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About six weeks into officially being a Centaur, Ilya’s stomach flips during practice. The little voice of Shane that lives in his head tells him he’s just nervous about playing Boston tomorrow. The little Shane is a liar, though, because while Ilya is scared of a lot of things he’ll never admit to, hockey has never been one of them. Getting anxious before a game is for rookies and boring Canadians.
And Ilya is a professional athlete, his whole job relies on knowing exactly what his body is doing — which is the only reason he manages to make it off the ice before he retches, and his mouth guard and breakfast splatter hollowly into the trash can beside the bench.
There are groans and whoops of disgust from the ice, somewhere behind him. “Party too hard for a Tuesday, Roz?” someone calls. Dykstra, probably, maybe.
Ilya spits, eyes shut so he doesn’t have to look at his own vomit, gropes blindly for a bottle of water to rinse the acid from his mouth. “Your music is so bad it literally make me sick,” he chirps back. Not his best work, admittedly, but there’s a second chorus of jeers and catcalls, so good enough. He gags and spits again. And look, he’s a hockey player and a queer man, he’s put plenty of gross shit in his mouth, but that mouth guard is absolutely a lost cause. No way. He’ll get a new one. He irrigates his mouth with an entire bottle’s worth of water and tries not to think too hard about it, tries to forget the feeling of half-digested oatmeal making its way back out the way it went in.
Fuck, he hates puking.
“You sick?” Wiebe calls from the other end of the bench, “or just making bad life choices? Because one of those means your ass is getting back on the ice, Rozanov.”
“Who says it can’t be both?” he says, because he’s just like that, even when it feels like his stomach is trying to turn itself inside out and this useless team still hasn’t even come close to winning a single goddamn game and Shane’s on an away trip so it’s not like being in fucking Ottawa is useful right now, anyway.
Wiebe says something else, in English. Ilya hears it, but he doesn’t understand because as he tries to straighten back up his vision goes white around the edges and his knees buckle.
At least it puts him at just the right height to lean forward and empty his stomach again.
With an official diagnosis of, “well, it’s probably either food poisoning or a gastro bug,” whatever that means, Terry, the team doctor, tells him to head home, stay hydrated, get some rest.
No shit, Ilya thinks. But what he says is a scraped, “okay,” trying not to shiver so he doesn’t look as pathetic as he feels as he’s shivvied into the backseat of a car that isn’t his, with strict instructions to call Terry if he isn’t feeling better in twenty-four hours.
Twenty-four hours is going to be a long fucking time, if the last one is any indication of what’s to come.
He pukes again in the car, into a plastic bag, curled around his cramping stomach and gasping out curses in Russian between heaves.
He pukes again in an ill-advised shower, because he feels far too disgusting not to take one. He can’t stop shivering, can’t get the water hot enough, and it’s either the illness or the heat or both that makes him overwhelmingly dizzy and he has to crawl out onto his stupid, new, glossy tiles.
This is pathetic. He’s pathetic. He’s pathetic and cold and he wants…
Well. It doesn’t matter what he wants. He takes a moment on the floor, wrapped up in a damp towel the size of a twin blanket, gathering his energy. He feels like microwaved shit, pretty sure he has a fever, and that makes it harder to think, but he’s a grown-ass man and he’s been taking care of himself since he was twelve years old. So he gives himself just one moment to feel like the pathetic sad sack he is, then drags himself up to standing, braced against the sink.
“Okay,” he says to his reflection. The mirror’s steamed, and Ilya’s so pale that he’s almost invisible in its translucent reflection. Just dark circles around his eyes and a pit of a mouth hanging open because he’s too tired to close it. “Okay,” he says again.
He played four games at the end of last season with bruised ribs. He can brush his teeth and walk to his fucking bed.
Just the idea of a sticking a toothbrush in his mouth as him gritting his teeth and willing away a wave of nausea, though, so he forgoes the brushing and makes do with carefully swishing some mouthwash, just to get the taste out of his mouth. It doesn’t really help, but it’s better than nothing.
Maybe.
