucking shit, and he missed Viktoria and hated her just as much that he had no idea where to even begin with that. His job sucked and the guy who always had the best stuff got busted a week back, and he and Rodya didn’t talk anymore, didn’t hang out anymore.
He got to be miserable, not Ilya. Going off to goddamn Canada to play the Junior World Championship, would probably be chosen first draft, would go far in life, fucking hockey genius with everything he wanted lined up in front of him, and he had the nerve to be unhappy?
Alexei was drowning, his life falling apart and Father berating him all the time and Ilya dared to be miserable?
“It must be so hard to be you. I can’t even begin to imagine all your problems. What, can’t figure out how to decorate the fucking houses you’re going to buy?”
“If you maybe got off your ass and got your shit together you wouldn’t be such a fucking shitshow. What’s the saying, "self-fulfilling prophecies?”
Alexei had tried when he was younger. Struggled through books and assignments before he eventually stopped trying because it was better being hit for being lazy than dumb. It was easier, because if he never tried he could never fail.
“You’ve never had to work for anything, so what the hell do you know about hard work?”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Alexei?” Ilya stormed. ”Do you know how hard I worked to get where I am?”
“You? Working hard? You’ve never worked hard for anything in your damn life. You’re lazy, Ilya. Some of us actually have to work in life. Some of us aren’t born with everything.”
“So you think that’s what I am? Born with it?” Ilya asked, his voice quieter but no less heated.
“You’re far too lazy to be anything else.”
Alexei knew it wasn’t fully true, but why then had he, who tried so hard when he was younger, always ended up second best to his younger brother?
Ilya pursed his lips and nodded to himself. His eyes matched Alexei’s. “It was good thing Viktoria left you. Good for her. I don’t know why she stuck around with you for over a year.”
Ilya didn’t hit him back and for some reason that clawed at his nerves more than any punch ever would.
Alexei didn't enroll in the esteemed Moscow MVD University like Father had done in his youth. Instead, he signed up at one of their regional training centers for initial training. It was the fast track, he knew. He wouldn't get a good position after he was done, wouldn’t get a good job at first. Junior officer or some shit, but it was something.
Father wasn't happy but eventually he came around to it. Believed that as soon as Alexei started working, he would be ambitious. Would get promotions through hard work instead of through a good educational background.
It was ironic, training to be a police officer, considering what Alexei got up to in his spare time.
Alexei aged and so did Ilya, until his tiny little brother was drafted and not so tiny anymore and headed off to Boston.
There, Ilya started making more money than in the Junior League.
Alexei started calling him after that, and Ilya always gave in because at heart, Ilya was sensitive like Mother, and that was something Alexei could use.
The debts he owed were starting to come bite him in the ass, and his lifestyle as it was required a lot of money to keep it going, and he didn’t have time to work because he was busy studying stupid fucking laws and stupid fucking shit for a job he didn’t want.
Alexei didn’t love Sonya. He was so goddamn stoned when they met he could barely remember it, just flashes of her naked body under his in some guy's bedroom, allowing themselves to be recalled.
And then she got pregnant, and Father told him to marry her before the kid was born so he did.
Sonya didn’t love him either.
The wedding wasn’t very big but Ilya still attended it. Ilya talked with Sonya during dinner after the ceremony. He had almost looked nervous when she guided his hand to her huge belly, but then Ilya smiled, his sky blue eyes like that summer day he fell with his bike.
Alexei poured himself a few fingers too much vodka in his glass until it almost spilled over.
Sonya moved into his apartment after the wedding. It wasn’t uncomfortable living with her.
And then Katerina was born, and he needed more money from Ilya than ever and Ilya sent it.
His Katya looked a lot like Ilya had done when he was younger. The same bright blonde hair before it darkened, but she had Alexei’s eyes. For a second he had the thought that Ilya was her father but that quickly passed because there was no possible way of that being true, Ilya being in America when Sonya had gotten pregnant.
Katya held his fingers when she was newly born, like Ilya had done. Was a gentle child and Alexei tried to be gentle in turn. It was difficult, having no way to navigate the role of a father when he knew he didn’t want to be like his own.
