Almost Too Late – 3 – DarkJediQueen

Reading Time:
55 Minutes

Ilya looked at his Instagram posts on his phone before he tossed it away. He thought about what kind of changes he could have made. He knew that being angry that Shane didn’t get on Instagram was stupid. He knew that. There were so many things on there that were from their life together. It was the kind of thing that Ilya could see was stupid now.

“And how are you really feeling?”

“I’m pissed at myself, and there are still parts of me that are pissed at him. I feel like he gave up too quickly, but then again, if I can’t be there when he wakes up from hitting a fucking moose after I throw him out of my house, why would he expect me to be there at all? The only thing that could have been worse was just never going there.”

“You are working on the homework I gave you?”

Ilya snorted, and he nodded.

“Okay, then keep on working on it, and we will talk in three days. If you need me, call. My service will help if you feel like you need to talk to me. I’m here for whatever you need, Ilya.”

“Thanks, I’ll talk to you in three days.” Ilya shut off the tablet, and he leaned back on the bed. He looked around the hotel room. He grabbed his phone and looked at the San Jose social media. The welcoming post for Shane to the arena before the game tonight had been massive. The San Jose Threshers were a good team.

When he had been in Boston, they had been big contenders for everything. They were in a bit of a rebuild after their biggest player retired three years before. Shane would be good there. There had been a teal carpet walk for him going into the arena with the fans being fucking excited for him to be there, even if he wasn’t playing.

Shane looked good. He looked sad, but no one was expecting him to be really fucking happy with the injury and then being traded to San Jose. There were already whispers that Montreal asked him to wave it, and he demanded that he pick where he went.

Ilya knew that he could call and talk to Yuna about it, but he was afraid of it. He scrolled a few videos; Shane was tagged, seeing him signing things. He looked good in the Thresher’s teal and black. Ilya thought that Shane looked good in pretty much any color.

He was stuck watching a looped video of Shane as he smiled at a fan who was being held up so Shane could give them a fish bump when his screen went away and then the icon for Yuna came up. She was calling him. He tapped the button to answer the video call.

“Yuna,” Ilya said when the video established a feed. Then the video turned, and he was seeing David as well. “David.”

“Shane is ignoring us,” David said.

Ilya felt his heart ache at that.

“He’s not doing good, I think,” Yuna said.

“No, I don’t think he would be. He loves you both though.”

Yuna looked at David, and there was a look that passed there.

“Yuna was very, very pushy about him calling you to fix things. We think that he’s pulling away to gt a little distance where we aren’t pushing him to fix things with you. Yes, it’s what we want, Ilya. But we also know that we cannot make him do that. You and he have to do what is best for you both.”

“I’m working on my apology,” Ilya said.

“And when are you going to do it?”

“When I’m sure that I’m not going to overwhelm him. He’s going with the team on an away stretch, from what has been reported, flying with them once he’s cleared to fly, which should be any day.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Cassie Boodram got to be good friends with a WAG for a player who was on the Centaurs for a year and then went to San Jose. Cassie’s being gentle about it, just talking about being worried about him and wanting to commiserate about being traded like that. Cassie’s good at that.”

“Sounds like. Look, if you talk to Shane before we do, please tell him that we just want to talk and that we will not push anything. The relationship is all yours to deal with. We can be pushy, but I think that this isolation is because we are too pushy.”

Ilya nodded. He wasn’t sure if that was the whole reason why Shane wasn’t talking to his parents or not.

“Come over for dinner when you are able to. We don’t want to lose contact with you.”

“You hope that he will take me back?” Ilya asked.

“We are, yes, but he’s a grown adult who can understand that we don’t want to lose you and we didn’t just fall out of love with you because you two broke up,” Yuna said.

Ilya understood that, but he wasn’t going to be the reason why Shane wasn’t close with his parents anymore. He would leave them behind and never talk to them again if he felt like Shane was going to pull back from his parents. Ilya loved them, but he would never, ever hurt Shane like that. He would never take his parents from him.

“Do you have his address?” Ilya asked.

David made a face, but Yuna nodded. Ilya wasn’t sure about the face that David made, but he needed the address. He needed to send things to Shane without them going through his parents. Or he could take them to his parents. They could send them out from there, but the one thing he planned to send needed his address.

