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Shane Hollander knew he knew better, and that was the problem.
He stood at the kitchen island, staring at the fridge and pantry, running through the items he knew he could find inside. There were batches of prepared meals in the fridge. Some were his safe meal — salmon, quinoa, kale. And some were meals his nutritionist told him were safe — vegetarian chili and sweet potatoes, leafy salads with walnuts, taco rice bowls with little containers of cheese and guacamole that he had to use. There were eggs, fruit cups, greek yogurt, and pre-portioned protein shakes. The pantry had protein bars, granola, cashews, and applesauce cups.
Everything “healthy.” Everything therapist- and nutritionist- approved. Everything Ilya-approved. Everything, technically speaking, Shane-approved.
After his first season on the Centaurs and a full year of being married, Ilya had had enough of gently prodding Shane about his “diet.” The bird food jokes were never funny to Ilya in the first place — it was just his way of trying to point out that he wasn’t blind. A week after their one year wedding anniversary, Ilya sat Shane down at the kitchen island, reached out to hold both his hands, looked him dead in the eyes and finally said, “I’m scared, Shane. I’m worried about you.”
Shane’s immediate reaction had been to shake his head and keep his eyes glued to the floor to his right. No, whatever Ilya was about to say, the answer was no, I’m fine, or shut up. Ilya had expected this, and made sure they were sitting face-to-face before he’d said anything. He reached up and put his hand on Shane’s cheek, waiting until Shane leaned into it. When he did, Ilya slid his hand down Shane’s cheek, pausing to trace a few freckles with his thumb for a moment, before gently grabbing his chin. He paused an extra beat, before gently trying to lift Shane’s face toward him.
Shane resisted, refusing to make eye contact. He could feel the tears welling in his eyes and was blinking fast, trying to bat them back inside. It was just him and Ilya. Ilya hadn’t even said what he was scared about. Maybe it had nothing to do with the fact that they were sitting in the kitchen, where Shane had lied about having breakfast, threw out half his lunch when Ilya wasn’t looking, and barely picked at his meal during dinner. This conversation had nothing to do with that. Shane knew he was lying to himself, and he couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with his husband. He stayed mute, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to stop shaking.
Ilya’s hand was still on Shane’s chin. Ilya could see Shane shutting down, and trying to fight it. Every flicker of Shane’s lashes, every shallow breath he took, it all landed like a fist to Ilya’s sternum. He had gone over this scenario with his therapist, Galina, about a hundred times. What he would say, how he would do it, when he would do it. This hadn’t been how he planned it, but he couldn’t just ignore the kind of day Shane had. Shane had gone for a twenty kilometer run, followed by some weights in the home gym, and then took their precious little Anya on a five kilometer walk, four of which Shane had to carry her for. Ilya knew Shane knew that he knew how little Shane had eaten all day. The protein shake Shane was supposed to have had in the morning was shoved to the back of the fridge behind the milk. Ilya heard the trash can lid go down, oh so quietly, after lunch. Ilya had eaten the rest of Shane’s dinner.
Ilya had failed to do this gently, but he had to keep going. He knew he’d never get another chance.
“Shane, моя любовь, please, look at me,” he said, trying to tilt Shane’s chin up again, but Shane resisted. Ilya pulled his hand from Shane’s face, which got him a flicker of a glance, and reached for Shane’s unheld hand. “Look, I know you tell me you don’t want to talk, so we don’t talk. Is fine, is always fine. But Shane, honey, I know what I see. You eat so little. You hide a scale under the backpack in your closet. You stand up and have to steady yourself. And I wonder why you feel so dizzy when you don’t have a concussion. And you don’t tell me, but you don’t have to. I know you want to be healthy, be in good shape, but Shane, you go too far. Come on. You know this, да?”
Shane took a deep breath through his nose. A single tear slipped down his cheek. He had a choice to make here. He could get defensive and deny — pick a fight with Ilya that would make both of them feel worse in the morning.
Or, he could be honest.
But if he was going to be honest, where would he start? Should he tell Ilya about the black hole inside of him that weighed him down? That black holes are vacuums, spaces with such intense gravity nothing could escape, cold and curved and collapsing in on themselves? That Shane has a black hole inside him? That he feels the emptiness like a weight on his tongue, sliding toward the back of his throat? That Shane is the black hole, and he’s going to ruin everything he loves eventually — Ilya included?
Shane tried to satisfy this collapsing energy inside himself. If he could just be good enough — a good hockey player, a good teammate, a good role model, a good philanthropist, a good son, a good husband — maybe he could escape the gravity. But Shane wasn’t even good at collapsing quietly and internally. If Shane had been better at tending to the emptiness, he might not be here, in this moment. Instead it was constantly leaking out of him — a tear down his cheek, a stomach grumble he couldn’t contain, a comment about macros that got him weird looks at team outings, a few too many sharp “I’m not hungry”s to his husband.
If he was honest, it meant he was abandoning the consistency of the coldness inside him. It was familiar and comforting. It was the one, steady thing he’d had when they’d been outed, when everything fell apart in Montreal. Yes, he’d had Ilya, but Ilya was in Ottawa, not Montreal. Ilya wasn’t something Shane could have in secret, on his own, anymore. Ilya was no longer purely synonymous with safety anymore. That had been taken from them.
Shane couldn’t control Ilya’s choice to stay with him. But he could control his diet, his skating, his workouts. Shane didn’t get to decide how he’d come out or when, but he could decide if he deserved to eat that day, and how much. Shane didn’t control how his tenure ended in Montreal or what his teammates thought of him, even after winning two cups together, but he could meticulously plan his day around eating as little as possible. Shane didn’t get to decide when a panic attack struck him down, left him breathless and shaking in strange bathroom stalls around the continent, but he could decide to press his nails into his palms until he bled, to scrape his knuckles on brick walls, to count how many hours he could hold a fast.
If he lied now, he might break Ilya. Shane finally looked up at his husband, his Ilya, who hadn’t moved an inch. Ilya’s blue eyes were scanning over Shane. His breathing was rapid. He quirked his lips to the side a few times, trying to figure out how to keep his face neutral, soft, open. Shane finally caught his shifting eyes. Shane was fucked. He looked back down.
Shane couldn’t lie. If he lied, he knew Ilya would know and be hurt. “My husband should trust me, да?” Ilya had his own struggles with depression, and he had acquiesced to Shane’s gentle, but firm, suggestions at therapy. He had asked Ilya to do the hard thing, and his husband had done it for him. And now it was his turn. Ilya was looking at him expectantly, asking him to do the hard thing.
“It’s a performance diet, Ilya, you know this,” Shane said, barely above a whisper. He kept going before Ilya could do anything other than deeply inhale. “It’s gotten out of hand, for sure, but I’m working on reining it in, really, I am. Today, today wasn’t my best day, and that, that’s okay. It’s, um, the anniversary of my trade to Ottawa being announced, and um, you know I love it here, you know I love nothing more than playing with you. The team feels like family. We get to be a family. But I just, there were a lot of news stories this morning, and social media notifications and I just, my brain was so loud. And the only thing that cuts through the noise is hunger.”
Ilya only exhaled once Shane stopped speaking. His lungs burned the way they only ever did on the ice. He held Shane’s gaze and said, “Shane, I am sorry you feel that way but, this is not normal.”
Shane started crying freely now and hung his head in defeat. “I know,” he whispered. “I know, I know. I know how weird I am, how weird I’ve always been. The past, like, 18 months were just so hard, for you, for me, for us. So much got taken from us, I was just trying to take control of one thing, one thing in my life. I needed to prove that I could handle something on my own. I needed to not burden you with another weird quirk of mine.”
If he’d looked back up at Ilya, Shane would see a horrified, contorted look across Ilya’s face. Eyebrows, lips, and nose, trembling, twitching, struggling to find their place on his face. Ilya had lived the same years as Shane — the same outing, the same kind of trade, the same loss of privacy, the same near plane crash. But Ilya could recognize his year and Shane’s had been different.
