Chapter Text
Ilya hadn’t meant to shove Hollander.
He was used to the ice giving him clarity and confidence, or at least a way to vent out his frustrations. But today, it was like he was trapped underneath instead of skating on top.
It was nearing the end of December and it was the first game against Sh—against Montreal since Boston, since Hollander had decided that frotting on the couch with Ilya had been too much for him. Hollander had stumbled around Ilya’s house, piecing together his clothing while Ilya had been glued to the spot Hollander had left him in, too dumbfounded to get up or even say anything. He had just listened to Hollander scurrying around, then watched him flee through the door, without looking back, only another hectic “I’m sorry” thrown over his shoulder.
At the game the next day, Ilya had been so furious with Hollander for making everything more complicated than it needed to be that he had flat out ignored him on the ice and instead had focused on making the life of every other Metros player hell.
Not this game, though. Not now, with even more separating the two of them than before. The icy air seeped into Ilya’s bones instead of clearing his lungs and, whether he wanted to or not, he felt his entire focus trained on Hollander.
A game between the Metros and the Raiders was usually something the fans looked forward to for weeks, knowing it would be intense from the second the skates hit the ice until the last camera stopped recording. They were bound to be disappointed today, though.
Ilya knew he was playing like shit and so was Hollander.
The Metros were leading 0–1. Their second line had scored during first period, with Hollander on the bench and Ilya's gaze having wandered to him, away from the ice.
There was only about half a minute left of the second period when he was facing off against Hollander in Boston’s attacking zone. Hollander had his mouth guard sticking out between his lips, moving it back and forth before putting it back in to get ready for the puck drop. It was a habit so Shane, Ilya’s planned chirp stayed stuck in his throat.
Hollander didn’t spare him even one glance before he won the face-off.
Immediately, Hollander was off to the other side of the ice. Ilya went after him, feeling his desperation close to bubbling over.
Okay, maybe he had meant to shove Hollander.
It should have been a harmless hit compared to how Ilya usually body-checked his opponents. He just wanted—no, he needed to be closer to Hollander, closer than Rose fucking Landry, and get a reaction, any reaction, out of him. Maybe Hollander intended the crack that had formed between them to be ripped open, but Ilya was still holding on on both ends. He was not leaving this behind without a fight.
Ilya could tell Hollander was distracted before their bodies made contact, but by then, there was no preventing it. His shoulder hit Hollander’s, hard. Ilya meant for the hit to pin Hollander’s body against the boards for a few precious seconds before Ilya stole the puck from under him. Instead, as soon as they crashed into each other, Hollander stumbled and lost balance.
He went careening into the boards, his momentum landing him headfirst into the edge between the boards and the Plexiglas, while Ilya’s carried him away from Shane. All he could do was watch, eyes locked on Shane rather than the puck like they should be.
He watched as blood smeared the boards red. He watched as Shane’s body crumbled and hit the ice, with a crunch that seemed louder than any fan in the entire stadium. He watched as Shane just stayed on the ground and did not get up.
Only then did Ilya’s brain really register what had just happened. He couldn’t have skated faster to the body lying on the ground, still unmoving, Shane making no effort to get back on his feet, or even his knees. He should have been faster, though. He almost made it when another body slammed into Ilya.
“Rozanov, you motherfucker!” Pike was on him, without gloves, landing a hit on Ilya's jaw. Ilya tried shoving him away, having no mind for useless scrabbles when Shane was still just lying there.
But Pike was like a chihuahua biting at Ilya’s ankles for attention, not letting himself be shaken off so easily. Normally, Ilya delighted in egging on opponents that picked a fight with him. Tonight, he had no patience for any of it.
“Otyebis' ot menya [Get the fuck off me],” he snarled, but of course Pike didn’t let go. Ilya made to get him off of him by slashing his stick between them, but his hands were empty. He must’ve abandoned it after the hit.
