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November 2020
The blustery November wind attempts to shake the windows of Ilya's home, and while it doesn't succeed in doing so, it doesn't fail to make the house feel colder and more empty than it typically does. The house is bathed in the dying light of the sun as it slips behind the horizon further with every passing minute. The only light that's actually on is the one in Ilya's bathroom, where he's staring down at the sink that is growing more and more likely to stain with each passing moment.
Any relief he felt upon first dragging a razor across his skin has now been replaced with annoyance and a pulse of shame as he realizes that he went too deep. He's unfortunately going to have to go to urgent care and get stitches.
Fuck. He just wanted to feel some release, to quiet the outrageous, overwhelming static that his brain has become as of late, and he can't even do that right. Ilya barely resists throwing something across the room or worse, punching the mirror, which would only mean he needs more stitches.
There's also a small flicker of fear, deep in his gut. He doesn't quite want to examine that particular feeling just yet.
With the praticed ease of a man who has been tending to various types of wounds over the course of many years, Ilya cleans the still bleeding wound and wraps it in gauze. It burns like hell to have the gauze against it, but the throb of it helps keep the fog from creeping back in.
As if on autopilot, he cleans the sink, bleaching it and rinsing it thoroughly before pulling on a zip up hoodie, a thick jacket, and a toque before snatching his car keys out of the bowl he keeps them in.
As he drives to the urgent care, he grows more and more pissed at himself for fucking this up. He hasn't done this in years, and the first time he tries to, he lands himself in the need of stitches. He's never needed stitches before, not for this.
By the time he's arrived, he's feeling very quiet and despondent, and he keeps his eyes down as he enters the building. Luckily there are only two other people in the waiting room this evening, and both have their noses buried in their phones, scrolling away.
Ilya can see the recognition in the eyes of the receptionist, but to his relief, she stays professional as she does his intake. She gives him a warm smile and lets him know he can sit down.
He takes a seat facing away from the other two patients and he pulls his hood up over his toque to further disguse his blonde curls, which are long enough now to threaten to brush the top of his shoulders. Shane loves them, but right about now he's wishing that he'd buzzed his head to the scalp before leaving the house.
He pulls out his phone and swipes idly through his apps, not really seeing the screen as he does. He just needs to look less like he's on the verge of full on disassociation. Everything inside of him has shifted intensely toward a feeling of numbness, more than anything. He presses his elbow closer to his body to apply pressure to the wound on his arm, and it smarts with a deep throb. It makes it easier to take a deep breath, and then another as it continues to pulseate with pain.
Even through the layers he's wearing, he can tell that he's beginning to bleed through the gauze.
Fucking idiot, he curses himself.
Before he can continue to further berate himself, the nurse approaches him and lets him know that they're ready for him so that she doesn't have to call out his name and risk drawing any attention to him. It's clear from the moment she lays eyes on him that he is desperate to remain as unrecognized as he possibly can.
They take Ilya to an exam room, where he removes his coat and slides his injured arm out of the hoodie sleeve. It's one of Shane's ancient hoodies from a brand deal long since dissolved, and Ilya doesn't want to take it off. He feels a bit like he'll cry if he has to take it off, and that makes him feel more pathetic than any other part of this.
There's already a sterile tray with sutures, gauze, tape, and a syringe full of lidocane waiting near the exam bed when they enter. The doctor is preparing an irrigation bottle of saline to flush out the wound, but when he's done, he sits down on the rolling stool beside the bed. He takes gauze scissors and carefully cuts away the gauze Ilya had applied before leaving the house.
"That looks pretty nasty," he says with a little definitive nod. "What happened?"
"A glass broke while I was washing dishes," Ilya answers, voice flat. He resolutely does not meet the doctor's eyes.
He religiously uses his dishwasher, but they don't know that. Shane does, however. He's going to have to find a different excuse for him.
The doctor nods again, taking Ilya's words at face value. He has no reason not to, after all. "That happens more than anyone would expect it to," he remarks. "I'm going to clean the wound and then get you numbed up, alright?"
Ilya just nods in response, and he watches with a sort of sick satisfaction as the doctor irrigates the wound and pats it dry with fresh gauze. Despite being angry with himself at how much he fucked up, there's a thrill that runs through him at the sight of what he did. The thrill is chased by that cold feeling from his gut, despite much he's trying to bury the feeling.
