Chapter Text
The first thing he notices is the hand at his wrist, the fingers circling softly but with an increasing urgency that seems to be begging him back to consciousness. That’s the only word he has for it—begging—and he barely has that, what with all the fog in his head. Like his brain has gone soup.
Except, soup is supposed to be comforting, right?
And this is not. It’s objectively not. It’s the opposite of that.
He tries to think of another metaphor, one that can get at the gravity of the heaviness of his head and the ringing in his ears and the dizziness; the confusion like clouds.
Cumulonimbus, he thinks to himself and then he thinks: why the fuck am I thinking about a third grade vocabulary word, right now?
Then maybe it is soup. His brain.
Hot and cloudy. A real mix of things—no, a real mess of things—all at once.
Pokhlebka, he thinks to himself but before he can grab it the word disappears.
Jjigae, he thinks to himself and he’s suddenly wistful for his grandmother’s kimchi stew. Which is a weird thing to be thinking about when your head is this heavy and you don’t know where you are or what day it is or anything really but the hand at your wrist and the soup in your brain, because yes, it’s definitely soup.
He laughs and he thinks it’s just to himself but it must not be, what with the way the hand at his wrist slides down to accommodate a pair of lips. A gentle kiss to the back of the hand and a gentler one to the inside edge of his palm.
“Shane?” a voice asks, and he knows that voice, though he can’t remember ever hearing it quite like this. Not this soft or this scared.
It is decidedly not his mother’s voice, too deep, too heavily accented, but the only person he can imagine being here right now is his mother, so he checks anyway. “Mom?”
“No, milyy. It is me, lyubov moya,” the voice says and Shane doesn’t really know what these words mean but they feel nice. There’s another kiss to his palm and then the gentle nuzzling of a nose from the base of his hand to the top of his thumb and that feels nice too. Familiar.
Shane doesn’t say that though or anything. Just settles back into the soup of his brain and the warmth of the hand encircling his.
“Shane, milyy,” the voice calls, and there’s that word again muddling the broth in the best possible way. “Can you open your eyes?”
“Oh,” Shane says and he sounds surprised, like he forgot he had eyes, like he never even thought about that as a possibility until now. “Maybe,” he says and his voice sounds so distant that Ilya wants to take the hand he’s currently resting at his husband’s wrist and gently slap him with it.
“Shane,” he repeats instead with as much command as he can muster in a moment that has overtaken and out run him as thoroughly as this one has.
“Open your eyes,” he demands and Shane’s eyes flutter open and his head bobs around, like his neck muscles have become jelly and he’s looking for a new anchor, any anchor. Finds one in Ilya who is looking at him with so much care and concern that if Shane wasn’t already boiling, he’d melt.
“Illll-yyyyy-aaaa,” he sing-songs and it’s a mess of vowels the likes of which Ilya hasn’t heard in ten years; he thanks god for small favors. “Ilya. Ilya,” his husband repeats just as dreamily and whatever drugs he’s on, they must be nice.
“You scared us,” Ilya says and his lip trembles, but that’s not what gets Shane’s attention the most. No, what gets his attention is that he doesn’t even try to hide it, which is so unlike him. So unlike this man Shane has known since he was seventeen years old that he starts noticing other things, too. Like the little wrinkles around his eyes that he can’t remember being there before and the tight shirt against his chest that reads ‘Ottawa Centaurs’ for some reason and the chipped black polish on his fingernails and the fact that he just said the word ‘us.’
It’s the word that Shane chooses to focus on.
“Us?” he repeats.
It’s a question but Ilya just replies plainly, “Yes.”
Shane wants to rephrase the question but he can’t think of how to and there are a lot of other questions swirling around the soup in his brain now like: ‘why am I at the hospital’ and ‘why are you here’ and ‘aren’t you supposed to be in Russia’ and ‘they can see us here, aren’t you worried that they can see us here’ but mostly he’s just happy that Ilya is here so instead he asks the most obvious thing he can think of. “Where’s my mom?”
“Ah,” Ilya nods as if acknowledging that this is indeed the most obvious question. “She is at home with Mika.”
“Mika?” Shane repeats and what he’s really asking is ‘who is Mika’ but it’s clear from Ilya’s answer that that is not what he hears.
“Yes,” he says and it sounds like he’s almost ashamed. “We were all at the game and then… anyway, I was so scared. We were all so scared but I admit I maybe didn’t handle it well and someone needed to be with you and someone needed to be with Mishka and well. I couldn’t not be with you, lyubov moya.”