Pike was hurling profanities and spit into Ilya’s face, and when he took another swing at him, Ilya used it to push him away again. It worked better this time. He got Pike partially off and made to kneel next to Shane—still sprawled out on the fucking ice—but now medics were pushing past him and blocking the way.
The refs had caught up with the situation too, hauling Ilya and Pike away from the scene and creating another barrier.
“Both of you, get to your teams,” one of them told them, his voice filled with an exasperated annoyance that made Ilya want to deal out punches, after all. He used his anger to instead elbow Pike away from him, making to skate around the refs. But it was useless. There was no way through.
“Is Hollander awake?” Ilya spat over the heads of the refs at the medics, who just ignored him.
“To your fucking bench, Rozanov!” He could tell the refs were just about done with him, but how was that important now?
“Fucking tell me how he is!” Ilya demanded again.
He knew worry drenched his voice, he knew he should let the medics do their thing, he knew, but it didn’t matter. He needed to know that Shane was alright, that he was responsive, that he was breathing, anything. That Ilya hadn’t just permanently injured his—
Pike was in his face again, swinging at him again, and Ilya just let it happen, his eyes fixated on the pile of medics, desperate to catch a glimpse of Shane between them.
He barely registered a ref pushing him towards his team, only distantly noticed his teammates trying to talk to him, patting him on his back. His eyes and focus stayed trained on where Shane was still surrounded. He didn’t dare look away, because what if—
He didn’t know how many agonizing minutes it took, but after a while, Shane was lifted onto a stretcher and carried out of the rink, getting further and further away, while Ilya could do nothing but watch helplessly.
The only things left of Shane’s were his helmet, his gloves, and his blood, staining the boards and ice. And Ilya, close to breaking.
If Ilya had thought that Montreal was out for his blood before the game, he'd learned what that really meant during this one. The rest of it had been a blur. Ilya wasn’t sure how he had even managed to skate and not storm out of the arena. He certainly had not played well, but he honestly couldn’t even tell what had been happening on the ice. There had been no further goals, so Montreal had dragged a one-goal victory home. And Ilya really couldn’t care less.
The Metros fans seemed like they shared that sentiment, hurling insults and various other things at Ilya as he left the stadium.
He had denied post-game interviews and knew the Raider’s PR team would hound him for that later, but really, they should be grateful. He was in no state to be interviewed right now. He wouldn’t be able to come up with passable answers of any kind when all he could see was blood and a body, all he could hear was the crunch of Shane falling to the ground, and all he could feel was it reverberating through his own bones.
On the way to the shuttle that would take him to the hotel, security had to intervene to keep fans away from Ilya and to keep their insults and frustrations from escalating beyond verbal. It was nothing, really, that hadn’t been hurled at him before, but it came with a seldom ferocity and, for the first time in his entire career, Ilya agreed with a lot of the accusations.
It had been his fault, after all. There was no way around it. Hockey was a violent sport, but Ilya was more than capable of checking players and not injuring them. At least, not worse than he wanted. There was no reason Shane should’ve ended up motionless on the ground. No reason but Ilya’s recklessness and lack of self-control.
Ilya pushed down the nauseating thought of ‘What if I paralyzed him?’ and kept his head low as he got in the shuttle without sparing a glance at even one of the fans.
(Before leaving the arena, he had tried to get to the home locker rooms, but security had heard none of it. Ilya had wanted—He didn’t know what exactly he had wanted, or could even get, from the Metros, but they had to know more about Shane’s situation than anyone else at the moment.)
Ilya went back to his hotel room because he didn’t know what else he could do. He didn’t even know where Shane was. (Probably a hospital, Ilya guessed, because no one with an injury that could be dealt with at the rink went down for as long as Shane had.)
He made the mistake of trying to look for information online. All he was bombarded with were reports of what had happened on the ice (with the occasional, days-old article about Shane with Rose Landry thrown in between). One video pretended to have an update on the situation, but it also only rattled off speculations.
