Dec 16, 2006 23:47
“Have Rostislav and Nash given up their attempt to make love in every room in Nationwide yet?”
I snorted. “Are you kidding? They’ve already gone through the entire first floor-and it’s only three months into the season.”
Igor let out a disbelieving laugh, shaking his head. His eyes crinkled at the corners, amusement curling his lips, and my heart warmed at the expression-it looked good on him. Igor was far too serious, far too often. I took a sip of my water, enjoying the lines around his mouth that represented years of laughter and years of pain, many of which I had been there right alongside him for.
In the back of my mind, I wondered what I looked like to him; if he saw the same aged features in my face that I saw in his.
Igor was in town for the week; ostensibly to check up on me. We hadn’t really gotten together since Ekaterinburg-since I had found Nikolai again. While it was a good excuse, and I enjoyed seeing my friend, it wasn’t lost on me that his visit coincided with that of a certain former teammate of ours to Detroit, only three hours north. Igor doesn’t often leave his wife and children and their comfy California home.
But Slava visiting from Russia is even rarer; and despite the years and changes of-and between-the two, some pasts just can’t be forgotten.
I’d taken Nikolai to his old apartment a few days previous, and he had been spending his time since going through his things, slowly and methodically seeing if they triggered any memories. This morning he’d shooed me away when I’d mentioned Igor was in town, and gone back to nosing through an old box of dust-covered books in clear dismissal. I no longer felt the need to protect him obsessively, to watch over him constantly, and just made sure he had my cell number on his phone before coming to meet Igor at the secluded, lavish little French restaurant L’Antibes to catch up.
Igor sat back, wine in hand as he settled in his chair and looked me over with a thoughtful gaze. There was a certain familiar glint in his eyes-the type of glint that said, ‘I’m about to pry into your personal life, but we both know it’s for the best so just answer my questions honestly and I won’t have to use a verbal crowbar to get them out of you in a more painful manner.’
Igor did that glint very well.
“So, how is Nikolai?”
No death and destruction yet. I eyed him suspiciously.
“Fine.”
Igor rolled his eyes.
“ ‘Fine’? This isn’t high school, Sergei, and you are not a teenager any more. I expect more than monosyllabic grunts. Put that vocabulary of yours to good use.”
Aha, there it was.
“He’s fine,” I repeated stubbornly. “I took him skating at Nationwide a couple weeks ago.”
Igor perked up, intrigued. “Really? How did it go?”
“Fine.”
He gave me a Look, and I grinned at him cheekily.
“It went well,” I went on, seriously. “He was a little jumpy at first; a little rusty, but-it was him, Igor. And he’s getting better every day, remembering bits and pieces, connecting feelings to the reasons why… He’s doing well.”
Igor nodded, his features expressionless. He was expecting something else; something more. I went over what I’d said again in my mind, dissecting it. Picking it apart. And, slowly, my shoulders slumped.
“But…he still doesn’t have any memory of me,” I admitted softly.
Igor’s eyes gentled, with that compassion he was so well-known for. He leaned forward, setting his glass down; watching me carefully. In a burst of something, self-preservation, perhaps; not wanting to hear what he was going to say because I knew that it would hurt, I barreled on.
“I know he’s going to remember, Igor. I know it. He’s so close, he keeps on saying how familiar things are…”
“Sergei,” Igor said quietly, pausing me. I averted my gaze, refusing to look at him. Refusing to see the understanding I knew would be in those clear blue eyes.
“What if he doesn’t remember?”
I flinched. The worries and concerns that I had been trying to suppress, the desperate longing that choked my throat surfaced again, and I curled my hands into fists against my thighs as Igor dragged my denial out into the open.
“He will.”
My voice was small and I felt small, the last vestiges of my hope thrown against into the light of stark reality. I loved Nikolai. There was no question of that. I loved him and I would give anything to him, everything to him that he wanted or needed. There was no ‘me’ to this anymore-no ‘I’, only ‘us’. I couldn’t, wouldn’t; refused to live without him.
The man that I had lived with all these past, turmoil-wrought months was Nikolai. That same smile, that same voice; that same body of soft skin and dark hair. He was Nikolai.
