Work Text:
“You okay?” Shane asks quietly.
Ilya hums in question, and the fingers in his hair give a light tug. He opens his eyes to look at Shane and smiles, inevitably.
It’s been months since they put words to this thing, since Ilya spent the summer and met Shane’s parents and told him he loved him, again and again and again, but he can’t help the way it still lights him up when Shane looks at him.
Even now, with that worried little furrow between his brows. Ilya reaches up to smooth it out.
Shane smiles, and his hands resume their caressing.
“You seem tired, is all,” he says.
Ilya shrugs, sinks into the feeling of his hair being played with. “I didn’t sleep that well.”
---
Shane has to leave, eventually.
He has morning skate and a game, and Ilya has practice, yet they both still linger in the entryway, like this weekend together isn’t already so much more than they used to have.
Finally, Shane shakes it off. “I’m going to miss my plane,” he says, and kisses Ilya a last time.
Ilya pulls him in for one more. “Do it,” he says, and only means it a little.
Stepping back, Shane picks up his duffel, slings it over his shoulder. He hesitates in the open doorway, then tugs Ilya in again. Another minute passes, before he says, “Okay, I really have to leave.”
A peck and he’s out the door.
The house is quieter without him. Ilya putters around, clears the dishes from their dinner. It’s gotten late, but he can’t bring himself to go to bed. He knows it’ll be cold now, and he knows it’ll smell like Shane in a way that’s only really a reminder that he isn’t there anymore.
He goes for a run.
---
Coach signals him to stay back after practice, and Ilya skates lazy circles as he waits for the ice to clear. A rookie hangs back to ask questions, still fresh enough to hang on Coach’s every word, until LeClaire eventually sends him off to the showers, and waves Ilya over.
“Bit of a delay on you today,” he comments, a small frown on his usually stoic face.
“Ah,” Ilya says. He didn’t think it was noticeable, but LeClaire has always been annoyingly sharp-eyed, a fact often bemoaned by hungover teammates who had been sure that this time they’d get away with it. “I did not sleep well. I will be fine for tomorrow’s game.”
He just needs one night to catch up on the rest that evaded him after Shane left. He’s not stupid, he knows the difference it makes to be well-rested, and with back-to-back games both Tuesday and Wednesday he can’t afford to stay up the whole night for no fucking reason again. He just needs to get some sleep.
Except night falls, and Ilya finds himself tossing and turning until he has to get up and pace the frustration off.
Tuesday’s game goes fine, he’s pretty sure. They win.
On Wednesday, he chats with Connors during warm-ups, drawing small circles with his ankles while his teammate drops his gloves to stretch out his hands. He’s watching the other team and doesn’t notice Connors press his palm against the ice. Cold fingers brush his skin and Ilya shudders. He whacks the hand away, and Connors laughs brightly.
“I will kill you,” Ilya says flatly.
Carmy snorts as he skates by.
The puck drops and Ilya wins it. He should’ve gotten it clean, but he feels a little bit like he’s directing his body with puppet strings. He doesn’t score before line change, and he can’t quite figure out if he would have on any other day.
It’s not a bad game, exactly, but that is by no means a credit to Ilya. His reaction time is worse than it’s been since Juniors, and his balance is shot to hell, leaving him wobbling and woozy; it’s probably why the check sends him sprawling.
He hits the ground and he doesn’t get up. It’s not that he can’t. It’s just that the ice is pleasantly cool as it seeps through him, and he’d really much rather stay right here.
Saint Vicky hovers over him suddenly, and Ilya automatically grabs the hand he reaches out.
Coach insists on a concussion check even when Ilya tells him he doesn’t have one, so he sits on the bench as the trainers run him through tests he’s done a million times before, and pretends he doesn’t notice the way the rest of his line is paying too much attention.
He gets cleared. He gets back on the ice.
When he gets home, there’s a row of texts from Shane waiting on his phone, and he stares at the notification for too long before he clicks on it.
Are you okay?
That hit looked bad.