Somehow, he makes it into the pair of sweatpants that Shane gave him shit about leaving on the floor, but who’s the clever one now, Hollander. On the weekend, Shane left a Voyageurs sweatshirt, folded, of course, and still tucked half under his pillow. More than anything in the world, Ilya wants to be with Shane right now, wants his head in Shane’s lap and Shane’s hands on his side and in his hair. Wants Shane’s arms wrapped around him like they won’t ever let go. He’d crawl between Shane’s ribs, if he could. Curl up between his lungs, against his heart, inside his skin, if he could.
He can’t even settle for the sweatshirt. Shane’s smaller than him, and Ilya’s skin feels too raw for something that tight. It’s like sandpaper, when he makes an aborted move to pull it on, and instead he ends up hugging it, trying to find Shane’s scent as he presses his feverish face into the collar.
I’m dying, he texts, squinting and scowling at how bright his phone screen is. He burrows as far under his blankets as he can get, squeezes the sweatshirt to his chest with the other hand. His bed is too big. Empty.
It’s only late morning. Shane’s still at his own morning practice, or meeting, or… whatever it is today. Ilya can’t remember if there’s a game or not. Can’t even remember what city Shane is in, only he knows it’s not Montreal, and it definitely isn’t fucking Ottawa.
Breathing into Shane’s sweatshirt makes the air feel thick and hot, like everything in his body feels thick and hot, and because he’s alone, he lets himself groan out loud.
God, he can’t remember the last time he felt this shitty. He can do injuries just fine, and nobody can push through an illness like a Russian athlete. The sport doesn’t take a day off just because your body wants one. Your body doesn’t tell you want to do. You tell it.
Ilya’s body, right now, is proving that theory wrong, and he almost lets himself sob when it tells him he’s going to throw up again, even though there’s nothing left, even though he was too sick and tired to think to drag the garbage can Shane makes him keep in the bathroom into the bedroom with him.
He does remember to take the sweatshirt when he stumbles back and crashes to his knees in front of the toilet.
———
Yuna answers her phone and hears her favourite thing in the world. “Mom?” Shane’s voice comes down the line.
“Hi honey!” she says back, mood high after a brisk half-hour on the elliptical and an e-mail confirming the next campaign with Reebok.
“Hi,” he parrots, and that’s when she catches the tone; tense, fretful. It sobers her in an instant, because she knows her boy, and while that tone could mean anything from being late to family dinner to his socks being too loose, she’ll never like hearing him stressed and unmoored, even if it’s usually over something that wouldn’t matter to someone else.
Unless it’s a hockey problem. Then they’ll figure it out.
The Voyageurs are in Tampa Bay, though, and last week Tampa lost to New Jersey, of all teams. New Jersey doesn’t have nearly the firepower that Shane and Comeau bring to the ice, or a brick wall like Drapeau in net, and they still crushed Tampa’s rebuilding team with a three goal win. So unless he’s hurt, which she would have already known about, Shane shouldn’t have any hockey worries. If Montreal struggles against Tampa Bay, then they’ve got a much bigger problem.
So a personal issue, then. Socks, food, something like that.
“Shane, what’s wrong?”
“Where are you?” he asks, instead of answering her question. “Are you busy?” She hears a damp rustling close to the mic, horribly familiar, and it makes her stomach sink. He’s chewing on his shirt collar. It was an anxious habit into his early teens, one that they’d managed, with much hardship and frustration, to squash. Mostly. It still comes out when he’s especially stressed, though.
Yuna wonders if she should check the news. Something about the team after all?
“Shane,” she repeats, “honey, take a breath. Stop chewing your clothes.”
“M’not,” he mutters, but the background sounds cease. “Are you home?”
“I’m home,” she says reassuringly. “About to make us something to eat.” David’s still puttering around in the home gym, and he made breakfast, so she’s doing lunch. She has designs on the last of their fall peppers and the fresh cilantro in the crisper.
“Can you go check in on Ilya?”
She pauses. Whatever she was expecting, it wasn’t this. Then again, why not. She never expected Shane to tell her she was even friends with Ilya Rozanov, let alone in love with him. Never expected that the Ilya who loves her son is different than the caricature of Ilya Rozanov she’s loved to hate for the better part of a decade, but still.
Ilya fucking Rozanov, of all people. She shouldn’t be surprised anymore.