It had been a while since Father looked as proud as he did at Alexei's graduation. At first, he hadn’t approved that Alexei didn’t attend the university, but eventually he got around to it. Believed that as soon as Alexei started working, he would be ambitious. Would get promotions through hard work instead of through a good educational background.
“The road’s only just begun, son. You have a long way ahead of you to climb to my rank, but you’re my son.” His warm hand grasped at Alexei’s shoulders, a small smile on his face. ”So I know you’ll be able to do it.”
Alexei nodded, smiled, thanked him, but he knew deep down that it would never happen.
That night he and some guys from the training program – all now lined up for some low-entry patrol jobs – drank so much two of them ended up kneeling in front of the toilet.
He had had plans with Sonya, but Dimitri asked and Alexei was so desperate to be out of the apartment, to still be fifteen when he, Luka, and Rodya drank homebrewed wine in the forest and Mother made him tea when he got back.
Sonya didn’t talk to him the next day but he couldn’t find it in himself to give a shit.
Having a child became expensive. Sonya stayed home with Katya, and Alexei’s job paid absolute shit. The bribes barely lasted a night out with the guys and the lines and the booze.
And it didn’t even come close to the debt he had been racking up through the years, and the people he borrowed it from wanted it back.
“Twenty thousand dollars?” Ilya exclaimed frustratedly through the phone.
“Yes, twenty thousand dollars! I’m glad your hearing is okay.”
“For what this time!?”
Katya was crying in the background and had been ever since 3 that night. He felt like he was going absolutely fucking crazy and he hadn’t gotten a fix for days now.
“For fuck you,” Alexei scoffed.
“This is the last fucking time.”
Ilya always yielded, every time.
“Yeah, fine,” Alexei agreed dismissively. They both knew it would be far from the last time.
“And I’m not sending it tonight,” Ilya added.
Trust Ilya to be a pain in the ass. Alexei needed that money soon. End of the week, the guy said yesterday. It was Friday today.
“Why the fuck not?”
“It’s— It’s midnight here, Alexei!”
“Oh, you always have some bullshit excuse, Ilya.”
Their names had turned into something bitter. Alexei was the first to stop with the nicknames, and he knew Ilya took a while to get used to it.
‘Ilya’ had become a weapon, something to use to show Ilya how little he mattered, how he no longer was the beloved Ilyusha — that the name had died with Mother and he would never hear someone from his family call him that again and he knew it fucking killed Ilya. Ilya deserved it.
Ilya had begun to top calling him Alyosha the first time Alexei had used Ilyushenka to mock him — not the teasing times from their childhood, but when it became an insult instead of hidden endearment. Something had changed that day in his sky blue eyes.
“How’s Papa?” Ilya suddenly asked. Almost every time they talked lately, he had been asking about him.
“What the fuck is up with you and Papa? Jesus fucking Christ. He is fine!”
Sonya was trying to calm Katya down, but she was crying so loud Alexei thought his head was going to burst.
They were doing fucking fine without him. But Ilya always tried to insert himself where he didn’t belong. The golden fucking son.
“We can all live without you. Go fuck yourself, Ilya.”
Ilya took a deep breath, the sound barely filtering in from the phone.
“On the phone yesterday, he asked me to bring home some bread.”
Alexei paused for a second. He swallowed.
“Well, he's stupid.”
A long pause. Through the phone he could hear the TV Ilya had on.
“Good night, Alexei.”
He looked at Katya and Sonya.
“First thing in the morning, Ilya.”
Katya turned two and Alexei knew he would beat the shit out of anyone that would ever hurt her, and he couldn’t ever imagine himself being the reason for bruises on her very small and fragile body.
It seemed Sonya was born to be a mother while Alexei struggled to be someone different from his Father but never really fully succeeding.
Alexei was also pretty sure Katya loved her uncle Ilyusha a lot more than she liked him.
Ilya had always been good with kids.
Ever summer Ilya came back from Boston. They didn’t see each other much those times. If it wasn’t for Katya and Father, he was pretty sure they wouldn’t meet in person again.
Protect your brother, Mother had said. Because it was always about Ilya, in the end.
When Ilya first got his skates on, Alexei knew his brother would be in attention’s sweet center for the rest of his life.
He hadn't been wrong.
“Where’s my fucking money?”
Rent was due and Ilya always sent money the last week of the month but he hadn’t so far.
