Show!Sveta and show!Sasha, book!Scott Hunter (but genuinely can't remember why I decided this, so far all I know, Scott is a mix)

If I fudged the date for their wedding a little bit, it's half on purpose and half because I couldn’t find a real date and I wasn’t going to do that much math to guess when it was

Chapter titles are from wolf parade songs! The actual songs are not tied to vibes or anything though, it’s just the titles themselves

Two weeks after his 31st birthday, Ilya woke up tired.

That was okay. He had been handling that since he was—he wasn't sure, if he was being honest, which he tried to be now, unfortunately. And sure, he had the therapy and the meds and Shane, but still. He had days where all that kept him from the real dark, but he still had to use someone else's light.

So he curled closer to his husband, found his hand, laced their fingers together. Waking up before Shane was rarely a... good sign. But it was okay.

It had been nice, last night. Playoffs had delayed his birthday, and Shane’s, so they’d combined the party and done it last night. They’d had most of the team over, and Shane’s parents, and Sveta had come up from Boston. Rose had come too, and the Pikes. It had been barbecue, and the smell of warm grass, and laughter. One of—maybe the—best birthdays he’d ever had.

Shane shifted in his arms. “It’s early,” he mumbled, turning to face Ilya, to nuzzle into his chest. “My alarm didn’t even go off yet.”

“Mine did,” Ilya murmured, because he was awake, and he wasn’t going to get back to sleep. Having Shane in his bed got Ilya to sleep a thousand times better than when he was alone, that was true, but still. Sometimes it wasn’t enough.

Ilya tried to delete that sentence from his brain.

“I didn’t hear it,” Shane mumbled.

Ilya tilted his hips forward. “It was not alarm you hear.”

There was a moment, and then Shane said, “ohh,” in something like a moan, as Ilya slid his thigh between Shane’s, ground their hips slowly together. Ilya fumbled behind him, had to reach far enough his shoulder twinged, and then found the pack he wanted. He popped out one piece of gum, and then popped it into his mouth before he came back to smile at Shane.

“Yes,” Ilya said, preemptive. “I will still brush my teeth later. But for now, no morning breath.”

“For you,” Shane said. “Give me a piece.”

“Mm,” Ilya said, grinning, chewing his piece slowly. He ran it around his mouth with his tongue, trying to get as minty fresh as fast as possible. “You want a piece of gum.”

“Yeah, I just said—”

Ilya leaned in, pressed his lips to Shane’s. “Open up.”

Ilya felt the shape of Shane’s frown, and then glanced up to see Shane’s eyes widen. There was a moment’s pause, and then Shane’s lips parted slightly. Ilya made sure Shane’s face was sideways, toward him, so that he wouldn’t choke on the second half of this kiss. Then he licked Shane’s mouth open further, and kissed him, and slid the gum neatly under Shane’s tongue. “There,” Ilya said, pulling back. “Your gum.”

“That’s so gross,” Shane said breathlessly.

Ilya raised his eyebrows at Shane. “Your tongue was just in my mouth. With the same spit.”

“Yeah, but that’s—this is different, I—”

“You don’t want it?” Ilya asked. He gave Shane a grin. “Give it back.”

Shane balked at that. Then realized he’d balked. “I—it’s already in my mouth.”

“Mm. Exactly.”

Shane chewed slowly. Ilya danced a hand down his body, ignoring how heavy his arm felt, and how the mint felt like too much in his mouth, the biting inhale of it. He circled Shane’s tip with his finger, over Shane’s boxer-briefs. Already wet, just from his gum trick. Oh, his Shane.

“You liked that,” Ilya murmured.

“I don’t know why,” Shane complained. His hips twitched as Ilya continued to circle, tracing delicately over the head.

“Because you love me,” Ilya said. He said it blasé, like he normally did, like it was just a fact he’d accepted and not a wonder every time he looked at the truth of it. He wouldn’t do Shane the disservice of doubting it, it was just—well, it was just that Ilya was full of shadows. He couldn’t be sure he’d shown them all to Shane, because they shifted, changed shape. Ilya couldn’t even name them all. So yes, Shane loved him now, but what if he had a breaking point? Ilya wouldn’t blame him.

Ilya tried to shove that thought away.

“Yeah,” Shane sighed, his body going pliant. “I do.”

“I do,” Ilya murmured back. It was still a thrill. To be married. Married! Settled down, in love, and tied to Shane Hollander. Fuck, Ilya preened over it.

“How are you so good at this?” Shane mumbled. “You make spitting gum into my mouth hot.”

“I did not spit gum into your mouth. I put it there gently. We can spit later.”

Shane made a choked, wanting noise, and his cock twitched under Ilya’s fingers. Ilya smiled tiredly down at it.

It was slow, the fucking. Soft. Softer than normal. Maybe it was because Ilya was tired, but maybe it was because the sun was barely up. Maybe it was because Ilya loved his husband—his husband!—and wanted to take his time. It was summer. They had the time.

Maybe it was because Ilya wanted to feel it. To linger in it. To bury his thoughts with sensations. Shane, hot and heavy in his hand. The taste of Shane’s hip. The electricity that spidered through him when Shane moaned and rocked back onto him slowly. The way Shane’s big, strong hands looked as he gripped a pillow above his head, and the way his forearms flexed. He told Shane, in a purr, that he wanted Shane to need it. That that was why he refused to pick up the pace. And he did want Shane to need it. He needed Shane to need him. But he also knew that if he stripped Shane down to need, the longer it might be before Shane noticed that Ilya was awake at a weird hour and still tired and hadn’t simply gone back to sleep.

Shane came first, the way Ilya liked it. Ilya was needy at that point, too, so he came soon after, spilling into Shane as he gripped Shane’s thigh, maybe pressing small bruises into him. Normally, he liked that. He knew Shane liked it, had caught him twisting in a hotel mirror to look at bruises and hickeys, had seen the small, pleased smile float around Shane’s well-fucked mouth. And Ilya, for all that he’d never once felt possessive before Shane, had been flooded with possessive hunger, had stalked into the bathroom, startled Shane, said you want more proof to keep with you? And then he’d fucked Shane on the bathroom counter, and Shane had left a bite mark on Ilya’s shoulder that Ilya had not even a little bit covered in the locker room shower, which made Luca Haas stare at the two of them, open-mouthed, and Hayes hoot, Bood whistle, Troy snort, and Shane go a shocking, bright red.

So Ilya knew that Shane liked the little bruises Ilya left on him, just like he liked most of the bruises hockey left on him.

But didn’t that just mean Shane liked it when Ilya hurt him?

Shane trusted Ilya not to hurt him too badly. What happened when Ilya couldn’t help it? Shane hadn’t seen Ilya… bad, yet. Ilya had ghosted him at the worst of it, at Sochi, and after. He hadn’t seen Ilya when Shane dated Rose; by the time they’d seen each other in Tampa, Ilya had clawed his way tooth and nail out of the darkest parts. And yeah, Shane knew that Ilya hadn’t been okay last time he was in Russia, but Ilya had had the very real excuse of a funeral to blame things on. Ilya had downplayed it as much as he could, and Shane hadn’t been there; he’d heard the fatigue and he’d seen Ilya’s tired smile, but he hadn’t felt the way Ilya’s hands were cold the entire time he was there, hadn’t seen through the screen the way Ilya dropped eight pounds in three weeks, hadn’t kept time when there were twenty hours in Ilya’s day instead of something closer to sixteen. Or, on the flip side, for the week or two after, when there had been approximately ten conscious hours in a day. Ilya had blamed the missed calls on jet lag. To be fair, the flight back from Russia did fuck him up, timewise.

It was one thing to see something. It was another to feel it in your hands.

Ilya was getting ahead of himself.

He just so badly didn’t want to hurt Shane.

“Sticky,” Shane murmured.

“Ya poydu prinesu tebe mochalku, moy budil'nik,” Ilya murmured, and went to the bathroom to fetch the promised washcloth. And he did, found a soft one from the stack—the very neat, very tall stack—and ran it under warm water. Shane wouldn’t want a real shower until after his morning run anyway.

Ilya caught his own gaze in the reflection. He turned the water off.

He looked normal. A little tired, but they’d had a late night and it was early. No one would notice. Shane maybe would, but he’d assume it was the late party.

But it wasn’t his face. It wasn’t even his eyes yet; he still just seemed tired. It was his shoulders. The set of them, the balance. The way he could feel his body sinking, his weight pressing into his hands on the sink. Almost visible.

This is going to be bad, isn’t it? he thought at his reflection. This is going to be a bad one.

Edit: okay so weeks after posting i realized that the last time ilya was in russia would NOT have been for the funeral???? He definitely would have had to go back at some point to switch to a canadian visa???? So just.... ignore that....

Ilya tries to manage the crash on his own.

Once Shane left for his run, Ilya was supposed to go back to sleep. That was what they normally did. Running together was good, nice, but a while ago, Galina had gently suggested the two of them not do literally every single thing together, codependence, blah blah blah. So Mondays, they didn’t run together. Shane went out and did his fuck-off early in the morning, and then normally came back to find Ilya asleep again, so he’d wake him up with a kiss and then go shower and make them a summer breakfast—something lazy and slow and nice—while Ilya went and did a 3k loop with Anya.

Today, Ilya sent Shane out of the bedroom with a smack on his ass, and then slumped back onto the mattress.

For a moment, he hated himself. They’d had a good fucking year. They’d gotten married, and then their honeymoon had been honey-soaked sex and sun, sweet and decadent and slow, everything Ilya had ever wanted. They’d come back and Ilya had started on meds, sure, which hadn’t been ideal, but probably necessary, and he’d adjusted. He’d done better than ever, actually, once his body figured out what was going on. Shane had come to the Centaurs, and they’d fucking dominated. The first few games hadn’t been flawless, no, there’d been some kinks to work out, an odd hesitation from both of them that had never happened before, but then they’d clicked, Shane had clicked with the whole team, and they had been on fire. They’d broken records. They’d fucking blitzed the playoffs, knocked out teams one after another, swept two fucking rounds. Their first year together and they’d gotten the Cup. That had only been two weeks ago. Ilya still should have been riding the high. He should have ridden the high for the rest of the summer. For the rest of his fucking life.

He looked up at the ceiling.

He took a deep breath. He was allowed to have a bad day. He suspected this was not just going to be a bad day, but there was no need to catastrophize. That was Shane’s job anyway.

He took another deep breath. He was fine.

Ilya got to his feet, then went to get Anya. She was annoyed at starting her day so early, liking a slow start to her morning, but she huffed into his knees anyway. She wagged her tail, looking up at him, though even she seemed kind of concerned as he clipped on her leash. He ignored that.

They went on their run. Ilya’s time was thirty seconds slower than his average. Statistically, probably that didn’t matter. It felt like an omen anyway.

Shane seemed a little surprised when he came out of the shower to see Ilya in the kitchen, Anya already fed, two cups of coffee ready for them, Ilya’s a significantly different shade than Shane’s. He’d left the cooking for Shane, though. Partially because he didn’t quite trust himself to pay enough attention right now, and partially because the thought of following directions made everything worse, and partially because he liked when Shane cooked. Ilya was, technically, the better cook, because he understood that you were just supposed to double the butter and the garlic and the spices of whatever the recipe said, and he could adjust on the fly when he realized he was missing an ingredient—that was born of practice, because not once in his life had he checked what he had before he started cooking. But Shane was methodical, and liked instructions, and Ilya liked to watch, with probably a sappy smile on his face, as Shane built something for the two of them. And Shane liked to do it. Dinners, they normally made together. Lunches, Ilya had given in to having pre-packaged athlete nutrition meals. Breakfasts, he often left to Shane.

Especially now that Shane was eating more regularly again.

“I thought you’d go back to sleep,” Shane said, pulling eggs out of the fridge. Eggs. Ilya chewed on his lip as he debated whether or not to say anything, then decided not to. It could go either way. “You’re normally not up this early.”

Ilya shrugged slightly, then went and sat on the other side of the counter. He propped his chin in one hand and watched his husband crack eggs into a bowl with one hand. He smiled slightly. “It’s a pretty day,” he said, which was a fact, and also not relevant.

Anya came over with a ball. Ilya took it, and rolled it behind him into the living room.

“It is,” Shane said. “Did you see the roses in the Madisons’ yard? I didn’t even realize they could get that big.”

Ilya hadn’t been paying attention, but he knew what Shane was talking about. “You want me to buy you roses?” Ilya asked. “We could get some.”

Shane blushed slightly. He found bacon in the fridge, pulled it out, got it frying. “Aren’t they like, delicate? Do they take a lot of effort?”

Anya was back with the ball. Ilya tossed it again.

“You are worth the effort,” Ilya said. “If you want them. I will prune them. Give them blood. Water them. You can kiss all the scratches the thorns give me.”

“Why the fuck would you give them blood?”

“For nutrients.”

Shane stared at him.

“It’s a thing,” Ilya said.

“Okay. Weirdo.”

If it had been last week, Ilya already would have been scrolling on his phone to figure out how to get roses. As it was, he added buy Shane roses to his phone calendar—not the cloud one he shared with Shane—for a week from today, and then he added buy rose plants to the calendar for next December. It was probably too late to plants them now, in June, when they were blooming, but in December at least he could pre-order them, or whatever. “What color?” he asked, dragging his mind back to conversation. He threw the ball for Anya again. “For these rose plants you want.”

“We don’t have to get roses. I’m just saying the ones were nice, today. I’m surprised you didn’t see them.”

Shane wasn’t exactly observant about flowers, normally, but landscaping added to the value of a house, and he remained Mr. Real Estate.

Maybe that was too harsh. Maybe Shane had just really taken the time to smell the roses today, while Ilya had been focused on not killing himself.

Ilya swallowed, and met Shane’s eyes by accident.

“You okay?” Shane asked, frowning slightly.

“Yes,” Ilya said. “Just picturing you with different roses between your teeth. Like a dancer.” Ilya did the tango pose—or salsa? whatever—and Shane snorted. Relief. “So what color? Pink, like your blush? Yellow, like that sweater you like? Red, because you are a classic guy? White? Orange?”

“What? There are not orange roses.”

“Yes, there are.”

“They would be ugly as hell.”

“No. No, they’re nice.” Ilya tapped at his phone with one finger, unwilling to actually pick the thing up and type with his thumbs. He pushed the phone over to Shane.

“Oh. Peach.”

Ilya rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

“Those are nice.”

“So peach roses for our house. You want them just here, or in Ottawa, too?”

“Ilya—”

“Shane. You have never mentioned flowers before, ever. So clearly you love these roses.”

Shane gave him a silly, exasperated smile.

Anya whined. He’d been ignoring her. Shit.

He took the ball. He wished she’d brought the rope, to play tug-of-war. That required very little of him.

Then Shane put his mug down a little too sharply on the counter by accident, and Ilya flinched.

That was.

That was not normal.

Shane was cursing softly under his breath, checking the counter and the mug to see if he'd chipped either. Ilya took the opportunity to do his own check, a systems check, surreptitiously scanning himself to see what the hell that was. He was tense, and his heart was doing that slow throb it had done a long time ago, when he'd walked through the door and found—

Ilya swallowed, hard, and tried to relax. It was just a little sound. He didn't normally react like that. He normally underreacted, if Shane and Galina were right.

Anya whined, pressed her cold nose into Ilya’s kneecap. He rubbed her head. God, he didn’t know what was wrong with him.

“Do you want toast?” Shane asked.

“Yes, please.” It would make the eggs go down easier. Ilya liked eggs, in general—he was not exactly a picky eater—but today was not in general.

----

For the next week, Ilya tried to ignore it.

He pretended he was normal. Didn’t admit to the fatigue, barely admitted it to himself in silence. Ignored the pain in his spine, the way his body worked harder to keep him upright. Blamed the way his fingers were cold and starting to crack on the summer sun and the time he spent swimming, which was… negligible, right now, but he tried to tell himself that was what it was anyway, as he massaged in the moisturizer that Shane bought him. Told himself that when he jumped at things that he was pretty sure he wouldn’t normally jump at, it was because everyone sometimes jumped at things. Startle responses existed. When he brought home fifty peach roses and another ten of various colors, declaring it was so Shane could see the effect for their future rose bushes but really just to see Shane go pink and happy, and the sight only gave Ilya a sudden tumble into melancholy that he then had to hide, he tried to lie to himself and then just straight up ignored it, instead focusing on the blow job that Shane gave him about the flowers. 

He was restless in a way he hadn’t been in a while. Antsy, unsettled. Bitchy. He didn’t realize exactly how long it had been until he gave in late one night and eased out of bed, not waking Shane. He left a note on Shane’s nightstand, then he brought Anya out to their little synthetic rink and skated tight circles, the tension easing out of him with every stroke of his blades. At one point, he put his hands against the wall and let out a slow breath, and an echo from years ago, one that sounded a lot like a Boston rookie that hadn’t been a rookie in a long time, said Christ, Cap, do they not have rinks in Russia?

Russia. He hadn’t felt this strange since the last time he came back from Russia.

No wonder he felt odd. He’d never felt like this around Shane before. Normally, back when he played for Boston, when he came back from the summer, he hadn’t settled until the first game against Montreal. The team thought it was just that he used Montreal as a benchmark, their rivals as the metaphorical beginning of the new season, when it all really started again.

It was Shane. It was always Shane.

This wasn’t quite the same. He was jittery and bitchy after coming back from Russia, sure, but he’d never been jumpy, had he? He hadn’t flinched at odd noises. He was pretty sure.

Right?

He found his phone, hovered a thumb over Marly’s contact. He could ask him. But then Marly would ask why he wanted to know, and—well, maybe he wouldn’t, he wasn’t exactly a detective. But still. It was a weird question to text out of the blue.

It was also two in the morning.

Ah, it was summer. And it wasn’t like Marly didn’t know Ilya sometimes kept weird hours.

He texted. You would not consider me jumpy person, yes?

He put down his phone, and looked up, and there was Shane.

“Gospodi,” he gasped, nearly jumping out of his skin. Fuck’s sake. To be fair, he thought anyone would have jumped at having someone appear out of thin air. Especially Shane, who was not known to be quiet around the house. He wasn’t clumsy, off ice, but he seemed to lose 20% of his spatial awareness, bumping into things, his feet not exactly light. Ilya had grown up knowing how to be quiet, but Shane had never feared making noise. It was nice, to have the house full of the little sounds of Shane. It was nice to know where he was, too, to be able to find him whenever Ilya wanted. Ilya pointed at Anya, who was lying curled up in her sixth bed around the property. “You. Terrible guard dog.” She raised her little doggy eyebrows, floofed her tail once, and then stretched, sighed, and went back to sleep.

“Love. What are you doing out here?” Shane asked.

Ilya gestured to the rink. “Skating.”

“I got that,” Shane said dryly. “Why are you skating at—” He checked his watch. “Two sixteen in the morning?”

Ilya let his skates ease him backward. Put his hands in his pockets.

Then he said, quiet, “Couldn’t sleep.”

Shane chewed on the corner of his lip, then came closer, stepping onto the artificial ice. Ilya swept over. Shane tilted his face up slightly to look at him.

“You’ve been tired,” Shane said.

Ilya shrugged slightly. Not much to argue there.

“Have you been out here every night?”

“No.”

“Tonight’s the first.”

“Yes.”

Shane reached up to sweep a slow thumb across Ilya’s jaw, raspy with stubble. He hadn’t been consistent with shaving lately, though he still managed twice a week. Mostly. He was normally a Monday-Wednesday-Friday man, if not an every-day man. Except for playoffs, obviously. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the beard, it was just that Ilya liked to be a certain level of sleek. Maintained. And the beard very quickly got unruly, required a lot to keep it in check. Easier to just keep it short.

“How long?” Shane asked.

Ilya couldn’t quite look at him.

“Since playoffs? Before?”

“No. No, no, moy lyubimyy.” Ilya reached for Shane, pulled him close. It helped, to have Shane’s warm body next to his. “Nothing like that.”

“So then?”

Ilya closed his eyes. “The day after our party.”

He was quiet while Shane did the math. He expected a lecture, but Shane just said, quiet, “Are you dreaming of your mom again?”

Ilya shook his head. “No.”

“You’ve been restless, in the night.”

“Have I?” No wonder he was exhausted.

There was a pause, and then Shane pulled away just enough to look up at Ilya again. He hesitated, then said, “I wish you wouldn’t hide from me.”

Ilya rubbed his thumb against his nose, then let go of Shane. He did a lap of the little rink, then slid to a slow stop in front of Shane again. “I don’t… mean to,” he said, haltingly. It wasn’t quite true, but it wasn’t quite false, either.

“I know,” Shane said.

“I don’t know what I’ve been dreaming about,” Ilya said honestly. “I don’t remember, when I wake up.” Which was kind of unnerving, if Ilya was being honest. He was normally a vivid dreamer, but lately he’d been waking feeling like he’d barely dozed ten minutes. “When you think I’m having a nightmare—I was asleep, asleep?”

Shane nodded. “Yeah. And it’s not like you were freaking out or anything, just—I don’t know, you’ve rolled over more.”

“Sorry.” Ilya nudged Shane’s hand. “I don’t mean to wake you.”

“No, no, it’s fine. And it’s not often, just… more than usual.” Ilya rubbed at his knuckles, which only made Shane notice. He frowned, took Ilya’s hands in his. “Shit, your hands are cold.” He glanced up. “Are you done skating?”

Ilya blew out a breath, then nodded. It wasn’t like it was really helping anyway.

---

Ilya yawned over his coffee the next morning, propped his head on one hand, and checked his messages.

Marly: HAHAHAHA

Marly: no

Marly: remember when Connors had to bang a pot with a spoon next to ur head when u were sleeping, for rookie night? u just rolled over and told him to stfu

Ilya snorted. He did remember that.

Marly: though u were really twitchy after I whacked hollander. Someone shut the door a little too loud and u would drop ur coffee or whatever

Marly: wait

Marly: oh shit

Marly: were you two together by then?

Marly: fuck, dude, I’m extra sorry now. i just thought u didn’t like seeing someone go down like that, especially right after ur dad

Ilya put his phone back in his pocket. Marly buzzed again. He ignored it.

“You okay?”

Ilya flinched, swore under his breath, then glanced up at Shane. “Yes. Sorry. I was just… thinking.” Except that Shane seemed preoccupied with something else. He was poking a stray grain of rice around the kitchen counter. “You okay?”

When Shane realized Ilya had noticed, he swept the grain into the sink. Then he fidgeted slightly and blurted, “Do you have plans, for our anniversary?”

Ilya stared at him.

“Obviously, we’ll be together,” Shane said hurriedly. “That’s not what I—I just mean—”

“You wanted a surprise,” Ilya said, and felt himself click down into a worse level, where the hollowness in his chest started. And it should have, because their anniversary was in a week. Ilya normally would have a surprise. Or at least would have an idea of what they would do. He’d surprised Shane for their first anniversary as boyfriends, and Shane had intercepted the surprise for their second by just telling Ilya that he was getting them reservations, and their third had been their wedding.

“No,” Shane said, eyes wide. “No, I—I’m hoping you don’t have a surprise. I’m hoping you don’t have plans, because I—I was thinking—”

Ilya swallowed.

“—I just really, really want to do nothing,” Shane finished.

Ilya blinked. “What?”

“Just—we’ve done big stuff together,” Shane said, steadier now that he’d admitted what he wanted. “We did Ibiza, and we got the Cup, and we—I mean, you got that ridiculous hot air balloon ride for three months, and we did that fancy dinner for six months, and nine months we were busy—which is good, anniversaries every quarter was insane of you—I just—I know we’ve been married for almost a year now,” he said. “So that’s almost a year of just being together and being normal. But I’m not tired of it. I just—I would really, really like it if it was just you and me and Anya, and we, like, hung out and went swimming and made food here. I like being married to you so fucking much Ilya, and I just—that’s all I want.”

Ilya took two steps and then he was hugging Shane, hard. “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, I would like that. I like being married to you, too.”

“Good,” Shane said, squeezing him back. “I’m not ruining your plans?”

Ilya shook his head.

“Thank god.”

“I will only have to cancel two mariachi bands,” Ilya said, muffled into Shane’s shoulder. Shane laughed.

And it was a good day, the next week, when the anniversary came around. Shane blew Ilya in the shower, and they went swimming, and Ilya fucked Shane to tears on the artificial rink, and they ate hamburgers that Shane portioned correctly, and they played fetch and keep-away with Anya for an hour. They collapsed into bed at the end of the day sun-kissed and warm and Ilya was so fucking glad that he’d married Shane, because he loved Shane so fucking much, loved his freckles and his laugh and his seriousness and his ass and his mouth and his snark and his fierce and absolute love.

He still stared at the ceiling for a long time after Shane had fallen asleep, because the hollowness in him had allowed Ilya to snub it for a day, but it was demanding to be remembered now, hungrier than before for being rudely ignored. Ilya just pulled Shane closer, and tried to anchor himself in the small, content sound Shane made in his sleep.

Ilya was a city boy, but he knew when the wind changed.

Scott Hunter is, yet again, an accidental catalyst. This time, it’s less fun.

edit: found out that GPs can prescribe antidepressants in Canada so I deleted my oc psychiatrist for being pointless lmao

“Ilya?”

Ilya flinched, tried to cover by lifting his hand to scratch the back of his neck. “Sorry. What?”

Hayes was looking at him oddly. Ilya tried to ignore it. It was a week before the summer camp started, and all the Ottawa staff had gathered for a meeting. Scott Hunter had intended to be there via video call, but had come up with Kip for the week before the camps as a little vacation together, so he was present in person. Ilya didn’t know why any sensible person would vacation in Ottawa, but sure.

“I was suggesting maybe Scott take the lead with Shane this year,” Yuna said, professional, easy, and Ilya’s stomach dropped out of his whole fucking body. “For forward work. Scott wanted to know what you thought of that.”

“I,” Ilya said. Shane was staring at his mom, which at least meant she’d blindsided both of them at once. “What would you have me do instead?”

She shrugged. “Be backup to both of them. Or be one of our guys on the side, watching both of them while Scott and Shane are on the ice. You could interact with both groups that way.”

Ilya tried not to act like he was being fired, which was how it felt, and tried to act like this was normal. He was a normal person. He was so normal. His mouth was so fucking dry, but he didn’t want to swallow, because that looked like he wasn’t fine. He reached for his water bottle. “That is fine by me,” he said, and took a sip of water. He pointed the water bottle at Hunter. “You want to be leader one more time before you retire of ancientness, is that it?”

Hunter actually seemed as surprised as the rest of them. Great. Great, now they were all going to think that Yuna, his fucking mother-in-law, thought Ilya wasn’t good enough to teach children how to play hockey. Did she? No. No, that couldn’t be it. His chest felt kind of tight.

“Watching you all last year,” Yuna continued, “I just think this might suit everyone’s skills more. Scott’s like Shane, he’s really good at the technical bits and demonstrations, and then you, Ilya, are really good at the motivation and spotting what’s wrong. We can even have you pull individual kids out for smaller groups, for one-on-ones or you with two or three kids, rather than the larger groups. That’s all. We can keep it the old way if everyone wants.”

She glanced at him, and it was business-like, but when her eyes met his, Ilya got it.

It wasn’t that Ilya wasn’t good enough to teach kids how to play hockey. It was that she thought it was too much for him. Sure, yes, both coaching positions were important, but it was a lot easier to excuse the person on the side for the day than to put someone else on the ice and click in as the leader of the little band of kids.

“No, no,” Ilya said, brisk, unconcerned. “If you think that’s best, then it is. I can do the breakaway groups. Unless Hunter is too tired from being one thousand years old.”

Hunter ignored that. “Then it’s fine with me, too,” he said. “How many kids are we expecting to have this year?”

-----

After the meeting, Ilya ducked out before Yuna or Shane could intercept him. He wasn’t sure what he would say. You don’t think I can do it. Or, to Shane, did you say something to her? Maybe he hadn’t. She was an observant woman, when she wasn’t going a million miles an hour, and—well, maybe it had been David, too. Ilya knew he’d been worse than usual at his last puzzle date with David, and he’d caught David’s eyes on him as Ilya fed a little bit too much of his food to Anya last time they’d been over for dinner, because he hadn’t been hungry and he’d hoped that was less obvious. Shit. Just, shit.

Hunter caught up to Ilya. Fuck. Now he was going to want to talk about coaching, and Ilya just truly could not think of a strategy right now. “You good?”

“What?” Ilya glanced at him. “I'm fine.”

Scott chewed on his lip, then said finally, “You look tired.”

Ilya, maybe obviously, was too tired to find another quip about Hunter's age. He just made a noise, trying to convey okay and without going to the effort of speaking.

“I'm serious,” Scott said. “I… I just wanted you to know. I'm here, if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” Ilya said slowly, still trying to figure out what the fuck Hunter thought he was talking about. What did he think of Yuna’s announcement? An injury, maybe.

Scott looked at him steadily, then asked, “Is it drugs?”

Ilya froze. Scott stopped walking, too. Then Ilya turned slowly to Scott and said, low, “Are you serious?”

“Listen, I know it's been a while, but you had a—kind of a rep, back in the day, and I get it, it can spiral out of control, but there are—we could get you help, is all—”

“I am not on drugs,” Ilya said through his teeth, though, unfairly, he fucking was. The most regularly he'd ever taken anything and it was a goddamn borderline useless antidepressant. He grabbed Scott Hunter's arm and dragged him into a supply closet. Ilya flicked on the light. Scott raised his eyebrows, and Ilya realized how ridiculous this looked. It didn't matter. “You cannot say that to anyone,” Ilya hissed. “I haven't done anything like that in years—since before I left Boston, I don’t even know where to get drugs in fucking Ottawa—and I don't really care about my reputation for my sake, but do you know the damage you would be doing to Shane if I had addict accusations?”

Scott frowned. “No one thinks Shane—”

“They would,” Ilya snapped. “And even if he gave them 400 clean samples, it would look terrible. Either that he knew I was using or he didn't. Every rumor would hurt him, because he has more to lose.”

“You both—”

“I am not one of hockey's heroes,” Ilya snorted. “That is you and that is Shane, and that is it. You for America, Shane for Canada. I was Russia’s, once, but.” He shrugged. That was over, now.

Scott chewed on his lip again.

“It's all hypothetical,” Ilya said, “because I am not doping and I quit coke years ago and the only pain medications stronger than Tylenol was when I was on an IV and they gave it to me before I was awake. Okay?”

Except it wasn't okay. It didn't matter if Ilya had cofounded a fucking mental health charity, Ilya had a fucking reputation. If Ilya lost it, it didn't matter if he admitted to depression, it didn't matter if he went public, everyone would think it was a cover up for drugs. The worst part about that was that if Ilya had been an addict, he still would have needed the therapy and the resources, and—but no one was going to believe he wasn’t. Or they’d think it was his fault, the fake addiction or the real depression, and maybe it fucking was, because he had—

“Listen,” Scott said. “I believe you.”

“Good,” Ilya said. “Then get out before I hit you for thinking I would hurt Shane like that.”

Scott paused. “You know, I don't—I don't want you to be hurt, either. That’s why I mentioned anything. Obviously, I don’t want anything to happen with Hollander, but the point was you.”

Ilya just looked at him, exhausted, and pointed at the door. Scott hesitated, then squeezed him on the shoulder and left.

Ilya stayed in the supply closet a little longer. Partially so that nobody saw him and Scott coming out of a closet together, because he didn't want to deal with affair rumors in addition to drug rumors, because fuck, he had a reputation there, too. It had been one year. One year of marriage, and there were already going to be rumors that Ilya Rozanov was bored, that Shane Hollander could not keep the notorious party boy happy.

And partially just because he needed a minute, just a fucking minute, where no one was telling him he wasn’t performing. Instead, he thought about everything he'd ever done in his life, and how he wasn't particularly ashamed of a lot of it, but it certainly was not going to help him now. You never think about the future, his father had told him, when he was sixteen, when all he did was think about getting selected for the NHL draft. You never think about consequences. I should have been harder on you boys.

Ilya scraped a hand down his face. He’d been married for one year, and he was already ruining it.

-----

Ilya and Shane had driven separately to the Irina Foundation meeting, because Ilya had his usual therapy appointment after and he almost never let Shane drive him to that. Well, more importantly, he almost never let Shane pick him up from that.

Which was good, because this session mostly involved Ilya admitting that he’d been weird and unsettled and flinching at things, and that he wasn’t sleeping well, and that Scott Hunter thought he was on drugs, and that Yuna thought he was cracking, and that Shane didn’t deserve any of this, and that Ilya was just really, really fucking tired, and the hollowness in his chest was getting kind of catastrophic.

The session also involved Ilya crying, which hadn’t happened in months.

When he’d managed to get a hold on the tears, Galina said, gently, as Ilya squished a pillow to his chest. “That’s not your normal response, lately.”

“Feels like it should be, right now,” Ilya said hoarsely. “I—I don’t know what’s going on with me.”

“Have you been crying a lot?”

“No. Just.” Ilya waved a shaky hand in front of him. “I just—I feel like a car crash,” he said. He squeezed the pillow again. “I feel like I can see something coming and I’m just bracing for it, but there’s never anything fucking there.”

“There’s nothing to brace against,” Galina said. “So there’s nowhere for all that energy to go.”

Ilya nodded.

She drew an arrow in her notebook. He could see the motion of the pen.

“What is wrong with me?” he blurted. She glanced up. “This isn’t—this isn’t normal depression. I’ve never—I’ve never felt like this. I’ve never been like this. This is something else.” He frowned. “Is this anxiety? Did I absorb some of Shane’s?”

Galina smiled slightly, at that, but shook her head. “There are some anxious features going on here, sure,” she said. “But I don’t think you stole some of Shane’s. How is his therapy going, by the way?”

“He doesn’t like it,” Ilya muttered. “But who does. Sorry.”

“But he’s….”

“Going,” Ilya said. “They said some OCD habits, some anxious habits. Control issues. Nothing clinical level. They just want to do talk therapy for a while, and he’ll be cured.”

Galina raised an eyebrow. He waved her off.

“Do you want to talk about that?” she asked. “About how Shane’s therapy makes you feel?”

“It makes me feel stupid,” he said, blunt. “Like I’m worse at existing. I know that’s not true, I know it’s just—different. And I’m glad! I’m glad that he will probably not have to do this forever, will maybe not have to go on meds. I don’t want him to hurt. Ever. No. His therapy is his, and mine is mine. It’s different. I know that. I want to talk about what the fuck is wrong with me.”

Galina considered him, then said, “Well, I have a theory. But I want to wait for our next session to discuss that. I want to give you a little more time first, to see if this is just a crash after such a big, good season. I know our last session, you weren’t feeling great, and the one before, but this could still just be a kind of emotional rebound.”

Ilya latched onto that. “I could be fine? At least, as fine as I ever am? This could just be a—a dip, like usual?”

“A bigger dip than usual, but yes.”

Ilya finally had something to brace against, then. He settled into it, and felt something soothing about that, about not knowing what she was about to say for the but. “But you don’t think it’s that.”

“I don’t know yet. But I do have a second theory. We’ve kind of… danced around it, but it might explain some things.”

“And you won’t tell me.”

“I’d like a little more to go on. But next week, if you still feel like this, we’ll get into it. Does that sound like a plan?”

Ilya rubbed a thumb over his knuckles, then nodded.

“In the meantime,” Galina said. “I want you to talk to Terry about upping your dose.”

Ilya froze.

“That is not a judgment,” she said.

“You said it might just be a dip,” he said hoarsely.

“And it might be. But this is… a fairly severe dip,” she said. “You’ve had some big changes recently, and it might just be an adjustment period. But I want you to be prepared for potentially increasing your dose if nothing has changed by our appointment next week, so a talk with your doctor might be in order.”

Ilya’s hands were trembling again. He squeezed the pillow until they stopped, and felt the void in his chest push further.

“Ilya,” Galina said, gently.

“You know that I will not actually talk to Terry until next week,” he said quietly. “You know I will chicken out. This is you giving me time to get used to the idea.”

Galina shrugged.

He knew he looked pathetic, a big man scrunched into the corner of a couch, holding a pillow for dear life, shoulders up by his ears. He swallowed, then said, barely there, “I feel like I’m failing.”

“That is not what this is,” Galina said firmly. “This is managing an illness.”

Ilya had nothing to say to that.

---

Back home, he kissed Shane hello, then flopped onto the couch. Shane followed. “We have time before dinner, yes?” Ilya asked.

“For…”

“I don’t know. Watching something.”

“We could watch an episode of—”

“Don’t say that real estate one,” Ilya groaned. “I don’t like that guy. You need to find a new one.”

Shane’s response was dry. “I’ll get right on that.”

Ilya looked at the ceiling. Then he said, “I need to call Scott Hunter.”

“You need to what?”

“I’ll be right back,” he said. He needed to do this now, or he wouldn’t at all.

Shane opened his mouth, then nodded, and said, “Okay. Whatever. Do you actually want to watch something before dinner, or were you just trying to get out of calling him? Does he know you’re calling him?”

Ilya shook his head slowly. Then, “Dinner can be right after.”

“Okay. I’ll start cutting up the green beans.”

Ilya nodded. He pressed a kiss to Shane’s jaw, then said, “I won’t take long.”

He brought Anya outside with him, and pulled out his phone as he watched her snuffle around in the grass. He braced a hip against the porch railing, and hit Hunter’s contact.

It was four rings, which was enough time for Ilya to regret it, but then Hunter answered, out of breath, “Rozanov?”

“Ah, what geriatric workout did I catch you in middle of? Water aerobics?”

“You called me, dickhead.”

“Yes.” Ilya’s hand was tight on his phone, but he said it without preamble, flat. “I have depression.”

There was silence on the line.

Ilya waved a hand between him and an imaginary Hunter. “This stays here, yes? I’m fine to be bisexual in public, but being sad is another thing.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course this stays between us. Who, um, does know?”

“Hollander,” Ilya said. He rubbed a knuckle against his temple. “His parents. My therapist. Terry—Ottawa team doctor, sorry. Bood knows, though it’s not like you and him talk very much, I think.”

“Not really,” Hunter said dryly.