“I could,” she says slowly, “but isn’t he at practice?” She glances at the clock on the microwave.
“Ended at noon,” Shane answers, sounding impatient, “but he texted me at like eleven and now he won’t answer me, and I just. I don’t know. I have a bad feeling.”
That feeling is called catastrophizing, Yuna thinks but doesn’t say, because she’s been down that road before and pointing it out doesn’t help. He just digs his heels in. Instead, she says, “He’s probably just doing some extra practice or something. Ottawa’s not playing tonight.”
“I know. They’re playing Boston tomorrow.”
Oh. She’d forgotten that part. Ilya’s first game against the team that drafted him (and yes, it’s been months, but Yuna still can’t get over the fact that Ilya Rozanov left the team that he built up and led to a Stanley Cup, for her son). It has to be nerve-wracking. She remembers some of the articles, the social media posts, calling Ilya a traitor and all sorts of less savoury things. Aggressive, almost violent things. Still. It’s not like he’s a rookie or some kind of shrinking violet. If anything, Ilya’s probably looking forward to it, little shit that he is. Even if he’s an unexpectedly sweet kid off the ice, he’s still a gleeful menace on it. He’ll probably enjoy the chance to chirp his former teammates.
“Shane. Ilya is a grown man and I don’t know if he’d appreciate his boyfriend’s mother showing up out of the blue. I’m sure he’s fine.”
“I know, I just. I’m in Florida,” he says, and it’s the open plea in his voice that gets her. Sue her, her baby may be a twenty-seven-year-old superstar athlete, but hearing him upset and needing her still tugs at all of her heartstrings.
“Okay,” she sighs. “Okay.”
And she knows it must be the right choice, because Shane exhales loudly into the phone, and she can practically hear the stress dissipating. “Thanks, mom. I owe you.”
She scoffs, already heading for her keys. “Don’t be stupid. I’ll call you later, okay? I love you.”
“Love you too,” he says, and hangs up.
Ilya’s neighbourhood is only a short drive down the highway, and one she’s already well familiar with. She and David helped him move in, after all, and they’ve taken turns hosting family dinners, even when Shane isn’t in town. The house is tucked away behind a privacy fence and some beautiful landscaping, so Yuna has to get halfway down the driveway before she sees that hers is the only car present. Ilya’s three-car garage is filled with the jewels of his pared-down sports car collection, but the sleek black Mercedes SUV he uses as his daily driver isn’t in the driveway. He’s not home. Almost certainly still at the rink, then. Or hell, maybe he’s hanging out with his new teammates. He could be doing anything.
That won’t be enough for Shane, though, and Yuna sends a prayer to the universe for patience with her beloved, neurotic son as she parks and unbuckles.
He’s not here, she texts.
Shane answers instantly and predictably. Did you go inside?
I’m not breaking into his house. But she does knock on the door, to no answer.
Door code’s 1410.
For fuck’s sake.
She goes inside.
Instantly, something prickles at the back of her neck, a faint sense of unease that she wants to attribute as a reaction to Shane’s obvious anxiety. Until she sees Ilya’s shoes, kicked haphazardly across the entry mat, like he came home in some kind of rush and couldn’t be bothered to even put them away properly.
“Ilya?” she calls
There’s no response, but when she calls out a second time, there’s a muffled thump from upstairs, in the direction of the bedrooms.
Something hot, then icy cold rushes through her. If that Russian asshole is cheating on her son, while Shane is halfway across the continent and worrying about him…
She stomps up the stairs, a string of sharp, ill-advised words already on her tongue, and bangs a fist on Ilya’s bedroom door even as she announces, “So help me, Rozanov—”
The smell hits her like a train, so much so that she stops in her tracks. It’s powerful, and sour, but not in the stale, festered way of dirty hockey gear. Or even the sweaty, bittersweet sex way.
A dry retch echoes from the open door of the en suite, then a groan.
Yuna immediately feels like the worst person in the world.
“Ilya,” she says again, tapping on the wall beside his bathroom, gently letting him know she’s there. She’s acutely aware of the ironic contrast to her attitude a few seconds ago, rushing in guns a-blazing as David always says, and this. “I’m coming in.”