“Your money?” Ilya asked in disbelief.
“Yes, my money. Are you deaf, Ilyschenka? Are words too hard your your little head to understand?
“I’m the one getting paid. I’m the one doing shit with my life instead of getting fucking high. It’s my fucking money.”
Alexei scoffed. ”You’re a disgusting faggot, Ilya, that’s what you are.”
There was a pause on the other line.
“What, you want Katya to starve? Is that it?” Alexei questioned harshly. That always worked. Call him a fag and bring Katya into it and Ilya fucking folded each time.
“Okay,” Ilya agreed.
It was easy to push Ilya to get what he was owed. Ilya pretended he didn’t care but he still did. He knew Ilya well enough to know that, at least.
“Doesn’t your brother play in the olympics?” Ivan asked one day, ashing his cigarette on the already full ashtray. Ivan was one of the guys they met years before in March.
Rodya was married by now to a woman Alexei had only met once.
He had thrown away the wedding invitation he had gotten by mail. They hadn’t talked for a year. Luka did, however, still talk to Rodya, more than Alexei did, but it wasn’t like before.
Luka had told him Rodya was clean, which Alexei years before never thought he would be. He still hadn’t decided on how to feel about that fact so he tried to ignore it.
“Yeah, what of it?”
“You think you could get us tickets?”
“Since when have you fuckers ever liked hockey?”
Ivan threw a cushion at him without looking but missed him by at least a hand's length.
“Ever since the Olympics were in Russia. So, you can or you can’t?”
In his e-mail inbox, he had three tickets from Ilya. Good seats. Last time they spoke on the phone, they had argued. They always did, but it had been nastier.
Alexei had been in a foul mood, having been reprimanded at a fucking job he had never wanted, and Alexei knew Boston had lost to Montreal the night before. Maybe that’s why he had chosen that time to call Ilya, why he called him Ilyushenka to get a reaction
Then the next morning Ilya had mailed him three tickets.
For a while, he had considered actually going, bringing Sonya and Katya. The girls would have liked it, he knew. Instead:
“I got two. And they’re good seats. How much are you willing to pay?”
He blew the money in one evening.
Alexei didn’t attend the games. The ticket he saved was left unused.
Instead, he laid buried balls deep inside some woman whose name he didn’t know and who didn’t know his name either in a motel room, the TV playing in the background. Both were coming down from a high.
They watched as Russia lost to fucking Latvia. It was too bad they weren’t young anymore and he could listen to Father hit Ilya with his belt anymore, like after every loss that was too shameful to be left unattended.
And Alexei couldn’t bite his lip, listening to Ilya’s grunts of pain and the loud sound of leather on skin, and push down the urge to go rip Ilya away from their father.
But rather Ilya than Alexei, whom Father usually preferred to hit, he used to tell himself, until those words started to taste less false on his tongue.
Sonya and Katya were visiting Sonya's mother in Voskresensk for the week, and Alexei had found the woman next to him at some lousy underground club.
“Can you turn that TV off? Hearing about slow Latvians winning is drying me up.”
“You were never even fucking wet to begin with,” Alexei scoffed but obligingly rolled over on the bed to grab the remote on the nightstand. The sheets were filthy and damp, and the entire room smelled of smoke and stale sweat.
“And whose fault is that?”
“Where’s Luka?” He asked Ivan when the Olympics was over, and they were smoking in his apartment. It was late, with a few people asleep on the floor. Or unconscious. He didn’t fucking know or care, for that matter. But Luka hadn’t answered his phone in a few days.
“Last I heard he was on some bender down in Kaluga.”
Alexei frowned, checking his phone for notifications, but none were from Luka.
“What the hell is he doing down in Kaluga?”
“I don’t know, man. I'm not his keeper, but Dimitri said he went a week ago.”
While Rodya had quit, Luka had gotten deeper in it than ever.
Alexei didn’t need fixes so often anymore and tried to create at least some distance between that life and himself ever since Katya turned three years old and looked at him with wide, wide sky-blue eyes and asked if he was okay after he came back home stumbling drunk from Luka’s one day.
He didn’t quit but he started keeping to it weekends again, and then every other weekend.
Ilya won the Stanley Cup.
“For you, Mama."
Alexei turned off the TV.