“It sure looks like that was a clean hit on the replay, but you never know when it comes to Rozanov. Especially where Hollander is concerned, one is bound to wonder what his intentions—“
Ilya turned the video off and resisted the urge to chuck his phone against the hotel room wall.
Instead, his fingers automatically switched to his messaging app and clicked on the chat titled Jane, a useless impulse. Their last two messages from October stared back at him, mockingly.
Jane:
Lily:
They hadn't texted since then and there was nothing else he could accomplish here. Shane was probably in no state to even look at his phone right now.
Ilya squeezed his eyes shut, massaging the bridge of his nose. He didn’t want to imagine what exact state Shane was currently in, but his mind supplied him with multiple—increasingly distressing—possibilities anyways.
Ilya had just plopped down on his bed, trying to force himself to stop pacing, when Connors, his hotel roommate for most away games, entered.
“We’ll get them next time, Roz,” he said, misattributing Ilya’s foul mood to their lost game. “Now that Hollander’s out for a bit—”
Ilya shot up. “How do you know that? Do you have any updates?”
Connors just held up his hands in defense. “No updates. But you hit the dude pretty hard, man. He’s probably not going to be up and running by tomorrow.”
Ilya knew he was behaving stupidly, but he couldn’t help it. Hell, he almost growled at his teammate but found some respectability buried in his stomach somewhere and only shouldered past him instead, out of the room and away from Connors’ confused protests.
The hotel lobby was stuffed with so many people, it was actively suffocating him so Ilya fled outside through the back entrance, where only cold air greeted him.
His fingers itched, but there were no cigarettes in his pockets, so they hovered over Jane’s chat again. Ilya cursed before his thumb hit the call button.
He almost hung up after a few rings because what the hell was he even trying to accomplish? No way Shane would pick up his call now. But before he could, the line connected. There was silence for a second, then:
“Uhm, Lily? Is that you? I, uhm, I didn’t know you and Shane were still…”
That was not Shane’s voice.
“Lily? Are you there?” Pike—at least Ilya assumed that it was Hayden Pike, it sounded enough like him, as much as a generic male voice could sound like anyone that Ilya didn’t really know—hesitated on the line.
Ilya wondered if his breathing gave him away.
“I don’t know what your and Shane’s deal is, but—” Pause. Pike sighed. “Look, I’m at the Montreal General, I haven’t been allowed to see him yet, but the doctors said he’s stable and—Fuck, Lily, can you answer? Are you even there? Hello? Hello?”
Ilya disconnected the call.
His back hit the cold brick wall of the hotel and he slid down until he was sitting in the freezing dirt. With the adrenaline slowly draining out of him, Ilya could feel a dull ache spreading across his face where Pike had managed to punch him.
The doctors said he’s stable. A reassuring sentence, surely. A sentence that could mean anything from ‘Shane will be back on the ice again next week’ to ‘Shane is no longer in a life-threatening situation, but he’s in a coma’.
Ilya pressed his fingers against the spots on his jaw where bruises were in the process of forming and kept pressing.
“I am here for Shane Hollander.”
To Ilya, the Montreal General Hospital seemed much like any other hospital he had encountered in North America so far. Busy, full of beeping, smelling bitter and artificial. Someone working the front desk who was always busy typing away on their computer and unimpressed with whoever wanted their attention. Ilya couldn’t really blame the receptionist for not even glancing up when he approached, though—she looked exhausted and overworked.
“What is your relation to the patient?”
Ilya was rarely at a loss for words, but this one gave him a pause. Nothing was the true answer. Hollander and he were nothing, could never be anything, at the end of the day.
“Colleague.” The word felt wrong on his tongue, not just because it was English, but because this objectively true fact felt like a bigger lie than any falsehood Ilya could come up with.