And yet he wasn’t.
He’s the same man and yet he’s a different man; not diminished but just different. Where my heart expects him to curl up against me in bed and press his mouth and his hands to my skin, my mind knows that he won’t, and he doesn’t-simply because that is not what he remembers. He remembers nothing of that, of that relationship of such deeper intimacy.
My mind accepts that, but my heart? My soul?
I break a little every time he smiles.
“You don’t know that he will, Sergei,” Igor said gently. “You don’t know if he ever will. Are you able to live with that?”
I bit my lip. “I…I can. But-I can’t.” I closed my eyes. “It’s like I love two different men, Igor; one I remember, and one new. They’re the same, but they’re different too, and I-don’t know. I just don’t know. I doubt myself all the time, I… I keep holding on to the hope that he’ll remember. That the two will become one again. It’s so complicated like this. I know I love Nik; love him not just for his memories, but for the man that he is, at his core-but I’m not sure how to approach this relationship. I don’t know if I should treat it like a new one, building new memories, or like the old one, only modified. I feel like I’m in a new relationship while I’m waiting for the old to resurface.”
Igor raised an eyebrow, not looking at me; swirling his wine around in the bottom of his glass and watching the dark red liquid swish and crash against its crystalline sides.
“You feel like you’re cheating on Nikolai with…Nikolai?”
His tone was arch, leading; Socratic in its prompting of me to think for myself. I stared into the depths of my water glass, poking at the few ice cubes melting at the bottom with my straw.
“I’m too old for mindgames, Igor,” I said, quietly warning. “I’m too old and I’m too tired to go soul-searching at this point.”
Igor laughed softly. The reaction was not what I expected and I looked up, bristling, but his eyes were smiling. He reached over, tipping my head up with the edges of his fingers; his thumb brushing against my cheek as he cupped my chin in his hand.
“Sergei, you don’t grow old,” he said. “You age, but you don’t grow old. It’s something I…Slava and I, we noticed in you. You grow up, you mature, you add experience to your years; but you’re just not old. It’s like wine-the older you are, the richer and more vibrant you become.”
“You and your wines, Igor,” I muttered, glancing away embarrassedly. He chuckled and patted me on the cheek before withdrawing his hand, his expression sliding into kind seriousness as his crossed his arms over his chest.
“I mean it, you know. It sounds like you feel you’re cheating on Nikolai with another version of him. I’m not pretending that I know everything, Sergei, but this sort of situation…doesn’t exactly have a precedent. There’s no one way you should act or feel. If I were you, I would treat Nikolai as if we were just beginning a relationship; bring yourself down to the level of knowledge that he has. You might know where he is ticklish but he doesn’t know the same about you-and don’t look at me that way, I know you can’t stand anything touching the bottoms of your feet. Some things may be different in this ‘new’ Nikolai, if you will; he may like foods he didn’t before, or dislike things that he didn’t used to. You don’t know, and you have to find out, again. You can use what you already know to prompt situations in which you can learn and relearn things about him-but do not be surprised if he acts or reacts differently from what you expect.”
I watched a drop of condensation trickle down the side of my glass as I digested Igor’s words. I knew that I would have to face reality someday and Igor, bless him and damn him, would be just the person to make me do it. I knew he was right, his idea was right, and yet…
“I feel like I would be letting him go.”
Igor smiled at me as the check was placed on the corner of the table. We both went for it but he got there first; and I scowled as he flipped the little black booklet open and slid his credit card inside. He was my guest, after all.
“It’s not as if you are going to forget him, Sergei,” he said mildly as he handed the check to a passing waitress. “Him or the memories of him before the crash. You have photos, tapes, friends to recount incidents-your lives together won’t disappear. Especially not with you building new memories together.”
“But what if he’s changed too much?” I blurted, putting voice to my deepest fear. “What if he doesn’t want this-want me-any more?”
Igor gave me a look that was as close to irritated as he’d ever been.
