Work Text:
He landed smoothly, twisting himself into another twirl upon landing, breathing gently but surely as he led his body into its formulated routine. Formulae outlined themselves in his brain, on a mental corkboard, spread across the miles of beige walls in a multitude of colors, as he spun, twisted, turned and glided across the ice. His trust lay in the steadiness of his rhythm, the surety of his step, and the confidence that came from the ease of long practice in sparkling white ice skates, worn down with constant use but gleaming with good care.
His heartbeat pulsed in tune with the beat crooning in his ears, winding its way through his mind and his system until he existed only in its powerful drumbeat and heart breaking vocals. He spun for a loop – once, twice, three times– before he curled himself inwards, spinning at a rapid velocity, before stretching out mid-spin and gliding out. Immersed in his routine, his supplication was reverent. He was the gentle wind, which stirred the snow; he was the bend of the gale that twisted the trees; he was the break of dawn, limitless in its possibilities, beaming down, breaking free from the twisted constraints of the night-
Laughter interrupted his nirvana, and he breathed in, turning the latest spin into a gentle glide. He felt the twitch is his forehead, felt the frown curl his lips, but refused to turn to the source of his disruption as it drew nearer. They hadn’t walked in yet, but he knew they would, soon. And when they did –
“Ah, it’s the little snezhinka*!” a deep voice called out, laughingly, and he grit his teeth and he executed another axel jump. The laughter came again, from a whole group of people this time, and his eyes slid shut as he glided and drew himself into a final salchow jump to finish off his routine for the day. Ignoring the ignorant idiots crowded around one of the more common entrances to the rink, he skated over to the side entrance, hopping out onto the benches before leaning down to undo his skates.
A set of hands on his shoulder yanked him upright, while another tugged the headphones off of his head. His eyes snapped open, even as he was forced to turn to face smirking violet eyes in a face he had the vicious urge to punch. He couldn’t do that, he reminded himself; one more suspension and he might not be given leave to attend the Olympic trials. He might not be able to apply this year, but he sure as hell wanted to be there; the first time his coach had taken him to an Olympic trial, he’d met tons of skaters, all of them far better than he. They had told him that when he was to return, they had all would ask to see how much he’d improved.
He couldn’t wait for it. He’d burned the metaphorical midnight oil to practice day and night for it.
He was not going to get stonewalled because he punched the smug asshole who deserved it; he’d long since learned that no one else was ever convinced by his reasoning.
He tried to shrug off the other man’s grip, and glared coldly when he couldn’t, “What’s your deal, Braginsky?” he snapped, irate. The other sent him a vicious grin, filled with teeth.
“Oh, but snezhinka, we were just trying to be friendly,” he cooed, even as his grip tightened to almost painful levels of pressure. He didn’t even flinch, and Braginsky’s gaze seemed to flicker, slightly impressed, before it hardened. There was a laugh from who he knew to be Gilbert – who’d grabbed his headphones – between him and the rink’s guard wall, and Braginsky’s grip only grew tighter. “Why are you so mean to us, dorogoy?”* He bit back a snarl as one of the Russian’s arms came to wrap around his waist, the other holding him steady and keeping him from shoving the asshole away.
A whistle blew, just as he’d been opening his mouth to respond, and Braginsky narrowed a frigid glare at the source of the noise.
“On the ice, boys!” the hockey team’s coach shouted, eyeing the two players and the figure skater with wary eyes – he knew what had happened four years ago, he wasn’t about to let the same thing happen again and take the fall for it – “That means you two, Braginsky, Beilschmidt!”
The two players scowled, but Gilbert took to the ice without much fanfare, dumping the headset on the stack of clothes he’d kept out. Braginsky tightened the arm he had around his waist before he let go. A hand caught his chin, as the hockey player leaned in close, smirking slightly.
“We’ll catch up later, vozlyublennaya,”* he said lazily, and Alfred scowled at the promise in those eyes, before he was let go and the Russian player took to the ice. He snatched his sports bag and grabbed the few things he’d left outside it, slipping out of his skates in the process, before heading inside to the locker room. He would steal his brother’s keys from the locker room where he knew the team kept their stuff to get home. Matt could catch a ride from one of his teammates.
He deserved all the awkward questions that would bring up.
Hmm…maybe he had time to stop at the park on the way home….