He checked in on Katya, who was sleeping soundly in bed, surrounded by stuffed toys. Half of them Ilya had gotten her.
Alexei was more at the station now, not patrolling as much. The pay was better, but not great. Alexei didn’t want to be there, wasn’t ambitious like the guys that started at the same time, which was shown because they got promoted over and over and Alexei didn't.
He wasn’t even disappointed over it — he never was anymore, because he never tried hard enough for that feeling to be justified.
Ilya sent enough money that they didn’t need to worry, however, and it started to last the entire month instead of being blown within days on coke and whatever else he could get his hands on, like when he was younger.
Katya grew older, talked and walked and sang stupid songs, and Alexei read her books in bed.
Stopped sleeping with other women, and Sonya stopped spending time at her sister’s all the time. Life settled, ebbed, rose, and fell.
He wasn’t particularly happy or content; maybe he never would be, but he made do. Didn’t get high or black out drunk during weekdays anymore, reserved only for weekends. Saw Luka less and less, who was living like he was eighteen again.
And then the sickness they all had seen coming in Father — but Alexei had pretended not to — couldn’t be ignored anymore. Ilya was in fucking America playing stupid fucking hockey instead of stepping up and being a dutiful son.
Alexei was stuck reminding their father that his first wife was dead, taking care of a man that was slowly starting to no longer be able to function. His phone rang through the night, the sound engrained into his spine, and he started drinking during the weekdays again.
Ilya came home during the summer. He seemed happier, and that made Alexei almost nauseous with acrimony. But Ilya took care of Father that summer, so Alexei didn’t have to.
“Cigarette?” Alexei asked as he opened the package. Autumn was approaching with a cold breeze in the air.
The wall of their childhood home was cool under his back. The paint as immaculate as ever.
Ilya closed the door after him.
He shook his head. “I don’t smoke anymore.”
Alexei raised an eyebrow, remembering the unbuttoned shirt buttons, the stumbling steps during summers, the smoke in his skin.
“Suit your-fucking-self then,” Alexei said and took out a cigarette. Ilya watched him light it and before he could tell him to fuck off, Ilya spoke.
“He’s getting worse.”
The smoke settled pleasantly in his lungs. He closed his eyes for a second, taking another drag.
(”Is mama sick again?” Ilya’s young voice echoed in his head.)
He took another long drag until he was certain no air remained in his lungs, that smoke was the only thing curling in his veins.
“Yeah, what a fucking observation.” Ilya opened his mouth to speak again, but Alexei beat him to it. “If you don’t want a smoke you can fuck off.”
His brother watched him for a few seconds longer, and Alexei turned his head when sky blue eyes landed on him.
Then the hockey season started and Ilya left, and Alexei was left to deal with Father again.
Father got worse when the first snow fell.
Alexei was watching him slowly lose himself, watched him slowly die. Had to make sure he took his medication and that he ate — all the while Ilya’s face was all over the internet, all the women he was fucking, all the clubs he went to, and all the games he won and goals he scored.
Polina barely did shit so he and Sonya were the ones left to do everything while trying to take care of their own child.
Ilya and he argued more and more on the phone. Alexei turned angrier, and Ilya did, too, which he had no fucking right to.
Ilya was winning game after game, his name well-known and praised, and Alexei was sitting in a fucking hospital chair while Father screamed at nurses.
“Look, Papa, it’s Uncle Ilyusha!” Katya said as she pointed at the TV the second he came back home from Father’s house. It was a game from the All Stars.
Shane Hollander made a pass to Ilya who scored.
“Look! He made a goal!”
He wasn’t sure when Katya had started watching hockey all of a sudden.
“He did,” Alexei said neutrally.
Sonya was standing by the stove. “Maybe we should get you a pair of skates, Katya.”
Alexei sat down beside Katya, who jumped into his lap within a second. “Oh Papa, can I? I want to skate like him!”
Alexei took a deep breath, fighting down the mordancy so words he would regret didn’t spill from his lips.
“Maybe.”
Father started spending more and more time in the hospital. His heart was slowly giving out.
Ilya sent money, but he wasn’t fucking there. Wasn’t there to watch the man larger than life slowly get reduced to a child in saggy skin and fragile bones.