Ilya nodded. He’d only told Bood because he was the main alternate, and because Ilya had felt bad that he’d been so shitty as a captain before. He’d pulled Bood aside, last October, and told him that if he ever felt like Ilya was leaving too much to Bood, to tell him so that Ilya could fix it, that Ilya was starting antidepressants and he was hoping it would make him a better captain, though the depression wasn’t really an excuse, and that he was hoping it wasn’t necessary but that he wanted Bood to know, so that Bood would just think he was sad, not a dickhead and a terrible captain. He’d been earnest, though kind of smirky about it, but Bood had just stared at him and said, Okay, none of that was necessary, dude, because like I’ve said before, you’re the best captain we’ve ever had. But you want to rewind a little bit and say anything else about you going on antidepressants?

“That’s all,” Ilya said. “I just didn’t want you going home and telling your boyfriend I’m on drugs. Because I’m not. Except the antidepressants. But those are legal. And less fun.”

“I wasn’t going to—god, you’re annoying.”

“I’m charming.”

Hunter hesitated. “That’s why Yuna had you and me switch. In case you—” There was a disgusting amount of concern in his voice when he said, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Ilya said, immediately. “Just—she is overreacting. She and Shane worry. Worriers.” He frowned. “That is the English word, yes? It sounds so weird.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s the word.”

Ilya nodded. “Okay. Great. Bye.”

He’d nearly hit the end call button when he heard, distant, “I meant what I said before!”

Ilya put the phone back to his ear. “What?”

“I meant what I said,” Hunter repeated. “Before. I’m here if you need anything.”

Ilya swallowed. “Right. Yes. Thank you.”

Then he did hang up. He brought Anya back inside.

Shane was almost done with the green beans, but he hadn’t started on the chicken yet. Ilya pulled out the meat cutting board and started to cut the chicken into strips.

“I told Hunter,” he said.

Shane glanced up. “About?”

Oh. Right. “He asked me today if I was doing drugs.”

Shane nearly dropped his knife. “He what?”

Ilya recapped the conversation, skipping the part about the danger to Shane’s reputation. “I figured he is good at keeping things quiet. And if he already thought—I don’t know. I thought it was a good idea. Though I suppose now maybe he’ll announce it next time he wins a Cup, just for attention.”

Shane rolled his eyes. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.” He dumped his green beans in a pan already dressed with a drizzle of olive oil and carefully peeled garlic cloves. “But if he does, I’ll tell everyone that he cries during sex.”

Ilya choked on a laugh. “And how would you know this?”

“According to you and Kip, gay people know everything. So.”

“This is true.” Ilya washed his hands off, then wrapped his arms around Shane waist, propping his chin on his shoulder. “You know, you have cried during sex.”

“Yeah. Honestly, it’s pretty great, so if Hunter’s pissed about it, he can go try it himself.”

Ilya tucked his nose under Shane’s ear, then squeezed him tighter.

if anyone wants to talk hollanov w me on twitter, i made a new one! @rozalov81

David Hollander is just happy to be invited. Ilya is… displeased by the circumstances.

evil mode got activated, so here's the next ch early!

He hated it. He fucking hated it, but what were his options? It was the day before the camps started, and he and Shane had just gotten home from the rink, where Ilya had been fine, but now he was flinching worse for some fucking reason, at the sounds of Anya’s nails when she jumped off the couch and when Shane said, unexpected, “We should think about adding another goalie coach,” and when a car started up in the neighbor’s driveway. Maybe it was just because he was too used to the cottage now, and the quiet there. Maybe he was going fucking insane.

He didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with him. If he knew, he could handle it. When the depression got bad, he knew how to fucking handle it, he knew how to conserve energy, how to cover his exhaustion with shark smiles and hide his fraying temper with his asshole reputation. It hadn’t happened before during camps, though, so he was maybe going to have to come up with a plan for that in general. But this, whatever this was? This twitchiness? He couldn’t conserve energy if he was bleeding it.

He didn’t know what was wrong with him, which scared him. And he wasn’t good at fear. He didn’t want the kids to pick up on it, and he didn’t want to lash out at the kids.

He swallowed, hard. He absolutely needed to figure out a way to hide impatience and irritability that wasn’t just being a dick, if he wanted to run these camps, even if he was already being sidelined. He refused to be an asshole to the kids. The thought made him feel vaguely sick.

Okay. Today, he would take the nuclear option and stay home. He would figure out how to not be a dickhead, and he would figure out what the fuck was wrong with him that today was so bad—maybe he had a fever? maybe he was dying, that would be a simple answer—and he would be fine tomorrow. And then tomorrow was his next appointment with Galina, and she would tell him what was really wrong with him. He probably should just call her today. Figure it out. Nothing had changed; if anything, he’d gotten worse. But he was so fucking scared of what she might say.

Shane had been talking, this whole time. Ilya hadn’t taken in a word.

“—for the scholarship thing, I want to talk to my mom about how that works—”

“Shane,” Ilya said.

“—and I just think we should be anticipating—”

“Shane,” he said again.

Shane turned around. It took him a second to register Ilya's position—shoulders tense, hand gripping the back of his neck—but as soon as he did, he was crossing the room and sinking to his knees in front of him. “Hey,” he said softly.

“I think,” Ilya said quietly, “it would be a good idea if I was not there tomorrow.”

Shane pulled at his lower lip with his teeth. Ilya could see the arguments rolling around in Shane's head. The "sense of purpose" and the "routine" and the "but it always makes you so happy to be there." But he knew that Ilya knew those. Ilya watched Shane try to figure out whether or not he should push, for Ilya's own good. If Ilya was bad enough that what Ilya wanted was no longer quite valid.

"If you think that's best," Shane said carefully.

“Hunter already thinks I’m on drugs,” Ilya said, dry. “And I… I can’t exactly blame him. And he knows me, has been to our house, we have been around him. I show up like this to parents? They will think I’m—what did Hayes say the other day? The parents will think I’m tweaking.”

Shane rolled his eyes. “Okay, I don’t know about that. But—yeah, obviously, if you think it’s best to stay home today, that’s—” He nodded, nodded again. Ilya watched the gears in his mind turn. "But I—would it be okay if my dad came around? I've—uh, I've been meaning to ask him to take a look at the shed window, see if he knows what—"

"Shane," Ilya said again, with the ghost of a smile. “You do not have to invent reason for David to come over. As long as he does not mind my... being very boring tomorrow."

“Of course he won't,” Shane said immediately. Then he said, quietly, “Does my mom know?”

They’d danced around Ilya and Scott Hunter’s position change. “I don’t know,” Ilya said. “I don’t know if she… noticed, that I’m acting weird, or if she really thinks I would be better one-on-one with kids. I haven’t said anything.”

Shane nodded slowly. “You could,” he said. “If you wanted.”

“I know.”

“Okay.” Shane glanced at the time. “I’m not really in the mood to cook,” he admitted. “How do you feel about ordering from that Cuban place?”

Ilya kissed the corner of Shane’s mouth. “Whatever you want.”

----

In the morning, Ilya got up before Shane and settled some of his pre-camp nerves with a smoothie that Ilya declared was personally and scientifically customized for Shane Hollander-Rozanov, with ingredients like love and his whole entire heart and the blood of his enemies. Mostly, it was beets. Ilya was soft and smiley and active enough that Shane didn’t remember to worry until he was literally halfway out the door, at which point he whipped around and said, “Are you sure you’re okay?” And then said, softer, “Sorry. I didn’t mean that so aggressively. Just—Dad’s coming over in a bit, but—if you need me to stay—”

“I’m fine,” Ilya said. He rubbed his thumbs across Shane’s shoulders. “Go. Ya tebya lyublyu.”

“Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu.” Shane kissed him quickly, then jogged to the car. Ilya waved, then shut the door, like a normal person.

And all of his brutally gathered energy vanished.

He pressed his forehead against the door and stood there for several minutes, then just gave in and sank to the floor. Anya came over, creeping, anxious, and he hated that she was nervous around him, ever, that he was the same as his father and the people around him had to be too fucking aware of his emotions, his reactions—

But she just nuzzled between his legs and looked up at him, licked his chin. He lifted her fully into his lap and held her. She put her head on his shoulder. He buried his face in her fur.

He stayed on the floor until he heard David’s car in the driveway. He squeezed his eyes shut, then raked into his mind to try to overturn some mildly fertile dirt. He felt like a dustbowl. Like a tundra, wind whistling.

He got to his feet, mechanical, feeling every bit of his greaseless joints. “David,” he said, his voice a little bit hoarser than normal but otherwise passably normal. David smiled at him. “How are you?”

“Good, good,” David said. “Glad to have company on my work from home day. I’d start bothering you about it all the time if I thought you had the space for it.”

Ilya smiled slightly. He motioned David in.

“Can I get you anything?” Ilya asked as they passed the kitchen. “Tea, coffee, lemonade—there is this awful mushroom drink Shane’s trying out, it tastes like real dirt if you like that—”

David laughed. Many men had loud laughs. Ilya’s father had rarely laughed at all, but when he did, it was timed and deliberate and more of a snort than a full laugh. David’s laugh was nothing like that. It was genuine, but it was quiet, even when he’d nearly cried laughing when Shane and Ilya had run into the Hollanders’ cottage and Ilya had said, blunt, saving his then-boyfriend the stumbling panic of how to phrase this to his parents, Shane thinks we got poison ivy on our dicks.

They had not. It had been a regular plant.

“Are you making yourself anything?” David asked.

“I was thinking of tea. But if you want—”

“I’ll join you in that,” David said easily. “You making that Russian tea?”

Ilya glanced over at him. Ilya didn’t drink a lot of tea—two kinds, actually, three if you counted the chai lattes with flower syrup that Harris sometimes brought him and were actually quite nice. Ilya made himself two kinds. One: a lemon-cucumber-mint thing that he drank warm in the winter at night when Shane started complaining that hot chocolate before bed made Ilya have too many dreams and then he whacked Shane by accident in his sleep. He drank it cold in the summer. It was decidedly not Russian. Two: ivan-chai, the herbal tea that he had Sveta bring from Russia, that he added lemon and jam to. He only ever drank that when he was sick. Either David had seen him drink it with a cold or something, or Shane had mentioned it.

“Yes,” Ilya said, because he wasn’t sick, technically, he certainly wasn’t homesick, but, well, it did sound nice, right now.

“Do you do anything special to it? Honey, lemon, sugar cubes? Some secret Russian ingredient?”

“The tea is the Russian ingredient,” Ilya said dryly, as he filled the electric kettle and flicked it on. He got two mugs, and carefully sliced a lemon into wedges. He lifted one at David, who nodded, so Ilya set aside a wedge for each mug and put the lemon back in the fridge. Then he found the raspberry jam where it was currently hiding behind some weird fucking smoothie powder, and David shrugged, game, so Ilya put a spoonful of jam in each mug. He found the teapot, and filled the silver infuser and dropped it in, then poured the water just after the kettle shrieked. He capped the teapot and waited.

Fuck, he was tired. It had felt good, for the four minutes or whatever that he had just been occupied, to do something simple and easy, to smell the spritz of the lemon and feel the weight of the kettle in his hand, to be able to do something for someone else, but the knowledge that David was only here because Ilya was fucking mental kept threatening to push Ilya under.

Alexei had hated ivan-chai. Said the smell made him sick. Looked at it with the same snide loathing that he put on when Ilya said their mother was having a bad day.

Ilya looked at the tea, felt a phantom weight in his hands as his body remembered making the tea for his mother, hoping it would fix whatever made her sick. It hadn’t worked then, and it wasn’t going to work now, and maybe Alexei had hated the ivan-chai because it was a fucking failure.

“But,” Ilya said, voice even, “we can add vodka. That’s also the Russian ingredient.”

“Not the lemon and the jam?”

“No,” Ilya said. “Those are just how you’re supposed to make tea.”

David huffed a laugh again. “Do you actually add vodka?”

Ilya shrugged. “Sometimes. Is not unusual.”

“Then sure.”

So Ilya found the vodka—in the back of the fridge, abandoned these days except for vodka sauce—and tipped a bit into each mug. Then slightly more. He had the urge to do a Sasha pour—roughly half the mug—but Ilya was supposed to be good. And the vodka did not interact well with his meds. The hangover was ferocious. He capped the bottle and put it back.

That was another nice thing about David. Ilya didn't resent Shane his worrying, but it was nice to mention vodka, and the concept of having some, and not have David instantly start doing calculations in his head, about whether or not Ilya should be having any, about whether he could tolerate it with the meds, about whether the vodka itself signified a downswing. David was either a good bit better than Shane at hiding his thoughts, or he simply trusted Ilya not to drown himself in vodka right then and there.

Ilya had lost track of time again. He hoped he hadn’t oversteeped the tea. He poured, then squeezed the lemons over the mugs, then handed one to David. He made no move to change locations, so David sat at one of the counter stools, unbothered, while Ilya stayed leaning against the back counter, staring at his tea and waiting for it to cool.

“You want to talk about it?”

Ilya hitched up a smile. He was good at acting; he’d been acting forever. “No, no, is nothing to talk about, really. I just….” He shook his head. “Yesterday was not a good day,” he said quietly. “I did not want it to affect the camp.”

David nodded, accepting that answer, then said, “You know, Yuna broke up with me once.”

Ilya nearly choked on his tea.

“I don’t know if we ever told Shane,” David mused. “It was way before his time, obviously, back when we’d only been dating, what, a year? And we were only broken up about two weeks, I think.”

“And he never asked,” Ilya guessed. “If you ever had… trouble.”

“Well, no,” David said. “But also, he normally goes to his mother for advice, and Yuna doesn’t really like to admit that she almost didn’t tie me down.” He said this with a smile, and a faintly dramatic arc to his eyebrows.

Ilya smiled faintly in return. Then he said, “Shane also… looks up to you two. I don’t think he’s ever wondered if you two even argued.”

“Oh, he knows we’ve argued,” David said. “He’s seen some of them, especially as he got older and we got a little more careless about what he heard. But you’re right in that he’s never—he’s never had reason to think we would separate, even in the past.”

Ilya met David’s eyes. “So what happened?”

David sighed. “Her mother hated me.”

Ilya nearly spit out his tea again.

“Yuna thought she was doing it for both of us,” David went on. “She’s a practical woman, and she figured we weren’t going to make it. Statistically, you know? She was saving us both the heartache of staying together longer and then breaking up. Her mom was convinced I would ruin her daughter.”

“In what way?”

“Well, I’m white,” David said bluntly. “So that wasn’t ideal. And I was a dumb hockey player. It was her dad who got her into hockey, her mom thought it was the stupidest sport on earth, played by idiots. So here I am. And my degree was in accounting. Not even super rich accounting, I just wanted to do the normal stuff.”

Boring, Ilya thought, so fond that he almost teared up. He looked quickly down at his tea, and hoped David didn’t think he was being rude.

“So Yuna broke up with me,” David continued. “And she meant it. Cold turkey.”

Ilya kept his hands around his warm mug. He glanced up, slightly wry. “Are you telling me you hate me for Shane? Is a little late.”

“No, no, you know that,” David said, and Ilya did, on good days. “I love you, and I love you for Shane. He’s better around you.”

Ilya managed another faint smile. 

“No, I’m bringing this up,” David said, slowly, “because for those two weeks, I wanted to die.”

Ilya blinked.

“Now, I know that’s different,” David said. “I really do. But she made a choice for both of us, without us talking it over, tried to be all self-sacrificing about it. And it was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, I think. And she didn’t really like it, either.”

“Right,” Ilya said, looking down at his tea again.

“The other reason I bring it up,” David said, in that same casual tone, “is that I was an absolute mess for those two weeks. I’m not saying that you are, right now, but I am saying—you don’t have to… perform, for me. We’ve been trying to tell this to Shane lately, too, that we want you two happy, not just performing well. If you just want to lay on the couch and look at the ceiling, that’s not going to faze me.”

“Ah,” Ilya said, quiet.

“That’s all,” David said. “I did bring a puzzle, if you want, and I also brought my laptop and a book, if you’re only putting up with this for Shane’s sake. I just… I know you, kid. I don’t want you to be worrying about whether or not I’m having a good time. I’ll be fine.”

Ilya swallowed. He took another sip of his tea to buy time, then he said, “How did you win Yuna back?”

David laughed. “I didn’t. I just—she actually, she came and found me. I was in my apartment, and she came over, and she said, ‘Jesus Christ, David, pour me a drink.’”

Ilya snorted.

“And then she said, ‘That was a mistake and I don’t ever want to do it again. I think we should get married,’ and I said, ‘please,’ so we hopped on a flight to Vegas and we did it.”

Ilya stared at him.

David frowned at the ceiling. “We must have told Shane this at some point.”

“I will ask him if he knows,” Ilya said. He twisted his mug in his hands, focusing on the warmth of the ceramic.

David seemed to recognize something in him. “Has Anya been out lately?” he asked.

“I haven’t taken her on her walk yet,” Ilya said. “But she has been out.”

“Do you want some company on the walk, or would you rather—”

“Shit,” Ilya muttered. “I should not be out in public, should I?”

“Why not?”

“If I am skipping my obligations,” Ilya said dryly, “I don’t think I’m supposed to look like I’m enjoying it.”

David shifted his mouth to the side, looking like he wanted to say something about that, but instead said, “I can take her.”

“Shane will be okay with you leaving me on my own?”

“Well,” David said, “are you going to be okay on your own for… how long is this morning walk?”

“If not a run, then normally twenty minutes. Maybe half an hour if I stop for coffee at the corner.”

“Then are you going to be okay for twenty or thirty minutes?”

Ilya looked at him. David looked back.

Ilya was quiet, but solid, like David, when he said, “Yes.”

“Alright, then. Where’s her leash?”

---

David brought back a decaf latte for Ilya. “I don’t know what they put in this,” he said, “but it was the special, and you seem like the kind of guy who gets the special.”

Ilya, who’d spent the time sprinting on the treadmill downstairs, trying to trick his body into liking being alive but mostly just tricking his body into nearly vomiting, said, slightly hoarse, “Thank you.”

---

The morning was quiet. David was at the kitchen table, working on his laptop. Ilya went through some of the Foundation emails, answering what he could without needing agreement from someone else, and scheduling sends so that it would look like he was doing this on their lunch break, or that evening, instead of when he was supposed to be on the ice. Anya was curled up next to him on the couch. 

David shifted in his seat.

Ilya flinched so badly he sloshed cold tea on himself. “Shit,” he muttered, hurriedly putting his mug down.

“You okay?”

“Yes, yes, I—there was more tea left than I thought, is all—” He went into the kitchen, dabbed at his shirt with a paper towel. His shirt was a dark gray, it would be fine; it was more something to do with his hands.

Why the fuck had Ilya reacted like that? He’d sort of forgotten David was there, sure, so the motion in the corner of his eye was kind of unexpected, but fuck’s sake.

He breathed out, slowly. He was fine. There was zero reason for him to feel like—well, like he’d gone home, only to find Alexei or his father there earlier than expected. Neither of them had ever been here. His father was dead; he hadn’t seen Alexei in years.

He was fine.

He went back out to the living room.

Later, David asked if Ilya wanted anything to drink, that he was going to have a glass of the lemonade if that was alright. Ilya said lemonade sounded great. He tried to decide on this email about the Montreal camp, if he needed to check with Yuna or if he was correct about—

“Here’s—”

Ilya jumped. “Gospodi,” he rasped. “Sorry. I—sorry.”

“No, my fault, my fault,” David said, setting the glass next to him. “I didn’t mean to startle you, sorry.”

“I don’t know why I did that,” Ilya muttered. “It isn’t like I didn’t know you were coming.” He pulled the glass to him.

“It’s alright,” David said. “Just lost in thought, maybe.”

Ilya nodded. He touched his temple, briefly, lightly, feeling the start of a headache. Tension, not concussion, not hangover. He’d been clenching his jaw. It happened when he was in Russia, sometimes.

Ilya squeezed his eyes shut, then said, “I—David?”

“Hm?”

“I’m going to go take a nap, actually, I think,” Ilya said. “So don’t worry if you don’t see me.”

“Sure thing.” He hesitated, than said, “would you leave the door open just a bit?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s fine.”

Ilya downed his lemonade, then went. He didn’t really want to take a nap, didn’t want to fuck up his sleep anymore than it already was. He used to be able to nap whenever the fuck he wanted. He should have said he was going to go work out. Except that he just wanted to be by himself, and if he went to work out, David would keep checking on him. He loved David, and he knew he was only put up to it by Shane, but Ilya was fucking jumpy today, and he wanted to just exist quietly in the dark for a bit.

So he crawled into bed and he scrolled on his phone for a bit. His eyes kept drifting closed.

Maybe a nap wouldn’t be awful.

---

A little tap.

Ilya lurched awake, vicious, and then saw a man leaning over his nightstand, and Ilya cringed back, violent, his back slamming into the headboard, his hands coming up toward his chest.

There was a moment of silence.

David looked at him, hands up, palms out. Surrender.

The noise. There was a glass of water on the nightstand. David had put a glass of water on his nightstand. The door had been open, why fucking not? And he was David. A thoughtful guy. He was sure he’d done this one million times for Shane.

“Sorry,” David said, when it was clear Ilya was a little bit frozen. He backed up a step. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” Ilya rasped. He needed to apologize for freaking out, for being a fucking weirdo, but he couldn’t seem to find the words. His head was so… empty. He needed to get it the fuck together. “No, I—sorry, I should not have—”

David hesitated, then put his hands down. The motion, though, sent Ilya back even farther in the bed.

“I’m sorry,” Ilya said again. “I don’t—I don’t fucking know what’s wrong with me—”

“Alright,” David said. He put his hands behind his back, and Ilya scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “It’s okay not to know right now. Okay?”

Ilya was shaking slightly.

“Right now, let’s just focus on what we can,” David said quietly. “Do you want to call Shane?”

Ilya shook his head, immediate. “No. No, I will only worry him. And I’m—I’m fine, I swear, I just—”

“Alright,” David said again, and Ilya wanted to grab onto that little word, said in David’s steady, easy manner. The shaking felt like it was going to get worse, and he absolutely could not let that happen. “Do you want me to go?” He leaned to one side a little. “Well. Downstairs, anyway. Shane would kill me if I left right now.”

The easy answer was yes. Yes, go back downstairs, please let me be insane alone. Don’t make me show you what I am. But Ilya’s whole body seemed to be seizing up in something that might have been terror with nowhere to go, and shame with nowhere to hide, and an inexplicable grief.

And David was there, and he loved David, and—

Stay, he’d once asked a Hollander, and that Hollander had left, and Ilya had—

But that was different. Shane had come back. Shane had more than made that up to him. And David was offering.

He should have said please go, but he said, “No,” in the steadiest voice he could.

“Alright,” David said, a third time, and there was maybe something a tiny bit pleased in his voice. Ilya’s whole body relaxed, nearly dizzy with relief that he’d done something right, and then instantly locked up again. Ilya didn’t do things right. Not like that. Not to fathers. There was a trick, there was some catch, there— “Then I’ll sit right here. If you want to talk, I’m here. If you don’t, that’s okay, too.”

Ilya didn’t know what to do with that. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, to be fair, telling David not to go downstairs, but it hadn’t been this, obviously. David sitting on the edge of the bed, hands in his lap, looking down toward his shoes. It wasn’t a shameful look, not a don’t look at me, vibe, just… calm. David tapping his socked toes against the floor to occupy himself, looking a little bit like a kid, the way that Ilya and Shane both tapped their toes in their shoes. It had been funny, realizing they both did it, though Shane’s tended to have a specific rhythm he was rehearsing, and Ilya just liked to stay in motion. David didn’t seem to have a pattern.

David noticed Ilya watching. His feet stilled. “Sorry,” David said, that Canadian sorry that was just a place-filler.

Ilya shook his head slightly. He shifted, pulled into cross-legged, his back careful against the headboard, safe from one angle. “Shane does that.”

“Still?” David laughed quietly. “He didn’t, when he was little. He was all over the place. Never wanted to sit still. Other kids, or the teacher, would get… well, kind of upset with him. So I told him he could tap his toes in his shoes, if he wanted. No one would notice. And it got the wiggles out of him, mostly. He turned into kind of a statue, sometimes, trying to make sure no one saw him move.” David sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let him take that so far.”

Ilya twisted a sheet hem in his hands. “You’re good parents, to him. Both of you.”

“We tried,” David sighed. “We certainly tried.” He tapped a toe on the floor.

Ilya hesitated, then said, “I do it, too.” He motioned to David’s feet again.

David’s smile was satisfied. “Do you? Well. No wonder you two fit. Peas in a pod.”

Ilya should have been happy that David was calling them peas in a pod. Saying he and Shane fit. Instead, it lit a kind of panic in his chest. If David meant that, then Ilya could only fail going forward. He would find out that Ilya was failing, falling, that Ilya was dragging Shane down with him. Fuck, he already had to know, considering Shane had asked him to give up whatever he was going to do that day and come babysit Ilya, because he couldn’t be fucking trusted alone for nine hours, he—

“Have you eaten today?” David asked.

Ilya looked up at him, sharp. “I had breakfast. What time is—oh.” It was nearly three.

“Do you have anything you were planning on making? Or are you in more of an ordering-in mood?” David tapped at his phone with his index finger. “There’s that good gyro place near here, have you and Shane been there yet?”

“Ah—no,” Ilya said. “We haven’t.”

“Do you like gyros?”

“I like most foods,” Ilya admitted. Normally.

“We could add some baklava,” David murmured. “Let’s just… get a little food in you. And then we’ll see where we’re at.”

---

By the time Shane got back and David went home, he was still headachy and tired. He asked Shane how camp had gone, tried to participate in the conversation, tried to keep up. He said, yes, yes, of course, to going in tomorrow, because what other option did he have? He’d taken off a day, and it hadn’t cured him, and he had a job to do.

What was the phrase? No rest for the wicked. Maybe this was what it meant, because he had done nothing, and he did not feel better.

if anyone wants to talk hollanov w me on twitter, i made a new one! @rozalov81

Ilya has a disagreement with a player’s father, and a disagreement with his own body about how to breathe.

enough of the preliminaries. time for the good shit

Edit: forgot to update the posting date lmao

It was easier to distract himself at camp, that was for sure. He skated circles around some of the kids, and "lost" races to the others, and he was, admittedly, good at the position Yuna wanted him in, watching the kids and picking out specific things they needed to work on, putting them in separate groups to work on that instead of the main drills that Shane and Hunter ran. Hayes asked him if he was okay, and Ilya just said he hadn’t felt well yesterday. Hayes looked kind of suspicious about that, which was fair considering he’d seen what Ilya played through, but Ilya said, didn’t want to give it to the kids, and Hayes brightened immediately. Of course. Understandable, now.

Their morning break, Ilya had caught Shane's wrist and tugged him into an empty office. Shane had said are you okay? and Ilya had said yes of course and then Shane had said we can't, here, and Ilya had said I know, I know, and Shane had said, unsure, then, okay...? 

Ilya had just wrapped his arms around Shane and tucked his nose to Shane's hair and breathed, slowly. Shane had tried to be worried again, but Ilya just whispered, "Shh, is okay. Just needed to be near you. I'm fine." So Shane settled, mostly, and had slid his hand up and down Ilya's spine, his other hand in Ilya's hair. And it had settled Ilya, a little bit.

But then they had to go back to everything, everything Ilya was supposed to love, everything he was fucking used to, and Ilya had felt the fracture lines crack open again almost immediately. It was easier to distract himself with the camp, sure, but it was also easier to get too focused, and then bam, a puck would hit the boards unexpectedly, and he would have to force a flinch inward. He’d never reacted like that to a puck before in his life. He was supposed to lunge toward a puck, in all honestly, make sure it hit him instead of the net, if he couldn’t get it with his stick. God, if he couldn’t figure out what the fuck was wrong with him, his season was going to be in the fucking trash. And it wasn’t like loud noises had ever bothered him before. Alexei had thrown a full vodka bottle at his head once—it missed, hit the wall behind him—and Ilya had mostly just been annoyed. Why couldn’t Ilya go back to that nonresponse?

His father had never thrown things, thought it was a ridiculous thing to lose a temper like that. Not masculine. Everything was supposed to be deliberate, considered, for a reason. He’d backhanded Alexei for it.

Shane was keeping an eye on him, Ilya could feel it—he could feel everyone’s eyes when they were on him, it was a talent of his, he knew exactly where people were, always—which meant that Ilya tried very hard to just look like he normally did. Fun, or bored. He had to be Fun Ilya here, because of the kids. Which was unfortunate, because Fun Ilya was tired. Bored Ilya would have been a lot easier to play.

A kid tugged on his sleeve. Ilya bit back a Russian curse, then said, “What do you need, krokha? Hollander says I am not allowed to give any of you more chocolate until—”

“Scott Hunter says you’re getting old.”

Ilya stared at the kid—Kaden, he was pretty sure—and then looked up to see Hunter salute him from the ice. “I called your name four times!” he called. “Who’s getting old, now?”

“Oh, that is very mean, from a dinosaur,” Ilya said. The kid giggled. “He sent you over here to tell me this message?”

The kid nodded.

“Okay, well, now you are a little dinosaur,” Ilya said. “Go on, go back to ANCIENT DINOSAUR. We’ll separate into teams next time, get you a mascot of a stegazavr—”

---

“Rozanov?”

They were supposed to be breaking for lunch, but Ilya turned, nearly thirty years of instinct. He was Hollander-Rozanov now, though at work he was still just Rozanov. He flattened a smile onto his face as the man stepped closer. One of the parents. Ashton’s father, maybe? He was there the full day. Did this man not have a job? He must, considering he also brought his laptop and sat in the stands clicking away on it. Ashton always looked up, hopeful, and then saw his father not paying attention. What was the point of being here and not watching?

Ilya found the whole thing difficult to reconcile even knowing that there was a chance Yuna would have done the same thing, even knowing that, well, if Ilya and Shane had a kid, it would maybe be hard to peel Ilya away from watching his kid blossom on the ice, or wherever. He would do it, though. For the kid’s sake. It was good to be away from a parent. Their kids didn’t exist yet—or they did, and they were out there, not yet adopted, which made Ilya nauseated if he thought about it too long, so he elected to pretend they didn’t exist yet, or that they were currently leading wonderful lives—but Ilya already knew that when they did (however they did it) acquire a child, he was going to have to devote a good deal of energy into not becoming a helicopter parent. He knew it was good to let children have lives of their own; he knew he wanted their kids to have structure, and support, like Shane had had, but also friends of their own and free time. Things Shane had had… less of. Unfortunately, Ilya knew exactly what kids got up to without parental guidance, and his own teen years were going to haunt every minute of their kids growing up. If he found out they did even a tenth of what he’d done at sixteen, he was going to go ballistic. He was going to start believing in every god under the sun specifically so he could pray the kid would absorb Shane’s rule-following kindness instead of Ilya’s rebellious fracturing. 

Reason #408 Ilya was not ready to be a parent, even if Sveta had asked him to stop sending her videos of babies in little blueberry costumes and sailor outfits and being held up so it looked like they were doing prisiadki routines, accompanied by one hundred crying emojis. It wasn't his fault. They were so cute. Ilya wanted one so bad.

Anyway.

This parent.

Ilya should have said how can I help but instead, because he already didn’t really like this man and also because he was tired, he just said, as pleasantly as he could, “Yes?”

The man held his hand out. Ilya shook. “I’m Cameron DeVries,” he said. “Ashton’s dad.”

“Right,” Ilya said.

Cameron’s eyes flicked down to Ilya’s skates, which added to the inch or two Ilya probably already had on the man. No. Not the skates. To his blue-purple-pink skate guards, which he’d bought in a fit of tipsy whimsy. He’d gotten Shane the green-blue ones, and he’d bought Scott Hunter the rainbow ones, and then he’d bought black and white stripey ones for Wyatt Hayes, and he’d laughed almost to tears when Hayes opened them, excited after everyone else got theirs, and had been so visibly disappointed by the jail-cell color scheme that he’d immediately googled the heterosexual flag and wailed, “why is it so LAME?”

Shane had been quietly pleased with his, though he still wore his normal black guards during the regular season, because they had been faithful to him and he did not fuck up a perfectly good routine for no reason. Ilya didn’t. He’d switched full time to these. Which Cameron’s eyes were now on. Ilya was not afraid of this random man, and normally he didn’t particularly care what random people thought of him or his colorful guards. But Ilya was having a particularly bad week.

“Is there a problem?” Ilya asked, mild.

“What? No.” Cameron’s eyes snapped back up to Ilya’s, though they flickered back once or twice to Ilya’s skate guards. Ilya put his hands in his pockets. “Well—it’s about Ashton.”

“Okay,” Ilya said.

“What do you think of him?”

Ilya blinked. This was… inappropriate, yes? It was lunch break, they didn’t really meet with parents now, and even then, they normally just did chitchat until Friday afternoon, when they told the parents how they thought their kid was progressing, and then again next Friday, they highlighted everything that had gone well and added, in the middle, one or two things for the kid to really focus on improving. There were no private ambushes in the tunnels. Also, it was Tuesday.

Had Cameron wanted this conversation yesterday? On day one? And when Ilya hadn’t showed, he… waited for this? Why Ilya?

“Ashton is a good kid,” Ilya said.

“But his hockey,” Cameron said, dismissing that. Ilya’s shoulders tensed. “I know he needs to work on his passing—”

“That will come,” Ilya said. The kid was what, eleven? “He is working on puck handling, right now, he got too good at skating too fast and now he struggles with keeping the puck where he needs it. He will adjust. He knows where the others are around him, it is only a… hand-eye thing, right now, and I think is only because of how fast he is growing.” It was easy to spot. He was young, but he was already gangly, growing too fast for his mind to catch up with the differences. Ilya had been the same, though his problems had hit two years later. Thirteen, and a growth spurt, and suddenly nothing felt quite right anymore, and he’d been terrified that hockey wasn’t going to save him after all. He’d stayed after practice every day until he was better than everyone else again. And then he simply… hadn’t stopped staying after practice.

“So you think he’s good,” Cameron said eagerly.

A muscle in Ilya’s jaw ticked. He took a deep breath. “All the kids here are good.”

“This isn’t a participation game,” Cameron said, like Ilya was supposed to agree. And he did, sort of, he understood the sentiment, he agreed not everything needed a literal trophy, that children needed to learn how to lose or you ended up with a bunch of little Dallas Kents, but he didn’t like the way Cameron said it. “Ashton loves hockey, obviously, but I don’t know.”

“What do you want from me?” Ilya said, finally.

At the bluntness, Cameron seemed released. “I want you to tell me if he’s worth it,” he said, and Ilya went very cold, very fast. “I just mean, if he’s good enough to justify all this fucking money I’m spending on hockey. It’s a lot, you know, and this camp isn’t cheap—”

“It is for charity,” Ilya said, and his voice sounded strange.

Cameron didn’t seem to notice. He waved a hand. “Sure, yeah, the charity. Whatever you want to call it. I just want to make sure I’m getting my money’s worth, eh? But if you tell me Ashton’s got what it takes, I’ll believe you. You don’t seem like you’d lie about talent.”

Ilya looked at him.

Cameron seemed to run out of what to say, briefly, then rallied. “He’s a good kid, yeah. And I've put all this money into making him the greatest he can be, but he’s just so lazy sometimes and I don’t want it to spread to—”

Ilya was aware of the sting in his hand before he was aware of what had actually happened. Then he was aware of Cameron’s face, pale and eyes huge. Then he was aware that he had just slapped his hand against the wall next to Cameron’s head, and that he was leaning in, every inch of him vibrating with the need to punch this guy.

Distantly, Ilya was impressed when Cameron managed to say, “What the fuck is wrong with—”

“Shut,” Ilya said, “the fuck up.” Cameron turned to go, but Ilya said, voice flat, “No. You stay.” And then Ilya sank to the floor, his back against the wall, and called Yuna.

She picked up on the third ring, voice confused. “Ilya? Are you not still at the rink?”

“Yes,” he said. “I need you to come to the visitor’s tunnel.”

“Okay,” she said, instant. “I’ll be right there.”

Ilya hung up, and put his head back against the wall, and waited. He closed his eyes and breathed. Cameron did not leave.

“Hi.” Yuna’s voice, and steps, coming closer. “What’s going on?”

“Yuna Hollander,” Ilya said, not opening his eyes. “This is Cameron DeVries. I slightly hit the wall next to him and that was unprofessional. I am very sorry. Can you please convey my deepest apologies.”

There was silence in the tunnel.

“And then,” Ilya said, getting back to his feet, flicking his eyes between the two of them, “can you please make sure I do not interact with him again?” He met Cameron’s disbelieving gaze. “And also tell him that he should not call his son lazy. He is not.”

Then he walked himself up to the room Yuna used as her office while the camp was on, and went inside. He sat in the second chair, and looked at his skates and their blue-purple-pink guards.

Maybe he should stop trying to rehab his image and just admit to the world that this charity was just a fucking front, that yes it did good but it had only been started because Ilya Rozanov was such a violent, impulsive asshole that Shane Hollander could not be seen with him without an excuse. Because Ilya ruined everything he touched. Because Ilya was not, and had never been, good.

Ilya put his head in his hands.

Yuna came in a bit later. She closed the door behind her, then pulled her chair out around the desk to sit in front of Ilya. “Okay,” she said briskly. “Don’t worry about him. This is the best training program like this, and the only access his son will get to you and Shane, so hockey culture on our side for once—he didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize Ashton’s spot here. He agreed to just drop Ashton off and pick him up instead of staying all day. He said the only reason he—well, it doesn’t matter.”

“What was he saying?” Ilya rasped, not lifting his head.

Yuna hesitated, but she was blunt as ever. She said, “All the allegations against Hockey Canada. We’re not associated with them, obviously, but it’s a whole thing, and—he acted like he just wanted to keep Ashton safe. Though I don’t know how he thought he was doing that with his nose in a fucking laptop the whole time anyway, and we have rigid procedures for who is where and with whom, at any point—”

Right. And it probably wasn’t just the Hockey Canada stories. It was that, in conjunction with the fact that Shane and Ilya and Scott and half of their coaches were flaming fucking faggots. Which meant, to a certain subset of person, pedophiles.

Ilya took in a thin breath.

“The point is,” Yuna said, “that’s taken care of. But honey. You don’t normally… is something going on with you?”

Ilya opened his mouth to deny it, and instead said, “I don’t know.” He hitched in a breath. “I don’t know.” DeVries was lucky Ilya hadn’t punched him. Ilya was lucky he hadn’t punched him. He felt out of fucking control. He ran a hand across his chest. Was he breathing?