He continues to watch as the doctor injects him with lidocaine in multiple spots. It burns, but it's quickly replaced by a distant numbness. After checking that he's numb by gently prodding the edges of the wound with the end of the hemostat, he begins working on the sutures. Ilya has watched himself get stitches on many occasions, but it's just as transfixing as it is every time. Watching the dextrous movements of the doctor's hands and the way his skin knits back together almost perfectly is hypnotic in its own morbid way.
"Would you like the records from this visit forwarded to your team doctor?" Dr. Beshear asks him once he's finished the ninth and final suture.
"Yes, that is fine," Ilya answers. "He will want to know what happened anyway, so might as well clue him in from the beginning."
The doctor gives him a nod in understanding while he tapes gauze over the stitches. He packs the remaining gauze and tape into a small plastic bag for Ilya to take home, since they're just going to have to dispose of it anyway.
"Alright, Mr. Rozanov, you're free to go. Be gentle when washing it with warm, soapy water. Let us or your team doctor know if you have any swelling, discoloration, or discharge from the wound and we'll get you taken care of."
Ilya nods and shrugs back into his hoodie, and then his jacket. The nurse hands him a printed copy of his after-visit summary, which he takes without a word. He checks that he has his phone and keys and leaves the clinic as soon as possible, once again keeping his head down and his hood up.
Having no motivation to put any effort into feeding himself but knowing he needs to eat, Ilya swings through the drive through and then heads home with a greasy bag of food as his companion.
Shane has a game tonight. He's already missed puck drop, but when he gets home he puts on the Montreal versus Buffalo game. So far it's 2 - 1 in favor of Montreal, which is to be expected. It's fucking Buffalo they're playing, after all.
Ilya mulls over what it is he's going to tell Shane about how he got hurt while he slowly chews his burger. He barely tastes it, but his body is rejoicing at being fed, so that's all that really matters in the scheme of things.
Some stupid little voice in the corner of his mind says tell him the truth and it makes panic surge up his spine with a strength that's almost physically painful.
No. He can't burden Shane with this, with the knowledge that Ilya is a fuck up in so many ways. He can't let him see how severely he's drowning by himself here in Ottawa, because he's sure that Shane will blame himself and Ilya can't have Shane feeling bad because Ilya is fucked up. It's his fault he's like this, not Shane's. He's already got enough to deal with without having to think about Ilya's shit on top of it.
He'll deal with it the way he always has; he's going to pretend that it doesn't fucking exist until he can't, and then he'll rinse and repeat. It would be easier to ignore all of this if he hadn't royally fucked up everything this time. He'd have his own little secret and have no one possibly prying further, and it would let him breathe again, if only for a little while.
This, too, thrums through him like a sticky electricity, right under the surface of his skin. It's like having a cobweb stuck to him and he desperately wishes he could scrub the feeling off under the too-hot spray of the shower. He's got another secret now that's too close to the surface, one that someone could look at too strongly and realize what's actually going on, and it'll fuck up his life. It'll get reported, it'll go on his records officially, and he'll be labeled unstable.
Maybe they're not far off, he thinks wryly, but they don't need to know that. Not officially.
He eats his fries robotically while he stares at the television. It's gone to commercial, and the lights and colors wash over him without really registering. He settles on telling Shane that he got knicked by a skate blade during practice today, and leave it at that. It wasn't super common, but it wasn't unheard of. It's happened to him legitimately a couple of times over the years, so he knows it's not very far fetched.
He finishes his dinner, even though it tastes like cardboard to him, and then he curls up on the couch under his heaviest blanket and watches Montreal absolutely pummel Buffalo into the ice. A little smile tugs at his lips as Shane scores a hat trick. Despite the dullness that taints every part of his system, he will always have a part of him that will be proud of Shane when he scores.
At some point during the third period, he must have dozed off. The commentators on the television are going over plays from the night's game before the next one on the sportscast comes on. The press junket must also be long over, as his phone is vibrating with a FaceTime call request.
Ilya turns on the lamp once he's sat up. He keeps himself cocooned in his blankets as he answers the request. Shane has his phone propped up against something on the counter while he fixes himself something from one of his meal prep containers. When Ilya answers the call, he stops in the middle of spooning out his brown rice to give the screen a smile.
Ilya can't help but smile back. The ice that's been enveloping him all day thaws a bit at the sight of his boyfriend making himself yet another boring dinner. "How badly did you destroy Buffalo?" he asks Shane. "I fell asleep sometime after hat trick."