It was also a stupid thing to say. Anyone who had any connection at all to hockey—which was just about everyone in Montreal—would, upon realizing what it meant to be colleagues with the Shane Hollander, take one look at Ilya and know he should not be here. But the receptionist was either the only person in this shit city who knew nothing about hockey or she truly did not give a fuck.
She typed something before looking up for the first time, apologetically. “I’m sorry, sir, only family and people cleared by the family are allowed to see him right now.”
Ilya clicked his tongue. That was to be expected. He wanted to leap over the front desk and get the room number himself. His knuckles rapped against the counter.
“Can I know his… condition.”
A shake of the head. “That is confidential patient information, I apologize. But you are allowed to go to the waiting area over there in case something changes or his family clears you.”
Maybe it would be better if she recognized him. Or maybe that would make it worse.
“Thank you, anyways,” Ilya ground out and smiled as politely as he could manage before turning around and walking away in the direction she had pointed to. Not to wait for the Hollanders, thank you very much, but to read the sign with the hospital map on it.
It was difficult to gauge where Shane might be. If he was in the ICU, the strict visitor rules would certainly make sense. But they were also sensible for a normal care unit. Shane was a national celebrity, after all. They would not just let random people—like Ilya—barrel in.
But what the receptionist had said at least implied that Shane was not well enough to decide for himself who could visit him. (Not that that made much of a difference for Ilya. He doubted Shane wanted to actually see him.)
Ilya only knew he was at this hospital because of Pike’s ramblings, a morsel of information that not even the news outlets had gotten their hands on yet. So far, everything about the situation seemed to be under tight wraps—the Metros hadn’t shared anything yet, least of all an injury report or anything of the kind.
It was about 10 in the morning, the day after the game. A time of day at which, under normal circumstances, Ilya would still be asleep, with his team’s flight to the next game not scheduled until the afternoon.
Yesterday evening, when he had realized that Pike had basically told him where Shane was, he had restrained himself from running to the hospital immediately. Instead, he had made himself lie in his bed and listen to Connors’ obnoxious snoring until the sun rose and he had an excuse to get up. He’d had the option to just sit in the hotel, antsy, not able to think about anything other than blood on the rink, or to do something stupid.
Visiting the hospital wasn’t that stupid, he reasoned. He was the Captain of the Boston Raiders, as well as the person responsible for Hollander’s hospital stay. Visiting an injured player on an opposing team to offer well wishes and maybe also an apology for a particularly hard hit was never required but a courtesy gladly seen by the League and the press. Good sportsmanship. Ilya just didn’t fit the type and people knew that. But he wasn’t doing anything wrong, per se.
Shane would have a room to himself, even if he was in a general unit, Ilya guessed. For privacy. But even if he was correct in that assessment, it didn’t particularly limit the options. The hospital was too big and Ilya couldn’t just wander around sticking his nose into random rooms, hoping he would stumble upon the right one.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Ilya had become an expert at recognizing when disdain was aimed at him. He turned around and was faced with—of fucking course—Hayden Pike.
Ilya schooled his face. “How is Hollander doing?”
He didn’t really see the point in pleasantries on most days, much less right now.
“Why do you care? Wanna rub it in some more? How do you even know—”
“I am team captain, Pike. Is my duty to check up on injured players.” He ground his teeth.
Pike scoffed. There were dark circles underneath his eyes. “Like that’s your goal here.”
Ilya took a steadying breath, trying to remind himself that he should not antagonize—at least, not more than he already has—the person who could probably help him the most right now. “Can you just take me to Hollander, please? I just want to see how he is doing, give him my apologies.”
“So you admit this is your fault!”
As if every hockey fan in the world hadn’t seen Ilya put Shane flat on the ice by now. Everybody knew that it was his fault.
“Are you a child, Pike? I don’t have kindergarten squabble with Hollander.” So much for no antagonizing. “I am here and want to give him regards. Or at least know how he is.”
Pike stared at him for a few seconds, seemingly trying to find answers to unasked questions on Ilya’s face before giving up, groaning.
