Chapter Text
The consciousness didn't return to Ilya in a gentle wave; it crashed into him like a physical blow.
Before he even opened his eyes, he was acutely aware of the violent, rhythmic throbbing behind his temples—a relentless, heavy bassline that vibrated straight down into his jaw.
The back of his throat felt like it had been coated in sand and battery acid and when he finally forced his eyelids apart, the sheer brilliance of the morning sun piercing through the gaps of the hotel sheer curtains felt like a personal assault.
The light was too flashy, too sharp, fracturing into blinding white shards that made him wince and immediately squeeze his eyes shut again.
He groaned, a low, pathetic sound, and tried to shift.
The movement was a mistake.
As he attempted to push himself up onto an elbow, the entire hotel room tilted violently to the left.
The room wasn't just spinning; it was churning and his muscles felt like lead, soaked in a cold, clammy sweat that made his skin stick uncomfortably to the rumpled hotel sheets.
He caught the suffocating, stale mix of last night's expensive cologne, sweat, and... something sweet and waxy.
He swiped a clumsy hand over his mouth. The unmistakable, artificial taste of lipstick coated his lips.
Помада? (Lipstick?)
Before his brain could even begin to process the implications of that, a massive, violent wave of nausea surged from the pit of his stomach straight up to his throat.
He froze, forcing his eyes shut, clenching his jaw so hard his teeth clicked, praying to a god he didn't believe in to just let the room stop moving.
From the adjacent bed, a loud, wet, rattling snore broke the agonizing silence. Ilya peeked through a slit of an eye.
Hammersmith was sprawled out on his back like a giant, pale sea star—or worse, a bad fuck buddy who took up the entire mattress without a shred of shame. The sight of him, completely unbothered, made Ilya's stomach do another violent flip.
The nausea hit again, fiercer this time, leaving no room for contemplation. He lunged out of the bed. His balance was entirely shot; his knees buckled instantly, and as he stumbled blindly toward the bathroom, his hip collided violently with the sharp corner of the nightstand.
"Блять," (fuck) he gasped, the sharp spike of pain radiating through his side, but he couldn't even pause to rub it.
He practically threw himself into the bathroom, kicking the door shut behind him with a desperate backward heel.
He dropped to his knees on the tile, barely managing to flip the toilet lid up before his upper body surrendered to the gravity of the porcelain bowl.
Waves of pure misery washed over him as his stomach violently emptied itself. It was an agonizing, full-body ordeal that left him gasping for air, tears pricking the corners of his tightly shut eyes.
When the dry heaving finally subsided, he didn't have the strength to move away. He slowly rolled to the side, letting his weight settle onto his butt on the hard, cold floor tiles. With a weak groan, he tilted his head back, resting the burning side of his face against the porcelain edge of the bathtub.
The immediate, shocking cooling sensation of the tub against his skin was the only saving grace in the universe. It slightly eased the dull, heavy throbbing in his brain, but he still felt like he was actively dying.
It felt as though his liver and kidneys had collectively decided that after years of loyal, unquestioning service, they were officially breaking up with him. They had quit him like a toxic ex. Though, looking at his current state, Ilya had to admit he was definitely the toxic ex in this scenario.
So, he just sat there in the absolute silence of the hotel bathroom. He had the bitter taste of vomit and wax in his mouth, an agonizing ache splitting his skull, a persistent, high-pitched buzzing ringing in his ears, and an overwhelming, desperate will to just slip into a coma and go back to sleep.
Getting wasted had been a catastrophic, monumental mistake. If before last night he had been on excellent, flirtatious terms with gin and tonics, he could say with absolute, definitive confidence right now: he was never, ever going to drink one again for the entire rest of his life.
As he sat there—or, more accurately, kept the upper half of his body pinned in a semi-upright position through sheer reliance on the porcelain furniture—he made the mistake of trying to piece together the previous night. It was a battle already lost.
His alcohol-ravaged brain put up a solid wall of static; he had officially and pathetically blacked out.
Чёрт. (Hell)
Grimacing, Ilya gripped the smooth edge of the bathtub, using it as leverage to drag his heavy, uncooperative body up from his dubious position next to the toilet.
He hauled himself upward, muscles protesting, until he finally managed to stand on his own two feet.