“Promise us that you are not going to just show up there,” David said.

“No, I promise I will not just show up there. I’ll just be sending him a package. I have the care package all picked out. Things that are in his diet. I will send them.”

“That would be good. He likes those snacks a lot.”

Ilya nodded. He smiled at Yuna, and they made a little small talk before Ilya hung up on them. He wasn’t sure how he felt about everything. It was sending him into a place where he knew he needed to write things down. He headed over to where the journal was that he picked up. He flipped to the page that he had made for Shane’s diet. The thoughts he had about it and the way that it made him feel. The way that he poked Shane until Shane reacted about the food that Ilya ate and it made him feel like he had won something.

Over an hour, Ilya flipped through the book to add in things on the pages where he had things written down for different things. It was stuff that he would talk to his therapist about when it was time. He wasn’t sure that he really wanted to admit most of these things. Seeing them laid out like that made Ilya feel a very different way than he thought. He picked up his phone, and he dialed the line that he had been given if he needed something that was an emergency but not an emergency where he was going to hurt himself.

“Mister Rozanov, how are you feeling?” a woman asked.

Ilya wasn’t sure how to answer that. He sat there with it and tried to think of something, but he just wasn’t able to, so he made a noise.

“Okay, that’s okay. My name is Mattie, and I’m one of the other doctors in the practice, I mostly work the hotline as people call it.”

Ilya remembered that when he signed it he knew that other doctors would have access to his file when they were working the hotline. The place was full of people who worked together as a team to take care of their patients. The only doctor who spoke Russian was the one he saw, but he could force himself to speak English if needed.

“Are you in danger of hurting yourself?”

“No,” Ilya said, able to get that word out of his mouth. He wasn’t. He just didn’t like the thoughts in his head right now.

“Okay, that’s good. Do you want to continue with me? I’ll look at your file and see the notes that are in there, and I can see about getting you in with your therapist as soon as possible. I know that there is a language barrier when you are not doing well. I don’t mind if you speak things that I cannot understand as long as you don’t get mad when I can’t understand.”

“I think I am like my father,” Ilya said.

“Okay, that’s something that is very much needed to be talked about. You need to answer me, though, Ilya.”

“Yes, I can continue with you, and I will take any appointment that I can get to see him.”

Ilya was happy about that. He had just been talking to him hours ago.

“Oh,” Mattie said.

“What?”

“There is already a penciled-in appointment for you at six in the morning,” Mattie said.

“What does that mean?”

“They are ones that we put in when we think that a patient’s going to need it, but it’s not one that would count against them for having a no-show because they did not make it. So, you can do what you normally do. So that’s good. Now, you can tell me all about your father. Why don’t you want to be him? I’ll keep my eyes off your file for now because I see that there is not a lot of talk about your father so far in your sessions.”

“No, I don’t like talking about him, but I will with you. Do you record things?”

“Yes, did you get the recording that this would be recorded?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, I was…”

“Upset. It’s understandable. Yes, they are recorded, and your therapist will listen to this when he can, maybe tomorrow morning when the note is there that he is going to be seeing you. He wakes up at four in the morning to do things.”

“I only do that for flights,” Ilya said.

“Yes, your life is more in the evenings. So, tell me about your father.”

And Ilya did. He told her all about the things his father did to his mother over the years and what the childhood memories of it were. Then the things that were done to him after his mother had killed herself, either on purpose or on accident. Ilya had never been able to figure that out. He didn’t think that it mattered in the end. She had killed herself, and Ilya blamed his father.

“Okay, so tell me about the things that you have done that remind you of your father.”

Ilya pulled the book closer to himself, and he sighed before he started to list off the things. Around Shane’s food, the way that Shane tried to talk to him about his depression, and Ilya had told him to be quiet and to be quiet more. The blacking out in anger during the fight that sent Shane home, which caused his accident, which had him being traded from Montreal.

It was a lot of shit, and Ilya was looking at it all, and he hated it. He hated himself.

“You are doing good. You are doing really well, Ilya. It’ll be okay. You have seen how you are, and we can work on a plan to help you stop what you are doing and fix it. To make yourself not be like that, it can be done, but you have to want to do it. Do you want to do it?”