“Don’t make me hit you, Seryozha,” he warned. The old nickname made me blush, hanging my head a little; feeling chastised like a child, as he intended. “Does it look like he doesn’t want to be with you? Do you really think that he has been acting this whole time? He may have lost his memory but don’t treat the boy as if he’s impaired.”
“He’s not a boy,” I muttered petulantly as Igor’s credit card was returned. He tucked it into his wallet and rolled his eyes at me.
“He may not be, but you’re certainly acting like one. Get up, malchik; I have to go buy souvenirs for Alyonka and Diana, and little Igor wants a model of the Santa Maria. Plus Elena wants some Chihuly replica piece-why the woman has such an obsession with little bits of twisted glass, I’ve still no clue…”
I grinned as Igor muttered to himself, following him out of the restaurant. He hailed a cab and hugged me goodbye, a silent gesture that told me he was still concerned; but his acerbic teasing also signified that he trusted I was able to deal with my problems, no longer the mess that he had last seen me as, those months ago in Ekaterinburg. I waited until the cab pulled away before heading to my car. Nikky’s old apartment building was just a ten-minute drive, and I parked in his spot, nodding at the doorman on my way inside.
I watched the numbers of the floors pass as the elevator sped upward; still unable to repress my amusement when they stopped at the thirteenth floor. Some places around the world still don’t have a floor thirteen, just a twelve and then a fourteen; people still superstitious about the supposedly unlucky number. And here Nikolai embraced it like a friend.
I paused in front of his apartment door, not knowing if I should knock or not; ending up just shrugging and sliding the key into the lock and slipping inside. There was rustling coming from within the apartment and as I hung up my coat I called his name.
“Nikky?”
“’m back here!” came the muffled reply, sounding from the direction of the living room. I followed the source of the noise to find Nik sitting on the floor, surrounded by stacks of books and photo albums and cds, scrounging through a box of old mementos from his CSKA and Elektrosal days that usually stayed shoved beneath the bed. I paused in the doorway and he looked up, hair mussed and eyes bright; dust speckling his shoulders with grey against the black of his shirt.
“Find anything interesting?” I asked with a grin, watching as he stood and brushed himself off. The laugh I received was breathy and tired.
“A little,” he smiled. I made my way through the piles of debris littering the floor, stepping carefully around a precariously piled tower of pucks and hockey tape.
Nik held out his hand and I slipped mine into it, pulling him into my arms as we sat down on the couch together.
“There are so many things, Sergei,” he murmured into my neck, a little awed wonder coloring his voice. He nestled in my lap, legs thrown over my thigh, arms wrapped around my chest and his face tucked against my collarbone. Those silver-grey eyes were closed, and his breath wafted across my skin like a warm summer breeze.
“So many things,” he repeated, his voice sleepy after a long day spent exploring the large apartment full of unrecalled memories. “Events I don’t remember, people I don’t remember…and all of them familiar somehow. There’s so much to take in.”
“Try to pace yourself,” I said gently, rubbing soothing circles into his back. “It’s a lot to assimilate in just one day.”
“Mm,” he agreed. His nose bumped against my neck and I chuckled, combing my fingers through his hair.
“Sleepy kitten,” I murmured, half to myself as I stroked his skin. Nikolai wrinkled his nose and nuzzled closer, sliding his hands beneath my shirt and curling his fingers against my hips. The press of his palms against my skin made me shiver, my heartbeat escalating to double its normal speed.
“Not a kitten,” he groused. He rubbed his hands up and down my sides and I couldn’t stop myself from leaning down, nudging his head up so I could taste his lips. He kept his eyes closed but his tongue slid lazily into my mouth, tangling with my own with a maddeningly slick heat. I breathed him in like air, drank him in like water; pulled him close and deepened the kiss in order to better incorporate his being with mine. His fingers dug into my flesh and a breathy moan escaped him as I tugged his head back with my grip in his hair, gently pulling until his throat was bared and I could suck at his pulse, beating fast beneath his skin. I shifted over him, sliding one leg over his, knees planted onto the couch on either side of his hips, leaning down and mouthing my way from his jaw to the hollow of his throat; dragging my tongue across that heated flesh.