“Mishka?” Shane repeats and what he’s really asking is ‘who is Mishka’ but it’s clear from Ilya’s answer that that is not what he hears.
“Yes,” Ilya says and Shane watches a tear slide down his cheek. “Am bad dad maybe but she is okay. Your mom is there and we will call her later and she will be okay, milyy.”
Shane’s brain swirls: Mishka. Mika. Bad dad. We. Us. Milyy. Lyubov moya. Jjigae. Pokhlebka. Cumulonimbus. “I don’t understand,” he says.
“Don’t understand what?” Ilya asks.
“Anything really,” Shane says simply and then after a beat he asks, “But aren’t you in Russia?”
Concern flashes in Ilya’s eyes. It’s immediate and it’s fierce and if Shane knew what was going on right now he would recognize it as the fear of a man who has not stepped foot in Russia in ten years, but he doesn’t, so instead he says, “I mean, I know you aren’t in Russia… obviously… but aren’t you supposed to be.”
Ilya isn’t sure what to say to this so instead he just shakes his head and swallows back whatever emotion he’s trying to repress. “No, I am supposed to be here.”
“Okay,” Shane agrees, like it’s an easy answer and another tear runs down Ilya’s cheek. Shane reaches out his hand to wipe it away, wincing gently as if there is pain in his ribs—not that he can feel it right now.
“Heyyyyy,” he calls, his hand cupping Ilya’s cheek and his eyes focusing on the thin creases around Ilya’s own that seem to exist if only to accentuate the delicate hazel of them. “It’s okay. I am okay. I am just fuzzy.”
“Yes,” Ilya agrees because Shane indeed seems fuzzy. “I should get the doctor, maybe.”
“No,” Shane protests. “Not yet.”
“Why not, sweetheart?” he asks.
Sweetheart.
Shane’s heart flutters in his chest, “Because then you’ll have to leave.”
“No.” Ilya argues, “I will just be right back with doctor.”
Shane seems to ignore him. “I mean, I know you can’t stay, not really. Hell, I don’t even know how you’re here right now but I don’t want them to make you leave.”
“Lyubov moya, no one will make me leave. I am not leaving. I will bring the doctor and then I will stay. We will all stay.”
“No, that’s not. I mean maybe that’s how it works in Russia,” Shane muses and it’s really a question because, do they not have privacy in Russia? “But you can’t here. They won’t let you here.”
“They will let me. I promise they will let me, sweetheart. Just, okay?” Ilya says and his voice gets increasingly frantic with each word like he’s suddenly realized something is very wrong but he isn’t exactly sure what. And then he is crying, like really crying. The tears running down his cheeks faster than Shane’s thumb can catch them. He tries anyway.
“Okay,” he agrees and it should scare him, the idea of Ilya staying when no one is supposed to know about them, when this is supposed to be his sweetest secret, but for whatever reason it doesn’t. Not right now. “Just one more minute please.”
Ilya nods into Shane’s palm. “Da,” he whispers. “Okay.”
“Besides,” Shane teases and he sounds so dreamy and ethereal and well, high as a fucking kite. “I wanted to ask you something…”
“Maybe we should wait for doctor,” Ilya says, painfully aware of how ridiculous his accent sounds right now, like the stress of Shane’s accident has turned him into a Russian villain ‘chasing flying squirrel and moose’.
“… I was going to ask you: will you come to my cottage this summer? Don’t go to Russia. Come to my house,” Shane says and he’s so excited he practically sings it.
It’s clear he has more to say but Ilya has already lived whatever day this is for him before, already knows the words waiting to burst out his chest and he doesn’t want to say ‘maybe’ this time. He doesn’t want to wait for Scott Hunter to come out so publicly on the ice and this time he doesn’t have to, so he interrupts. His lips pressing softly to Shane’s cheek.
“Yes, of course,” he says. “The cottage. Of course. It is so private. No one will know. We will have a week, maybe two. Together, okay?”
Shane wants to ask how Ilya knows that he was going to suggest all of that but in the moment he just decides to take it as kismet, as truth, as fact. “Okay,” he breathes, “Yea.” And despite the soup of his brain it really is okay.
“Good,” Ilya says and for the first time since before Shane woke up even, Ilya lets go of his hand. “Now, I am going to go get the doctor. And then I will be right back, I promise.”
“I know,” Shane says and he doesn’t know exactly how he knows this but for whatever reason he does.