The Voyagers had abandoned Shane, whereas Ilya had chosen to walk away from the Bears, even if he fucking hated losing in Ottawa that first year. Ilya had left Russia behind freely, something he knows Shane won’t ever fully understand; Shane blames himself for Ilya “losing” Russia. The internet loved Ilya’s sluttiness — it was part of his charm, they said — and though the outing certainly stained his image, the reaction to him was slightly less intense as the reaction Shane got, and Ilya could tune it out better. The internet hated Shane for being a gay, self-assured, hot Asian-Canadian man who “never let loose,” disgraced the honor of Montreal’s captaincy, while simultaneously having a stick up his ass and slutting himself out to the enemy. And it hurt Shane to be measured by anything other than his hockey skills. Ilya wondered if Shane was white and blue-eyed, if they would be saying the same things.
Ilya knew how much Shane had taken to heart this past year. He knew that on the days he couldn’t get out of bed, Shane kept their lives running. Ilya noticed that whenever he had a bad day or week, Shane never seemed to have one at the same time. Shane was constantly shapeshifting, trying to ease the burden of Ilya’s depression, without sharing the weight of his anxiety. Ilya knew Shane was lying most of the time when he said he was fine, but Ilya didn’t dig. He didn’t want to start a fight. They’d fought enough to last a lifetime, he thought, in regards to their Boxing Day fight. He didn’t want to give Shane a reason to hate him, a reason to leave. Ilya could hardly believe Shane wanted to stay, even after they were married.
But Ilya would take a fight, would even take a divorce, if it meant Shane stopped torturing his body by starving himself. Ilya knew that Shane would be so much healthier without him — that this never would have happened if he had left Shane alone in the locker room shower all this years ago — so the least he could do was help him, at whatever cost. Even if it cost him Shane’s love. He had to push, he had to have this conversation.
And Shane hadn’t lied. Ilya hadn’t prepared himself for what would happen when Shane told the truth, or what the truth could be. He never got that far in his sessions with Galina. So he didn’t say anything. He just sat there with anguish written on his face, and hoped Shane would keep talking.
“Everything that happened this year, it all felt like punishment for not being good enough at hockey, at loving you, at being a good son,” Shane continued, choking on his words through his tears. If he stopped talking, he’d get lockjaw, and there was nothing worse than not being able to speak during a panic attack. “So I just thought, I thought if I could make myself leaner and buffer and a bit better at hockey, I would make my parents proud, I’d make you proud, I’d make Montreal want to keep me, I’d make you want to choose me, even when shit got hard. I could make you believe I really do and will always choose you. And with the diet, I did get leaner and better at hockey, and it was working so well until the video, and then it stopped working, so I just thought it meant I’d have to get more intense.”
“I thought it was a sign that the universe wasn’t punishing me enough — it couldn’t be if you were also suffering — so it was time for me to start punishing myself, demanding more from myself. And, God, Ilya it felt so, so good to punish myself, to run those extra kilometers, to skip meals, to decide what other people were able to witness. The control and the release. It was like edging myself, except it wasn’t pleasure, but relief. The hunger’s been the worst part. I know you noticed it during games toward the end of the season, that I was getting sluggish and slow. But the hunger was so painful, it was the best feeling. One stomach grumble could snap me out of a panic attack. I only ever wanted to feel hungry, when I felt too much or I couldn’t feel anything at all. It worked, it was working, it is working. Don’t make me stop, Ilyusha, please.”
Shane was fully sobbing now, and Ilya was silently crying too. Ilya pulled Shane forward and collapsed him into his chest as he cried. During panic attacks, Ilya would normally whisper “it’s okay”s or “shh”s or other sweet nothings in Russian into Shane’s ear, but Ilya knew his words couldn’t meet the moment. He stroked Shane’s hair, and let Shane grip him like he was holding on for dear life.
Where did they go from here? This was so much worse than Ilya had really understood it to be. He had assumed it was an anxiety thing, maybe like Shane thought he was going to get sick and die if he ate certain foods, and that the list had grown out of hand. Or when he was having a panic attack, that he was nauseous or worried heavy foods would make him throw up. Or that Shane was worried he was losing his edge with age, and that being fit would help.
This was such a complex web. It had started with Shane being concerned with his game and staying fit for hockey. He wanted to take care of himself, and he hadn’t wanted to rely on someone else to help him manage that. Somewhat neutral intentions. But, it wasn’t all neutral, and it never was. Not wanting to burden Ilya? Not neutral. Montreal? His parents? Keeping Ilya’s love? Not neutral.
It dawned on Ilya that he and Shane were the same at their cores. He was horrified by what Shane was saying, but he understood it — he knew he’d felt similarly at times. They shared the same emptiness, it just manifested in different symptoms.
Galina had gotten Ilya to understand, through a year and a half or so of sessions, that a lot of his issues went back to a question of his sense of self-worth — a sense of self-worth that had been decimated, systematically, by his father and brother in the years since his mother had died.
Did he deserve pure, unbridled love from Shane? Did he deserve a supportive team? Did he deserve Yuna and David welcoming him with open arms? Not believing he deserved all the good things in his life made him keep Shane at arm’s length when things were hard, zapped him of his energy to engage with his life, made it hard to look in the mirror and want to give a damn about the body staring back at him.
And here was Shane, questioning if he was good enough to love, good enough to work alongside, good enough to eat. Ilya wasn’t perfect, but he knew Shane would need his own Galina to make him understand that he didn’t have to “deserve” the most basic things, like food, or the good things, like joy. He just got to have them, because he existed, because he loved, and because people loved him. Ilya didn’t necessarily believe it either, but he was coming around to the idea that maybe he didn’t have to “earn” everything good.
They didn’t move for at least an hour. Shane sobbed into Ilya at an awkward angle across the stools, and Ilya absorbed the shockwaves. When enough time had passed, when the wracked sobs turned to softer sniffles, Shane unentangled himself from Ilya, stretching out the stiffness. Shane looked him in the eyes. He tried to talk but he couldn’t open his mouth, it was locked shut. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Massage the muscles. His jaw would come undone at some point.
“мое солнышко,” Ilya started. “Thank you for sharing that. I know it was hard. You are so brave. I can’t make you stop, no. But, I want you to get your own therapist. Galina has been good for me. The beginning was hard, but now, not so bad. You encouraged me to go, and now I am telling you that you need to. No complaints.”
Shane knew Ilya was grateful that his jaw hadn’t fully released itself yet. He was building an argument against Ilya in his head. Shane needed control over his diet, not a therapist. How could Ilya not understand this after all he had just told him? Shane had the upper hand here. He knew Ilya understood what it felt like. He knew Ilya had resisted treatment. If Shane could just have a few more good days in front of Ilya, he’d get Ilya to understand there isn’t a problem that needs treatment here.
“You can’t tell me what you are thinking and then expect me to just be okay with it. You aren’t okay with it when I talk about myself the same way, no? I get treatment, I get medication. I still struggle, but I try. I try for you, and one day I will try for myself. You have to try. You have to try for me, Shane.”
Fuck. Okay, Shane thought, he just had to come up with a new plan. That was fine. He could do that. He looked Ilya in the eyes again. Fuck. No, he couldn’t. There was his husband, the man he loved more than life itself, with concern etched into every nook and cranny of his face. His blue eyes were dark, but not threatening. There was love all over his face. No plan of Shane’s would stand a chance, not with Ilya looking at Shane like that. Not with Ilya knowing the truth.
Shane nodded, small and timid, but clear enough for Ilya to see it.
It was settled. They would rest today. Tomorrow would be a new day. Shane would start looking for a therapist, and they would take it one day at a time.
Shane had been staring at the fridge for over a half hour before he shrugged his shoulders and walked away. He had stopped thinking about the food within the first few minutes anyway. His mind had meandered, but he couldn’t remember where it had gone, just vague curves and bumps of memories — a 20 kilometer run and a fight that never came to pass.
Ilya wasn’t home to help make the decision for him. Not that Shane couldn’t make the decision alone, normally. But today was just one of those days.
Everything felt off the moment he opened his eyes. He couldn’t place his finger on what was wrong, but his chest had felt ever so slightly tight, so subtle that he could mostly forget about it.
