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Ilya doesn’t understand why it starts. He doesn’t know how, or even when. Doesn’t know what day he would mark on the calendar if someone were to ask. He is sure it started sometime recently. It must have. Maybe a few days ago. Last week, maybe. The week before.
What he does know is that when he wakes up on this beautiful Saturday morning with his beautiful husband—glowing, peaceful, the ring around his finger shining with the glint of sunlight—sleeping next to him, he feels something odd in his chest. Something that makes Ilya feel the need to carefully stand up from the bed and walk out into the living room once he’s pulled on a pair of sweatpants.
He hadn’t slept much anyway, and despite the temptation to simply lie there in bed with Shane, he doesn’t. Doesn’t know why he doesn’t, either. Maybe because lying there in bed, eyes open, restless, with Shane sleeping soundly next to him, would remind Ilya that he hasn’t been sleeping much at all most nights lately.
He makes a pot of coffee as quietly as he can. The Sun is only barely rising against the horizon. He hadn’t checked the time, but it is early. Too early, he thinks, to be waking Shane up with his noise.
It’s a thing to be grateful for that it is summer, and that they’re staying at the cottage. Ilya thinks he is grateful that he can go outside to drink his coffee. Sit out on the deck in one of the comfortable lounge chairs, rest in the lingering cool of the night breeze and breathe it into his lungs. Sit in the quiet of the isolated surroundings, listening to the rising chirps of the birds in the trees and the sway of the branches.
In his pocket is a half-empty pack of cigarettes. He’d brought it with them to the cottage on a whim—not really thinking he would use them—and brought them here to the deck hoping the simple weight would bring some satisfaction. They have been sitting in his luggage case for the past week and half, untouched but not unnoticed. This is the first time he’s brought true attention to them.
Ilya knows that when Shane wakes up, comes looking for him and wraps his arms around Ilya from behind and kisses him softly, he’ll taste the smoke on his tongue. He knows that Shane will scold him for coming outside at six-o-clock to smoke.
He takes it out and lights a cigarette anyway.
The taste is terrible alongside the black coffee. It leaves a film on his tongue that makes him smack his lips between draws. He hadn’t brushed his teeth before coming out. He should have.
But despite the taste, and the lingering worry about Shane’s complaints, Ilya feels his head go light with the nicotine. He feels his chest, still lingering with that odd something, release just a small amount of tension it is holding on to. Every exhale tinged with smoke both somehow loosens him and winds him up tighter. He doesn’t know what words to put to the feeling.
He hasn’t known many words to put to his feelings at all recently. He knows there must be some that suit what has been lingering inside of him, but he doesn’t know them. Maybe Shane does; would be able to pull a perfectly fit word from his perfect brain to make Ilya understand his own feelings.
But, then, that would mean he would have to try to tell Shane what these things feel like, and Ilya doesn’t know if he could do so.
He might, distantly, know the feeling. Probably. He knows that he has felt things like these before. Knows that there have been times like these in the past, when things seem to be dulled and greyed and made into something quieter that Ilya can’t quite manage to hear fully.
His cigarette burns down to the bud; Ilya lights another.
He wishes he was able to turn up the volume. Wishes he was able to press a button and make everything go back to full color. Wishes he was able to look at things as he usually can, and not with a lingering, tainted voice in the back of his mind that makes it all sound not so nice as it is.
Because it is nice. Everything is good, lately. Ottawa is climbing the rankings, and the team is closer than they’ve ever been. He is free for the summer, no work, no obligations. Free to spend every moment he can with his Shane, lounging and laughing and drowning himself in the love between them.
Everything is good, and yet every moment Ilya sits here, thinking, it all feels like it’s moving further away from him.
Galina has talked to him about this. Many times since he began seeing her, she has mentioned these… episodes, as she calls them. Small lapses, drops, lows, whatever the fuck they are. She has told him that they are normal. Common. That Ilya should keep aware of the signs of them. That Ilya should know when to reach out. That Ilya should not have to deal with the lowness of them on his own.
But even now, having been seeing Galina for a few years, having gone over the precautions to take and the things he should do when they come, he feels this something growing inside of him and he feels his brain simmering with a desire to sit in it.
Ilya doesn’t understand it. He knows that he knows better than to be sitting here with himself, wallowing in this feeling. He should not be sitting with it. Should not be thinking it in the first place. Should not be smoking. He should be asleep with Shane, cradled in his husband’s touch and air and warmth.
But even the warmth has felt dulled lately, chilled to an aching distance from it, and Ilya hates himself for thinking this way.
