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All the nights I spend fighting bad thoughts in my room
Feeling so alone, might as well be on the moon
I thought I found the antidote with you
I thought I found the antidote with you
“Goodnight, Ilya. I love you.”
The call ends, and Ilya is left staring into his own eyes in the reflection of the dark screen.
Most nights these days end like this. With a video call to Shane, a debrief on both of their days, some kind of video sex, and then quiet moments of vulnerability where they both stare into the cameras of their phones and wish that teleportation had been invented.
Tonight is no different. And Ilya wouldn’t change a thing about it.
In the months since returning to Boston after spending the summer with Shane at his cottage, Ilya has quickly adjusted to what his new life looks like. Gone are the nights out at clubs, the sweaty press of bodies, the burn of whatever drink is in his hand. Really, this new life had begun months before he and Shane had even admitted the depths of their feelings. After Tampa, that had been it for Ilya.
In no way does he regret any of these changes, but he cannot deny that sometimes, after the facetimes end and he is alone in his quiet apartment again, there is a certain appeal to the idea of being anywhere where he would not be alone. Sometimes, the silence of his solitude seems to have a physical weight that suffocates his brain into a numb fugue.
Ilya is not a stranger to this feeling of melancholy. He has spent his entire life weaving between these bursts of mental sabotage. But he would be a liar if he said he hadn’t hoped they’d go away now that Shane was his. Ilya has never been in love before, but he believes that if anything was powerful enough to silence the bug in his brain that sometimes whispers horrible things to him, it would be the power of his love for Shane, and the way Shane loves him back.
Ilya reminds himself that things are difficult right now, but they will get easier. They will spend the summer together, and then, if everything goes according to plan, Ilya will move to Ottawa. He and Shane will be closer than they ever have been, and soon they can let the world know that they are friends.
He just needs to be patient.
But my head is full of poison
And my heart is full of doubt
I got toxins in my bloodstream
You tried hard to suck them out
And it feels like medication
And it's good for me, I'm sure
But it don't matter how your love feels anymore
It'll never be the cure
It'll never be the cure
The cottage is a much needed sanctuary for Ilya, and not just because it means he gets unrestricted access to Shane.
His transfer to Ottawa has been announced. The public response has been…loud.
Things are good as long as Ilya stays off his phone and ignores the speculative articles and probing texts. It doesn’t really bother him when the articles question if he’s stupid or arrogant, but what does bother him is his own silence. He knows he can’t give them an honest answer when they ask him why he’s leaving Boston, but that doesn’t make it any less shitty when he shrugs and gives some cocky response about being ready to “try something new.”
But now he is at the cottage with Shane, and when Shane sees him begin to frown at his phone, he plucks it from his hands and tosses it away; or he straddles Ilya’s lap and holds his face between his hands so that Ilya is forced to look him in his soft eyes; or he challenges Ilya to some unimportant competition that they both get joyously consumed by; or he crawls across the couch and trails gentle, worshiping kisses up Ilya’s thighs as he goes.
And each time Shane shows his love to him in a new way, Ilya smiles, and feels okay, because this is why he is moving. This is why it is okay that the entire NHL empire is discussing him with no chance of his own input. It’s why it’s okay that the men on his old team in Boston can’t meet his eyes anymore; they are hurt by his lack of an answer and find that a betrayal - because if Ilya has no good reason to leave, then was it them? But that is too vulnerable a line of thinking for them to ever vocalize and so instead they look at him with anger in their eyes.
It can be the right decision, he knows, and still hurt in some kind of way. He would never tell Shane this, but he also thinks the way Shane seems determined to keep him busy and not talk about the move or the media maybe indicates that Shane knows something is going on in Ilya’s brain.
They only have three more days left before they have to go back to reality. Shane falls asleep on the couch, and Ilya goes to sit out on his own by the fire that is still dying down.
It will be good, he tells himself, feeling daunted that when he gets back, the move begins. He is already mostly packed, but soon the boxes will be out of his Boston home, and Boston won’t be his home anymore at all. Ottawa will be, and he will be two hours away from Shane. Shane, who is his true home. What is Ottawa or Boston or Moscow when compared to Shane? None of those cities have ever made him feel as safe and loved as he does when simply existing in the same room as Shane.
