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He sleeps a lot more these days. Usually, he’s already awake before me, but it’s like he can’t find the energy lately and I can’t blame him. Not now. Not when he’s already in the thick of something I’ll never understand or would wish on my worst enemy.
Funny how he used to be that once. Go figure.
It’s not just his sleeping that’s changed, either. He walks slow and his joints get stuck, sometimes to the point where he’ll couchrot and call it a productive morning. It’s one of the worst parts of it. The feeling of losing what you know best.
I know he knows, I can see it. His eyes aren’t as bright and the colour in his cheeks is fading as the weeks pass and he can’t get back on the ice with me - too wobbly, too forgetful.
One day, he won’t get back up. I hope it never comes to that. I doubt he’ll let it.
He’s learnt to be a better captain, though this, somehow, despite not being a fucking captain anymore. He talks less, listens more. He already did that, but for a man with a smart mouth, he doesn’t say much these days, just stares from somewhere far away with a soft smile on his face that breaks my heart and makes me cry at night.
Every single movement is made with purpose, as if to make each one last as long as possible. Sometimes he’ll swoop in behind me, like he used to when we were just figuring our shit out and rest his head on my shoulder. Sometimes he’ll reach across the couch for me to hold his hand; just so he knows I’m there.
Every touch is so gentle it almost stings. Even when we’re in bed and he’s flailing from a moment where he loses himself, thinks he’s back in Russia or with his father or brother, the blows don’t even hurt anymore.
The worst nights are when his mother comes to visit. I know she does, as her name appears on his lips and my anxiety spikes and I beg her, wherever she is, not to take him. Not yet. Let her little boy stay with me, just a little while longer. Then, if I’m lucky, he wakes and he takesthe opportunity to hold onto me, mumbling something in Russian through the thick veil of tears he refuses to cry in front of me because he thinks he needs to be brave.
He doesn’t need to be brave, not with me. Not around my parents who are trying their best to hold me together, not around Hayden and Scott and Kip and our terammates who all still check on him and me. He’s already fucking brave.
Brave for being here right now, suffering, forgetting, losing…he doesn’t need to prove anything. All he needs to prove is that he can beat this, like everything else. This is his Stanley Cup, the real one and I know he’s trying so hard, but the team is one man down and that man is his mind. Soon enough, it’s going to flicker out, whether me or him want it to.
God, I’m not ready. I’m just not ready.