He doesn’t answer, and she goes in anyway.
Ilya’s crumpled up like a wad of paper, shirtless and trembling all over. He has one arm across the rim of the toilet, forehead resting on his forearm, the other braced against the floor. He lifts his head when she enters, blinking owlishly. His curls are dark with sweat, sticking to his face, and his lips are so pale they’re almost white under a thin crust of bile. He breathes heavily through his mouth, squinting like he can’t figure out who she is. After a moment, he cracks out, “Yuna? Why…?”
“Shane sent me to check on you,” she explains, going to kneel beside him on the tile floor, feeling supremely guilty at her own certainty that Shane was worrying over nothing, because clearly this isn’t nothing. That if Shane was less convincing, or she was less willing to do anything for her son, Ilya would still be here sick and alone in this echoing, cold, white room. There’s a bathmat or a sweater or something scrunched under his legs, and a wet towel in the shower, but other than that he doesn’t have so much as a shirt. He’s shivering but there’s an unhealthy flush around his cheeks and eyes.
She reaches out slowly, watching his reaction in case she oversteps, because she may be his boyfriend’s mom but she’s not Ilya’s mom, and the difference matters. But in fact, when she puts a hand on his forehead, which is way, way too hot, he closes his eyes and leans into her touch, rather than shying away. Her throat tightens and she smooths his hair back, buying a moment to compose herself before she asks, “What do you need?”
It instantly feels like a cop-out, letting herself use her managerial pragmatism as a shield when she should be a bit softer. When if it was someone else with her baby, she’d want them to be softer.
Ilya mutters something in Russian, his voice little more than a hoarse whine, and she doesn’t understand it, of course, but then she catches the word “mama” and her heart cracks right in half.
Yuna doesn’t know much about Irina. Just what Ilya said during the press conference when he and Shane launched the Irina Foundation. She knows that Irina died when Ilya was a little boy, and she has never asked for details. Ilya has never offered them. But she knows, despite what she may have assumed moments ago, she knows how hard Ilya loves, how he tries to hide how much he needs in return. She knows how much he soaks up affection from Shane like a greedy sponge, has even caught him looking at her and David with cautious, vulnerable hope.
She should have known better. She needs to be better, for him. And for Shane. Irina.
“Oh, honey,” she says, grabbing a dry towel to wrap around his bare shoulders and pulling him into her arms as he shivers, face screwed into a knot of misery. Yuna sends a silent thought to Irina, wherever she may be. I’ve got him. I promise. I’ve got your boy.
Ilya sinks into her, too tired and miserable to hold himself up if he doesn’t have to. Yuna strokes his hair again, rubs his back in the way that Shane has always found comforting. She feels him fumbling for the wad of dark fabric under his knees and eases her hold so he can finagle it up to his chest, holding it tight like a security blanket. She sees that it’s a sweater, now, and she catches the edge of a Voyageurs logo, sucks in a breath as she realizes.
Then Ilya is scrambling with sudden energy, flinging himself away from her while the towel slides off his shoulders. She can see the muscles in his back spasming as he gags, hard, but nothing comes up. He spits into the toilet bowl, mutters something she doesn’t catch followed by a harsh, quiet, “fuck,” which she does.
Okay, Yuna tells herself, as she pulls the towel back up and continues to rub his back. Okay.
People have called her a lot of things, over the course of Shane’s career. She knows not all hockey parents are as involved as she is. She knows that she can be a lot, has heard words like “overbearing” and “momager” more times than she can count. “Intense,” in a way that suggests it’s a bad thing. “Tiger mom,” when it’s her race that’s the problem. “Bitch” when it’s her gender. She’s never cared, because if people want to tear her down for loving her son so much she’d lie and fight and spit to get the very best for him, that’s on them, not her.
She and David wanted more, and they were so lucky to even have Shane, and ever since she met that squashed and squalling baby she was ready to do whatever it took to make him happy.
And Ilya makes Shane happy.
And right now, Ilya is sick boy who needs his mom.
And Yuna can’t do that for him, but she can damn sure be the next best thing.
“Okay, honey,” she tells him, “here’s the plan.”
