Chapter Text
Ilya’s phone is ringing.
Ilya’s phone is ringing, and it’s still dark outside his hotel.
Ilya does not pick up his phone. Obviously.
Ilya’s phone rings again.
It rings again and again and again. It rings for long enough that Ilya groans, flops onto his stomach, and snatches it off his nightstand, ready to chuck it across the room.
But it’s Svetlana, so he pauses. The call ends again, for the 4th time.
He calls her back, and she picks up only a beat into the first ring.
“Ilya?!”
“What?!” he groans, falling face first into his pillow. “What, Sveta, wha-”
Only then does he realize she’s crying.
Sveta doesn’t cry the same way Ilya doesn’t cry - they don’t, obviously, but if they ever do, it’s awful. Her voice is hiccuping, gasping, heaving, and Ilya sits up so fast his head spins. He almost drops his phone.
“I thought - ” She heaves in a breath, and Ilya holds his own, terrified to say a word which could set her off again. “I - Ilya.”
“I’m here, I’m here,” he says, throwing himself out of bed and hunting for a decent shirt. “Where are you? I’ll come get you.” She’d come to Moscow with him, which is the only thing that had made it bearable. Following his outburst at his father’s wake - and the following spiral about what the fuck he thought he was doing, cutting off his only immediate living relative - Svetlana had talked him through it. Repeatedly. For multiple days. Until he’d finally, finally, accepted it. He owed her a lot, for that.
By then, there wasn’t enough time to make arrangements before he went back to the Raiders. And, of course, he couldn’t come after the season, since he’d decided to go to Shane’s cottage instead. So, he’d booked this trip in secret - just five days, just long enough to set up his niece’s trust and to transfer his apartment’s lease to Alexei. Svetlana had agreed to come.
Now, Ilya was regretting it, because clearly, something had gone wrong.
“Sveta - ”
“Ilya, there are photos. Of you. Ilya, you - you need to run.”
…Okay.
So something had gone wrong.
Just…not for Svetlana.
“Photos?” he asks, a bit stupidly. He knows what she means. Of course he does. He’s had nightmares about what she means. But - well. No. Surely not.
Right?
“They’re old, I think,” she says, sniffling. “I just saw them on some gossip rag, but they’re - Ilya, they’re definitely you. With a man. They just got published on this stupid, shitty blog, but they’re going to get picked up the moment people wake up.”
Well, at least Ilya has a shirt on. Now, he just needs to find pants before his life ends.
“Fuck.”
“You’re going to leave, you have to leave,” Svetlana chants. Ilya can hear her driving, now that he’s focusing. “I’m coming to your hotel. By the time I get there, you will have your bag packed, and a new ticket booked.”
“I - okay,” he says, because he’s hardly going to argue, but that’s a lot to do one handed. He puts the phone on speaker and puts it down. He succeeds at tugging his pants on. His bag is half packed - he and Svetlana were supposed to leave in 2 days. They were supposed to get to the airport, breeze through security, wander Moscow’s fancy airport that was a second home to them both, and then enjoy their transcontinental first-class plane tickets.
Then, apparently, Ilya got outed. Great.
(Fuck, he got outed.)
“Ilya?”
“Mm.” His duffel bag is black, nondescript, small enough to be a carry on. He doesn’t bother packing the clothes strewn around the room. He roots through the bag until he finds his passport. His Russian passport. He sets it gingerly on top of everything else, like it’s a live bomb. It is, now. He has no keys; he turned in the ones to his old apartment. He throws his phone charger and laptop into his bag.
“Tickets, Ilya. I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”
“Yeah.”
He zips up his bag and grabs his phone. He tries to ignore how badly his hands are shaking. His United Airlines app cheerfully reminds him that he has a flight in 2 days, 5 hours, and 12 minutes.
Fuck.
On a whim, he switches to the Air Canada app and looks up the quickest flights from Moscow to Ottawa.
Shane’s in Ottawa. He’s visiting his parents. Ilya should not go to Shane right after getting outed. He scrolls through flights anyways.
“Ilya?”
“I’m looking,” he says. “I - the drive is an hour? To the airport.”
“No. 45 minutes. 30 minutes. The roads are still empty. I can make it.”
“Jesus, Sveta.”
“Do not dare complain to me right now.” He hears skidding over the line as she takes a turn.
“There’s a flight from Moscow to Paris in 90 minutes. S7.” They can’t get to the airport that fast. He can’t clear security that fast. He can’t clear security at all if the police are hunting him.
“Book it,” Svetlana says, and he does. He throws on shoes, a hoodie, a baseball cap, and sunglasses.
He grabs his bag, and he runs.