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Shane and Ilya sit in the doctor’s office together, listening intently as the doctor signs her prescription pad.
“One every four to six hours, as needed.” She rips off the slip, and extends her hand towards Shane. Shane blinks at the piece of paper, unable to do anything about it with one hand full and his other arm strapped tightly to his chest in a sling.
Ilya reaches over instead.
“Sorry, ” the doctor laughs sheepishly. “This should last you through the month. Your surgery went well, so I wouldn’t expect you to need any refills. If you think you do, please come back and see me.”
“Thank you, ” Shane says as they both stand, but Ilya’s eyes can’t seem to leave the doctor’s scrawl, tracking what looks like a messy Vicodin scribbled at the top of the page.
Even as they walk towards the pharmacy, Shane notices Ilya won’t stop scowling at the piece of paper. “Hey, ” he asks, nudging Ilya with his free elbow. “Where are you?”
Ilya’s head pops up. “Hm? I am right here. Where else would I be?”
“I don’t know. You seem a little… far away. In here.” Shane taps a finger to his temple.
Ilya smiles at Shane, but his eyes flick towards Shane’s sling before he responds. “I just worry about you. They put your shoulder back together. She said it was”—Ilya makes air quotes with his fingers—“‘very standard repair,’ but now they want to give you this… vee-co-deen?”
“Vicodin, ” Shane corrects with a small laugh. He continues to explain that a smooth surgery doesn’t change the fact that they still had to carve into his shoulder to fix the ligaments Cliff Marleau did Shane the courtesy of tearing.
Ilya doesn’t hear any of it. One word echoes in his ears: Vicodin, Vicodin, Vicodin. He knew those letters seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite place them until he’d heard it out loud.
A decade ago, he’d sat beside his mother in a hospital, not unlike this one. He couldn’t understand much at only twelve years old, but he’d known his mother looked much more beautiful without the bruises on her face. He couldn’t understand why, but he’d known his mother lied to the doctor when she said she’d had a small car accident.
He’d been otherwise intrigued by his mother’s brain scans glowing behind the doctor, and he missed much of what the doctor had to say. The one word that kept coming up, though, was Vicodin.
“Ilya!” Shane waves his good hand in front of his face, a brown bag between his fingers.
Ilya snaps out of his fractured memory. He hadn’t even noticed they’d stopped walking, let alone that Shane had picked up his prescription already. “Sorry! I’m here. Let me take that.” Before Shane can protest, Ilya snatches the little baggie out of Shane’s hand.
***
At home, Ilya helps Shane settle back into the apartment. He kneels to untie Shane’s shoes for him, pulling them off while he clutches the bag tight. When he stands back up, it crinkles in his hand. He helps Shane out of his jacket, careful of the sling, the bag still caught between his fingers. He doesn’t even let go of it when he sits down beside Shane on the couch.
“You gonna hold that all night?” Shane nods towards Ilya’s hand. “Here”—Shane extends his own hand to Ilya—“I’ll put it away.”
Ilya adjusts his grip, eyebrows knitting together in some unnamed thought, instead of just handing them over.
“Is fine. I can do it. You rest.”
As Ilya stands up off the couch, he pauses, tripping over himself. He bends down to kiss Shane’s forehead mechanically, back tense, lips barely skimming Shane’s skin. It doesn’t feel like Ilya, only an absence of.
Shane’s eyes follow him as he walks towards their cabinet. He seems half a step out of time with himself, stopping and starting like he’s running through a checklist only he can see. Shane tries not to read into the way Ilya falters when he opens the cabinet door and finds the shelves of pill bottles staring back at him. Shane notices it, then he doesn’t.
Ilya never really did know what to do with his hands when Shane got hurt, so Shane lets it go. It would probably be weirder if Ilya wasn’t bothered, Shane thinks to himself, and he turns back to the TV.
***
That evening, Shane’s outstretched on the couch, head heavy in Ilya’s lap. He’s tucked his good shoulder against Ilya’s thigh, but the other one throbs with his pulse, a dense ache rolling under his skin.
Shane tries to focus on Ilya’s fingers in his hair instead. It works for a while, until Shane shifts ever so slightly, and lightning strikes through his shoulder.