————
Somehow, Ilya finds himself back in bed, and he’s not really sure how he got there, when he has probably fifty kilograms and a fair amount of height over Yuna, and absolutely no ability to bear his own weight right now. All he really remembers of the hundred kilometer journey from the toilet to his bed is taking one dizzy step at a time, and a steady stream of stern instructions and encouragements in his ear.
He’s wearing a shirt, too, which he can’t remember putting on at all, but he simply doesn’t have the wherewithal to consider that right now. His cross is cool against his collarbone, and he still has Shane’s sweater in his arms.
He wants his Mama, and he wants Shane, so badly he could cry, and this is all he has. Sometimes it feels like all he’ll ever have.
“Have you,” he hears, and then English gibberish. He ignores it, curling into a tighter ball and wishing his mouth didn’t taste like vomit. Not that there’s even been any of that, the last couple of times. He’s been reduced to dry heaving and occasionally spitting up bile, which is somehow worse. It hurts.
“Ilya,” Yuna’s voice says, sharp.
He tries to focus, to form a word. “Huh?”
She repeats herself, slower. “Have you managed to keep anything down today?”
Down where? he wonders stupidly. He makes a vaguely negative noise.
“You need electrolytes,” she says, and he can’t really remember what that word means or if he even cares. “Wait here.”
She’s gone before he can wonder where she thinks he might go.
Ilya finds himself drifting, not exactly asleep but definitely not awake, either, and he dreams he’s in a hotel room, somewhere, waiting for Hollander to appear, laying back against the pillows and thinking about touching himself as he watches the door in eager anticipation. Waiting.
His head lifts and he takes a swig of… something. He can’t remember pouring anything, and it disappears after he drinks. It’s sweet, a little salty, doesn’t have the bite of shitty vodka or the smooth burn of the good stuff. He takes another sip and swallows the pills that have appeared in his mouth, too.
There’s a female voice that sounds vaguely familiar, talking out in the hallway. She should go into her own room, Ilya thinks, I can hear every word she’s saying. She says something about putting someone to bed and staying with them, which sounds nice. He wishes Hollander would hurry up so he can stay, too.
“Shane,” the woman’s voice says, and it startles Ilya so much that he opens his eyes before even understanding that they were closed. Yuna’s voice is stern again and it makes him want to sit up straight until he realizes she’s on the phone, not talking to him. “You need to trust me, okay?” she’s saying. “Believe it or not, I know what I’m doing, here.” There’s a pause, and she rolls her eyes up to the ceiling. “I’m sorry, which one of us has taken care of a sick kid before? Yeah, exactly. Yes, I know he doesn’t like ginger tea. Shane, honey. Seriously.”
Yuna catches him watching her, and tucks her phone to her shoulder. “Your boyfriend is a worrier,” she whispers.
Ilya’s lips feel like they’re cracking when that makes him smile. He shifts a bit on the bed, trying to sit up and reach for the phone.
Yuna’s having none of that, however, and she immediately puts a hand on his shoulder to push him back down. It’s annoying how easy it is for her, how absolutely incapable Ilya is of resisting. He hates feeling this weak, this vulnerable. Although, the way her hand stays on his shoulder, squeezing and rubbing gently, is nice. He doesn’t mind that.
Now that he’s a little more aware, Ilya can hear the timbre of Shane’s voice through the phone, and it aches, knowing how close that piece of Shane is and not being able to reach it.
Yuna interrupts both her son and Ilya’s morose thoughts. “I’m putting you on speaker,” she says into the phone, then sets it down on the pillow beside Ilya’s head. To his absolute horror, he feels his eyes filling with grateful tears, but she doesn’t say anything about it, just smiles and squeezes his shoulder again and says, “I’ll give you two a few minutes. Drink more of that, if you can,” she adds to Ilya, pointing at the opened bottle of Gatorade on his bedside table. Then she pauses, like she’s thinking about saying something else, but doesn’t, and leaves.
“Ilya?” Shane’s voice crackles next to his head, and dammit. A tear runs out of the corner of Ilya’s eye, drips into the ridge of his ear. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing the rest of the tears away.
“Hi,” he rasps.
Shane sucks in a breath. “You sound awful. How are you feeling?”