So, it will be okay. Even though Ilya feels an unexplainable sense of dread at the thought of leaving the cottage in three days, it will be okay. Because Ottawa means closer to Shane, and closer to Shane means closer to home.
But there is that small, nagging, incessant, screaming bug in his brain that whispers, “but what if…?”
The questions vary, but they always start with those two words.
“What if it’s not the same once you’re in Ottawa?”
“What if all your relationship comes down to is passion fuelled by rivalry and distance?”
“What if your new coach stares at you the way Papa used to? With unobtainable expectations and deafening disappointment. You were never enough for him. Not when you were the first draft pick, not when you funded his doctor visits and Alexei’s indulgent lifestyle, not when you won the Cup. What if your new coach looks at you and sees whatever Papa saw that made you never enough?”
“What if your new team watches you the way Alexei did? With guarded loathing, and spiteful glee when you flounder? Alexei, who used to sit on the other side of Mama as she’d read stories to you before bed, and pretend that he wasn’t interested. Mama never forced him to stay, but still he did, and you’d both laugh together at the silly voices that Mama would use for the characters. Alexei, who loved you then when you were a boy, and saw who you grew into and could not find a way to love that man.”
“What if Shane doesn’t love you once there is not distance to shield him from who you really are?”
“What if you move to Ottawa, and your team rejects you, and the city hates you, and Shane learns that you’re too much, that there is something wrong with you in a way that will never be fixed?”
“What if Shane realizes you are not worth the risk, and then you are in a city that does not know you on a team that hates you and Shane is two hours away and he is not your home anymore. Boston will hate you, too, so it will not be your home. And Moscow cannot be your home. What then?”
“What will you do, Ilya, when you are alone, and have no one and no place to call your home?”
Ilya sits helplessly watching the flames. It feels like his only option is to remain still and wait for the bug in his brain to stop whispering to him. What else can he do? He could scream and thrash and rip the skin off his face until he can find a way to reach his fingers through his eye sockets and pull the bug out, but that would probably wake Shane up. He could walk to the end of the dock and sink into the darkness of the lake, but he worries that the bug would be the last thing he hears before he dies, and if he’s going to die, he would want Shane’s voice to be the last thing he hears.
And so he sits. And he waits.
It’s not his patience that finally starts to quiet the bug, but the opening of the screen door and the soft, sleep-laced, “Hey,” as Shane pads softly over to where Ilya sits on the outdoor loveseat.
Ilya isn’t sure what his face must show, but Shane deposits a kiss onto the top of his head before settling down next to him. “You okay?”
Ilya hums in acknowledgment and then says, “Yes. Just do not want to leave.” It’s not a lie, but it is far from the whole truth.
“We’ve still got a few days,” Shane says, rubbing soothing circles into Ilya’s back. “But…yeah. I know what you mean.”
Ilya turns to look at Shane, trying to mask his alarm. Is Shane also afraid of what being closer will mean? Does Shane already see the cracks starting to form? Does Shane wish Ilya hadn’t signed with Ottawa? It had been Shane’s plan, originally, but what if he regretted proposing it in the first place?
Instead, Shane blows air out from his cheeks and then says with such sincerity, “I’m going to miss you so fucking much.”
A smile cracks across Ilya’s stoic face. Reflexively, he teases, “You have just seen me for four weeks straight, Hollander.”
“I know,” Shane replies, still serious. “And I wish I could stay here with you for another four years.” He blushes, as if the confession hasn’t just silenced the bug that has been poisoning Ilya’s brain for the last hour. “I mean - I’m still looking forward to the season starting -”
“Of course,” Ilya deadpans with a smirk.
“But if we could just like…stop time. And we could just be here together for like…a long time. As long as we want. And then restart the world when we’re ready to go back.”
Ilya traces his thumb over Shane’s cheek. “I do not know if I would ever be ready to go back.”
Shane chuckles, leaning into the touch. “Yeah, I guess that’s the dangerous part of that plan, huh? I don’t know when I’d be ready either. We might accidentally lose track of time, and then when we remember to start it again, we return as seventy year old men who definitely won’t get medical clearance to go on the ice.”
Ilya laughs at the absurdity of this conversation, and also basks in the concept that Shane thinks they could spend the next fifty years together with no desire for anything else.
“Well, perhaps I will cancel my Amazon order for time machine, then,” Ilya muses. “I would not want to rob NHL of their two best players so early in their careers.”