“Ilya, honey—”

“I don’t know,” he said again. He leaned forward, pressed his elbows to his knees again. He fought to get in a normal breath.

“Hey, Mom, there you are. I was wonder—what the fuck?”

Then Shane was next to him, crouched down. “Hey. Hey, what’s wrong?”

Yuna said something. Ilya couldn’t make it out over the rushing in his ears.

Ilya said, kind of dizzy, “My heart is going—my heart is really fast.” He made a small sound between a giggle and a hiccup and felt everything start sliding out of his control. There was a physical sensation of slipping. “What is that about?”

“Mom, what happened?”

“There was… an incident,” Yuna was saying. “Everyone’s okay, it’s been handled, but—”

“What kind of incident?”

“Shane,” Ilya whispered. The room was going dark at the edges. “What is happening?”

Shane put his hands on Ilya’s knees, but kept his attention on his mom. “What kind of incident?”

“Ashton’s dad made a comment about Ashton,” Yuna said. “Ilya… hit the wall next to him.”

“The fuck did he say about Ashton?”

“Called him lazy,” Ilya whispered. “I shouldn’t have—but he wasn’t—his dad didn’t—Shane, I can’t breathe. I can’t—”

Shane ran his hands up and down the tops of Ilya’s thighs, pressing down slightly, forcing Ilya’s attention. “I think you’re having a panic attack.” He was crouching next to him, and he reached up to brush Ilya’s sweaty hair out of his face. Why was he so sweaty? He’d barely done anything. He—he was maybe going to throw up. He was so hot, but he was pretty sure his hands were freezing, and he was—he was dragging in breath like he’d been doing bag skates, he—

Panic attack? No. No, his heartbeat was in his whole fucking body. How long ago had Shane said that? “No,” he whispered. “I’m having heart attack. My—I can feel my mouth—my heart, it’s in my mouth—I—”

“I can go get Terry,” Shane said.

The world lurched under him, and Ilya gasped, fumbling into Russian, “No. No, I—I’m fine, I—”

“Okay,” Shane said, switching into Russian, too. “Because I’m very sure you’re having a—panic attack.”

“I don’t get those, I’ve never gotten those—”

“I know, love, but I think that’s what this is.”

Ilya was losing his grasp on what he cared about. “I don’t know what’s happening with me.”

Shane opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“Okay,” Yuna said. Ilya flinched. Yuna. He’d fully forgotten she was there. He had no fucking idea what she’d said. But he tried his hardest to pay attention, to translate through the tumbling in his head, through the way he wasn’t entirely sure he was sitting up straight. “You’re really pale, hon. Can you lay on the floor for me?”

Shane slid from a crouch to sitting cross-legged on the floor. Ilya slid down to join him, and then slumped back. He didn’t care that this was humiliating. He couldn’t fucking breathe. He dragged in an attempt at a breath and felt like he failed. His head was in Shane’s lap.

“Knees up,” Yuna said. “Come on, sweetheart.”

Ilya put an arm over his eyes. He was so dizzy, except that he wasn't quite in his body enough to feel it, just registered it distantly, in the way the floor seemed to slant under his body but he could do nothing about it, like he was pretty sure he wasn't actually breathing but someone was making harsh, hitching gasp sounds—

“I cannot feel my hands,” he whispered. And then he felt—something, at least, not normal, but maybe just the sensation of his arm moving at all.

“Can you feel that?”

Shane. Shane was holding his hand. Ilya’s shoulders hitched.

“It’s okay,” Yuna was saying. Ilya only blurrily understood anything she said. “It’s okay, sweetheart, it’ll come back. You’ll be okay, I promise.”

Ilya bit down on his lip. At least, he was pretty sure he did. He couldn’t feel his fucking face. He had the extreme desire to hide, to just scramble into the darkest, coolest closet he could find, and hide there until this was over, preferably in a small curled up ball. But he couldn’t even sit up, let alone find a suitable supply closet. Maybe under the desk. He used to hide under Alexei’s desk, before Alexei hated him. And why the fuck was he thinking of home so much lately?

Why the fuck was he thinking of Moscow as home?

“Mom? Can you turn off the lights in here? And then—I’ve got him, can you go get Terry? Just keep him outside until we’re ready, until Ilya agrees to it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

The lights clicked off. Ilya’s chest loosened a fraction.

“That helps me,” Shane said softly. “Not having lights like that. Is it better?”

Ilya nodded slightly.

“Good. Okay. Can you slow down with me?”

Ilya hauled in a breath, and it was big and high-pitched and desperate, and god, the shame. The fucking shame of it, crashing through him.

He knew Shane had had panic attacks. He’d seen them, walked Shane through them best he could. He’d never once thought Shane weak for having them, never once thought less of him at all.

But there was no reason that Ilya should have had a panic attack. He was the one who’d nearly hit someone else, he was—he was the one who’d been violent, and oh, fuck, if he ruined everything Shane had worked so hard for—

“Hey,” Shane was saying. “Hey, hey, hey.” He had his hands on Ilya’s face. “Breathe—I don’t know how to say that. But please. With me. Come on. In. Mhm. Hold it for a second, there, now out, come on. Slow. Good. In.”

Ilya couldn’t quite meet Shane’s eyes, so he focused on Shane’s lips instead, moving carefully as he retaught Ilya how to breathe. Tried to focus on Shane’s hands on his arms.

God, the fucking shame, coiling up from his stomach and into his ribs. He thought he might be sick from it. He’d done that, once, when he was what, fifteen? Had had a terrible game, had known his father was watching and it was like something had gone crooked in him. He’d fumbled nearly every face off, hadn’t even had an assist, had the puck stolen from him in a way that shouldn't have been possible. It was quite possibly the worst game of his life.

He hadn’t even made it to see his father, really. He’d come off the ice and gone straight for the bathroom and he’d puked. No fuss, like this. No frills. Just his body rebelling from the absolute humiliation. And then he’d changed into his normal clothes and his father had been waiting outside, and Grigori at least waited until they were in the car to hit Ilya so hard across the face his ears rang.

Grigori didn’t bother showing up to a game again for a year and a half, and only then because Sveta’s father had wanted to go. Ilya hadn’t worried, that time. He’d settled into who he was. Brash and unconcerned with anything. Besides. It would only serve his father right, if he watched yet another game where Ilya broke.

He hadn’t, of course. He was too good by then.

Oh. The Olympics. He’d been sick with disgrace, but not literally. He’d been dragged so far under at that point that the shame had barely made his top five most prominent emotions, behind terror and dread and despair and a specific brand of toska that he associated with Shane Hollander. By the time he failed against Latvia, Ilya had been dissociating more often than not. He’d only been himself on the ice, and even that hadn’t been enough.

Ilya had never once in his life thrown up from nerves. Anticipation was a gorgeous, hungry creature to him. He couldn't help but see the future through roses. He couldn't help but hope, and determination was a creature he fed willingly.

Shame, though. The shame of what he'd already done.

It was one of the things he and Shane differed on, maybe one of their biggest differences, he thought. Shane didn't care about the past. He was scared of the future, terrified sometimes, but he was always looking to it.

Ilya was so easily dragged down by his own history.

Shane was afraid of what he couldn't see. Ilya was afraid of what he could.

---

Once Ilya could sit up again, Shane convinced him to let Terry take a look at him. He was fine. He was pathetic, but fine. He also let Shane convince him that Yuna would be driving him home, because Ilya refused to let Shane do it instead, not wanting to let down more of the camp. Once he was home, Yuna stayed in the house. Ilya didn’t care, except that he knew she was there, and knew he was responsible for a whole fucking mess, and it made him apologize profusely, and then go straight to bed and pull the sheets over his head.

He canceled his appointment with Galina. He said all the right things; that he wasn’t in danger, that he had just had a bad day at work and he was not in the headspace to add more to it, that he wasn’t alone, that he was fine. She agreed to the cancellation—good, he wasn’t showing up either way—but she asked if he would come in Friday after camp, instead. Keep his next Tuesday one, too. He agreed.

---

The next day, Ilya was on his best behavior. He smiled and he chatted with the kids and he joked with the parents, trying to put everyone at ease. He’d fucked up, and now it was his responsibility to keep everyone on an even keel. That was how it had always been. It didn’t matter that by lunch, Ilya had to text Shane and tell him he had to take a call with Galina during lunch, to talk about insurance things, which was a lie, because what Ilya really had to do was find that supply closet again and sit in it, his back to the shelving unit, head tipped back, breathing very slowly with his eyes closed, in as close to silence as he could get, the light turned off, because otherwise he was pretty sure he was going to scream. And it didn’t matter that he felt like he was full of cement when he went back out, smile pasted back on, that he could physically tell he was slower, that his fucking brain was buffering. He just kept going. Pushed harder. He’d been doing this his whole fucking life.

It had never been this hard.

---

The next day, Ilya felt like shit. He was literally, utterly exhausted, and getting up made him genuinely wish for the cessation of existence. He wanted a black hole. He wanted a meteor to wipe him out. He wanted his heart to simply stop beating, for there to be one moment where he existed and another where he didn’t.

He wanted to not feel already dead when he woke up.

But he couldn’t call off again, it had been what, three days? It was Thursday. This was why he always showed up, this was why he never missed anything: he was always saving up for when it was worse, and it always got worse. If he had gone on Monday, then he could have stayed in bed now, though he wouldn’t have, because tomorrow would be worse. He knew it even then.

So he didn’t cry or whine or complain. He forced himself to sit up. Shane was behind him.

That was the first thing. Normally, Shane was gone when Ilya woke up. Because Shane liked an early start, and he liked to make the coffee cleanly, efficiently, and he liked to have it ready for when Ilya stumbled down. Shane still behind him, when it was not a Saturday and it was not a particularly late bedtime last night, meant Shane thought today would be bad for Ilya, too, because while Ilya was used to Shane’s need for early mornings, Ilya also took the bed being empty worse when he was bad.

Ilya got out of bed. He didn’t say anything to Shane, just went to the bathroom, then downstairs. He turned on the kettle because he could hear Shane rustling behind him, but he himself went to their treadmill, and he got on it. He ran, mechanically, with none of the pleasure that working out normally brought him. Just turning the speed up, and up, until he was sprinting, until he was running flat out, until he slammed the emergency off and nearly threw himself into the front of the machine because he mistimed it. He stood there, breathing hard, hands white on the guardrails.

He went and showered.

By the time he was dressed and back in the kitchen, Shane had his arms crossed.

“No,” Shane said.

“I’m going,” Ilya said, flat.

“You’re not.”

“I committed to this, Shane,” Ilya said, the words biting. “I committed to this, and the kids—their parents—expect me to be there, and—”

“And you’re not going to help anyone if you spend all day looking like you’re on the verge of killing someone,” Shane pointed out.

Ilya smiled. Shane’s expression made him stop.

Ilya blew out a breath. “I’m bratty, annoying person,” he said. “I have a whole—” He snapped his fingers several times, though on the last one, his fingers went too slow and it was just a dry rasp.

“Persona?”

“Oh. Yes. Is same in Russian, I thought—whatever. Whole persona to back me up. No one will suspect anything.”

“It’s not about suspecting anything, it’s about you—”

“I said I would go,” Ilya said flatly. “This is something I want to do. Your mother already put me on the sidelines, I won’t even terrorize any children.”

“That’s not what she—”

“Shane,” Ilya said. “I’m going.”

Shane was angry the whole drive to the rink.

---

Of course Ilya didn’t terrorize any children. He was pretty sure they knew he was tired, and it took a nearly herculean effort to pay enough attention to know what the fuck any of the kids were doing, let alone what they might be doing wrong, but he managed. He got most of them to laugh. He sent them back to their parents with smiles on their faces.

He downed half a protein shake when they got home, and then he crawled into bed and he stayed there.

---

He’d been right.

Friday was worse. He had to drag his eyes open, and the light coming through the windows was too bright, too happy, too completely disconnected from the yawning nothing in him, and Shane’s arm around him was so sweet it made Ilya feel a self-hatred that was so pure it didn’t even affect the nothingness in him, like blue flame. He lay there, hollow, and wasn’t sure how he managed to breathe.

He sat up. He swung his legs out of bed.

“No,” Shane said behind him, before Ilya even stood. When all Shane could see was the line of Ilya’s spine.

Ilya slumped forward, braced his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. He breathed out slowly.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. He had a job to do, so he would do it. The end. He would run himself into the fucking ground if he had to. He would crawl to the rink. He didn’t fucking care.

Shane was rounding the corner of the bed, coming to crouch in front of him, between Ilya’s knees. He looked up at Ilya. And Ilya knew he was going to cave before Shane even spoke, because Shane was looking at him with such worry he couldn’t bear knowing Shane would keep worrying, through the day, because of him.

“Please,” Shane said quietly. “Please.”

“I can go,” Ilya said, low, mulish.

“I know,” Shane said. “I’m not saying you can’t. I know you’ve done this before, I know—even two seasons ago, I know it was hard, and you managed to keep it a secret, and—I know you can, Ilya. But I’m fucking begging you not to.”

Ilya closed his eyes.

“What changed? You took Monday off. I didn’t even have to fight you for it, you just—”

“Monday was different,” Ilya said, flat. “Monday, I was weak.”

Shit.

Shane stared at him.

“Not—” Ilya swore in Russian. Then he said, “It was different, Monday. I was—I was twitchy. I don’t know what was fucking wrong with me, but it wasn’t this. This is what I know, this is what I can manage, but I wasted the day off on Monday, so now if I take this, too, I am—”

“Weak,” Shane said softly.

Ilya looked away.

“Ilya.”

“I don’t need a lecture.”

“I’m going to hell,” Shane said. Ilya jerked his gaze back to Shane, confused, until Shane continued, voice burning, “I am going to commit crazy crimes, specifically to get sent to actual hell, so that I can find your dad and kill him again.”

Ilya grabbed Shane’s shirt and dragged him up. Shane ended up on Ilya’s lap, as usual, and Ilya held him tight, let Shane hold him tight.

“I’m so tired,” Ilya whispered into Shane’s shoulder. “But staying home is not going to help.”

“I don’t want you at the camp,” Shane said. “I think it’s making it worse.”

“It’s not the camp,” Ilya said. “Just. Doing… anything.”

“Maybe it’s burnout,” Shane said. “Maybe the camps were a bad idea, maybe we really need the rest in the summer, maybe you—”

“I do not think it’s burnout,” Ilya said. He traced little hearts on Shane’s skin with his fingertips. He tried to lose himself in sensation, the way he normally could, but it was… he was already too deep, too far underwater. He felt like he was drifting, even as Shane held him together. What Shane didn't understand was that yes, it cost energy to go to the camp, but it also cost energy to break the routine, break that plan he'd set for himself. On any normal day, Ilya was a king of going with the flow, but like this? “I don’t know what it is, but I do not think it’s burnout. And I’m glad for the camps, Shane, I’m serious. I like doing it. The past few, I—I mean it, when I say they help. Normally.”

Shane scratched at the back of Ilya’s head. Ilya breathed in Shane’s skin.

“I’ll get Dad to come over again,” Shane said quietly.

“I’m not going to do anything. Don’t have the fucking energy.”

It was a bad joke, and Shane predictably hated it. He leaned back, forced Ilya to look at him. “That’s not what it’s about.”

Ilya raised his eyebrows.

“I want you to have company,” Shane said, in bald anguish. Ilya felt like a fucking worm. Worse than a worm. At least worms were useful. Maybe Shane would like him better as a worm. “You won’t let me stay, but I want you to have company, Ilya, because you hate being alone, and you have options, now, you have people. I want to make things easy on you, because I can see how much everything costs you like this.”

Ilya took a shaky breath. Fuck.

“I—not David,” Ilya said. “I’ll text Harris. He—Troy is at the camp, Harris might… might be free.”

Shane kissed the top of Ilya’s head.

After another minute or two, Shane got up. Ilya followed, ignoring the ache in his… everything. He made them tea while Shane cooked.

Shane didn’t plate two separate breakfasts this time, just dumped everything on his plate and handed Ilya a fork. Ilya fucking loved him. He wished the crater in his chest would remember that.

“You’re going to get emails,” he said, without emotion.

Shane glanced up. “What?”

“About me. They’re paying for a ten day camp, and I missed two of the days. Twenty percent. And part of a third. Not a small thing. The Foundation is going to get emails, especially since there was no… explanation.”

Shane looked at him carefully now. Not with pity. Not even consideration, really. He was trying to read Ilya, parsing what Ilya had left out.

Shane said slowly, “Do you want to give them an explanation?”

“What would we give? An injury doesn’t make sense with the timeline. Neither does being sick. A work obligation would be the worst, since that would be something planned, and the Foundation should have come first. I have no family obligations that wouldn’t include you.”

Shane’s mouth tightened, quick and then gone, at that.

“Is just a fact,” Ilya said tiredly.

“I know,” Shane said.

Ilya turned his mug in his hands. In the winter, when it was bad, he was cold all the time. He could explain it away, blame the weather. In the summer, when it was bad, his hands still went cold, but mostly he just felt dull. Like every nerve had been blunted. That was the feeling, now. Like he was handling the mug through gloves.

“Do you want to tell people?”

Ilya didn’t look up. “Am I supposed to?”

He heard Shane’s frown. “What do you mean?”

Ilya wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, really. He wasn’t sure he had the words in Russian, either. He settled. “We had to tell people about us,” he said. “About gay marriage. There was no question of whether or not people got to know, they were going to know.”

Shane nodded.

“And then we were icons,” Ilya said, his voice going slightly odd on the word, and he moved on. “Everything we do is through that. You score gay goals and I captain bisexually and everything is queer, now. You were gay before and your goals have always been gay, but they’ve always also just been goals.”

Shane had almost twitched into a smile, in the middle of that, but it dropped quickly. “You don’t want to lead… depressively,” he said quietly.

“Not really.”

“So then we don’t say anything.”

Ilya looked down at his mug. “But I am cofounder of a mental health charity.”

“Okay, but that doesn't mean you have to tell everyone that you—”

“If I had a heart attack and then started a charity focused on heart attacks, everyone would be so inspired by the story,” Ilya said. “And it would make sense.”

“The Irina Foundation already makes sense,” Shane pointed out. “You already told people that it’s named after your mom, that—”

“I know,” Ilya said. “I know.”

Shane waited.

“I just—does it mean anything?” he asked. “If I am not brave enough to announce it. I should be breaking down stigma, but I am falling right into them. I hate myself for being like this and I can’t fucking handle the idea of everyone knowing, I—I’m happy to be bisexual, I’m not fucking happy to be this—”

“No—Ilya, no.” Shane came over, settled on Ilya’s lap again. Ilya was so fucking tired. He let his forehead fall against Shane’s shoulder, one of Shane’s hands on his lower back, one at the back of his neck. “You don’t have to tell anyone,” he murmured. “You’re right, it was different, coming out, even if we... even if it wasn't how we wanted. But I think that shows you can feel differently about it, too. Ilya, hey, hey. Look at me. You don’t have to tell anyone, ever, okay?”

Ilya just closed his eyes.

“How did you feel telling Scott Hunter?”

In the moment? It had felt whatever, mostly. Hunter was a good guy.

After? Ilya couldn’t quite look back on the moment without wanting to rip off some of his skin. He’d genuinely rather get ice burn. It had been different than telling Shane, or David, or—

Well. Well, no, actually, it felt a little bit like telling Yuna.

Everyone Ilya knew was associated with hockey, somehow, but Yuna and Scott Hunter were maybe the clearest distillations of it, even more than Shane. He’d been a little bit terrified of Yuna’s reaction, when he told her. Shane had offered to be there, but Ilya had wanted to do it alone. Shane thought he was being brave. Ilya had been sparing Shane his mother’s first, uninhibited reaction, if it went badly.

It hadn’t. She’d been so sweet about it, near tears, asking if there was anything she could have done differently when he was in Ottawa alone. He’d said no, no, of course not, and he hadn’t been alone, he’d had them, and they had meant so, so much to him. That was when she really had cried, and pulled him into a hug, and said I’m so sorry I’m crying, this isn’t about me, I’m just so sorry you were going through that and I didn’t know, sweetheart. Does Shane know? And Ilya had said yes, yes, he knew, Shane was the one who saw it first, it was partially for Shane that he had started therapy at all, and Yuna had leaned back immediately and said I love Shane. You know that. But Ilya. You deserve to be happy for you, too, honey.

Still. Yuna meant hockey. Scott Hunter meant hockey. And hockey meant taking the hits with a grin and playing through it.

Ilya hesitated, and then just shook his head slightly. He didn’t regret telling Scott Hunter, just like he didn’t regret telling Yuna. He did wish that he hadn’t felt like he’d had to.

“If you wanted to do something in between,” Shane said, cautious, accepting that instantly and offering a new solution. “You could just tell people you see a therapist. People could draw their own conclusions.”

Yes, like Scott Hunter had. That Ilya had anger issues, shown on the ice, or drug issues, as rumored, or a fucking sex addiction, as hinted at by tabloids. Even if people guessed correctly, that it was genetic, that his mother had killed herself and thus Ilya was damaged, too, it wouldn’t feel correct.

“No,” Ilya said quietly. “It would not work.” Hunter’s assumptions had come from a kind place, but not everyone’s would. He needed to protect the charity, and he needed to protect Shane, and, something whispered, you need to protect yourself.

Shane opened his mouth like he wanted to ask why it wouldn’t work, then clearly changed his mind. “Did Harris text back yet?”

Ilya checked his phone. Harris had indeed. “He says he was just going to go to his family’s house today. He said I could come if I wanted, bring Anya.”

“That would be nice,” Shane said, hopeful.

Ilya tried for a smile. It would be exhausting.

Ilya gets his new diagnosis.

Ilya was pretty sure he dissociated for five straight hours at the Harris family apple farm. He’d managed to only have one tiny little panic attack thing, after one of the dogs barked when he wasn’t expecting it, and then Harris’s sister shrieked a laugh in the kitchen, and then Harris’s dad clapped Ilya on the shoulder. And he’d managed to hide it entirely in the bathroom. After that, he’d been so tired that he simply… was not present anymore. He'd laughed when it was expected and he'd joked and he'd smiled, he'd thrown balls for the dogs, he'd felt like he was drowning, he'd existed only technically in his body. He had performed the role of Ilya mostly satisfactorily. He’d maybe scared Harris a little bit.

And then it was time for therapy. He sat in his car for a few minutes at the farm, after he’d said his goodbyes, because he was trying to come back to his body, so he could safely drive. Anya sat patiently in the passenger seat, with her little doggie seat leash and harness, watching him carefully, but petting her did not anchor him like it sometimes did. He felt… well, like his second season in Ottawa. No longer confident that he could win, really, but no other choice. He was trying so fucking hard. He’d said he would bring Ottawa to the playoffs, and he had. He’d said he wouldn’t kill himself, and he hadn't. Wouldn't.

Liar. Liar told you that.

Normally, he reserved a cigarette for after therapy—if it was bad, he was better now, he didn’t crave them so much—but holy fuck did he need one now. But he didn’t want to taint the sanctity of the farm, so he would smoke outside Galina’s office. With that in mind, that specific, tiny goal in mind, he managed the drive. He dropped Anya off at home on the way, resisted the urge to simply go inside with her and sleep on the couch until Shane got home. And then, at the office, he managed to resist the actual smoking part. Told himself he could smoke after, because he was already a couple minutes late.

He tried, in therapy. Normally. He tried to be open, and receptive, and even if he sometimes failed at that miserably, he at least was not normally this: checked out, and barely engaging, and only dimly aware that he was here because he had moved up this appointment, because he'd skipped his last one, because he needed this, needed to be here, that Galina was maybe going to tell him what the fuck was wrong with him this time. He told her, flat, about the incident with Ashton's dad. She asked how he felt about it. He said he didn't feel fuck all about it. She asked what he had been feeling, the day it happened, and after, and about the maybe-panic-attack thing. He tried to remember, but it was like clawing through mud. "Out of control," he said finally. "I was... everything was too loud, that day, I felt... I don't know. On edge. And then he said his son was lazy and I just... snapped. So I was angry, at Ashton's dad, and I was upset with myself, and then I was stressed about how it was going to reflect on the foundation. On everything Shane worked so hard for."

Galina paused, noted something, then said, "And that's what led to the panic attack?"

"That is what Terry and Shane are calling it, yes."

"Why don't you want to call it that?"

Ilya shrugged. He didn't have a good reason. He didn't even have a bad reason. He was scooped out, hollow. He felt just a tiny bit lightheaded, and he wondered, abstractly, if he was going to have another panic-attack-not-panic-attack. He wasn't sure, again, what his breathing was like, because his head was not quite connected to the rest of him. He was looking down at his fingers like they did not belong to him.

"I don't care what it was," he said, honest, blunt. "I just... need to get it under control. And then I... can be honest with Shane again. I can’t show him this, he'll—he's going to freak out. Once is one thing, but if he... if he thinks this is a whole thing." He shook his head, and his vision went slightly spotty. "He’s going to think I’ll kill myself. I can’t—this is too much to put on him. I—”

He gave into it, putting his head between his knees.

He should have had the fucking cigarette.

“Okay,” Galina said. He heard her footsteps, heard her put a water bottle on the table in front of him, go back to her seat. “Before we talk about that, I need to address something specific.”

Ilya nodded against his knees.

“Do you think about hurting yourself, Ilya?”

Ilya slumped further. Now they had to go through these motions. “Sort of.”

“Like how?”

“You know how.” His spine was starting to hurt. He sat up. He found one of the pillows that lived on the couch instead and put it on his lap. It normally helped. He still wasn't quite in his body, though, so the physical act of touching this stupid pillow was kind of pointless. It was a pale blue, like Shane's favorite linen shirts, and it had that slub weave that Shane liked in their outdoor furniture, and he could not really feel this pillow. He looked at the water bottle, decided he didn't trust himself not to spill water everywhere. “‘Intrusive thoughts,’ mainly. What if I drove into this tree. What if I started drinking and didn’t stop. What if what if what if. All impulse things.”

“Do you think you’ll go through with any of them?”

He wished he could get up some conviction, but that was a lot of effort for something he was too exhausted to do anyway. “No,” he said. Then he added, with a tiny amount of fear, still the most emotion he'd had all session, “But they scare me.”

Galina nodded. They’d talked—ad literal nauseam—about Ilya’s fear that he would simply… succumb. That the dark would pull him under, with no warning, and he would leave Shane.

Something in him flipped, and instead of empty, all he felt was anger. “Why now?” he snapped. “Galina, why now?” This was the real question. The thing he’d been spinning in his head, trying to find an angle on. When he spoke again, he was somewhere between demand and desperation. “I haven't—nothing bad has happened in months and months. I thought I was getting better, I thought—” He cut himself off. Galina didn’t like it when he thought of himself as fixable, because it implied broken, and he wasn't a dish to be glued together. But still. "I had a handle on it."

“Well,” Galina said. “I have a question for you.”

“I asked mine first,” Ilya said, irritable, petulant, but he waited.

“Do you feel safe in Ottawa?”

Ilya jerked his head back slightly.  “Of course I do.” There were the death threats, obviously, and the rage of homophobic NHL fans, but he and Shane had a good security system and they both knew how to throw a punch and, well, Ilya just didn’t think about it very much. Shane did, but… Ilya didn’t know. He was pretty sure that wasn’t really what Galina was asking about, either. Even if it was, he was leagues safer here than he’d ever been in Moscow. And he was so much more settled than he had been in Boston.

“Can you elaborate for me?”

Ilya stared at her. “I mean. Everything is good. Shane and I are together and out and I love his parents and Anya is doing well in her training and the team is doing well, we just—we just won a fucking Cup, we dominated, and they're all—I’m not even worried about Haas anymore, he's doing well, and—and—no, I am fine. Everything is—is better than anything I've ever had.” He ended in nearly a snarl, and fuck, he had to calm down.

“I think that's why,” Galina said gently.

“What?”

“Often,” she said, “PTSD can—”

“PTSD,” Ilya said in disbelief.

“Post-traumatic stress—”

“I know what it is,” he said, dismissive. He and Shane had sat down with a psychologist, near the beginning of founding their charity, to go over various mental health diagnoses so that if there was ever a question on one, in the press, for whatever reason, they wouldn’t be caught off guard. Yuna’s idea, obviously. But Ilya had been framing PTSD as shellshock, in his head. “I was never a soldier. I was never even—I got out of the draft, because of hockey.”

Galina tapped her pen against her notebook. “There are other causes of PTSD, not just battle,” she said slowly. “Witnessing something traumatic. Domestic abuse—”

“I still would not call it that,” Ilya muttered.

“We’ve been over this,” Galina said. “We’ll table that to come back to, even though you have agreed that if anything like your childhood happened to one of the kids in your care at the foundation, you would consider it abuse and try to get the child to safety. And even if you think you weren’t abused, you’ve admitted that you think your mother was in a domestic violence situation.”

Ilya nodded slightly.

“Domestic abuse like that—or even witnessing it—can also cause C-PTSD,” Galina said. “Complex PTSD, from more prolonged situations, rather than a single event.”

Ilya let his head fall back. “And you think this is me. The C-PTSD one.”

“You have described to me,” Galina said, in her here is the evidence I have collected voice, which Ilya disliked primarily because it always proved him completely incorrect about something, “multiple instances of your father being violent toward you."

"We were not Canadian," Ilya muttered. "A little slap does not mean I was an abused child, discipline is—"

"You would slap a child?"

Ilya's breath caught, somewhere near his diaphragm. Of course he wouldn't slap a child. 

Galina held his gaze, waiting.

"No," he said, like it was a stupid answer.

"And from what you've described, he hit you," Galina said. "Remember, I am Russian, too. You can't hide behind that."

Ilya looked away, mutinous.

She turned back to her list. "There are also the multiple instances of your brother being violent toward you—"

"Brothers fight, my father put us against each other, I—"

"And that's normal, and fine? To pit children against each other for affection?"

"When you put it like that," Ilya muttered.

"You told me once that Alexei broke your arm."

"It was an accident."

"Was it?"

Ilya swallowed. They'd been over this, and it was humiliating to admit: he didn't know. Sometimes he went looking for memories of his childhood and he simply did not have them. He'd been terrified to admit that to Galina, terrified it had shown that he was, even now, going to follow his father's unsteady footsteps, but she had only said it was typical, both of trauma and of depression. That it did not mean dementia. He remembered being fourteen and wrestling with Alexei. He remembered being terrified of what his father would say, what his coach would say. He remembered not crying. He remembered trying to play through it, and then throwing up from pain. He remembered saying, with the dull slant of repetition, it was an accident.

He didn't remember if that was true or not. 

"There were also the multiple instances of your father being violent toward your mother, and toward your brother. Multiple instances of your father or brother verbally berating you. The same from various childhood coaches. Multiple instances of neglect, either due to your mother’s depression or your father making a point. This all happened over a period of years—most of your childhood and adolescence, really, up into your twenties, before your father passed."

Ilya set his jaw. She hadn’t mentioned the single event, either, but she didn’t have to.

“You have also described,” she said, continuing, “chronic self-esteem issues, chronic depression, guilt over what has happened to you, persistent feelings of shame in reference to your depression and how you interacted with your family, being afraid of getting too close to people while also fearing abandonment, codependency with Shane, frequent feelings of disconnection with loved ones, repeated dissociative episodes, multiple self-destructive behaviors—”

“Okay,” Ilya said, his face heating. “Okay, I get it. What, am I typical?” It should have been reassuring, to be told he was just like everyone else. But Ilya had been extraordinary his whole life. He kind of wanted Galina to say no, you are the craziest bastard I ever saw, so he could say I fucking knew it and get on with his hopeless life. Instead, he had to be typical, which meant doing the proven methods to try to help himself out of the hole.

“You present quite clearly,” Galina said dryly.

“But why now? I’ve been—if it’s about my childhood, I haven’t been a child in a long time.”

“No,” she said. “But I do think you’ve been having symptoms for a long time. Right now, they’ve just gotten harder to ignore, like your depression did when you moved to Ottawa and lost most of your coping mechanisms. I also think this downswing has been worse than previous ones, because PTSD can show up when you least expect it. Either you reach a breaking point, or... you—and your body—recognize that this is different. You can look at it as your brain not knowing how safety feels, so it's scared, and it reacts badly. Or you can think of it as your body finally recognizing a safe space to be ill. It's like when you're working hard, working hard, and then the first day off you have, you feel like you got hit by a truck. Your body will demand the rest at some point.” She gave him a knowing look. “And we've established that you have been running on a deficit for a long time.”

Ilya worked to unclench his jaw. He released his death grip on the pillow, finger by finger. “That—” He shifted his mouth to one side. “That isn't fair,” he said, and hated himself.

“No,” Galina said gently. “It's not. But it does mean we can make an action plan for this.”

“Another safety plan,” he said dully.

“We can adjust yours, if that's something you want,” she said. “But no. I just mean an action plan. A treatment plan. How we're going to approach this, just like we made a plan about how to approach the depression.”

Ilya took a slow breath, then nodded. “Right,” he said, quiet. “Yes.”

“Ilya,” Galina said. She waited a moment, made sure she had his full attention. He did that, sometimes, kind of pulled back, into himself, and he didn’t always register that he was doing it. She waited until—well, until she saw something in his face that told her he was actually paying attention. He didn't know what it was, because he had lived for twenty-something years with almost no one noticing. Then she just said, “What are you feeling right now?”

He snorted. “I am feeling stupid,” he said, before he could filter himself. That was how he was supposed to do it, how they got anywhere, just speak before thinking. It never would have worked in English. “I feel—I feel betrayed, maybe, by myself, because I—I have been doing everything for this, I was getting better, with the depression and the—everything, I—” He sniffed. “I'm angry, that I have this new fucking problem, and that it—it seems like I'm going backward, so why did I do any of this to begin with, I was fine before, I was fucking fine, I was sad but I wasn’t—I wasn’t this, I could fucking handle it, I—” He drew in a shaky breath, pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I feel like I'm failing Shane,” he whispered. “And the foundation, and the kids, and I’m going to fail my whole team, and Wiebe, and Shane's parents, and—and you, and—everyone who has been dealing with me and helping me and giving me grace,” he spit, with all the scorn he tried not to feel about the word. “And now I'm worse.”

“I want you to remember how you felt when you first came to therapy,” Galina said.

“I felt like shit about it,” Ilya said. “I thought it was fucking pathetic.”

“No,” she said, and Ilya frowned. “No, I mean how did you feel. Not about therapy. But I mean why you came.”

Ilya looked away. He knew exactly how he'd felt. He'd been exhausted and spread too thin and wasn't reaching out enough. He'd thought about the blank, easy emptiness of being dead every day, even when he tried not to. He hadn't always tried not to.

“Now,” she said, not making him say any of that out loud. “Was that, ‘I was sad, but I was fine?’”

Ilya met her eyes again.

“You have a habit of... revising,” she said. “How you felt. Trying to stuff down anything bad, tell yourself that it was fine, it didn't affect you.”

“Yes,” he mumbled. They’d been over this.

“But you weren't okay,” she said gently. “You knew that, which is why you sought out help. You weren't handling it until you came here. You were ignoring it, which is not the same thing. Do you think you'd be in the same place you are now—and I mean with Shane, and out, and married, and both on the Centaurs, and with a Cup—if you hadn't come to therapy and started addressing some of what you were going through?”

Ilya gave her a blurry look and a watery laugh. His eyes stung. “I don't think I would be alive,” he rasped.

“So,” she said, tidily, like that was a normal response. “You know that therapy helped.” She pointed her pen at him. “We'll keep going, Ilya. It's not going backward, even if it feels like it. And I'm not supposed to compare my clients,” she whispered confidentially. “But you are one of my best. You're very dedicated.”

He laughed, wiped his nose. “I bet you say that to everyone.”

“Nope,” she said, and smiled so he didn't know if she was joking. Then she tapped at her notes, back to business. "Now. I want to get into why you keep saying 'everything Shane has built' when you refer to the Irina Foundation. You're aware that you are cofounders, yes?"

Ilya groaned. This again.

---

He called Terry from his car. Shane had offered, before, to drop him off and pick him up from therapy, so that Ilya didn’t have to drive after. But that had made Ilya feel like he skipped a step going downstairs, unsteady, a flash of animal fear. He wasn’t good, after therapy. It took him a minute to come back to himself, and he… he didn’t like being alone, but the thought of walking out of an appointment and directly into company made him want to back away slowly. Besides. He knew when he was bad, he knew when he couldn’t drive, he’d call Shane if he had to. Normally, he liked to walk around afterward anyway, try to settle himself with motion. Shane had Ilya’s location.

So he moved his car from the doctor’s office to a nearby grocery store, and then he stayed in his car with it off, and called Terry, slumped down with a hat and sunglasses on. Said, as matter-of-fact as he could, which was pretty easy with his accent, that he wanted to try upping his dose. Terry agreed to get a meeting on the books. Maybe he’d heard about Ilya’s little anger incident. Maybe it was just that Ilya had to go in to Terry more regularly than the others during the off season, because of the meds, and he was losing weight. Ilya saw the numbers same as he did; they were low, lower than they normally were this time of year. It wasn’t fast, but it was steady, ticking down. Last time, Terry had offered the same suggestions as when Ilya first went on meds, when the nausea had been bad. Easy things, gentle things. Ilya just closed his eyes and nodded.

So. In a few days, he’d meet with Terry, and talk about hockey, and how he would rather stick his head in an actual toilet than discuss the fact that his mental health was in the toilet. And then Terry would say yeah sure in response to Ilya's request, because Ilya would grit his teeth and admit to the fact that he was not good, and he would come home with a shiny higher prescription.

He needed to tell Shane. Fuck, he needed to tell Shane both that his meds were changing, in case Shane ever picked them up for him, and that he had a brand new shitty diagnosis, and that Galina also wanted to start meeting twice weekly instead of once, for a bit. Fuck.

He drove himself one minute down the road, to parking near the river, and he walked a long time. 

--

Shane appeared in the hallway immediately, while Ilya was still toeing off his sneakers. Fancy sneakers. Ilya liked nice things, liked rotating things in and out of his wardrobe, a lot more than Shane did. Yuna was trying to figure out how to renegotiate some of the sponsor deals. Ilya was a different vibe than Shane, but Ilya was also far more likely to look like he was actively enjoying a product.