“It’s early,” comes suddenly from behind him, Shane’s voice still hoarse with sleep.
“Yes.” Ilya has the brief thought to quickly put out the cigarette, but it wouldn’t matter. Shane knows he’s smoking, and Ilya doesn’t want to let go of the lightheadedness of the nicotine yet.
“Is everything okay?” Shane asks, stepping around the chair, sitting down carefully on the arm rest. His hand slides up to Ilya’s neck, caressing the tangled curls at the base. Ilya wishes he didn’t partially want to shy away from the touch.
He takes in a thick draw of smoke, holding it, releasing, and nods. “Yes.”
“I didn’t think you brought any with you,” after a lingering moment of silence.
The sounds of the surroundings become very loud as they both sit with the words. Ilya wants to ask the trees to be quiet for a moment so that he can think properly.
He forces himself to shrug. Another draw. Another shallow breath into his aching lungs. “For safe keeping.”
Shane hums, still gently brushing his fingers against Ilya’s neck. He leans closer, bumping their shoulders, dropping his chin to the top of Ilya’s head.
They sit there for a moment like this. Shane’s breathing somewhat helps to calm Ilya’s own. Also pools into a deep guilt in his stomach. Shane should still be sleeping. Should be resting in the warm calm of their bed, not out here, trying to soothe something Ilya is not sure he wants Shane to understand.
“You should go back to bed,” he says, quietly, a hollow to his voice that he doesn’t like the sound of.
“So should you,” Shane echoes. His lips press to Ilya’s hair. His hand cradles the back of his neck.
“Cannot sleep. I would keep you up.”
“That’s okay.”
“Go back to bed, любимый,” Ilya repeats. He shifts, looks up at his husband. He doesn’t know what the expression on his own face is, only that it makes Shane frown down at him.
He hates when he makes Shane frown this way.
For a moment, he’s forced to sit with it. Look at Shane’s sad, reaching eyes and his tight lips while his cigarette burns itself down between his fingers. The guilt continues to spread, thick and muddy.
“Okay,” Shane then says, quiet and soft. He kisses Ilya’s head again. Twists a finger into a curl. “Don’t stay out too long, you’ll get mosquito bites.”
A small smile reaches Ilya’s face, the feeling tugging on him in the way he can never resist when Shane says something so wonderfully Shane, no matter what he feels in the moment. He nods, looking down at his hand for a moment, then back up. Nods again, though, he doesn’t know why.
“I will be back inside soon.”
Shane mirrors his smile and stands up from the arm of the chair, nodding back. His hand lingers in Ilya’s hair until his body drags it away purely through distance. Ilya doesn’t watch him go back inside, letting his eyes drift back out into the expanse of green surrounding the cottage, to the lake off in the distance and the shine of the rising Sun against the water.
It should be easy to feel good here. He always does. This is their place now. Their sanctuary away from the rest of the world, where it’s only them and nothing else. Ilya should feel safe and warm and calm with it all. Should be able to let the thoughts he’s having drift off and away where he can deal with them when they’re back in the real world.
But these thoughts are chained down to him; a quiet, dull roar demanding attention. He’s tried to stay busy. Tried to distract himself with the water and the trees and Shane, because that is usually what works. And yet still, they remain. A film over everything that Ilya can’t peel away.
He isn’t even sure what the thoughts are. If they are even intelligible sentences, or just a hum of words in Russian and English trying to make sense of themselves. He doesn’t like when he cannot put words to his thoughts. Not being able to put words together in English to describe things is hard in itself, but when his thoughts begin to blur into one unraveled mess, he never knows what to do with them. Never knows how to make them make sense.
Really though, there is not much to make sense of. These feelings are not right. Misplaced. There is no reason for them to be sitting in his chest. No reason for him to feel this fog over everything, greying his surroundings.
There is nothing to much make sense of, but Ilya remains out on the deck for a long time trying to make sense of it. He stays until the Sun has risen beyond the horizon, until the warmth in the air picks up with its light, until the birds’ singing rings out loudly through the trees, and until he’s smoked another two cigarettes. His lungs burn. It’s been too long since he’s chain-smoked. Too long since he’s sat in one place so stilly, thinking.
He wonders, dimly, distantly, if this will become a habit again. He knows he doesn’t want it to be—hasn’t in a long time. Knows that Shane will be disappointed if he starts smoking heavily again.
I will never fucking forgive you if you get lung cancer and die.
Years ago Shane had said this, and Ilya still occasionally thinks back to it. Anytime the craving for nicotine echoes through his head, he thinks of it. Anytime he thinks about running down to a corner store for a pack, the words repeat in his mind.