Miraculously, the world only tilted slightly instead of performing a full, spinning dance routine in front of his eyes.
But standing up brought a whole new horror. When his gaze finally raised to his reflection in the bathroom mirror, the sight was almost comical. He looked less like a functioning human being and more like a survivor who had just crawled off the set of Project X.
He was entirely shirtless, his skin pale and marred by the angry red flush of a hangover, with a few faint, unidentifiable smudges on his chest. His hair was a wild, bird's-nest disaster, sticking up in every direction from where he'd been tossing and turning in sweaty hotel sheets.
But the centerpiece of the wreckage was his face. His lips were completely dried out, cracked, and heavily smeared with a bright, messy shade of lipstick, just as the awful taste had warned him. It looked absurd—grotesque, even—contrasted against his hollow eyes and dark, sleep-deprived circles.
He stared at his own reflection, blinking blearily as his brain slowly ground its gears. Then, it hit him properly for the first time since he'd opened his eyes.
Откуда блять взялась эта помада? (Where the fuck did this lipstick come from?)
Ilya stumbled back into the main room, his bare feet padding heavily against the carpet. In the adjacent bed, Hammersmith let out another rattling, atrocious snore. Ilya ignored him, his focus entirely narrowed on a single, desperate mission: find the phone.
Что же он сделал с телефоном?! (What the hell did he do with the phone?!)
He began a frantic, clumsy inventory check. After a tense minute of tearing through the wreckage of the room, he finally confirmed that the big three had made it safely back: wallet on the desk, room key on the nightstand, and his phone buried under a discarded jacket.
He grabbed the device and unlocked it. Instantly, the bright screen felt like a laser beam burning into his retinas. The text and icons were all sloppy, dangling and shifting out of focus. Grunting in frustration, Ilya closed one eye, squinting hard with the other to force his vision to concentrate.
Fuck it, being hungover was absolutely not for the weak.
When the screen finally stabilized, his stomach dropped. His phone was flooded. Bombarded. Dozens of unread texts, missed calls, and a skyrocketing count of Instagram notifications.
Какую хуйню он вчера там натворил?! (What kind of fucked up shit did he do last night?!)
Before he could even brave the social media apps, his attention was drawn to a barrage of erratic, furious messages lighting up his lock screen from his teammates' partners.
Rachel: Ilya, are you actually out of your mind?! Tell me this is some sick joke.
Maddison: I can't believe you right now. We have spent MONTHS dropping hints to Jane, literally convincing her that you guys were endgame, and then you pull this absolute shit??
Vanessa: You are SO stupid, Ilya. Seriously. We literally told Jane that she meant something to you, we tried to help you, and you go and ruin it in one night with Chloe Zhang? An actress? Are you for real right now??
Ilya stared at the screen, his single open eye widening in sheer, unadulterated confusion. Chloe Zhang? Who the fuck was Chloe Zhang?
With trembling fingers, he bypassed the texts and opened Instagram. When the app loaded, he was forced to face the raw, unvarnished truth. Plastered right at the top of his feed, tagged in a viral post from a high-profile entertainment account, was the living proof of his own doing—the exact memory his brain had pathetically blacked out.
It was a candid, high-flash photo from the club. Ilya was flushed, laughing, his hands resting on the waist of a smoke-show actress, thoroughly devouring her mouth. The distinct, deep plum lipstick on her lips perfectly matched the wreckage smeared over his own face.
The caption read: "Spotted: Ilya letting loose after the match with Chloe Zhang 👀🔥"
Worse, when he looked at his actual direct messages, her name was sitting right at the top of his inbox. She had followed him last night, and a text message from her was waiting for him.
“i would like to get a real taste of last night again...”
Ilya didn't even finish reading the message. His head felt too incredibly heavy, everything was spinning, and his throat burned with a sudden surge of acid.
It was absolutely not the right time to answer the hungry, flirtatious messages of a woman he had zero intention of ever meeting again. Not after the WAGs had decided to collectively crucify him for it.
He had completely lost any form of appetite. He didn't care about the actress. He hadn't even wanted to go to the club.
He was just in a foul, miserable mood. Frankly, he had been in a suffocating mood all week, largely because his phone had been a minefield of incessant, stressful calls from across the ocean.
The old man was sick.