That makes Shane laugh softly. "Final score was 6 - 2." He returns to arranging his bowl properly, spacing everything out so that it heats evenly. A small furrow has settled between his brows as he works, and Ilya wishes he could reach through the screen and smooth it out with his thumb. "Practice wear you out today?"
It takes Ilya a moment to realize he's been spoken to, and he startles a little bit, which only makes the furrow between Shane's eyebrows deepen.
"Yes. Near the end there was a small pileup and I got slashed with a skate," he says with a little shrug. "Nothing major, but I had to get a couple of stitches. Medical bullshit always exhausts me. Drags on too long."
Shane stops what he's doing so that he can look Ilya in the face. He can feel Shane's worry through the screen, and he gives his boyfriend what he hopes is a reassuring smile. "Ilya—"
"Do not worry, moy lyubmyy," he says, tone gentle, but still full of assurance. "It was a clean cut, no lasting damage. Is superficial, but wide enough to require stitches. Nothing warranting concern. It does not even hurt."
It'll definitely be throbbing later, but right now there's still vestiges of lidocaine in his system. He can feel the sensation of the sutures against the gauze, but still no pain. He keeps that part to himself.
Ilya can see the gears turning in Shane's head, and he silently counts to five while he waits for his boyfriend to breathe again. After a few seconds, Shane sighs and closes his eyes.
"I guess you're right. I just hate the thought of you getting hurt like that. We both know how easily it could have been worse. Skate lacerations can be fucking atrocious. There was Malarchuk, and Zednik…" Ilya can see him go a little pale at the thought.
"This was my arm, solnyshko. Nowhere near my neck or my head at all," Ilya assures him, and Shane huffs softly.
"Audette had his wrist slashed so bad in '01 that he needed surgery," Shane points out.
"As I said, superficial. I got lucky. You don't need to worry," he assures Shane again. He feels so very lucky to have this neurotic, anxious man that loves him so much. It also hurts somewhere deep in his ribs that Shane isn't here, making his dinner in Ilya's kitchen before they go to bed in their room. It may only be 200 kilometers between the two of them, but it might as well have been 2,000 for all the good it did him.
"Just make sure you take good care of it, okay?"
Shane has popped his bowl into the microwave finally, and he cracks open a ginger ale with a pop that echoes through his kitchen. Ilya rolls his eyes a little and gives Shane another smile.
"Do you think I have never cared for stitches before? I'll be fine. You worry too much. You are too pretty to be anxious like this."
Shane laughs and shakes his head. "You underestimate my ability to do both."
While Shane eats his dinner, Ilya listens to him give a play-by-play of the game. He's beginning to doze off again, trying desperately to cling to Shane's words, but they float through his head like smoke. The sound of his voice is just too relaxing to his keyed up system.
"Why don't you head to bed?" Shane asks him. "You're falling asleep where you sit, Ilya."
He opens his mouth to protest and is instead taken over by a big yawn. Shane laughs at the pouty expression on his face when he realizes his own body just ruined his argument. "Okay, okay," he says with a sigh. "I will go to bed. I love you," he tells Shane. The words immediately soften Shane's expression, and Ilya wishes he could kiss him goodnight so fucking badly.
"I love you, too."
"Spokoynoy nochi, malysh."
"Goodnight, Ilya. I'll talk to you tomorrow."
They both kiss their index and middle finger and touch it to the camera, sharing a goodnight kiss the only way they can at the moment. When the call ends, Ilya closes his eyes and runs his fingers through his hair.
Like it's just been waiting, the emptiness immediately begins clawing back in. The cold feeling in his gut is getting stronger, but he ignores it in favor of getting up to go through his evening routine. He brushes his teeth and washes his face, and combs his hair serum though his curls just like he's supposed to. He skipped all of this last night because he just didn't have the energy to, but he's trying to hold onto routines as best he can because he knows they'll help keep him afloat.
He falls into bed in his boxers and Shane's hoodie, and he curls around his pillow. Despite being exhausted down to his bones, he can't fall asleep. His brain, which has been full of sand and sludge for most of the day, is finally starting to race again. It's never a good thing when this happens, and it pulls a quiet sob out of Ilya when it begins. This is how he got into needing stitches in the first place. The razor was supposed to make this stay quiet for a while.
