Halloween

Ivan jolted awake. He looked at the clock on the cable box and sighed. He'd wasted an hour sleeping, while he should have been outside enjoying the town, He gently untangled himself from Alfred, taking care not to wake the smaller boy up. Gathering up his things, he quietly left the house and made his way to town.

Ivan was glad to see the lights on in Feliks's bakery. He had worried he would need to break in. Instead, he walked in the front door, startling the blonde reading at the counter. He looked up.

"About time! I was starting to think you weren't coming. But then I thought, 'No, this is Braginsky we're talking about, of course he'll come if it means messing up my day,'" the man said with a dismissive flick of his wrist.

"You look old, Feliks," Ivan greeted.

"Yeah, and you look fat. What else is new?" Feliks scrutinized Ivan's clothes. "Oh! Speaking of new, you missed our date so now you can't get new clothes. I guess you'd rather play with your new toy than look nice."

"I don't need new clothes. These are fine."

"Um? You totally do. There are so many cute things out there for teenage boys, but when I see you wear those shabby things I want to puke."

Ivan leaned on the counter and grinned. "Go ahead. I'll just take what I need and go."

Feliks rolled his eyes and started filling a bag. "You're going to Toris's next, right?"

Ivan nodded and grabbed a nearby pastry. "Why?"

Feliks beamed and held out the bag. "Just tell him I said hi!"

Ivan reached for the bag. "Why can't you tell him yourself?"

"We're both pretty busy guys. He's got papers to grade, I have a shop to run…" He reached out quickly to grab Ivan's wrist before he could pull it away. "Do not go making trouble. I don't want to hear about anything tomorrow, you hear me?"

Ivan tried pulling his hand back, and failed. Feliks's grip was like a vice. "I just - I want to find -"

"You won't." With a surprising amount of strength, Feliks pulled Ivan closer, so he was leaning over the counter, almost nose-to-nose with the smaller man. "They left, Ivan. They've been gone for years. Why do you think we stayed? Why do we do this every year? We're your friends, Ivan."

Ivan grabbed the bag with his other hand and yanked away from Feliks. "Some friends you are," He scowled as he walked away.

"Don't make trouble for Toris!" Feliks shouted after Ivan's retreating figure.

Ten minutes later, Ivan stood in front of Toris's door, fishing a pirozhki out of his bag. The door swung open and Toris ushered Ivan inside. Ivan offered the bag.

"Any news?" Ivan asked, taking his jacket off and sitting on the couch.

"I'm making borscht," Toris said as he walked to the kitchen.

"Yes, and you also have vodka you'll share with me." Ivan smiled, "That isn't news, Toris, that's tradition."

Toris emerged from the kitchen with a bottle, two shot glasses, and a grim smile. "Irunya is graduating this year."

Ivan looked up. "High school?"

"College." Toris handed Ivan a glass. "We're getting old, Ivan."

Ivan ignored him. "What about Vanya?"

"He looks just like you. He graduated high school last year, and is in college for engineering."

Ivan fiddled with his glass. "Do...do you have any letters?"

"Yes, Toris said, "And pictures. Let me get them." Ivan took his shot and poured himself another as Toris continued, looking for the pictures. "Katyusha and Sadik are still married, and seem to be doing well. Natalya's ballet studio won an award for something - here they are!" Toris picked up a shoe box and brought it over to Ivan. "She's still so pretty."

"She never wanted you," Ivan smiled coldly.

"I know," Toris sighed, "It's a shame she never married." He shook his head. "Maybe the soup is done! I'll go check," he said and retreated back into the kitchen.

Ivan looked at the box and took a pull from the bottle before opening it

Toris came back with two bowls of borscht. He handed one to Ivan, before sitting down with the other. "Why do you keep hanging around Alfred so much?"

Ivan, pulled from his contemplative state, froze with his spoon halfway to his mouth. "Why not?" He smiled.

"For starters, does he know about you?" Toris gestured to Ivan.

Ivan ate his soup. "What is there to know?"

"Well," Toris started, "I don't know. Maybe the fact that your body has been decomposing under the pool for thirty years?"

"Silly Toris," Ivan's smile glinted sharply, "It hasn't been that long!"

"So he doesn't know. You need to tell him, Ivan."

Ivan's face fell into something far more vulnerable. "I can't. He doesn't like ghosts. I...I think they scare him," he almost whispered.

Toris smiled a little. "How can he say that when he's never met one before? Before you, of course." Toris ate a little soup and became serious. "But you really should leave Alfred alone. You have bigger problems."

Ivan looked up from his bowl. "I do? Like what?"

"They're redoing the pool. They have to tear it up and re-lay the foundation so it doesn't leak and rust the pipes -"

"You have to stop it," Ivan said, eyes flashing.

"I can't. I've tried already, but this is beyond administrative, even, this is the county -"

"You need to try harder." Ivan's hands gripped the bowl so hard it cracked, blood-red liquid spilling onto the carpet. "They can't do this."

Toris backed away, cautious of the explosion that seemed inevitable. "I can't Ivan. I told you, this is through the county, and it's unsafe for the students, and - you can't do this forever. You have to move on." Ivan's head snapped up. Toris continued, still wary of what was coming." "I'm 40. I want to be able to live my life, not worry constantly about what you might do."

Ivan dropped the remains of his bowl onto the carpet. He grabbed his jacket and the box of letters, knocking the vodka bottle over. He turned to leave. "Katyusha's borscht was better. I'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Laurinaitis."

Toris stood defeated in his living room, surrounded by soup, broken bits of porcelain, and vodka. He sighed. He'd had worse. "I'm sorry," he said to the empty house.

Ivan found the keys to the ice rink in the potted plant by the front entrance. Tino left them there every year, since he and Berwald were long gone by the time Ivan got there.

He opened the door and found his skates in a closet in Tino's office. He put the shoe box on the desk before going down to the rink, where he shed his shoes and put on the skates. After skating a few laps, he found a stick and puck and shot them into the goal.

He alternated between skating and shooting until about 4am, when he went back to the office to return his skates to their place in the closet. He removed the cover of the shoebox and began reading his sisters' letters to Toris. He saw how well everyone was getting on, the family that would never know him and that he would never know, and cried.

He cried for what he couldn't control, for losing everything he'd ever known, for Alfred who would surely hate him and for Toris who probably already did. He cried for what he'd missed and would never get to know, for his sisters living their own lives on the other side of the world.

He cried until he felt the pull of the sunrise, at which point he packed the letters back up into their box, wrote a note to Tino to return them to Toris, and walked back to the school. He wondered what would happen when they started tearing up the pool. How should he tell Alfred?

((A/N: Hello I'm back from the dead! Lots of stuff has happened since I last updated (I mean, its been 4 YEARS so obvs stuff has happened), but I want to finish this. I never stopped thinking about it and I've been on a roll with writing so I thought, hey why not.

I updated Chapters 1 and 2. There were a lot of dumb and embarrassing spelling/punctuation errors in Ch2, so I hope those are all gone now.))