Ilya wants to laugh, but only manages another little smile. “Worse than I sound,” he admits. “You send your mom to me? Sent her.” he asks, losing his grip on English conjugations. Stupid language.
Shane’s never made fun of his accent or his slip-ups, and he doesn’t start now. “I was worried. You texted that you were dying and then stopped reading my messages and didn’t answer the phone.” He sounds aggrieved, and that does manage to force a tiny laugh out of Ilya’s abused body. It’s barely more than a puff of air, but Shane hears it, because he says, primly, “What?”
“You’re so mad,” Ilya teases. “What, you think I am just being dramatic? Is like me.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t.”
“No,” Ilya says. He’s so tired, and his whole body hurts. He wants to sleep. But more than that, he wants to stay on this phone with Shane, forever, if he can.
“So,” Shane says, in that endearingly awkward way he has when he wants to ask a question. “What happened? You’re sick?”
“Puked at practice,” Ilya confirms. And then as if it’s the devil that appears when spoken of, Ilya feels his stomach lurch again, and he wants to scream, even though that would hurt. Not again, he begs silently, please. But he is not the master of his own body today and he finds himself rolling dizzily to the side of the bed, because at least throwing up on the floor is better than on the mattress. He goes to try to stand, and his feet hit a plastic bucket. He doesn’t have time to think about how it got there before he seizes it, bends double, and spews up neon yellow Gatorade. Some of it splashes up on his chin and he groans in pain and disgust. “I hate this,” he mutters in Russian.
Shane’s voice sounds muffled and panicked somewhere to his right. “Ilya? Ilya, are you okay?”
Then, somehow, Yuna’s back in the room, and Ilya has the embarrassed urge to shove the bucket away so she won’t see what he’s done. She doesn’t even look at it, just half-sits beside him, rubbing circles on his back, watching his face as if to see if he’s finished. After a moment, she sets the bucket on the floor and wordlessly wipes his mouth and chin with a cool, damp facecloth. That’s the thing that does it, makes Ilya curl up over himself and try not to shatter into pieces because he’s sick, and he hurts, and he misses his Mama so damn much but somehow, someone is taking care of him anyway.
“It’s okay,” Yuna says. “We’re okay.”
“Mom?” Shane calls, pleading. Yuna leans around behind Ilya’s back to grab the phone. He keeps his eyes squeezed shut, trying not to completely fall apart. He feels terrible, and he’s so tired, and he doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know how he can ask Yuna to stay and doesn’t know if he’ll survive if she leaves. He doesn’t want to be alone. He’s always so alone. He always wants what he can’t have. Pathetic.
“Sorry,” Ilya croaks, to Yuna or Shane or Mama, he doesn’t know.
“Don’t apologize,” Yuna orders. Then to Shane, “we’re fine, he was just sick again. Don’t worry, I’ve got him.”
Shane’s quiet for a moment, then says, pained and wistful, “I wish I was there.”
“Not during the season,” his mother says sharply.
Across the open line, Shane makes a noise like a deflating balloon. “Really, Mom?”
Before it can turn into an argument — and it will, Ilya can feel Yuna drawing up beside him — he says, “Is fine, not contagious. Team doctor said it was,” he grasps for the words, feeling stupid and slow, and looks at Yuna for help she obviously can’t give him. “Poisoning?”
“What!?” Shane shrieks, voice blowing up an octave. “What do mean, poisoning, like—”
Ilya stares at Yuna helplessly, who is staring back looking shocked. He makes a vague gesture. Shane is still yelling but Ilya can’t quite make the words out anymore. “No, no,” Ilya says. “Is like. Food, I think. I ate seafood. The black ones, like clam?” He cups his hands together, hinges them open and closed.
“Mussels,” Yuna sighs with relief. “You ate bad mussels.”
“Should remember that one,” Ilya grumbles, annoyed both with himself and the entire English language. “Mussels, yes. Last night, at pub. Taste was a bit weird but I ate them anyway.” He lets his head hang down tiredly. “I will not make that mistake again.”
“No, I imagine not,” Yuna says dryly, but she reaches out to resume the soft circles against his back, and Ilya doesn’t let himself talk him out of leaning against her shoulder. She kisses his hair, gently, so much like her son.