“The laceration on his head isn’t that bad, but he got a concussion. His collarbone is broken and his ribs are bruised. But he’s doing fine, all things considered. No, like… internal bleeding or anything,” Pike forced out, adding a muttered remark, “No thanks to you.”
That was right. No thanks to Ilya. He balled his hands into fists, digging his nails into his palms to ground himself.
Internal bleeding would have been bad. Broken bones were never good, but they would heal in time. Ilya had no idea what a laceration was—he tried to mentally repeat the word to himself so he could look it up later—but it sounded like it was less of an issue than the concussion. He had expected a concussion; he just wished Pike had shared how severe it was. That was probably the biggest concern. Concussions were par for the course in their field, but they could bring loads of troubles, any hockey player worth their salt knew that.
But Pike seemed mostly calm about all of it. And he shared Shane Hollander’s injuries with his rival, which he probably wouldn’t have done if things were more dire. So maybe Ilya could stop freaking out now. He waited for his body to get the memo, but it didn’t seem so inclined yet.
Ilya shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket and bit his tongue, willing himself to not ask to see Shane, again. He was already pushing his luck with Pike. Ilya had probably fulfilled his good sportsmanship duties by now. Besides, Hollander had called off their little arrangement last time—for crying out loud, he had gotten himself a girlfriend who probably was fussing at his bedside right about now. He didn’t need Ilya to make things complicated again.
For once in his life, Ilya decided not to push further.
He felt a thousand years old, all of a sudden. “Wish him… a fast recovery, yes?”
Pike nodded, tense. “Sure.”
Ilya told himself to turn around and leave, but his body didn’t cooperate. A moment too long passed between Pike and him, and Ilya didn’t know which one of them felt more awkward.
“Tell Hollander—”
“Well then—”
Their voices tangled together uncomfortably.
“I mean,” Ilya cleared his throat and decided that this one sentence would not condemn him more than he already was, “Tell Hollander I didn’t mean to… to hit him like that. Was an accident.”
If Pike was trying to hide his surprise, he was doing a poor job of it. “I, uhm, will tell him that.”
Ilya needed to get out of here. He nodded tersely at Pike before whipping around and basically fleeing the hospital.
(While waiting to board the team’s plane, Ilya checked the news on Shane Hollander, like a compulsion. He avoided videos, his memory already sufficiently laying out the entire hit by itself.
A 1–0 victory but a captain loss for the Metros—
Hollander on close observation at the Montreal General Hospital—
Throughout his entire career, Rozanov has been known as a particularly violent player, but we thought even he knew not to take it too far—
Rose Landry spotted entering the Montreal General THIS MORNING. No doubt—
Movie star visi—
WHAT SHANE HOLLANDER’S (#24) INJURIES MEAN FOR THE REST OF THE METROS SEASON—
No official statement on Hollander’s condition yet. No sightings of Ilya at the hospital either.
Ilya had looked up what a laceration was and all that had done was reinforce the image of Hollander’s blood in his brain. He didn’t know why he was so focused on the head wound, of all things. It was probably the least serious of Hollander’s injuries.
All of Hollander’s injuries were bearable, actually. They just needed time to heal. Even a concussion. Ilya had had four concussions in his life so far—one mild, two moderate, one severe—and each one had been a pain to endure, but they hadn’t been the end of the world.
So why were Ilya’s hands still shaking?)
Hollander was out for the rest of the season. Well, more precisely, he was out at least until the playoffs. But it didn’t seem like the Metros would make it past the regular season anyways, especially without their star player and captain. Online, Boston fans were gloating. His teammates didn’t outwardly celebrate, but they were certainly not hiding their glee at the news either. They were definitely not not patting Ilya on the back.
Good sportsmanship, the whole lot of them. Ilya had the urge to break some noses.
Instead, he was taking out his frustrations on one of the stationary bikes in the Raider’s fitness facility.