He hisses through his teeth.
“Shane? What’s wrong?”
“It’s my shoulder.” Shane squeezes his eyes shut, willing the swell to pass quickly, but it sinks deeper into his bones.
Shane feels Ilya sit up slightly before he asks, “Is it hurting?”
Shane snorts softly. “Yeah. Guess I’m due for another.”
“Another? What? No, you’re not. You just took one”—Ilya checks his watch—“an hour ago. The doctor said every four hours. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking my shoulder feels like it’s on fire, ” Shane grumbles, more annoyed by Ilya’s tone than the pain in his shoulder.
Ilya’s breathing goes shallow. All the words he has queued up tumble out at the same time. “It doesn’t work like that! You can’t just take them whenever it hurts more. You need to wait! That’s not how—”
“Ilya.” Shane stares up at him, voice firm. “I was joking. I know what the doctor said.” He adds in a quiet mumble, “I just wish it would stop hurting.”
Ilya exhales, long and careful. “It will, ” he says quietly. “It just needs time.”
He returns his fingers to Shane’s hair, and Shane hums in acknowledgement, shifting back into place. Hockey highlights fill the space between.
Ilya tells himself that they’re good; Shane is resting, and everyone is good. But one nagging thought will not leave him alone: what if I hadn’t been here?
It’s entirely uninvited, unwelcome.
What would Shane have done?
Ilya fills in the holes rather quickly. His gaze drifts away from the TV, past the wall, to the medicine cabinet. The idea of the pill bottle sitting there unattended makes his chest tighten.
He gets up, gentle when he moves Shane’s head, but otherwise fixated on one goal. He vaguely hears Shane asking where he’s going and mutters something back about the bathroom before he closes the door behind him.
The medicine cabinet opens with a light creak. The bottle is right where he left it, upright with the label facing outwards. He reaches in and takes it, the pills sliding around inside.
Rattle.
His hand tightens instinctively, the sound landing deep and wrong in his chest.
Rattle.
The tile is colder under his feet now. The light is brighter, too. He blinks against it, breath catching in his throat.
The bottle is bigger.
No.
His hand is smaller. And it’s shaking.
The pills clatter inside the plastic, echoing down a dark hallway. The bathroom shouldn’t be this long, he thinks. He turns and finds himself facing a heavy door, light streaking through where the door has unlatched itself.
He knows he shouldn’t go inside. He knows it the way children know things without being told, the way the air feels drearier, clinging to him, and dragging his limbs down like lead.
“Mama?” He doesn’t recognize the sound of his own voice.
He knows, suddenly, that whatever’s behind the door won’t answer him.
The bottle slips out of his hand, hitting the bathroom tile with a hard crack. Ilya jerks back as if it bit him.
His back slams into the wall. He barely feels it in his spine because his lungs won’t fill with air despite each shuddering breath he takes. He presses a hand flat to the cool tile. His pulse hammers so loud that it blurs the edges of everything, and Ilya squeezes his eyes shut.
“Ilya?” Shane’s voice. It’s muffled through the door, but it’s him, unmistakeably.
Ilya forces down a breath that scrapes his throat raw.
“I’m—” A cough rips itself out. He swallows, forcing his voice to steady. “I’m fine, ” he manages, but his voice quivers on the last syllable.
Silence.
“You sure?” Shane calls, concern spilling through the cracks around the bathroom door.
Ilya nods before he remembers Shane can’t see him. He presses the heel of his palm into his sternum like he can hold his heart still.
“Yes, ” he says more confidently. “Just dropped something.”
The bottle doesn’t move.
Neither does he. Not until his pulse stops sounding like rattling plastic.
***
He ends up tossing the pill bottle behind a stack of towels, like he can’t stand to touch it for more than a second. It’s good enough, he thinks. Out of sight, out of mind.
Ilya closes the cabinet door, lingering by the sink for a moment to collect himself. He runs cold water and splashes it on his face.
For Shane, he reminds himself. He has to keep it together for Shane.
When he steps back into the living room, Shane hasn’t moved much. He’s half-sunk into the cushions, head tipped back, eyelids drooping, but not asleep yet.