“Yes,’ Ilya said.

“Good. Then we can work on that together right now to work on the small outline of the plan, and then it can be worked on between you and your therapist.”

“And you?” Ilya asked. He closed his eyes. He knew that having more than one wasn’t going to be better than having one, but he liked her voice, she was calm and soothing to him, and right now he felt like he needed it.

“Of course. I can work in tandem with your other guy. We work well together and make sure that things are good. You can trust that we have you in our sights when it comes to taking care of our patients. Are you going to be better tonight when we get off the phone?”

“Knowing there is a plan and starting to work on what you have given me will help me. I’ll try and sleep, but I am not sure if I can.”

“That’s okay. As long as you rest, even just lying in bed reading can help your body settle down and rest. As long as you aren’t pacing around or doing something like that, you’ll be good, Ilya.”

“Okay,” Ilya said. He remembered Shane telling him something like that and thinking that it sounded like shit. Now hearing it from Mattie made Ilya think that maybe Shane had been right. There had to be something behind it. He could see it, a body at rest, used less of everything.

“Or watching a movie or a TV series. You might end up falling asleep as long as you aren’t obsessing about falling asleep. That’s where a lot of people have issues; if they worry and then they get up and do things, they wear out their body. Just make sure that you eat a little more of things tomorrow so that you don’t worry about burning out.”

“I can do that.” Ilya made notes about sleeping and what to do and vowed to look up online. He would have to do a lot more research into it as well as food to help him recover from this. Maybe if he didn’t put as much of the stuff that he liked to eat into his body, he might be able to help his body not fight itself if he did that. He liked the idea of that. He really did.

“Okay, let’s work on the plan and how to work on making sure that you don’t lash out. It’s going to be small changes—small changes that get bigger the more you do them. There will be no quick fix with this.”

“I know. I know all about how it’s not going to be a quick fix, but I will do anything to make myself better so that I can love Shane the way he needs to be loved.”

There was a sound from Mattie, and Ilya realized that he had never named him before this. He needed to make sure that she knew who he was talking about.

“You have his name, right?” Ilya asked.

“I do, but I hadn’t looked at it, and well, you were talking about the fight and the day, and then a car accident; my brain went there. I’m sorry I didn’t look at that before now. You are holding a lot more in than I thought. I’m sorry that I reacted like I did.”

“It’s fine. It’s a shock. Two big hockey names.”

“Yes, well, I grew up in Montreal. I’ve been pissed since they traded him. I’m not going to talk about this more, but maybe we can talk about it another time because I think that seeing a few of the notes in here, you have issues understanding what kind of pressure is put on Shane.”

“No, I know what kind of pressure is placed on him now. I looked up about his race and everything.”

“Ah, but that’s not what it’s like to play for Montreal. I know that you understood it in Boston, but Montreal is a whole other beast when it comes to that pressure. You need to look up the riots that were had.”

“Riots?”

“Yes, you didn’t see the statement put out by Shane about him being traded and not riot?”

“Shane asked Montreal not to riot?” Ilya asked. He made a note to look that up because he had never noticed that. He hadn’t seen that. It had probably come through Farah. He had a few things to look at, and he needed to do it. He had more to learn, it seemed.

“How about you and I make a plan to talk in the next few days as well so we can talk about what hockey is like in Montreal?”

“Okay, it’ll have to be a video call because I cannot make time to get in there with everything coming up.”

“Of course. It’s good. We can email to figure that out. How are you feeling?”

“Good. I’m good. I promise.”

“Good. Now, let’s go over the plan for the next few days, and you write it down. You need to make sure that you are keeping track of that so that you don’t freak out about having no plan.”

Ilya closed out the call with Mattie, and he felt better than he had before. He went to his Instagram, and he got ready to make a post on there. Shane might never see it, but Ilya could show it to him later, and he was very much very quick on making things better for himself so that he could make things better for Shane.

It felt a lot lighter to deal with this. He was not sure what he was going to end up having at the end of this. The whole thing with Shane might have been the end of the whole thing. It might have been the end of the line, and Shane wasn’t willing to take him back. Even if so, Ilya could be better for himself because he didn’t like who he was right now.

—

Shane looked at the box that was on the counter. He looked at Mickey, who was staring at the box.