“I don’t think my heart could’ve taken it if the Metros managed to take the Cup for three years in a row, man,” Cliff said conversationally, leisurely cycling on the bike next to Ilya, and he certainly looked punchable, at least more than usual.
Ilya upped the bike’s resistance percentage. His mind supplied him with memories of Hollander and him racing after the draft. He pedaled even faster, wondering if it was possible to out-pace his own mind.
“The Metros are shit without Hollander,” Ilya snarled. “You are saying you want to play boring games against shit teams?”
“Always the competitive fucker, Roz,” Cliff laughed, not noticing Ilya’s disdain.
Ilya kept his gaze focused downwards, watching sweat trickle down his arms onto the handlebars of the bike. Hoping Cliff would take the hint, he tried to tune out the overenthusiastic voices of the sports commentators on the TV screen in front of them.
It had been about a week since the game against Montreal and Christmas break was behind them. Ilya had not contacted Hollander. At first, it had been out of caution; Pike could still have his phone—or even worse, Hollander’s parents could've gotten hold of it—and if he was answering calls, Ilya doubted Pike respected privacy enough to not read texts too.
But even after a few days, Ilya still hadn’t texted.
(Ilya also remembered how, when he’d had concussions in the past, the doctors had been adamant about limiting screen time. (Perhaps he could also recall not being so strict on that rule himself and being rewarded with stabbing pains to his skull.) And with how much of a rule follower Hollander was, maybe he wouldn’t even read his texts anyways.)
But by now, he had to admit to himself that he just couldn’t bring himself to press send on anything. None of his words sounded right. He wasn’t even sure if he should say anything. If Pike had kept his word, Hollander knew Ilya had visited and offered his apologies. There wasn’t much more to say. Even when they had been on good terms, they never texted anything more than innuendos and meet-up locations.
‘I can’t do this.’ Hollander had been clear the last time they had met up.
The way they had managed their hook-ups before had worked, but Ilya had crossed a line. He had crossed several lines. Inviting Hollander to stay over. Making food. Hanging out outside of sex. Saying his name. And it had been clear then: Hollander could not do any of it, could not do more than their regular routine.
And Ilya could not either. If, at the beginning, sex with Hollander had been like driving his sports car at full speed down a highway with open windows and wind in his hair, the danger thrilling and mixing adrenaline with pleasure, then over the years, the road had narrowed to a single track and not even slamming the brakes could prevent Ilya from colliding with an approaching car. And if the impact hadn’t been in Ilya’s house in Boston, then it had been on the ice in Montreal.
In some twisted way, lectures from his father from years ago that he thought he had sufficiently forgotten came back to Ilya now—and maybe his father had been correct in his assessments. Ilya did let his emotions affect his game. Not only had he played like shit against the Metros, but he had also hurt Shane—
Ilya could not do this. There was no way around it. He had to find a way to work through his withdrawal from the addiction that was Shane Hollander. It would pass. It had to.
“Holy shit, Roz, you’re gonna break the machine.” Cliff’s voice—closer to him than expected—suddenly pulled Ilya out of his focus. Ilya startled. His foot slipped out of the pedal. But that didn’t stop it from continuing its rotation and slamming itself into Ilya’s heel.
“Blyat! [Fuck!]” Ilya yelled, hopping off the bike. He shook his leg until the pain subsided, cursing some more. “Marly, what the fuck, don’t go around whispering in my ear while I work out.”
Ilya expected Cliff to start laughing at him, to bring some normalcy back, because that’s what they did. Laugh about stupid, inconsequential stuff happening, like Ilya earning a bruise from a fucking stationary bike. But Marlow just regarded him with an unbearably concerned—or maybe confused—look. He rounded the bike to get to Ilya and put a hand on his shoulder. “You good?”
Where, before, Ilya had shut out the noises of the gym, they now engulfed him and grated against his skull. Machines were whirring and people were grunting. And of course, the sports channel was giving some kind recap on Hollander’s injuries.