“Okay,” she says, “that’s enough excitement for now.” She cuts off Shane’s protests. “Ilya needs to hydrate and rest, and you’re supposed to be napping before your game. So go nap.”
“It’s just Tampa—”
“Yeah, and imagine how embarrassed you’ll be if you lose to Tampa Bay because you’re distracted and tired.”
Shane sighs in defeat. “Fine. Sure. But you’ll stay, right?”
Ilya’s chest goes warm, hearing Shane ask the question he’s too scared to. He’s still sitting, slumped tiredly against her, so he can’t see Yuna’s face, but he hears the surety in her voice when she answers, “I’ll stay,” and feels the squeeze of her arm.
“Fine,” Shane says again. Then, “I love you.”
Ilya is still Ilya, despite everything, and he manages a, “Which one of us?” that makes Yuna huff a laugh.
“Both of you. Asshole.”
———
Shane flies straight from Dallas to Ottawa, three days later, and Yuna is waiting for him in the airport. She sees him see her from halfway down the escalator, and even from that far, she feels the way his full attention zeroes in on her. He starts jogging down the rest of the escalator, edging politely past people and their carry-ons, and she meets him a few meters from the bottom with a hug that she needs almost as much as he does. She squeezes tight and he tucks his face against her neck. “I know, baby,” she whispers. He nods, starts to pull away, but she keeps a hold on him for one more moment. “He said to give you this as soon as I saw you,” she says, and before he can do much more than scrunch his eyebrows in confusion, she kisses him on the cheek. His face immediately goes bright red, and as cute as that is, they’re going to get noticed if they stand around here too long, and neither of them wants to deal with that today. Besides, Shane has somewhere to be.
“No bags?” Yuna asks, and he shakes his head. Her eyebrows go up. “Carry-on?” He only has a backpack.
He shakes his head again. “Team’s taking care of my stuff.”
“Oh, Shane.”
“Mom. I’m the captain, I’m allowed to ask for favours, okay? Can we go now?”
“Fine, fine,” she says, pulling out her phone to call David, who’s waiting in the cell phone lot. She keeps her other arm wrapped around Shane’s, grounding them both, and feeling grateful to have a son who doesn’t shy away from parental affection. “What did you tell them?”
“Family thing,” he says noncommittally.
“Family thing,” she repeats.
“What?”
And then they’re getting in the car, David calling back a, “Hey, kiddo,” from the driver’s seat and Shane reaching forward to clasp his shoulder. And then they’re on the road, with Shane settled in the backseat, chowing down on something Ilya put together with much affectionate grumbling about stupid diets and airport food that Shane won’t eat. Shane’s shoveling food in his mouth with one hand and texting frantically with the other.
He looks up when they turn off the highway, and Yuna sees him frowning in the rear view mirror. “Are we going to your place?” he asks, voice cracking in honest surprise. Then he flushes. “I mean, not that I don’t want to see you, too, but—”
“We know what you mean,” Yuna says, fondly. “Don’t worry. He’s been staying with us.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Really? Why?”
“Well,” David says, “you didn’t think we’d let him knock around all alone for a week in that big house in Cedarhill, did you? He’d go crazy.”
Shane hums, and when Yuna looks, she sees he’s gone back to his phone.
It wasn’t just that, really. They wanted to get cleaners in to deal with disinfecting the bathroom, and even though Ilya hasn’t thrown up again in the last two days, he and Yuna are both feeling a little gun shy. She always managed to forget, somehow, when he wasn’t in front of them, how much Ilya needed to be around his people. And fine, maybe she was a little embarrassed to admit how much her clever, loving, vulnerable, six-foot-three menace of a future son-in-law activated her intense tiger bitch instincts like a sleeper agent.
So she wanted him close and comfortable. So what, he did too. So of course she brought him to her home, and put him in Shane’s bedroom, and they were all happier for it. It’s not like he’s been going to the rink, trying to hide which direction he’s coming from. He still has a couple of days before the team doctor says he’s allowed back. He still needs to sit down if he’s on his feet for too long, still on a careful diet of bland foods and sports drinks.
Shane is out of the car and halfway to the door before David even has it in park. “Geeze,” he mutters under his breath, and she laughs.