“Took you long enough, ” Shane murmurs, free arm reaching for Ilya.
Ilya takes his hand. “So sorry, solnyshko.”
Shane peaks through hooded lashes at his boyfriend. His face looks tired, but he can see gears churning together through Ilya’s eyes, rusty and grating.
“You okay?” Shane sits up.
“I will be better when I get you into bed.”
“That’s a little ambitious, don’t you think?” Shane chuckles. “I can’t even take my own shirt off right now.”
Ilya’s eyes flicker, something bright and impish bringing him back to life.
“Oh, I would make sure you wouldn’t have to.” Ilya smirks, but all the mischief leaves his eyes as he crouches down.
Shane’s surprised by the restraint in Ilya’s kiss. Ilya’s hands cradle his face, but don’t roam like they usually do. His fingertips barely shift, as if he’s decided movement isn’t worth the risk of hurting Shane.
Shane traces kisses across Ilya’s cheek to his ear where he whispers, “Let’s get ready for bed, yeah?”
Ilya sneaks one more kiss in the crook of Shane’s jaw before he slides his arm around Shane’s waist, helping him stand.
The apartment winds down around them, toothbrushes hanging over the sink, clothes sitting in the hamper, pillow fluffed. Then, they’re side by side in bed.
Ilya keeps his arm loose around Shane’s waist, and Shane drifts into rhythmic breathing rather quickly. Ilya couldn’t be so lucky. Sleep keeps slipping off of him, thoughts snagging on everything and nothing. He could’ve sworn his eyes were closed, but they were open the whole time. It was just too dark to know.
Ilya frowns into the abyss. The ceiling should be above him. This, he knows, but the space seems to stretch on forever, barren and hollow.
He listens for Shane’s breathing, but all he hears is that damning rattling.
His fingers twitch against the mattress, unable to move anything else. The sound shouldn’t carry. It’s barely a noise, but Ilya feels wholly consumed, drowning in shadows that he can’t tell apart. The dark ahead of him cracks open.
Not the darkness. A door, creaking open, light flooding through from behind it.
Ilya wakes all at once. One second, hardly asleep, the next dragged upright by a sharp inhale that burns all the way down his throat.
He doesn’t think. He turns.
Shane is on his side, hair fanning over his forehead.
Ilya leans closer, waiting, watching. He counts: one breath, two breaths, three breaths. But Ilya can’t trust his eyes. His fingers scramble for Shane’s wrist. Just to be sure.
Shane’s pulse beats under his fingertips, alive and unhurried.
Only then does Ilya finally exhale.
Carefully, so he won’t wake Shane, he brushes his hair back from his face. His hand lingers there a second too long, thumb resting near his temple, savoring Shane’s warmth, his movement, his aliveness.
Ilya lies back down, but he doesn’t close his eyes again for a long time.
***
Shane wakes first, wincing before he’s fully conscious. His shoulder throbs in pulsing waves, the kind that ripples deep into the marrow.
Shane waits a moment for the pain to subside, but it only gets worse. He doesn’t waste anymore time before he rolls out of bed, cradling his arm, and walking towards the medicine cabinet.
He blinks at the shelf in front of him. His prescription isn’t there.
Huh.
He checks every label, as if he might earn its appearance with a patience he is quickly running out of.
Still nothing.
He frowns, then glances down. Behind their stack of blue towels, he spots an orange blur.
“Oh.”
Shane feels silly for how annoyed he’d felt, and a little embarrassed at how fast his patience had worn thin.
It all made sense. Ilya must’ve just… missed when he’d gone to put the bottle back last night.
Shane fishes a pill out and swallows it dry. He leaves the bottle on the sinktop.
When Ilya wakes a few hours later, it’s slow. The last scraps of sleep cling around the edges of his thought. Ilya sits up, scrubs a hand over his face, and swings his legs over the bed. He can hear the familiar patter of someone else’s footsteps beyond the bedroom walls.
Shane.
He smiles.
The bathroom light clicks on, but he freezes in the doorway.
The jarring orange bottle sits front and center. Did Ilya not hide it last night? He could’ve sworn—
Forget it. Ilya unscrews the cap as quickly as he can, and he dumps the rest of the pills into his hands. He counts every single one.