“Hey,” Shane said, as Anya launched herself at Ilya.

“Hey,” Ilya said. He couldn’t quite look at Shane. He bent over, petting Anya, focusing on her fur under his fingers, on the warmth of her little head, on her wet tongue licking across the back of his wrist, happy to see him as always. She pranced sideways, pressing her whole body against his legs, her feathery tail swooshing against the back of his calves.

Shane hesitated, but stayed where he was. He was blocking Ilya’s access to the rest of the house, and he knew that. Ilya let him. He had to tell Shane, and he had to work his way up to it. Shane didn’t let him hide as much as he used to.

“You were gone a long time,” Shane said. His nose twitched slightly, but he didn’t say anything about the smoke he could definitely smell on Ilya.

Ilya kept petting Anya. He swallowed. Then, “Therapy is going to be twice a week, for a little while. Fridays, and also Tuesdays.”

Shane waited.

“And I called Terry. I am upping my meds.”

Shane chewed on his lip, then said, “Okay.”

“I’m worse,” Ilya said.

Shane very clearly wanted to argue that, but he held his tongue, waiting Ilya out.

“Galina thinks it’s not just depression,” Ilya said, and he felt like punching a wall about it or letting the nothing drag him down again, and he tried very hard not to give in to either. Just focused on Anya.

“Okay,” Shane said. “What does she think it is? Wait, like, she thinks it’s depression and something else, or was the depression a misdiagnosis?”

Ilya hadn’t asked, but he guessed. “And. Not or.”

Shane nodded, and waited.

“PTSD,” Ilya said. He felt like a hunted fucking animal, his shoulders braced, his forearms tight, his ankles engaged, ready to flee. His core, shaking with the effort to maintain stillness. It was taking everything he had to keep talking with his husband. “She thinks it’s PTSD.”

Shane hesitated, and then said, “Yeah.”

That was surprising enough that Ilya just blinked at him. “What?”

Shane finally motioned behind him. “Do you want to sit?”

Ilya followed Shane into the living room, Anya trotting along next to him. He sank onto the couch, and he tried to look normal. He clearly did not succeed, because Shane immediately took the throw blanket off the back of the couch and settled it over Ilya, who only then realized he was trembling in the air conditioning. Shane sat on the other end of the couch, cross-legged. Anya jumped up, immediately, because if the throw blanket was out, she was allowed. She nuzzled between Ilya’s legs and plopped down. He stroked her ears.

“You don’t seem surprised,” Ilya said.

“Well,” Shane said. “I kind of suspected.”

Ilya stared at him. “What do you mean, you suspected?”

“I—” Shane scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I did some research? After you said you’d started seeing a therapist, I… I went down this whole rabbit hole. About depression, about—about what has the highest rates of—” He glanced away, then said, eyes on the blank TV instead of Ilya but voice still even, “of suicide. And I got kind of off track, but I ended up on a page about how queer people have higher rates of mental illness, and then this whole thing about PTSD, and things that could cause it, and. Well.”

Ilya made an impatient gesture.

“Just—you—seemed to have a couple.”

Ilya crossed his arms.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Not everyone who has a bad thing happen to them gets PTSD,” Ilya said.

“No. But you also didn’t… just have one bad thing happen to you—”

Ilya turned away, twisting his head so his neck cracked, did the same on the other side. He focused on Anya again, fluffing up the fur on her side and then smoothing it back down, trying to settle himself.

“Hey.”

Ilya glanced over at Shane, but didn’t say anything.

Shane shifted closer. Ilya moved his legs, and Anya hopped down, then flopped onto Ilya’s foot. Shane put his hands on Ilya’s face. “Hey,” he said again, soft. “I’m not calling you weak.”

“I didn’t—”

“You were thinking it.”

Ilya shifted his jaw.

“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it. It was only… when I went through the symptoms lists, for PTSD, and for depression, there was a lot of overlap anyway. And we both know your mom—that your mom had some kind of depression, at least. But some of the PTSD stuff sounded familiar, love.”

Ilya flinched slightly. Love. Shane had only started using it last year, had decided it was a pet name he liked saying. And normally, Ilya found it very hard not to kiss Shane stupid when he used it, which Shane used to his advantage. Shane liked to say it in public, or at a game, and then watch Ilya go a little mad.

But now. Right now. Ilya had just gotten another fucking diagnosis and Shane wanted to call him love.

“Don’t,” Ilya said quietly. He shifted back. To protect himself or to protect Shane, he wasn't sure.

“Don't what?”

“Don't act like—like this is easy.”

Shane's face twitched, all confusion. “I don't think what you're going through is—”

“No, I—” Ilya pushed a hand through the air, the panic trying to shake into something less scary, something like anger, and Ilya trying to bridle it back and not quite winning. “Not me. Us. Don't act like—like being around me is easy. Like loving me is easy. I fucking know it's not, so don't patronize me by—”

Shane's face fell utterly. Then he kind of choked on a laugh. Ilya stared at him. That seemed like a step too far even for Shane.

But Shane just said, “Ilya. Ilya. Apart from hockey, loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever fucking done.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It is. Love,” Shane said, deliberate, catching Ilya’s jaw in his hand, making him look him in the face. “It’s hard, yeah, I’ll admit that it’s hard to watch you hurt. But that happens. No one is running around never hurting, especially not in fucking hockey.”

“This isn’t exactly a broken leg.”

“No. It’s not. But it’s what I signed up for anyway.”

Ilya chewed on his lip. He scraped at his knuckles with his other thumb. Shane caught his hands, soothed his own thumbs over Ilya’s knuckles.

No. No, this was too much. Ilya shifted backward, a little shaky, and Shane let go. Easily. Good. Ilya didn’t know what he fucking wanted. He wanted Shane to let him go because he should, because Ilya was too much work, and because Ilya really didn’t want to be touched right now, everything was too goddamn overwhelming. He wanted Shane to resist, and hold him tight, and never, ever let go, because he loved Ilya, and sometimes Ilya needed someone else to hold him together, and he fucking always wanted to be touched.

Ilya fidgeted with the edge of the throw blanket. His head was a fucking mess.

“What do you need?” Shane asked quietly.

Ilya tucked his thumb inside his fingers to make a fist, squeezed until the knuckle protested. He closed his eyes, shook his head slightly. Then he took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He looked back at Shane. “Nothing,” he said, low. “Nothing. I’m just… I’m going to walk Anya. I’ll be fine, I—I just want to… process.” He knew Shane had already checked his location, had seen Ilya walking the river path, but it didn’t matter. His options were taking a nap, which Shane would worry about and probably wouldn’t be successful anyway, or do something useful but quiet, which was walk Anya.

Shane’s eyes flicked over his face. “Okay. Do you want to cook with me, or do you want me to get started on dinner?”

Ilya cracked, then, and Shane saw it. He reached for Ilya just as Ilya shifted back toward him, and then Shane was tugging him over, tucking himself into the corner of the couch and pulling Ilya down on top of him, spreading the throw blanket over them both. Anya curled up at the other corner, where Ilya had just been. Ilya pressed his ear to Shane’s chest, over his heart, tried to steady himself with the even, strong rhythm. Shane didn’t say anything, just kept one arm wrapped around Ilya’s waist, the other on the back of Ilya’s neck.

It wasn’t always like this, after therapy, but it wasn’t exactly uncommon, either. Ilya processed better with a little time to decompress first—he was quite sure he was not the only person this happened to—and walking Anya was one way to do it. Listening to Shane’s heartbeat was another. Stretching his hand out and pulling his fingers back, over and over, tracing Shane's lats and obliques and feeling the thrum of him, alive, alive, alive.

Shane was always so warm. Sturdy. Ilya didn't like to have any sense of using Shane, of being anything like a burden, but—well—as a lighthouse, Shane really was indisputably excellent. Shane had always been there, in the same place, glowing, somewhere Ilya had dragged himself out of the storm of his stupid fucking life and sheltered. Shane never seemed to mind, barely seemed to realize he was doing it, sometimes. Ilya wanted to stay in Shane's arms for literal ever.

But Anya did have to go out.

So after a while, Ilya shifted to sit up. “Wait for me, for cooking,” he said. They normally cooked together. It was only on bad days that Ilya wasn’t up to it. And sometimes on very bad days, Shane deliberately picked dishes that only required one knife, like he was worried that Ilya would stab himself right there in the kitchen. Ilya had been mildly irritated the first time Shane banished him to the barstools on the other side of the counter, mostly because he’d already been in a pissy mood, but then he’d seen Shane’s face, and how scared he was trying not to be, and Ilya had sat, carefully, on the stool, and watching Shane sliced tomatoes for the world’s biggest caprese salads.

“Okay,” Shane said, and reached up to press a soft kiss on Ilya’s jaw. Ilya shifted to kiss him back, still soft, just breathing into it, and then got up. Anya stood immediately, wagging her tail but with her soft eyes on Ilya, not even flicking to Shane, like she’d understood their conversation.

When Ilya got back with her, Shane was puttering around the kitchen, checking ingredients. Ilya put Anya in the bedroom, then came back and kissed Shane until they were fucking against the counter, Shane’s head thrown back and Ilya’s teeth in Shane’s shoulder. It wasn’t the most graceful fuck ever, but it was mutually needy, and that was what Ilya had hoped for. They had always spoken easiest through sex. And this, Shane’s hungry hands on him, keeping him tight to Shane’s body, the way Shane couldn’t hide his relieved shiny eyes, the desperation when he said fuck, Ilya, oh fuck—

Over dinner, Shane said, quietly, “I love you.”

Ilya leaned over and kissed his shoulder, where he’d bitten Shane earlier. “I love you, too.”

Which was why he called Svetlana.

And before anyone comes for Galina for taking a year and a half to tell Ilya about his insanely obvious diagnosis: she's suspected for a while now! But she (i) also thought there were more pressing issues to deal with, like the codependency w Shane and Ilya's high key depression and his suicidal ideation (they spent a long time on that). I also think Ilya probably lied or downplayed like. A lot. In therapy. Not to hide, necessarily, but bc he genuinely doesn't think it's relevant anymore (if it ever was) so he glossed over a lot that would have had Galina bring some things up way sooner. Ilya is out here like what does Moscow have to do with anything, I haven't been in years, while Galina is out here like .............. bruh. Anyway I think Galina is doing her best with a recalcitrant patient, who nevertheless is trying, he's just a little bit traumatized into keeping things to himself

The Boston Interlude

Note: this is the most EXPLICITLY suicidal chapter. As in, blunt discussion of methods. No attempts are made, and not a serious plan, but there is a lot of discussion of the concept. We end on a softer note, and as usual ilya is never alone, but this and the next chapter are the #worst of it, so if anyone needs to take a break... i'll still be here later

on the other hand, this is one of my fav chapters so woohoo to me

Also absolutely thought this song was called HOLY ghosts despite having listened to it 40000 times. If you saw that before, no u didnt. Still a p relevant ch title but also wish it was holy ghosts now lmao

Ilya did nothing all weekend, slept fourteen hours each night and then just watched mindless movies with Shane, and he didn’t run but he did go on extremely long walks with Anya and Shane in the evenings. Sunday night, they dropped her with David, who was always pleased to take her, and they drove to Montreal for the second round of camp. Ilya managed to do every day. Shane reminded him that Jackie would love the company if he wasn’t up to the chaos of the camps, but he just shook his head and got through the days. He had been here before. He dutifully did his therapy sessions via video call. Galina had given him some reading to do on C-PTSD, but a lot of it was in English. Shane wanted to read it anyway, so he let Shane read it to him.

Terry wanted to adjust his meds as soon as the camp was over, but Ilya had managed to push that off by one more week. He wanted to try one last thing first. So the day after the Montreal camp finished, Ilya braced himself, and then said to Shane, “Sasha is coming to Boston.”

Shane looked at him. He'd never met Sasha, though Ilya had mentioned him, a few times, in stories, in passing. He got the impression Shane wasn't a fan of Sasha, though Ilya honestly couldn't tell if it was misplaced jealousy or dislike for the stories that Sasha and Ilya found themselves together in.

“Okay,” Shane said, waiting.

“I am going to go to Boston. Stay with Sveta and him.”

Shane stared at him. He had not missed the singular I. “Now. You want to go to Boston now.”

“Yes.”

“Like—like this,” Shane said, which would have pissed Ilya off a few years ago but now just reminded him how much Shane loved him.

“Yes.”

Shane rubbed his jaw. “You don't want to just invite Sasha up here maybe, instead? With Sveta?”

Ilya shook his head. “Sasha would go insane up here.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Ilya was currently going insane up here. It wasn't how Ilya meant it—he didn’t think his own insanity had anything to do with Ottawa being boring—but it was how Shane took it, and Ilya watched it land like that. It was the first time this whole fucking summer that Shane had looked unsteady.

“I—” Ilya didn’t know how to save this.

“You think they can give you something I can’t,” Shane said quietly.

“No,” he said. “Or at least—not like how you are thinking. Like—like Galina is own thing. Like your parents give me something you can’t. Like Hayden or Rose give you something I can’t. Only in sense that, that we can’t be everything. Yes? Need whole support system, not just one person?”

Shane chewed on his lip, but he nodded.

“I would ask if you wanted to come,” Ilya said, “but listening to them would teach you absolutely wrong Russian. Extremely bad immersion.”

Shane snorted. He took a deep breath. “You're going to do exciting things, I’m sure,” he said, with a wobbly smile.

“Ah, yes, go on the duck boats and heckle the geese in Russian,” Ilya said. “Will be very exciting. Too much for you to handle.”

Shane raised his eyebrows. “Not clubbing?”

“I cannot think of something I’d rather do less,” Ilya said. “Sasha might go out, but Sveta already said she would stay in with me. I think she is getting tired of it too.”

Shane worried at his lip again. “Just—so then—”

Ilya couldn't say the real reason he'd asked, quietly, for Sveta to get Sasha to fly in. Other than friendship, sure, and speaking rapid-fire Russian that wasn’t about fucking feelings, there was one other thing they could give Ilya, and it was the real thing that Shane couldn’t give him, something Ilya hoped he never could: the understanding of someone else who flinched at ghosts.

It was maybe a step backward. But right now, he was backsliding anyway, and it felt like it was getting uncontrollable. One single step back was maybe better, if it meant he could brace, if it meant he survived to make it forward again.

And it—maybe it said something, about Sasha and Sveta, or about Ilya, but—they were the only two people he didn't currently feel like he was failing. He'd been at his worst with them, back when they were teenagers, they'd seen him puke up liters of vodka and they'd seen him strung out on coke and they'd seen him silent with a broken nose that he wouldn't talk about. There was no lower he could go with them. And he'd seen them at their lowest, too, he didn't—he didn't feel like he was dirtying them, by being near them.

He'd brought this up with Galina. He'd stumbled his way through an explanation, a justification, preemptively defensive, but she'd surprised him by saying she thought it was a good idea. To remind himself, maybe, that his roots were not all something to push away from, that he had always had people in his corner. When he got back from Boston, though, Galina was going to want to work on how he could bring Shane into this category. How he could work, again, on not putting Shane on a pedestal.

“I know you don’t like it,” Ilya said quietly. “I don’t like it. But I—something about this, about me—something is making me… bad. And I just… need to not. Just for a few days. I’ll probably just sleep.”

“Do you think it’s Ottawa?” Shane asked, uncertain. “Like—”

Ilya shook his head, then remembered what Galina had said. He went back to Shane, took his hands. “Yes. But—no, listen—Galina said—she said that… PTSD. It can be… triggered, by feeling safe. You, and Ottawa, make me feel safe.”

Shane frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Ilya laughed slightly. “Yes. That is what I said.”

“So what do you—”

“Apparently,” Ilya said gently, “I feel safe enough to break apart.”

Shane bit his lip, scanning Ilya’s face. Shane’s eyes went glossy. “But then—so then, did you never feel safe in Boston? And fuck, wait, does that mean you don’t feel safe with Svetlana and Sasha? Should I—”

“No, no, is not like that. That’s not what I mean. I… Boston was good. Don’t worry about that. But almost the entire time I was there, my father was still alive, Russia still had a hold on me, I couldn’t have you. And I am safe with Sveta and Sasha, you don’t have to worry about that. They just… they are different. Not so polite and Canadian.”

“I’m not polite—”

“Shane,” Ilya said with a snort. “You say politest fuck off ever.”

“You are such an asshole.”

Ilya shrugged. Then he tugged Shane to him. “I will come back to you,” he said quietly. “I will always come back to you. But I am so tired, sweetheart. I need to try something. I want to be okay for training, but Terry is not going to sign off on me lifting eight hundred pounds if I’m only getting three hours of sleep and I keep losing weight.”

“You’ve never lifted anything close to eight hundred pounds.” Shane wiggled closer into him, pressing his face to Ilya’s neck. “So your plan is to go to Boston, so you feel less safe, so you’re forced into putting yourself back together. And then come back fresh, so you can approach the C-PTSD on a full night’s sleep.”

“Yes.”

“That’s the most insane thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“I know, I know. Is less good than starting a ten year plan with a charity and a team change and—”

“Okay, I get it.” Shane pulled back slightly. “Are you sure I can’t come? I could do other stuff during the day, while you—” He sighed at Ilya’s expression. “Okay. Okay. Yes." He fiddled with the hem of Ilya's sleeveless shirt. "We... I need check-ins."

"I will text you every morning," Ilya said. He'd been ready for that request. Once upon a time, he would have expected that to be stifling. And normally, he was pretty sure Shane wouldn't ask for it. It was just him, now, that made it seem necessary. "And I will text you in the evenings. Will probably call, too." He did not promise a call, though, and Shane didn't demand it. He wasn't convinced he'd have the energy to call, and if that was the case, Shane would worry if Ilya failed to do it. Better to manage expectations now.

"Svetlana has my number," Shane murmured to himself. "Does Sasha?"

"Do you want him to?"

Shane hesitated.

"I will give it to him," Ilya said.

"And you'll tell me if you get worse?"

It was Ilya's turn to hesitate. He didn't want to worry Shane from far away.

"If you need me to come get you, I will," Shane said, serious. "I will fly to Boston. I'll drive, if flight schedules make that faster."

"That is what I am afraid of," Ilya said, smiling slightly. "I don't want you to have to jump into—"

"Ilya."

Ilya pulled Shane close again. "I will tell you if I need you."

That wasn't the same as telling him if it got worse. But Ilya could handle it, if he got bad, and Sasha and Sveta wouldn't let him do anything terrible. They were the reasons he hadn't fallen off the edge when he was younger, and they would do it again now. 

Shane nodded against him. Then he whispered, "I’ll miss you.”

“Don’t worry,” Ilya murmured. “I will miss you more.”

---

It was so easy to fall back into rhythm with Sveta, it always was. Sasha was more of a wild card, but so was Ilya, normally, so he couldn’t blame him. Paris suited Sasha, though, and all three of them were better when they were away from Moscow, so there it was: the reunion was all plane-tired smiles and Sasha putting Ilya in the worst headlock known to man, only because Sasha was taller than him, and Sveta jumping on Sasha’s back to make him piggy-back her around her apartment while they argued about where to go for dinner. Most of their time together was arguing, really, just at different volumes and different levels of real anger. Maybe that was why he’d been primed to fall for Shane, Ilya thought idly. He was so easy to tease, so easy to get riled, but it was the same way it was easy to be with Sasha and Sveta, because he knew they always forgave him. 

Sasha and Sveta argued about what movie to put on later, too. Ilya was tipsy off his two vodka shots, which they both made fun of him for, and he suffered good-naturedly. But he was fucking exhausted, nodding off by the time they settled on a movie, his head ending up in Sasha’s lap, and he just mumbled something about one of the actors before he fell asleep entirely. It was probably one in the morning by the time the movie ended, a light evening’s work by Sasha and Sveta’s standards, but late for Ilya these days. He blurred awake, but it was only for Sveta to mumble, “Move, duckling,” and he crawled under the sheets she raised. She and Sasha didn’t leave, just got under the same sheets with him, the same way they did in high school, all tangled together in limbs and warmth. Ilya was in the middle, always in the middle, because Sasha and Sveta were likely to bite each other or shove someone out of bed if one of them was in the middle. Ilya was peace-keeper.

And Ilya knocked out instantly.

---

When he woke, it was to bright sun slicing through the window. Sasha groaned at the light and rolled over, and Ilya just let his eyes flicker closed again. He was warm, and he was tired, yeah, but it was more the sleepiness and the weight of a good night’s sleep after a long time of not getting enough. He felt soft, and content, and pleased.

It had been… so long since he slept like that.

His back was to Sveta’s, spine to spine. He was facing Sasha, who was now facing the wall. Ilya stayed in the cocoon of warmth, letting his thoughts drift. If he slept like this every night, then he could return to Shane rested and ready to take on… well, whatever it was he was supposed to be taking on. The C-PTSD. Or whatever. He could be good, for Shane, and the team.

“God,” Sveta mumbled, rolling over to face him. She kept her eyes closed, but he eased onto his back and let his eyes flicker open, trace the familiar angles of her face. “You think so fucking loud.”

He smiled slightly. That was what he said to Shane.

“I do not,” he rasped. He cleared his throat.

“Shut up,” Sasha groaned from his side of the bed. Ilya tilted his head. “It’s too early.”

Ilya’s gaze landed on the alarm clock on Sveta’s side of the bed, vintage and cute. There went his sleep schedule. “It’s nearly eleven.” He slumped upward, propped himself up on his elbows to blearily look for his phone. He knew he'd texted Shane last night, both at a reasonable time and a late one, so Shane hopefully wouldn't be too anxious about not getting a text yet. 

Sasha just groaned again and pulled a pillow over his own face.

Shane had texted, but just a response to last night's texts. I love you too. No are you up yet??? or you're ruining your sleep schedule or tell me you haven't offed yourself yet. Well, Shane was unlikely to word it like that. But Shane seemed to be handling it, though Ilya desperately wished he didn't have to. He hoped Anya was comforting Shane. 

Ilya texted back that he'd slept well, offering up the information freely. He wasn't sure how Shane would take it, tangible proof that Ilya's insane plan was working, but maybe it would help.

Shane: good. That's really good, love

Eventually, though, they did get up. There was no structure, which was very Sasha and Sveta, and used to be very Ilya. They went out to brunch, and Ilya ordered a waffle with whipped cream and maple syrup and strawberries. Sasha had eggs and bacon and three mimosas. Sveta had French toast, and Ilya filched a bite of it, covered in butter and powdered sugar.

They really did go on the duck boats. Sveta thought they were ridiculous, but Sasha had never been and Ilya wanted him to have the full tourist experience of Boston. He’d done this when he was nineteen and lonely and his accent was still bad and his English was, well, passable. When he’d still been a young phenom but not yet captain, not yet a tour de force. He’d thought nobody in their right mind would expect Ilya Rozanov to be on a duck boat, and in his hat and sunglasses and 2000 dollar coat, he’d been right.

Anyway. Ilya took a selfie with Sveta and a video of Sasha looking bewildered and snooty, and sent them both to Shane.

Shanya: I didn’t think you were serious

Ilya snorted, texted back in Russian. With Shane learning Russian, Ilya had finally switched his phone’s language to Russian, had just kept the English keyboard handy so he could text back to hockey chats. It had been strange, seeing настройки and контакты and the date, in Cyrillic, every day, to have to switch into the English keyboard instead out of it. Shane normally texted back in English still, because he was a lot slower at typing in Russian than he was speaking it and he got frustrated. He was planning to switch into full Russian for immersion in the next few months, though. But Ilya texted back now, Я всегда серьёзно отношусь к веселью. I am always serious about having fun.

Shanya: how come you’ve never taken me on a duck boat?

Ilya blinked at his phone, then answered. Would you want me to?

Shane typed, deleted, typed, deleted.

Ilya waited. Sveta’s laughter pealed over the water. Sasha was whining about something. Ilya chewed on his lip, then typed, in Cyrillic, next time we have a game here. Then he switched to the English keyboard to write, locked and loaded, Hollander-Rozanov.

Shane gave the message a heart. Then he texted, I love you.

Ilya typed it out in both languages.

Dinner was easy. Sveta did not cook, so she took them out to eat at some little hole in the wall that she said had the best pasta in town. After, they watched another movie, and Sasha and Sveta got hammered off of gin and orange juice, and Ilya smoked outside on the balcony before coming back in and crawling into bed with them, ready to knock out. He was exhausted again.

But this time, though he fell asleep the same way, and was herded into the bed the same way, and was bracketed on both sides the same way, he did not sleep the same way.

Ilya woke up like he’d been slapped in the face, which was to say brutal and instant. It was pale outside, pre-dawn, and he was trying to get out of the sheets but Sasha was sprawled in his boxers on top of the sheets on one side, and Sveta was curled up in a ball that was hard to get around, but fuck, Ilya was sweating and he was 50/50 on whether or not he was about to vomit and—

—and there was this wretched, gaspy sound coming from him and he wanted—he needed to get out of here, he needed to—

“Ilyusha,” Sasha mumbled. “What the fuck are you—”

“Ilya? Ilya,” Sveta said, scrambling up. Sasha rolled over, still half asleep, but Ilya was still choking on a dream he couldn’t remember, and—

—Moscow, in the summer, and—

“I need the bathroom,” Ilya gasped, and Sveta got out of the way. He stumbled off the bed, one ankle tangling in a sheet, and ended up in front of the sink, shaking, frantically searching his own face for traces of his mother and then cringing when he found them. He ducked his head, and then he put the sink on full blast and shoved his head under.

For a second, it was glorious.

Freezing, and short-circuiting, and—

Then it was less great. There was water in his ears and running down the back of his neck and up his nose and he pulled out, turned the sink off, grabbed blindly for a towel.

“Christ, Ilya, what are you doing?”

Ilya fully intended to answer. To snark back. It was at the tip of his tongue. Except that his lungs kept stuttering. He couldn’t actually get a full breath. He looked back at Sasha, and tried to say I don’t know, but he couldn’t fucking do it.

Sasha pulled him down to the floor. “Pay attention to me,” he said, while Sveta hovered in the doorway. “Alright? Listen—”

—Moscow, summer, but a different one, 2007, they’d all been clubbing and Sasha had brought molly and—

Ilya gave a sort of hysterical laugh. “I need to tell Shane and Galina,” he gasped. “I have had a panic attack before. You remember when we did—we did molly in that club and I freaked out? It was the only time I ever had a bad high, and you, Sasha, you—you said exactly that, you said—alright, listen, just like that, pay attention to me, and I—I completely forgot about it, I puked behind the club and—and you two thought I was gonna die and—”

“Okay,” Sveta said. “Maybe we don’t say it like that, exactly.”

Ilya tried to heave in oxygen. He failed. His vision tipped, and he dragged in what oxygen he could and then he slid down to lie on his back, like he had with Shane, in Yuna's office. Sasha patted him kindly on the bicep, then blinked, squeezed said bicep, and muttered, "Jesus."

Ilya choked on a laugh.

Sveta held out a cigarette. Ilya reached up with an unsteady hand and took it, then tilted his head back, met her gaze from upside down. They hadn't actually smoked inside the apartment yet, despite the fact that Sveta owned it. She was too classy to have her possessions reek.

She shrugged. Sasha reached out and lit it. Ilya breathed in the smoke, the familiar slow easing burn of it, felt the nicotine blunt the edges of his shaking. He was halfway through the cigarette before the world stopped tilting under him. 

They’d been in this situation before, the three of them, rotating between positions in the bathroom depending on the night. Not in a long time, though. Shane thought Ilya had an impervious stomach when it came to alcohol, but—well, Shane had never seen Ilya party in Moscow. Shane had heard rumors of Ilya doing coke, but he hadn’t seen it, and he certainly hadn’t seen Ilya doing any of the other party drugs that Sasha had specialized in.

He'd had a habit of going too far, with coke. It just wore off so quickly. So he tried to do more, to make it last longer, so he didn’t have to keep cutting and lining and snorting, he could get it all over with at once. Drinking was different, the haze settled for hours. The soft liquid of it. Not coke. And he always wanted to be sharper sharper sharper.

Sveta hadn’t liked it at all. The second time she had to deal with him almost ODing, she had yelled at him so badly he'd held up his hands and surrendered, quit using it on the spot. He wondered if he'd ever told Shane that. Probably not. He maybe was supposed to.

He wondered, sometimes, if that was the difference between him and Alexei. He'd had a friend good enough to care about him.

Ilya took another long drag, then carefully sat up, braced himself against the wall of the tub. Sveta filled a the glass with water and passed it to Sasha, who handed it over.

Ilya let smoke curl out of his mouth, then had a careful sip. Another.

“So,” Sveta said.

“This is… not exactly what I was telling you about,” Ilya rasped. "But here it is anyway."

“Ah,” Sasha said. “Yeah, you’re fucked.”

Sveta kicked him.

“You’ll be fine,” Sasha amended. “Come on, I’ve had like, a million panic attacks.”

Ilya glanced over at him. “Since when?”

“Rude as your first comment.”

“Fuck off.”

“Besides, we’re not talking about me. Who’s Galina? I didn’t think your Shanya would be into sharing.”

The concept of a threesome between him, Shane, and Galina nearly made Ilya choke. But, ah, shit. He hadn’t told them.

Ilya scratched at his nose, then said, “My therapist.”

“You owe me a blowjob,” Sasha told Sveta, who rolled her eyes.

“On what bet?” Ilya demanded.

“I’ve said you needed therapy for like, a decade,” Sasha said bluntly. “Sveta agreed, but she said you’d never do it.”

“Go fuck yourselves.”

“Ah, ah, I have Sveta to do it for me,” Sasha said, prim. “So? What’s the diagnosis?”

“Fuck off,” Ilya said, a little bit irritated now. Sasha had always been irreverent, but this wasn’t a game to Ilya.

“Oh, you fuck off,” Sasha said. “I know you don’t know anyone else enlightened, but it’s basically the standard greeting for people in therapy. I’m in therapy and then oh same, what are you in for? It’s like prison, Ilyushka. Pass me the soap nicely.”

A muscle ticked in Sveta’s jaw, but she didn’t say anything.

“How would you know?” Ilya muttered.

Sasha raised his eyebrows, then said, dryly, “I have a therapist. I’ve had one for like, fifteen years. My father watched The Sopranos ‘for the culture’ and—what are you laughing at?”

“Sorry,” Ilya said. He took another swallow of water. “Sorry. That’s just—that’s just such a your father thing to do. Did he sit you down and—”

“Literally fuck you, dickhead,” Sasha said. “It was—he said that if I was going to go and be a faggot in Paris then I—” He sighed. “He didn’t want me near him, really, but I think his thinking was that killing myself would only look worse for him. Would confirm that I was gay and that being gay was a prison and blah blah blah.”

Ilya met Sasha’s eyes.

“I still think,” Sveta said from her place by the sink, “that he wanted you happy.”

“It’s nice to think that,” Sasha admitted. “I don’t know if that’s true.”

“Well, he couldn’t admit it,” Ilya said. “That would be gay.”

Sasha snorted.

“You two are ridiculous,” Sveta muttered.

Sasha shrugged, then waved at Ilya. “So? What are you in for? Mine was anxiety, if you want me to go first. Or, depression with anxious features, technically. There’s less of all that now, but I still keep my therapist.”

Ilya rolled his eyes. He shivered slightly, and Sveta disappeared, only to come back a moment later with the entire duvet. She wrapped it around him, tucking two corners under his hands, and then sat on the bathtub rim again.

Ilya took a deep breath. “Depression,” he said, hating it. “But I—Galina—she thinks PTSD now, too.”

“For something recent?” Sasha asked, confused. “I thought—”

“Or just… it’s showing up now?” Sveta asked.

Ilya nodded at Sveta.

“Ah,” Sasha said.

“Don’t say you called it,” Ilya mumbled.

“I didn’t,” Sasha said. “But if I’d known what PTSD was back when we were young, I would have called it.”

Ilya stuck his tongue out.

“Well,” Sveta said. “That sucks. I’m not surprised, obviously, but that still sucks.”

“Why is no one surprised?” Ilya asked. “Shane wasn’t, either.”

“Because you found your dead mom at twelve,” Sasha said bluntly. “And your dad and Alexei have been shitheads your whole fucking life.”

“Mm,” Ilya mumbled. “There is that. I guess.”

“Add them on top of depression,” Sasha hypothesized, “and it’s a whole thing.”

“Don’t forget your attention deficit,” Sveta said.

Ilya looked up. “What? I don’t have—”

Sasha laughed in his face.

“You do,” Sveta said. “Maybe not in Russia, but babe. You do.”

“Jesus fuck,” Ilya muttered. “You two.”

---

They went back to bed, once Ilya was less at risk of being sick. It was too early to go out to eat properly, so Ilya curled on the bed with his head in Sveta’s lap and they watched a replay of a recent KHL game while Sasha went back to sleep. A headache pulsed vaguely in Ilya's temple, and he realized he hadn't even had the good grace to be pleased by the lack of it yesterday. By the time Sasha woke up, Ilya was less shaky, and they went and found breakfast, this time at a little diner. Less mimosas, more coffee. Sasha chowed on a whole breakfast burrito, and Sveta got a veggie omelet, and Ilya picked at a muffin. The waitress clearly thought all this was backward, but she didn’t comment on it, nor did she comment on the purple shadows under Ilya’s eyes.

Then they went walking. Sasha had only been to Boston twice before—normally, when Ilya saw Sasha, it was in Russia; he had only come for Sveta’s twenty fifth birthday party, and her thirtieth, a year ago. So they wandered the city, occasionally getting an Uber somewhere. They found lunch at some little food truck, bougie and stupid, and ate their fusion tacos. The sun was out, and the leaves shimmered in the breeze, and Ilya was jumpy but the walking helped. The aimlessness helped. Speaking Russian, and making dark jokes that Shane wouldn’t have liked but Sasha snorted at and Sveta snarked back at, and smoking once or twice helped. Maybe indulging in a coping mechanism occasionally did not make him a complete and utter failure.

He missed Shane. He did. He missed the smell of his hair and the way his wedding band clinked against Ilya’s when they held hands. He missed Shane’s dry humor. He missed—

“You are such a fucking sap,” Sasha said, the fifth time Ilya mentioned Shane in ten minutes.

“Shanya this, Shanya that,” Sveta said. She bumped her hip into Ilya’s. “You love him.”

“I married him,” Ilya said dryly. “Yes.”

“What does he think of all your problems?” Sasha asked.

“Shura,” Sveta said.

“It hurts him,” Ilya said. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “He… he worries. A lot.”

Sasha and Sveta exchanged a look. Ilya didn’t bother calling them on it.

“Well,” Sasha said, looking at the sky. “How lucky you are to have that, hm?”

---

Ilya believed in God on a technicality.

He liked to believe there was an afterlife, so that his mother could rest easy and his father could roast in hell, which meant probably there was a god responsible for all that. On his darker days, before he and Shane got together, before he let himself think anything real with Shane was possible, he'd held on to that belief specifically because he thought, maybe, if he didn't fuck up too badly during his life, then maybe he would also get to rest after he died. Maybe he would get to stick around, watch over Shane, or kick ghost rocks until Shane got there even if Shane didn’t actually believe in any of it, and then they could hang out. Talk about something other than hockey.

Except for the whole, maybe they'd both go to hell for being queer thing, and maybe Ilya was going to hell anyway because he was a terrible son and a worse brother and he'd committed kind of an astronomical amount of sins if he bothered to think about it. And also, he always imagined himself waiting a long time for Shane to join him in the afterlife. Which meant Ilya would probably die young. This fit, generally, Ilya's whole vibe, but that meant there was a cause, all of which were probably sins. Either some kind of drug death—sin—or losing control of his car—sin, presumably—or losing a fight—sin—or a hockey accident—sin just because he definitely could have avoided that—or because he'd just straight up killed himself, finally. Ilya hadn't put a lot of thought into that last one, tried to skirt the edges of it, but sometimes in the dark, the thought was just there, and Ilya had to watch it, fully, make sure it did not come closer. That one was a mega sin, as far as he was aware.

He didn't really... believe in it. It would mean his mother was in hell, which Ilya categorically refuted. She'd been escaping hell on earth. It had been—surely, God would understand.

If Ilya killed himself, on the other hand, God would look at him in disgust, and say, "what the fuck were you running from? Your perfect life?" and personally chuck him in hell.

Probably.

Ilya liked to believe in a merciful god, because he liked to believe his mother was in heaven and he couldn't quite reconcile queerness with being a real sin. But his imagination could not stretch far enough to believe any god would grant him mercy. What the fuck had he done to deserve it? He also understood that the whole point of Christ was mercy, but, well, everyone had a breaking point. Everyone had an exception. And Ilya was, in many ways, exceptional.

All this to say, when they passed Holy Epiphany Church, Ilya paused.

Sveta and Sasha were ten meters away by the time they realized he wasn't with them anymore. They turned around, then glanced between Ilya and the church. At the way Ilya's hand had snuck up and the way he was twisting his cross between his fingers.

"Honestly," Sasha said, bored, "tell me how many times you actually went when you lived here?"

"It's Russian," Sveta said, a little mollifying. She looked up at the domes of the roof. They had nothing on St Basil's but then, nothing did.

"I went on Christmas Eve," Ilya said quietly. "When I didn't have hockey." On American Christmas Eve, he'd normally get Chinese and get drunk alone in his apartment, because Sveta went home for two weeks.

He hadn't even really gone on Christmas Eve in real life, when he lived in Russia. His father allowed the cross, and that was it—Ilya probably could have counted on his fingers how many times he'd been to a church with his mother.

Ilya scrubbed a hand across his face. Real life. He hadn't thought of Moscow like that in a long time. The first few years he'd in the US—maybe all of the time he'd lived in the US—he'd felt like he was in a gorgeous fever dream for ten months out of the year. The two he spent in Moscow were real life. The awful months were real. Russia was real. The NHL, Boston, those were dreams he made up to get through.

And then he moved to Canada, and even if he hadn't been with Shane yet, he was closer, and that hurt too, and Canada had been real life. Now Moscow was a dream, a nightmare, but he still couldn't quite wake up.

Ilya looked up at the top of the church again, feeling unreasonably unsteady. Maybe he'd always just been fucked.

 Well. That wasn't really news.