The loathing and loneliness swirl around viciously, like a tornado gathering debris as it carves its way across the ground. In the middle of it all is that cold fear he's been trying to ignore for hours, and now it comes to him, unbidden.
He's scared. He'd wanted to hurt himself, sure. That wasn't necessarily a new feeling in his life. He's been causing himself pain in various different ways since he was a child, because he figured out that it was something he had some control over. It was a way to quiet things when it got to be too loud for him to take anymore. Most of the time, he got it out of his system by goading someone into hitting him or slamming him into the boards too hard. He then had bruises he could press on, aches that would radiate through his body for days and give him something else to focus on.
Other times, he would be careful with a razor, usually on the insides of his thighs, leaving small marks that went unnoticed and faded into something resembling a stretch mark if it left a mark behind at all. There are a smattering of long-faded circle scars on his wrist from cigarettes over the years as well. Everything has always been so well hidden.
He'd planned on just making a small cut on his forearm, something that was innocuous enough that nobody would notice, and if they did, it wouldn't be enough to comment on. He didn't mean to make such a big wound. Everything had just been so much and he'd lost control, and before he knew it he was staring at something too wide and too deep for what he'd intended. Maybe it was because it had been years since he'd taken a blade to his skin, but in truth, he knew it was more than that.
What if, next time, it was even worse than this?
Another sob tears out of him as he curls around his pillow. He buries his face in it because he can't stand the sound of himself losing control. He doesn't know how long he cries for, but he feels empty and scraped out inside when the tears finally die down. His throat aches and his face feels puffy.
He misses Shane.
He misses his mama.
Ilya wishes right now, more than he has in years, that he could still properly remember her voice. If he concentrates hard enough, he can feel her fingers brushing through his curls. He focuses on the foggy memory of her singing Pesnya Medveditsy to him, and he lets that guide him into sleep.
In the morning, he wakes before his alarm. He doesn't have to be up until eight, and it's barely half seven now. His first thought upon waking is that he wishes he hadn't, and upon realizing it, that same cold fear from the night before settles deep in his gut.
He needs help.
—
The scar, when it heals, is wider and pinker than he expected. It heals differently than any other cut he's made to his body. The ones to his thighs had always healed white, and the burns hadn't stayed pink for very long. This one, however, is an angry pink and it reminds him of railroad tracks. The doctor did a very good job of suturing him up, but with the width of the wound, it hadn't been able to heal any thinner than this.
Shane touches it often, and has even kissed it, like he can make it heal better if he does. Every time Shane touches it, a sour feeling settles in Ilya's gut, tainting the joy that comes with being so clearly adored and loved. He hates it, but he can't do anything about it.
He can't tell Shane the real reason it's there. He hasn't even told him about Galina yet. He wants to have a better grasp on just what the fuck is wrong with him before he even entertains doing either of those things.
So, for now, he stays silent.
—
August 2021
Shane has only been playing with Ottawa since July, and with how busy their lives have been, it takes until the end of August for Ilya and Shane to feel like they can go out with the team and join them for dinner. Shane agrees to let go of his strict diet for the night, agreeing to eat some lemon garlic wings if he could also order a salad. Ilya had told him he couldn't be the only one at a wing joint not eating wings, but he was going to get something healthier to go alongside them even if Ilya gave him shit for it.
The tables they're occupying have been pushed together, and they're covered with various wing flavors and sauces and sides. Conversation flows freely from all parts of the table, overlapping and bouncing around the way it tends to when you have this many people contributing at once.
Shane and Luca Haas are talking about injuries as Ilya digs into his curry wings with gusto, and he's half listening to their conversation. He tunes in at what can only be described as a catastrophic time, hearing Shane crack a joke about the alleged pile-up during training that led to Ilya needing stitches.
Luca frowns and scratches his head with the hand that's not covered in hot sauce. "Roz got cut by skates during practice once?"
Ilya's heart drops somewhere down to his toes and he's unable to school his face into something calm and detached as Shane slides his gaze from Luca's face to his, expression calculating. He doesn't miss a beat, however, and after a moment, he laughs.
"Shit, I just remembered that happened to him in Boston, not here," Shane says, shaking his head. Luca laughs too, and Ilya feels like sinking through the floor.
The look in Shane's dark eyes makes Ilya want to go stand in the corner like a scolded child. He can see the hurt now that he realizes Ilya lied to him, and he can also see that he's not going to get out of talking about it. Not with Shane.