Shane had really meant it. Ilya knows he’d meant it. Knows that the serious look in his eyes gave gravity to the sentence, even if his tone had been light.
It hurts to wonder if Shane would not forgive him for feeling this way for no reason. Realistically, as always, Shane would simply try to help. Help Ilya move through the fog as best as he possibly could, giving it everything he has like Shane does with everything he does.
But Ilya also knows that this would make Shane sad, and that’s the last thing Ilya wants now. He has been so light lately; getting used to Ottawa, finding his comfortable place in the team, working harder than ever and yet doing so with an ease Ilya admires. Shane tries so hard, and Ilya doesn’t want to give him anything more to fill his plate. He wishes he could be the perfect, happily content partner that Shane deserves.
Even now, ever occasionally, Ilya thinks he is not good enough to be married to someone so wonderful as Shane. It is usually fleeting, rare, but now that Ilya is sitting here alone it has time to settle, repeat.
But this is stupid to think about. Shane loves him, and he loves Shane. They bicker, disagree, and argue over little, stupid things that make no sense to anyone but them. They also ramble to each other at the end of long days, lie next to each other with their fingers laced, muted, calm, their breathing synced, and they play dumb video games and run around the yard with Anya and eat dinner every other weekend with Yuna and David.
They have a life together that has been building slowly in the same pattern since they were eighteen. They have family. They have happiness. They have love that Ilya thinks will be the closest he ever gets to heaven.
So why can he not feel it right now?
Why does it all feel so dim?
By the time he goes back inside, Shane is fully up. Rummaging around the kitchen for ingredients for breakfast, the smell of cooking vegetables filling the room. He looks up from the pantry to smile at Ilya, eyes crinkling.
It’s easy to forget sometimes that the man standing in front of him is older now than he was many years ago. Ilya doesn’t know how. Only knows that he finds himself tracing his fingers to the thin, shallow branches around his husband’s eyes when they are lying together in bed; finds that he loves looking at the gentle lines curved around his mouth; finds that the growing number of freckles along his cheeks never ceases to make Ilya’s heart go tight with the time they show.
Because that is what they prove to him, when he does let himself sit in their gravity. The changes on Shane’s face prove that Ilya has been given the gift of watching the other man morph and grow and age all within reach. That Shane is there with him. Not going anywhere. That Ilya will be able to watch the lines spread and the freckles multiply and Shane’s hair go grey around the edges for many years to come.
He lets himself smile back. It feels weak, but it is a smile nonetheless. He walks over to the kitchen. Slides behind Shane and wraps his arms around his waist and kisses his cheek. He feels Shane’s face wrinkle up—probably cringing at the lingering scent of his cigarettes. He kisses him again and squeezes his arms to apologize.
“Thank you for making coffee,” he says, not commenting on the ashy smell.
“Mm.” Breathing Shane in, trying to let the smell of cedar shampoo dull his thoughts. “I needed wake up call.”
“You haven’t been sleeping much,” Shane notes, turning his face. He kisses Ilya square on the lips, cigarettes be damned.
Ilya shakes his head. No use denying. “No.”
“I can go down to town and get some melatonin or something,” he offers, always the fixer, “if it’ll help. I know I used to use it when I first started playing for Montreal. Helped me calm down before bed.”
Shrugging, squeezing his arms around Shane again. “Is okay.”
“You need sleep.”
“You will just have to put more effort into tiring me out.” Ilya smirks into Shane’s cheek, biting gently at the plush of it. It should feel playful, but it mostly just feels like he’s putting on a show.
“I’m serious.” Shane turns away from the stove, sliding his arms up over Ilya’s chest. “It’s not good for you to be sleeping so little.”
“I am alright, sweetheart.” Tries to kiss him, denied by Shane reeling his head back just enough to keep his lips out of reach.
“Ilya,” he says sternly. Not mean, not chiding, just firm and serious.
Ilya sighs. He drops his head onto Shane’s shoulder, nuzzling into the curve of his neck. His arms have gone loose, posture lost completely. His knees feel weak. He doesn’t want to talk about this right now. He needs another cigarette. He needs to get his head to sit properly on his neck before any more words are spoken between them.
Shane’s hand moves to cradle the back of his head, fingers in his hair. He presses a kiss to the side of Ilya’s head, lips lingering.
“I’m just worried you’re not getting enough rest,” he whispers. The words gently rumble through Ilya’s skull. “I’m worried you’re…”
He stops. Sighs. Ilya is terrified of what he is going to say.