The park was always beautiful, but in the early winter it was stunning. There had been a light snowfall earlier that morning, so much of the snow was still pristine. Some had little tracks of passing animals – some squirrels and other larger creatures as well – alongside some graceless toddlers’ flailing. He spotted a snow-angel or two in some of the banks as well. But the park he loved was fairly isolated, and not as popular with most of the city, so most of the snow rested undisturbed. Being so close to the ice rink, he’d had a lot of time to wander through these parks – though his father had once had a meltdown when he’d realized where he’d been going everyday after dark – and he knew the routes intimately. He could wander with his mind elsewhere and still stay completely on track. So, that’s what he did. His mind wandered…to the hockey team, in particular. He scowled.
They really weren’t that bad, well, he mused, tucking his mitten-clad hands into his jacket pockets…at least not anymore. They’d been so much worse when he’d been in high school, and his older brother refused to be seen with him, and therefore couldn’t (and sometimes, wouldn’t) protect him from the violence. And there had been violence. While he usually wouldn’t let his brother fight his battles – the hero had to fight them on his own, duh – the level of violence the hockey team often asserted towards him took on a terrifying level as he’d gotten older. There had been one incident, after he’d gotten back from watching his first Olympic trial, that the team had ambushed him and shoved him down, beating him bloody until one of his legs had broken and his ankle had shattered, before leaving him there in an abandoned alleyway near the rink, in the midst of a freezing cold winter.
If it hadn’t been for the slightly paranoid, but kindly old janitor who walked around the place at night to make sure there was no mischief going on, he might not have lived to see morning; hypothermia would’ve gotten to him first.
His father, despite his disdain for his son’s skating passion, was livid that the problem had been growing under his nose and he’d never known about it. He knew there was a reason he thought an angry Arthur Kirkland was someone to be feared, but an angry, overprotective Arthur Kirkland? Well, the man did love his children, and fought viciously to protect them; Alfred would give him that, despite the strained terms they were on. None of the hockey team that had actually participated in his assault had returned to his school after his father had gone after all of them with his team of lawyers and punishing political power. His papa – who’d supported him, found him a sponsor, a coach, and tutored him himself in private lessons on the ice since he’d first took that beginner’s skating lesson and fallen in love – had been outraged, and pained, that someone could see his son’s passion and think it was a reason for derision. So much so, that they had felt the need to attempt to permanently halt his ability to hone his passion; it had been a sheer miracle that he had been able to walk again, let alone take to his skates like the way he had. He was driven when he wanted to be, and he’d been up and in the rink only months after his therapy had begun. His papa had been proud. But his brother…his brother had sat at his bedside every night. He’d read stories from the news, brought in his comic books, and even snuck in a couple of McDonalds meals to make up for the icky hospital food.
But he hadn’t said a damned thing; not about the incident, not about what was being done, not even the fact that members of his own hockey team had done this to his little brother. Or, even, the fact that the hockey team didn’t know Matthew even had a little brother, because apparently Alfred had been so obnoxious as a pre-teen that Mattie had decided to pretend they weren’t related when they entered high school. And apparently, that still applied when the team he practiced with, laughed with, and invited to their home…injured his younger brother so badly that the doctors thought he’d never be able to skate again.
At least he’d had the presence of mind not to say, “It’s for the best,” even though it had been blatantly obvious that Matt had been thinking it.
He’d showed him. He’d show them all one day.
Ironically, the torment died down a lot once Ivan Braginsky had moved to town and joined the hockey team.
Sure, Braginsky played rough with him, called him weird nicknames, and complimented him backhandedly in the same breath, but he’d never actually hurt him. He made sure that the others knew not to hurt him either. The one time one of the hockey players had come close to sending Alfred to the hospital again, Braginsky had sent him to the hospital instead. And made it blatantly clear that Alfred was his territory; not that Alfred was particularly fond of that label either. It was something that he made blatantly clear to Braginsky, who only ever smirked or leered at him when he did so.
Oh, and that was the other thing: the sexual tension.
That day they’d first met had been charged with sexual tension. Even as oblivious as he could be at times, he couldn’t have denied the way Ivan looked at him, from the very beginning. That surprised, intrigued flare within violet eyes that had melted into a slow-burning blaze of lust mixed with desire and want coloring that suddenly predatory gleaming gaze; it had set him aflame the moment he’d met it head on, but he hadn’t dared let it show. After all, it wasn’t like the others hadn’t looked at him that way either; it hadn’t stopped them from nearly killing him in a dark alley one day. But even then, he’d known Ivan would be different. The team seemed to know it to, if their catcalling and their set ups seemed to mean anything. They’d all rallied behind their new captain, and tried to con the professional figure skater they’d bullied for years into a relationship with the violet-eyed hockey player.