“I had to sign for that, by the way. It came from whatever company this snack box is from.”

“Snack box?”

“Did you order an overnight box of snacks last night?”

“No, I did not.” Shane looked at the box for a few more seconds before he grabbed the knife that was out to open the box. He did that and looked at the snacks that were inside. Yes, he got things from this place because the ingredients were all good and clean. They were the things that he just didn’t find in Montreal, and now that he’s here in the US, he had been thinking of getting a box of things.

The small, slow changes that he was making to his diet with the help of Jackie’s friend were just that, small and slow. He didn’t even want to think about what else he was going to be changing, but having these snacks was a good thing.

“So who did?” Mickey asked.

Shane started to pull out the boxes, and he stopped at the ones at the bottom. The one snack he hadn’t had in a while. The ones that were not on his diet plant. There was also a sheet of paper in there. He picked that up before taking the last boxes out. There was a note inside of there.

“I’m sorry. I’m very sorry for what I have said over the last while. I will wait to tell you the rest of the things when you are ready to call me, but I’m ready to tell you whenever you want.”

“It’s from him,” Shane said.

“Your boyfriend who broke up with you?”

Shane nodded. He laid the paper down. It listed the items that were inside as well as the gift note. There was no name on it, but there was Ilya’s name on the place where the gift came from. Shane looked at Mickey, and he picked up his phone. He waved for him to stay right where he was.

He dialed Ilya’s number, using the time to do it from memory to make sure that he was going to do this. He wanted to be done with him, in his head, in his heart. It was hard because he loved him. He fucking loved him so much.

“Hold on a moment, please, I’m with a few of the team.”

“I can call back.”

“No, please, no. I don’t mind. They were just hanging with me because I’m sad. That’s all. It’s nothing big. Okay, I am in a bathroom. Thank you for calling me, Shane.”

“Of course. I’m with Mickey, but I’m not leaving the room with him. He is staying right where he is, and I’m sure that he will freak the fuck out over who I am talking to later.”

“It’s okay. I… didn’t react well to the accident or that you were traded. It was all happening around them. I knew that they would talk, and I wanted to make sure they did not.”

“You told them about me.” Shane gripped the counter, and he was glad it was a strong bit of material because he might break it.

“I wanted to make sure that they did not talk about it out of place, leaving too many holes would leave the chance for talking. I knew as I was doing it, I would be hurting you, but I wanted to make sure that you were not hurt more if they talked to their girlfriends. They have been good. They have all promised me that they are not talking with their girlfriends or the wives. They only talk when it’s just them and me. Many have told me they support me and will help in any way that I can with wooing you back.”

“Fuck, Ilya, why the fuck did you break up with me?”

“I didn’t realize that you would take that,” Ilya said.

“I can’t… fuck.”

Shane jerked as the phone was taken away from him and laid down on the counter. Mickey got a hand between his shoulder blades.

“Rozanov, you there?”

“Yes,” Ilya said.

“This is Mickey Blackwood. I have the phone on speaker because I think that Shane is having the start of a panic attack. Give us a few seconds here.”

Shane felt the hand on his shoulders, rubbing up and down between them. He matched his breathing to the speed that the hand was moving. He remembered Mickey doing it for him in Kingston one time. His older brother had horrible panic attacks that left him not able to do much when he was growing up until they got them under control.

“I’m better, thanks.”

“Phone stays on speaker,” Ilya said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I want to make sure that I can talk to Mickey if you have another panic attack. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for so many things that I cannot even understand how I messed up so badly. I’m in therapy. I have a team of doctors, actually. I talked to two of them yesterday in two of them today because I was not in a good place last night. I wasn’t at risk of hurting myself, I promise, but I was very much not in a good place.”

“You broke up with me,” Shane said.

“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry that you thought that I did. I was not in a good place mentally. I was not in a place where I was ready to face what I had done to you. Between backing out in rage and then kicking you out and the moose. I was having issues that night. I heard the doctor talking, and I didn’t hear it all. I was too freaked out. I thought that you would never play hockey again. I heard that over maybe not being able to play this season again. By the time that I knew what was going on, I had already fled from where your parents and Pike were waiting.”

“You were happy about me getting your shit out of the house,” Shane said.