Sasha evaluated him, then sighed, pulled out a cigarette, and lit up. “Have fun,” he said. “I'm not going in there, but I've got time.”

“I'm not either,” Ilya said. He plucked the cigarette from Sasha's hand and took a long drag, then a second, then handed it back. Sasha flicked ash at him, and they started walking again.

“Why not?” Sveta asked.

Ilya wiped at his nose, then flashed his wedding band and a pale smile.

Sveta stopped walking. “Do you know?”

“Know?”

“Of course he knows,” Sasha snapped. “It's orthodoxy, Sveta.”

“I know that,” she snapped back. But she didn't, not really. She'd grown up far from religion. Sasha had had one grandmother who insisted on Easter services, and was part of the reason he rarely spoke to his family anymore. Ilya hadn't exactly had a full religious education, but....

“I don't know,” Ilya said. “For all I know, they’re the wokest church in Boston.” Sasha snorted. Sveta muttered, tough competition. “But I don't—I’m not in the mood to test it,” he said quietly. He wasn't in the mood to be know for sure.

He twisted his wedding band around his finger. It meant so fucking much to him.

He'd put it on his right hand. Like he would have if he'd gotten married in Russia, and not Canada. Like he would have if he'd married Sveta, or some other woman, and not Shane. He hadn't even thought about it, really, just instinctively offered his right hand, and Shane had slid the ring on, and they'd kissed and been married.

He was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at his own hands.

“You are still Russian,” Sveta said quietly, with her preternatural ability to read his thoughts.

“Am I allowed to be?” he asked, aiming for offhand, unbothered.

“Yes,” Sasha said, intense, and Ilya looked up in surprise. “Yes, you are still Russian. You will always be Russian, and you—" He waved a hand at the church, at Russia, contradiction though that was. "Do you know what you are in Russia?"

"Dead?"

"Hope, you dipshit." Sasha shook his head. "You're one of the most famous Russians alive right now, and you're fucking gay."

"Bi," Ilya corrected, quietly, though he knew Sasha simply used labels differently than he did.

As expected, Sasha waved that off, and Ilya let him. "You are Russian, fact, and you are bi, fact. You married a man, fact. You, Ilyusha," he said, gripping Ilya's jaw, out here in public, which normally Ilya would have knocked his arm away for. But this felt bigger. Sasha was looking at him with an intensity that Ilya rarely saw from him. "Don't let anyone take that from you," Sasha said quietly, fiercely. "Understand? Imagine how we would have felt, seeing someone get out, and be queer—"

"Pretty good," Ilya said dryly.

"—and then deny being Russian?"

Ilya felt the cold swoop in, instant. The abandonment. The quiet devastation, that to be as they were meant having to choose.

Ilya nodded slightly.

"So be gay," Sasha said. "And be Russian."

"Bi," Ilya corrected again.

Sasha let go of his face and pushed away from him with a groan. "Big fucking inspirational speech and all you can do is be pedantic. Christ, Ilya. As if I'm not the same thing—"

"You're not bi, you're indiscriminatory," Sveta muttered.

"That's called pansexual now," Ilya said.

Sveta rolled her eyes. 

"I don't want a label at all, you fuckhead," Sasha said. "Though I'm certainly gayer than you are."

"No doubt," Ilya muttered. But then he caught Sasha's sleeve and pulled him into a hug, tight. Sasha just patted him on the back at first, annoying, but then he wrapped an arm back around Ilya, too. When they pulled apart, he gave Ilya a very French double kiss on his cheeks. "Are you Russian, in France?"

"Fuck no," Sasha said with a grin. "But I was never as Russian as you. And I'm not a fucking Russian icon."

"Don't give yourself no credit," Sveta said. "You're clearly still Russian."

"My French is impeccable, s'il vous plaîs—"

"No French person would wear that."

Sasha gasped and shoved Sveta, who shoved him back, laughing. Ilya felt a small smile on his face, soft, and genuine.

---

And then he crashed.

He always crashed.

He’d made it four days. Four lovely, Russian-soaked sunlit days. He’d lurched awake every night apart from that first one, and his appetite was still uneven, and he flinched at anything he wasn’t expecting, which, considering how drifty his head was, was almost anything. So, honestly, it had been not great. But it hadn’t been worse than in Ottawa, and he’d gotten a little bit of relief from the constant feeling of failure, the constant sense that he was fucking up his entire goddamn life.

But then. The last full day they had, it was like the light went out. The emptiness was back, and his answers to questions went short and dicky, and his interest in conversation dropped off a cliff. They tried to go out in the morning, but Ilya couldn’t find his last pair of clean socks, and he got so pissed off that he just told Sasha and Sveta to go without him.

They didn’t. Even when he just crawled back into bed, they stayed. Sasha leaned against Ilya’s knees and scrolled on his phone. Sveta put another KHL game on, from some weird old rerun broadcast. They ordered food in. When Ilya was snappy, they told him to fuck off. When he tried to put the blankets over his head, Sveta just said, “No, you fuckhead, I like to see your face. It’s the only good thing about you.” When he said no, it’s all too fucking bright, she just pulled the shades down, shrouded her whole apartment in twilight. It was like when he’d had a concussion, when he was seventeen, roughly two weeks after beating Shane—Hollander, then—at their first match up, at World Juniors. Sveta had basically abducted Ilya, said that her dad knew how to deal with concussions because of his years in hockey. Grigori had been helpless against Sergei Vetrov, who was powerless against his only daughter, so he let it happen. Sasha had functionally moved in, too, just for fun.

Ilya had known it was a temporary solution. Had known that Grigori would be pissed that he was missing this much practice, this many games, for a stupid concussion. But he’d been dizzy and ill and he’d let it happen. He would deal with the consequences after.

And he had.

Ilya spent most of the day in bed. He was just so fucking tired. He ate little bits and pieces of what Sveta offered him. Peanut M&Ms. A piece of inari, when she got sushi for her and Sasha. A second piece of inari, nibbling on it carefully. He made it through a full bottle of blue Gatorade, and a mug of ivan-chai. A few pelmeni, though he shook his head at the sour cream and Sasha got very close to his face, then whispered, “Are you dying? Blink twice if yes.”

He did not tell Shane. He didn't need to worry him, stress him out, make him start googling flight prices. He did send little heart emojis, in every color, and Shane sent them back. He told Shane he hadn't slept well. That was enough. Not full honesty, but he wasn't lying, either.

By the time night fell, Ilya got out of bed. Useless. He stretched, slowly, then caught Sasha’s eye and glanced at the balcony. Sasha grabbed his cigarettes and followed. Sveta was in the bathroom.

It was chilly, out on the balcony, but Ilya let it nip at him like a restless pet. He sniffed once, thumbed his nose, lit his cigarette off Sasha’s lighter. For a few minutes, they were both easy in the restless quiet of Boston.

“You’re worse, today,” Sasha said.

Ilya made a short noise.

“You were hoping we’d cure you.”

Ilya let out a smoke ring. Then he took a long drag, and let it out slowly.

“You understand that’s not how it works.”

“Yes,” Ilya snapped. “I understand that’s not how it works. I didn’t just start therapy yesterday, it’s been—” He did the math. “A year and a half.”

“What did you want from this?”

“I can’t just want to speak Russian?”

“You had me fly here from Paris,” Sasha said. “You had Sveta say get on a plane, Sasha, Ilyusha wants to fucking kill himself. What were you expecting from this?”

“Nothing,” Ilya said, hating the evidence. He knew that he’d sounded bad when he’d called Sveta, but Jesus. “I wanted the way you two are. I didn’t want to deal with Canadian worry. I wanted to be around people who wouldn’t be upset if I joked about a short rope and a hard drop. Who wouldn’t be upset if I said ah yes, a classic way, not even hard materials to get. I didn’t want to tiptoe.”

He wouldn’t have said it, if Sveta was there. But she wasn’t, still back inside, taking off makeup or something. He let his head fall back against nothing. His elbows on the railing, his back to the world. It would be easy like this, too, just kick off once, hard, and he would fall. He closed his eyes. He took another drag off his cigarette, tasted Shane’s disappointment.

Tasted Shane’s worry.

“You wouldn’t tie the noose right.”

Ilya coughed on smoke and straightened up, laughing a little.

“You would be better off with pills.”

Ilya flinched back, then.

“Ah, no?” Sasha was looking at him straight on, and Ilya met his eyes in a kind of scared confusion. Sasha caught Ilya’s wrist and pulled his arm out. Ilya was getting twitchy now. Sasha traced, sensually, eyes still on Ilya’s, a path down the underside of Ilya’s forearm. “You would do this, instead? But the mess, Ilyushka, for someone else to clean up.”

Ilya swallowed.

“Mmm, a gun, maybe,” Sasha mused. He let go of Ilya’s wrist, only to make a finger gun with one hand and press his index finger to Ilya’s temple. Ilya jerked away. “The mess is worse. I hear brain is very sticky to get out. Ah, you can do it in a car in a garage! Shanya—”

“Don’t.”

“—hates your cars anyway, it would be a good excuse to get rid of your last one.”

Ilya had backed away a step. He took another shaky drag, but it didn’t get rid of the sudden, achy nausea. Shane, finding him in a garage. Or fuck, Yuna. David. Anya, barking and barking. Ilya dragged in a breath, no smoke this time, feeling a little bit like he was choking.

“Hm,” Sasha murmured. “What else?”

“Sasha,” Ilya whispered.

“A bridge,” Sasha continued, unconcerned. “But if they don’t find your body quickly—I hear it’s quite bad, to not know. The waiting. The hope, you know? It eats at you. Sveta would break, I think. Instantly. But you know who would take that way the worst? Your Shane. He would tell himself he knew what happened. You go missing, he calls us. Sveta would know that you were dead, but your Shanya isn’t Russian. He would hold out hope, even if he was very practical, even if he told himself it was over. And then when they finally, eventually found you and confirmed it—”

Ilya shook his head.

“He would fucking shatter,” Sasha said. “Because he would have denied all that hope, he wouldn’t have even let himself believe in it but it would be there anyway. And then it would all come crashing down—”

“Stop—”

“You stop,” Sasha snapped, and put a hand to Ilya’s throat, loving, awful, not tight, just there, its own shadowy noose, the weight of everyone who loved him. Contact, his palm warm and his fingers cool. Ilya went immediately dizzy with it, fighting for air even while his airway was entirely unimpeded. “You stop fucking around, understand? We joke, yes, but don’t think I don’t know when you aren’t. You’ve thought about it, haven’t you? You’ve googled how long the rope should be. How high the stool. Where were you planning on doing it? Fuck you, Lyulya—”

“What are you two doing?”

Sasha shoved away from Ilya, spinning to face the city. Ilya slid to the ground. He choked on nothing. He choked on his future, maybe. He choked on wanting to be alive and wanting to be dead and all of his fucking want.

He pressed his forehead to his knees and tried not to feel the hot tears go cool on his face.

“What is fucking wrong with you,” Sveta asked Sasha, in that almost bored tone she got when she wasn’t angry.

“He’s making jokes he can’t commit to,” Sasha said, snarky, but he sounded a lot more congested than he had a minute ago.

Sveta took a moment to absorb that, and then she sat next to Ilya on the cement floor of the balcony. She looked at him, Ilya could feel it, but he just wrapped his free arm over his head. He couldn’t handle it, her looking at him, her seeing him like this. Before Shane, before Sasha, even, it had just been him and Sveta, tangled together in gold and black. Notorious in the club scene, paraded before power, hungry for more. Sasha knew him—fuck, he knew him—but Sveta. Sveta.

“I’m sorry,” Ilya choked, and Sveta just pulled him to her. He resisted, at first, before the crying got too bad, before it took over and turned into ugly, choking sobs, but she fought back, like she always did, and then he was in her arms, and then Sasha was there, too, on his other side. “I just—I can’t—”

“Shhhh,” Sveta murmured. “I know. Sweetheart. We know.”

---

“What did you even say?” Sveta asked Sasha. Ilya was quieter now, head in Sveta’s lap, shivering a little from the aftershocks, eyes dry, head aching. She was petting his hair. Sasha had a hand on Ilya’s ankle, thumb shifting over the bone.

“I suggested ways to kill himself. You know he was considering hanging? Passé.”

Ilya choked on a laugh. Sveta said, “And the most chic method is what? Doing too much coke off a stripper’s tits? Please, Sasha.”

“It would be off a stripper’s ass.”

“Oh, so you can make a joke, but I can’t,” Ilya said, the first actual sentence he’d managed in a while.

“Yes,” they said together. Sasha sighed. “Of course not,” he said. “You would die if you weren’t allowed to joke, and wouldn’t that be convenient for you?”

“But darling,” Sveta said. “You have to admit, some of your jokes lately have been… less funny.”

“More just direct statements,” Sasha said. He sighed. “I maybe overreacted.”

“Ah,” Sveta said, over Ilya’s head, with a shrug. “Sometimes he needs a push.”

“He’s lucky I didn’t push him over the balcony.”

Sveta hit the back of Sasha’s head. Ilya huffed another laugh.

“And for the record, I would use one of my father’s guns and go off into the woods at the dacha,” Sasha said.

Sveta and Ilya stared at him.

Then Sveta shrugged. “A bridge. I like the idea of the fall.”

They looked at Ilya.

“Fuck,” he said, glancing between them. “Really?”

“They don’t let you graduate in Russia without picking how you’d do it,” Sveta deadpanned. “Come, you know this.”

“Russia doesn’t get to be in the top ten most suicidal nations for no reason,” Sasha pointed out.

“We’re not in the top ten anymore,” Sveta said. “We made it out.”

“Oh, lucky us. Or should we try to help them back up?”

“I’m sure they’ll get back up there without us,” Sveta muttered. “I think we’re still only eleventh.”

“Well?” Sasha asked. “Is it really hanging?”

Ilya blew out a breath. “I don’t know.”

“Ah, fake,” Sasha said. Ilya huffed a laugh. “Just let me know which jokes I’m actually supposed to worry about.”

Ilya looked up at the sky, at the helicopter loudly drifting past. “Drugs, probably, but not pills. Coke. Or a full handle of vodka. Probably wouldn’t take very much anymore.”

Sveta rubbed her thumb against his shoulder. “So we were playing with fire, back then.”

“Oh, yeah. I think even some of my Boston teammates, if I told them, would be… not surprised.” More than once, Cliff Marlow had been the one to drag Ilya back home, not sober enough to know what time it was, and make sure he drank water. Ilya was captain, sure, but Marly had been the one to make sure he stayed that way.

He probably should tell Marly, actually. Not that Ilya had been flirting with death not entirely unintentionally, but that he was in therapy. Marly would probably throw him a party in relieved celebration.

“Well,” Sasha said. He gripped Ilya’s ankle, and Ilya raised his eyes to him. “I’m glad no one got burned.”

this is NOT shane's thought process, bc i do think he's by this point more evolved than this, but it COULD have been and I thought it was funny/sad

shane: u think they can give you something i can't (a railing, sexual)

ilya: only sort of (a literal railing, to keep him from falling off an edge)

sasha and sveta: should we let him on the balcony? there is a railing. not very tall though. ah, close enough

Also: to any russian-speakers out there... I only used ilyushka twice and i was hoping Sasha was being bitchy enough for it to make sense as almost a kind of "u r being childish for thinking like this" snark implication... but if I got that wrong lmk and i'll change it back to ilya ):

Ilya faces the middle of the night on a higher dose.

i was going to wait another day but... it's Ilya's birthday! so extra suffering for him (sorry, love), and early chapter for y'all as a present instead

Two days later, he was back in Ottawa. His little break in Boston certainly hadn’t cured him, but he’d gotten to see Sasha for the first time in a while and he’d gotten to hang out with Sveta, who he didn’t see often enough at all. He was still too tired and his chest still felt hollow, but spending five days speaking only Russian and romantic cynicism was at the very least a change of pace.

Shane picked him up at the airport.

He’d liked spending time with Sveta and Sasha. But he was glad to be back with Shane. He didn’t think that would ever change. He found Shane’s car instantly, like a homing pigeon, and got in before Shane could get out, and motioned for Shane to drive. Shane did, wordless. It was a short drive, twenty minutes, back to the house, and Ilya spent most of it with his eyes closed, his head back against his seat. Shane asked, voice low, if he was okay, and Ilya just nodded. 

As soon as Shane parked, Ilya was out of the car. Shane was barely out of his seat by the time Ilya had rounded the car. Shane’s eyebrows pulled together, all worry, saying, “Are you—”

And then Ilya had him in his arms, had his face tucked against Shane’s neck. Was breathing him in, was easing the tightness that lived behind his heart whenever he was gone from Shane. “I missed you,” he whispered in Russian, and then switched to English. “Shane. Next time I go somewhere, it will be we go somewhere.”

Shane laughed slightly, helpless against obvious relief. Ilya knew he should have been talkative on the drive back, knew that Shane would be stressed the fuck out, but he also knew that Shane would be anxious of people taking photos of them at the airport. He’d known that once he had Shane in his arms, he was not going to be able to let go long enough to get home. And he hadn’t known how to say any of that without freaking Shane out even more.

"But you're okay? You had an okay time?"

Ilya nodded into Shane's neck.

“I love you,” Shane said in Russian. “I love you more, more, more. Every day.”

“Not as much as I love you,” Ilya said.

“You’re right. Not as much. Bol’she,” Shane said. “I love you more.”

---

A day after he got back, Terry upped his meds. He had two weeks to adjust before Ottawa training. He told himself two weeks would be enough. He hoped it would be.

The change was worse this time than it had been when he first started on the meds. He was sweaty, and he woke up with headaches, and it took even longer to get to sleep and he knew he was sleeping worse because Shane was also waking with circles under his eyes. But Shane kissed him every morning. And Ilya mumbled, “How long?” And Shane told him how many days it had been since he started on the new dose, to remind him that this was temporary, just an adjustment.

Still. It sucked to be awake at two in the morning and pacing outside his downstairs bathroom, just in case he puked.

Ilya didn’t think he was going to be sick. He just wanted to be near the bathroom in case he was. He’d managed to get out of bed without waking Shane—a solid feat, these days, which Ilya was trying not to stress about, with minimal success—and now could pace without worrying about waking Shane with that, either. Anya sat and watched him, her little face going back and forth. Ilya focused on outrunning the nausea.

It was just the meds. It had been a little bit less last time, if he remembered right, but it had been there. So he wasn’t shocked that upping the dose had brought this back. He would get through it.

Had the nausea actually been from the meds last time? Or had it just been the fact that he’d been taking a daily pill? He’d talked about that possibility with Galina and Terry, but—he was pretty sure they’d settled on it being the meds.

Ilya scrubbed a hand against his forehead, took in a slow breath through his mouth as he turned to begin another lap. He’d had that discussion with Galina and Terry, yes, or had he just considered doing it? No, he was pretty sure he’d—fuck, though, the increase in dosage was making him foggy, too, like last time. Not to mention the fact that it was making the insomnia worse, which had happened last time, too, except that he’d been starting from stable when he first started taking them, and he hadn’t been losing his stupid mind, and—

Was this how his father had felt, when it first started?

Ilya pivoted, hard, and even had a moment to spare his knees a thought before he was dry-heaving over the toilet bowl. Anya sat in the doorway.

When it was over, he didn’t even get the relief that normally followed being sick, the tired at least it happened and it’s done. Normally, when he was sick, he just kind of gave up all pretensions and let himself remember that he actually lived at the mercy of capricious forces and he’d never been in control of a single thing in his life.

Right now, he couldn’t quite afford that. So he got carefully to his feet and rinsed his mouth out in the sink. He caught his own gaze in the mirror by accident. Not sexy. Wan, eyes rimmed in tired red, hair slightly damp at the temples.

More precisely: sick-pale, every angle too sharp, carved down. Eyes hollow. Like his mother, at the end, eyes still glittery with tears when she said she was okay, tried to reassure him. Like his father, at the end, eyes shaky with fear as he tried to bite back. Ilya's body had come from his father, strong, brutal. Ilya's face had come from his mother, her soft mouth, her born-to-be-broken nose, her expressive brows, even if he was a boy and therefore was not allowed the same range she was. His curls were hers, too.

But his eyes. Fuck, his eyes. They were the exact same shade as his father's, down to the uneven pigment. Every time he looked in a mirror, he saw his mother's sadness in his father's shade, a combination that never failed to unsteady him. He normally didn't meet his own gaze in a mirror unless he'd already committed to hating himself for the day. 

Anya nosed at the back of his calves. He reached down and pet her slowly.

He wasn’t losing his mind. Not like his father had. He didn’t have dementia. But it was—it wasn’t an impossibility that he would, someday. After a lifetime of dealing with Ilya’s depression and now this—what if Ilya finally got his mental health under control and then he started slipping in time and Shane had to fucking handle that, too? What the fuck had Ilya been thinking, ever letting someone as golden as Shane shackle himself to the ticking goddamn timebomb that Ilya was? The minute Ilya knew that Shane was starting to have feelings for him, Ilya should have taken himself out back like a dog and just—

Ilya swallowed, hard.

The second best time was now.

Ilya’s stomach rolled again. He breathed through it, careful. He looked back at the mirror and met his own gaze. He didn’t have a lot of patience for affirmations—Shane did, Shane fucking loved them—but there were some that he kept in his back pocket for days like this. Galina hadn’t been stoked about some of them, Ilya knew she’d been hoping for less Shane-centered versions, but this was what Ilya had. I am okay, he told his reflection. Shane loves me anyway. Shane would kill me himself if he knew these thoughts. Shane would make the same choices, again and again, like I would pick him, again and again. I am okay. I am okay.

Anya whined slightly and pushed her nose into Ilya’s wrist. He sank to his knees in front of her, stroking her head, letting her lick his hand. Fuck. Fuck, if he—if he did lose his mind, here, now, and he didn’t recognize her—she wouldn’t know what was happening. How could he explain dementia to a dog? How could he explain C-PTSD, his unsteady reactions? He’d sworn, over and over to himself, that he would never become his father, unpredictable and mean, but what if he couldn’t fucking help it?

He fumbled forward just in time to heave again. Anya licked his arm, then left.

Fuck.

She didn’t leave him in the middle of things like this, except to do one thing, which Ilya had been hoping not to do.

Ilya gagged again. He spit once, twice, then just slumped against the cabinet under the sink. He was so tired. Had he ever not been tired?

“Hey,” Shane said, as Anya came back, clearly pleased with herself. He evaluated the scene, then crouched next to him. “At least come upstairs,” Shane murmured. “To our bathroom.”

Ilya acquiesced, followed Shane with fingers tangled in his. He brushed his teeth again, even if he hadn’t brought much up, just to feel cleaner. Shane brought in a blanket, and a glass of ginger ale.

“To settle your stomach,” he said quietly. Ilya washed his hands in cold water, then pressed one to the back of his neck. He took a sip of the ginger ale. “How long?” Shane asked.

Ilya shook his head slightly. He didn’t know. “An hour?”

Shane nodded. “The meds?”

“I don’t know.”

At that, Shane’s eyes snapped to his. “Do you feel sick?”

“No, no, just—not like that. Probably. Probably just the meds.”

Shane looked at him, then said, “Come here,” and Ilya bowed into him. They were on the floor, and Ilya wasn't entirely sure how they'd gotten there, because he was just trying to breathe through the teeth clamped into his heart, the claws sinking into his lungs. He didn't think he was crying, but he was shaking, worse than when he'd been hypothermic at 14, trudging home through a freak storm, worse than when he'd been so hungover after he first saw the news of Shane with Rose that he actually thought he might die, worse than when he'd done too much coke with Sasha and they'd both nearly vibrated out of their skins.

They slept on the bathroom floor.

In the morning, Shane woke him up—good sleep hygiene, to wake up at the same time every day regardless, trying to force himself into a schedule—with a mug of the ivan-chai and another glass of ginger ale. They showered together, slow, careful, and Shane fingered him, slow, careful, until Ilya’s nails dug into Shane’s arm and he came, breathless, legs shaking, and Shane had to ease him down onto the shower bench, both of them panting and maybe too serious and full of brutal love. Breakfast was easy, a protein shake for Shane and a smoothie for Ilya, just fruits and yogurt and only one scoop of protein powder. It wasn’t enough, not really, but it was a lot more than Ilya had thought he’d be able to handle this morning. He should have been having more protein. He needed to fucking make up for the fact that he was still losing weight. But it made the shake too heavy, and there was only so much he could do at once.

---

The nausea passed. The inability to sleep did not. He started running at night again, slipping out of bed and going down to their gym, trying to wear himself out at three in the morning. Except that he was exhausted, he was already fucking exhausted, he went through every goddamn day exhausted because he couldn't get to sleep.

Ilya had stopped listening to music as he ran. He only wanted to listen to angry shit, too loud, and that wasn't good sleep hygiene, so he just ran, harder, faster, until he couldn't fucking think straight. Until his lungs ached and his thighs ached and his eyes ached and—

Shane was there. Ilya flinched, badly, nearly flipping himself off the treadmill because he hadn't noticed Shane's entrance over the thump of his feet and his harsh gasps for air. Shane reached over and pushed the emergency stop as Ilya tripped, fumbled, caught the guardrail.

“You,” Shane said, “did not eat enough today for this.”

Ilya slumped to sit on the end of the treadmill. He did not comment on the role reversal. Shane sat next to him, letting his legs fall open, their thighs touching. Ilya gripped the back of his own neck.

“It’s only been a week and a half,” Shane said. “I don’t know if that’s enough time to adjust to new meds, or if it’ll pass soon, or if we should talk to Terry about it.”

“Only a week,” Ilya repeated. “Can be up to six before I feel normal. Last time, it took, what, five?”

“Then maybe it's time to look into a sleep aid,” Shane said. “Just until you adjust.”

“No,” Ilya said.

“Plenty of people—”

“I said no, Shane.”

Shane was looking at him. Ilya couldn't meet his eyes.

“I could keep them,” Shane said quietly.

“I'm an adult,” Ilya said. “I shouldn't have to—”

“You're an adult,” Shane agreed, “dealing with a lot. I would probably worry about the same thing if I—”

“No,” Ilya said, twisting to face him, panic flooding his body with ice and adrenaline. Holy fuck, he wanted to go back to being under-reactive. “No, Shane, I—you don't, do you? Tell me you don't think about it. Tell me you don't—” He knew he wasn't being fair, knew his reaction was out of proportion, but still. The thought of Shane being sad. The thought of Shane taking himself from Ilya—

Ilya wouldn't fucking survive. Not for Anya, not for Yuna, not for David, not for the Centaurs. He wouldn't fucking survive. Not a second time.

“No, no, Ilya, no. I'm just saying—I get why you don't want pills like that around.”

Ilya was shivering. He was soaked in sweat and there was always a chill down here in the basement and he was coming down off an adrenaline spike like he’d rarely had before. “Okay,” he said. He shook out his arms, tried to get rid of some of this anxious energy, but his hands were still shaking.

“You're—hang on.” Shane got up and walked away. Ilya tried to get a handle on his fucking body.

Then Shane was back, with a blanket. He wrapped Ilya in it, then pulled Ilya over so he could rest his head on Shane's shoulder. The pressure on his temple felt so nice. He'd forgotten about the headache until it eased a little.

God, he felt like such shit.

He was just so fucking tired. He ached for sleep, but still, he could feel it, knew he wouldn’t actually manage to get there anytime soon. It was a buzzing in his stomach, the slightly jittery nature of his thoughts. Full body. He just wanted it over. He wanted his fucking body back, his reliable body, the one that got hard when he wanted it to and the one that liked food and the one that was steady. He understood that his mind was fucked, that had been real for a long time, but his body—apart from the tiredness that used to creep up on him, but at least then he could fucking sleep. He could opt out of all these thoughts because he could just close his eyes and fucking sleep.

“I don't—” He cut himself off.

Shane gave him a minute, then said, “You don't what?”

Ilya shook his head against Shane's shoulder. Here, he was always here, breaking apart in Shane's arms. Galina said it was because he felt safe, but he'd never been so fucking scared.

“Ilya,” he said quietly.

“I don't want to do this anymore,” Ilya whispered.

Shane went motionless. Ilya's shivering got worse.

Then Shane was just pulling Ilya into his arms. He bracketed him with his legs, wrapped his arms around him, clung to him. Ilya pressed his forehead to Shane's collarbone.

It was a while before Shane pulled back. He hesitated, then said, “Do we need to go to the hospital?”

Ilya shook his head. 

“It's not—it's not a mark of—you're not giving in, or something,” Shane said haltingly. “You know that, right?”

Ilya nodded. He didn't like it, but he knew it. “I know,” Ilya said. “I know. But I....” He scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “It's just the medication,” he rasped. “I just need to wait it out.”

“Okay. I'm staying home tomorrow.”

Ilya didn't fight him.

“Will you come back to bed?” Shane whispered. “I'll hold you till you fall asleep.”

“It will take forever,” Ilya mumbled.

“I don't care.”

Ilya closed his eyes, then nodded. But he was sweaty, and he didn't want to make Shane hold him like that, which meant a shower, which meant—

“Shh,” Shane murmured. He ran his hand up and down Ilya's arm. His skin reacted immediately, little ants, goosebumps, and Shane made more soothing sounds, and Ilya's eyes burned.

The void was bigger. It was swallowing everything. It was swallowing Shane, and his touch, and muffling his voice. Ilya's breathing was going unsteady again.

Then, voice careful but firm: "Ilya. I really, really want to call Terry."

If Ilya let Shane do that—and Ilya had never called Terry for this before, not like this, he'd never even called Shane over a depressive episode, the closest he'd come was that call to Sveta, or a call to Sasha once after a practice that left Ilya so empty he thought the glint of the skates was maybe too appealing—if he let Shane call, it meant Ilya was admitting that this was the worst of him. That Shane was seeing the worst of him. The whole thing that Ilya had been trying to avoid, for months. For fucking years. 

Ilya bit his lip so hard he tasted blood.

Yeah. That was what he was doing. He was already fucking seeing the worst of him. It didn't really matter if Ilya labeled it or not, if Ilya admitted it or not, let Shane call Terry or not. This was the worst of it, and Shane was there, holding him, and if this was it, if this was too much—

He wanted to believe it wasn't. He was choosing, his greedy fucking hands on Shane's calf, holding tight, his greedy fucking heart curled around Shane's love, to believe it wasn't. 

Ilya nodded.

---

It felt stupid, especially because it was the middle of the night and the whole call felt like Ilya is sad and he can't get to sleep. Well. Shane called three times in a row before Terry woke up. Ilya would have been on the verge of telling him to quit, if Ilya had still been someone who cared. But it had been eleven days of less than three hours a night and Shane didn't want to wait until morning, so he kept calling. Terry, despite being woken in the middle of the night, was kind: he didn't have the supplies to knock Ilya out, but he did have an in at the Ottawa hospital. He got Ilya in through a back entrance, and he spoke to the doctors, and he explained what was going on to Shane. Ilya had kind of clocked out.

“It's just to knock you out,” Terry said at one point, as a nurse slid the IV needle into Ilya's arm. “And then we'll ease off it, and you'll hopefully stay asleep and catch up a bit on that. Alright?”

Ilya nodded.

“And we’re going to bring your antidepressants back down to your old dose,” Terry said. “Tomorrow, you and I can have a real meeting, maybe with Galina, too, about what we think is the best way forward, but for now we’re bringing you back down.”

“I can keep going,” Ilya mumbled.

“No,” Terry said. “This kind of medical restlessness is not what we want from the meds.” He glanced at Shane. “How are you?”

“I'm staying,” Shane said.

“No one's kicking you out,” Terry said mildly.

“If this is on the record,” Shane started.

“For insurance purposes, yes,” Terry said. “As far as the team knows, no. You're off season, and this has nothing to do with a sports injury. Tonight will not affect the season, or your ability to play.”

“I don't care if the team knows,” Ilya whispered. “I just want to sleep.”

“You will, Ilya,” Terry said. “Just a minute. Don't worry.”

“That's all he needs,” Shane said, protective, even as Ilya felt the drugs start to pull him under. “He doesn't want—he's handling it, otherwise—”

“That'll be a question for when he wakes up,” Terry said mildly. “Trust that I want what's best for him, too.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to trust that?” Shane said, temper flaring for the first time. “This goddamn sport wants everything from us—”

“I trust you,” Ilya mumbled. “Terry. I... I trust you.”

And then he was out.

---

The first thing Ilya was aware of was fingers twined in his.

He took a moment to orient himself, without opening his eyes. He was still tired, but it was a chemical fatigue, something he could fight if he had to. There was a faint beeping. He was vaguely chilly.

Shane was in the chair, head pillowed on his arms on the edge of Ilya's bed. One of his hands was tangled in Ilya's.

It was morning. At least, daytime, maybe midday, if the window was anything to be believed. Ilya shifted slightly, without conscious thought to, just sore from being motionless for... however long.

Shane snapped awake.

“Hey,” he murmured. “How do you feel?”

Ilya took a moment to consider. “Better,” he mumbled. He rolled onto his side, toward Shane, ignoring the twinge in his arm as the IV pulled. Shane straightened, hand flickering over the IV until Ilya settled, and then his hand went straight to Ilya's head, combing through Ilya was sure were lank, sweaty curls. “What... time is it?”

Shane glanced to the side. “Two in the afternoon.”

“Great,” Ilya mumbled. “Ruining my sleep schedule.”

Shane kept stroking his hair. “We'll talk to Terry about it.”

Ilya nodded slightly. “He went home.”

“Yeah. I'll text him now, he told me to let him know....” Shane trailed off as he pulled back slightly, found his phone. He typed, then focused on Ilya again. “So you feel better? Not so tired, not so...?”

Ilya nodded again. “If I could just stay like this,” Ilya mumbled. This nice, easy drifting. He thought the depression and its fog was a drifting, but he was realizing now that it was less a drift and more a drag, like he was a stone in the river rushing around him, unable to connect, only able to feel the cold water as it ripped past. This. "Is easy. Warm. That... would be nice."

Shane’s fingers were in Ilya’s hair. Ilya’s eyes had slid closed again. “Ilya,” Shane whispered.

“One more nap,” Ilya mumbled.

---

When Ilya woke up again, it was to Shane typing on his phone, eyes shiny with unshed emotion, lashes glittery. That face triggered something in Ilya, to the point that he could feel the last of the drug chemicals being replaced by something close to adrenaline. He hated to see Shane upset, would do almost anything to make it stop. He sat up.

“Oh.” Shane saw him move, hastily pinched tears away. “Hey,” he said, his voice slightly wobbly.

“Hey,” Ilya said in return, worried. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing, I'm fine.”

“Shane.” Ilya put his hand carefully on Shane's cheek, swiped a thumb over the bone. “I am not supposed to hide from you. Please don’t hide from me.” He shook his head slightly. “I scared you. I’m sorry.”

“I—” Shane's lip trembled.

“Shane,” Ilya murmured again.

“It does scare me,” Shane whispered, and Ilya’s heart broke.

“I’m so—”

“No,” Shane said. “Don’t. That’s not even what I was upset about, I—I can handle that. I swear. I just—” He pressed his lips together. Then he let out a breath. Took in another, slow. “What you said earlier. About staying like that. Half-asleep. That it would be nice.”

Ilya nodded, hesitatingly. He didn’t quite remember it, the drugs making him a little foggy, though slightly differently than the fatigue had. He shifted his thumb again, encouraging.

Shane wrapped his hands around Ilya’s free one, then it poured out, halting and upset but unstoppable. “It just—it makes me so fucking sad,” he whispered. “That you—you're the fucking heart of the team, you're big and bold and—and—and I know a lot of that is bravado, I know some of it is more of an act, but it's an act you like, and—and you're exciting and you love—you love being alive, so much that it makes me jealous sometimes—so to see you wishing you could just exist in the morphine haze because it was easy and warm—when you're a hockey bastard, you love the ice and the difficulty, you're not scared of a challenge, I—I just—it makes me so fucking sad. And, like, pissed, because of what your head does to you.” Shane took a shaky breath, finally meeting Ilya's gaze. “And I don't want you to—I don't want you to think I'm pitying you, or that you need to hide this from me so I don't feel sad, or whatever, I just—" He took another deep breath. "It really hit me. You know? That it takes so fucking much from you. I wish I could—I wish I could do something about it. Like if I could—if I could punch the depression, I would get like, a season-long suspension for how much I would fuck it up—”

Ilya laughed slightly. Shane looked like he wanted to cry at the sound.

“Come here,” Ilya said, and Shane climbed into the tiny, uncomfortable bed with him. “Shh,” Ilya murmured, one hand on the back of Shane’s neck as Shane settled against him. “Is alright.”

“It’s not,” Shane said. “It’s not, I hate it.”

“I know.”

“But I don’t—I don’t hate you, obviously, I just—I wish I could do something, I hate feeling powerless like this—”

“You do something,” Ilya whispered. “You do everything. You got me here. You did not let me sleep alone. Sweetheart. You do more than enough.”

“You’d tell me? If there was something else I could do?”

“Yes.”

“I mean it, Ilya. I know you like to be the one to take care of people, but you have to let me take care of you, too.”

“I know. And if there is ever a way for you to punch the depression, I will tell you. Even if your right hook is as weak as your backhand.”

“Good," Shane said, and it was the fact that he ignored Ilya's gentle ribbing that made Ilya tip Shane’s face up. His heart flipped again when he saw the glint of tears on Shane’s face, so he just kissed them away. Shane pulled him in for a real kiss, hungry and sad and protective, and then Ilya pressed his face to Shane’s chest and waited for the doctors to come back in.

---

The conversation that afternoon was short. Ilya was going back down to his previous dose. Therapy was going to be the most important part of his treatment plan for now; with this reaction to the meds, and the fact that he’d been mostly okay on his previous dose. The current plan was to assume the increase in symptoms was due to the C-PTSD, not a failure of his medication; with Ilya’s therapy now being adjusted to address it, everyone was hopeful that they could get him back on track without another medication change. If he continued to get worse, they would consider changing medications altogether, but training was about to start up—Ilya was absolutely loathe to risk changing meds in the middle of the hockey season. He supported the therapy plan, even if it meant he was going to have to do it twice-weekly for the foreseeable, which was going to be fucking irritating when games and travel started up again.