One, he concludes. Shane only took one.
Ilya nods to himself. He gathers the pills back into the bottle, and presses the cap back on, screwing it just a tad tighter than it needed to be.
He scans the bathroom. He doesn’t need the prescription to disappear; he just needs it out of reach, where a groggy, impatient hand can’t find it.
This time, he tries under the sink.
***
It’s a week of this Vicodin hooky between Ilya and Shane.
At one point, Shane decides he’ll just try to power through, gnawing through the pain and spacing out doses, just so he wouldn’t have to watch Ilya bristle every four hours, but for all the love he has for Ilya, this pain is a degree too much, too avoidable.
Plus, Shane typically has success reading his boyfriend’s mind, able to pull the pill bottle out of whatever corner Ilya buried it in.
With a sharp swell digging at his shoulder, today, Shane doesn’t have it in him to contort his body to peek into every crevice of their bathroom.
“Ilya!” Shane growls. “Where are they?”
“Where are what?” Ilya calls from the kitchen.
The delay only irritates Shane even more, and he stomps towards the kitchen.
“Ilya, I don’t have time for these games right now. I know you’re going through something, and I’ve tried not to pry, but I’m fucking tired, and my shoulder hurts. Where did you put my Vicodin?”
“Games? I do not play games.” Ilya approaches Shane, but Shane recoils. Ilya flinches, hands curling at his sides. “I just do not want you taking too many.”
“What? You think I can’t count to one? What the hell, Ilya?”
“I know you can count, but you are in pain, and when people are in pain, they do not think straight.”
“Yes! Ilya! I’m in pain, so please go get the Vicodin, so I can not be in pain.”
Ilya watches Shane’s chest huff up and down, his nostrils flaring slightly, but through his anger, Ilya notices the telltale quiver of Shane’s lip. He’s hurt. And Ilya’s doing it to him.
“Ok, ” is all Ilya says before he’s trudging past Shane.
He hands Shane his prescription, 29 minutes too early he notes in his head, but this he keeps to himself.
Shane doesn’t say anything; he just snatches the bottle and washes his pill down with a gulp of water from the sink. Even as Shane haphazardly tosses the pill bottle onto the countertop, he can feel Ilya’s stare burning holes into the back of his neck. He tries to settle onto the couch, but the feeling doesn’t fade; it lingers, prickling between his shoulder blades.
Ilya seems to float just a little closer with every one of Shane’s movements, a flinch, closer, an eye twitch, closer, a shudder, closer, until he’s hovering right beside Shane, wordlessly. His expression is blank in that way that isn’t empty, just… occupied, like his body’s here, and the rest of him is someplace Shane can’t follow. Somehow, it makes Shane feel even smaller on the couch; there isn’t enough air for all three of them, for Shane, for Ilya, and for the part of Ilya that doesn’t stop watching.
“Ilya.”
Ilya’s back straightens. He almost instinctively wants to step closer to Shane, but Shane cuts him off.
“Please. You’re suffocating me. I need some space right now.”
“Space?” Ilya knows what Shane’s asking for, knows that it’s reasonable, but his lungs tighten like they’ve forgotten how to work. Space is what you give people when you trust the world not to take them while you’re gone. Ilya’s learned better.
“I just want to be alone.”
Ilya’s shoulders dip. He nods once, too quickly, already stepping back before he can think better of it.
“Okay,” he says, voice thin. “Okay. I’ll go.” As much as his instinct is to stay, to watch, to protect, when Shane asks, Ilya can never say no. He doesn’t turn his back right away. He waits half a second, like he’s expecting to be stopped. When he isn’t, he leaves.
The crisp winter air hits his face as he steps outside. He inhales hard, like he’s been underwater.
He’s done this before. Not the argument. Not Shane’s voice, tight with pain and frustration. The leaving. He knows this position; it’s imprinted in his bones.
Last time, he hadn’t even known that’s what he was doing. He hadn’t known there was anything to stop. She’d smiled at him that morning. Asked what he wanted for dinner, and sent him out like always.
He hadn’t known a bottle could be a decision, one she made in the quiet of their home.
