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The moment Shane pulled out of his parents’ driveway, he felt all the strings he’d been using to tie himself together go slack, all of his efforts to seem like he was fine fell away immediately, leaving just him and the road ahead of him. He could almost feel the power to the control centre of his brain flickering out, the blackout rendering the long list of tasks required to be done any moment that he wasn’t alone, non-functional; sit naturally, watch your facial expressions, make conversation, stop fidgeting, act engaged. One by one, each was powered off without anyone pausing to consult him, but the part of his brain that would normally be lecturing him to act like a human being had lost power along with the rest.
So he focused on driving. All he had to do was steer, brake, and accelerate – that didn’t need power. He didn’t need to figure out why Ilya was shooting him that look; he didn’t even need to figure out what it meant. All he had to do was drive.
“Do you… Want to talk? About all of that? Are you okay?” Ilya asked. The hesitance unnerved Shane; it was a far cry from the confidence he usually approached everything with.
Shane gave a grunt that approximated a no, along with a vague shrug. He definitely didn’t want to talk and had no clue how he was feeling, so it seemed like an accurate enough response.
Turn left up here, then a right, then another right, then you’re home. It was a drive he knew by heart, but repeating the turns in his head was comforting, in the same way that rubbing the fabric of his pants by his knee with the hand unoccupied by steering was. They were things to do while Ilya studied him – for what, Shane didn’t know – at least.
He’d made the first turn and was about halfway to the turn when Ilya reached over and switched on the radio, slicing through the unobtrusive silence and throwing whatever parts of his brain were lucky enough to still be operational into chaos. He shook his head quickly as he reached over to turn it back off.
“Okay, that’s fine, we can leave it off,” Ilya said gently, and Shane didn’t reply. A distant part of him told him he was being rude, but whatever part was meant to receive that message and correct accordingly had been another casualty of the power outage.
Thankfully, Ilya let them remain in silence for the rest of the ride back to the cottage, and as Shane pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine, the last thing he had to be on top of was done. He could just stay in the car if he wanted to, but Ilya had already gotten out and was waiting on him now, so Shane should probably follow. Ilya got to the door with Shane shortly behind, then turned to look at Shane as he stood there.
“You have the key,” Ilya prompted, giving Shane another one of those looks. Instead of attempting to figure out what it meant, he fished his key out of his pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. He stood in the entrance and watched Ilya follow him inside and pull the door closed behind him. Ilya turned back around to face him, and for a few moments, the two of them just stood there, Ilya staring at Shane while Shane looked anywhere else.
“Well, we have time. What do you want to do?” Ilya asked with a grin.
What did he want to do? They had a few hours until his parents would be here; they could do anything they wanted; an infinite number of possibilities, really. What did Ilya want to do? Shane was acutely aware that they had a limited amount of time together, and he didn’t want to waste a second of it, what if he chose wrong? In the end, he made a noise that vaguely resembled I don’t know, and left it in Ilya’s hands.
Instead of coming up with an answer for him, Ilya’s face twisted into something and met him with another round of questions.
“Shane, what is wrong? Did I do something? Why aren’t you talking to me?”
It was about three more questions than he had the capacity to answer. He didn’t have the words to explain any of it.
“No, I just…” He began, fiddling with the hem of his shirt as he desperately tried to rangle together whatever vaguely-operational parts of his brain were left to form something resembling a coherent reply, “It’s not– I, uh…”
“Hey–” Ilya began, reaching out to brush Shane’s arms – which had at some point moved from fiddling with the hem of his shirt to yanking on it – but the feather-light touch may as well have been an army of ants the way it itched against his skin, burrowing beneath it and feasting on his insides. He flinched back automatically, away from the feeling, though it lingered on his arms, and he didn’t have to decode Ilya’s expression to recognise the hurt.
“Sorry, I–” Shane tried again, squeezing his eyes shut as he desperately tried to scrounge up enough power to assemble anything that would get Ilya to drop it.
“No, no, is okay, just...” Ilya opened and closed his mouth, hunting for a solution, before continuing, “Come.”
Ilya led them to the living room, pointing to the couch and saying, “Sit,” which Shane complied with automatically, while Ilya fiddled with the remote, putting on an old hockey game and sitting down with him – close, but not close enough that they would be brushing up against each other.
All he had to do was watch the game – one of Boston’s playoff matches against New York this season; one of the two Boston had won, Shane was pretty sure. All he had to do was allow himself to be absorbed by the game, and he could finally allow his brain be powered down instead of having to try and fight against it.
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It wasn’t until the third period that he finally felt like he was starting to come back to himself. The lights in his brain slowly flickered back on, and gradually, power was restored.