Shane had been there—he was Ilya’s ride home, for starters, and he’d never left the hospital. He’d objected to Ilya’s obvious reluctance to change meds in the middle of the season, but Terry had pointed out the fact that the stress of that timing wouldn’t be good for Ilya either. Shane had crossed his arms and clenched his jaw, and Ilya had run his hand up and down Shane’s spine until he moved away, irritated. Ilya couldn’t be upset; hockey was important to both of them, and risking games was not what either of them wanted, and more than that, it was Shane’s turn to look like he’d gotten no sleep. So he waited until they were home to bring it up again.

He thought Shane of all people would understand the reluctance. But Shane stared at him for about fifteen straight seconds, and then said, “Are you fucking joking?”

Ilya blinked. “About…?”

“If you need to change meds, you change them. I don’t give a fuck if it’s in the middle of the season or not.”

“It’s not your choice,” Ilya said, which was a stupid thing to start with, but too late now. “And I thought you would understand, the team—”

“The team can fuck off!” Shane snapped. “I don’t care if we lose every fucking game, if you need to change medications—if you need to play less shifts, or get put on IR, or whatever, I don’t fucking care, any of that is better than you hurting longer than you have to.”

“You would not say the same if it was reversed.”

“No, I wouldn’t. But you would. You would tell me not to be stupid.”

Ilya rubbed a thumb over his knuckles. That was probably true.

“Galina thinks it might work,” he admitted. “It’s not just me saying it, Terry and Galina both—they think it might work. Keeping my old dose, and doing more intensive therapy, to address what was missed before.”

Shane took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“But if I did have to change,” Ilya said, “we would not lose every game.”

“I know. I was exaggerating.”

“Good. Because the team would still have Shane Hollander. He would not let them lose.”

Shane’s mouth twitched. “Shane Hollander-Rozanov.”

“The Shane Hollander-Rozanov.”

Shane wrapped his arms around Ilya. “Just do whatever you need to,” he whispered. “Okay?”

Ilya nodded into his shoulder. He fisted Shane's shirt in his hands. "I need you," he whispered. 

"In what position?"

Ilya bit back a huffed laugh, then just shook his head and kept Shane to him. "This one."

"Oh." Shane pressed his lips to the side of Ilya's head. "Well. You have me. Always."

"Thank you," Ilya whispered, his voice tiny.

Shane just nudged his nose against Ilya's temple, and held him tighter.

Ilya rounds a corner.

Upping his meds had been a bad plan, but once he was no longer running on three hours of sleep, Ilya decided Sasha and Sveta had not been.

Something in him felt… settled, in a way it hadn’t before. Maybe before, he’d still been too Boston. Too American. Everything had to be fair, everything was always supposed to be fair. Americans didn’t always succeed, but they liked talking about it, and well, fuck, maybe Ilya had been convinced. Everything bad could be fought, even winter.

In Russia, nobody fought winter.

It was something settled into. It was gathering people around. It was making sure there were the supplies necessary to make it till spring. It was sharing stories of past hardship, and prepping for the next one.

Ilya didn’t have to… to give up, exactly, but he maybe did have to accept that the dark was already here. The sun would not rise for a while. So maybe it was time to let Shane know that, alert him to the shadows, point out where they lay. Maybe it was time to stop his useless protests and accept that his life wasn’t fair, and that to get through his own personal winter, he was going to need certain things.

Of course, it was fucking sunny outside, warm and breezy, so it felt stupid to act like he had to batten down the hatches and prepare for a snowy siege, but whatever. The dark was coming. He was Russian. Attacking Russia in winter went badly; the depression, or the PTSD, or whatever the fuck, didn’t understand that Ilya was built to survive.

---

He had three days until training camp. He told Galina he was worried about it, worried about the fact that his weight was off and his own training was off, he wasn’t where he liked to be before the start of hockey. Terry wasn’t worried about it, necessarily, but he admittedly had said let’s keep an eye on that, and was going to think on more ways to get Ilya back up to speed, had spoken with Wiebe about it, with Ilya’s permission.

Galina was caught up on the medication situation, but he hadn’t really had a chance to talk to her about Boston, so he did now. About how he felt a little bit more… willing to face facts. About how no, Sveta and Sasha and the concept of Russia hadn’t cured him, but he’d been reminded that, well, he’d been through a lot. And he’d come out okay. Or at least, hadn’t fucking killed himself yet, so maybe that was enough.

Galina pursed her lips slightly at that wording, which Ilya took as a victory. It was the face she made—he was pretty sure—when she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to laugh or roll her eyes, and had decided that neither was appropriate. “Alright,” she said. “Before you went to Boston, we talked about putting Shane on a pedestal, as opposed to the way you feel about Alexandr and Svetlana.”

Ilya nodded.

“Did you think about that while you were with them?”

“A little.” Ilya tapped the toes of his shoes against the floor. “I’m not afraid to get Sasha and Sveta dirty with all of my stupid shit. They’ve seen worse than me. And I’ve seen them at… pretty bad points. Where Shane—he’s Canada’s Golden Boy. And I know that’s just… mythology, I know he’s a little asshole and that he isn’t perfect and everything, but sometimes I… sometimes maybe I buy into it, too. And I’ve been scared of other things too, like when Scott Hunter thought I was on drugs, I was so scared about how that would reflect on Shane, if more people thought that. I just—I haven’t kept my hands clean, exactly. But Shane has, he’s always done everything by the book, and if I was the one to ruin that—he’s worked so hard—”

“Is it all about his reputation?” Galina asked mildly.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you not want to let your reputation—which isn’t nearly as bad as you think it is, you’ve changed your image quite a lot over the past few years, I did a little looking of my own—tarnish Shane’s? Or do you not want you to touch Shane? Because we weren’t talking about reputation, at first. We were talking about things you can tell Shane, privately, in your own relationship.”

Ilya swallowed.

“I know you want to... protect Shane,” Galina said. “From your past. And from what you think of as your self. But—”

Ilya shook his head slightly. “I—I think maybe, I—” He swallowed. “I'm maybe—” He sighed. “I'm hiding,” he said quietly. “I am hiding behind wanting to protect him when really I'm trying to protect myself.”

Galina held his gaze, keeping very still, the way she did when she thought he was on the brink of something. She waited.

“I—I am afraid,” Ilya said, very small, “that if I tell him everything—everything I've done, every stupid choice, if I lay it all out for him, really, specifically. Then he is going to realize I have never been good enough for him. Or that he is going to think that maybe I—maybe I deserve this. I've earned all my bad luck. I don't—I don't want to taint him, but I—I think it would be worse, maybe, if he agreed.”

Galina smiled softly. Ilya wiped at his face. “I think,” she said, “that you're probably right about you're doing. Now, do you actually think Shane will think you've earned your bad luck, or do you think that's the depression talking?”

Ilya flinched away from thinking about it, but he braced his shoulders and then shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “No, of course not. He would be—he would be so upset, if he knew that I'd even considered it. He would think that he needed to prove himself to me, and that's not—I don't need him to do that.”

Galina nodded slowly. Then she said, “Are you sure?”

Ilya blinked. “Isn't—yes. Yes, I'm sure. I'm not—isn't that bad? To make him prove it to me? To not just trust him?”

“To make him prove it, yes, isn't ideal,” Galina said. “But let him prove it is something else. Let him show you. We've talked a lot about your sense of self-worth, and how you resist the thought of people loving you.”

“Lots of people love me,” Ilya said. “I’m quite famous.”

“And you use praise like that to prop up your self-esteem,” she said, chopping down his ego in one fell swoop. “You made up a whole separate person to be, so that you could keep people and their reactions to you distinct from how you felt about yourself, really.”

Ilya held up a hand. “I was also fucking men, and needed to not have anyone think that was happening. I would like to point out my reputation was useful.”

“Sure,” she said easily. “It just also hurt you.”

Ilya pouted.

"All summer, you've mentioned things like Shane staying up with you at night when you couldn't sleep. Or Shane bringing back pie from that bakery in Vanier even though it's out of his way. Or Shane planning movie dates outside—"

"Yes, he's been amazing," Ilya said. "He is everything I could have ever wanted, and he has to try to cheer me up, and—"

"What if he's not trying to cheer you up?"

Ilya blinked.

"Maybe," Galina said, "he just wants to make you happy. The same way you want to make him happy. Maybe you're primed to reject it because you think he's trying to cheer you up, but it doesn't have anything to do with your depression, or the C-PTSD. Maybe Shane just loves you." She shrugged. "And maybe he's trying to cheer you up, I don't know, I haven't spoken to him. But those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive. They don't even really have to be related."

Ilya fidgeted with his water bottle.

“All I’m saying,” she said gently, “is that you trust Shane. You tell me all the time that you trust Shane. Maybe it’s time to trust that he loves you, and that you won’t scare him away.”

Ilya swallowed, then nodded. He walked along the river for an hour and a half after. He thought about how every time he broke in front of Shane, Shane picked him up so carefully. He thought about how fucking weak he felt each time it happened, how absolutely goddamn pathetic, and how much Shane didn't seem to care. He thought about how maybe he equated being strong to successfully hiding. Real men didn't cry, or show affection, or lose control, ever, of anything. Real men were like his father. 

Then he went home, and found Shane in the living room, in his glasses, taking notes on a cooking website.

He took a deep breath, and then he took Shane’s laptop and put it on the side table.

“I didn’t even hear you,” Shane said, looking up. “Sorry, love, I—”

Ilya straddled him, kissed him, hard. Ilya was very rarely in this position. Normally it was Shane in his lap instead of the other way around. But Shane rose to the variance easily, hungrily, almost, his hands immediately sliding down to splay against Ilya’s ass even as he arched up a little, into the kiss. This was the third way to decompress after therapy. Ilya didn’t normally reach for this method, because normally he thought it wasn’t really fair to Shane. It felt like he was using Shane, Shane wasn’t supposed to be a reward, and Shane was always nervous that Ilya wasn’t actually in the right state of mind after therapy.

But they had always spoken so well, like this. Ilya’s sexual history had been this: sex was normally fun, always a distraction, frequently a reward. Sex with Shane had always been different. From the fucking beginning, it had been different. It had been curiosity, sure, it had been dangerous, and from halfway through that very first hookup, Shane had always meant safety. Shane had always, always with his body, told Ilya that he was safe, and cared for, and worth something more than just an orgasm. Ilya’s body had relaxed into Shane’s so much faster than his mind had, had recognized a careful hand and soft eyes before Ilya knew what it meant.  

Lips, tongue, teeth. The slow slide of it. The breaths that were just on the edge of sound. The hot sting of tears.

“Woah. Woah, woah, hey. Are you—”

“I am fine,” Ilya said, his voice hoarse. “I am fine and I want to talk to you after but right now I need to tell you everything that matters and I can’t do it in English and I can’t do it in Russian.”

Shane pulled back for a moment. There was a tear on his cheek, one that had fallen from Ilya’s face onto his, isolated and glittery. Shane didn’t seem to care, just looked up at him with those big dark eyes. “I love you,” he whispered. “You know that?”

Ilya nodded.

Shane’s hand slid under Ilya’s waistband. He bit, carefully, Ilya’s lower lip, until Ilya was slumping into the kiss, until he was grinding against Shane, until Ilya’s hardness pressed against Shane’s, both of them dragging, fully clothed, against each other. Ilya barely heard the drip of the lube bottle as Shane fumbled it from the side table one-handed, but he felt it as Shane pressed a slick finger down to his hole.

“This?”

“Please,” Ilya said. “I need—I need you, I—”

Shane caught one of Ilya’s hands, pressed a kiss to the inside of his palm. “Shh,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”

Ilya settled a little. Shane pressed his mouth to Ilya’s again, soft. His one hand, he kept twined in Ilya’s. His other stroked down, and then around, and then, slowly, in. Ilya made a small sound, which slid into a low moan as Shane pressed further. Ilya’s hips twitched forward. Shane rocked up against him, then did it again, harder.

Shane slid a second finger in, then twitched them out to straight, and nudged Ilya’s prostate.

Ilya gasped against Shane’s mouth. “Shane,” he whispered. “Fuck, Shane.”

“I love you like this,” Shane breathed. “When you need me. When I can make you—” He massaged Ilya’s prostate with the tips of his fingers and Ilya shuddered, gave a broken moan. “When I can make you sound like that. When you let yourself sound like that.”

Ilya wasn’t sure let had anything to do with it. He squeezed Shane’s hand, too deep to respond any other way.

But Shane knew that, was too smart for that. “When you lose control,” Shane murmured in Ilya’s ear. “When you let yourself go with me.”

He rocked up against Ilya again, grinding up, and pressed down with his fingers. Ilya probably nearly strangled Shane’s hand as he came, in his fucking pants, because neither of them had had the foresight to realize that was where this was going. Ilya let his head fall onto Shane’s shoulder as they both rocked through Ilya’s aftershocks.

Then, a whispered, sheepish, “Sorry about your pants.”

Ilya opened his eyes. “Shane. I do not care about my pants right now.”

Shane loosened his hand from Ilya’s now-lax grip and stroked his fingers through his hair as he carefully pulled his other hand free. After a minute, Ilya managed to lift his head and kiss Shane again, and deeper, until Shane was squirming a little under him, breathy and—yes, perfect, still hard. He had not finished with Ilya.

Ilya leaned over and pulled a cloth from the side table, handed it to Shane, and then backed up and slid off Shane, down to his knees on the floor. He hauled Shane forward, even as Shane tried to clean off his hand. Shane ended up half curled over Ilya, his good hand in Ilya’s curls again, as Ilya sank his mouth over his hard, heavy cock in one go.

“Fuck,” Shane gasped. “Fuck, you didn’t have to—”

Ilya nudged his nose against Shane’s warm skin and swallowed. Shane gave a wordless whine, fingers going tight in Ilya’s hair. Ilya’s eyes flickered closed. Yes. He eased back, bobbed forward again.

Shane moaned something, muffled into either Ilya’s hair or his own elbow, voice low and dark, like he had to say it but didn’t want Ilya to hear. And it was muffled enough that he almost succeeded, but Ilya had had a lot of practice over the years interpreting Shane’s sex-drunk speech.

Everything that matters.

Of course he knew. Of course he heard what Ilya had been saying, with that, could translate it through the motion of their bodies. This, this was everything. This was a statement of everything. Not the sex, exactly, but the push and pull, the dance they did with each other. Ilya pulled back, got his hand on Shane’s wet cock instead. He almost grabbed the lube but didn’t want to take the break. He spit on it, then looked up at Shane as he stroked, tight, slow. “You,” Ilya whispered, and Shane’s breath shuddered out of him. “And me. And us. This, between us. The way we fit, Shane, so good, you are so good, we—” His breath caught.

Shane’s lifted his head. “We are so good, together,” he whispered, pupils blown out but gaze still steady on Ilya’s. “We are so fucking good together, Ilya, you are so good, let me say it. Let me tell you.”

Ilya kept his eyes on Shane’s, and licked Shane’s head, tonguing into the slit slowly. Shane choked, Ilya sank onto him, and Shane lurched up into him as he came with a moan. Ilya swallowed, and swallowed again.

“Fuck,” Shane mumbled, slumping over Ilya. He scratched his blunt fingers through Ilya’s hair again and Ilya leaned his cheek on Shane’s thigh, smiling softly up at him.

“Shower,” Ilya murmured.

“You wanted to talk.”

“There is lube dripping out of my asshole and I am sitting in cum, Shane. For once, I am going to say, yes, please, whole shower after sex.”

“Now you know how I feel.”

“Mm, yes, so, please?”

The shower was quick, at least, and warm, settling Ilya even further into his body. Once they were out, though, he remembered what he needed to do, and the tension started to creep back into his shoulders.

Dried off, Ilya led them back out to the couch. Shane had offered the bed, but Ilya didn’t want to bring any of this into the bed, not if he could help it.

So they were back where they started. Shane on the couch, and Ilya straddling him, because it felt like maybe he should. Shane looked up at him again, soft, pleased, but attentive to whatever Ilya wanted to talk about.

He took a deep breath,

“Sometimes I want to kill myself,” Ilya said.

The smile dropped off Shane’s face, but he didn’t flinch away. He just kept looking up at Ilya, waiting, patient. He put his hands on Ilya’s thighs. Steady.

“I’ve done coke and molly and LSD,” Ilya said. “Also poppers, but those don’t really count. Oh. And weed. Obviously. And so much alcohol. And nicotine.”

Shane blinked. “Like, now?”

“No. No, no, not in years. Except the weed. You know that. But I did the others during the season. Not in Ottawa. But in Boston. Or Russia. Sometimes. Not a lot. When I was… when things have been bad, before. Or when things were really good, and I was scared of when they’d be bad again.”

Shane chewed on his lip, then nodded.

“My genetics are depression and dementia and an alcohol tolerance that is probably not to my benefit.”

Shane swallowed, but didn’t stop him.

“I’ve had chlamydia twice.”

Shane made a face. “Okay, I don’t know if I need to know that one.”

“You’re lucky it isn’t more.”

“Yeah, I’m aware,” Shane said dryly. “I’m glad you had heard of safe sex by the time I came around.”

Ilya rolled his eyes.

“And sometimes,” Ilya said, repeating himself for effect, “I don't want to be alive."

Shane squeezed Ilya’s thighs.

“Technically,” Ilya said, “is not PTSD. There is C at the beginning.”

“Complex,” Shane said quietly. “I know.”

“For… repeated incidences,” Ilya said, faltering.

Shane slid his hands up and down Ilya’s thighs, careful, encouraging.

"My mother—" Ilya's voice cracked and he stopped, took a breath. "My mother. My mother sometimes... forgot. About us. Lunches, or appointments, or—or sometimes she did not forget, but she did not get up, and I told myself it was the same." He shook his head, moved on. "My brother—was not always a dickhead. We were close, when I was small, before things got bad, and sometimes I think I hate him most for that. He—I sent him too much money and he blew it on bullshit and coke and I hit him, the day we buried our father." Ilya blinked up at the ceiling, and then down at Shane's lap, at his own body in Shane's careful embrace.

He couldn't do this. Not like this. He rolled them, so Shane was on his lap. There. Shane could get up, leave if he wanted to. He wouldn't be trapped. He never wanted to trap him, even if the thought of Shane walking away made him feel like bees were crawling all around him.

The weight of Shane in his lap was reassuring.

Ilya put his hands on Shane's knees, delicate. Shane switched to running his hands up and down Ilya's arms, thumbs doing circles on Ilya's shoulders. Ilya tried very hard to focus on that, to keep that in his head, to stay present and not float away or pull back like he'd been doing lately. He had to be here, with Shane. "My father was not a good man. My father hit my mother, and Alexei, and me, and probably his second wife. He was not normally an angry man, which felt worse. I used to wish he would just be angry, because I felt out of control, and if that was what he felt, then maybe I could understand, but he—but it was not about that." Ilya took in a breath, released it slowly. "My father hated me, I think," he whispered. "Because I left. And I think he hated Alexei more, because he never did."

Shane just looked up at him, steady.

"It is exhausting," Ilya said. "Sometimes, every day is exhausting. I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to stop. But every day that I get to play hockey, and every day that I get to see you, or talk to you, every day that I hang out with your parents, every day that I—that I get to play with the Pike children, or hang out with the team, I—it is worth it. You have to know it's worth it. Sometimes I can't see out of the—the dark, in me, but I am so grateful that I have the chance to—to live, like this, with you."

"Ilya," Shane murmured.

“I don’t—I don’t want to scare you,” Ilya whispered. “But I—it’s not fair to you, to hide. To tell you I love you and not let you tell me back, knowing everything. And hiding makes it easier, to—to tell myself you would not like me, if you knew.”

Shane motioned for Ilya’s right hand. Ilya held it out, unclear on what was happening, and then let Shane pull off Ilya’s wedding band. It was okay, technically, Ilya wasn’t superstitious about taking it off because he had to take it off all the time for hockey, but he still felt his heart flip over in fear.

Then Shane put it straight back onto Ilya’s finger, slipping it gently back into place.

Ilya bit his lip.

“I don’t care,” Shane said.

Ilya searched his face, trying to find the lie, the hesitation. Nothing but seriousness. Nothing but—

“It’s you,” Shane said, keeping his gaze. “Always.”

He clutched Shane to him so hard that Shane, who loved being manhandled, eventually did have to mumble, “Ilya. I can’t breathe.”

He let go. Only for Shane to tilt Ilya’s face up and kiss him, hard. “I love you,” Shane said. “I told you before. Bol’she, i bol’she, i bol’she.”

Ilya pressed his forehead to Shane’s. It was not how a Russian-speaker would have said it, but it was how Shane did. It was how the love of his life did. More and more and more. “I know.”

the next one is functionally an epilogue, even if it’s only like two days later. my darling has turned the corner and faced his fears! good for him

Also:

If you're here for the character study, can I also direct you to my fic: put it all down. And also, sunfish. Or, like a challenge.

If you're here for Ilya being physically unwell: sunfish, I don't want that to be you, lionheart, and it was the fever are all sickfics, and one single piece is injury whump

If you're here to see Ilya's depression: little blue dot, or put it all down, or i still want to win

If you're here for ilya vulnerability: actually maybe all of my fics now that i think about it lmao

#acceptance

The first day of training, Shane shook Ilya awake before dawn.

“What the fuck,” he mumbled. “House better be burning down.”

“Obviously not,” Shane said. “But we have places to be.”

“What? What places? Training is not until ten, it is—fuck’s sake, Shane, it isn’t even six—lyubimyy, what happened to sleep schedule—”

Shane held out a hand. “Come on.”

“Shane—”

“Come on,” Shane said, firm. Ilya followed, because when did he not?

Ilya didn’t fall asleep on the drive, but he did prop his head up on his hand, his elbow on the door. Shane refused to tell him where they were going. He just handed over a breakfast sandwich and a smoothie and slurped at his own smoothie. Ilya managed most of both.

Except that it was the exact same route they took to the practice rink. And they ended up… at the rink. And then Shane was unlocking the door and letting them in, a backpack from the trunk slung over one shoulder.

“How did you—”

“Called in a favor,” Shane said.

They went to the locker room. Shane pulled their spare skates out of his backpack. And only their skates. He had Ilya sit, and then he laced Ilya’s skates on for him, checking the hooks, glancing up to make sure they were tight enough. Ilya was so confused—and, if he was honest, still half-asleep—that he just… let it happen.

Then Shane laced his own skates on. He was wearing his blue-green skate guards. He got to his feet, then took Ilya’s hand and pulled him up, too, and pulled him out to the ice.

Except that something in Ilya hitched, and he stopped before he stepped out. Shane turned, fluid on the ice, and waited.

“I’m going to let them down,” Ilya said. “The team.”

“This isn’t about the team,” Shane said.

Ilya waved a hand. “Sure. Giving your captain one last shot to deal with his stupid fucking issues before training isn’t about—”

“I don’t give a fuck about the team right now,” Shane said. “That’s not why we’re here.”

Ilya shut up.

Shane held out a hand again. And Ilya took it, again. He let Shane pull him onto the ice.

He trusted Shane. He always trusted Shane.

“So then,” Ilya said quietly, as they started a slow loop, “why are we here? Training doesn’t start for another few hours—”

“Well,” Shane said, “we never get to skate. Just the two of us. I wanted to do this a while ago, but then I couldn’t get it arranged before you went to Boston, and—I don’t know, stuff kept kind of put wrenches in my plans.”

Ilya blinked at him.

Shane looked over at him, equal parts shy and annoyed. “We’re on a date, dumbass.”

Ilya blushed, high and immediate.

---

They skated for two hours, slow laps and then racing, silly, and then copying each other’s motions, dancing around each other in tandem. Then the rink was booked for other people, even before Centaurs training started. They went back home, and Ilya took Shane apart, twice, in fervent thanks. And yes, he was tired, and yes, he was kind of jumpy, but he could handle day one of training. He didn’t feel like he was going to fall apart. He even got to tell Terry that he felt better. The team was so happy to see him in a captain capacity again—or maybe just in a present capacity again, considering the few events he’d attended this summer, he’d barely been a person—that most of them gave him bear hugs that lasted a little bit longer than normal. And if Ilya’s eyes stung, well, like Sasha had said. How lucky to have that.

Slowly, slowly, unevenly, haltingly, Ilya scraped his way back to good. Enough that he stopped flinching, even if he didn’t quite regain his ability to be entirely unfazed by things that made other people screech. Enough that he started sleeping properly again, and Shane stopped looking so tired, too, and Ilya's appetite came back, and he started gaining back some of the weight he’d lost, and Hayes said, quietly, "You're got some color back." Enough that when they won their first game in the pre-season, and Shane kissed Ilya on the ice for the first time, Ilya wrapped his arms around his husband’s padded frame and just spun him around to their teammates’ cheers, and he hid his happy tears in Shane’s shoulder even as Shane said, laughing, oh my god, Ilya, put me down, you’re gonna fucking drop me—

Shane’s parents took them out to dinner the next night, in celebration. It was on the later side, because Ilya was still in therapy twice weekly. They still had a… lot to cover, but he was more stable now.

Still. Two months ago, the thought of having dinner out with Shane and his parents would have exhausted Ilya, and now he was laughing quietly with David over steak, and teasing Shane, and talking shop with Yuna. He’d lost his way, a little bit, but he’d survived, and his family was there to bring him safely home.

On the way back to the house—Ilya drove, Shane had been drinking, partially to excuse the blush from Ilya’s dress shoe sliding up the back of his calf—Shane said, “That’ll be us someday.”

“That was us now.”

“No. I mean, we’ll be out to dinner with our adult kids and their partners, someday. We’ll see them grow up, and pick good people, and we’ll get to have nice dinners with them.”

Ilya pressed a hand to his chest for a moment, and then reached over and squeezed Shane’s hand. “Yes,” he said. “That’ll be us, someday.”

Shane kissed the tips of Ilya’s fingers, then just held his hand in both of his, apparently content with that.

Ilya needed to do something, or he was going to die of happiness, right then and there.

“Hey,” he said, mouth tipping into a smirk. “Did you know your parents broke up once?”

“They did what?”

And it's done! Or so it says.... for now....

Anyway, yes, it is over, the arc is complete, Ilya is on a better path! Yay for him. On the other hand, I do have one deleted scene that I'm toying with and will probably tack on as an extra bonus chapter (zane boodram? who said zane boodram. i said zane boodram). I also have a vague idea for a second bonus chapter (ft. david and yuna? yes? if I can figure out how I want it to go?). So, work subscribers, don't quit on me quite yet.

But also: thank you everyone for the reaction to this one! Also, take care of yourselves 👀

Last: If anyone wants to talk even more, I am over on Twitter as @rozalov81 . I only have two followers bc it is a new account, not bc I am a loser. mostly/probably

bonus/deleted scene one: Zane

Warnings: suicidal ideation again, each very brief but present. Medication adjustment problems. All of the previous tags still apply! We still end up in a good place, but ilya takes a rough route there!

So originally I was going to have bol’she be longer, and have them up Ilya’s meds twice before realizing that wasn’t the solution and back it down once. That was going to take them into training and pre-season. On the other hand, idk how pre-season works and also, the rest of it ended up having an arc that I was already having trouble not giving weird pacing to lmao, and this chapter hits a couple notes kind of repetitively with the rest of the fic. On a third hand, I like this scenario for a few reasons, so:

The ice wasn’t helping.

Ilya had been irritable all week, and trying not to be. Shane reminded him that mood swings were part of the dosage increase and Ilya tried not to snap I fucking know that. Worse, he was exhausted, again. Normally, once he laced his skates, he could feel right. A brief respite.

Not yesterday. He’d been slow as fuck, reaction times like shit and his sprints barely the equivalent of a jog. The ice was fighting him for the first time in his life.

Today, he was still slow, and he just wasn’t with it. Nothing was clicking for him. He’d already thrown his stick at the boards once. Now, they were trying new lines, scrimmaging, and—

And then Ilya was down.

What the fuck?

For a second, he fought for air. The wind had been knocked out of him. Nothing hurt, at least not more than usual, it was just the shock of it.

And.

And everything seemed to have been knocked back into place? Fog gone, everything clear. Maybe it was adrenaline, kicking in. Bood had just checked him hard enough to send Ilya to the ice, and he’d had the opportunity because Ilya hadn’t been paying attention. He hadn’t been aware of what was going on, which was mostly insane because Ilya always knew what was going on.

Ilya had just fucked up. Astronomically. If that happened in a game—

“Shit, Cap, sorry, I thought—”

Something detonated in him.

Ilya had fucked up, and someone else was trying to take the blame, and it was for something they were supposed to do.

“Don’t fucking apologize,” he snarled, slapping Bood’s helpful hand away. “You should be doing that. It does not matter who I am, you fucking HIT, you go for it—” He switched to Russian as he got back up, only half intentional. “This is why this team took so fucking long to win, no one is willing to—”

Someone caught his arm. Ilya yanked it back without looking.

“Don’t fucking touch me—”

“Enough.”

Ilya froze for a moment, and then turned, slowly, predatory. It was Shane. Of course it was. No one else spoke Russian.

“You hit your head,” Shane said. “Go get checked out.”

“It was barely—”

“Ilya. It was loud. Please go get checked out.”

Wiebe was already heading to meet him. Ilya stalked off the ice, ripping his helmet off as he did. He swore, loudly, in Russian.

“That,” Wiebe said, following him down the hall, “was not your normal attitude.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Ilya snarled. “Maybe if it was, we would have had better team, sooner.”

“You don’t believe that.” Wiebe glanced at him. “Is this the—”

“It is the nothing,” Ilya hissed. “I am fine. I do not have a concussion, and I—”

“I heard the C word,” Terry said, coming into the hallway. “Roz. What happened?”

“I fell. I am fine.”

“Just a precaution,” Wiebe said. “Roz got knocked down, helmet hit the ice—”

“It was not that bad—”

“Did you hear the bang? Sounded hollow.”

Ilya was not amused. His irritation wound its fingers tighter through his ribs.

“This is a waste of time,” he said as he followed Terry.

They ran through the battery. Eyes, response times, balance. Every test he passed only made him more pissed, until his jaw was tight and he was giving the absolute minimum of answers to Terry.

Somewhere, distantly, a little piece of him was curled in a corner, whispering this isn’t me. Please know this isn’t me. Ilya put a jar over it like Shane did to spiders, and ignored it.

“Alright,” Terry said. “No concussion, you were right.”

“I fucking said so,” Ilya muttered.

“I’ll go tell Wiebe. No, you stay here, I… want to talk to you about something else. I’ll just go assuage his concern, and, well, probably also Hollander’s.”

Ilya wanted to bare his teeth. Wanted to scream. His health, reported to other people, like that mattered more—

Ilya waved him away. As soon as Terry was gone, Ilya slid off his chair and crouched in front of it, braced an arm against the seat, tried to breathe.

Maybe there was something wrong with him. He—he was so fucking angry he was going blind with it, and over what?

He tried to settle his heartbeat. Tried to cool off. Slow and steady. He could be normal. He had to be normal.

He closed his eyes. Imagined all the fury sliding off him. Imagined being in the showers, and letting the water take away all this red anger. He just wanted to be clean.

He had to apologize to Bood. And probably the whole team.

Footsteps in the hall. Ilya breathed out, careful, and got back to his feet, shook out his arms. God, everything ached.

It wasn’t just Terry who came in. Shane came in, too, still in his gear. Ilya frowned.

“So,” Terry said. “We’re putting you on IR.”

Ilya stared at him. All that hard work to calm down, and now his blood pressure was almost definitely over the roof. “I’m not—did we not just establish that I’m fine.”

“You don’t have a concussion,” Terry agreed. “But you’re not fine.”

Ilya’s throat worked. He dug a thumb nail into the knuckles of his other hand. This was why he should have gone to a different fucking doctor. He never should have let anyone even semi-related to hockey know about the depression, or the meds, because now everyone was going to think he was broken.

And he was, but he’d been broken his whole goddamn life and he’d still played excellent hockey, so it was stupid to tell him now that he wasn’t—that now a single bad day—

“It’s not going to be for long,” Terry said. “A couple weeks. Just until you adjust a little more.”

“A couple weeks?”

“You’ve been on the new dose for two weeks now, right?” Terry asked. Shane nodded next to him. Ilya felt every muscle in his body hitch tighter. “It can take a bit to settle in. The fogginess, and the mood swings—”

“Is not a mood swing,” Ilya said through his teeth. “I’m fine.”

“Ilya,” Shane said quietly. “When have you ever yelled at Bood like that?”

A part of him felt bad. The larger part of him was snarling.

“It’s just pre-season anyway,” Terry said. “But we need you thinking clearly on the ice, or you’re going to hurt yourself. Off it too, obviously, but for work—”

“Fine,” Ilya said, because he wasn’t going to win this. The fury in him tumbled, righted itself, burned hotter, clawing up the back of his sternum. “Fine, take me off, see if I fucking care.”

He stalked back to the locker room alone. Shane didn’t follow. Probably still talking with Terry, trying to figure out how to carefully, gently manage Ilya into chains, lock him to the fucking floor. He yanked off his gear, flung it in his cubby, considered using his skates to just slice into his wrists and then discarded the idea just as fast, slammed the guards over the blades, and stalked to the showers, breathing hard. He stood under the water with his eyes closed and made no move to do anything else.

Could he drown like this?

The backs of his eyes prickled. He clenched his jaw, and then braced his hands against the wall. No one else was there.

He took a deep breath. Another. He didn’t care. He didn’t fucking care.

The sound of the locker room door.

Ilya squeezed the back of his neck.

“Ilya?”

He flinched at Shane’s voice. Not the first time, not the last. “What?” he rasped.

“It’s half an hour till the end of practice,” Shane said. “But I didn’t know if you’d—if you wanted to stay. I can drive you home, or Harris can if you… if you’re upset with me.”

Fury tasted like ash. “And why would I be upset with you, Shane?” he asked, voice low.

“I—I honestly don’t know,” Shane admitted. “But you are. I know you don’t want to be on IR, but—”

“I have played through bruised ribs, and pneumonia, and two different broken ankles,” Ilya snapped. “And you and Terry think I should be on IR because what, I space out at one moment in a fucking practice?”

Shane frowned at him. “I only know about one ankle.”

“That is not the point right now.”

“No, you’re right, the point is that if you spaced out like that during a game—”

“I wouldn’t space out like that during a game, because it’s a fucking game, it is different, that’s what I’m—since when in hockey do we say what if and not just fucking play me?”

Shane chewed on his lip.

“None of this would be a problem if we didn’t up my meds.” Ilya wanted to curl his lip as he said it, but Shane didn’t like the utter disdain Ilya felt toward his own medication. “But no, Ilya is too fucked up. Let’s see if we can fuck him up more. Let’s see if you still like me when I can’t play the thing that links us, because I’m too fucked to handle it. You didn’t like me losing, and now you want me out?”

Shane frowned. He hadn’t been able to follow all that, then. Good.

Ilya scrubbed a hand across his forehead.

He shouldn’t have said any of that. He’d been a dick and he’d done it in Russian and that wasn’t going to hide him much longer and he didn’t want it to, wanted to be held accountable.

He was so tired. He was suddenly so, so tired.

He looked at Shane again, who was opening his mouth. Ilya cut him off. “Can we not have this conversation while I am naked?”

“Oh,” Shane said, eyes widening, blush going across his face like he hadn’t even realized Ilya was still in the shower. “Yeah, of course.”

Ilya grabbed his towel. “And I can drive myself home.”

“No,” Shane said. Ilya was going to choke in the noose of his concern. “Terry—”

“I don’t fucking care what Terry thinks!” Ilya exploded. “For FUCK’S sake, can I not be trusted to do anything anymore?” He wished he was still in his gear, so he could punch the wall and not break his hand. He stalked back toward his clothes. “Go back to practice,” he snapped at Shane. “I will get a fucking Uber or something.”

“Ilya—”

“I don’t,” Ilya said, “want to talk. I do not want to argue, I do not want to do any of this right now, I am so fucking angry and when I yell, it reminds me of—” He shook his head, unwilling to say it, unwilling to put it out there. He hitched in a breath instead, jaw locked.

Shane looked at him. Then he said, quiet, “Will you text me when you’re home safely?”

Ilya had once been able to ghost through Boston, driving around and doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, accountable to no one but his coach and his captain, and then only his coach. Svetlana had had his location, but she only checked it when they were supposed to be meeting up and he was late. Cliff had had his location too, but only so that when they were out at bars and clubs and Ilya slipped away, Cliff would know not to wait for him.

Ilya couldn’t quite put himself in Shane’s shoes now, because he was pretty sure that if he did, he’d want to shoot himself. Of course Shane wanted confirmation that Ilya wasn’t dead somewhere.

“Yes,” Ilya said, clipped.

“Okay,” Shane said, and went back to practice.

Ilya stood there dripping for another minute. Then he dried off and changed back into his normal clothes. He did pull his glove back on and punch the wall as hard as he could, once. It predictably made his hand ache.

Then he took the keys from Shane’s bag and went to find the car. He flung his bag in the back, flung himself in the passenger seat, and then slid down as far as he could go without being intensely uncomfortable. He jabbed his sunglasses on and pulled his hat low.

He texted Shane. i’m waiting in the car. do not rush. i’m fine.

Then he exited the thread with Shane and pulled up Bood’s number. Bood, who had a little smiley face next to his contact. Bood, who Ilya had snapped at for no reason.

Ilya wiped at his nose, tried to blink away the blurriness. Sorry for being a huge dick was not going to cut it. Sorry for yelling at you in front of everyone was better, but didn’t settle the remorse crawling around in Ilya’s hands. I never should have been made captain. It should have been you. It was accurate, but it would end up with Bood trying to tell Ilya he was wrong, and comforting him, and that was not what this was about.

Ilya put his seat back as far as it would go and put his feet against the glovebox. Just to brace himself against something. Just to make himself a little smaller. His breathing was going uneven and tight, in a way it had been doing a lot lately, and—

He almost texted Galina. They are taking me off my line, they are putting me on IR, they are telling me I can’t do this but it’s the only thing I have ever been able to do. He deleted all of it. He shoved his phone in his pocket.

By the time Shane opened his door to get in, the tears had dried. They’d been slow, no crazy meltdown, just slow and unstoppable. Eventually, they’d stopped anyway. Ilya was sure the evidence was all over his face. His head ached. His eyes still stung. He had an elbow against the car door, one hand over his eyes.

“Oh,” Shane said softly. “Okay. In the back.”