“I was happy you were trying to protect me even though I had not done anything but hurt you.”

“You brought your new boyfriend to get the boxes,” Shane said.

There was silence, and he glanced to see the phone was still going. He let Ilya have that silence.

“Troy and I are not together. I don’t want him like that, and the things I have said under the guise of jokes were not okay. I never should have said anything like that. I never should have made any jokes about fucking him.”

Mickey made a noise, and he looked at Shane with the look of utter shock. Shane knew that he and Mickey were going to have to talk about everything that he was finding out about Shane.

“You never should have.”

“You told me time and again when things hurt you, and I made you think that I didn’t care by telling you that it was just jokes, so you never once pushed back on that, and I’m sorry. There are a lot of things I am sorry for, and my English and things mess up my head. So, I have been working on a letter. I will send the letter when I can. Do not be mad at your parents for giving up the address of where you live. I promised them that I was not going to go there in person. That I was just going to send something to show that I was sorry. I have also been asked to tell you that you can talk to them. They are not going to push getting back with me and talking to me about things before you are already.”

“I didn’t want them leaving you. You have no one else. I did that to you.”

“No, Shane, you didn’t. I did that. I got it mixed up in my head that I had to be out to have friends. That I needed to be honest about everything in my life even with things they didn’t need to know. There was no point where they needed to know this. It was not something that I should have done. I have been doing reading.”

“About what?” Shane asked. He grabbed a stool and pulled it over to sit down on.

Mickey shoved himself up onto the counter to sit there. Shane grinned at him. It was a fake grin, but it let Mickey know that he was fine with him staying.

“I never once considered how you and I would be different in coming out. I’ve seen the things on posts about you, even without the world knowing you are gay, they are acting like you are already something they can yell at. I never saw your skin color making you different, but the world does, and they treat you that way. I found an article about how your race would make it different for you to come out. It wasn’t like saying you were, but it was bringing in the race thing in, and since you are the biggest player. I will send it to you if you want to read over it to tell me what they have right and what they have wrong.”

“Okay, that sounds good. I’ll read it. I don’t tend to read those kinds of things because I’m used to being treated like this.”

“Mattie, the lady therapist I talked to last night when I wasn’t doing well and then again today, she is a big Montreal fan. Well, I think that now she’s a big Shane Hollander fan because she can’t support Montreal after they traded you. I didn’t realize you had posted something about Montreal not rioting.”

“Well, Montreal likes to do it, and I wanted to make the exit as clean as possible. We have a pact of mutually assured destruction. If the team even down to the players leaks it more that I’m gay, I will make sure that Montreal understands that I was traded because I’m gay. The world will know. I want to make sure that I am protected as much as I can be. Using what little bit of leverage I have, that allowed me to pick where I went.”

“You wanted San Jose?”

“Of the teams that were offering the best for me that I knew that Montreal would take, having Mickey here was a good thing.”

“Mickey is the friend from Kingston?”

“Yeah, we were both billeted in the same house because we got along. There were issues with kids and me,” Shane said.

“Because you are a better player who is not white?” Ilya asked.

Shane had always thought that Ilya understood things because he always made good comments when Shane bitched about players, but now it seemed that he had just been talking out his ass, it seemed. He wasn’t sure what was going to come of them talking.

“So, we are not broken up?”

“I know that you think we were, but I didn’t think that we were. I was getting my head together after talking to Jackie and her calling me your ex. I didn’t want to fly off the handle. I didn’t want to be one who was making things worse.”

“Okay, that’s good. I… I am going to be honest, I’m not wanting to get back to where we were. I mean, we both only have one game with each other, and there will have to be phone calls. I’m not feeling like we can get back to where we were before this.”

“No, I get to. You have been moving on in your head. I understand. I will take what you give me, Shane. I love you, and I’m sorry that I hurt you because I was not doing what I needed to do to make myself better. I didn’t choose you over hockey because if I had, I would have been in a place where I wasn’t able to make as much money, where I wasn’t the star center, and where I wasn’t captain. I’m working on the way that I feel. And I’m working on not making comments about your diet.”

“Why?” Shane asked.