“Should we give them a minute, you think?”
David shoots her a wry look. “I think if we give them much more than this, we’re going to need to cover our ears and eyes when we go in there.”
As expected, her boys are firmly attached to each other when she and David make their way inside, but it hasn’t gone anywhere beyond tight hugs and murmuring to each other. She tries to listen in on whatever they’re saying, but can’t make anything out until Shane huffs a laugh, slaps Ilya gently on the chest, and says, “You asshole.”
“You loooove me,” Ilya teases.
“Fuck off,” Shane rebuts, then leans in for a chaste kiss.
“Hey,” Ilya protests, even as he chases the kiss. “I almost died, be nice to me.”
Yuna scoffs at that, and they both look at her, Ilya with a grin and Shane with something a little more vulnerable. “Don’t freak him out, you were fine.”
“I lost eight pounds in one day!” he protests. “Practically wasted away.”
Shane sucks in a breath. “Jesus, Ilya.”
Ilya shrugs, tangling his fingers almost unconsciously into Shane’s in a way that makes Yuna’s chest tighten. “Is okay. I had your Mama there, and I have eaten so much plain toast. I am half toast now, probably. At least eight pounds toast.”
“Toast is good for unhappy tummies,” David says, unrepentant.
“Tummies, yes. My tummy is okay now, I think. Surely I can eat real food tonight?” Ilya says hopefully.
“Well,” Yuna says, trying not to smile, “I assumed we’d take you two back to your place after supper, but if you want to get risky with it…”
“No, toast is good, I love toast. I have always said this.”
Yuna drives her boys home while David tidies up. Ilya ate a bowl of plain brown rice and some steamed veggies, not really willing to actually risk more than that while the rest of them added marinated salmon and kimuchi, which somehow all fit in Shane’s current diet plan. It’s hard to keep up with his rules, admittedly, even for Yuna, but Ilya assured them it would be fine, and it was. The two of them kept playing footsie under the table, like they thought Yuna and David wouldn’t notice even when it started getting competitive and Shane banged his knee on the bottom of the table, and his face went bright red when everyone looked at him.
She walks them up to the door, ignoring Shane’s weak protests that she doesn’t have to. Of course she doesn’t have to. She’s going to anyway.
She tugs Ilya into a goodbye hug as he reaches the door, and he comes willingly, nearly burying her as he hugs back. “I’m glad we could be here for you,” she whispers in his ear, the closest she can get to admitting that she keeps getting stuck on the thought that if this had happened last year when Ilya was in Boston, he would have been all alone. The first time, she had to go sit down and take deep breaths until she stopped feeling like she was going to cry, imagining it. He nods against her. “I love you. But call me yourself next time, okay?”
He laughs. “Next time? What, you will poison me next?” But his eyes are bright, and he leans into her hand when she reaches up to pat his cheek. He looks past her, and a funny little look passes over his face, fleeting enough that she can’t figure out what it is. “Okay,” he says, “goodnight, Yuna,” and he punches 1410 into the keypad and disappears through the door.
Right, she thinks, of course, and turns to her son, who is standing there with his thumbs in his pockets like he’s forgotten how to act. He’s also looking past her, where the door has closed behind Ilya, with an intense kind of fearful longing.
“Shane,” she says. He doesn’t seem to hear her. “Shane,” she says again.
This time, he takes a deep, shaky breath, and looks away. “Sorry,” he says, her beautiful, ridiculous boy.
“Come here,” she says, and he steps into the hug just as easily. She rubs his back in small circles.
“Was it really bad?” he asks, muffled against her hair.
She doesn’t like to lie to him. “It was,” she says simply.
He takes another deep breath. “I was scared.”
“I know,” she says, taking a step back so he has to look at her, and waiting until he does. “It was scary, and he’s okay. He’s here now, and you made sure he was taken care of.” She thinks, again, of Irina, of how it feels to love someone else’s son like this.
“He’s family now, and Dad and I are here for him when you can’t be. We’ve got him. Okay?”
“Okay,” he says, voice wobbly. Then, “Thank you.”
God, she loves him. Both of them. Her boys. She kisses her son on the cheek and sends him inside to Ilya.