I mean, you got back on the ice after so I’m assuming you don’t have a concussion.
Fuck McKinnon honestly.
Text me when you’re home.
I love you.
Ilya hadn’t realized it was McKinnon who checked him. It makes things just a little bit worse, and he is considering how to put that into words that make sense when he realizes that the thought of typing out everything he wants to say to Shane exhausts him.
Shane picks up on the first ring.
"Hi," he says, and Ilya knows just from his tone the smile that's on his face. Small but all-consuming, enough to make his eyes crinkle.
'I miss you,' Ilya doesn't say. 'Do you miss me like I miss you?'
"Hi."
They talk until Ilya’s eyes grow heavy and he’s yawning through his words. Shane chuckles, and the sound of it right by his ear grows a small sun in Ilya’s chest.
“Go to sleep, baby,” Shane says, low and soft. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
So Ilya does.
He dreams of cold hands, and he dreams of running. And he wakes up with his heart racing.
Contrary to popular belief, Ilya is not entirely incapable of recognizing the limits of his own capabilities. He drives to the rink, and then he sits in his car long enough to not feel completely insane for showing up to work at this hour when he walks through the door. The building is still mostly empty, so Ilya waits outside the locked offices of the Raider’s medical team.
A surprised greeting jolts him from his mulish staring contest with the wall. Ilya tensely returns it, and the doctor schools her raised eyebrows to invite him in.
They’re leaving for a roadie in the evening, and it’s a short one, but it’s still someone else in his space 24 hours a day for almost a full week, and Ilya’s not even doing a good job of hiding it without sharing a room with a nosy teammate. He just needs to fix it.
So when the team doctor asks him about his recent sleep habits, Ilya says, “Seven hours.”
And the doctor hums and nods and says, “Well, that is a bit low, but I wouldn’t be concerned quite yet. Do you feel it is impacting your day to day life?”
And Ilya says, “Yes.” And then he blinks, and says, “No. Seven hours this week.”
---
The sleeping pills rattle when he puts them down on the kitchen counter, and the lights catch on the little white label. Prescribed for insomnia. He has no plans to take them. He’s afraid if he does, he’ll take all of them at once.
He wonders who’ll find him if he does.
Ilya had come home early, is the thing. He’d run home from school, instead of wiling away the hour before practice at the park like he usually did, because Mama had seemed happy that morning, seemed present in a way she so rarely was those days. He’d called out for her as he peeked into rooms, before finally sneaking open the door of the master bedroom, even though he knew he wasn’t allowed in there. He’d thought she was sleeping at first.
Her hand was cold when he held it.
And he doesn’t remember his dad coming home, but he remembers the way his fingers had dug into his skin when he dragged him from the room.
Ilya knows, logically, that his father must have called someone. Whoever you call when there is no emergency, because the body’s already cold, and no crime to solve, because she did it to herself. They must have taken her from her room at some point. He doesn’t remember.
Alexei didn’t come home until the evening, staying out for longer and longer lately. Father didn’t usually mind, but today he hissed with every glance at the time, every call Alexei didn’t pick up. When the front door quietly opened that night, and his brother furtively walked in, Alexei’s eyes flickered between them. Father didn’t yell. Ilya listened quietly as he sat Alexei down and told him that their mother had had an accident, and didn’t react even when his brother tried to catch his eye.
Later, he found Mama’s cross in his pocket. He didn’t remember taking it.
---
A figure paces back and forth by the hotel entrance, and halts abruptly as Ilya draws nearer.
“Thank fuck,” Marly says, too loudly for the time of night, stumbling slightly as he approaches. “Dude, you’ve been gone like, an hour!”
It doesn’t sound right. Ilya has no way of disputing it.
“Where were you?”
Ilya blinks at him. “I went for a run.”
For a very long moment, Marly stares. “It’s 2 in the morning,” he croaks.
Ilya glances at his watch, except he’s not wearing it, and when he pats around for his phone, his pockets are empty.