His jaw tightens. He couldn't stop her. Not then. Not when it mattered. Not when she—
Ilya stops walking.
The thought slams into him so hard it almost feels physical: this isn’t her.
Shane isn’t quiet in that way. Shane doesn’t smile like he’s already somewhere else. Shane yells. Shane snaps. Shane tells him when something hurts.
Shane asked for space. Not silence.
Ilya turns around before he can finish the thought.
This time he does know. This time he sees it happening. This time someone told him they were hurting instead of hiding it behind a smile and a closed door and a bottle on a nightstand. This time, he would help.
His chest aches, but his feet are already moving back toward the building.
He is not making the same mistake twice; he’s not letting absence silence him.
The apartment is dim when Ilya steps inside, late afternoon light thinning across the floor. Shane’s on the couch, or he should be. The outline is right: long frame, arm slung off the cushion, head tipped back. But something about it makes Ilya slow. Shane never lies like that. He sprawls, loose-limbed and restless even when he sleeps, like stillness is something his body refuses to agree to. This looks arranged, almost careful, the way someone might settle if they didn’t plan on moving again.
An orange bottle rests near his hand.
Ilya stops breathing.
The air smells faintly of Russian vodka and cigarettes, creeping under the familiar scent of their apartment, and the note of it slips somewhere deep and old before he can stop it. The light feels wrong too; it’s too flat, too gray, like the sun’s been filtered through curtains that aren’t there. He takes a step closer, shoes quiet against the floor, and the stillness on the couch doesn’t change. The hand hanging over the edge looks smaller than it should. Paler. The fingers don’t twitch, don’t react.
The room tilts, not spinning but sinking, like the floor is rising to meet him until all he can see is the body on the cushions and the bottle near its hand and the terrible wait press in around them.
His throat closes.
“Mama.”
His hands already reach, searching, like if he can get there fast enough, he can catch her before she slips away forever. Her skin is warm, but his palms won’t stop shaking long enough to tell. He presses his fingers to her cheek, her throat, her wrist, chasing a pulse that won’t hold still beneath his touch.
“Mama, hey.” He pats her cheek a couple of times, hoping to draw her out of a stupor. “Hey, you fell asleep,” he says, breath tripping over itself. “It’s dinner time. You said we were having pelmeni.”
He remembers the empty bottle. He wipes at his eyes with the back of his wrist and smears the room instead.
“Mama, where did they all go?” he asks, voice cracking.
He grips her shoulders and shakes, not hard, just enough to coax. “Please. Don’t—don’t do this again. I came back this time. I’ll stay, okay? I won’t leave. I won’t go anywhere. Just wake up.”
There’s a shift beneath his hands, a slight shiver, a groan that doesn’t belong to his memory.
Shane blinks once, twice, and the outline of his face sharpens beneath the dim light.
“I… Ilya?” The voice is groggy, unfamiliar, and not hers.
The word “Mama” dies on Ilya’s lips in a faltering murmur. His knees buckle slightly. The memory doesn’t vanish; it just collapses into the edges of the room.
“You—you took them all. I—” He picks up the pill bottle, but it’s heavy in his hand, lid screwed on, white pills still clattering around inside.
Shane rubs at his eyes, eyebrows scrunching in confusion. “Ilya… what the fuck? I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s—”
Shane doesn’t finish his question when he hears the low Russian mumbles spilling out fast and broken, the way they only ever come out when fear drags Ilya some place younger. Every word Ilya’s been saying, every motion, was rehearsed for someone else, from a memory he’s buried for too long.
Shane reaches for Ilya’s cheek. “Hey, Ilya, slow down.” Shane tries to draw Ilya’s gaze up to his face. “Look at me, Ilya.”
Ilya fights Shane’s grasp, muttering to himself. He doesn’t know what to do with the pills, so he drops them, but his hands continue to tremble. Shane has no idea what Ilya’s reliving, only that his boyfriend is unraveling.
“Baby, you’re scaring me,” Shane whispers, kneeling beside Ilya to meet him at eye level. He takes one of Ilya’s trembling hands into his own. Only then does Ilya seem to notice Shane in front of him, finally looking at him, not through him, drawn back to Shane by the raw concern of a voice he trusts. He’s still shaking, but at least he’s aware of the smell of the apartment, of Shane, of now.
