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Ilya has never been this upset about Rose Landry, and shes the last person to have fucked his husband.
It hasn't been a good day. They haven’t had very many good days this summer. The cottage is normally an oasis, but with Shane’s injury the pressure of their lives hasn’t lifted. The injury isn’t Shane’s fault. Fucking Ottawa defenseman slammed him into the goal post. Not a dirty hit.Ilya’s husband is the fastest in the league and going at top speed. Two hundred and fifty pounds of enforcer was enough to shatter Shane’s tibia and gift him a nasty concussion. Shane’s been on crutches for more weeks than Ilya can tally.
It's both of their faults Shane has lost weight since his injury. Shane had four surgeries and Ilya had to change his meds and spent a few weeks in a haze. They thought they were preparing for a cup this year. Now they aren’t. Whatever.
Ilya believed him longer than he should have. Ilya would be happy spending the rest of his life in service to meeting Shane’s every desire and need, sexual or otherwise. Shane does not want this, so Ilya has to leash himself. Shane said he wasn't hungry, not with the “massive lack of exercise” and nausea following the concussion. Ilya didn't like seeing his collarbones sharpen and face thin. But Shane smiled when Ilya brought him ginger ale - even if he switched the diet stuff - and so Ilya assumed it was okay.
The humiliating thing is that the way Shane talks about food is a language Ilya isn't fluent in. And Shane talks like Ilya is a child in a third failed class. Ilya knows calorie, protein, ratio, percent. Math is math, which is universal, and it is hockey math. He knows simple and complex carbs - even if he doesn’t know why English would add another meaning of complex when slow carb described it just as well.
Shane normally sees through Ilya playing stupid. With food, Shane wants to enforce it. Shane normally says fuck off and shut up like the words are finger through his hair. With food, Shane rips the hair from the follicle.
In the season, they had an uneasy balance. The biggest stumbling block living together full time. Shane didn’t like how Ilya ate. Ilya didn't like how Shane ate. No, wrong. The way Shane ate reminded him of needles. Precise and sharp. He had been more relaxed after the wedding. Some softness in his day to day. Ate a chocolate zucchini muffin when Ilya switched chocolate chips for cacao nibs and whole wheat flour and flax seeds. Then the season hit.
A rink Ilya trained at when he was thirteen also trained figure skaters. Sometimes he would watch them. They were so skinny, their skin thin, letting the ropey muscles contract visibly. They got off the ice, wore sweaters and layers and hid it.
Ilya had wondered what they looked like still. Later, he saw a dog that had starved death in the street. Seeing the muscles in its once fast legs answered his question.
His husband is not a bruised teenage girl or a stray dog. His husband gets blood tests regularly and takes fish oil pills. Ilya pushes his husband all day long, but pushing on food hurts. And Shane is so fucking hurt already, even if Ilya is trying not to act like it. So Ilya doesn’t talk about it until Shane’s sharp tongue would hurt less than Shane’s visible ribs.
Last June they were the Ottawa Pride Parade Marshalls. This year, they aren't even planning on going into the city. Whatever. Their lives are smaller with Shane injured. Ilya won’t let him feel guilty for it. (Their lives are smaller because Shane won’t go to restaurants and has only increased the hours a day he trains and has stopped sleeping through the night and is consistently the irritable one, but Ilya doesn’t want to fight about food.
Two weeks ago, Shane stopped eating brown rice. He didn’t tell Ilya this after his phone call with his doctor, or while Ilya took the extra 15 minutes to wait for the rice cooker to finish.
“Phytic acid disrupts your body from absorbing vitamins,” Shane said.
“Then we eat white rice,” Ilya tried. He can’t watch his injured husband go a fourth meal in a row without a meaningful carb.
“I shouldn't have simple carbs,” Shane said, and then ate his cod and steamed broccoli with lemon.)
It’s Strawberry season. Ilya fucking loves strawberry season. Ilya buys a crate on the side of the road and eats just one, just to check. Husband tax. Shane ate strawberries from his hand kneeling last summer. He sucked the juice from Ilya’s fingers while they both got hard. After, Ilya bought a second crate to bring to Yuna and Davids’s and they ate strawberries on the deck and Ilya kissed the flavour off his lips and Shane grinned.
Ilya doesn’t actually think strawberries are going to fix his husband. But if they can get a few sweet kisses and some healthy sugar, Ilya will call it a good day. They could really use a good day.
When he gets home, Shane is doing seated yoga. Ilya takes a moment to admire his husband. Ilya cut his hair after the first surgery because caring for it was too much work for Shane to deal with. Ilya offered to wash and brush it for him, but Shane wanted his independence. Shane is in a tank top and little lulu lemon shorts. The stitches on his leg are out, finally, but it's been healing so slowly the doctors ordered some blood tests.
Shane isn’t happy. Ilya knows before he sees his husband's face. There’s too much tension in his neck. Worst of all, Shane’s arms are shaking. He looks frustrated, not calm. Ilya wants to smooth the wrinkle between his eyebrows. Shane is tired of being fussed over. Ilya can do something nice.
“I got you a treat!” Ilya says.
“A treat?” Shane says suspiciously. Shane doesn’t trust Ilya’s definition of treat anymore. Ilya will get it back, he just hasn’t figured it out yet.
“Da,” and he’s grinning, and brings the strawberries out from behind his back.
