Chapter Text
Shane looks off on the drive to the practice facility. Ilya tries to look without looking, stealing glances at stop signs. Shane’s… not shaky, exactly, but jittery. His energy is weirdly amped. It’s troubling because his husband hasn’t been energetic lately. Ilya thought it was the late season wearing on them both, but now his thoughts are turning somewhere far less pleasant.
They skate hard, and maybe that means it’s okay. Shane’s on it. He passes cleanly. He’s faster than he needs to be.
The chemistry is there, like they’re talking without talking, and Ilya fucking hopes that means it’s okay. He loves Shane as his A.
But when Wiebe blows the whistle and Ilya follows the rest of his team off the ice, Shane gestures to Hazy and says something asinine about drills, and Ilya feels like he’s chugged a gallon of ice water or cement. Shane has been antsy about his bad side; he wants to practice turning, getting his dexterity back even though to Ilya he skates just as well as he did two years ago. Ilya still gets off the ice because they’re at work and he’s not the boss of Shane and he keeps telling himself that as he strips down, feeling sick and frightened, trying not to watch the clock.
Ilya goes slow. The other guys file out. Bood wants to barbecue this week even though it’s supposed to be cold and wet. Ilya can’t think that far ahead. Barbecue, why the hell not. He takes a long shower. Or it feels long. He scrubs hard and leaves himself red and when he’s finished he just catches Haas putting on his shoes.
Haas has a question about his backhand even though it is a work of art. Ilya is trying to be a good captain and repeating bullshit advice. He must seem distracted, tapping his fingers impatiently on his thigh. He’s about to apologize to Luca for that when he hears the door open and thank God, there’s Shane, sweaty and red-faced. He looks so fucking hot with his hair plastered to his forehead like that.
Ilya nods at them so he can keep watching without it being weird. “Thanks for the tips, cap,” Haas says, but Ilya’s not really listening. His husband is still breathing kind of hard. Too hard? Ilya’s being paranoid. He is. He looks away and can’t stand it. Shane must know Ilya’s watching him. Ilya hates himself for it. Shane’s fingers fumble with the laces of his skates, then he shucks them off and stands up.
He’s shaking. Ilya flies to his feet but he’s too fucking slow and his husband crumples from his knees, how strange, he doesn’t fall so much as collapses. “Motherfucker!” Ilya shouts. He can’t care right now that his teammates are here.
“Should I call 911?” asks Haas, quietly. Naively. His accent is particularly pronounced on the numbers. Ilya is trying to figure out if Shane hit his head. He is trying not to cry. He’s buzzing. He’s, fuck.
Shane isn’t out for long. His eyes open and he looks confused. Ilya is so relieved that he suddenly remembers to be angry.
“Shane, what the fuck—“ Ilya cuts himself off. He can’t be impulsive. He can’t ask the question he wants to ask, because Hazy and Haasy are right fucking here.
As if to remind Ilya, Hazy chimes in.
“Hollsy, you good—“
“Sorry, stood up too fast.” Ilya wants to believe him and almost does, almost doesn’t hear the unsteadiness in his husband’s voice. Why are the guys still here? “Wow, that was—I knew I should have drank more water.”
Everyone in the room is looking at Ilya, and Ilya feels like the worst kind of liar when he keeps his voice calm. He learned how to do this when he was a kid. Swallow everything and act like everything is normal, because if he acts like it is, it will be, at least for right now. And he needs it to be normal for a second until he can figure out if his husband is okay.
“Haas, can you get my Hollander a Gatorade? Blue, if it’s there,” Ilya asks. Shane closes his eyes and looks like he’s resigning himself to the fight they’ve been having for two years. He still looks pale and he’s breaking Ilya’s fucking heart.
“Sorry, I’m fine, just pass me your water bottle,” he says. His voice is flat and toneless. Ilya wants to scream at him. Take the fucking Gatorade. Do not fucking fight me on this. I cannot watch you do this to yourself again. He hates that he wants to scream at him; Shane is obviously miserable.
But there’s something steely and cold in Shane’s eyes when Hayes grabs Ilya’s water bottle and passes it to him. He drinks deeply. Ilya watches the bob of his perfect throat.
“Shit Hollsy, that was scary—“ Hayes says. Ilya agrees, but he wishes Hayes would leave, even though he’s not sure he trusts what he would say if he were alone with Shane right now. His husband is sitting, but he hasn’t tried to stand. Hands shaking as he sips more from his water. Ilya wants to snatch it out of his hand and pour it over him, like he could wake Shane up somehow, with enough of a shock.
He doesn’t know how to do this.
When he was nine or ten, he spent weeks trying to get his mamma out of bed. He’d get into bed with her, jump on the bed, sing at the top of his lungs. He’d pretend there was an emergency in the kitchen, that he’d broken glass or started a fire.
Ilya never got her out of bed. That whole summer, she’d shuffled back and forth to the bathroom like an automaton and he brought her tea and bread and pickles and cheese and sometimes she ate and a lot of the time she didn’t.
He failed then, and he’s watching Shane disappear, and he’s never been so fucking scared, not even back then.
Bless Haas, who bursts through the door with the correct blue Gatorade, not the bullshit Gatorade Zero that Shane used to like.
“That’s the wrong blue.” Ilya can’t stop himself from tensing. He feels like last summer, furious and frightened and powerless. Nothing seems real.
“Sorry,” Haas says. He’s about to dart out of the room to replace it, which Ilya absolutely cannot have happen. Haas doesn’t know that he can’t say sorry. He can’t imply that there’s a wrong choice in Gatorade. Gatorade is supposed to be neutral. Gatorade does not feel neutral. Ilya’s lost his grip on something important and essential, he realizes.