Marly watches him warily. “Yeah, I, uh—” he cuts off. Waits, like he’s leaving space for Ilya to say something, then continues quietly when he doesn’t. “I tried to call you, but your phone’s in our room.”
Ilya nods. Nods again, when no other response comes to mind. “Right,” he mutters.
The hotel’s automatic doors slide open when Ilya steps past Marly, their quiet whoosh almost drowned out by the cut off half-squawk he makes. On the threshold Marly catches up, and Ilya’s turned around by the force of his hand on his shoulder.
Despite his open mouth, for a long moment Marly doesn’t say anything. The glass doors slide closed again.
Finally he seems to find his words, but Ilya doesn’t let him get out more than a “What— “ before he interrupts. “I’m tired, Marly,” he says. “I’m going to bed.”
This time, Marleau doesn’t try to stop him.
---
He had been careful.
For years, Mama’s cross lived hidden in his room, or tucked cautiously under his clothes, or buried in a pocket. He didn’t know if his father or Alexei would take it away, but he couldn’t risk it.
It was different, in America. He put it on the moment he stepped on the plane, and he never took it off again.
A couple months into his rookie season, Coach had called for Ilya to do media, and he’d spared no thought to the golden cross stark against his bare skin.
Alexei had blown up his phone until Ilya picked up. He’d yelled and called him a thief and a liar and a disappointment, so Ilya had done it again after the next game.
---
Ilya washes the taste of vomit out of his mouth.
“You good, Roz?” Marly calls from behind the door.
“Fine,” Ilya says. He can’t remember the dream anymore.
Marly pops his head into the bathroom. “You contagious?” he asks suspiciously.
“Leave, Marly.”
The door creaks as it’s shoved open, and Ilya breathes in and out slowly. He leans heavier on the counter, lets the granite edge dig into his palms.
“You know,” Marly says, walking in to perch on the rim of the too low bathtub. Ilya watches him settle in the mirror, then looks down again. “You’ve been weird lately.”
When Ilya says nothing, he continues, “Have you been sick?”
She was sick, he hears echoed in his mind. Lost track of the medicine she took. A real tragedy. The overhead lights buzz loudly from above. He hadn’t noticed them before.
“What time is it?” Ilya finally responds.
He hears rustling behind him before Marly answers, “It’s— It’s four, Roz, but is that it? Did you catch a bug or something?”
Later than he expected, and four hours more than he’d managed yesterday. It’s not enough. “I’m not fucking sick, Marly,” he spits.
“Then what the fuck is it, Roz?” Marly snaps. “Because you’ve been fucking— You’ve been weird, okay?” He exhales, almost a laugh despite the complete absence of joy. “You haven’t gone out with us in weeks, you keep fucking zoning out and you’re playing like shit! And, apparently—” His voice goes high and thready. “—You’re running around all night, without your phone, or, or your fucking wallet, and without telling me!”
Slowly unfurling from his hunch over the counter, Ilya keeps his spine ramrod straight as he finally turns to look at Marly.
“I’ll keep it off the ice,” he says coldly.
He doesn’t slam the door as he exits the bathroom, only because Marly is suddenly right behind him. He’s talking, but Ilya doesn’t hear it as he says, “I’m going out.”
Grabbing the lighter and fresh box of cigarettes he’d thrown on the small table in the entryway earlier, he doesn’t look back as Marly calls after him.
---
The day of the funeral, Ilya had curled up in his brother’s room and watched as Alexei struggled with his tie in front of the mirror. He’d whispered, “It wasn’t an accident.”
Alexei had met his eyes in the reflection, and gone back to his tie.
“It wasn’t an accident,” Ilya said, louder.
His brother had finally turned around, and there was something in his eyes, but it wasn’t surprise. “Stop,” he said.
“She did it on purpose!” Ilya insisted, and his head had snapped to the side with the force of Alexei’s backhand.
“Stop lying,” Alexei hissed. “Just shut up.”
And Ilya shut up, and Alexei turned back to the mirror and finally got the knot right. He glanced back, and gestured at the tie draped over Ilya’s shoulders, still untied. “Come here,” he said. “I’ll do it for you.”