Shane smiles, and presses a soft kiss to Ilya’s lips. “For the good of hockey, I guess that’s for the best.” He stands up. “Are you ready to come to bed? I can put the fire out.”
Ilya nods, taking Shane’s offered hand. He goes to their bed alone while Shane takes care of the fire.
It will be good, he tells himself.
And when Shane comes to bed a few minutes later, and Ilya pulls him as tight as possible against his body, he thinks he really believes it.
But I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
Summer.
This is what Ilya reminds himself of as he prepares to see Dr. Galina this morning.
In summer, everything will be different.
Everything will be better.
In summer, the world will learn that he and Shane are desperately, disgustingly in love with each other. Shane will become his husband, and Ilya will stop feeling this way.
He will stop feeling like the second that ring leaves his line of sight, a cloud starts rolling in on his mind. Not a cloud that brings a thunderstorm, but a cloud that signals the start of an overcast day. The sun shines on his mind every time he looks at his ring, every time the Centaurs roar with a newfound camaraderie post-near death experience, every time Shane brainstorms plans for the next chapter of their life. And yet sometimes, those clouds still roll in and cause his brain to have a gray, overcast day.
But he tries to remind himself that everything is going exactly as it should be. The Centaurs are winning more than they ever have. Ilya has friends in Ottawa on his team, and a family in Yuna and David. Ilya has a fiance.
All the pieces are coming together. Their ten year plan is now on a speedrun to be complete in a few months. And yet some days, Ilya still feels like the ground is crumbling beneath him and he will fall into a cavern so deep he cannot see the bottom.
It is in these moments that he reminds himself he just needs to wait for summer.
It will all be okay in summer.
And my head is full of poison
And my heart is full of doubt
I got toxins in my bloodstream
You tried hard to suck them out
And it feels like medication
And it's good for me, I'm sure
But it don't matter how your love feels anymore
It'll never be the cure
It'll never be the cure
“I choose him.”
The words repeat in Ilya’s brain, weeks later.
Shane had looked Crowell in the eyes, taken Ilya’s hand in his own, and stated, “I choose him.”
And now Montreal is out of the playoffs.
And that stupid fucking bug that lives in Ilya’s brain will not shut up.
“Would he still choose you now, if he knew this is where he would end up?”
Ilya tries to tell it, “Yes, he has chosen me and that will not change and I know this,” but the bug is already whispering its next dose of poison.
“How much backlash from the league, the fans, his own team, can he take before he realizes you’re not worth it?”
Ilya finds it harder to argue with the bug on this topic, because sometimes, when Shane is not there to trail loving fingers through his curls, or press soft kisses to his temple, Ilya begins to wonder the same thing.
“Will your team realize what you are then? A fraud, who can’t keep the man he loves, let alone lead a team through the playoffs?”
Ilya tells the bug, “My team has been good. They do not care about Shane and me. They just care about the game.”
But the bug sings over his protests at a deafening volume.
“What are you, with no Shane and no hockey? You are nothing. There is nothing to you beyond the people you surround yourself with. And when those people no longer want to be around you? What will you be then? Who are you, Ilya, when the day is over and you have nothing but an empty house and a cold bed to come home to?”
Ilya tries valiantly to argue that he will never come back to an empty house, because Anya will always be there to greet him. And if things go the way he’s hoping, his bed will never be cold again, either, because Shane will be spending every night with him in it.
But the bug does not listen to Ilya, and so instead Ilya stalks through his dark house to crawl into bed next to Shane. Shane folds himself around Ilya’s body without waking up. And there, in the dark and feeling the physical proof of Shane’s love, Ilya is almost able to ignore the bug in his brain.
Oh, 'cause baby, I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
I'm unraveled
Why can't you come stitch me up?
Why can't it ever be enough?
Why can't you come stitch me up?
Why can't it ever be enough?
It's not enough
They are married. The world knows about them. They live together. They play on the same team. It is everything Ilya never thought he would have and desperately wanted for so, so long.
He goes to sleep next to the man he loves and wakes in the morning next to the man who loves him. They go to practice together, and cook dinners together, and take Anya for walks together.
They do almost everything together. And Ilya loves every second of it.
