Chapter Text
“Is me?”
The voice over his shoulder made Luca Haas nearly jump out of his airplane seat. It was a good thing he took safety very seriously, and was strapped in, otherwise there was a good chance his startle reflex may have caused an injury. He managed to save his laptop, just barely, but now his headphones are half out of his ears, and he’s craning his head to look up at….oh god Ilya.
Ilya does not seem to care that he had inflicted a minor heart attack. Though Luca supposed that was just normal. He for the life of himself could not act normal about his captain.
He could not, for the life of him, separate Ilya-the-hockey-player-he-idolized-growing-up from Ilya-his-teammate-and-captain.
So hence, the mini heart attacks on the regular. And holy fucking shit, Ilya was staring intently at his sims game, where yes, a version of Ilya was currently doing a “juice” stand. Luca was starting to wish he had hit his head to avoid this.
“What is?” Ilya gestured at it.
“Sims,” Luca muttered, still wanting to die.
“Is that Harris?” Ilya pointed at another sim, that was yes of fucking Harris.
Luca may or may not have started a save file with many of his teammates going to University of all things. He knew it was weird. He was not one of those builder simmers or legacy players. He had thousands of start files, and somehow “playing” with real people actually kept his interest. So he created his team, and sent them off to university something Luca hadn’t been able to do in real life. It was stupid of him to play it on the plan with said team around him, but he was sitting by himself in the back of the plane. Everyone else seemed so tired but he wasn’t.
“What is sims?”
“Ilya-
But his Captain and childhood idol plopped himself down into the seat beside him, clearly interested. Luca began his spiel on the history of the sims.
“What am I studying?” Ilya was pointing again at his sim, still frozen in the midst of doing the sims version of a keg stand.
Luca wished he had not been so detailed in his description, “villainy?”
He expected Ilya to find this weird. Expected his Captain to berate him for living in a fantasy world but Ilya is grinning as if this amused him more than completely and utterly creeped him out.
“Did you create the people?”
“They’re called Sims,” Luca said, and then shrunk in his seat. Why was he being so defensive? He turned to look at his captain, “no there’s a gallery where people upload them. There’s literally hundreds of you,”
“Hundreds?” Ilya repeated, “show me,”
Luca uploaded the gallery, peering between his fingers as sim versions of Ilya populated. Many of them without shirts, and apparently had been made with the max muscle scale all the way up. Ilya made an appreciative sound which drew Troy’s attention, who gave them a quizzical look. Luca shook his head wildly. He did not need anyone else to see this.
“They are talented,” Ilya said nodding appreciatively, “wait is that Hollander? Why do they create us together? Ho…,” he squinted, “Hollonav?”
There was no way in hell Luca was going to explain that term.
“Sometimes people like to make you guys and act out your rivalry in sims,” Luca said, “I’ve seen it in videos,”
He had never as a teenager created his hockey idols. No never would he admit this.
“I want to see game,”
“Oookay,” Luca pressed play, and was then forced to explain the oddities of Sims 4 University Life to Ilya, who like Luca had never actually gone to actual university. As they played, the sim versions of Harris and Ilya were invited to another party, which Ilya made him accept.
“Wait…is that two guy sims making out?” Ilya pointed.
“Well ja,” Luca said, “in the sims world everything is equal. Marriage. Pregnancy. No homophobia at all….,” he even went into build mode to show the different flags. He knew that Ilya had fought Kent over homophobia, and figured Ilya would appreciate the effort the sims creators did.
“I want to buy this,”
***
Shane woke to an empty bed.
Ilya’s side was still warm, indicating that maybe he woke up to go the bathroom. Shane ran his hands, and shuffled closer to the pillow, inhaling the familiar smell. When his boyfriend did not return, Shane went to find him.
“What are you doing?” he rubbed at his eyes, blinking in the light from the computer.
Ilya was hunched over his laptop at the coffee table, posture atrocious, shoulders curled forward, eyes locked onto the screen with an intensity usually reserved for playoff overtime. He was giggling?
“Ilya?” Shane said again, “it's four thirty….is that Sims?”
He hadn’t bothered to look for his reading glasses so the pixelated people were blurry. lya turned at that, the giggling cutting off so abruptly it was almost suspicious. For a split second, he looked exactly like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, wide-eyed, guilty, and already calculating an exit strategy.
“Why is there someone with red hair trapped?”He couldn’t see details, but he could see enough. A figure. A room. No door.
“No reason,” his boyfriend said with a quickness that said there was a sure-fire reason.
He stepped closer, nudging Ilya aside with his hip so he could get a better angle on the screen. Ilya resisted for half a second, then gave way, though not without a low, dissatisfied noise.The building on the screen, save for the random room where the woman with red hair was trapped, looked like his cottage? Had Ilya been a secret simmer?
“Is this…” his eyes scanned over the screen, finding them in sim form, “is this us?”
Ilya was turning red. Shane usually loved when he turned red. He especially loved teasing him about it. Russians do not do this Hollander, is windy(he said this even when there was no wind or when they were indoors). He was at the moment not sure whether to be touched or concerned. The sims versions of themselves were in an embrace, so that was nice.
“Ilya…,” Shane breathed through his nostrils, “why is Rose…that is her right? Why is she trapped in a windowless and doorless room?”
“She kept escaping the pool,”