Chapter 1: After the Free Skate
The slap of his skate guards against the tile was the only sound Misha could focus on. That, and the burn in his thighs from the last quad attempt, the one Ilia had landed perfectly beside him. The locker room was a cavern of stale sweat and neon glow, the air thick with leather and cold metal. Their lockers were side-by-side. It meant nothing, except everything.
Ilia was already pulling his shirt over his head, the muscles of his back shifting under skin glazed with a fine sheen. Misha kept his eyes down, fumbling with his laces. The silence was a living thing between them, pulsing with everything they never said.
“You hesitated on the Lutz,” Ilia said, his voice flat. He didn’t look at Misha. He never really looked at him, not in a way that mattered.
“I know.”
“It’s a weak jump. It looks scared.” Ilia turned then, leaning back against the lockers. His platinum hair was dark with sweat at the roots, his cold blue eyes assessing, dismissive. “You skate like you’re apologizing for taking up space.”
Misha said nothing. The criticism was a familiar ache, a dull pressure behind his sternum. He yanked a skate off.
Then Ilia moved. It was always sudden. One moment he was across the space, the next he was right there, the heat of his body erasing the chill of the room. He caged Misha against the cold metal lockers, one hand flat against the steel by Misha’s head, the other coming up to fist roughly in his tousled dark hair. The grip was sharp, commanding.
“You skated like you wanted this, though,” Ilia murmured, his breath hot against Misha’s ear. It wasn’t a question.
Misha’s breath hitched. He went utterly still, every nerve ending screaming to life. This was the closest thing to praise he ever got. Acknowledgment that Ilia had seen something in him, even if it was just this raw, wanting thing.
Ilia’s free hand went to Misha’s belt, the buckle clinking softly in the hollow room. His fingers were deft, impersonal. “Quiet,” he said, a whispered command as Misha started to shiver. “Just be quiet and take it.”
Misha closed his eyes. The fogged mirrors across the way reflected only blurs of motion, shadows merging. Ilia talked. He always talked.
“You think about this during practice,” Ilia whispered, his voice a low, cruel scrape. “I can see it. You get sloppy when you’re needy.” His hand was inside Misha’s pants now, a possessive, claiming grip that had nothing to do with tenderness. “This is all you’re good for. Right? A convenient hole.”
The words should have shattered him. They did, a little, somewhere deep inside. But the breaking was a habit now, a ritual. It meant Ilia was focused on him. His total, devastating attention was a drug. Misha nodded, a slight, desperate movement. His scalp stung where Ilia held him.
“Use your words, Misha.”
“Yes.” The word was torn from him.
“Yes, what?”
“It’s all I’m good for.”
Ilia kissed him then, if you could call it a kiss. It was dominance, a biting pressure meant to consume rather than connect. Misha melted into it, into the sharp taste of him, the familiar scent of his sweat. He let himself be maneuvered, pushed, used. The edge of the locker dug into his spine, a counterpoint to Ilia’s hands on his hips.
It was fast, and rough, and utterly transactional. Ilia’s breaths were ragged in his ear, a series of commands and degradations that Misha absorbed like scripture. He didn’t ask for anything, didn’t dare to touch Ilia the way he wanted to—with reverence. He just took it, because taking it meant he was needed, in the most broken way possible.
After, Ilia stepped back as if flipping a switch. He adjusted his clothes, ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t look at Misha, who was still leaning against the lockers, trying to remember how to breathe.
“Shower,” Ilia said, not even a little out of breath. “You reek of desperation.”
He turned and walked toward the showers, the sound of his footsteps echoing. Misha watched him go, the perfect, ruthless line of his shoulders. The room felt cavernous again, and terribly cold. He slid down the locker to sit on the bench, his body humming, his heart a ragged, aching thing in his chest.
He would shower. He would go home. He would come back tomorrow and do it all again—the jumps, the criticism, the cold silence that sometimes, if he was lucky, broke like this. He clung to the phantom heat of Ilia’s hands, the echo of his voice. It was better than being ignored. It had to be.
From the shower stalls, the sound of water hitting tile. Ilia didn’t call for him. He never did. Misha pulled his clothes back on, his movements slow. In the fogged mirror, his own reflection was a pale ghost, sharp features blurred. He looked away.
The door to the locker room banged open, letting in a burst of noise from the rink—the Zamboni grinding its way across the ice, erasing all their marks. Ilia walked out, hair damp, bag slung over his shoulder. He paused at the door.
“Your free leg was lazy in the step sequence. Fix it.”
Then he was gone.
Misha sat alone in the neon glow, the words settling into him. An order. A dismissal. A tiny piece of Ilia to carry with him until the next time. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and pressed the heels of his hands against his closed eyes until he saw stars. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. But it was all he had, so he held onto it, tight.