“Dude, you just passed out,” Hayes says, thank fuck. “Just drink the thing.”
“I feel fine. I just want to go home.” Shane says it nonchalantly, like a liar. Like he’s gonna go home and shower and put on a movie like this is a normal fucking day.
Ilya inhales so he won’t say something he regrets.. “Hazey, go shower.”
“Got it, Cap,” Hayes says.
“See you tomorrow,” Haas says, finally taking the fucking hint that this is not a group conversation.
The shower turns on, water hissing. Ilya isn’t ready for this. “It’s not the wrong blue.” He tries to keep his voice neutral, curious. The water is distracting. He should have told Hazy to go the fuck home instead. No matter how gross he is.
“I just don’t want it.” Ilya wants to shake his husband just so Shane will fucking look at him. Desperately, suddenly, he needs Shane to fucking look at him.
Shane does, and looks deflated. Ilya feels sick with himself for being so frustrated. What’s wrong with him?
And what the fuck is wrong with his husband? Why can’t Shane just do this for Ilya? Why does it have to be so fucking difficult? “You just passed out. You need to drink it.”
“Ilya,” Shane says, in a voice close to casual.
“Shane.” If Ilya’s not careful, his voice is going to break.
“I just want to go home. I have a headache and the lights in here aren’t fucking helping.” Shane sounds like someone in pain and Ilya curses himself; his husband just fainted like five minutes ago. Annoyed, he snaps to his feet and slams the lights off. They’re just illuminated by the glow from the shower room, which makes Shane’s skin look healthier.
“Better?” Ilya sits back down and grabs the Gatorade. He’s fixated on it. If Shane drinks this blue Gatorade, then he’ll be okay. Ilya knows it.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” Shane says, and sounds genuine. “It was really stupid to go for so long without water.”
Ilya softens. He clings to the apology like a life raft. Shane seems willing. “You will feel better once you have some energy.”
He twists the cap off the Gatorade and tries to pass it to his husband, who stiffens and smiles chillingly.
“I’m okay,” he says.
“Can you drink half?” Ilya asks. “Becuase you said you are sorry for scaring me.”
“That’s not fair. I don’t want to.”
This is starting to feel like a hostage negotiation. Ilya can’t look at the thing behind Shane’s eyes, can’t fight with it right now. Not as Shane’s husband, anyway. But he still has some kind of authority here. He thinks he does anyway. Ilya feels like a traitor, but he has to put on his captain voice so he doesn’t start begging.
“Drink half and we can go home.”
Shane is defiant. “I’ll drink it in the car.”
Ilya’s voice trembles because he’s terrified, and because he’s pissed. “I don’t think you will.” Maybe he should have let Haasy call 911 after all because Ilya’s fucking lost here. He can’t do this. “You can drink half in our nice dark locker room, and then we can go home. Or I can call an ambulance for my husband who passed out and is acting strange.”
“Fucking fine.” Shane is as mad as Ilya’s ever seen him. Over half a Gatorade. He likes blue. It’s his favourite. Watching him chug it back like forced medicine, like punishment, is disorienting. Ilya’s stomach churns. He’s handling this badly.
“That’s half.” Shane wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and Ilya can’t argue even though he’s not sure it is half, even though Shane’s voice sounds a little strangled. From the other room, the water quiets.
“My turn,” Shane says, going to stand. Ilya panics, remembering how suddenly he fell.
“You are not going alone.”
“We are not showering together at work.” Shane sounds so fucking disdainful that Ilya would be hurt if he weren’t already so sad and angry.
“You just passed out.” He stares at his husband.
Ilya hopes he’s imagining how resentful Shane looks as he turns the lights back on, grabs his towel and soap. He follows Shane to the showers and watches him strip naked. Ilya feels—wrong. Hates watching this. It’s weird to watch and not want Shane at all, to feel only terror. His mind floats, detached and far away. Shane’s under the water for less than three minutes. Ilya’s sweating in his clothes, the humidity getting to him, but he tries to ignore it.
Ilya stops Shane from grabbing his own bag and slings them both over one arm while his husband clutches the sweating Gatorade bottle to his chest like a baby. Ilya needs to stop glancing at it. Can’t. He’s being obvious. He’s broken something. The silence between them is thick and heavy and cold. Ilya unlocks the car and throws the bags into it too forcefully. Shane slides automatically into the passenger seat. Good, Ilya thinks, you’re not fucking driving right now. Ilya turns the car on and the bluetooth connects automatically to his phone, startling him. Angrily, he presses the power button on the entertainment system too hard to turn it off.
It’s harder to watch Shane while he drives. He keeps his eyes trained on the road so he won’t start crying and need to pull over. For the first time in his adult life, Ilya pays a lot of attention to the speed limit. He can’t accelerate because he doesn’t know how fast he’ll go if he does. His knuckles are white against the wheel’s black leather. Fuck. This is fucking bad. Ilya wants to call David and Yuna because he feels so out of his depth right now. Because he missed this shit the first time and now he’s let them all down again.
Passing out at practice? It feels drastic. Ilya’s thoughts are running a mile a minute. Shane wasn’t ready to play again. Shane wasn’t ready to fucking model. Shane wasn’t ready to come home. This is too hard. Ilya can’t be trusted with this precarious, delicate, deadly thing. Shane is not drinking more Gatorade.
They are fifteen minutes from their house. If Ilya drives faster, they’ll start fighting again sooner. In here, the silence can approximate peace. Ilya runs a hand through his damp hair and stares blankly at the snowmelt, the piles of plowed snow stained with car exhaust from the winter and slowly shrinking under the sun. Other families, happy, functional, healthy families are going for walks. Going for a walk with Shane feels like trying to detonate a bomb. Ilya wants to throw up. But he doesn’t. He just drives.