Dying, according to Andrei. Or maybe not dying. With his father, it was becoming increasingly difficult to tell where reality ended and panic began.
Either way, the calls never stopped.
His father had always occupied a strange place in his life—a source of both loyalty and fear. A man Ilya had spent years trying to impress and even longer trying to escape. Every conversation somehow ended the same way: with Ilya feeling ten years old again, standing in the shadow of expectations he could never satisfy.
Отец: Илья? Почему ты не дома? Мать приготовила ужин, а тебя нигде нет. Где тебя черти носят? (Father: Ilya? Why are you not home? Mother made dinner, and you are nowhere to be found. Where the fuck are you?)
Илья: Мама умерла одиннадцать лет назад. Я в Штатах. (Ilya: Mom died eleven years ago. I am in the States.)
Then a few days later:
Отец: Илья, ты взял мой старый галстук? Тот, который мне подарил Петрович Соколов перед смертью? Синий, шелковый. Где он? (Father: Ilya, did you take my old tie? The one Petrovich Sokolov gave me before he died? The blue silk one. Where is it?)
Илья: Отец, я не брал твой галстук. Андрей потерял его почти 6 лет назад. Мы же это уже обсуждали. (Ilya: Father, I didn't take your tie. Andrei lost it nearly 6 years ago. We already discussed this.)
Отец: Врешь. Вы оба только и умеете, что терять мои вещи и портить мне жизнь. (Father: You're lying. You both only know how to lose my things and ruin my life.)
Another argument. Another accusation. Another reminder that, somehow, every disappointment in the family eventually found its way back to Ilya.
And if his father wasn't calling, Andrei was.
Money.
There was always something involving money.
A debt. A bill. A repair. A crisis.
Sometimes Ilya wondered if his brother remembered how to speak to him without eventually asking for something.
The worst part was that none of it allowed room for anger.
If his father was truly deteriorating, wasn't he supposed to be patient?
If Andrei was struggling, wasn't he supposed to help?
Every resentment came bundled with guilt, transforming itself into an obligation before he could even acknowledge it.
By the time New Year's Eve arrived, he felt exhausted.
Not physically but existentially.
And the club had never been about celebration, it had been about escape.
He had wanted noise loud enough to drown out his thoughts. Alcohol strong enough to silence the constant pressure building behind his ribs. A few hours where nobody expected anything from him.
Where he was no son, no brother, no provider, no disappointment.
Just Ilya.
Or at least the version of Ilya people liked best.
The successful athlete.
The charming asshole.
The handsome celebrity.
The version that smiled for cameras and signed autographs and pretended everything came naturally.
Because that version was easier than the truth.
The truth was exhausting.
The truth was knowing there were entire futures available to other people that would never be available to him.
The truth was carefully measuring every attachment, every look, every lingering touch.
The truth was spending years learning how to want things silently.
And maybe that was why the actress had appealed to him.
Not because he cared about her.
Not because he wanted her.
But because for one drunken, miserable evening she had looked at him with uncomplicated desire.
No expectations, no history, no obligations.
Just attraction.
Something easy and temporary.
Unfortunately, alcohol had a way of turning temporary mistakes into permanent problems, and his brother kept calling him again and again the whole night, when none were answered, he started to text him.
Андрей: Ответь на телефон, придурок!! (Answer your phone, jackass!!)
Андрей: Ты вообще соображаешь, что творишь? Ты думаешь, мы тут слепые? (Do you even realize what you're doing? You think we're blind here?)
Андрей: Мама бы так в тебе разочаровалась, если бы видела это дерьмо. (Mom would be so disappointed in you if she saw this shit.)
Андрей: Отец болен, лежит дома, а ты развлекаешься по клубам с бабами. Ты думаешь, у меня Инстаграма нет?! Я всё вижу, Илья. Весь мир это видит. (Dad is sick, lying at home, and you go party in clubs with girls. You think I don't have Instagram?! I see everything, Ilya. The whole world sees it.)
His gaze drifted back to the Instagram photo.
The more he looked at it, the worse it became.
The actress wasn't the issue, the issue was that he couldn't stop seeing someone else.
Nobody would ever understood that, because no one understood the history, the risks, or why every step toward Hollander felt like stepping toward a cliff edge.