Like a coward, he looks away first and back down to his wings, feeling significantly cowed. He's not really hungry anymore, but he forces himself to finish his food.
If he's much quieter for the rest of the night, nobody notices.
—
The ride home is silent. Ilya keeps his arms crossed across his chest as they drive through Ottawa. He keeps brushing his thumb over the scar, which has since started to fade a bit, though the soft pink it's become still has some patchy spots where it's darker. It's soft to the touch, still raised. The sensation is different, and he focuses on it instead of letting his mind spiral.
He's been doing so, so much better over the last several months. He hasn't wanted to hurt himself since in any serious capacity, and most days are no longer tainted by the fog that had become ever present in his mind. But right now, he's trying very hard not to catastrophize. If he were feeling more himself, he'd joke that he's trying to take Shane's job away from him, but he can't even bring himself to do that.
The front door closing behind them feels louder than normal, and Ilya follows Shane into the kitchen after toeing off his shoes and lining them up against the wall beside the door. Shane wordlessly makes them tea, and only after he smells it does he realize that Shane made his a cup of Russian Caravan instead of the green that Shane prefers. A small teaspoon of jam gets stirred into Ilya's before being handed to him.
He wraps his hands around it and follows Shane to the living room. He sits down in the corner of the sectional because it makes him feel safer and less exposed. He hates how pathetic he feels in this moment, how scared. Shane hadn't run when he had told him about the depression, about Galina. But this? He's afraid this will be when Shane finally decides he's too much.
Ilya knows he looks defensive, knees drawn to his chest and tea cradled in his hands, and it's because he is. He's scared, and he hates it so very much.
To his credit, though, Shane doesn't look… angry. He looks hurt, still, and it makes Ilya feel awful that he made him look like that. More than that, though, he looks contemplative, like he just wants to understand why.
"So," Shane begins once he's sat down facing Ilya, barely a cushion apart. Their feet are touching ever so slightly, and it helps calm some of the storm inside of Ilya. "You want to tell me why you lied about what happened?"
Ilya looks down at his tea. "Not really," he says, and his voice is rough with emotion. Before Shane can say something, he continues. "But I will."
Shane takes a deep breath and nods. "Okay. Just… take your time."
"It… was an accident," he says after a silence that stretches out much too long. Oh, how he hates that word. Accident. He feels almost like his father, saying that his mother's death was an accident even though they both knew full well that she took those pills with every intention of never waking back up.
"An accident," Shane repeats, brows furrowing together. As always, Ilya wants to smooth out the little wrinkle that appears, but now is not the time.
"Sort of," Ilya says. He knows he's not being very clear, but finding the words for this is hard. It would be just as hard to say in Russian, too, he expects. He hasn't even told Galina about this. "It wasn't… entirely an accident."
Ilya looks up at Shane from his tea, and he watches Shane work to parse out his meaning for several seconds. He watches with a resigned horror as what he means dawns upon Shane. His husband's face goes pale and his eyes grow wide.
"Y-you hurt yourself?" he asks, voice small. Ilya almost wishes he'd yelled instead.
"Yes," he whispers. "It was not first time."
Shane makes a noise akin to someone punching him in the throat and Ilya fights to not withdraw further into himself. Hot shame washes through his body and he looks back down at his tea. The surface of it is disturbed by how his hands have begun to tremble.
"Not—how often, Ilya?" Shane asks him.
"Not often," he answers quickly. "Not like that, and not for years beforehand. Not since, either."
Somehow, that makes it worse.
Shane puts his tea down on the coffee table and he scoots forward, and before he can interject, Ilya finds his own tea being set down, too. It's replaced with Shane's hands. They're so warm and so familiar, and they squeeze his, helping to calm some of the tremors.
"What does 'not often' mean?"
Ilya has to give Shane credit for not immediately freaking out. He loves his husband to death, but they both know that between the two of them, the spiraler and catastrophizer is Shane. It also belays the gravity of the conversation if Shane is suppressing the panic he's no doubt feeling so that they can talk through his without someone's anxiety throwing a wrench into it.
He has to look away as his eyes begin to burn. He doesn't want to cry but he knows he's not going to make it through this conversation without it. "There was never regularity to it," he says. He clears his throat, trying to get the gravelly emotion out of his voice, but it doesn't help. "Just when things to too loud, too much. Small things, easily missible things, usually on inside of my thigh. Maybe small burn on wrist that could be written off. Being reckless and antagonistic to get thrown into boards. Too much drinking here, a little too much drinking there."