He went for his usual off-season morning run, a simple 5 kilometers, just to wake him up and get his body moving, followed by some weights and some yoga to cool down. He drank his smoothie, took Anya out to do her business, and started on breakfast before Ilya had come out of the room. Three eggs and two slices of buttered toast for both of them, a sprinkle of cheese on the eggs because he was feeling wild. Everything was going just right. They went on with their morning, doing a load of laundry, discussing dog-friendly hotels near Banff for a vacation, planning what needed to be done for when the Pike family came to stay in a few weeks, and divvying up the foundation work they had to do now that the camps were over.
The weight on his chest felt tighter with each topic. He brushed it off. He was fine. The day was a good one by all metrics. His nervous system just couldn’t figure it out.
Shane made it until 11 a.m. before the wheels fell off. Ilya went to take Anya to the groomer and run some errands, and the second he closed the door, the cottage shrunk around Shane, his skin felt tighter, and the lasso gently resting around his lungs suddenly pulled taut.
His breathing grew shallow and his peripheral vision started to go white. He pawed at his neck and chest, digging his fingernails into the back of his neck, holding them there. Shane could handle this. Shane knew how to handle this. Shane had coping mechanisms now.
He peeled his nails out of his neck. He sat down with his knees pulled to his chest and hugged himself. The pressure felt nice, calming. Deep breath through the nose, out through the mouth. Five things he could see. Count to 100. Breathing. More breathing. No ice this time because he was alone, but he could think about the cold, think about hockey.
Eventually, Shane’s breathing steadied. He unfolded himself, stretched, and stood back up. But he still felt unsettled, his chest still tight. No matter, things could keep going right. All in all, it had only been 15 minutes. Not bad.
Ilya had made Shane promise to let him know whenever he had a panic attack, and Shane had been pretty good about it over the last year. But this one had been so short, Ilya really didn’t need to hear about it until he’d gotten home. Or at all. There were a few Ilya hadn’t heard about, and while those had normally been accompanied by setbacks in his progress, that had been more towards the beginning. Shane was more in control now, it was fine if he kept this one to himself.
It was settled. Shane was fine and Ilya wasn’t going to be bothered about this. His chest still felt tight, though, so perhaps he could loosen it up with another work out. He would keep it short, just enough to open up his lungs, and he’d ride the bike so he could take care of his emails while he rode. Simple. Good plan. He could handle this. Shane started slow, no resistance, just pedaling loosely while scrolling on his phone. He typed, he pedaled a little faster, he took deep breaths, he repeated. Over the course of an hour, he reviewed all his emails, re-read the draft of his report for the Irina Foundation board meeting in two weeks, played a game of chess, and still, his chest felt like it was only getting tighter.
He threw his phone down, and upped the resistance on the bike, and hammered into the pedals. He rode, upping the resistance, pushing his speed, just like the first night he’d felt sparks with Ilya, until he was drenched in sweat, lungs on fire, legs like jelly. It wasn’t that his chest felt looser, it was that he felt his heart racing instead of tightening. That felt good.
Ilya probably wouldn’t think anything of Shane’s new clothes when he came home. Shane didn’t have a good reason for taking another shower, but it was very Shane-like to just take a second shower at random, to feel like he hadn’t gotten it right the first time and resolve it. Very Shane-like.
Time had escaped Shane, and he missed his 12:30 lunch time by a lot. Ilya’s “so, what did you eat?” text followed by a “hello?” burned a hole through his phone. He needed to go eat something, anything. Ilya would definitely forgive him for skipping a meal in favor of a protein bar, right? He might have to tell Ilya he was feeling nauseous. He’d behave himself at dinner that night.
So he found himself in his kitchen, blankly staring at the fridge and pantry for a half hour, before he shrugged his shoulders and walked away. He’d gotten another “hello?” from Ilya, which he promptly answered with a “hey, wasn’t looking at my phone. protein bar & second smoothie. stomach was feeling weird.” He didn’t look at Ilya’s response. He felt his chest tightening again.
Shane knew he knew better, and that was the problem.
He knew better than to not eat anything and to lie to Ilya and to overexert himself with too many workouts in one day. He knew better than to go into the guest room closet and dig out the scale Ilya didn’t know he’d kept and weigh himself. He knew better than to be upset at the number, because a lot of it really was muscle, and to start scratching himself repeatedly over it.
But he couldn’t help himself.
It was so tempting and so familiar, so he just went for it. Like riding a bike, he’d joke if he could. It felt cold, but good, refreshing. Like if he had held an ice chip during his panic attack, except this was more effective. His mind was racing with all the possibilities. What else could he get away with before Ilya came back?
When Shane had first started treatment, it was intensive and he hated it. He tried pretending he was better immediately, while still skipping meals and purging — a new behavior — when Ilya wasn’t looking. Ilya and Shane’s care team caught on right away. Shane eventually genuinely took to the treatment plan. Shane was going to be good at therapy, if he couldn’t be good enough at anything else, after all.
While it got easier to eat, work out a normal amount, and actually enjoy life, Shane’s brain was lagging behind. It was constantly scanning and assessing situations for what he would have done, back before he’d been caught. And even now, over a year later, even though most days are okay enough, his brain is always silently tracking what could be different. It’s just that Shane knew better.
But today, Shane knew better and didn’t care. He didn’t want to have to report his panic attacks to his husband anymore, especially not the short ones; he wanted Ilya to feel like his husband, not a caretaker. He didn’t want to have to report his lunches anymore. He didn’t want to feel like a burden. He didn’t want to have to follow someone else’s idea of what it took to make a panic attack go away, because they hadn’t worked, not really.
Shane knew better, but Shane knew himself best. This was what Shane needed today.
Taking care of himself the right way was easy at this point, because there was a strict set of rules to follow, and he was good at following rules. It would be easy to get back to it the next day, Shane was confident about this. He was already feeling better. But if Shane was going to have a cheat day, he needed to maximize the catharsis. He didn’t have enough time for an intense work out again or take a third shower today, but he’d stick with the safe meal for dinner, and purge while Ilya was on the dock having a smoke. He’d make sure they would have very intense sex, a third workout for the day. Shane was buzzing with excitement. For one day, he’d take back control of his life and his body. Shane could be good enough for the worst parts of himself.
This plan was working excellently while Ilya was out. Shane had even gotten himself to purge what was left of his breakfast, which wasn’t much, but it felt good to be on his knees for something other than sex. To be heaving and wretching into the toilet, sweating. He let another wave of panic hit him, and he didn’t work his way through the interventions his therapist helped him come up with. The panic attack lasted over an hour, and Shane felt wrung out and raw when it was over. He felt fantastic.
There wasn’t much else he could do physically at the moment, especially since he knew Ilya should be coming home soon, so he plopped himself down on the couch, redownloaded Twitter and started to scroll. He read through DMs and comments left under his posts, lingering over the harshest comments. He searched his name up alone and with Ilya’s and read through the posts. There were plenty of positive ones, but he’d found more than enough homophobic comments to settle in with. There was also a subset of comments focused on how much Shane didn’t deserve Ilya. The comments hurt, stinging his heart, and reigniting a fire within himself. They were right — he wasn’t good enough for Ilya.
In a blink of an eye, the cold crept up through him at full force. It was bone-chilling and it was painful, but it was home. It had never left Shane, it was just at bay. Shane knew this was how it worked — this was how it worked for Ilya, too. But Shane had been really good at keeping it at bay. And now he wasn’t being good at that anymore.
All of the thoughts he’d wound up in neat little spirals and tucked away came undone. Ilya had carried most of the weight for them this past year. Ilya kept track of meal plans and times, kept snacks in his bag, and planned workouts that were good for both of them. He did it all with a smile and a kiss and a promise of really good sex if Shane followed the plans.
Shane was sure that there was more Ilya had done for him without him noticing. Shane was right, but he’d never know the extent of it.