“You purr, don’t you?” I whispered as he let out a low, long moan. I sucked on the bit of neck available to me while trailing my hands up his chest, along the flat lines of his abs, until my fingers could work the top button of his shirt open.
Nik gasped and arched his hips up into mine. His chest was smooth as I slipped my hands beneath the parted material of his shirt, lowering my mouth to his skin, tasting him like a fine wine on my tongue. His hands went to my shoulders, clutching at the blue fabric of my shirt as I mouthed one nipple with my lips, gently teasing and worrying the hard little nub until he was groaning and squirming in earnest, fingers digging into my skin as I lapped and suckled my way down his heaving chest.
I was flying. The scent of Nikolai, so subtle yet so powerful overwhelmed my senses and my soul until I could barely think straight, grasping at him as if he were life and I a dying man. After so long, after so long…blinded, groping, I fell into him and cared for nothing but the soft flesh beneath my tongue, the body beneath my hands; the man beneath my body.
“Sergei,” Nikolai moaned as I sucked a bruise into being on his shoulder, my fingers working at the buckle of his belt. “Sergei…”
Want you so much, Nikky, my muzzy brain whispered. Need you so much. Please…need you…
“Sergei…Sergei, stop…”
His skin shivered beneath my lips. The curves of his hips felt so familiar, so right beneath my palms…
“Sergei, stop.”
I froze.
You’ve fucked up. You’ve fucked up again, why did you fuck up again?
I let go and scrambled backwards; scooting to the other side of the couch, trying to escape the eyes I knew would be staring at me accusingly, angrily. I would have gotten away, too, had it not been for Nikolai grabbing my wrist and yanking me back, and in my surprise I looked up at him.
He wasn’t angry. His eyes weren’t accusing. His fly was open and his shirt was draped across his shoulders, almost falling off, revealing the marks my mouth had made on his neck and chest; his lips bruised and cheeks flushed-but he wasn’t at all irate. He looked a little embarrassed, mussed, but his gaze was more gentle and understanding than anything.
“I’m sorry,” I started, babbling. “Nikky, I’m so sorry, I didn’t-”
Nik shook his head and pressed a finger to my lips. The words died in my throat as I stared at him, frozen, scared, waiting for his next move.
He smiled softly and leaned up to press his lips to the corner of my mouth.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he murmured, removing the slender digit so he could nip at my bottom lip. “It’s alright. It’s just…too fast, you know?” He teased my mouth open and I melted beneath him, tentatively returning my hands to his hips; ecstatically pleased when he did nothing to prevent it, not even flinching. I moaned when his mouth left mine, staring anxiously up into warm grey eyes.
“You make me drunk, Sergei,” he said softly, reaching up, combing his fingers through my hair. The touch was gentle and soothing, and felt just so damn good; so comforting. “I can’t think straight when I’m with you like this. Everything’s so fuzzy…I need to have my head sorted out before we start something like this. Before we-do this again. You understand?”
I nodded, wordlessly, not trusting myself to speak. Nikolai smiled and brushed the backs of his knuckles against my cheek and I closed my eyes, reveling in the feel of him touching me. Loving the feel of him touching me.
“I just…I need you so much, Nikky,” I whispered. He never stopped stroking my hair as I spoke. “I don’t mean to rush you, I’m sorry I did, I wasn’t thinking, but-I just need you so badly.”
“And I’m here.” I opened my eyes and caught his gaze, gentle and intent. He took my hand in his own and kissed the tips of my fingers; and I sighed softly with the intimacy of the gesture. “I’m here, Sergei, and I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have to feel rushed-we have the rest of our lives. I just need…a little more time. I’m sorry for that.”
“Don’t be.” I leaned forward, tucking my head beneath his chin, against his collarbone, just resting against him. I was tired of apologies. I was tired of explanations. I was tired of doubting myself and doubting him when I had no right or reason to do either. He slid his arms around me and I let myself go, closing my eyes and sighing against his skin, letting the tenseness flow from my body in a wave of release.
I’ll wait for you forever, Nikolai.
There was no ‘him’ any more.
No ‘me’ any more.
Only ‘us’.
-
series: tumbling down