They certainly didn't know that if circumstances had been different—if the world had been different—Ilya would have stopped running from this months ago.
That was the truly pathetic part.
Not the kiss, the headlines or even the hangover.
The pathetic part was realizing how naturally Hollander had slipped into places he was never supposed to occupy.
The WAG group chat had started as a joke.
A rivalry and a provocation, never meant as a humiliation.
But a way to make Hollander squirm, or at least that was what Ilya told himself.
In reality, somewhere along the way, it had stopped being a joke.
He liked seeing him there.
Liked watching him interact with everyone.
Liked how naturally he seemed to fit into parts of Ilya's life that nobody else ever touched.
And that was dangerous.
Ilya dragged a hand down his face.
In the next bed, Hammersmith finally peeked his eyes open. He looked thoroughly, miserably drunk as his gaze lazily drifted over to Ilya.
He mumbled something that sounded like a cross between a slurred "hi" and a weak "fuck me," before dragging his heavy limbs out from under the sheets. He didn't walk so much as crawl, a pathetic, evolutionary regression of a man making a desperate beeline for the bathroom.
Left alone with the rhythmic thumping in his head, Ilya wanted to fucking punch himself. He wanted to hit himself for being so reckless, for being so painfully unsure of what he actually wanted, and for dragging Hollander into this entire mess in the first place.
Why had he given him so much attention? Why had he gone out of his way to buy and gift him that stupid, oversized teddy bear?
In the beginning, his plan had been entirely different. He'd actually wanted to buy Hollander a pair of lace panties flanked with the Boston Bears logo.
He had pictured it perfectly, a cruel and hilarious joke to remind his rival exactly who owned him in the bedroom. But then he had thought better of it.
First, because Hollander would have absolutely never worn them, likely calling it an outright sacrilege to allow anything from a team other than his own to touch his body.
But second, and more honestly, because something inside Ilya had shifted.
More than mere lust, he had started to feel a dangerous, consuming greed regarding Hollander. He wanted him for himself. He wanted him naked, unbothered by team logos or jokes, screaming only Ilya's name.
So instead, he had bought the teddy bear. It was still comical, the perfect obnoxious allegory to represent Ilya in Hollander's space, but at the same time, it had been a pathetic compromise. He had been pathetic.
And now, staring at the fallout of his actions, it looked like he had built a bridge not only for his own buried hopes, but potentially for Hollander's too—hopes that Ilya knew he could never actually fulfill.
The bathroom door creaked open, and Hammersmith emerged, his brows furrowed in deep, profound disgust. He was squinting, his face contorted like he was trying to solve a complex mathematical equation.
"Man," Hammersmith croaked, his voice thick with sleep and hangover. "Why is there vomit with unpeeled mandarins in the bathtub?"
Ilya blinked, his brain entirely short-circuiting. He stared at his teammate in sheer confusion. "A... what?"
Hammersmith glanced back inside the bathroom, rubbing a hand over his face, visibly exhausting every single one of his remaining brain cells just to formulate a sentence. "The... the mandarins, man. Where are they even coming from...?"
Then, somewhere deep within the tangled wreckage of Hammersmith's sheets, a phone started to blast a tinny, high-energy beat—"Blank Space" cutting sharply through the room.
Hammersmith winced at the noise, stumbling blindly back toward his mattress. He began a frantic, clumsy excavation of the blankets, tossing pillows aside until his hand finally clamped around the vibrating device. He glanced at the screen, and the blood instantly drained from his already pale face.
He breathed out a weak, terrified, "Oh no."
He swiped the screen and brought it to his ear, his voice dropping an octave into a pathetic, submissive whine. It became immediately obvious to Ilya that the caller was Maddison.
"Hey... yes, I'm fine," Hammersmith slurred, rubbing his eyes. A pause. "Yeah, I'm still drunk. I'm sorry." Another pause, longer this time, as a sharp, muffled voice buzzed angrily from the speaker. Hammersmith looked like a dog that had just been caught chewing up a designer shoe. "I'm sorry, babe. I didn't know he was gonna—"
Suddenly, Hammersmith froze. He glanced over at Ilya, his eyes widening in pure, unadulterated dread.
"Are you sure...?" Hammersmith whispered frantically into the receiver, trying and failing to lower his voice. "Maddi, he looks like death, I don't think—okay, okay! Fine!"