When they’d shown up to training camp, and Shane was just barely at the bulk and weight he needed to be, Ilya had shielded him from Coach Wiebe’s questions. Ilya took care of filing their medical forms, and gave the team doctor a head’s up to go easy on Shane. Ilya took on some of the interviews and media availability Shane normally would have done. When the press asked him about it, Ilya charmed them with a “What, I’m not good enough for you? You miss my sexy husband too much? I know how you feel, I miss him when he gets out of bed in the morning.” and a wink. The team knew better than to ask or push and prod, but Ilya kept them all in check anyway with a secret team meeting and a threatening look in his eye.
Ilya was probably sick of taking care of him, Shane thought. No, Shane knew. Maybe that’s why his errands took all day today, because he just wanted to get out of the house and away from Shane. Maybe he was taking Anya to see new homes back in Ottawa and he was going to come to him in a few days and ask for a divorce, telling him that he’d found a new place and that he couldn’t be with a man who needed constant coddling and gave bad head.
Or maybe, Ilya had actually driven over to his parents’ cottage, and was just hiding out there for a few hours. Maybe they’d had lunch together, and spent several hours talking about every Shane quirk they all hated. Maybe Ilya would divorce him, and win his own parents in the divorce. He couldn’t really fault them for siding with Ilya. Yes, Shane knew that no one was “perfect,” but he was pretty sure Ilya was as close as a person could get. He was in shape without trying, he could eat meals like a normal person, he was good with the kids at the foundation, he was team captain, he was his mother’s favorite son. Sure, Ilya had bad days here and there, but overall, he was who Shane would pick if Shane had to pick between himself and Ilya.
Or perhaps, Ilya had been with Coach Wiebe, trying to help him figure out a mid-season trade to get rid of Shane that they could sit on until November. Ilya was helping Wiebe because he wanted to divorce Shane, and because Ilya and Wiebe had long-discussed how Shane’s performance hadn’t lived up to the expectations they’d had when he’d joined the team. Shane was taking up too much of the salary cap, anyway.
When Shane finally heard Ilya’s keys in the doors, he turned the TV up, hoping he wouldn’t hear his husband’s greeting over the sports channel. He’d been lying on the couch, unmoving, eyes glazed over, mind in its spiral for hours at this point. Shane wasn’t sure he was ready to face Ilya. Shane had never been very good at lying in the past.
Anya wiggled her way out of Ilya’s arms and bounded through the entryway, straight to the living room, hopping up on the couch to lick Shane’s face. Shane had never been more grateful for Anya — she brought a genuine smile to his face, which was good, necessary momentum for the evening. Ilya followed after her once he’d toed off his shoes and deposited the grocery bags in the kitchen.
“Honey, I’m home,” Ilya shouted, doing a poor impersonation of I Love Lucy’s Ricky Ricardo. He flopped onto the couch right on top of Shane, an easy, warm smile on his face. “Gimme kiss, мое солнышко.”
How could Shane ever say no? It started off chaste, just a simple press of lips together, two faint smiles keeping the kiss from deepening. Ilya parted his mouth just slightly enough and Shane kissed and sucked on his lower lip, hoping to see it swollen when they pulled apart. Ilya nudged Shane’s lips apart with his tongue, first just getting a quick swipe, then slowly sliding his tongue into Shane’s fully opened mouth. Shane moaned into Ilya, relaxing into the kiss. This was exactly where he wanted to be. This was exactly where Shane didn’t deserve to be.
Ilya felt Shane freeze under him, and immediately pulled back from the kiss. He scanned his husband’s face waiting for an explanation, or looking for any indication of what could be wrong, but he couldn’t find what he was looking for. Something about the day had been nagging him from that morning, but he couldn’t figure out what was wrong.
“You stop kissing me?” he asked. “Did I forget important anniversary? Our anniversary was a few weeks ago.”
Maximize or honesty? Maximize.
“I’ve been feeling nauseous since lunch, and just got hit with another wave of it,” Shane lied.
He grabbed at his stomach and grimaced to help sell it. Ilya immediately put his hand to Shane’s forehead to check for a fever.
“Oh no baby, I’m sorry,” Ilya said. “No fever, though. Maybe it’s a little bug? Have you thrown up?”
Not yet.
“No, no, I think I just spent a lot of time in front of a screen today,” he said. Shane rose and felt the room spin as he stood upright, wobbling on his way up.
“Shane?,” Ilya asked, cautiously but firmly. Shane only ever got dizzy and wobbled this way when he hadn’t been eating. Ilya hadn’t seen this happen in 10 months. “Shane, did you have a good day?”
He knew what Ilya was really asking. He really needed to collect himself. Get your shit together or you don’t get away with this, Shane thought. Could he blame the nausea?
“Sorry, the nausea really got to me, and my leg had fallen asleep, just a lot at once,” Shane mumbled, walking away.
Ilya eyed Shane suspiciously as he walked away. Something was not right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe Shane was coming down with something? But it was the middle of the summer and the only people they’d seen in person the last two weeks were each other, Yuna, and David. Where would he have gotten it from? Who? Ilya’s depression began rearing its head, telling him all about a secret lover that Shane could have. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. No, that’s not it. Shane would not do that. These are not helpful thoughts. I am worthy of Shane’s love.
Maybe Shane wanted a divorce? Shane would not do that. These are not helpful thoughts. I am worthy of Shane’s love.
Maybe Shane relapsed and is lying to Ilya because he doesn’t trust him? Shane would not do that. These are not helpful thoughts. I am worthy of Shane’s love.
He repeated this game of negative thought paired with the mantras for a few minutes, while he heard Shane clattering around in the kitchen. He decided Shane was just feeling under the weather and stopped spiraling, but he was still unsettled.
When Ilya entered the kitchen, he spotted two plates of salmon, quinoa and kale, with two glasses of water, and a can of coke unopened, next to Ilya’s dish. The serving portions were correct, but Ilya knew this meal meant something was bothering Shane. Clearly, Shane didn’t want to talk about it, but maybe he’d seen something upsetting on the sports channel before Ilya had walked in. If it was his anxiety, Shane would have told Ilya. He knows his husband.
Ilya kept the conversation at dinner light, filling Shane in on the details of his day. The trip to the hardware store to pick up the materials he needed for the honey-do list Shane had for him before the Pikes arrived — re-caulking the tub and fixing the broken planks on the dock. He’d had to go to another store to get the child-proofing locks, and while he was there, he got distracted by the toys and books, so he bought some as welcome gifts for the Pike children, and so that maybe, next time they came, Jackie and Hayden wouldn’t have to pack their whole house. He got interrupted and sat in his car for an hour on a call with Farah because some sports magazine wanted to do a profile on Eastern European athletes in North America who rejected their home countries. And then, of course, Anya had to be pampered. And there was stop by the Hollanders’ house to pick up some extra muffins Yuna had baked after she had accidentally doubled the recipe.
Shane listened to his husband attentively, asking questions and laughing at the right time, a genuine smile creeping in every now and then. Even though Shane felt a storm brewing inside, Ilya was able to pull him out of it for a few brief moments. But all he could hear was Farah and Yuna. They had to have been talking about him, right? Why didn’t Ilya mention how long he’d stopped when he went to his parents’ place?
He finished his plate, the meal sitting incredibly heavy on his stomach. He was going to be sick — maybe he didn’t have to purge if it just happened naturally on its own? He felt his eyes watering as he moved to clear their plates. If Ilya caught his eye, he’d know. Luckily, Ilya looked toward the backyard instead, watching the sun setting over the lake. Ilya was definitely going to go smoke tonight. He got up, grabbed the pack of cigs from the coffee table in the living room, stuffed his feet into his slides, and headed toward the door.
“Babe, you coming with?” Ilya asked. He knew the answer would be no because he was smoking, but he felt unsettled about leaving Shane alone. “I can wait to smoke until you go back inside.”
“No thanks, I’m good,” Shane shouted over the faucet running. “You go enjoy yourself.”
As soon as Ilya disappeared into the twilight and made his way to the edge of the dock, Shane sprinted toward the bathroom. Purging took little effort — maybe he really was sick — but Shane cleared his system out with ease, popped a mint into his mouth, and dashed back to the kitchen. All in all, less than 7 minutes of his time. But his heart was racing. What a rush, pulling a fast one on Ilya. Just like the old days, pressed up against the boards, fighting for the puck, using a cheap and dirty bedroom phrase to win the battle.
