Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5
Cliff and Ilya have a late night conversation before Ilya returns from Russia.
The gym surrounding Ilya was surprisingly dead. Or maybe not, since it was the time of the day when most people would be at work rather than working out. But even then, it is weird to be completely alone in the state-of-the-art gym that is completely silent except for the news playing on one of the TVs and an old sitcom playing on another. Not that he had been paying attention to either TV, preferring to listen to music during his workouts. Something about tucking his noise-canceling headphones into his ears while listening to music louder than is advisable always made the outside world fade away for a while and his brain go quiet.
Ilya'd finished his workout ten minutes ago, and he felt absolutely disgusting. He's dripping in sweat, and his head is still pounding after going out with Sveta the night before and getting spectacularly drunk, or maybe his head is pounding from stress—it's hard to tell these days. Ilya feels like he hasn't relaxed since he set foot back in Moscow at the start of the off-season.
He'd gotten into a massive fight with Alexei about their father yesterday, and Ilya's jaw has been so tightly clenched ever since that his teeth fucking hurt.
He had thought that getting in a good workout would alleviate some of his stress, that it could trick his body into relaxing.
It was something he had learned from Marley back during their first year playing together. Marley had gotten into it with his mama after an embarrassing loss that both men maintained was not their fault. The current Admirals' lineup had been playing together for years. Hunter and Vaughn had been experiencing some sort of full-on, paranormal mind meld that would have made it impossible for even Gretzky to get past, let alone Ilya in his rookie year, when he was playing with injured ribs and that bitch-ass goon Zullo had put Marley into the boards hard enough to concuss him. So, yeah, that loss was not his and Marley's fault. But they'd both walked into the locker room after to voicemails waiting for them about all the ways they had failed and should have played better.