---
A hand lands on his shoulder.
“Rozy,” Marly says, and when he looks up he can tell by his face that it wasn’t the first time. Behind him, Ilya sees Carmy and Saint Vicky exchange looks, sees Connors packing his gear in that very focused way he does only when he’s eavesdropping.
“Want to come over?” Marly asks. It is not what he wants to ask. They both know this.
“No,” Ilya says. Then, “Ah, not today, Marly.”
“You sure?” he presses, oh so casually. “It’s been a while.”
It has been a while.
“Marly, you are obsessed with me,” Ilya says, and light laughs ring out across the locker room from those listening in. Well, at least from those who don't know what conversation is really happening here. But it’s fine. Very few of them do.
---
Ilya slapped his brother across the face.
“What the fuck?” Alexei slurred. He blinked, slow and dumb, but whether it was from sleep or from whatever he had taken, Ilya didn’t know.
“You fucking traitor!”
Ilya tugged hard at Alexei’s nightstand and it toppled with a crash, sending his alarm clock and his notebook and his empty syringe to the floor. Alexei’s eyes drifted, his blown pupils never quite landing on the mess.
His brother sat up, loose-limbed and floppy, and Ilya shoved him back down.
“I hate you!” he screamed.
His pulse was still erratic from the heart-stopping fear of seeing his brother sprawled out across his bed and knowing, not yet steady by the time Ilya slammed the door behind him.
---
It’s late.
Ilya watches the alarm on his bedside table tick later, and the light of it hurts his eyes.
He thinks of the sleeping pills still sitting on his kitchen counter. He’s done that a lot lately, in ways that only make him more sure that he should throw them out. He won’t.
When it nears dawn, and Ilya is so exhausted his chest feels heavy with it, he knows, quite suddenly, that if he doesn’t move now, he never will again. He’ll sink into the bed and calcify. No one will be able to pull him out. It zings through him, clear and unmuddied, and Ilya grabs onto it with both hands. It’s the first emotion he’s been certain of since this whole thing started, and he clings to it. It’s fear, but it’s something.
But then he’s pacing in his living room, and every time he passes the kitchen entrance, a glimpse of pill bottle orange in his periphery makes his stride stutter.
He goes for a run.
And when he’s not sure how long it’s been, or where he is, or if he can take a single step further, he calls Marly. He wants to call Shane, but Ilya thinks if he tries and the call goes to voicemail he’ll—
Nothing. He’ll nothing.
Time passes or it doesn’t, and then Marly is there, looking down at him. The grass beneath him tickles his neck, because he’d been running through a park when he thought that maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad place to lie down forever and then his legs had given out.
Marly crouches down, leaning over as he gently pulls Ilya’s eyes further open, one by one. He studies his face intently, and the furrow between his brows grows deeper. Ilya lets him.
“What did you take?” he asks.
And Ilya says, “Nothing.”
And he can’t help but think that if he had taken something, this is not where Marly would be finding him. This is not how Marly would be finding him.
Twisting to the side, Ilya just gets an arm under himself before he throws up.
---
Ilya used to dream of running away.
Not to anywhere specific, really. Somewhere warm. But he’d dream of running, and the streets would warp around him, an amalgamation of everywhere he knew. And he knew he’d be safe when he got there. He’d be happy.
And he would wake up with his heart racing.
---
Marly hovers.
He drags Ilya back to his apartment and plants him on the couch, never straying from his side more than a minute. When it turns a reasonable hour he calls Coach and tells him he’ll miss morning skate but be there for the game, so sorry for the inconvenience, and also that Ilya is sick and won’t be there at all. Ilya watches him pace, listening absently to half of the conversation as Marly convinces Coach he’s not just hungover.
“No,” Marly says, and takes the eight steps there’s space for from one side of his living room to the other as he listens to whatever Coach tells him. “No, I don’t think so.”