Ilya was still out at the edge of the dock, looking out at the water, when he was back in Shane’s view. He knew Ilya would never know that he had gone. But the minty breath might give it away. Shane peeked in the cabinet. A mini-sized Snickers would have to do. But a 10 km in the morning could make up for it.
But Shane wasn’t doing this again tomorrow, was he? Technically speaking, however, he wasn’t fully maxing out his day, and he was just finishing the job up. Okay, fine, that was allowed.
Shane went to the bedroom and sat on his bed, pulling “The Boys of Winter” by Wayne Coffey off his nightstand. He got a few pages into the second chapter before he found himself reaching for his phone again. He reopened Twitter and re-read the posts that said he didn't deserve Ilya. Shane took screenshots of all of them, and tucked them into a secret folder on his phone. It was a good idea to have them there, to remind himself, when he needed it. Tonight he would prove to Ilya that he deserved him.
Come to bed. Now. That’s all the text said, but Ilya scrambled up from the ledge of the dock, running barefoot through the yard, barely remembering to wipe his feet with a towel before he stepped inside.
He made it to the room, smelling like a burning cigarette, to find his husband naked on the bed, already fingering himself. Ilya smirked. So that’s how it was going to be tonight, huh? Ilya was going to make him work tonight. And it looked like Shane was asking for that.
Ilya couldn’t fall asleep that night, despite the fact that Shane dozed off with ease in his arms. Shane had insisted that Ilya go harder, get more intense that night, and normally, those words were a delight for Ilya. Ilya could fuck Shane like his life depended on it, and Shane would positively melt the longer they fucked. It helped him get out of his head, and it seemed like Shane had needed that tonight.
Except tonight, Shane never melted. He was determined and focused, but never tried to take control away from Ilya. He was extremely present after their orgasms, their shared shower, changing the sheets, shutting the lights and kissing Ilya goodnight. That wasn’t like his husband. Sure, Shane was like this all the time, but it didn’t follow him into the bedroom.
When Ilya woke the next morning, Shane’s side of the bed was empty. Ilya laid there a little longer than usual, trying to swirl his mind around the sex they’d had last night. Shane hadn’t been seeking pleasure. He’d quite possibly given Ilya the best head of his life during their second round, but Shane wasn’t chasing Ilya’s lips like usual, wasn’t grinding with as much enthusiasm as usual, wasn’t looking him in the eyes like he always did. Shane had been guarded. It had made Ilya feel cold and unloved.
When he finally trudged into the kitchen, breakfast was waiting for him, and Shane was halfway through his own smoothie. He’d left his own breakfast untouched, making sure they’d eat together. Shane got up to greet Ilya with a kiss, curling his fingers into Ilya’s hair. The kiss was tender and sweet, but short. Shane smiled too wide when they broke apart. He looked a little like a madman. Ilya pulled him into a hug for a little longer, and he felt Shane’s heart thundering under his chest. Ilya would think he’d pushed himself to the brink during his workout, but Shane didn’t do that anymore. Shane had a secret. His body couldn’t hide that.
They mostly ate in silence. Ilya spent his breakfast working through different possibilities for Shane’s secret, while eyeing Shane’s plate to see that the eggs and toast were actually disappearing into his husband. Shane actually ate his breakfast which meant only one thing to Ilya: Shane was going to ask him for a divorce.
Shane ate in silence, avoiding eye contact and the heavy looks Ilya was giving his place. Ilya knew. He had to know. Ilya was going to be so disappointed. He would definitely be getting the divorce papers soon.
Shane wasn’t sure what Ilya knew, but he knew that Ilya knew something.
Maybe Ilya had felt something different in the air the second he’d walked back in the house after his smoke last night. Maybe Ilya had noticed how absent Shane had been during sex, how he’d denied himself the pleasure of slipping away. Maybe Ilya had woken briefly when Shane had gotten out of bed an hour earlier than usual. Maybe Ilya had checked his phone and tracked Shane’s location, and saw him a full 5k out, which meant he knew he’d run it back. Maybe Ilya had noticed Shane’s heart racing when they hugged in the kitchen this morning, Shane still catching his breath after his 10km run and extra heavy lift session, despite having finished working out 35 minutes ago. Maybe all of yesterday’s maybes were true.
When Shane had woken up that morning, he really had intended for the run and the workout to be the end of his mini relapse. It more than made up for the Snickers bar he’d eaten. Shane was ready to go back to his normal routine, and he wasn’t really thinking about purging his breakfast when Ilya had taken Anya out to the backyard to play for a little. But suddenly, he found himself in front of the toilet, with the contents of his breakfast looking back up at him. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there. He flushed, brushed his teeth, and fixed his hair again.
Ilya was still in the backyard with Anya when he left the bathroom, so he went out to join in. Time passed lazily as they played, but Shane was acutely aware of how wrong everything felt. Their marriage was a ticking time bomb, and it was all Shane’s fault.
Shane didn’t get back on the horse the next day. Or the next day. Or the next day. Or the rest of the week. He knew how to, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Every day he woke up and felt the need to punish himself for not getting back on the horse the day before. And when he went to bed at night, he could feel Ilya still next to him, unsure of if they should cuddle or not. And it broke Shane’s heart every night because he knew Ilya was trying to find the right time to ask for a divorce. So, he would purge the next day so he could feel the hunger — not the ache. He didn’t deserve Ilya, and he could feel Ilya realizing that. Ilya hadn’t initiated sex since The Day Everything Went Wrong, and he turned down Shane’s many, many initiation attempts.
Ilya never said no to sex, especially not when Shane was begging for it. But this week, he could barely bring himself to cuddle his husband, making sex out of the question. Ilya knew something was horribly wrong. Shane had been waking up for his workouts early, and Ilya wasn’t really sure if he was actually working out early or if Shane just couldn’t bear to share a bed with him anymore. There was no indication of a change in their routine, though, because Shane never deviates from a routine. Breakfast was ready at the same time, every day. Chores split the same way. There was just more quiet time than before, and that was okay, because everyone needed quiet time sometimes.
He knew that Shane was only asking for sex to prove a point. Or to keep up the ruse. He wasn’t sure which one, but it was likely both. And while sex had been a coping mechanism (a form of self harm, if you asked Galina) at one point in his life, he couldn’t hurt himself like this. This wasn’t a random hookup, it was his husband. A husband that he wasn’t even sure was his anymore.
As the week went on, the house grew eerily quiet. When they didn’t have business to attend to, Ilya would spend most of his day on the lake in a kayak, alone with his thoughts, or he’d “run errands,” but never come home with anything he said he needed to get. He did laundry that didn’t need to be done. Ilya spent a lot of time turning memories over in his head, like the sea turning shards of glass to smooth stones, wondering where he had gone wrong. Maybe it had been believing Galina that he deserved goodness, that he deserved Shane. Maybe he had gotten lax about the relationship, and hadn't tried as hard as Shane needed. Maybe Shane had fallen out of love, simple as that. If that was the case, he wondered if Shane would describe what it was like to do so, so he could understand Shane, his father, and his brother.
Shane woke earlier and earlier, pushing his morning run to 14 or 16 kilometers, adding another set of reps to his weight lifting. When he was home alone, he’d purge, then go out on long, wandering walks in the woods. He’d walk until his legs gave out and he had to sit, back against the nearest tree, tears streaming down his face. He’d smack his head back into the tree repeatedly until he started seeing spots. His panic attacks washed over him for hours at a time, daily, sometimes twice daily. He re-read the tweets he kept on his phone, and found new ones to add to the collection, all reinforcing the same idea: he had never once deserved Ilya’s care and affection, and now he’d run out of time.
The silence was eating at them both. The mechanical touches and kisses, just for maintenance, were destroying both of them. Ilya had booked another session with Galina, and actually drove to Ottawa and back in one day, just for it to be in person. She had seen him for two hours, instead of one. Shane stopped eating when Ilya went out, and purged whenever they did eat together. He had stopped making himself breakfast, telling Ilya that he’d had eaten his already when Ilya came out of their room with bedhead and a vacant look in his eyes. Shane still kissed him anyway.
