Chapter Text
“Ilyusha!” Svetlana bursts into her best friend’s apartment, nudging the door closed with her heeled boots. She sets down the unopened bottle of vodka she’d bought especially for this occasion and her bag, in order to take off her shoes, then wanders in.
She frowns at the quiet that greets her. “Ilyusha? Ilya? Where are you? I have vodka!” She walks further into the apartment. “And we can order those disgusting burgers you like-” she stops abruptly, teeth clicking shut as she walks into the living room.
Ilya doesn’t notice her right away, lost in his own little world. The TV is on, but muted. Ilya is staring at it unseeingly. “Ilya?”
She wanders over, grabs the remote and turns the TV off, bathing the room in darkness. Svetlana has to scramble to find the light switch. When the room is bathed in light, she finds her best friend squinting at her. “What are you doing here?” Ilya slurs, head leaned on the back of the couch.
It’s then that she notices the nearly empty bottle of vodka at his feet.
Svetlana huffs. “This was a waste of my money, then,” she tells him as she shakes her gift in his face.
He bats her hand away, annoyed. She throws herself down beside him. “Why aren’t you out celebrating your first win with your teammates?”
“I was,” he says curtly.
“And?”
Groaning, he pushes his face into her arm. “Stop,” he mutters pleadingly.
Svetlana wants to push. She doesn’t. She lets her head rest against his and moves her hand to clutch at his. She freezes when she finds it’s not empty.
Ilya shakes her hand off gently and reveals the small picture inside. It’s well loved, the edges worn and faded. In it, there’s a smiling Ilya at ten or eleven years old, his mother hugging him from behind. Both of them are beaming at the camera. Svetlana wants to trace that smile, that carefree smile she barely gets to see anymore, but she keeps her hands to herself.
“She would have loved this.”
Svetlana closes her eyes, swallows thickly. “Ilyusha.”
He takes a swig of vodka, balances the bottle on his knee and stares at it. “I keep thinking- if things were different, if she had- maybe she would have come with me, maybe she would have been with me today, cheering me on. She would have celebrated with me today, Sveta.”
She has to bite her lip to keep from crying at the palpable pain she can hear in his voice. “Ilya-”
He pulls away from her, puts his head in his hands. “She should be here.”
She can’t take it anymore. She sits up just long enough to pull him back into her arms. He resists at first, only for a few seconds, before he slumps into her embrace. She holds him tight, tight enough to hurt.
He doesn’t complain. In fact, he doesn’t say a thing. Slowly, little by little, he grows heavier in her arms. She looks down at his face and finds his eyes closed.
Her eyes move further down and she finds his hold on his photograph with his mother slack now. She takes it gently.
He will never be alone, Irina, she vows silently, I promise you, I will never leave him.