Ilya was fucking women and partying and living his fucking life like he had no regrets, all the while Alexei sat in an uncomfortable chair in hospitals and tried to remember the millions of medications Father should take and how often and with what and how much.
The only thing Ilya seemed good at was sending him money.
Father died in March and Ilya came back home.
Alexei spent three days straight drunk, two of them high, on Ivan’s floor. He couldn’t get ahold of Luka.
Rodya sent a text that Alexei didn’t respond to.
Ilya fixed details about the burial and assets that Alexei didn’t give a shit about. He had already done so much that it was Ilya’s damn turn.
Alexei had never seen Ilya look like how he did after the funeral. It surprised him, the animosity in Ilya’s eyes, the tremble of his hands even as his words were viscous and steaming with rage and resentment.
Ilya used to have the ability to take and take whatever Alexei threw at him, never fighting back in a way that actually mattered. Continued to send money, to answer every time he called. Took every insult and came back.
But was never good at taking insults at other people, however. Maybe that’s why he insulted Svetlana.
Alexei had never thought he could push Ilya so hard that he broke, but Ilya broke and broke he fucking did.
“You can have my apartment. And there will be a trust for my niece. She can have it when she’s eighteen. And you will never, ever contact me again.”
Alexei was frozen, unmoving, his breath in his throat.
Is that how he looked when he told Ilyusha it was his fault Mother died?
No, he decided. He must have looked worse. Crueler.
Ilya looked like he was crumbling at the core.
“If you do, I will use every piece of my fame and money and notoriety to make sure that you can’t show your face in this fucking city without someone wanting to break it open. So take what I offer, shut your fucking mouth and walk away.
Alexei fixed his suit in the mirror, brushing away a tear just before it could spill over. Ilya’s ragged breathing echoed, louder than the mellifluous music drifting in from the sitting room.
He looked at Ilya through the mirror, and he knew, just like he knew years ago that he would never see Viktoria again, that this would be the last time he would lay eyes on his brother in person.
Last time he would hear his voice that wasn’t through the TV.
Alexei did as told and left. Walked out the front door until he ended up at the playground where he beat the shit out of the kid that bullied Ilya. Alexei couldn’t remember what his name had been.
The blood from the kid’s nose that had dripped onto the asphalt after Alexei broke it was gone. Must have been washed away by the rain fourteen years ago. It was stupid to have thought it would have stained.
“You’re a big brother, Alyosha. Which means that you need to look after your brother, your little Ilyshenka.”
He crouched down, his head in his hands, as he started sobbing.
Nothing turned out like he thought it would all those years ago.
When the video of Ilya and Shane Hollander leaked, Alexei wasn’t surprised. Of course Ilya was a fucking faggot.
He wasn’t the least bit surprised he didn’t get an invite to their wedding, either. If he had, he would have burned it. It was fucking disgusting, seeing pictures of the two. Seeing Ilya smile like he hadn’t since Mother died.
Life in Russia had gotten worse for a while. He was, after all, the brother of the fag who was fucking some Asian fucker—Chinese, maybe, but they all looked the fucking same.
Alexei was the brother of Ilya Rozanov, who turned his back on his own motherland.
But the scrutinizing eyes eventually receded. It wasn’t a hidden fact that Alexei despised his younger brother, after all. He wasn’t silent about it.
He participated in the shit talking when meeting Ilya’s old coaches and Father’s old coworkers, who muttered words of forsaken morals and dishonor.
The Major General was an old, close friend of Father who had been promoted shortly after Father died. When they were younger, he used to come over for dinner once a year.
Alexei and Sonya had gotten an unexpected invitation one day to join him and his wife for dinner. Sonya wore her nicest dress, long and black, with her mother’s pearls.
“It’s a shame about that brother of yours, really. I always expected better of him. But what do you expect when the boy wasn’t even here when his own father was dying,” the Major General suddenly said just after the main course had been served.
“Ilya had always been selfish. It’s no surprise,” Alexei said as he cut into the meat. It was slightly overcooked, the fine tenderloin just a bit too tough. It was a lot nicer, however, than the cheap shit he and Sonya could afford.
“Too like that mother of yours,” The director said and Alexei swallowed. Sonya’s legs brushed against his and he nodded.
“It’s a shame.”