It all came to a head on the seventh day since this had started.
This morning, Shane set out Ilya’s breakfast for him as he heard Ilya yawn in the other room. Shane couldn’t really stand to be in the same room as him anymore, but he waited to keep the routine of serving his husband, and to see if Ilya would kiss him if he didn’t initiate it. Shane walked away disappointed when Ilya didn’t kiss him. They were definitely headed for divorce.
Ilya was incredibly offended when his husband didn’t kiss him that morning. Shane put out the plate, leaned over the counter and kissed Ilya, every morning, without fail since they started staying overnight together. Shane had made a point by taking that away from him. The divorce conversation was coming.
He figured Shane couldn’t initiate a conversation about divorce if he wasn’t home, so Ilya went out. No kiss goodbye, just a “Heading out, see you later, моя любовь,” as he shoved his shoes on and headed out the door. Shane sat on the couch and nodded his head in acknowledgement. He got in his car and just drove the whole day, no destination in mind, pulling over periodically to check if Shane had called or texted. There was nothing.
Shane knew he was fucked. He’d been ignoring his mom’s calls for days, texting her instead. They hadn’t come around for dinner because Shane had a bug, because Ilya and him had been focusing on their relationship, because he just needed some space. Shane knew Yuna knew something was up, but he didn’t want her to be blindsided when he finally told her about the divorce.
Before Ilya got home, Shane had some things he needed to do. He cleaned, deeply and frantically. He worked out, again. He remade the bed, went out to buy Ilya some cigarettes and peanut m&ms, and packed a little overnight bag for himself. He knew Ilya wouldn’t want him here anymore, not after the conversation he was preparing to have, so he’d go stay at his parents’ place. They would be sad, but they would understand.
He waited at the kitchen counter, taking sips of lemon water, slowly. Shane hadn’t eaten anything in over 24 hours, and he was feeling it. The hunger felt good. It cut through the noise, but it broke his heart. Last night, when they went to bed was the last night they’d ever go to bed together. He didn’t know it at the time, and he wished he’d appreciated it more, even snuggled back into Ilya’s arms, instead of scooching away.
When Ilya walked into the house at 7:30 p.m., Shane finally saw how ragged and rough he looked. His face looked lifeless, dark, puffy bags under his red-rimmed eyes. His shoulders curved inward, his lip was scabbing over from having picked the skin off, and he walked slowly. Shane hated that he could see how badly Ilya was doing all over his face before starting this conversation. He knew he’d be hurting Ilya — his good, kind, softhearted, handsome, strong, brave, and beautiful Ilya — but he couldn’t be the source of this distress anymore. He had to set Ilya free, so Ilya didn’t have to make the hard choice.
Ilya approached the kitchen island slowly, staring Shane down. The driving hadn’t felt as cathartic as he hoped, but it was because he knew the shoe was going to drop when he came home. There was no outrunning this, no changing Shane’s mind. As he took Shane in one last time — his pretty, stubborn, talented, brilliant, charming, strong, and beautiful Shane — he could see how wrecked Shane looked.
Shane looked hollowed out, his cheeks and dark circles sunken in. His frame seemed smaller than it should have, like he’d lost some weight. How could Shane have lost this much weight in a week? Unless... no, not that. Shane was sitting upright, but he could see how much effort it took for him to sit like that, to compose himself. Shane looked wrong. Something was wrong. And of course it was! The Shane who promised to love him forever, who gave Ilya all of himself, who chose Ilya over hockey, who rearranged his whole world to fit Ilya into it — that Shane was going to ask him for a divorce.
“моя любовь,” Ilya started quietly, avoiding eye contact. “Can you tell me what I did wrong?”
Shane looked up, dumbfounded. How could Ilya dare to ask him when Shane knew what he’d been planning? Is he just upset that it seemed like Shane was going to beat him to the punch?
“Nothing, Ilya, nothing,” he said with a sigh. They were in for a long night. “I’m sorry I’ve been so weird the past few days, something was just weighing on me, and I think we need to talk. And I think you know we need to talk.”
Ilya nodded in agreement. Yes, they were overdue for a direct conversation — Galina had told him that during the first session they’d had that week. “Do you want to go first or do you want me to go? We haven’t done this too often.”
“I’ll go first,” Shane said, a nervous, sharp edge to his voice. He’d prepared a speech and he couldn’t let Ilya get in the way of it. “Ilya, I—”
“Shane don’t do this, please,” Ilya whispered, still avoiding Shane’s eyes.
Speech ruined.
“I think we should get divorced,” Shane blurted out. He immediately dug his nails into his palms, frustrated and overwhelmed, but relieved at the same time. This conversation wasn’t anywhere close to done, but it had been started. There was no going back. There was no going back.
A fight so bad he punctures a lung and dies from the lack of oxygen. A bullet through his heart. A check into the boards so bad he breaks his neck and becomes paralyzed. Finding his mother over and over again. His father coming back to life, taking him back to Russia and jailing him. None of those imaginary scenarios came even close to how ruined, how destroyed those six words made Ilya feel.
He had known it was coming. He wasn’t sure of it the first day, but he’d felt it the rest of the week, the way Shane disconnected from him. He had considered the possibility of broaching the topic before Shane could, but he didn’t want to get divorced. He loved Shane so much, it nearly killed him for the last 14 or so years. He couldn’t even remember how long they’d actually been together, because he couldn’t remember or believe in a life where he wasn’t in love with Shane.
Ilya didn’t understand why Shane was asking for it now, after the good year they’d had together. They had just won the Stanley Cup together. Shane had been healing, and so had he. They had been planning a trip to Banff, they were hosting the Pikes in a few weeks. Fuck. Would he never see those Pike kids again? Hayden he could be okay without, but those were his nieces and nephew. Would he never see Yuna and David again? What about the Irina foundation, how would that go on? It would probably be Ilya's, but Yuna kept it alive. Shit, fuck, shit. What about work? How did they go back to the locker room? How were they supposed to face the world?
How was Ilya supposed to face his life without Shane? Getting married meant he would never have to do life without Shane. That was the whole point. That is why he made the sacrifices he did. That is why he chose Shane, even when he could have chosen an easier and less fulfilling path.
Shane couldn’t take Ilya’s silence, but he understood he had just dropped a bomb on Ilya, ruining the timeline, ruining their lives. Shane didn’t want to get divorced, he just couldn’t bear to hold Ilya back anymore. To make Ilya have to deal with his eating disorder, again. To stop Ilya from finding a better lover, a better spouse — someone less complicated and horrible.
Ilya could take his parents and the Pike kids. Could take the cottage and the Ottawa house and the foundation and the Centaurs. Ilya deserved all of these good things, and Shane was just ruining it all for him. He could talk to Coach Wiebe on Monday about getting bought out of his contract. Shane wasn’t good enough for Ilya or the Cens, and he hadn’t understood why anyone had pretended he was for as long as they did. Ilya had sacrificed so much to make this work, and Shane was pissed at himself for accepting these sacrifices freely, for expecting them to be made. Shane had to make the sacrifice now, it was the only way to balance the scales, to give Ilya all the joy he’d given Shane.
Shane kept his eyes on Ilya, and Ilya trained his eyes on the island, leaning his elbows against it, rubbing his hands across his face. Ilya was weeping freely, yet quietly. See, this is what Shane did to Ilya. He made him sad. He made Ilya bottle his sadness. Shane blinked his tears back. He couldn’t cry when he was the one wreaking havoc.
After a few minutes of silence, Ilya finally locked eyes with Shane. He couldn’t read Shane’s expression. His flat lips, red flush, and narrowed, but watery eyes. None of it computed to an emotion Ilya could understand. Ilya couldn’t understand. Shane was clearly waiting for Ilya to break the silence. He’d said all he had to say, apparently.
“Shane, what the fuck?” Ilya said, voice even, low, and slow. He needed to keep a handle on his accent and his English to get through this, even though his mind was doing cartwheels in Russian. “What the fuck do you want a divorce for? You do not love me anymore? You love someone else? Those are only two reasons I can think of that you want divorce for. Or, I did something bad and I do not know it, but let me fix it before you decide to leave.”