He turns. Step, step, step. He tries to hide a glance at Ilya and accidentally meets his eyes. Reaching the other end, he turns again. Steps again. Marly sighs, and stops pacing. He stares openly at Ilya as he says, “I don’t know.”
Ilya drops his gaze, turns so he can pretend he’s occupied looking out where snow has started falling from the thick layer of clouds.
When Marly finishes the call, he drops down heavily on the couch, lolls his head to the side to ask Ilya, “Want to watch a movie?”
He doesn’t really, but the other option is letting Marly stew in silence until he inevitably breaks and starts asking questions, so Ilya says yes.
He’s curled up on his side by the time his phone lights up with a notification from Jane. His eyes have been drooping the entire third act despite the movie not being good enough to keep awake for, but now he thinks he couldn’t fall asleep if he tried for the weight on his chest.
Shane’s been texting him a lot lately. Ilya hasn’t responded in two days. Every drafted reply seems meagre and insufficient, the lack only growing with every passing hour he doesn’t text back.
You aren’t on the roster for the game tonight.
Are you sick?
He reads the notification previews, but makes no move to pick up his phone. Almost twenty minutes pass before another chimes in.
Can you please just text me so I know you’re alive?
Slowly, wearily, Ilya types alive. He stares. His phone screen darkens, then shuts off, before he can decide if it’s worse than no answer at all. Another pause, then Ilya stretches to place his phone screen-down on the coffee table, and pretends he doesn’t know Marly is watching him do it.
---
When it nears evening, Ilya practically has to shove him out the door. Marly threatens to stay home, despite knowing very well Coach would skin him alive for bailing this late, so Ilya tells him he’ll do it himself if he doesn’t get his ass out the door.
“You better still be here when I get home,” Marly says, but he doesn’t look particularly convinced by his own words. He’s right to doubt. Ilya doesn’t last ten minutes before he pulls his shoes on and shuts the door of Marly’s apartment behind him.
It’s snowing again, or maybe still.
It’s not a particularly long trip home, but it’s one he usually hails a cab for. He walks instead. His apartment is dark when he steps in and toes his shoes off.
Flicking the lights on, Ilya falters. “Shane?”
Hunched on the couch, Shane rests his elbows on his knees, his knuckles clenched white around the orange bottle Ilya never moved from his kitchen counter. He jolts to standing at the sight of him.
“Ilya,” he breathes. He’s still in his boots and winter coat, small droplets of water on his shoulders where the snow has melted in the heat of the apartment. Ilya realizes suddenly that he’s freezing. He’d left without a jacket last night and hadn’t bothered taking one of Marly’s for the trip home, and now the warmth hits like a shock to his system, hard enough to make his hands tremble.
“You had practice today,” Ilya says dumbly.
“It was optional,” Shane defends, a little sheepish.
Ilya huffs an almost laugh, and like the sound gives them permission, they both unfreeze from where they’d been rooted to the spot. Meeting in the middle, they wrap around each other as closely as they can get. A low sound punches out of his chest; Shane squeezes tighter, and Ilya hopes he’ll fracture his ribs, bruise the evidence of Shane’s presence into his skin and bones. He was here, he’s been here, I have proof. A big hand at the back of his skull guides him into the hollow of Shane’s throat, and Ilya presses in closer. Relief loosens his limbs, leans him heavy and clumsy against him.
Mumbling his words into Shane’s skin, Ilya asks, “What are you doing here?”
A second, then Shane pulls away, and he squashes the desperate urge not to let him. Ilya’s heart drops. He should’ve kept his mouth shut.
But Shane doesn’t go far, keeping his arms looped around him as he leans back to search his face; Eyebrows scrunched and lips flat, he seems disgruntled he would even ask, and Ilya can't look away from the wrinkle between his eyes.
“Ilya, you haven’t answered me in days,” Shane says. “They aren’t saying why they scratched you from the game. I thought— “ His jaw goes tense and tight, and Ilya sweeps a soothing thumb across it. Shane breathes, purposefully perfectly slow.