Ilya shrugged Cliff’s hand off, aiming for dismissiveness. “I’m fine.”
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew he was taking his anger out on everyone around him, most of which didn’t deserve it. Especially Marly—who was probably the closest friend Ilya had when it came to hockey players.
Ilya was known to throw around chirps and curses, but he prided himself on knowing how to strike a balance between charming and insulting, and knowing when it was necessary to lean more in one direction than the other. Recently, he’s had no nerve for charming.
The second he was out of the training facility, he lit himself a cigarette.
In a game against New Jersey, Ilya went to slam an opposing player into the boards to steal the puck. Before their bodies made contact, Ilya could feel Hollander's body crumble underneath his. He barely even managed a shove and the puck did not even make it near Ilya’s stick.
With the way Svetlana was waiting for Ilya in his kitchen when he returned from afternoon practice, he knew it was an intervention.
They hadn’t seen each other in the past few weeks, but instead of jumping up from the chair she was sitting on and greeting him with a bright smile and warm hug, she raised her eyebrows, a concerned smile plaguing her lips.
“Sveta,” he complained after a second of silence. “What did I tell you about letting yourself into my house?”
“That I can do it whenever,” she answered smoothly, finally sliding off the chair. They met in the middle, her arms snaking around his waist.
Speaking and being spoken to in Russian unearthed a deep-seated exhaustion in Ilya he hadn’t even realized was eating away at him. His shoulders dropped.
“Oh, Ilyusha.” Ilya resented how pitying she sounded, but accepted her embrace nonetheless, pressing her flush against his chest.
When they stopped hugging, Svetlana stayed close and put her hands on his shoulders, holding him at arm’s length, a scrutinizing look in her face. “You have not been well.”
So, it was one of those times. Svetlana was an expert at seeing through Ilya’s shit. Sometimes, Svetlana did not address something with Ilya, even though she had noticed, sensing that he did not want to talk about it. Other times, she would confront him directly about it. There was no in-between, and today Ilya would have to make do with the latter.
Ilya shrugged in denial, knowing it was useless, but needing to keep up the performance anyways, if he didn’t want to break down right this second. “It’s nothing, just a bit of a slump.”
Svetlana had only an unimpressed tilt of her head to offer him. “You have been a mess. Come on.”
She dragged him to his bedroom, and for one horrifying second, he thought she wanted to have sex. And even though they were both always good with rejecting each other when they weren’t in the mood, Ilya felt himself tense up.
But he should’ve known better. This was Sveta, after all, the person who knew him best in the entire world. She took the TV remote and put on some hockey game. Then, she got onto the bed, fully clothed, and patted the mattress next to her. Ilya followed and, in a matter of mere moments, his head was in her lap and her fingers were soothingly carding through his hair. He allowed himself to close his eyes, let the hockey commentators’ voices blend together, focused only on the reassuring touches, and if a few tears ran down his face, neither mentioned it.
It was only when Svetlana got up to leave a few hours later that she broached the topic again.
“Whatever is going on. The way you’re dealing with it… it’s not good. You’re hurting yourself.”
As if Ilya wasn’t well aware. That didn’t make a better solution magically manifest in front of him, though. “I’ll get over it, Sveta. Don’t worry.”
Maybe he should’ve tried initiating sex, after all; that was usually a good way to get his mind off things, with Sveta especially. (Even if lately, there was only one person that came to his mind when he thought about sex. But that was part of the problem that needed fixing.) He could hit up his teammates to go clubbing, perhaps. He just needed to find a way to cope with everything better and then he’d be okay.
“Ilyusha.” Fooling himself was easier than fooling Svetlana. “Running away does not solve anything.”
Standing next to the bed, looking down to where Ilya was leaning against the headboard, she hesitated for a second. “I know you like to decide things in your head without consulting other people involved. It might be your one flaw. So, at the very least, please try to talk to him.”