“Oh,” Shane says, studying the offering carefully. Ilya hopes he’s thinking of last summer. Ilya hopes he doesn’t feel bad for the differences this year. Shane isn’t picking up a strawberry. He’s just looking. He isn’t smiling. It would feel pathetic to tell Shane to think about how the strawberry will taste like the warm sun at six in the evening and cumming so sweetly for him.
“You have to eat them, yes, to get the flavour.” Immediately he regrets the words. You have to eat, Ilya says, like the dumbest husband alive.
Shane’s face looks so cold. That cold erupts in Ilya’s own chest. Then Shane looks away.
“I told Rose I’d call her back when I finished yoga,” he says.
“Shane,” he tries.
“If I don’t call her soon, I’ll miss my chance for the next few days. Not everyone gets to sit on their butts all summer.” There’s so much raw disgust in Shane’s voice that Ilya can’t find the air to make a joke about how much he enjoys Shane’s butt.
“Okay,” Ilya says. He does not feel okay about it.
Shane slowly brings himself to standing, and very carefully brings himself to the bedroom. Alone.
Ilya looks up the water ratio for quinoa again. He is determined to get feeding his husband correct at least once today. He does not think about Rose Landry. He does not think about how much a good day costs.
Shane hits call on Rose’s contact. He’s still thinking about the unreal amount of strawberries in their kitchen. It's absurd.
“Hi Babe,” she starts. She sounds like she’s smiling. It's relaxing.
“Hey Rose,” he says. “How’s Vancouver?”
“Beautiful. Canadian. How is my favourite beautiful Canadian?” Her voice is so warm, and it just doesn’t reach him.
“The stitches are finally out.” He doesn’t mention that getting them out made him the most lightheaded he can remember being.
“That’s great! I bet it’s so hard for you to not have a reason to shower together anymore-”
Shane sighs. “We would never get anything done if we showered together every time. I was just putting a bag over the bandages.”
“Sexy. “
“You know it’s not.”
“I know.
There’s a few moments of quiet. Shane wonders if Rose is pacing. He misses pacing. “I’m so bored. The most interesting thing is that Ilya brought home a huge palette of strawberries and I guess I’ll be watching him get sick of them.”
“You’re not going to help?” Rose sounds offended on Ilya’s behalf, like their conspiring again.
“Too much sugar,” he shrugs, even though she can’t see him.
“Shane. It’s a fruit.”
It feels bad to be the bearer of bad news. It makes him feel like a freak. Normal people don’t want to know what he knows about fruit. Normal people do not need to know what he knows about food. But he is so sick of everyone acting like the know more when they don’t even have the right set of assumption. He sighs. “Fruit has sugar. Watermelon has a terrible GI score.”
“You’re hating on watermelon? It has water in the name!” Shane wants to meet the PR team for watermelon, and bananas too, if he’s throwing fruits out. Fruit is healthy for most people. But it isn’t his fault it isn’t healthy for him. Inefficient. Unnecessary. Not when so many vegetables meet the same needs better without blood sugar spikes and fructose.
“Rose-” He tries.
“‘You’re going to force your poor husband to get sick on strawberries?” Rose is almost certainly chirping, but that knowledge doesn’t help when he’s so tired of having this conversation.
“Well, he doesn’t have to heal a compound fracture to get back on the ice.”
“Shane, I hate to use Hollywood logic on you, but strawberries are like the lowest calorie fruit out there. Even supermodels eat strawberries.” Now she sounds sad. She doesn’t get it
“I’m not a supermodel. I’m a professional athlete.”
“Is this the control thing again?” She still sounds unhappy, but the words are closer to what he wants her to understand. Okay.
“Yes. Because I need my body to work the way I expect it to.” Everything in his life is a control thing, he doesn’t say.
Rose sighs. “Your body needs energy while it heals.”
“I know that. So does my nutritionist.”
“Okay Shane.” She says.
“Sorry, I just. I’m tired.”
“Okay Shane,” Rose repeats.
“Okay Rose,” he says, and she laughs a little.
They eat dinner. Ilya’s quinoa turns out. Shane eats it. Ilya doesn’t make any jokes about it. Ilya has a steak and Shane has a cod fillet. Ilya dips his steamed broccoli in the butter sauce and juices from the steak. Shane watches him as he does. Shane’s eyes don’t leave the butter and pepper soaking into the florets.Shane thinks about the saturated fat in the butter. About the fat in the steak. Ilya swallows the quinoa without chewing it. Shane breathes and chews each mouthful precisely.
“Rose thinks I should eat strawberries because supermodels eat strawberries,” Shane starts, like it’s a joke. Begging Ilya to see how silly it all is.
“You are more beautiful than a supermodel. You should eat a strawberry because I drove through the wilderness to get them for you. Facing danger- “ Ilya has a grin like he could go on and on and Shane loves that look, loves getting swept away in it. But not about this.
“ I just shouldn’t be eating fruit.” He says. Ilya looks at him carefully. Shane wishes he knew what to look for, but the food on his plate looks so daunting and the food in his stomach sits uncomfortably.
“Okay. Maybe the man at the fruit cart will have a squash for you later this summer.” Ilya has the right smile on now, still focused. Just focus on something good.
“Zuchnni noodles would be good,” Shane says.
“Okay,” Ilya says, in that way that acts like he hates Shane’s food, but loves him enough to eat enough micronutrients.
After dinner. Ilya puts the strawberries in the fridge. Two days in, a strawberry gets a soft spot that spreads its rot. Ilya throws the whole pallet into the garbage.