And yet…
There are moments, when he and Shane are sitting quietly on the couch together, something playing on the TV in the background. They aren’t speaking, but it is a comfortable quiet where they each have nothing to say. It is the banality of living everyday life with another person, and Ilya feels so lucky to be able to have these boring evenings.
He knows this.
But sometimes in the beautiful, luxurious quiet, that fucking bug in his brain starts its deafening whispers.
“How are you just sitting there, doing nothing? You could be using this time for conditioning, or tape review, or strategizing new plays. Instead, you sit there and do nothing. You lazy piece of shit.”
“What if you’re getting soft? Shane fell in love with you because you were the best at hockey. Now that you have him - now that he legally is stuck with you, you think you can just lose your edge?”
The bug thinks for a moment before presenting its next question.
“So, what, the only reason you’re playing is because of Shane? What would Shane think of that, to know that he is the only reason you do anything?”
“What a worthless captain you must be, to not care about your team enough to want to be great for them.”
“The Centaurs deserve better than a half-assed captain who needs his husband to hold his hand just to get through the day.”
“Shane deserves a husband who can be as great as he is. Not someone who will tug at his hand and pull Shane down with him.”
“People who jump into water to save someone drowning often drown themselves.”
“Are you going to drown Shane just because you can’t swim on your own?”
Across the couch from him, Shane watches the movie absentmindedly. If he were to look at Ilya, will he see the war happening in Ilya’s head? Will he hear Ilya’s silent pleas for help as the bug wiggles deeper and deeper into his brain until its poison is all Ilya can hear?
He should say something, he knows distantly. Both Shane and Galina had been trying to convince him of the importance of asking for help. Of sharing his feelings before it even gets to the point of needing help.
This time, it is Ilya’s voice that whispers in his mind.
“But it was supposed to be different now.”
“I have everything I have ever wanted. I have Shane, and our team, and our home, and our family.”
“This was supposed to make me happy.”
“This was supposed to fix me.”
And yet here he is, married, happy, and still paralyzed to the whispers of the bug in his brain.
Numbly, his brain drifts between his options. He could bash his head into the wooden coffee table until the bug is turned to pulp. But he thinks Shane would restrain him before he could accomplish the task. He could keep sitting here, listening to the bug, but he thinks if he doesn’t move soon that he might never move again. And people would notice if that happened. He could stand up, get his keys, get into his car, and drive away. He could drive and drive and drive and maybe he would run out of gas or maybe he would just close his eyes with his foot on the accelerator and see how long it took to hit a turn. But he could accidentally kill an innocent driver by doing that, and so that one isn’t really an option he supposes.
He could talk to Shane.
He could mute the TV, and look Shane in the eyes, and tell him that things are not okay, and that maybe that thing he warned Shane about before they got married really was something they needed to look out for and not just something theoretical.
And…what then?
Shane’s eyes will glisten with tears but he won’t let them fall. He will hold Ilya. He will press a kiss to Ilya’s head, and his temple, and probably his lips. He will tell him that he is here. He is here and not going anywhere and they will get through this together. He will suggest they call Dr. Galina in the morning, and say gently yet firmly that it is probably time Ilya consider listening to her suggestion about medication.
No matter what the bug in Ilya’s brain says, Shane will not leave. Although it takes effort to swim through the bug’s poison, Ilya does and eventually reaches the island of logic in his brain. And on that island, Ilya finds the truth that Shane will still be here when Ilya shows him how broken he is.
And on that island of logic, Ilya also realizes that he does not want to let the bug in his brain rule his life like this anymore.
Without consciously doing it, Ilya feels himself reaching for the remote. He pauses the TV. Shane turns to him. Ilya feels sick.
But still, he says, “Shane? I think…I think I am not okay.”
All because my head is full of poison
And my heart is full of doubt
I got toxins in my bloodstream
You tried so hard to suck out
And it feels like medication
And it's good for me, I'm sure
But it don't matter how your love feels anymore
It'll never be the cure
It'll never be the cure
It'll never be
Ilya’s mid-morning alarm goes off, but he is already standing with the glass of water in his hand and the pill sloshing down his throat. Now that he has done this every morning for the past three months, it does not feel bitter anymore going down.
He hears Shane’s feet coming down the steps, and then his head peeks into the kitchen.
“Did you -”
“Already swallowed.” Ilya sticks his tongue out as if to prove his point, but Shane has no interest in checking.
He crinkles his nose slightly. “Weird wording.”