The room stills while the memory’s edges fold away. Ilya exhales raggedly and finally lets himself sink slightly against Shane, one hand still clutched in his, as his forehead drops onto Shane’s good shoulder.
“I didn’t know if you would wake up, ” Ilya chokes out.
“I’m awake now. I’m fine, Ilya.”
Ilya wades into the moment before he speaks again, meekly. “You just looked so much like her.”
Shane freezes. The words echo in his mind, scanning everything he’s seen the past few days—the hovering, the constant hiding and counting of pills, the understated panic driving Ilya’s every move.
Her. Shane’s stomach twists. Shane remembers the story Ilya had told him once, long ago, by a warm campfire. Quiet fragments, his mother, pills, a moment when Ilya had been too late.
“It was never about me, was it?” Shane tries softly.
Ilya’s shoulders start to bounce under muted hiccups. Shane pretends not to notice tears dropping onto his thighs.
“If I am wrong one more time, I don’t know if I can come back from it.”
“You were never wrong the first time, Ilya, you were a child.”
“But she was my mom, Shane. I should’ve known.”
Shane feels the vastness of Ilya’s grief pressing down on him, and he realizes there is no phrase, no clever line, that could ever make this right. His mind scrambles, hands gripping Ilya’s arms as if he could somehow transfer strength through skin, and he comes up empty. All he has is the barest truth he can reach for: “There’s… there’s nothing you could’ve done.”
Ilya sits with Shane’s words for a moment. “This means I wasn’t enough, ” he concludes.
“No, Ilya.” Shane tenderly draws Ilya’s face off his shoulder, brushing hair away from his eyes. Shane’s previous hesitation disappears into an anchored resolve. “The love she had for you is real. Look at you. You protect the people who can’t protect themselves because she protected you. You’re gentle when someone is scared because she was gentle with you. You survived the worst thing that could happen to a person, and you didn’t let it make you cruel because she never taught you cruelty.”
Ilya shudders against him. “Still…”
“You both had to learn to live in a house that stopped feeling like home. Don’t you think she’d be proud that you still figured out how to build a new one, with me? That this could be all she wanted for you?”
“If I have it all, then when do I get better?”
“I can’t tell you this feeling ever goes away, but you grieve her because what she gave you is real. People don’t ache like this for something that wasn’t.”
Ilya bunches Shane’s shirt in his fists, biting back a swell of tears.
Shane finishes, “You don’t have to do it by yourself anymore.” When the tears fall down Ilya’s cheek, Shane wipes them away with his thumb, kissing Ilya’s forehead, and drawing him into his chest. They stay there, together, for a while, Shane keeping Ilya close while the silence carries what words cannot.
Shane never thought he’d meet Ilya’s mother, but after that day, he understands that he already has—in every careful touch, every quiet kindness, and every piece of love Ilya ever learned from her.
***
The pill bottle sits on the kitchen counter, bright orange in the morning light, as ordinary as the coffee mug beside it. It isn’t hidden anymore. It hasn’t been for weeks.
Shane twists the cap and taps one into his palm. “10:15, ” he says after glancing at the time.
It isn’t permission or a warning, just a habit now, a small offering.
Ilya glances over from where he’s leaning against the sink, drying his hands on a dish towel. His gaze flicks to the pill, then back to Shane’s face. His shoulders stay loose. No counting. No tightening jaw. Just a quiet nod and a low smile.
Shane swallows it, sets the bottle down where they can both see it, and crosses the kitchen. When he passes, he hooks a finger in Ilya’s waistband, tugging him close. Ilya leans into him automatically, like he always does, forehead brushing Shane’s temple in a brief, absent nuzzle before he pulls Shane into a kiss.
Nothing about it feels fragile anymore.
Trust, Shane has learned, doesn’t always sound like declarations. Sometimes it sounds like a cap clicking shut. Sometimes it looks like a bottle left out in the open. Sometimes it’s just someone saying okay and meaning it.
Across the counter, sunlight warms the plastic label. Neither of them looks at it.