Shane took a deep breath. Of course Ilya hadn’t done anything wrong, but he knew Ilya would be better off without him, and he knew that Ilya knew that, too. He had to. Nothing else would explain why everything felt so wrong.
“No, Ilya, I love you very much and there is no one else—”
“Then why? Why, моя любовь?”
“Oh fuck you, Ilya” Shane shouted. He’d never shouted “fuck you” at Ilya before, with any real sincerity before. He hated that he did just now. This is the kind of horrible Shane had always been, this is what people saw in him that Ilya didn't. “You deserve better, Ilya, you know that! You are happier when I’m not around! This whole week, you’ve just been so happy and free, and the only thing that’s changed is we spent less time together. You’ve always deserved better than me! You’ve done so much for me, and what have I given you in return? A mess, always a mess.”
Shane was crying now, too. Not as pretty as Ilya was, of course. Words and spit babbled out of his mouth, tears leaked out of his eyes, and snot dripped out of his nose.
“You were going to ask for a divorce soon, anyway, so I thought I’d make this easier for you” Shane, mumbled mostly to himself.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ilya asked, clearly exasperated. Ilya had been avoiding Shane all week because he thought Shane was going to ask for a divorce, after the night with the salmon and the sex. Ilya thought it was some fucked up goodbye ritual — a return to the beginning, a full circle.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ilya repeated. “This is about your anxiety? That you’re not good enough for me? My depression? That I’m not happy enough in my life with you? That I don’t love you anymore? If you believe any of this, you are true lunatic. You are not thinking clearly, you do not understand what you’re saying.”
Ilya was just trying to backpedal the groundwork he’d laid this week, clearly. But Shane had gotten the message and he wasn’t going to be gaslit.
“Ilya, I know exactly what I’m saying. I’ve thought this through. This might hurt now, but it is what will be best for you. I’m going to go stay at my parents’ tonight, and we can work out the details later. I’ve got some lawyer recommendations for you, and we have the prenup. I already have some thoughts on how we’ll—”
“нет” Ilya said, firmly. “нет, нет, no, no, no, no, no. You will not be going anywhere. You stay here tonight. We will not be working any details out. We are not getting divorced, нет.”
Shane had gotten up to move to the front door, where his bag sat beside his shoes, but Ilya blocked his path. He moved closer until they were inches apart — he was not letting Shane run in the middle of a conversation like this. Shane was stubborn, but so was Ilya. And Ilya was determined to stay married. Shane avoided his eyes, but couldn’t fight back when Ilya lifted his chin, forcing them to make eye contact.
“You thought you could just decide to divorce me? And just do it? And you thought I’d take that well?”
“Yes, no, I don’t, I don’t know, Ilya.” This had been much easier when they hadn’t been making eye contact. “It makes sense, it made sense. You were thinking it.”
“No Shane, no. I was not going to ask you for divorce. I do not want to divorce you, and I will not let you divorce me. Sorry, you will have to try again.”
“Ilya, no, no, no, I’ve made up my mind, you can’t hold me hostage.” Shane stepped to the side, and tried to walk toward the door again. Ilya grabbed his wrist, and held on, even as Shane yanked his arm to escape. Ilya tugged, forcing Shane to face him again.
“You’re not divorcing me.”
“Fuck off, Ilya. You were planning on divorcing me! You think I didn’t notice? The way you stilled in the bed next to me? The way you were leaving the house all day, without telling me anything about where you went or why? Because you were talking to lawyers, my parents, Farah, and realtors. I’m not stupid! I know what you were up to.”
“No, Shane, you clearly do not!” Ilya’s accent was thick and heavy now, as he yelled. It came with the territory, just like when he gave his captain’s speeches. “I have no intentions of divorcing you! I do not want to get divorced! And I do not understand what gave you that idea! Shane, honey, please, the thought of this marriage ending is soul crushing, I cannot go on without you.”
Ilya softened his grip around Shane’s wrist to see if he would still run for the front door. He didn’t, but Ilya could see the color drain from his face, his chest heaving, eyes struggling to stay open. This wasn’t good. Shane freed himself from Ilya and ran to their bedroom. Ilya went after him, but he heard the ensuite bathroom door lock from the inside.
“моя любовь, моя любовь, talk to me.”
Shane could hear Ilya speaking, but he couldn’t process anything that was being said. His vision had been going white since Ilya said “нет” the first time. He’d been fighting it the best he could — counting and breathing — but the white spots in the corner started to float across his vision when his breathing grew shallow. Ilya had started to sound far away when they were in the kitchen, a quiet but persistent ringing fighting to be heard instead. The spots grew larger until he couldn’t see anything. When he pulled away from Ilya to head to the bedroom, he relied on his intimate knowledge of the space to get there.
There was nothing he could hurt himself with in the bathroom, and Shane was pissed. He was the one who locked razor blades in the bedside table, to keep Ilya safe on his worst days. The pills were in a locked safe in the kitchen. He let out a laugh. How ironic. He smacked his head back into the tiled wall repeatedly, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t release.
Shane could purge. But what was there to purge? He hadn’t eaten in more than 36 hours. It was worth a try. He stuck his fingers down his throat, gagging immediately. His reflex had somehow grown more sensitive in the last 36 hours.
He got himself to retch, loudly. All that came out of him was acid and bile. He choked and gagged and spit repeatedly. It was torture. It was over. He wailed, in relief, in overwhelm. He wailed because Ilya was on the other side of the door, and he’d just given his secret away.
Ilya could have unlocked the door with a pen cap, but he trusted that Shane wasn’t going to do something drastic. Shane had quietly suicide-proofed the bathroom himself when Ilya had mentioned he thought about dying the same way his Mama did, just to find out what she’d felt in the end.
But, Ilya hadn’t been prepared for the sound of the retching. The retching. A new lens for Ilya to review the past week under. Shane wasn’t mad or unhappy with Ilya, he’d relapsed. He doesn’t know when — at least a week ago — and he wasn’t sure why. Shane had been plotting a divorce, so Ilya wasn’t technically wrong, but Ilya knew now that it wasn’t really going to happen. As much as those six words, “I think we should get divorced,” will be seared into his memory forever, a wound that will always hurt, Ilya knew Shane didn’t really mean it. He was desperate and flailing, looking for a way out of the situation he’d dug himself into: burying himself under lie after lie. Ilya knew Shane’s mind must have been going wild all week. He got nauseous at the thought of the thoughts Shane had likely been having — and how Ilya had been too preoccupied with his own worries to notice Shane slipping away.
The wailing was worse than the retching. Shane sounded like someone had died. Ilya had wailed like this once — he didn’t know what Shane was feeling, but he knew there was deep grief and pain ripping through his every cell. He wanted to hold Shane in his arms, but he couldn’t get to him.
Shane’s panic attack raged on. He wailed, gasped for his breath, saw stars, heard ringing, smacked his head into the wall, dug his nails into his palms, curled in the fetal position, covered his ringing ears with his hands, and scratched at himself repeatedly over and over for what felt like forever. Like all panic attacks, this one ended not with a bang, but a whimper. They were like tornados. They came tearing through, destroyed everything, and then left Shane with the bitter quiet to pick himself and the pieces back up.
He slowly peeled himself off the floor, and warily rose. He flushed the toilet and put the seat down first. He made sure he wasn’t bleeding anywhere, then washed his hands. He avoided looking in the mirror but it was inevitable. Shane was a mess. He reached for the door to the bathroom, but paused a moment to see if he could hear Ilya outside the door or puttering about somewhere deeper in the house. He was met with silence. Maybe Ilya wanted a divorce now, after seeing and hearing how much of wreck Shane was. Maybe he’d left the house. Shane understood, really.