Ilya shrugs. “Is not lie.”
“I told Luca I’d come in early today so we can work on that play from last night. Do you want to join?”
Ilya shakes his head. “I told Anya I would take her for long walk before practice. I will drive separately.”
“See you in a bit, then.” Shane pecks him on the lips on his way to the door, calling over his shoulder, “Love you.”
“Love you,” Ilya responds, watching his husband fondly as he grabs his bag, throws on his jacket, and leaves.
Speaking to Anya in Russian, Ilya begins prepping the two of them for their walk.
“Come along, my little princess. We do not want to upset Dr. Galina now, do we?”
Dr. Galina had encouraged Ilya to create some kind of routine separate from Shane. It was good that he and Shane enjoyed spending time together, she told him, but it was also not realistic to think they would never be separate ever again, and Ilya needed to know how to be on his own and not fall victim to the whispers of the bug in his brain.
So now, on any day they are home, Ilya takes Anya for a walk with just the two of them. They take other walks with Shane later in the day so he isn’t left out, but the first walk of the day belongs to Ilya and Anya alone.
Ilya slips Anya’s snow booties and jacket on, and then dons his own gear. He coos at how cute she is and then leads them out of the house.
Because Dr. Galina hadn’t strictly forbidden it, and because Ilya also can’t help himself, he periodically checks Shane’s location on his phone until he sees him reach the rink. Satisfied, Ilya tucks his phone back into his pocket.
It is a good day today. Ilya can feel it in the way his lungs breathe the crisp air and his brain warms when the winter sun hits his face. There have been a lot more good days recently.
He had realized a month and a half in that the medicine did not solve everything. It did not eradicate the brain bug, but instead made it much easier to ignore. There were still days when it was hard, but the good days outweighed the bad in a way that made life much easier to endure.
The first few weeks had been a battle with his own body to even allow himself to swallow the pills. His throat didn’t seem capable of allowing the tiny capsules down. He almost threw up twice in the first week for no other reason than pure anxiety and dread at the feeling of the medication going down.
But he got better at taking the pills without issue, and his brain quickly learned that Dr. Galina had in fact not been lying when she explained to him how he was not broken, his brain was simply chemically imbalanced. And once his brain had those chemicals that it had been lacking for so long, other things got easier, too.
His thoughts are less likely to paralyze him or make him feel like he has to scream until his throat bleeds. It becomes easier to say “I am feeling this” because it doesn’t feel so much anymore like it is wrong to feel that way.
Even Shane himself has experienced changes. The quieting of the bug in Ilya’s brain makes it so he is able to hear what Shane is actually saying, and say what he actually wants to say in return. It seems like Shane is opening up the more that Ilya does. When Ilya first realized that two months in, he felt a sinking feeling with the realization that he had been holding Shane back in this way. Ilya’s own inability to handle his shit had prevented Shane from making leaps like this.
The bug had been loud that night, but Dr. Galina had told him in his next session that it isn’t uncommon to see these kinds of changes in partnerships when only one component starts medication. It is easier to be vulnerable with someone who is also vulnerable. Ilya had been guarded his entire life, even after years of being with Shane. Now, on this new medication, Ilya’s brain is resetting itself. It is reconfiguring to a new normal. And Shane himself, probably without knowing it, is adapting to the new reconfiguration. In a positive way, Dr. Galina had assured him.
And so Ilya takes his medicine every morning, because it is good for him, and it is good for Shane, and it does not even fill Ilya with dread anymore.
Dr. Galina says that he may not need to take it forever. That had been a key factor in his initial decision to start medication. But he feels less and less like it matters if he is able to stop one day. He cannot deny the lightness that he wakes up with, not having even known that he woke up heavy before. He relishes in feeling in control of his life, and that he is the one who chooses what he does and when. He feels lucky that Shane is adapting to Ilya’s new reconfiguration and they are learning new details about each other every day.
He walks with Anya in the sun, and he breathes air into his lungs and he does not feel like it would be better if he didn’t exist. He has everything he has ever wanted, and things are still not always perfect, but that does not mean his world is ending. It took his brain over a month of medication resetting it, and many talks with Galina for him to accept that sometimes he will still have to work at being happy.
For now, though, his brain is balanced, and the bug that lives there is quieter than it has been his entire life. And it is a good day.