Ilya knows that Shane must have noticed his downness lately. It is hard for Shane, Ilya knows, to not notice things like that. He is always observing, always noting things into his mind for later reference. Cares such patient attention to Ilya’s every move. It once felt suffocating—being so closely watched, unable to hide—but now, after so many years, Ilya takes it as what it is. Love and affection and care. As terrifying as it is to be seen, Shane does so with so much delicacy that it is hard to not feel comforted by it.
But right now, he is scared that Shane will say something too real. That he will draw enough firm attention to Ilya’s downness that it forces Ilya to face it head-on. He tries to stay still. Tries to will everything to disappear, maybe.
“I don’t want you to feel like you can’t tell me things,” Shane finally says, voice barely above a mumble.
It feels odd, in this place in the conversation. Ilya thinks Shane must have been thinking of saying these words for some time, repeating and reordering them to fit just right against his tongue. Shane always plans important things. Even things as simple as a sentence.
“I do tell you things.” Still nosing at Shane’s smell. Still cradling his waist loosely. Still trying to fight of the rumbling thoughts telling him to run away.
“I know.” Another kiss to Ilya’s head. A squeeze around the back of his neck. “But you hide things sometimes, too.”
Ilya does not like it put this way. He does not like the idea of Shane feeling left in the dark about what is going through his mind. The guilt in his stomach bubbles into something ugly and achy.
“I’m sorry.” Parting from the sweet, hidden safety of Shane’s neck, forcing himself to look into his husband’s face. When he meets Shane’s eyes, there’s a desperate look in them. His lips are tight. His brows furrowed.
“You don’t have to apologize, just,” he says, sighing, looking down for a moment then back up again with a growing might in his gaze, “don’t hide. Please.”
And Ilya cannot think of what he should say. Cannot do much of anything but stare into Shane’s beautiful dark eyes and try not to let anything build wetly behind his own.
Shane’s hand traces the side of his face. Fingers dance across his temple, his cheek, the ridge of his eyebrow. “I’m here, okay? For anything. I don’t care what it is.”
All Ilya can force himself to do is nod. His throat is tight for some reason. His hands, maybe, tremble at Shane’s waist.
And Shane—beautiful, wonderful Shane—just pulls him closer, draws his face back into his neck, holds onto him like an anchor. Ilya’s chest stutters with a breath, shaking, trembling against Shane’s own. He tries to match his breathing to Shane’s. Tries to inhale and exhale slowly. In and out. One, two, three, four, five. Shane traces the lines of his shoulders, soothing. Ilya keeps trying to breathe.
“It should not be this way,” pushes out from his tight throat. He clutches onto Shane, and he does not know why. Flooded all of the sudden. Aching deep in his chest. The thoughts are roaring louder than they had been just minutes ago; burden, guilty, shameful, careless, useless, lazy.
This is not Shane’s responsibility, Ilya tells himself, grasping, desperate, screaming into the void of his mind. This is not Shane’s job, trying to keep Ilya here and present, and yet Shane still holds onto him and kisses his ear and soothes the tightness in his muscles with his gentle hands.
“There isn’t any way it should be,” Shane says, soft and breathy into his ear. “Just you.”
“But this not—I am not—” Hands going tighter in Shane’s loose t-shirt. Eyes wound shut. Ilya doesn’t feel like he can breathe. He tries to think of Galina’s voice: one, two, three, four, five. His chest is still suffocating him with shallow bursts of oxygen. “It should be good. And I should be good.”
English is going frazzled in his brain. Thoughts running to quickly to translate properly. He hates that he cannot think of the words to say.
“You can’t control it.” Shane’s kisses are moving across the side of his head. His hands are both rubbing circles into Ilya’s back.
“I want to.”
Nodding, sighing. “I know.”
“I want to turn off these things,” Ilya grits, drawing a hand up to scrape at the few inches of space between it and his forehead. “I want to make it all good.”
“I know,” Shane repeats. He turns his head, breathes in Ilya’s hair.
“It is like curtains I cannot open. Just sit and block out light and make all these beautiful things so hard to see.”
Shane doesn’t speak, and now Ilya is speaking too much and can’t stop himself from grasping at the few words that make sense in his head and pushing them out of his chest.
“I want to be happy here. I do not want to make things dark here like they are in my head. This is supposed to be light place.” He presses his lips to Shane’s shoulder. Keeps his eyes tightly shut so that he doesn’t have to feel fully aware of their desire to shed tears. “I do not want to make you feel I am burden here. We should be good here, and I am not good.”