Ilya glanced up, dull.

“Get in the back.”

“Hiding me away?”

“No. Come on, please?”

Ilya got out, then got into the backseat. He was glad he’d put his bag in the far back.

Shane joined him, then pulled the door closed.

“You public indecency kink is getting—”

“Don’t do that,” Shane said. He pulled Ilya to him. “Come here.”

Ilya squeezed his eyes shut. Wrapped up in Shane’s arms, he realized he was shaking. “We could do this at home,” he whispered.

“I didn’t want to wait.”

Ilya pressed his forehead to Shane’s shoulder, his nose to his collarbone. Then he was holding Shane tightly, his fingers probably pressing bruises into Shane’s skin, literally marking him in pain, but he couldn’t stop and Shane just kept pressing kisses onto Ilya’s head, his temple then his ear then his hair. “I’m sorry,” Ilya whispered. “I’ve been asshole. All week.”

“Yeah,” Shane said, and Ilya was relieved that Shane didn’t deny it. “This dose seems like it’s hitting you harder.”

“Don’t make excuses for me,” Ilya whispered.

“I’m not. You literally just apologized.” Shane was pressing the heel of his hand to Ilya’s spine, smoothing up and down. Ilya managed to relax his grip on Shane a little. “I’m not saying you can go be a dick all the time, but I am allowed to recognize that this is a little bit chemical.”

I don’t deserve you.

They stayed like that, wrapped up in each other, until Ilya’s heartbeat eased back down to normal, until he could let go of Shane without that flash of panic he sometimes got, like if he let go Shane would run. They got back in their seats up front, Shane driving.

“Well,” Ilya said. He would keep coming to practice; he was captain, he wouldn’t just abandon the team because he couldn’t skate. He would see Bood tomorrow. On the other hand, he didn’t want to let it wait, and he wanted his apology to Bood to not be in front of the whole team. He didn’t want to corner Bood into accepting it. He wiped his nose. “Would you drive—” He shook his head. “I can do this myself. Later. You’re probably hungry. And he probably does not want to talk to me right now.”

Shane glanced over at him. “Text him. If he’s good with it, we can go over now. And he’s probably good with it.”

Ilya stared at his phone for a minute. The fog was back, though he couldn’t decide if it was just exhaustion now, his emotional rollercoaster having whipped him too far today. He finally typed out could I come over?

Bood took a few minutes to text back. Ilya was convinced it was because Bood hated him now. Shane pointed out that Bood was probably just driving.

Then the text was of course, man

Ilya nodded to Shane, who put the car in gear.

At Bood’s house, Shane squeezed Ilya’s hand, then disappeared to talk to Cassie and little Milo. Bood motioned Ilya out to the patio. Good. The open air felt nice, the September air a late bloom. Ilya kept his hands in his pockets. Nonthreatening.

Bood glanced at him.

“I’m sorry,” Ilya started. “Really. I should not have yelled at you like that.”

Bood shrugged. “Tempers flare, dude, it wasn’t a big deal. People have said a lot worse to me.”

“That,” Ilya said quietly, “does not make it okay. I should not have lost it at you.”

Bood reached over and knocked his fist against Ilya’s shoulder. “Thanks.” He hesitated. “Hollzy said you’re on IR for a bit.”

Ilya’s jaw clenched. He knew the others had to know, and he knew Shane probably hadn’t said why, but it felt like a betrayal anyway. It wasn’t. It wasn’t. It was the stupid fucking meds, making him unsteady in an minefield.

“It’s not because of the check, is it?” Bood asked anxiously. “I swear, I thought you were gonna move—”

Ilya barked out a laugh, hoped Bood couldn’t hear how much he hated himself in it. “No, no. Not your fault, and I should have moved anyway. I am fine. Well. Not fine, apparently, I—” He’d rolled over several options in his head on the drive here, had considered what he was going to say, but now that it was here, he… well, he hated every option. He took a deliberate breath, forced himself to keep talking. Bood had half the picture anyway, he might as well keep going. “I’m on a higher dose of my meds. Giving me brain fog, and mood swings, and I lost weight again—Terry thinks it isn’t safe for me to be on the ice right now.” He scrubbed a hand across his forehead.

There was a pause, then, “Your antidepressants?”

Ilya swallowed, then nodded. He met Bood’s gaze, and was kind of surprised to find it wasn’t concerned, or pitying, or anything else. Just even.

Bood gestured to the steps leading down to the lawn. “You maybe wanna talk about that?”

Last time, when Ilya had told Bood he was starting meds and that he was hoping it would only make him a better captain, Bood had asked if there was anything else Ilya wanted to say about that. Ilya had politely declined.

“I’m not Terry,” Bood pointed out. “Or Shane. And you said you had a therapist, too, right? Just, you know, maybe it would be good to talk about with just a friend.”

This time, Ilya found himself saying, “No. Well, maybe. Probably yes.”

They sat on the steps, shoulders almost touching. For a minute or two, they were quiet. Bood leaned back, propped himself up on his elbows. Then he said, quietly, “You said it was depression, right?”

Ilya nodded slightly. He dug his thumb into his knuckles, rubbed. “It’s—is more, now, I apparently have many problems.” He huffed a laugh. “But yes. And they upped my medication, and it’s not—it is not going very well.”

“Antidepressants suck sometimes,” Bood said contemplatively. “Long-term, they’re good, but at the beginning? Woof.”

Ilya glanced over at him.

Bood shrugged a shoulder. “I went on them when I was nineteen or twenty. After my dad died. I came off them after a year, I was doing a lot better, but at the beginning I almost quit after three weeks. I felt even worse and I sweat buckets, dude.”

“Don’t even get me started on the sweat,” Ilya groaned. “Shane is always halfway to drowning me with Gatorade.”

Bood snorted.

“I’m sorry about your father,” Ilya said quietly.

“Thanks.” Bood waved a hand. “But he wouldn’t like to be talked about like this. He was a party guy. I’ll tell you stories about him over the grill sometime.”

Ilya smiled slightly. “Did he teach you to grill?”

“Don’t fucking change the subject man, I know you.”

Ilya stuck his tongue out. “I do want to know.”

“You don’t—you don’t have family here, right?”

Everyone knew that. Family events were very nice, and Ilya was glad that families could be appreciated for all the work they’d put into helping people succeed. Family events also outed him as the fucking loser who didn’t have one.

Not anymore, he reminded himself. He’d been tempted to bring Svetlana, once, a long time ago, then decided it would be too weird, and also everyone would hit on her and she’d be too thrilled. And now he had David and Yuna and Shane.

But that wasn’t what Bood was asking.

“No,” Ilya said. He looked out at the lawn again, at the late wildflowers cropping up here and there. “My parents are both dead. And my brother is a shithead. He is still in Russia and I hope he stays there.”

Bood nodded slowly. “That’s gotta be hard,” he said quietly.

Ilya reached down to pick at a little sliver of wood coming up from the step. He didn’t want anyone to step on it. “I used to be happy about it,” he said. “Being here, it was escape, you know? But.” He didn’t know how much of this Bood wanted to hear, but he couldn’t quite seem to stop himself. “My mother died when I was twelve,” he said. “Overdose. Intentional.” He still hadn’t figured out how to say it in a way that felt right. But Bood knew that part already, because of the foundation. “But we all pretended it was an accident. I was told to say it was accident.” Ilya got the sliver free and twisted it between his hands. “I got very good at lying. And I got very good at thinking lying about it was protecting her, because otherwise I didn’t think I could do it. And still, I think, the secret of it was—” He swallowed. “It was very clear that we should be ashamed of her. But also we could not say what we were ashamed of. So we had to bury the shame, too. It made me—” He laughed again, short. “I do not really like to hide.”

“The bullshit that people try to make me ashamed of,” Bood said. “I've never had the option to hide. But I think that meant I had to decide real quick if I was going to agree with them or if I was going to believe my mom instead, when she said that me being Black didn't mean I couldn't play.” He glanced at Ilya. "It fucking sucks that your family made things worse, instead of better."

Ilya nodded. “People think I don’t go back to Russia because of Shane,” Ilya said quietly. “And part of it is that. Maybe I would go back, visit friends there, if I could. But my family—I don’t know if I would have… if I would have survived a lot more of it. I don’t know how many summers left I had in me, to go back, if my father hadn’t died.”

Bood reached over, pressed a hand to Ilya’s shoulder, then pulled back again. Ilya nodded, quick, in thanks.

“Sometimes I think about if the laws are changed,” Ilya said. “About if I could go back. I wonder where I would take Shane, but I still feel sick when I look at flights, because for so long, going back to Moscow meant going home, and I hated it. It was all hiding.”

“Is it really that bad?” Bood asked. “Russia, and gay people, I mean. Or is it one of the western ‘oh they’re so backward over there—’ and it’s actually like, mostly fine.”

Ilya shook his head. “They—” We, his mind wanted to supply, because he was Russian, and it made him nauseated. “Weeks after Hollander and I went to the Olympics,” he said quietly, “Russia took Crimea. And then said there are no queer people there. But there were, the statistics of it before, there—it is big place, there were probably ten thousand, and did they leave? Did they have to lie, still? Did something happen to them?” He shook his head again. “And then in 2017, my country was detaining queer men in Chechnya. Before that probably, too, but—they were detained, and they were tortured, and the government said ‘no we did not do that,’ because ‘there are no gay men in Chechnya.’ Because if they existed, their families would kill them first.”

“Oh,” Bood said. “Oh, fuck.”

“Moscow used to—” Ilya didn’t know if he could finish. Moscow used to. There was so much that Moscow used to. “It was not always like this,” he said. “Growing up, it was not this bad. But now I have to watch the news and know it is only getting worse.”

“Fuck,” Bood repeated.

“Canada does not do everything perfect,” Ilya said, with a tight smile, snapping the little sliver of wood in his hands, “but I am mostly allowed to exist, here.”

“That can’t… help,” Bood said. “The depression thing.”

“No, not really,” Ilya said. “But there is not a lot I can do. I—one of the things I—do you know a safety plan?”

“Uh, in what context?”

Hm. Okay. Ilya tapped the toes of his shoes against the step. “It’s to… guide you away from doing bad things. Like, list of coping mechanisms to do instead. Or people to call. Yes?”

“Gotcha. Are we on there?”

Ilya glanced at him. “What?”

“Us. Me and Cassie, or the Centaurs—if it’s what I think you mean—you know you can call us, right?”

Ilya blinked several times, rapidly. “You are not on the safety plan right now,” he said. “It—I don’t like to mix it with work. But I—thank you.”

“We got you,” Bood said. “Whatever you need.”

Ilya nodded, wiped his face preemptively.

“What were you saying was on the safety plan?”

“Oh. I—I help with an organization for queer Russian people. They do counseling, and asylum work, and advocacy. When I’m sort of sliding, I donate to them or I talk to some of the people, feel like I’m doing something useful. But I have to be careful, because if I—if I do it when I’m really not in a good place, I—I get worse, quite quickly. Because I cannot help them all.”

“Christ, Roz, you make us all look bad.”

Ilya let himself fall back on the deck, squinting up at the sky. “Bood, I am nobody’s role model. Shane wants me to take that off the safety plan entirely, only do it when I feel okay.”

“I’m serious. You’re a model to all of us. Well, Hollander is the model, but you—”

“Ah, are you flirting about my husband, Bood? Have you not heard? I have anger issues. I will hit you.”

“Is that what happened at the camp? No way did you hit someone who flirted with Hollander.”

Ilya sighed. “No. Almost hit a camper’s dad. He called his kid lazy. I—I do not have good track record with the word lazy.” In English or in Russian. Ty, chertov lenivyy rebenok, his father whispered. Lenivyy, his brother snarked, lip curled, as Ilya failed a class because he’d fallen asleep too many times, exhausted from practice.

Bood made a sound of understanding.

“I don’t know,” Ilya said, looking up at the sky again, “how much of me is genetic, and how much of me is how I grew up.”

“Nature versus nurture.”

“Nurture,” Ilya repeated.

Bood caught the tone. “Like, raised.”

“Mm. Yes.”

“None of us do,” Bood said.

“That is true.”

“Could I ask you something?” Bood looked over. “You didn’t want to talk, last time, when you told me about the meds to begin with, but I… that year before you and Hollander came out.”

Ilya knew the question before he asked.

“Was that the depression? I kind of wanted to say something, but we weren’t that close. Deek and I were trying to figure out how to approach you. Cassie told me to just ask, but we… didn’t think you’d like that. But you were so much quieter than you had been, and I get why, now, you weren’t at every party, you were with Hollander a lot, but—but was it just that? Or was it the depression, too?”

Ilya raked a hand through his hair. “I… it has been a long time,” he admitted. “But that was. That was maybe the worst of it.” He snorted. “Well, the worst of it before this summer.”

“Did something happen this summer?”

“No,” Ilya said bluntly. “Which is apparently the problem. I cannot have nice things.” He shook his head, then smirked. “It—Ottawa is too good to me. Which apparently is a real thing, if you are fucked up the way I am.” He sighed. “But you are right. I would probably not have reacted well if you and Dykstra said something to me. I snapped at Shane when he brought it up the first time. I was mean to him, I shouldn’t have been. Like I was mean to you today.” Ilya closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. Really. I do not like that I—that I snapped like that.”

“You’re forgiven,” Bood said. “Seriously. I know you, I know you aren’t normally like that.”

“And you’re okay? I did not—this did not—you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, dude, seriously.”

Ilya nodded slightly.

Bood looked up at the sky again. “Does it help, being out, now?”

Ilya nodded slowly. “Yes. I was not depressed because I’m bisexual, but—but part of it was the hiding, the lying. I wanted to tell you guys for a long, long time, about Shane.” He poked the pieces of wood under the steps, where they wouldn’t be trod on. “But we could not risk it getting out.” He sighed. “But even after we came out, I—some things got better, but my depression is—it is maybe chronic. I don’t want to hide it, but it is very hard to share it, when it is the same thing I was told never to ever share, and I am not proud of it anyway, and—” He took a deep breath. “Anyway.”

“I’m glad,” Bood said, careful, “that you’re willing to tell me. I’m serious, man, I’m really glad that you can do that.”

Ilya looked over at him, met his eyes. He wanted Bood to know he was being serious too. “So am I. You are very… you’re very steady, Bood. You make it easier.”

Bood gave him a lopsided, comforting grin. Then he rapped his fingers against the deck. “Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

Bood blinked. “Really?”

Ilya gave a wan smile. “The meds. The adjusting. Haven’t really wanted anything in two weeks.”

“Bro, that sucks.”

“I know.”

“Well. Do you want to stay for dinner anyway? I’ve got the marinade you like already going on some chicken, but I won’t mind if you don’t eat much.”

Ilya took a deep breath. “You don’t have to do that. I came to apologize, not to take over your dinner.”

“Believe me, I wouldn’t ask if I thought you would ruin the sanctity of mealtime. I’m just saying. You two can stay for dinner if you want. Milo loves seeing you, if you’re up to it. And we can… talk about any of this more, or we can talk about when you and Hollander are gonna give Milo a friend, or—”

“Oh, are you campaigning now? You are joining war on the side of Hayden Pike, you know this?”

“I didn’t know it was a war.”

“It isn’t,” Ilya admitted. “Everyone is mostly on the same side.”

Bood sat up. “Wait, are you saying—”

“Not soon,” Ilya said. “I have to figure out my fucking head first. But not—not far far away, I think. Maybe. Hopefully.”

“Oh, you’re gonna be a great fuckin’ dad,” Bood said, slapping Ilya on the back. “Now you have to stay for dinner. I’m gonna harass Hollander until he tells me the plan to get you pregnant.”

“To get me pregnant?”

“You’re telling me you wouldn’t, if you could?”

Ilya hadn’t really thought about it, but, well, fuck. Probably he would—

Then he remembered, the thing he’d told himself the day of his father’s dementia diagnosis. He’d downed half a bottle of vodka and thought about his parents and his cokehead brother and forbid himself one future. He’d scheduled a vasectomy the day he got back to Boston. “No,” Ilya said. “No, my blood ends with me. Not enough good to pass on to weigh out the bad.”

Bood made a face, almost argumentative, but almost sad, too. “Well, I can’t make that choice for you,” he said quietly. “But I wouldn’t say that. You’ve got a fucking lot of good.”

Ilya looked away.

“But come on,” Bood said. Ilya knew Shane hadn’t had specific plans for dinner, and that Shane did really like the recipe that Bood thought was Ilya’s favorite, mostly because Ilya always ended up getting thirds, because Shane fucking ate all of his off his plate. He was being bullied into staying, after being a dick, and he didn’t deserve this. But Bood seemed so happy to do it. He followed Bood back inside. “Time to interrogate Hollzy anyway. You want me to take the adoption or fostering route, or just ask him baby names until he tells me?”

“Oh, we are naming our baby Roger Crowell. Did I not mention?”

why bood and not troy? bc honestly I do not care about troy and also I think bood is criminally underutilized! he seems so cool and chill. more zane boodram content irl pls rachel. i also think that troy's response to ilya's depression would be... idk, different. YES i know he could empathize with ilya and being in a dark place and the #parental trauma, but idk, I wanted another someone outwardly happy, who Ilya wouldn't necessarily immediately peg as someone who would understand, to still be like, hey. ur okay.

OKAAY was just going through the timeline again for a diff fic and I did not realize bood was draft 5 years after ilya and shane, implying he is 5 years younger and not roughly the same age. whoops. Probably would have written this differently if I had ever put that together. Oh well
Also: maybe another bonus/deleted scene upcoming? I still cant figure out how I want to do yuna and david so it'll be a bit longer of a wait, but. It will maybe exist

Bonus/deleted scene two: Ilya tells Yuna that he's seeing a therapist

So I love ilya’s relationship with Shane’s parents. I did manage to get that scene with David in there, and it made sense (in my heart) to have Yuna be involved in that first panic attack at the foundation, but after that I couldn’t really figure out a timely way to get Yuna her own scene where Ilya was like. Fully conscious lmao. Also I forgot. BUT it did kind of keep niggling at me, esp bc we do get that full David-oriented chapter, so here we are.

That being said... turns out there might be two bonus scenes for Yuna. Scene one: flashback, to when he first told her that he has depression, and actually, fuck it: it’s gonna be Yuna POV.

Yuna was surprised when Ilya texted to ask if he could come by after practice. It wasn’t like it was a shock to see him, they didn’t live far, but normally these days it was as a group of four. David was at work, and the text didn’t say anything about Shane, despite the fact that they both would have had practice that day.

But Of course! was her answer, because. Well. Of course.

He’d shown up right at the expected time, knocking politely on the door before letting himself in carefully. “It’s me,” he called down the hall.

“Come right in, hon,” Yuna called back, quite a bit louder. “I’m in the kitchen. Do you want a snack?”

“Ah, no, I’m—did you just make those?” He was standing in his sock feet at the edge of the kitchen, looking at the plate of cookies she was holding out to him.

“Ten minutes ago,” she said. She wiggled the plate a little. “They’re still warm.”

He smiled, but her smile fell a little. He was kind of wan. Hair still damp from the rink shower, and in this weather—“Thank you,” he said, taking a cookie and then grabbing a napkin to hold under it. Something was wrong. He was always a tiny bit awkward in her house, but this seemed like something more. He seemed almost stilted.

“Tea? Lemonade? Water?” Yuna asked, automatic.

Ilya shook his head. “No, no, I’m fine. I just chugged a Gatorade, I’m surprised you can’t hear the slosh.”

She snorted. “Do you want to sit?”

“Would maybe be good,” he said. “Sorry, I don’t—I won’t be here long, I just—”

“Take however long you need,” she said, easy, as they went to the living room. She sat in her chair, and he sat in the same corner of the couch he always did. He put the napkin on his knee and held the cookie carefully over it as he broke it in half, then ate a piece. She tried not to frown. This was not the Ilya she knew. The Ilya she knew would have inhaled the cookie, and she would have been able to get him to accept at least two more. Especially just after practice.

The light was different in here, but—the evidence was mounting. The kid looked pale. Paler than usual, anyway, and considering his palette was normally roses and cream—“Honey, are you okay?”

“What? Yes. Sorry. This cookie is delicious.” He scrubbed a thumb along the inside of his other wrist, then said, “I wanted you to know why we can’t—why I can’t do dinner on Thursday.”

Yuna frowned. “What do you mean? Shane said—”

Ilya nodded once, almost a jerk. “Yes. But that was—not the whole truth. And I feel like you should know anyway.” He flexed his hands, then said, flat, “I have therapy that day.”

“For your shoulder? I didn’t realize it was still bothering you, maybe we should get a second opinion on—”

“No, no. Not PT. I mean—therapy, therapy. For my head.”

There were worse reactions, Yuna was sure, but just staring at him blankly could not rank highly, either.

For a moment, she was conscious of her mouth being open in disbelief. She very specifically closed it. Took a moment to try to collect her thoughts, except that they all seemed to have scattered.

Ilya Rozanov, throwing her for a complete loop once again. Brash and overconfident and a terror on the ice, suddenly dating her son and protective of him and softly reassuring him. Snarky and kind and a menace at backgammon, in therapy.

“For what?” she asked, before she could stop herself.

“Depression,” Ilya said.

“Is this because of the move?” she asked. “Was Boston really that much better than—well. No, I know it was, but still, I didn’t think—”

“No. No, is… chronic. Probably.”

Yuna’s mental train stuttered to a stop again.

In the silence, Ilya met her gaze. His shoulders were back, loose, and there was something casual about the way he leaned back on the couch, like he was nonchalant. Yuna, though, had never once been accused of being stupid. “Is shock, I know,” he said, bored, hiding. “I am so hot and so wealthy and so good at hockey, and—”

“Does Shane know?”

And Ilya flinched. Yuna wanted to smack herself. Was she fucking serious? “Yes,” Ilya said, serious now, like he didn’t want her to think there was anything more important than her son, except that the flaw in his reasoning was that both of them were, now, hers. He leaned forward, lacing his fingers together, his wrists on his knees. “Yes, he knows, he—he was one who saw it first. Or, well, thought it was worth addressing, first. I—” He chewed on his lip, a distinctly un-Ilya habit, and Yuna wondered how much of himself he kept hidden, even now, even years into knowing each other. She wondered how many people had told him to keep secrets. “I am in therapy,” he said again, like reassurance. “Partly it was for him that I started going. I—I’m trying to be better, I know you saw me say ‘in sickness and in health,’ and I am—I am trying very hard to make sure that I—”

“Oh, Ilya,” Yuna said, unable to stop herself. He swallowed. His earnest eyes were still on hers, and she was fucking devastated that she’d known what she did—that his parents were dead, that he didn’t speak to his brother—and she had not done more, made it crystal fucking clear that he had a place here, with them. “I love Shane, you know that, but honey. You deserve to be happy for you, too.”

That was what made him look away.

“Was it—have you been dealing with this alone?” she asked, a part of her mind breaking off to do logistics, like it always did. He was in therapy. He’d been in therapy long enough for a diagnosis. He’d never seemed all that sad when she saw him, but he was, occasionally, distant, or a little bit more irritable, though he always seemed to try to be on his best behavior in her house. But all that meant was that she had no reliable timeline. When had it started? “Is it because of the move to Ottawa? Is Shane being here helping?”

“It does help,” Ilya said quietly. The façade had dropped, and he just looked tired now—fuck, he’d been so tired last year, and reaching into the year before. She’d assumed it was just that he played a taxing sport, and he played a particularly physical style of it, and he was compensating for a terrible team, and that he spent all his free time driving in and out of Montreal. She’d worried for him, but clearly not enough. He’d fallen asleep on her couch so often, when he watched Montreal games here, and she’d woken him because she thought it wasn’t good for him to sleep on the couch, given he was always at some weird fucking angle, but then he always made his excuses and drove himself home. Maybe she should have just let him sleep, argued more for him to stay, made sure he knew he was welcome to rest. “But it—it is not because of the move to Ottawa, it was… it was probably always going to come. For me. My therapist says it is probably partly genetic, and partly… partly my family in other ways.”

“Is there anything I should have done differently?” she asked. She was a little bit spiraling. This didn’t normally happen to her, but she was rarely blindsided, and it was even rarer that it was something she could not change. Ilya. Her kind Ilya. Shane’s secretly, devastatingly gentle husband. Christ, she was near tears. How long had it been going on? She tried to wipe the tears away. “Shane was right, you were alone up here this whole time, I—”

“Of course not,” Ilya said. “No. Yuna, no. And I was not alone. I had you and David, and you—” He swallowed. “You both have meant… very much to me.”

“Oh, my god,” she said, and gave in. She crossed the little space between them and sat next to him on the couch, pulling his hands into hers. “I’m so sorry that I’m crying,” she said, gripping his fingers. “This isn’t about me. I’m just so sorry you were going through that and I didn’t know, sweetheart.”

“I did not want you to,” Ilya said quietly. “I—it was not—I did not think—” His jaw worked, and he took a moment before he decided on how he wanted to say it. “It was not supposed to be for me. For people like me. Therapy,” he clarified. “Like I said. I’m wealthy and I have my perfect husband and I am best hockey player on the planet and—”

“Ongoing debate,” Yuna said, before shutting her mouth. Now was not the fucking time to—

But Ilya was smiling, almost smirking, something real. “Still. No reason for me to—to be like this.”

She squeezed his hands again. “I take it Russia is not very big on mental health.”

“It is not,” Ilya muttered. “And I’m not sure American and Canada are very perfect about it either, in a different way, but neither… neither is hockey.”

Hockey. Christ, of course not. “Has your team been okay about it?” she asked.

“I have only told Bood,” Ilya said, and there was a flicker of something like shame in his mouth. “Because I—I started medication for it, a couple months ago, and I wanted him to know. In case I was… strange.”

“And has that gone okay? I know it can be hard to get the right one on the first try, but—I’m overstepping,” she said. She let go of his hands, then wondered if that was a mistake, then wondered what the fuck she was doing, beside royally fucking this. Was there a course to take, on how to handle your son-in-law’s mental health coming out? God knew she’d fucked his coming out as bi. Where was David when she needed him? Had Ilya not wanted David here for a specific reason? “Honey,” she said. “I’m going to be honest with you. I love you. I want to support you. But I don’t know how. Do you want me to tell David or do you want me to let you do that? Should I be looking into the Player Assistance Program? Should—”

“No,” Ilya said, alarmed. “No, no, that program—is good, and everything, but I do not need them involved right now. I’m fine. I’m—the meds are okay, and I have my therapist, and Terry—the—you know the team doctor—he knows. It is all okay.” He took a deep breath. “You can tell David. I figured you would, you are married, it is okay—I just… I thought maybe you would have questions. Is okay. I just… I thought maybe it would be good, to talk to you first.”

Yuna bit her lip. That was an tactful way to put David is not going to freak out like you are.

He was right, and he was wrong. He was right in that this conversation would have been extremely short, if it was Ilya and David. Ilya: I have depression. David: okay, son. Anything I can do? Ilya: no, thank you. David would give him a hug, maybe a long hug, and they would move on.

He was wrong in that it would stay a short conversation. David would have immediately come home and said Darling, we need a plan. He would have pulled out the rolling whiteboard in the garage that they used to plan vacations and deal with crises, which Shane made fun of and which Shane had bought identically for himself when he moved out. And they would have figured out a way forward, complete with target dates and resource lists and color-coded warning signs.

David was an extremely calm man, but he was also an extremely devoted man.

“You already support me,” Ilya said quietly. “I promise. I don’t—I don’t want you to feel—” He looked at the ceiling, mouth set in a frustrated sideways pout. “I am not telling you to make you feel bad,” he said. “I just—I thought you and David should… know. It is… probably not going away.”

“I’m glad you told me,” Yuna said. “And I’m serious when I say I love you, okay?”

He nodded slightly.

“Now say it back to me.”

He smiled, fond. “I love you, too. And David.”

“No,” she said, waving that away. It was very nice, but it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Ilya frowned. “Tell me that you know that I love you.”

His smile went lopsided, almost fragile. “I do know.”

“And you know you can talk to us about anything?”

He nodded again.

“Good.”

“But,” Ilya said, popping the rest of his cookie in his mouth and getting to his feet, crumpling his napkin, “I should go. Shane will start doing yoga without me if I take too long, and I want to beat him at how long I can hold this hollow back pose thingy.”

“Of course,” Yuna said, standing. “But take some cookies with you.”

Once she’d sent him off, she stood in her kitchen for a little bit.

Then she went and pulled out the whiteboard, and by the time David got home, she had half of it filled with further research topics. She turned to her husband when he walked in and said, “New information.”

“Hit me,” he said, dumping his bag on the couch as he came over to inspect. He frowned as he read Ilya face of gay, Shane face of mental health? comfort levels and tracked across to watch Irina Foundation speech again and then down to topics to Google:

“Ilya,” she said, “has chronic depression. He’s in therapy. And he’s medicated. Shane knows.”

David held out his hand. Yuna handed over his green marker. He rolled his eyes and put the marker in his other hand, then reached for her hand this time, and held it. He tugged her to her and kissed the top of her head. “He told you this?”

“Mhm. And he said I could tell you. I don’t think very many people know.” She reached out, blind, and tapped where she was pretty sure she’d made a list of people who knew: Shane, Ilya, her, now David, Zane Boodram, Terry Wilson, an unnamed therapist.

“On a scale of one to ten,” David started.

“I did not bulldoze him,” Yuna said, and extracted herself from David’s arm. She pointed at the board. “He came over and told me. Unprompted. He wanted to say that he was missing dinner on Thursday for therapy, not just because they were busy.”

“Ah,” David said.

“But David,” she said. “What do we do?”

He glanced over at her. “We tell Shane that we want to support them both, however we can,” he said gently. “And then we wait for Shane to loop us in on whatever he has brewing, because I am sure he has a whole plan.”

True. Yes. Thank god they’d raised a boy who knew how to plan.

“And in the meantime,” David said, circling the things to Google list, “we do this. And we put a hold on this,” circling the Ilya face of gay, Shane face of mental health.

“Yeah,” Yuna said. “That’s fair. Just—Ilya seems so comfortable in being bi, but he was so uncomfortable today, whereas Shane’s seemed a lot more in touch with his feelings lately but is still so—”

“Putting,” David said, erasing it entirely, “a pin in it.”

“Fine.”

Scene two is coming! It'll be back to Ilya POV, and it'll take place after bol'she, more like Bood's chapter

Yuna takes Ilya for ice cream; Ilya shares his PTSD diagnosis

A month after his skating date with Shane, Ilya received an invitation to another date.

This one from Yuna.

It was Saturday morning, and Shane was at a shoot. He’d tried to wiggle the schedule around, hadn’t been able to—but Ilya was okay, or at least better, and Ilya had been trying to get Shane to not be scared to leave Ilya alone anyway. He’d pushed him to go. It was a single day. They wouldn’t even be apart overnight. Ilya could have gone, too, except that he’d thought—and Galina had agreed—that it would maybe be a good idea to have one single day apart. Ilya’s relapse, or breakdown, or whatever, had not exactly helped the anti-codependency agenda.

So Shane was off being sexy, and Ilya was down in the gym, slowly doing yoga and wondering how the fuck Shane could do some of these poses. Hips were not supposed to stretch this far, and Shane could stretch farther. It was insane.

Then the text.

YUNA: how would you feel about an ice cream date today?

Ilya’s bullshit pose felt altogether too sensual to text his mother-in-law during, so he unwound himself with a groan and crawled over to the wall, where he slumped back against it and braced his wrists against his knees. He contemplated his phone. How did he feel about an ice cream date today?

Better than he would have a few weeks ago, that was for sure. He was still twitchy, which meant going out for ice cream was not necessarily going to be as smooth as it once was, but he’d also gotten more than five hours of sleep every night this week. Sometimes even a full eight. He’d kind of been looking forward to a day alone, but Yuna wasn’t hard to be around, not like it sometimes was for her and Shane.

Going out, though, meant people maybe seeing him. Normally, he didn’t mind, he liked making people happy just by existing. To be honest, he kept one of those little Sharpies on his Mercedes keychain.

But depending on the day, it could be… a big crowd. A big to-do. And Ilya was… less good at boundaries, the more tired he was, and interaction with strangers was a little more tiring than it used to be, and—Ilya shook his head. Yuna would be there. She was always clever at devising ways for Shane to get out of what he didn’t want, when he actually admitted he didn’t want something, and Ilya could always use her as an excuse, too, say, oh, we have to go now.

YUNA: And no, Shane did not put me up to this.

Then a third. But David did say it was too chilly out for ice cream, so you’re my only hope.

Ilya huffed a laugh, quiet even alone in his own house. He typed back, slowly, before he could overthink. sure. yes. an ice cream date sounds nice. I’m free all day.

A text back, immediate: Perfect! I’ll swing by in an hour?

He added a heart to the message, then got up and went to shower.

This was not their first ice cream date. They had started last year, once Shane and Ilya were out—well, it had happened a couple times before, after they started the Irina Foundation and figured it wasn’t completely unreasonable, but then Shane had found out and got so anxious about people figuring it out that they had stopped for a while. The point was, it turned out Yuna Hollander had a sweet tooth. David liked dessert, would have a scoop of ice cream sometimes, would definitely accept an offered slice of cake or a cookie, but Yuna was the one driving consumption in their house. And David, poor guy, was not really an ice-cream-in-winter guy. He could be tricked into it, if the house was warm enough, but he would never go get an ice cream cone in October.

Ilya would get an ice cream cone at any point in the year, and Yuna had discovered this, and turned it into ice cream dates. He liked them. A lot. They were not normally very long—unless the conversation turned to hockey—and they were extremely low stakes, and, well, they made Ilya feel like Yuna liked him. Just as a person, by himself. He hoped that she felt that too, that he liked her as a person, wasn’t just suffering her presence because he was married to her son. Ice cream gave them something to bond over other than hockey, which would always be more hers and Shane’s, like he had with David and puzzles. If hockey was Shane and Yuna’s, then it was also David and Ilya’s—in that, they liked it, and certainly had opinions, and it was fun, but it was not their only topic of conversation. The best part of hockey was that it had gotten them out, and it had gotten them partners that meant everything.

Of course, Ilya was who he was, and the ice cream dates had not always been uncontroversial.

Yuna was the one who had brought it to Ilya’s attention. She’d sent him the link to the tweet, where a blurry photo of them eating ice cream cones and walking down the street was accompanied by the caption SOMEBODY TELL SHANE HOLLANDER. It had been retweeted by a bunch of morons, who all added holy shit not even six months and Rozanov is cheating and okay well I’d cheat on him for her too and what did anyone expect? dude isn’t gay, it’s all PR for the league. Ilya had been having a good day, so he was amused, at first, and it wasn’t like this was the first time—he’d been spotted alone with Svetlana once, too, two months after the wedding, and people had been all over him then, too. Svetlana had taken the initiative on that one; she’d just posted a video of the tweets on her laptop, then panned the camera to her own face, and laughed at the camera. It was so intensely derisive that Ilya had called her to ask if he should be offended. Sasha had called Ilya, nearly in tears because he was laughing so hard at Sveta’s video, and asked if Ilya would recover.

This, though, with Yuna, he’d been amused, and then embarrassed. Not that anyone would think he was with Yuna, she was a beautiful woman, and intelligent, and so kind—but embarrassed for Yuna, that she had to get dragged down into the whirlpool of his reputation. So he’d been in the process of writing a long apology text when he got a second one from her, after the link.

YUNA: I think we should do a prank with this

Ilya had been caught off guard. Yuna was fun, sure, and savvy, but he’d never done a prank with her. He didn’t know anyone in Shane’s family knew how to prank. Maybe this was the prank.

Ilya had texted back, what kind of prank?

Which was how they had ended up walking into the house, where David and Shane were debating the merits of carrots versus beets in a roast, hand in hand. Shane had raised his eyebrows, and then Ilya had looked over at David to find him with an identical expression, and Ilya had been unable to keep his giggly smile from turning into a wide smirk as he proclaimed, “Yuna and I are running away together.”

David and Shane had just stared at them. Yuna slid her phone across the countertop, where the original tweet lay. “Oh my god,” Shane muttered. David snorted.

“What?” Yuna asked, letting go of Ilya’s hand. She propped her hands on her hips and mock-glared at David. “You don’t think I could be a cougar?”

“Mm,” David said. “I think the younger crowd probably wants you, sure, but I don’t know if you have the bite.”

Yuna had gasped, then growled, “I’ll show you bite,” at which point Shane said “JESUS,” and dragged Ilya out to the backyard instead of sticking around to witness anything else.

The rumor hadn’t needed to be addressed; it had fixed itself. The original poster had quote-tweeted themselves to announce oh my god you dumb fucks, that’s shane hollander’s MOM. NO I do not think rozanov is cheating on his husband with his MOTHER IN LAW. They were just eating ice cream. it was cute.

Ilya checked the weather now. The week had been on and off, a lingering summer warmth undercut by early fall winds, battling back and forth. Today seemed like it was heading for cold. Probably why David had declined. Ilya dressed, then found a nondescript sweatshirt to tug on, and Dykstra’s FISH FEAR ME ballcap gift to wear backward, and his sunglasses. He whispered an apology to Anya and told her he would bring her back a little doggy cup, because if Ilya was recognizable to begin with, he was doubly when he brought Anya into the city. The price he paid for a beautiful, sweet, perfect dog. She almost always came on ice cream dates; he just didn’t think he had the capacity for it right now. He’d make it up to her.

Soon enough, Yuna was there. Ilya got in, smiled, kissed her cheek. They made small talk as they drove to their favorite ice cream shop, kind of out of the way and tucked down a side street. Ilya really didn’t know how it managed to stay open as long into the winter it did.

By the time they’d gotten their ice cream, more sun had peeked out of the clouds and they sat at one of the little metal tables outside. Yuna licked her soft serve as Ilya bit into his moose tracks. “I don’t know how you do that,” she said, laughing. “Doesn’t it hurt your teeth?”

He gave a big smile. “Perks of some being fake.”

Her eyes widened, like she’d forgotten that was a fairly stereotypical facet of hockey life. “Oh my god, I didn’t even think of that. How many?”

He shrugged. “Three. People think it is more, but it’s not even from fights. Was a high stick incident when I was sixteen. Though. I guess he was also angry at me for earlier, so. Normally people are breaking my nose again, not knocking my teeth out.” He pouted. “I don’t know why everyone is always punching me, I do nothing to deserve it.”