With a look of profound pity, Hammersmith reluctantly extended his arm across the gap between their beds, holding the glowing phone out like a live grenade.
"She wants to talk to you," Hammersmith mumbled, avoiding Ilya's gaze entirely. "Man, I'm so sorry."
Oh, so was Ilya. He stared at the vibrating screen, his stomach doing another flip, knowing that whatever was waiting for him on the other end of that line was going to hurt a lot worse than the hangover.
Ilya reached out with a trembling, clammy hand and took the phone from Hammersmith. He swallowed hard, trying to clear the bitter taste from his throat, and brought the device to his ear.
"Maddison," he croaked, his voice thick and rough.
"Don't you dare 'Maddison' me, Ilya!" her voice exploded through the speaker, so sharp and loud that Ilya had to pull the phone away from his ear with a hiss of pain. The sound vibrated straight into his splitting headache. "Are you out of your mind? Seriously, what is actually wrong with you?!"
"Look, I—"
"No, you look!" she snapped, cutting him off entirely. "Do you have absolutely no shame? You are at a VIP table, in public, making out with some actress like a desperate teenager while Jane is literally at home? We have been trying to help you two for months! Everyone knows how Jane feels about you, everyone knows you two have been building something, and you go and pull this repulsive shit?"
Ilya froze, his hand tightening around the casing of the phone. The pounding in his head seemed to stall for a fraction of a second, replaced by a sudden, jarring spike of confusion. Everyone knows how Jane feels about you.
"Wait," Ilya muttered, his brow furrowing deeply. "What do you mean 'how she feels'? She doesn't... we haven't..."
He genuinely didn't know. Shane—or Jane, as the girls callously and confidently knew her—had never said a word about feelings. Did the girls know something he didn't? Had he talked to them?
Ilya rubbed his forehead, closing his eyes tightly as the hangover waged war in his skull. "We are not together, Maddison," he muttered, trying to find a shred of solid ground to stand on. "We never said we were. We are not exclusive to begin with."
A heavy, suffocating silence hung on the line for a fraction of a second before Maddison let out a sharp, mocking scoff.
"Oh, wow. That is a very low, pathetic excuse for someone who literally demanded that Jane stay in the WAG group chat," she fired back, her voice dripping with venom. "You don't get to parade her around to us, claim her as your partner in front of the entire team's wives and girlfriends, and then hide behind the 'we're not exclusive' card the second you want to behave like an animal. You brought her into our space, Ilya. You gave her that title."
Ilya gripped the edge of the mattress, his knuckles turning white. He had no comeback for that. She was entirely right, and the hypocrisy of his own actions felt like a physical weight crushing his chest.
"Look," Maddison continued, her tone shifting from pure rage to a tense, stressful clip. "I am already dealing with Brad. Believe me, I am going to speak to him about posting photos of people without their consent on Instagram. It's a violation and it's disgusting. But Brad didn't force your face onto hers, Ilya. You are completely to blame for this shit going on."
"Did she..." Ilya hesitated, the name catching painfully in his throat. "Did Jane see it?"
"We don't know," Maddison said bluntly. "She hasn't answered the group chat, and none of us want to text her directly yet and trigger anything if she hasn't looked at her phone. But honestly? It's already too late. It doesn't matter if Brad and the PR manage to get the original post deleted. The tabloids already screenshotted it. It's everywhere, Ilya. Deleting it now won't magically make it over."
Ilya let his head fall forward as he stared at the carpet.
"Jane is such a kind, affectionate, genuinely intelligent person," Maddison said, her voice dropping into a quieter, heavier disappointment that hurt worse than her screaming. "She is so fiercely protective of the people she cares about, and she has been so incredibly patient with you. And you just managed to be a complete asshole."
"I didn't mean to—"
"I really hoped that the arrogant, careless jerk you play up for the cameras was just a persona," Maddison interrupted, her disappointment ringing clear through the line. "We all did. No one expected Jane to change you. She shouldn't have to fix a grown man or deal with a man-child. But we at least expected you to be kind to her. We expected you to respect her enough not to humiliate her on a public stage."
She let out a long, exhausted breath.
"Put my fiancé back on the phone. I'm done talking to you."