Unlikely, he dismissed in his head with a mental scoff, even as his mind shied from the truth of the situation. After all, just because they knew he was romantically opposed to a relationship with Braginsky – what the hell would that do for his mental health, or his sanity for that matter – didn’t mean they wouldn’t try to convince otherwise, or that the relationship could take a…distinctly different tone.
It already had, after all.
…
Okay, so he’d been drunk. Give a guy a break sometimes, jeez!
He’d been drunk at a party held by one of the figure skaters he’d become friends with at the trials that didn’t live too far away from him, a few towns over, actually. It was supposed to have been a great night out with his skater friends, some of their friends, and have a fantastic party vibe going all throughout the night. And it had been a great night…until he’d seen Ivan Braginsky walk through the damned door and greet one of his friend’s friends, who’d presumably invited him there. His friend had been fine with it, and while he’d been plied with alcohol and candy, ignoring Braginsky’s presence, he’d been fine with it too.
When he’d woken up in the pre-dawn, naked as the day he was born, covered only by a light quilted blanket, an arm wrapped around his waist and a familiar, foreboding substance crusted on his thighs, entangled with a familiar pale-skinned, ashy-haired, violet-eyed hockey player, leeching his warmth to make up for the piercing ache he could feel in his ass…well. Then he’d had a problem with it.
Not that Braginsky had let him go long enough to let him stop the next problem he would have with it. Or the two after that. Damn them both for being athletes; their stamina was, quite frankly, ridiculous. Braginsky hadn’t let him go until it had been almost noon, and even then, he’d had to catch him when he’d nearly collapsed after standing from the bed (the hockey player certainly hadn’t complained about that; in fact, he’d been ridiculously smug about it too), before dragging him off to shower. Together. Because, apparently, he couldn’t be trusted not to slip over slick tiles with the lack of control he had over his lower half. As if that was his fault (actually, if he remembered right, it kind of was).
And then, after his absolutely ridiculous morning, his friend had admitted that his ride had bailed at the party after running into his ex-girlfriend. So, Braginsky slung him over his shoulder, kicking feet and all – damn the fucking pain and his fucking limp for restricting his movements, and damn Tylenol for not being strong enough for a hangover cure – and manhandled him into his car so he could drive him home.
And people wondered why he had a problem with the asshole. Not that he would ever tell them about that. At all. Ever.
But it would certainly explain – to the rest of the team, at least – the way that Braginsky looked at him. It could even – in the farther leaps of logic – explain why sometimes, that gaze wasn’t just liquid lust and delightful desire, but something softer, more potent, and ten times more dangerous to him all the same. It would definitely explain when the way Braginsky would curve his arm around his waist changed from its standard possessive claim to something more gentle, reverential, as if holding something precious.
It would explain why he wasn’t exactly opposed to Braginsky’s advances, or why he hadn’t reacted more violently than a punch to the face, an elbow to the gut, and – occasionally – a knee to the groin. He knew self-defense – could probably sling around more weight than the entire hockey team thrown together – and if he wanted Ivan to stop than he would make sure the other stopped. And if that didn’t work – well, he’d tried the hero’s route, and infinite persistence in the face of a blatant “no” was a violation of consent; and his father hadn’t exactly raised a slouch, he was completely versed in all of his rights. He’d crush anyone who tried to take him to trial thinking they could get out of violating his rights, and Ivan Braginsky would be no exception to it.
Only, he’d liked it. And if it ever happened again, there was a chance he would continue to like it. But, the thing he did respect Braginsky for, was the man never pushed him into anything. Yeah, they’d slept together while drunk, and yes, they’d both been completely sober when Braginsky initiated rounds 2 through god only knows, but if the other man came on to him, and he said no, the other man would stop. He’d cling, he’d curl closer than necessary, and skirt the boundaries of personal space until they were nonexistent, but he wouldn’t force anything Alfred didn’t want.
And he liked that. He really did.
Ivan Braginsky was still a jerk, of course, a world-class jerk with a handsome face and incredible skill in the bedroom, but a jerk nonetheless. And he didn’t let jerks have their way with him without working for it.