Yuna snorted. “Sure.”

“David had his hockey career, yes? Did he get in fights?”

“Not many,” Yuna said. “One or two. He was quite the chirper, though, actually, when he wanted to be.”

“Ah, I don’t believe it.”

“Oh, come on, you saw him on the ice last winter.”

Ilya laughed slightly. “Mm. You’re right, I forgot about that.” Ilya had been delighted, actually, to find out that if David had skates on, he became something of a demon. He’d said, offhand, that it wasn’t surprising Ilya couldn’t score against Shane, considering he couldn’t even tie his laces with proper knots, and Ilya had been so surprised that he’d actually looked down at his skates, wondering what could possibly be wrong with them. David had swiped the puck away from him, and Shane had gotten the pass, and they’d scored. Absolute insanity. Yuna had cracked up.

Ilya’s little trip down memory lane meant there was a pause in the conversation. He glanced back up, still smiling faintly, to find Yuna watching him over her ice cream. He popped the last of his into his mouth, trying to avoid whatever she wanted to say.

“I just wanted to say,” Yuna started delicately, and it would be easier if she held a bag of bricks over Ilya’s head, “that I—I see how much better you’re doing lately. You know Shane doesn’t tell us anything if he can help it, he wants to give you as much privacy as you want. But I wanted to tell you that I see it.” She ate the last bite of her cone.

“Must have looked pretty bad, if this is a significant improvement,” Ilya said before he could stop it. Then he remembered that he’d fully panicked in front of her, had probably caused her a significant amount of legal stress for the Foundation. “I—sorry. For—that you had to see, I mean, that whole thing at the Foundation, I—”

“What? Oh, no, honey, no, don’t apologize. I wanted to talk to you about that earlier, back when it happened, but—” She fidgeted with her ice cream napkin a little, shredding along a fold. “Well, Shane was very… mindful of your time,” she said tactfully. “I told him that I was thinking of bringing you out to lunch or something, but he didn’t think you had the energy for it. That’s not a critique, either, alright?” She sighed. “I’m bungling this. What I’m trying to say is, I wanted to talk to you about that since it happened, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you, either.”

“If there’s any—legal—”

“No,” she said, shutting that down. “Nothing came of it, I’ve been keeping an eye on everything and on DeVries specifically, but he still has Ashton signed up for next year and everything, I think we’ll be fine. I wanted to talk to you because I wanted to make sure you were okay. Shane had his first panic attack when he was eleven, and it was scary to be on the other side of it, so I can’t imagine how scary it is on the inside.”

“Eleven,” Ilya said, glancing over. “That is… young, yes?”

“Oh, I don’t know how early they normally go,” Yuna said. “I only know Shane. And it was on the ice, so it was double scary, I couldn’t tell if he was physically hurt, he could barely talk to us—”

“What happened?” Ilya asked, irrationally worried. Like some specter of a panic attack from twenty years ago would rise up and take Shane again.

Yuna was the one to glance away this time. “It—some kid was being racist. Carter Binley. His parents were those outwardly accepting kind of people who ‘only had issues with the wrong kind of immigrants.’” She sketched quotes in the air. “And Carter was absolutely jealous of Shane’s ice time and how good he was. So when it happened, Shane—god, he was so scared that people would think he didn’t deserve to be there, that his ice time was just some quota thing. That was what he panicked about.” She chewed on her lip. “I don’t know if he even remembers it. It wasn’t the only time he heard racist shit, I know that, but I remember it.” She sighed again. “He scared me. I worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle them, the panic attacks, or—or any of it. And I didn’t want him to lose hockey over it. He loves it so much.”

“I’m sorry,” Ilya offered, running a thumb over his knuckles. “That anyone would say bullshit like that to him.”

“Your kids will have to deal with it, too,” Yuna said absently, verbally kicking Ilya in the chest. “Not just the Asian thing, but talk about a nepo baby. So just be aware, that that—” She’d looked back at him, and Ilya couldn’t have said for the life of him what his face was doing just then. Yuna frowned slightly, then her eyes went wide. “Oh, God,” she said. “Sorry, just completely jumping the gun there, in like five different ways—”

“No, no,” Ilya said, smiling a little. “It’s nice.”

Yuna shook her head, embarrassed. “Anyway,” she said.

“Anyway,” Ilya murmured.

“I just wanted you to know I see you getting better,” Yuna said. “I see you getting faster on the ice again, and you’re easing back on—on the walls, and I see your real smile more. That’s all. I know there was that hiccup, with the meds, and I just—I’m glad that things seem to be looking up for you, hon.”

“The meds,” Ilya said quietly. “Yes.” He took a deep breath. “I told you about the—the depression.”

She nodded.

“It….” He sighed. “It is more complicated now. I have a new diagnosis.”

“If you want to talk, you absolutely can, and I will listen,” Yuna said. “But just, before you get further—you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. Okay? I didn’t bring you for ice cream to corner you into anything.”

“I know. I—partly, I want to say it for Shane,” he said. “So he does not have to talk around it, with you. And with David. But partly, maybe, I should—try to practice, talking about it.”

“Okay,” Yuna said, and waited.

“I… have not talked about my family a lot,” he said. “I know you know about my mother. At least, the darkest parts of her, I told about it for the Foundation, but I—there is that. And I know Shane hasn’t talked about my father or my brother, and it’s not just because he wants to protect my privacy, I have also not told him a lot. But they—I mean, my father is dead, yes, and my brother is not, but they—police, both of them, and they didn’t like me, much. My brother is made terrible, when he is scared, and I think he is scared a lot.” Ilya looked down at his napkin, where he was worrying it the same way Yuna had. “My therapist says I have been scared a lot,” he said quietly. “And I just kind of… ignored it. Is why I had meltdown this year. I—I felt scared, by how safe I am here. You, and David, and Shane, and the team, all—I was safe, for real, for first time maybe. I am safe.”

Yuna made an aborted motion, and Ilya went tense, which he hoped to fuck she hadn’t seen. Luckily, she was too busy saying, “Oh, sweetheart,” and maybe she really hadn’t noticed. The motion was—he was pretty sure that motion had been her wanting to put her hand on his arm, and maybe Shane had mentioned—or David, considering how jumpy he’d been around him—that Ilya wasn’t quite as good with casual touch as he’d been before. He was getting better, of course, the locker room helped. But still.

“All that to say,” Ilya said, “the—my therapist says it is PTSD. C-PTSD, to be… specific.”

Yuna nodded slowly. “How is that different?” she asked. “I mean, I know the basics, but I mean for you. Does this new diagnosis change how you deal with things?”

Ilya traced the tip of his shoe along the pavement under them, dancing his heel back and forth. “Going forward, I don’t think it is—too different,” he said slowly. “I am jumpier. And kind of… more…” He gestured to his face, and Yuna nodded. Crybaby didn’t have to be a word he said out loud. “But most of it, is just how I have felt anyway, just with a new name. Maybe I’m a little bit more aware of things, now that I know what it is. And therapy is a little bit different. Galina wants me to try this EMDR therapy thing soon.”

“Oh,” Yuna said in surprise. “I’ve heard of that, it’s supposed to be very good.”

Ilya nodded. “I will probably not be… cured, exactly,” he said quietly. “I’m supposed to manage my expectations—there is a good chance that the depression is genetic, so will still have to be managed, and the EMDR maybe works best about specific events, not just… my whole childhood. I don’t know. It is a process. And I will do it, maybe next summer, when it is easier to have a schedule.”

“I’m sure Shane’s pissed about that,” Yuna said dryly.

“Yes, he wants me to hire a therapist to go on the road with us and do it at the set times anyway,” Ilya said. He rolled his eyes. He was not fucking doing that. “I am managing. And I’m better now, I think. I can certainly handle rest of the season, and get another Cup with him, and then fuck off to have lasers in my eyes or whatever.”

Yuna smirked at that. “I’m not sure about lasers, but okay.”

Ilya shrugged. Whatever got him there.

Yuna hesitated, then said, “That trip you took to Boston. Shane said it was to—to help recenter you. Was the team really—”

“Oh, no, was not the team,” Ilya said. “Though I did stop to see Cliff Marlow, before I came back. No, I went—yes, to recenter, sort of, but—I saw my friends from Russia, Svetlana and Sasha.”

“I imagine it’s easier talking about home in Russian.”

“Here is home,” Ilya said. “But it is easier to talk about my life in Moscow, yes, in Russian.”

Yuna hesitated again. “If not—if not to recenter.”

“Then for what?” Ilya raised his eyebrows. Yuna nodded. Ilya dragged a fingertip along the table. He’d been working a lot on this with Galina. It was maybe hard to say to Shane’s mother, though.

He could just not say it.

But also. Other than Ilya, who knew Shane best?

“Shane,” Ilya said quietly. Yuna blinked, surprised. “I was… I was trying to keep him safe. Put him on a pedestal—and obviously, you know he is perfect, I don’t have to tell you twice—”

“He is absolutely not,” Yuna said. “I’ve seen his cooking.”

“No, no, he has gotten better—”

“And have you seen the shed at the cottage? He likes to be so neat and yet.”

“Okay, yes, the shed is… nightmare,” Ilya said, laughing a little. It was maybe Shane’s greatest shame, that mess of a shed. He laced his fingers together, fidgeted a little. “But—I—I wanted to keep him clean.”

“Clean,” Yuna repeated.

“I don’t want to be the worst thing to happen to him,” Ilya said. His voice cracked on worst, and suddenly he wished he had another ice cream cone just for something to occupy his hands with, and he could no longer look at Yuna. He hurried on. “Sveta and Sasha, I can’t be worst thing to happen to them, it’s already—they’ve already been through—I am not an apocalypse. But to Shane—”

“Hang on, hang on,” Yuna said, putting her hands up. “First of all, hon, I love you, you know that, but—don’t you think you’re overstating things a little? The only apocalypse that will happen to Shane is if you two broke up, and we know that’s not happening.”

“Broke up, yes,” Ilya said, and swallowed. “Or if I—if I left. If I was gone.”

Yuna frowned. And then her eyes went huge and dark and she said, soft, “Oh. Oh, sweetheart.”

“I don’t plan to,” Ilya stumbled on. “I never plan to, but I do not know if my mother did, either, or—or how bad it got, for her, and—but—and obviously, things are different, Shane is not—my life is perfect, and hers was so very not, and I—I don’t want to leave him,” he said, almost in a panic, trying to make sure he was understood, that Yuna knew. His voice nearly cracked again when he said, “I don’t want to leave any of this.”

“It scares you,” Yuna said, gentle, “to think about any of it, and think about Shane, at the same time.”

Ilya nodded.

“I imagine that makes it hard to talk to him about it, sometimes.”

Ilya nodded again.

“That’s where your friends come in?”

A third nod. Then, hoarse, “I’m sorry. You did not sign up for this. Was only supposed to be an ice cream date, I—”

“No, don’t apologize, never apologize for this,” Yuna said. “Hey. Hey, it’s alright.” She opened her mouth again, then changed her mind and got to her feet. “Laugh, hon, and then wipe your eyes and come back to the car.”

“There are people around, aren’t there?”

“Yeah, and one of them has a Centaurs hat. They haven’t seen you yet, though. Give them just… alright, they’re inside, come on.”

Ilya swiped a knuckle under his eyes and got to his feet, following Yuna around the corner. They took a longer way back to the car, but then they were safely inside. Ilya slumped low and tipped his hat down, propping an elbow on the door to prop his cheek up with his fist, hiding himself a little more.

It felt a lot like cowardice. It felt a lot like shame. He swallowed hard against the visceral disgust he felt toward himself, and took a slow, deep breath. It was fine. Yuna was judgy, and she didn’t seem to be judging him, so it was okay.

They were a couple minutes into the drive when Yuna said, “That wasn’t a great place to pause the conversation.”

“No, is okay,” Ilya said hurriedly. He wasn’t in any great rush to go back to talking about his suicidal ideation with his mother-in-law. “We hit the main points, I think.”

Yuna threw him a slightly exasperated look, then tapped her fingers on the wheel. “Fine. I’ll let it go. If you let me say two more things.”

Ilya glanced over at her. They were on the main road now, so he felt comfortable sitting up again. “You’re not going to give me a choice on this.”

“No. Ready?”

He nodded.

“Shane,” she said, “has never been afraid to get dirty.”

Ilya tried to argue. “It isn’t just—”

“Nope,” she said. “Never. He’s come home in blood that isn’t his before and blood that was, grinning either way. He’s redone the shoreline at the cottage himself, when erosion makes the dock unsteady, and the muck down there can get disgusting. He’s come home sweaty and he plays a sport full of spitters and Hayden’s kids have gotten spit-up and puke and poop on him for the past—however many years. And he’s come home from roadies exhausted, and I’ve seen him near tears after some of the Foundation events because he knows how much impact you two are having. Honey, he has never been afraid of hard work.”

Ilya opened his mouth, but Yuna beat him.

“He always has a safe place to land,” she said. “And he knows that.” And before Ilya could ask, she said, “Whether that’s you or us—or Hayden, or Rose—he knows where he can go to recover, and then go out and do it again.”

Ilya scrubbed a hand across his face.

“When it’s something he loves,” she said gently, “he likes to do it.”

Ilya swallowed, then nodded.

“The second thing,” she said, and Ilya wanted to say that was all one thing? “Is that I want to make sure you know that David and I—this doesn’t change how we see you—”

“It does, though,” Ilya said, almost too flat. But he hated that. Of course it did. They would not ever see him as unbreakable as they had before. He could not get that back.

“Okay, fine,” Yuna said, surprising him. She glanced over at him as she pulled into his driveway. She parked, then turned to him fully and squeezed his arm. “I didn’t—I see you differently, in that now, I see more of you. But you would have to commit real crimes for David or I see you in a bad light. So unless you’re planning on murder, you will never do anything where we don’t see you and love you.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “You know why we do ice cream dates?”

“To eat ice cream?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes. But also, sweetheart, because I want to give you a chance by yourself. You know I love Shane, but he stops by alone sometimes. And you haven’t, since he moved back to Ottawa. I want to make sure you know that—that we love you by yourself, too. We weren’t just humoring having you around because we were empty nesters and we figured we might as well take a substitute. You’re always welcome, hon, okay?”

Ilya bit his lip against a hot sting in his eyes.

“And honestly,” she said, “I think Shane is the one more likely to commit an actual crime, if he thought it was justified. Especially if he thought it would protect you.”

Ilya pouted, relieved at the chance to say something that wasn’t about his own mental health. “Shane and I are on the same team now, so we have to make new competition, yes? Who can commit bigger crime?”

“Not sure we have to go that far,” Yuna said, smiling.

Ilya got out of the car, then went around to her side. She rolled down her window. He leaned against it. “Now I want you to know something,” he said.

“Alright.”

“I really, really like our ice cream dates,” he confessed. “And I will try to stop by more. You and David.” He swallowed against the lump in his throat. “You both mean very much to me. And not just because I want you to adopt me when I am best hockey player instead of Shane—”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, sure,” Yuna said, laughing.

“—but because you—you are everything I wish my parents could have been. Both of you.”

Yuna stared at him.

“I love my mother,” Ilya said hoarsely, and fuck, he was going to cry again, god dammit. “I do. But she—she was not—she could not always… and I am not saying I see you as a replacement, you are completely different, it’s just—you treat me like—”

And then he had to stumble back, because Yuna was coming out of the car and throwing her arms around him, holding him tightly. He squeezed her back.

“I am so, so lucky to know you,” he whispered.

“I don’t know what I did in a past life to get you,” she said, holding his shoulders as she leaned back. “I could not have dreamed up a better son-in-law if I tried.”

“When Shane and I have kids,” Ilya said, serious, “I am going to model everything on you and David.”

“Not everything, maybe,” Yuna said. “We… weren’t perfect parents.”

“Okay, well, I won’t have to tell our kids that gay people exist, I think they will figure that one out already—”

Yuna rolled her eyes and let go of him, climbing back into her car. “I love you, honey.”

“I love you, too.”

“Oh my god, I almost forgot—do you want to come over for dinner? With Shane out of town, I didn’t know if—”

Ilya shook his head. “Next time,” he said. He noted her worried eyes, which she tried to conceal behind easy confidence. This was what he’d been afraid of it, but it… it didn’t feel suffocating, like it maybe would have before. And she didn’t seem to be taking his refusal badly. “I just—Galina said that I’m supposed to work on being okay alone.” And fuck if that wasn’t an embarrassing sentence. He’d been alone for years, it wasn’t like this was new.

It was different, though. Choosing time alone to recuperate from a long week, alone, on purpose, not because he was hiding or too tired to put on a mask, but because it was a good thing to be able to be alone for twenty hours at a time. Even if Anya was also there.

Fuck, he’d forgotten her pup cup.

“Okay,” Yuna said. “Let us know if you change your mind, alright? Do not ask David for movie recommendations if you’re doing that tonight, though, he’s on some ridiculous bird documentary streak.”

“I will keep that in mind,” Ilya said, smiling.

Yuna started to roll up her window, then Ilya tapped on it again. She raised her eyebrows.

“At least once a month,” he said. “Ice cream. I could get it in the calendar, around games. Maybe Shane could use the time to be alone. Or with David.”

Yuna’s smile was even bigger than his. “Once a month. I can work with that. We really could start that flavor review chart….”

“Leave it to me. Shane will love that I am making a chart.”

Inside, Anya greeted him, happy as anything, unaware that Ilya had forgotten her ice cream. Luckily, he had some in the freezer. He scooped out a bit and gave it to Anya in a bowl on the floor, then scooped out a little spoonful for himself. It didn’t taste as good without a partner in crime, and he hadn’t even finished his dumb yoga that morning, and Shane wasn’t back until late tonight, but he felt lighter anyway.

and that's that! for real this time. I think. never say never and all that, but for now it's over.

on the other hand, i got an idea for a new chapter for one of my other finished fics (~oooo~ who could it be) and also started getting into the weeds of an idea for a fully new fic, another longer one, where Ilya starts meds while still on the raiders. who's ready to put ilya in a new mental saw trap? me

also, as evidenced in the comments of prev chapters: i'm always here to talk characterization, diagnosis, and whatever tf else about these people! i love them

David and Ilya, which also means David and Shane

deeply not what I should be working on, but here i am. as usual, can't stop thinking about David Hollander

CONTINUE to mind the tags: referencing a past suicide attempt, past drug use, alcohol, Ilya's mental health. there's also reference to Yuna's difficult time bringing Shane into the world. all's well that end's well, but as usual in this fic we get dark before we get better.

David’s plans for the day were as followed: puzzle for a while with Ilya in the morning, then go to a dentist appointment in the afternoon, followed by probably grocery shopping. Yuna had some meeting in the morning, so she’d been disappointed she was going to miss hanging out with Ilya—so Ilya had happily agreed to go to the Irina Foundation office with her for the afternoon, to do who-knew-what. Shane was at a shoot in Montreal. David couldn’t have said what he was promoting this time if someone had held a gun to his head. Sometimes he worried he didn’t pay enough attention when Shane and Yuna brought up the various campaigns, but then he would say What’s this shoot for again? and Shane would tell him, exasperated that he had to repeat himself. More than the exasperation though, always more, was something like relief. That that did not matter to his father. That David was interested because it was Shane doing it, not because of the brand.

For now, it was puzzling time. He and Ilya had been considering doing yard work, but it was kind of a shitty day out. Chilly and gray and damp. Inside, they’d agreed, was much better. And there was that new 2000 piecer he’d gotten of a snowy hockey game outside on a lake.

Yuna and Shane were the hockey devotees, but David could own up to it: he did like hockey a little bit more than the average Joe.

They had the news on in the background. Unfortunately, they ended up on a story about how people needed to be more careful about their medications, because there had apparently been a spate of dogs getting into some new antidepressant and needing to get their little stomachs pumped.

“Christ,” David murmured. “That’s a rough day for a dog.”

“Is not so bad,” Ilya said, nonchalant, poking another sky piece into place. He really had a gift for clouds. Any other day, David would have brought it up, and Ilya would have said, again, they are different whites, like snow, you are Canadian, you should see this, and David would have marveled. Today, David’s attention was no longer on the puzzle. “Feel like shit for a bit, but better than the alternative. And the IV is helpful. Though that is for a human,” he mused. “The dog would not know what was happening, which is very upsetting, probably. Could not imagine letting that happen to Anya.” He frowned. “Did it say what brand it was? I should check, make sure it is not mine that is so apparently irresistible to dogs.”

David stared at him.

Ilya slid another cloud piece into place, then seemed to register both that David wasn’t speaking, and what he had just admitted to. He went still.

The polite thing to do would be to gloss over it. To allow Ilya to pretend he had not just told David he’d had to get his stomach pumped. On the other hand. There hadn’t been even a whisper about an incident like that in Ilya’s career. Which meant that either it happened in the summer, when Ilya was back in Russia—which meant it was at least a few years ago—or it happened before he was drafted.

There were youthful mistakes. There were parties gone overboard. David kind of suspected that if it was either of those, Ilya wouldn’t particularly care about sharing details. Would just say something like mm, yes, Cup celebrations when I went back to Moscow were crazy, you would not believe, got a little carried away, and shrug it off. It wasn’t like no hockey player had ever partied too hard before.

But Ilya had gone quiet.

“Ilya,” David said quietly. “When was that?”

“A long time ago,” Ilya said. “Haven’t done it in years.”

David tripped over that, too. He put down the puzzle piece he’d been considering and looked up at Ilya. Mostly, he tried to let the kid come to him. It had worked on Shane, mostly, except for the glaring hole where Ilya himself was. And Ilya seemed to need it too, sometimes, that space to decide for himself what to tell David.

But this was—this was too important. What David suspected was happening was too important to risk Ilya believing David did not care one way or the other.

So he focused. “Ilya,” he said, quiet, firm. “Did it happen more than once?”

Ilya rubbed the back of his neck, looking away. After a minute, he seemed to brace himself, and sat back in his chair, spine very straight. “Twice,” he said quietly.

“When?”

Ilya’s jaw worked. “Once at thirteen,” he said, voice low. “And once at sixteen.”

“Thirteen,” David echoed, unable to stop himself.

“It’s different, in Russia,” Ilya said. “Drinking is—and yes, there is underage drinking here, and I have heard some of the youth hockey horror stories, believe me, but it is different, in Moscow.”

“It was at a party?” David asked.

Ilya nodded once. “At sixteen, yes. My team had won two days before, was still excited about that, my friend Sasha—” He sighed. “We did like, a lot of coke. And then got too fucked up and added vodka and, well, Sveta was extremely pissed at us. Her father made sure we got very, very private doctors. There is rumor about me, in Moscow, and the party scene, but it was all years ago and now they have better rumors about me, ah?”

The coke, well, David could hardly judge. He’d been on a college hockey team in the eighties. He hadn’t exactly been a stranger to snow. David, though, had been a goalie. He knew exactly how to keep his eye on the puck through traffic. “When you were thirteen,” he said. “Was that also a party?”

Ilya swallowed.

David wondered if he was supposed to couch this in something. If he was supposed to say if you don’t want to talk about it or something equally toothless. Maybe he was. He didn’t want to push the kid, exactly, he certainly didn’t want Ilya to clam up or run like Shane had always done when pushed, didn’t want to trigger Ilya’s tendency to turn his face a little away and deflect. But he also kind of needed to know. And Ilya wasn’t pulling back yet.

He kept quiet.

Ilya rubbed his thumb over his knuckles. Then he said, “No.”

“Was anyone around?”

Ilya sniffed. Then, “No.”

David waited.

“It was the week after my birthday,” Ilya said quietly. “Six months after my mother died.” And then Ilya paused too long.

“Ilya,” David said, soft.

“I don’t quite remember,” Ilya said slowly, terribly slowly, like he thought David would interrupt, tell him no, enough, I don’t want to hear this anymore. “You have to—I don’t remember a lot of that night. And I have not thought of this for a long time.” He swallowed, and David saw him shift into it, make the decision to finish the thought. “But I—that time was very bad for me. I think—I think I got home, and I think I got the bottle, and I think I was aiming to finish it.”

“You knew what would happen?”

Ilya nodded slightly.

David let out a breath.

“I did not want to be there anymore,” Ilya said. He was still so spine-straight, hands on the table like a peace-showing. He was a solid guy, big and broad, but sometimes David saw something terribly brittle in him. “Did not want to be anywhere anymore.” He shrugged, suddenly. He was trembling slightly, though he didn’t seem aware of it. He was aiming for casual. “But that did not happen again. Honestly, that was probably as bad as it got, and then I threw myself into hockey for real, and it did not get that bad again for a very long time. I did not let it. Distracted myself, Galina says—ah, fuck. I’m sorry. I should not—I shouldn’t have put this on you. Should have saved it for Galina.”

David knew by now that that was the name of Ilya’s therapist. “No, no,” he said. “I can handle whatever—but does that mean—have you not talked about that with her?”

“No,” Ilya murmured. “Honestly had forgot it happened. That year, the next one—what I remember of it, I don’t really want to. I don’t think of it very much. We have covered some of it, but not all, apparently.” He tilted his head back, closed his eyes. “Fuck. She is going to be annoyed with me.”

“Who—what happened?” David asked. “If it was the first time you got your stomach pumped, who—”

“Alexei,” Ilya said. “My brother,” he added, like David had forgotten. And truthfully, Ilya spoke so rarely about his brother that David was always kind of startled to remember he had one. Much like Ilya’s parents—sometimes it was like David assumed Ilya had just spawned somewhere one day, popped into existence as a cocky, goofy kid with a heart so big it spilled out of his eyes every time he looked at Shane.

It broke David’s heart, sometimes, when he remembered.

“That was maybe the most angry I have ever seen him, in the hospital,” Ilya mused. “He did not speak to me for a week. My father was angry, too, obviously, but that always made him talk more.” He waved a hand, then went back to the puzzle, clearly trying to get back to normal. He seemed to note the way his hand was shaking this time, and squeezed it into a tight fist, then reached for another cloud piece. “You really cannot tell the difference between this white and that white?”

And this time, David let him deflect. For a little while, anyway. David needed to process.

“No,” he said, “I really can’t.”

Ilya tsked. He looked for a good spot to test his piece on. David kept quiet, worked on his own corner.

After a couple minutes, Ilya said, “I will have to tell Shane this.” He dropped his head in his hands.

“He won’t love it,” David admitted. “But yeah. You should probably tell him.”

“He is like you,” Ilya said, which surprised David so much he glanced up from the puzzle. Ilya didn’t lift his head, stayed with his palms to his eyes. He didn’t look stressed so much as weary. David wished he could pull some of it from him. “I told him stupid bullshit about my life—not like, made up, just, the dumb shit I had done. And he was so steady. He was not angry, or freaking out—he was scared, a little, I think, he tried to keep it hidden but I know him, he was a little bit scared—but he was so steady. You gave him that, I think, you and Yuna. Strong base.”

“We tried,” David said faintly.

“I don’t want to keep testing him,” Ilya whispered. “Finding new things wrong with me to tell him, like a game where I just wait to see which thing breaks him.”

“Hey,” David said. “That’s not gonna happen. Okay? He loves you. And this is not going to break him. Like you said, eh? He’s steady. He’ll worry, but he knows you’re okay now. He can handle it. And he started seeing Liam, so he has another place to process if he needs.”

Ilya nodded, then sat up again.

The front door opened. David and Ilya both jumped. “I’m back,” Yuna called, flurrying her way through the main hallway. “I’m just going to go to the bathroom and grab a snack, then we can head over to the office, does that sound okay?”

“Take your time,” Ilya called back. “I am in no rush.”

“Did you eat lunch?” David asked, checking the clock.

“Yeah, I had a salad with Molly from the office, but they skimped on the chicken today.” She vanished upstairs.

“She and Shane,” Ilya said, smiling slightly.

“Cut from the same cloth,” David nodded. “Hard to keep up with them, sometimes.”

“But,” Ilya said hesitantly, “is good, too, yes? You center them.”

“So do you,” David said. “Don’t think I don’t see it. You keep Shane sane. Honestly, he orbits around you.”

Ilya shook his head. “That is backward. He is my center.”

“Twin stars, then,” David said. “Trust me.”

“Ah,” Ilya said. “But I meant literally. He is sometimes my center, and I am his wing, and—”

“You know what?” David asked. “I hope your kids are goalies. Every last one of them.”

“You think that is crazy threat,” Ilya said, pointing at him. “But you know Shane actually does want one of our kids to be a goalie? He wants one to be like you, thinks you’d be proud of that specifically. He’s been drafting plans to encourage ‘goalie behavior’ on that crazy whiteboard of his, I don’t even know what ‘goalie behavior’ means—”

“He has?”

Ilya caught the look on David’s face. “Fuck,” Ilya said. “Maybe that was supposed to be surprise. Well, you have years before any goalie behavior, because these kids do not exist yet probably. So try to forget I said any of this, yes? If anyone can turn this plan into a real thing, it will be Shane, so I do not want to be the one responsible for wrecking this years-long surprise—”

“I never heard it,” David declared. God, his kid was too fucking sweet.

“Never heard what?” Yuna asked, coming back down.

“Shane’s very long plans to solve the goalie crisis,” Ilya sighed. “On our drive to the office, do you have any crazy stories about David’s goalie days? Somehow, this will probably help Shane’s plans.”

“Well, let me think,” Yuna said with a smile. She darted over, kissed David, then said, “See you for dinner, honey?”

“I’ll be here,” he said. “Have fun, you two.”

Yuna was already heading back to the car. Ilya made to follow her.

“Hang on—Ilya—”

He turned back.

David hugged the kid. Made sure he squeezed tight, splayed his hand across Ilya’s shoulder blades, made sure Ilya could feel it. Ilya had been normal, casual, about the hug at first, but at David’s tight hold, he went kind of still. David held on. Then Ilya squeezed back, hesitant. David could have cried with relief.

“Thank you,” Ilya said quietly, when they finally separated.

“I’m glad you told me,” David repeated. “Stay safe, kid, please.”

Ilya gave him a mock shocked look, putting a hand to his heart and everything. “Me? Safe? Always.”

David rolled his eyes, because that was what Ilya was looking for. He let Ilya go. He heard Yuna’s voice again, bright and stern about something and then a laugh, after Ilya’s low voice joined her. He heard her car start, and he turned back to wave them off.

Then he walked back into the living room, sank onto the floor in front of the couch like he rarely did these days, and sobbed the way he’d done the day Shane was born.

It had been a hard birth. David had kept it together, barely. Yuna had been terrified for the little thing she was trying to bring into the world and David had been terrified for her, had felt like the only one who was. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to exist without her, if things went badly. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to console her, if things went badly the other way. She wanted it so badly. And he wanted the little thing, too, he wanted it more than almost anything else, but at the cost of her?

And then Shane had been there, born, and David’s world had tipped on its axis. There had been complications, and blood, and Yuna so fucking pale, and David had been shunted to one side and then out of the room. He had been dizzy with worry, faint with absolute terror.

But he still had Shane in his arms. Tiny Shane, looking up at him with those big dark eyes. Shane was a finicky kid, later, Yuna always complained about the way he wriggled in her grip, but he had always settled in David’s arms. David didn’t know that yet, but he’d later think, hope, pray, that it meant Shane had always known that David loved him with everything he had, would always love him, always.

He walked that hallway with Shane for an eternity. When he was allowed to see Yuna again, he put Shane carefully back into her arms. She kissed his little head, reached exhaustedly for David.

And as soon as she was sleeping again, as soon as they had taken Shane off to the nursery, for whatever fucking reason, David would have held onto that little boy forever if they’d let him—as soon as Yuna was asleep and David was alone, he broke down. He was quiet about it, had always been a quiet man unless he was on the ice, but the tears would not stop, the hoarse ache of his throat would not stop. He’d cried and cried and cried. At first, he thought it was just the aftereffects of the constant terror of the day, the relief of the birth finally arriving, that Shane was there and safe and that Yuna would be okay.

It was only about half an hour into the crying that he realized it was for Shane. That Shane was there, and safe, and he would never be this safe again. That he was in the world now, and things were going to hurt him, and David could shield him from some of it but he would not be able to stop the world from hurting him someday. Someday, David would fail.

Now, here, in his living room, three decades and a little bit later, he couldn’t stop the tears because he could not stop imagining a tiny little boy, born what, a month later? A tiny little boy, wailing just like Shane had, fists in the air, just as helpless, just as wanting, just as perfect.

That little boy, shielded from nothing.

David didn’t exactly remember being thirteen, considering it had been most of a lifetime ago. But he remembered when Shane was thirteen. Shane, all hockey sticks and comments from teachers about eye contact and needs to participate more and needs to pay attention in class. Shane, all laughter in the car after practice. The way every bad game could still be cured with ice cream. The way David had worried, even then, about hockey’s hold on him—but he’d been happy that Shane knew what he wanted, that he’d seemed to have unlimited ambition, and belief in himself. How excited Shane was for the future.

And across the world, another thirteen year old, trying to finish a bottle of vodka alone.

David grabbed his keys.

-----------------

Two and a half hours later, after canceling his dentist appointment and accidentally scaring Yuna a little bit by calling her to ask her to please keep an eye on Ilya that afternoon and to not let him go back home, haha, it was nothing, nothing had happened, he just, uh, well, he wanted Ilya to come back for dinner, would she ask him, he’d said yes of course? excellent, that was excellent—David made it to Hayden Pike’s house.

“David,” Jackie said in surprise, opening the door. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, of course, of course,” he said. “Sorry, Shane is staying here tonight, right?”

“That’s the plan, but he’s not back from the shoot yet. I think he said—” She checked her watch. “Actually, soon, probably. I know he was considering just going back to Ottawa for the night, but they wanted that really early morning bit tomorrow, right? Hayden was complaining about it, he wanted to bring Shane to that new smoothie place. He thinks he’ll love it—oh, there he is now!”

David turned around. Shane was pulling into the driveway. David could see the confusion on his face from here. Jackie left the door open, but did a quick pivot to deal with a mildly concerning sounding crash from inside.

Shane got out of his car, and didn’t have time to say more than “Dad, what—” before David was hugging him.

Shane quieted, just the same as when he was that tiny little thing in David’s hands, stilled and settled. Shane had never been huge on hugging back—that had been more for his mother—but he let his forehead rest on David’s shoulder, like he always had, and David pressed a hand to the back of his head, keeping him to him. Safe. Protected.

Loved more than anything.

“Everything is fine,” David said, his voice cracking. “Don’t worry. I just—I love you. I love you, Shane, you know that?”

“What? Dad, of course I know that. I love you, too. Are you sure everything is fine? Did you just drive here from Ottawa? Is—”

David had neglected to consider that an unannounced, extremely random arrival from David might send Shane into a panic. “I promise,” David said, pulling back. He met Shane’s wide eyes, then squeezed his shoulders. “I just—some of my college buddies were in Montreal, last minute thing. I was gonna grab a drink with them. And you were here, so I figured I’d—come say hi.”

“Okay?” Shane said, still looking bewildered. And David was fucking thankful for it. For that expression, there, on Shane’s face now. That he would simply accept it, that David would come say hi when he saw him all the time, far easier. That he might think it was weird, but ultimately, it was something normal to him, David’s fondness. That David could ask you know I love you? and Shane could be baffled by the question.

“Alright,” David said, and clapped Shane on the shoulder. Shane was still looking at him like he’d beamed there from the moon. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Uh, yeah,” Shane said.

“Great. Tell Jackie I was just stopping by.” He felt a little bad for that, but not enough to stay. David got back in his car, waved, and headed back out. He voice-to-texted Yuna: if anyone asks, Bob and Charlie were in Montreal and asked me to get a drink with them today. When he stopped for gas, there was a text from her: Alright but ??????. He texted back: I’ll explain later. What should we have for dinner? I’ll be back in an hour and a half. Ilya still there?

At that, she called. “David, what is your deal today?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just asking about din—”

“Will you cut the shit? You have been acting odd since I got to the house, and Ilya’s been kind of quiet all afternoon. Did you two get in a fight or something? How could that puzzle—”

“No,” he said, leaning back in his seat. “No, nothing like that. Just—he told me… he told me something that happened when he was young. It was heavy. That’s all. I want him to feel loved.”

“Oh,” Yuna said.

“And it made me think about Shane,” David admitted. “So I drove out to Montreal to see him. I just—Yuna, I had to. I had to make sure he knows we love him, always.”

“David,” she said again, softer. “You probably scared the shit out of him.”

“I definitely did,” David said, laughing a little. He cleared his throat. “But it’s all fine. I told him that college buddies were getting a drink, and that I figured I’d join them. So that’s why I asked you about that. Don’t worry, neither of them are cheating and asking for an alibi.”

“It did cross my mind,” Yuna said.

“Which one would you have pegged that on?”

“Well, that was the thing,” Yuna said. “I really can’t see it being either one of them.”

David smiled. He glanced in the rearview mirror and realized someone was waiting for him to move his car from the gas pump. “I’ve got to start driving again. Hour and a half from home, love. Text me dinner ideas, I’ll pick it up on the way back into town. You said Ilya’s been quiet—okay, though?”

“Yeah. Present and accounted for, just a little quieter than normal. Nothing near last summer.”

“Alright. Ask him about the Canuck dog show—I think it’s coming up, and he usually has a lot of opinions on it. See if that gets him back to normal. Okay. I really do have to go.”

“I’ll see you in a couple hours. And I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said, her voice all warmth.

David turned the car back on, and headed back home.

I just think Ilya breaks David's heart. I just also think that this gives him a lot of feelings about Shane. also, originally, I was going to have this be almost a mirror to Ilya coming to tell Yuna about his diagnosis: I wanted Ilya to come looking for advice from David on how to tell Shane about a past suicide attempt and david got to me like ? me? someone wants advice from me? because i imagine shane normally went to yuna. i absolutely could not figure out a scenario where that actually happened though lmao, so we got this instead. maybe somewhere else I can make ilya ask for advice like that. who knows.

standard 1: critique me and my interpretations if you want! i'm down to talk shop or talk creative choices/differences. but pls don't be mean to any of the cast/crew/creators in my comments. i will only be sad

standard 2: no ai was used here and if ai touches me i'll end it all

edit: where did you all come from, i got like 2k hits in the last 24 hours and idk why