When he opened the door, Ilya was sprawled out on the floor in front of it, asleep, head resting on a throw pillow, arms wrapped around one of Shane’s sweatshirts. A quick glance at the alarm clock told him it was 1:30 a.m. Fuck. How long had he’d been in there? Five hours? Ilya waited for him the whole time? Shane was fucked, he was so in love. He carefully lifted Ilya, who mumbled and stirred, but never fully woke, and tucked him into bed. He went back to the kitchen to grab his phone, and he saw that Ilya had cleaned, and reset the kitchen to be ready for their usual routine. Ilya was going to be here tomorrow to pick up the pieces with Shane. Shane didn’t deserve that, but wouldn’t deny it either. Shane set his alarm and then got in next to him, tucking himself under Ilya’s arms.
Shane was both incredibly grateful for Ilya’s love and devotion, and completely embarrassed by what had happened. He knew they would have to talk tomorrow, and that Ilya was going to be hard on him. He couldn’t even be sure that Ilya hadn’t already reached out to his care team, his parents, his therapist, and Galina. Fuck. In trying to unburden Ilya, Shane had just made more of a mess, more work. Ilya was going to continue being his caretaker, even though he tried to end things tonight. He needed to get Ilya to stop loving him.
When he woke up at 5:30, Ilya was still soundly asleep, and holding Shane like his life depended on it. Shane pushed him off anyway, threw on his favorite running clothes, and snuck out the door. No food in over 48 hours. He was running 25 kilometers today. No negotiating with himself about it. It sucked from the second it started, but his brain was eating it up. This is how this should feel: complete misery. This is what you deserve. This is how you should feel. Shane might have fucked everything up with Ilya, and maybe they would really get divorced, but Shane was at least good enough for his brain again. That brought a quiet smile to his face as he ran.
Ilya woke up to an empty bed, which left him confused and sad and empty, not that that really mattered — he hadn’t remembered going to bed at all. Ilya had stretched out in front of the bathroom, listening to his husband wail in agony. It stretched Ilya’s heart into new dimensions, crushing his lungs, fracturing his ribs, leaving him a wreck in his own right. He would have held it in for as long as he’d need to, because Shane was going to come out of the bathroom, and he was going to be there for him. Really, that had been the plan. But Shane’s panic attack raged on for hours, and Ilya had simply fallen asleep, like a guard dog. Ilya’s heart started racing immediately. It was only 6 a.m., Shane didn’t start his morning run until 6:30 or 7 most days.
He crept out of bed and checked the bathroom, the guest rooms, the kitchen, and the living room for Shane. No luck. He went to the locked pill box in the kitchen and found all of the bottles still there; he couldn’t tell if the dosages were all there, but if any were missing, it wasn’t enough to kill Shane, at least. No missing razor blades either. Shane wasn’t in the backyard, and there was no evidence to suggest he’d drowned himself in the lake. There was no note and the overnight bag he’d packed was still there. But his running shoes were missing. Shane was running — he shouldn’t be.
When Ilya forced himself back into the bed, he couldn’t fall asleep. There was so much he didn’t understand. So much to be mad at himself for, mad at Shane for, mad at the world for, and yet. And yet, he was lying in his bed, while his husband was likely torturing himself on the trails. What if he collapsed and never made it home? It would be so much worse than divorce, and it would be Ilya’s fault for not just accepting Shane’s plan.
Ilya got back up and started his day. He scrubbed the bathroom, not that Shane had made a mess, but because he knew Shane would feel the emotional residue. He made a pot of coffee. He went into the fridge to find ingredients for Shane’s smoothie, and when he pulled the bags of fruit and kale out, that’s when he saw it. A stockpile of protein shakes, pre-portioned meals, fruit cups — things Shane said he’d eaten in the past week, just sitting there. Ilya knew what Shane had been waiting for: dumpster day was Monday. If Ilya had agreed to the divorce, Shane knew Ilya would leave the house, and he could come back here and take it all to the dumpster, with no evidence.
What had happened to Shane that made him slide so far back? Ilya thought it over as he started portioning out the smoothie, adding an extra banana and scoop of peanut butter. Things started to get weird after Shane had pulled out the salmon for dinner. Shane had initiated really intense sex, which seemed like nothing unusual. But the salmon, quinoa, kale combo — that combination in particular was the red flag. Ilya had only been out of the house for five or so hours that day. What had happened? Would Shane ever tell him?
He finished making the smoothie, dumped it into an insulated tumbler, and took it out to the front steps, along with his own coffee. Ilya would sit there forever if he had to. But he was going to be right there whenever his husband came home. Because Ilya knew Shane, and he knew Shane would find his way back to Ilya, no matter what. That’s just how things worked between them.
Ilya wasn’t very good at stillness, but he tried. He tried to meditate like Shane would. He tried to be still and open to whatever came in and out of his heart. It wasn’t calming him very well.
Eventually, Shane rounded the corner back into the driveway. He was shirtless, using his shirt as a rag to wipe his face, and he was drenched in sweat. His eyes were trained on the ground and his brows were furrowed as he made his way down the path. Everything hurt. He was gasping for air. He felt faint.
When he came into Ilya’s view, it became apparent how much had gone wrong. Shane’s body looked bony and frail and off. Ilya knew every curve, every dip, every muscle and freckle on that body, and it just did not look like Shane. He’d lost some muscle mass. But it was more clear now than ever before: the light inside him that made him Shane, that made his routines happy instead of destructive, that made Ilya’s world go round, that light was gone.
Shane didn’t see Ilya, not until he collapsed on the pathway leading to the front door, just a foot from where Ilya was sitting.
“Fuck, baby, are you okay?” Ilya asked, immediately setting his coffee down and reaching for Shane. He pulled him out of the sun, and had him sit upright, back against the house.
“I'm dizzy,” he mumbled back. He lolled his head back and closed his eyes. God or whoever was out there could take him now. Shane couldn’t face Ilya. Ilya shook him a little bit, treating this like concussion protocol. The patient had to stay awake. Answer questions. Shane tried, but it was hard. He couldn’t talk and breathe at the same time.
Ilya gave him some time to gather himself, and then, when he thought Shane could handle it, shoved the ice cold smoothie into his hands. An ice chip during a panic attack. Shane came back to himself immediately.
“You will drink this,” Ilya instructed, bringing the straw to Shane’s lips. Shane sucked and from the first taste that passed over his tongue, he knew Ilya had messed with the recipe. But it tasted so fucking delicious he didn’t care. He felt delirious. He was going to start crying over a smoothie.
When he finished it, Ilya took the cup from him, stood, and offered his hand. The lack of conversation was freaking Shane out, but he was too exhausted to care. He took Ilya’s hand and continued to hold it as Ilya walked them to the kitchen. When he’d had this cottage built with the kitchen as the central focal point, Shane had no clue how much he’d come to resent that choice — it always had to be the fucking kitchen.
Shane stopped in his path when he saw the kitchen island. It was littered with every snack and every meal that Shane had lied about eating. He’d hid some of those protein bars in really creative places, and yet there they were, staring back at him. He was speechless, and mad, and so desperately in love, and absolutely torn open. There was no word in the French or English languages that felt comprehensive enough for everything he was feeling. When things calmed down, he’d have to ask Ilya if Russian had any options.
“I don’t know what happened, but Shane, you can struggle, you can have a hard time, but you don’t have to hide it from me,” Ilya said, looking ahead to the counter, instead of at Shane.
Shane nodded his head. His jaw was locked shut again, he could feel it.
“When you’re ready you will tell me, but for today, I will take care of you. We will take baby steps. And when you’re ready to talk, we will make a plan. But for now, I will hold you and I will help you through today. And then we’ll take it one day at a time. But no divorce, not now, not ever. You’d have to kill me if you ever wanted to get rid of me.”
Shane’s lips quirked into a half smile at that. He nodded again, and let Ilya pull him into a crushing embrace.
“I know better,” Shane whispered. “But it was so hard, and it got so bad so quickly.”
He whimpered into Ilya's arms, and Ilya pet Shane’s hair and ran his other hand up and down Shane’s back. Ilya wasn’t going anywhere, nor was he letting Shane go anywhere.
“I know, моя любовь, I know. But you are so brave. We try again tomorrow, for each other, да? One day at a time.”
One day at a time. Yeah, he could do that, Shane thought, he could do that for Ilya. One day at a time.