Everything came back to him slowly. The first was the awareness of how he was sitting – unnaturally stiff, his back ramrod straight – and he let himself relax into the couch beneath him. It was enough to get Ilya’s focus back on him, away from whatever he’d been looking at on his phone.
The attention was enough to bring in a wave of embarrassment. Normally, when this happened, he could cover it up well enough to have anyone worried, or at least not think it was anything more than him being tired, or bored, or off, or any number of other acceptable things. He’d hoped he’d be able to keep up his façade of something approaching normalcy for at least a little while longer with Ilya, but there was no ignoring the gapping crack he’d just put in it.
He couldn’t bring himself to look at him yet, but Shane did scoot over on the couch, pressing himself up against Ilya’s side and resting his head on his shoulder. Almost automatically, Ilya looped his arm around Shane, bringing his hand up to card through his hair.
He saw now that the sky was a fair bit darker than it had been when they’d left his parents; it couldn’t be long before they’d arrive.
“What time is it? My parents will–”
“Just past five, I already texted them to push it to six.” Ilya interrupted.
Shane frowned, “They could have come at five, I would have been fine.”
Ilya raised his eyebrow at him, and Shane only managed to make it about two seconds before cracking, mumbling, “Whatever. Thank you.”
“Do you want to talk about what happened?”
The thing was, he really, really didn’t, but he knew he definitely owed Ilya some kind of explanation about what the hell that was. The problem was that even he didn’t really know what it was, just that it was something that sometimes happened to him.
But still, he owed it to him to try. “Sometimes, when I get– Overwhelmed, I guess, it’s like… I dunno, like my brain just powers down, and I get kind of– Well, like that.” He stared intently at the TV as he explained, just as an excuse not to have to look Ilya in the eye.
He didn’t want to explain what else could happen when he got too overwhelmed. Turning into a zombie was enough without also telling Ilya that sometimes, when he couldn’t escape whatever the issue was, he’d end up uncontrollably sobbing, and shaking, and throwing things. He didn’t need to give him another thing to scare him off, not yet. Besides, it was rare, and he’d practically perfected the art of making sure he got away before anyone else could bear witness.
“What’s it like for you, while it’s happening? Is it... Bad?” Ilya asked, and the concern radiating off of him was enough for Shane to set aside his discomfort and turn to look him in the eye.
“Well, not exactly,” Shane began, “It’s like… I can’t really think – like there’s a wall between me and the rest of the world. It’s only when something tries to break through that wall, or I have to try to break through it, that it gets bad. I guess it leaves me kind of exhausted after, too.”
Ilya’s eyebrows furrowed as he took in what Shane was saying. “Break through… Like when I touched you? And asked all those questions?”
“Yeah, kind of. I’m sorry I reacted like that, though; it wasn’t fair to you.” He winced, “You don’t– When that happens, you don’t have to try and fix it – you can’t really fix it, anyway – you can just leave me alone. It’s not your problem.”
Ilya scoffed at that, “Your problems are my problems. You think I ever want to leave you alone? I might have made it worse this time, and I’m sorry I did, but there’s ways to help if I know what to do, yes?”
“It’s not your fault, it’s not like you knew what was happening.” Shane brushed off, burning under the embarrassment of making Ilya feel like he needed to be responsible for his baggage. “Besides, you pretty much figured it out in the end. Putting the match on was good, and not touching me or making me talk or anything.”
“Is that it? Nothing else that can help?” Ilya asked with a frown, as though the idea that he couldn’t solve all of Shane’s issues was of great personal offence to him.
“Not really, I’ve mostly just got to wait it out. If we’re around other people or somewhere loud or something, it helps to leave, but if it’s important, it’s usually not worth the hassle and I just stick it out, maybe go somewhere quiet for a bit if I need to.” Shane shrugged. He didn’t need this to be Ilya’s problem; he’d made it through his life just fine for this long by powering through and dealing with the consequences once he was alone.
Ilya mulled that over for a moment before replying, “Well, I can always cover for you, and at least now I know how to not make it worse next time. Anything else I should know? You also turn into wolf-bird on the full moon?”
“What? No, what the fuck?” He replied as Ilya grinned, “But, I don’t know… It’s usually loud noises or being around people a lot that sets it off, but sometimes it’s other things, like today. It’s not usually this bad; normally, I just seem a bit quiet.”
“Okay... You said before it leaves you exhausted after, I can tell your parents not to come. They’ll understand.” He insisted.
“No, you know what they probably thought we were doing when you told them to come later. If we tell them not to come at all, they’ll think we’re hung up having marathon sex or something!”
“Well,” Ilya replied with a sly grin, “If it’s what they’ll think either way...”
With that, Shane got up from the couch, shooting Ilya a withering glare, “After my parents leave, asshole. Now help me set the table.”