Chapter Text
The first crack didn't happen with a crash.
It happened with the soft plastic rattle, barely audible over the hum of the refrigerator, as a bottle of antidepressants fell off Ilya’s nightstand as he bumped into it on the way to the bathroom, rolled across the guest room floor and came to a stop against Shane's bare foot.
Ilya froze in the doorway.
Shane was already crouched down, picking it up before Ilya could cross the room and intercept it. His thumb found the label automatically, the way athletes read scouting reports, quick, efficient, taking in everything.
Shane had obviously known Ilya was on antidepressants, but something was off here.
Three refills. Two of them never picked up. "It's nothing," Ilya said, stepping forward, reaching for it. "I just—you don't need to—"
Shane didn't hand it back. "These are from November, Ilya." His voice was quiet. Careful. The kind of careful that meant he was holding something heavy. "Your prescription says twice a day. Two refills expired. The third one's still active but this is the first and the bottle's half full."
Ilya's stomach dropped. He kept his face still. "I've been managing."
"Managing how?"
"Shane."
"I'm not accusing you of anything." Shane held the bottle up, not demanding, just showing. "I'm asking because I want to understand. I just wanna help you.”
There it was. The thing about Shane that made Ilya want to scream or kiss him or collapse, sometimes both. He never cornered. He never accused. He just left the door open and waited, patient as stone, until he decided whether or not to walk through it.
Ilya didn't walk through it.
"I have been inconsistent with the dosing," he said, and the words came out flat, clinical, like he was reading a report about someone else. "Is not big deal. I'll fix it when I get back home."
"When you get back home." Shane repeated it slowly, like he was testing the weight of each word. "That's three weeks from now. That’s after this break and after 6 more games.”
"I'll be fine."
"You skipped breakfast. You skipped lunch yesterday. You've been shivering since you walked through the door and it's seventy-two degrees in here."
Ilya opened his mouth. Closed it. He hadn't realized Shane was counting. "The nausea is from medication," Ilya said finally. "Or the lack of it. I don't know. It passes. I am fine.”
"And the shivering?"
"Is just temperature issue. Common side effect." He said it like he was reading off a bottle. “Is not dangerous. Galina says so.”
Shane was quiet for a long moment. Then he set the bottle down on the dresser, deliberately, like he was marking territory Ilya couldn't reclaim. "I'm not going to make you talk about this," Shane said. "But I'm not going to pretend I didn't see it, either."
Ilya nodded, once, sharp. That should have been the end of it. It wasn’t.
___________
By noon, the nausea had moved from background noise to a dull, persistent ache that sat behind Ilya's ribs.
Yuna had made miso soup, something light, the kind of thing you made for someone when you suspected they weren't eating but didn't want to say it outright. Ilya managed three spoonfuls before his stomach turned and he had to excuse himself to the bathroom.
He stood over the sink for five minutes, gripping the porcelain, waiting for the wave to pass. His reflection stared back at him, pale and hollow-eyed, hair disheveled in a way that looked less like a stylistic choice and more like a symptom.
You look exhausted.
He splashed cold water on his face. The shock of it helped, briefly. When he came back out, Yuna had cleared his bowl without comment. She was reading something on her phone, legs curled under her on the couch, and she looked up when he entered.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Fine. Just travel catching up." The same lame excuse he’d been giving for two days now.
She nodded. Didn't push. But her eyes lingered a beat longer than they should have.
Ilya sat down in the armchair across from her, pulled his knees up, and pretended to scroll through his own phone. The screen was dark. He didn't unlock it.
____________
The temperature thing got worse in the afternoon.
One moment he was too hot, sweat prickling at the back of his neck, his shirt sticking to his shoulder blades. The next, he was freezing, deep bone-cold that no blanket could touch.
He wrapped himself in the throw from the couch and sat rigidly, trying not to let his teeth chatter.
Shane walked past, saw him, and stopped. "Want me to turn the heat up?"
"No."
"You sure?"
"I'm fine."
Shane looked at him. Didn't move. Ilya's jaw tightened.
"I said I'm fine." He snapped.
"Okay." Shane held up both hands, a small surrender, and kept walking.
Ilya watched him go and felt something twist in his chest. Guilt, maybe. Or frustration. He wasn't sure anymore. They blended together these days, all the sharp edges worn smooth by repetition.
_________________
Night came. Ilya lay in the guest bed, alone, staring at the ceiling, counting the minutes as they stretched into hours.
He’d insisted on sleeping in another room.
Partially because he didn’t want to have to face the conversation that awaited him in the room he shared with shane, also because Shane insisted on not having the fan on while they slept because he was a notoriously light sleeper and it would keep him awake but with Ilya’s temperate deregulation his body was overheated and needed the fan, so this was the compromise.
His body was exhausted. He could feel it in the ache behind his eyes, in the way his limbs felt weighted, in the hollow pull behind his sternum that meant his system was running on empty.
But his brain wouldn't shut up.
The dosage inconsistency looped through his mind on repeat. He should have refilled them. He should have been more careful. He should have hidden the bottle before Shane found it. He should have been better at pretending, because pretending was the only thing keeping the structure of his life intact.
You're falling apart.
No. He wasn't. He was tired. That was all.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. A text from Shane, two rooms away.
‘Still awake?’
Ilya stared at it. His thumbs hovered over the keyboard.
He typed: ‘ Almost asleep.’
He deleted it.
He typed: ‘Yeah.’
He deleted that too.
Finally, he sent: ‘ I’m fine. Long day. Go to sleep.’
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Then: ‘ Okay. Door's open if you need anything. Love you’
Ilya set the phone face-down on the nightstand.
The silence pressed in. The ceiling stayed blank. His heart started beating faster for no reason he could name, a slow crawl into panic that built like pressure behind a dam.
His breath came shorter.
His hands started shaking.
He knew what this was. He'd been here before, in hotel rooms and locker rooms and the back of taxis, alone with his own mind spinning out of control. His brain screaming at him that something was wrong, everything was wrong, he was going to lose the thread entirely and never find it again.
Breathe.
He couldn't.
Breathe.
The panic crested, crested, crested—
And then it ebbed.
Not because he fixed it. Not because he did anything. Just because his body ran out of fuel for it, the same way a fire burns through everything in reach and then gutters out on its own.
Ilya lay there, trembling, sweat cooling on his forehead, and waited for his heartbeat to return to something resembling normal.
When it did, he whispered into the dark:
"It’s just fatigue. I am fine.”
The words hung in the air, thin and unconvincing, like a promise he didn't believe anymore.
He didn't sleep.
He just lay there, eyes open, waiting for morning to find him still intact enough to pretend.