“Are you okay?” Shane asks. The unsteady note in his voice is almost covered by the rattle of pills as he moves the hand still gripping the bottle between them. “What’s— Why do you have these?”
“Team doctor prescribed them,” Ilya says, which is an answer, but not what Shane is asking. “Last week,” he adds, like more irrelevant details will make up for dodging the question.
Shane nods anyway. “And you need them?”
“Maybe,” Ilya says. It ends up a whisper. He tries again. “Maybe. But I haven’t— “
His voice goes tight and rough, and he stops before something comes out he can’t take back. He clears his throat. There are so many things he wants to tell Shane. Excuses and apologies and explanations he’s been coming up with for days. His mouth feels empty of them now.
“I’m tired,” Ilya confesses.
And Shane gets that determined look Ilya loves him for.
It isn’t nearly late enough to sleep, but still he lets Shane guide him around, never losing contact as they both get ready for bed. Shane stalls when they reach the bedroom. Ilya waits, leaning against him as Shane gets his thoughts in order.
“Do you want one?” he asks, stiff and uncertain. Ilya can feel his muscles move as he gestures vaguely towards the living room.
Ilya shakes his head, rolling his forehead back and forth against Shane’s skin. “No,” he says. “I don’t want pills.”
He grimaces at his own words.
“Shane,” he says quietly. “Will you throw them out?”
Shane squeezes him for a second, presses a kiss to his hair. “Of course,” he says. “Of course.”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Ilya hears Shane move around outside the bedroom. He hears the toilet flush a long moment before he returns. As they settle, Ilya drags him close, stacks their limbs until they are touching at every possible point, and he breathes out deeply, feeling something dislodge in his chest as he does.
He doesn’t dream.
---
Shane’s still there when he wakes up. He’s propped up against the headboard, a mound of pillows letting him sit up without jostling Ilya away. Ilya burrows further into his stomach and Shane drops a hand into his hair, rubbing a strand between his fingers before coiling it up and letting it bounce free.
“Hey,” Shane says, and Ilya breathes a vague sound of acknowledgement.
It’s warm, and Ilya winds his arms around Shane’s waist, slipping them under the fabric of his shirt to seek out the heat of his skin. Shane smooths a cradling hand down the back of his skull. With a snuffling breath, Ilya blinks his eyes open.
His room looks different in the sunlight. Drenched in gold, the shadows don’t seem as deep. The rays warm the air, and as Ilya watches, a stray breeze through the cracked open window brings the dust motes to dancing.
“The sun’s up,” Ilya murmurs.
“It is,” Shane agrees quietly. Placing his phone down, his hand joins the other in playing with the curls at the nape of his neck, thumb stroking over the shell of his ear. “Morning, Ilya,” he says.
Shane’s phone is still on, an article titled ‘Insomnia — what to expect’ open and glowing on his bedside table. Ilya doesn’t say anything about it. They’ll talk about it later, all of it, and he can’t quite tell if the jump in his muscles is the urge to run away or run toward.
“Morning,” Ilya echoes.
Shane shimmies in his arms, and Ilya reluctantly loosens his grip to let him move, scoot down until they’re face to face. The second he settles, Ilya wraps around him again, clinging to the heat of him until they’re temple to temple.
“I’m sorry I didn’t text you,” Ilya says softly.
“It’s okay,” Shane says.
Ilya pulls back just the inch it takes to look at Shane’s face.
“It is!” Shane insists. “I mean, I wish you had, but— It’s okay.”
Shane is a bad liar, and Ilya has known it from the beginning. It’s one of the first things he learned about him. Searching his expression now, there’s only that searing earnestness he’s come to associate with Shane.
“Okay,” Ilya allows. Then, “I’m still sorry.”
“I forgive you.”
Shane ends the statement with a press of his lips to Ilya’s, then nods decisively. “Are you hungry?”
Caught up in chasing after the kiss, Ilya takes a second to process. And he is, a little, but—
“Can we just stay here?” Ilya asks. “For a little while.”
“As long as you want,” Shane promises.