The tears are hot as they roll down his cheeks silently, shame burning in his chest as he confesses the one thing no one but Sveta knows, and they had never actually spoken about it. She had recognized the burns for what they were. After that, he had used scar cream to get them to fade as much as he could lest he be caught again.
"For how long?" Shane asks softly. He squeezes Ilya's hand.
"Since my mother died," he rasps, and it's like the dam finally cracks inside of him. A sob escapes him and he covers his mouth with his hand, mortified.
Shane pulls him in and wraps Ilya tight in his arms, holding his husband like he's afraid to let him go. At this moment, he kind of is, if he's honest. He knew Ilya had struggled over the years, had been struggling when they were still keeping everything a secret, but he never imagined he'd been actively harming himself. He feels abhorrent for not noticing, for not questioning things more, for not trying to do something more.
"I was so scared to let it get too loud," Ilya grits out. "So scared that if I didn't shut it up, that I would… that it would take me too. That I'm too much like mama, and I wouldn't be able to stop it."
Fear grips Shane at the thought, and he kisses Ilya's temple. His fingers card through his curls at a steady pace. He can't lose Ilya. He knew he was too close for comfort with the emergency landing back in January, but he's realizing with a cold dread just how close he may have been to truly losing Ilya over the years. Nothing in the world scares him more than the prospect of losing him. Nothing.
"And now?" Shane asks, his own voice wavering now. He's got tears in his eyes, but they haven't fallen quite yet.
"It's not loud like that anymore," he tells Shane. He needs him to believe him. He knows he lied about this once already, but he's not lying this time. He doesn't know what he'll do if Shane stops believing him. "Galina helps. Medication helps, too. And you. You help so much, Shane. You make the loud not so loud anymore."
Shane lets out the breath he didn't realize he was holding, and the tears finally fall.
"I'm so fucking sorry that you were dealing with that alone, Ilya," he tells him.
It's not what Ilya was expecting to hear at all and the whine that comes out of him is mortifying. Shane just shushes him softly and kisses his hair again. He had been so sure that Shane would be upset that he lied, that he'd continued to lie about this even after they agreed not to hide things from each other, and that he'd maybe decide that in the end, this was just too much to deal with.
Maybe when his head is clearer and he's not so gripped by shame and fear, he'll realize that of course Shane had been understanding and ready to be there for him, no matter what happened, but right now, it feels like a bigger surprise than Scott Hunter coming out was.
"You don't have to do this alone," Shane continues. "Never again, okay? I know I already asked you to tell me if it's getting bad again, but I need you to tell me if the urge to hurt yourself comes back. I'll do whatever you need to help you through it, okay? Just… please don't hurt yourself again."
Ilya nods into his shoulder. "Okay," he says. His voice is small and so unlike his normal bravado that it makes Shane hold him even closer. "I promise I will tell you. I… have never had anyone to tell when it was that bad."
Svetlana would have been there for him, but he just couldn't do that to her. Putting this on her would have been unfair. She already carried so many of his secrets. She shouldn't have been burdened with yet another one.
Shane hates how lonely much of Ilya's life has been. He deserved to grow up surrounded by love and joy, and he didn't get it. It will forever gut him that such a sweet man had to live in a world that was so cold, but he's so grateful that Ilya finally has the love he's always deserved.
"You won't have to face it alone again, Ilya. So many people love you, okay?"
"Okay," he says again, finally beginning to relax into Shane.
Sometimes his brain is mean to him and tries to tell him again that he'd be better off alone, that it would be better if he weren't bothering all of these people with his presence and likely inevitable disappointment, but now, most days, he can remember that he's loved. He has Shane, he has Yuna and David, he has Sveta. He's got his team, his coach. Hell, he's even got the Pike family, as much as he and Hayden would both hate to admit it. He has friends and boundless love in his life now. He's in a better place than he's ever been. He's married to the love of his life and is allowed to love him loudly and proudly, he's the captain of his team of ragtag weirdos and he gets to play beside his husband, he has a mother and father-in-law that adore him against all odds, and he still has years to go before it's time to retire.
They lay there for a long time, until neither of them are crying any more and the only sound in the house is their breathing and the quiet hum of the air conditioning.
"I meant it when I said I haven't wanted to since the last time," Ilya finally says, breaking the silence. "I scared myself. I didn't mean to need stitches."