It was true, he knew. Ilya and Mother were cut from the same cloth, the same fragile teacups that would shatter the second they hit the floor, and Alexei had shattered them both over and over until both were gone.
“I gathered from Grigoriv that you weren’t close to her?”
Alexei shook his head. He had been, once, especially before Ilya. He had wanted to be closer to her as he aged.
“Maybe Ilya would do us the favor of following in her footsteps.”
The Major General’s wife laughed, a shallow and cold sound, and then Sonya and Alexei did too.
The Major General smiled, nodded to himself, and Alexei for some reason felt like he had passed a test.
When he was a child, he beat the shit out of the kids that bullied Ilya, let him sleep in his bed when he had been having nightmares (coincidentally, Ilya always had bruises those times) and had promised Mother to protect Ilyushenka.
When he was in his mid-thirties, he laughed when the Major General suggested Ilya should kill himself.
Once upon a time, they had been young. Alexei had looked at his newborn baby brother and, though he had denied it, had been so fucking proud. Now he fucking laughed and agreed while they talked about how Ilya, his baby brother, should kill himself.
And the worst thing was that he couldn’t find it in himself to be revolted at the idea, couldn’t fully disagree. Maybe it would be better if Ilya offed himself. Maybe he would somehow get a kid too and then that child could find his lifeless body.
Or maybe Shane fucking Hollander would.
Alexei would laugh if that came to pass. Or maybe he would cry. He didn’t know which.
Sonya took the car to go get Katya from her sister’s place. Alexei insisted on walking.
He passed the woods he, Luka, and Rodya used to explore. The ditches they had thrown up in. In the silence of the night, he could still make out their laughs bouncing off the pavement.
Luka died from an overdose three years ago. Alexei had gotten the call a week after from Luka’s mother.
Rodya was on his second wife. He had never met her. They hadn’t talked long before Luka died. None of them called when they found out.
No longer was adolescence their companion and cloak. Now adulthood had them all in its grips, and the two of them that remained were fucking failing.
(Alexei would walk that same elegiac path many, many times more as he continued to age. Would look at the places that had once meant something, images forlornly fading each time until he couldn’t remember the sound of their voices or the blue of Ilya’s eyes.)
Last he heard, Viktoria moved to Petersburg. Maybe she was dead. Maybe she was married and a mother. All he knew was that he felt it in his marrow that they would never meet again.
And Ilya was married to a man he loved on the other side of the world and had the fucking audacity to be happy.
He got to live his life like it was a movie. Got to play hockey, had a team with people that liked him, got to be famous, and got to be happy and away from Russia and the haunting of their parents.
Ilya got to live — and live it seemed he did.
It wasn’t fair, and Alexei hated Ilya for it. He hated him for so many things that they all just blended together into a feeling he would never get rid of; that still clung to him and made him ugly even as he tried to be better for Katya.
But he was always, always failing. Always falling short.
The next day he got promoted to captain.
Alexei had a framed picture of him and Ilya in the top drawer of a white dresser. It was wrapped inside a sweater two sizes too small for him. The upper right corner was cracked from when he dropped it once — his hands had been clumsy from alcohol and pills, and his eyes blurry from the cold in his heated apartment.
Mother had given him and Ilya one each a few weeks after the pictures were taken.
He should probably throw it out.
(He knew he would never be able to do it).
Alexei took it out and looked at it.
He didn’t recognize the two brothers in the picture. Ilya’s hair was a lot blonder, and Alexei’s hand rested in his curls.
The stupid suits they wore at their mother’s insistence looked dumb. The grins on their faces and the childlike innocence shining were dead alongside their mother.
None of them had a brother anymore. Both of those kids were long gone, the picture a reminiscence of a time elapsed ages ago. The moments of youthful contentment and childish happiness were so far away that Alexei sometimes wondered if they had even existed.
Ilyushenka and Alyosha were gone, and Ilya and Alexei remained. Two strangers sharing the memories and surname.
After a while, he carefully wrapped the picture in the ragged sweater again, put it back in its spot, and closed the drawer.
(That wouldn’t be the last time he ever looked at it. Not the last time he traced unknown faces with steady fingers, not the last time ephemeral wistfulness echoed in the silence as the drawer was shut.)
Alexei wasn’t Mother’s favorite son. He knew why.