At that, Shane draws away. He keeps hold of Ilya’s shoulders, leaning back, and Ilya knows he should do the same. He does not want to leave this spot, though. The safety it holds, the hidden place where he doesn’t have to face the reality of whatever might be spread over his face. But he knows that Shane wants him to. Wants Ilya to look at him and let him look back. Wants to see everything that his face is revealing, no matter what might be there.
Ilya steals one last kiss to Shane’s shoulder, and pulls back. His eyes are wet, his mouth tight.
Shane has a look on his face that is hard to understand. Ilya is usually so good at knowing what Shane’s expressions mean, but this one is hard. Maybe it is the blur in his vision that makes it so hard to understand.
“You aren’t a burden.” Shane’s fingers squeeze down on his shoulders. His brows are a hard line, but his eyes are so painfully soft that Ilya has to swallow down a noise back into his chest.
“I am not being easy,” Ilya tries to counter, but Shane is already shaking his head before the last word is out.
“I don’t want easy, okay?” He reaches his left hand down and grabs Ilya’s own, lacing their fingers. Ilya feels the soft clink of their rings against each other. He breathes. He watches their fingers flex against themselves as Shane squeezes.
“I want you,” he says. His voice is in that tone he uses when they are on the ice, when he’s trying to convince Ilya that his idea for a play is better than his own. There’s finality. Sternness. Affection. There are so many things laced into Shane’s words and Ilya is not sure what to do with them all.
“I want you however you are, because it’s you.” He pulls their hands up, rests them against Ilya’s chest. “It’s you. And I love you. And I’m going to be here when you need me, okay?”
Finally, maybe deciding that there must be something more for him to seal his words with, Shane leans forward again and kisses Ilya softly. Ilya wonders, somehow, if he is still bothered by the lingering taste of nicotine.
This is hard to think about, though, with Shane’s soft lips pressing against his without hesitation and their hands bound together to his chest. It is hard to not let himself kiss Shane back. Hard to not let himself drown in the warmth around him, let his head fill with Shane’s words and water down the cruel sounds of his own thoughts.
“You aren’t a burden, Ilya,” Shane says as he parts from the kiss. “You will never be a burden. Not to me, or mom and dad, or anyone else.”
If Ilya was not so terrifying close to tears, he would joke that the favorite son could never be burden; really, all he is able to linger on is the absence of my hovering before the mention of Yuna and David.
Shane nods at him, as if he is trying to solidify the words further. Force Ilya to agree with him on sheer will. “We’ll figure it out, okay?”
And Ilya, unable to deny Shane’s might, nods back. “Okay.”
“Don’t ever keep things like this from me,” Shane adds, a little firmer. “I’m here, and I want to know so I can help you.”
Ilya nods again, smiling a bit. It does not feel quite as it should, but it’s easier to do so than it was just a minutes ago, and Shane would be deserving of it even if it was the hardest thing on Earth for Ilya to attempt.
“Okay,” he repeats, bringing his empty hand up to card through Shane’s hair, trailing his fingers around the shell of his ear.
“I love you.”
“я тоже тебя люблю,” Ilya echoes.
“And throw out those cigarettes,” Shane finishes, now glaring his perfect, grumpy kitten glare that holds nothing but affection behind the tight frown of his face.
Ilya smiles wider, and this motion feels even easier than just moments ago. He leans in to peck the corner of Shane’s downturned lips. He pulls on the lobe of his ear.
“You should not deny me these things,” he chides, forcing his face into a pitifully weak frown to match his husband’s. “I am sad. Deserve simple pleasures.”
“And when you get lung cancer?”
“I will use the, eh, what people say when good thing happens for no reason?”
“Miracle?” Shane says flatly, doing not such a good job at hiding his amusement. Ilya is glad that things have suddenly become lighter. That he is being rewarded for letting some of the heaviness out.
“Yes. These miracles, people talk about. I will use mine to cure lung cancer.”
“Or you could just stop smoking.”
“But then what would I do with my miracle?”
Shane scoffs, shoves gently at Ilya’s shoulder, and smiles as he turns back to face the stove. His eyes are wrinkled beautifully. Ilya wants to count every etch in his skin and the years that go along with them.
He wraps his arms around Shane from behind and hooks his chin over his shoulder to stare down at the mundane sight of his husband stirring vegetables. It’s so very plain, so very boring, and yet it calms Ilya’s brain in a wonderful way that keeps his thoughts at bay.
As he watches, he does not have the heart to tell Shane the unfortunate news: he already used his miracle many, many years ago. He supposes that means he will just have to quit smoking.