Shane is quiet for several seconds, thinking about his response. "Maybe it was a good thing you scared yourself," he says slowly. "It means you're less likely to do it again, doesn't it?"
Ilya nods. "It is one of the things that made me realize I needed help. That, and the thoughts I had the next morning. The two of them together made it clear I could not do this without assistance."
"I'm not glad that it came to that, obviously," Shane says with a little huff of cynical laughter, "but I'm so glad that you realized you needed to do something about it before it could get any worse."
"Me too," he whispers.
They lay in the dark for a while longer before deciding they should head to bed. Ilya is exhausted after such an intense conversation. He just wants to be held and go to sleep. He waits for Shane to rinse their tea cups and put them in the dishwasher before they head up the stairs, hand in hand.
Both of them go through their nightly routine, neither saying anything. The silence is comfortable now, no longer fraught with tension the way the silence in the car had been. Once in bed, Ilya tucks himself into Shane's side and throws his leg across him, effectively clinging to him like a needy koala.
Shane kisses his forehead and runs his fingers through Ilya's hair again, knowing that it relaxes him.
"Ya tebya lyublu," Shane murmurs to Ilya.
Ilya smiles and kisses Shane's shoulder. "Ya tebya lyublu, solnyshko."
—
December 2021
Things have only continued to improve since August, much to Ilya's relief. Over the months since then, he's found himself staring at the scar on his arm often, wishing that it would disappear. He hates the reminder of how far he'd fallen into his despair. Sometimes Shane catches him, spaced out and gently tracing the mark. When he does, he just gently kisses the spot and then kisses Ilya like he's the most precious thing on the planet.
Today finds him driving across the city to the tattoo parlor that Bood had recommended. The man has many tattoos, and his best ones were done at the shop Ilya is headed to. He's alone, since Shane has a brand deal meeting. He'd wanted to be there, but Ilya had assured him it was okay that he couldn't be. Hayley Williams' Petals for Armor plays quietly as he drives.
Music has always been a bit of an outlet for him, but when things got bad (and then worse), he had stopped listening to it completely, finding it overwhelming for the first time in his life. Since things have gotten better, he's fallen back into music and taken to listening to new things, things he wouldn't have given a chance to before. It's how he stumbled onto Petals for Armor to begin with. It's become one of his favorites, and it's given him a new way to look at things. Galina was very pleased to hear about him finding joy in music again when he told her about it.
After his tattoo appointment, he picks up dinner from one of Shane's favorite restaurants once he's checked that Shane is home from his meeting and hasn't started cooking anything. He wouldn't want to ruin the effort that Shane is putting into making food for them, after all.
When he returns home, Shane is on him the moment he's put the bag of food on the table.
"Can I see?" he asks, unable to hide his eagerness. It makes Ilya laugh brightly, and he nods.
"Just a second, malysh. Let me get my jacket off first."
Ilya removes his jacket and hangs it up in the closet. His toque and gloves get put in the small tote on the shelf inside so they don't get misplaced. He shrugs out of his hoodie and drapes that over the back of the couch since he'll be putting it back on later, and then he holds out his arm for Shane to examine.
It's wrapped in plastic right now to seal in the moisture, but the entire thing is very clearly visible. The artist did a fantastic job on the lily. It's even better than Ilya had hoped for, with its incredibly realistic composition and shading. Along the edge of one of the petals, in simple but elegant script, it reads watch me bloom. The scar is hidden entirely by the ink of the tattoo, unless you know exactly what to look for. It'll still be able to be found through touch, but over time that too, will likely fade.
Shane's expression is full of pride when he meets Ilya's eyes. He is so proud of how far his husband has come and all of the work he's put into getting here. He gives him a big smile.
"It's beautiful, Ilya. Is it what you'd hoped for?"
He nods, returning Shane's warm smile with one of his own. "Yes. I will have to thank Bood for the recommendation. Andy is very good artist, as you can see. He did even better than I expected him to. It is my favorite tattoo now."
While he's very partial to the loon, Shane has to agree.
"Me too," he murmurs.
Growing together with Shane is the thing Ilya is most proud of in life. He's done a lot of things worth being proud of, but nothing like this. Becoming a better, more introspective person alongside the love of his life is the best thing he could have asked for. There will always be things that hurt, always be things that he misses, but the thing he has come to accept that he will never lose is Shane. He will never stop being thankful for that.
Not ever.