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The self-righteous anger burns itself out within an hour, leaving something cold and hollow in its wake that Ilya is a little afraid to look at it.
He’s no stranger to fights. No stranger to couples fighting, either; he’d gotten enough second-hand experience through his teammates and back home from his brother.
It’s different when it’s him. It’s different when it’s Shane rearing back from Ilya’s words, face going blank. It’s different when it’s Ilya, alone in his – in Shane’s cottage at some lake in the middle of fuckass nowhere, Ontario, the slam of the front door still echoing in his ears.
The silence is bearable while he still has the anger for company. It’s a skittish thing, painful and frightened, clawing at his chest even though it had already made him lash out, making itself larger than life in his chest, so big he can feel is crawling out from between his clenched teeth as he’s prowling the house, until he finds himself in the home gym. And he shouldn’t – shouldn’t resort to exercise with his ribs still unhappy, shouldn’t take out his anger on his battered body by way of machines, but he suddenly knows that the alternative is to throw himself in the lake and swim until he sinks, to the very bottom; that the alternative is stomething equally stupid.
And he may be angry, and melodramatic, and so upset that he’d dig his teeth into the drywall if Shane’s fucking cottage wasn’t made of glass and wood, but he’s not stupid. He can’t afford to even entertain the notion of stupidity, not when he knows so very well how this kind of stupidity ends – with limp hands and black clothes for everyone else, a gaping hole that cannot be filled again.
Ilya may be angry, but he’s well aware he’s already hurt Shane more than enough. He cannot run the risk of making it infinitely worse through yet more stupidity.
So he hits the treadmill, turns the resistance up until it matches the yawning darkness in his chest, and doesn’t think about how he’s stranded here all on his own because Shane has taken the only car out here to god knows where.
(His parents, probably, and isn’t that just wonderful? Ilya knows he isn’t what any of the Hollanders wanted for their son, and the certainty that it is very much warranted, that Ilya is part of the group of people who do not think he’s a good fit for Shane, creeps into the space his waning anger leaves in his chest.)
What the fuck would you know? he’d hissed to Shane, his already-bruised heart smarting from Shane’s earlier words. He can’t even recall them now; somtehing about parents, or maybe rough childhoods, like Yuna and David and Shane himself haven’t painted enough of a picture to know that while Shane was cherished as a child, he didn’t have an easy time by any means.
Ilya knows this. Knows that Shane is lovely and funny and kinda snarky and kind and a fucking great hockey player. Knows that he was still an Asian kid who didn’t fit, whose differences went beyond the colour of his skin and down to his very core, because the first thing Ilya had ever learned about Shane Hollander aside from his name and that he was a great player had been the fact that he sucked at socialising.
That sort of thing left scars.
So did the death of Ilya’s mother.
It still shouldn’t have made Ilya lash out.
But it did, and now Shane is gone, and Ilya is all alone in the too-large cottage as darkness moves in, in reds and oranges at first and then as a suffociating mass that spills through the windows.
By the time the house is fully dark, Ilya is soaked through with sweat and shivering, possibly from the cooling moisture on his skin or his workout or something else entirely. His phone has disappeared somewhere, and he can’t find the energy to drag his sorry ass to the shower so he can put himself back into something resembling a human.
He’ll have to, he knows this. Will have to pull himself together and figure out where Shane went, and how to apologise. He’s never been very good at that, but he can’t give this up at the first hurdle. So he’ll come up with words that will have to fix this, because he doesn’t know what to do if it doesn’t.
Wither away in this too-large, too-fancy house that these bloody Canadians insist is a cottage, maybe, until everyone will be confused at training camp next season about where Ilya Rozanov is, whether he’s skipping out on his team.
“You are a melodramatic little bitch,” Ilya tells himself in English as he sinks down in the space between the couch and the knee-high table, because he hasn’t showered yet. If he’d flop down on the couch like this, all the words in the world would not suffice to make Shane take him back. He laughs, because the thought is making his eyes burn, and he cannot cry. He got himself into this mess, and he can be a man about it… as soon as his chest stops feeling like it will fall apart any second.
Which will be any moment now. It will.
Ilya curls up there on the floor, best as he can, and focuses on breathing. It helps to be in a somewhat enclosed space instead of surrounded by all these windows; it reminds him a little of the wardrobe he used to have in his room that was perfect for hiding in when Alexei was a little shit and told Dad Ilya had gotten another bad grade.
Ilya must drift, because the next thing he knows is the sound of the front door opening, followed by Shane’s voice: “Ilya?”
Shit. Shane is back, and Ilya is no closer to figuring out what to say to him to fix this. He says nothing. There are no words, and any English he usually has has dried on his tongue.
“Ilya? Ilya!” There’s the sound of footsteps – shoes on Shane’s immaculate floors – and Shane’s voice climbs with every repeat of Ilya’s name. It doesn’t make sense.
The overhead lights flare to light suddenly and Ilya squints. Shane is standing next to the light switches, in the clothes he’d been in earlier, still with his shoes on. His face is tense, though it relaxes when he spots Ilya.
“Ilya,” Shane breathes, and then he’s across the room and sinking down next to Ilya, hands on his jaw and lips frantic as he kisses Ilya. Ilya is so dazed by the sudden change in mood that he can barely kiss back.
“Fuck.” Shane pulls back just far enough he can lean their foreheads together, eyes closed. “Fuck. You scared me.”
Oh.
“I came back and the house was dark and… God.”
Oh.
“I wouldn’t.” Ilya’s voice is scratchy from disuse and the tears he’d swallowed. His hands find Shane’s wrists, and he pulls him in so he can press kisses on the pulse points. “I promise, I – I wouldn’t. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Neither did I,” Shane gets out in a rush. “I was being insensitive, and I realise this now, and I should have realised it would be a painful subject.”
“You talked to your mother,” Ilya says drily, because he doesn’t know what else to say. His own mother will always be a painful spot in his life, an emptiness that is mostly numb but sometimes hurts. It’s no reason to hurt the best thing in his life these days.
“My father, actually. Mom isn’t the best with feelings.” Shane smiles, a little uncertain, and Ilya can’t help but pull him in again to kiss him again.
“I am also sorry for scaring you.”
“Don’t be. But – you need a shower.”
At this, Ilya actually does laugh. “Well. I think I need supervision, yes?”
“I know what you’re doing,” Shane tells him, but he climbs to his feet and then pulls Ilya up, and then herds him to the bathroom like he doesn’t want to let Ilya out of his eyesight any time soon.
Ilya is definitely not complaining.