“Because I remind myself of my father. I wrote down things that I remembered saying about you, or to you, things that I thought. I remember the resentment that I was building, and I realized that I was acting like my father while thinking that I was my mother. You have never said things to me to hurt me. You have made off-handed comments that were because you were stressed but never with the aim to hurt, and instead of saying something, I just kept them inside and said that you didn’t mean to hurt me.”

“Like what?” Shane asked.

“When your mother was stressing you out about the camps. The nonstop texts—you made the comment about not getting texts from my mother all the time. Now you are right, and I don’t want you to never complain about your mother because I know she’s a stress point for you sometimes.”

“I could have worded it differently to not have your mother in it,” Shane said.

“Yes, but also I wasn’t telling you about the dreams I was having about trying to get you to meet her. I would dream she was there with us, but you were inside and not coming out, and then by the time you finally came out, she was gone. It was not helping me not resent you. I have issues, and I have a lot of them. I know that. I know that things are being worked on, and I know that things are hard. I just… needed someone who wasn’t going to make me resent you more.”

“Who was doing that?”

“My other therapist. I had been seeing her without telling you. I wanted to fix myself, and you never knew that I was in therapy. It didn’t work. She was pushing the idea that I was living this horrible life and you were living this perfect life.”

“And who are you seeing now?”

“There is a group of them. It’s a clinic that works around people with deep childhood issues but also with the idea that sometimes you can’t rely on a single person. The guy I see speaks Russian, not as a native speaker but as someone who learned it to speak to his wife when he met her when she was a child. He was a child too. He has some help on the ways that Russia fucked me up because his in-laws fled from Russia years ago. So he is helpful. I don’t think he’s racist either. Then there is the lady. She is a big hockey person.”

Shane moved to lay his head down on the counter. He was fucking tired. He was so fucking tired. Having this weight off him made him see how tired he was. He turned his head to the phone, and he listened as Ilya told him about what he knew about each of his therapists.

“I’m glad you are getting help. I’m getting help on my diet, and maybe I need to see someone about other things as well.”

“Why do you need help with the diet?” Ilya asked.

“Because when I was in the hospital and I went over the diet with them, the nurse looked really concerned, but not because of the food. She brought what I wanted, but because of the way I talked about it. After her shift was over, she came and talked to me about two different disorders, one a lot closer to what I was doing, and the other the fallback basically. I’ve not told anyone this. I mean, I told Jackie that I needed to talk to someone about it, and she’s got a friend who does that. I’ve had a session with her talking about unpacking how I got to where I am. I’ll text you the disorders. So, the snacks are nice, but also the extra one that I used to eat—it’s nice. It’ll help me.”

“I’m glad that Jackie is helping.”

“Hayden and Jackie also bought me a used DS and a new Switch. I used to play a lot of games on the road, but then I was being made fun of, and I stopped outside of playing sports games. So, getting back into Zelda would be nice. So, that’s something. They also got me a travel case that I can use for both of them on the road. Which will be nice with the roadie. I’m rooming alone. That’s something that they have already told me. Out of respect. I can change it if I want someone to share with me, and they have talked to Mickey, who said he didn’t mind if I felt like I needed it.”

“We need to talk about a lot of things,” Ilya said.

“Yes, but why don’t you both head to bed? Get ready for bed, and then just talk while in bed. Maybe no sex because I think that maybe that would make things worse.” Mickey made a face when Shane tipped his head to look at him.

“How about I call you when I’m ready for bed? I take a while, and cleaning the wounds is something I need help with.”

“Send me pictures?”

“Of?” Shane asked. He made a face because he had no idea what kind of pictures Ilya would want about him.

“Of the arm. I want to see it. You have ones from the start, right? And you can take one now?”

“Ilya.”

“No, it’s not to make me feel bad. I know that I didn’t want you hurt. You were still hurt because of my actions, but I am not holding onto that guilt. That is something that we worked on already. I mean, yes, I feel bad, but I didn’t want it, and it was an accident. I just want to see. I wasn’t there, and I will regret that my whole life. So I want to see what it looks like.”

“Sure, I’ll take pictures, and I do have what it looked like when I first took the gauze off the wound. It was horrible to look at. I wanted the show of my progress, though, but also to know what to look for if something was going wrong.”

Shane sat up, and he thought about what he wanted to do. He could get his headphones on and settle into bed afterwards and talk so that the sound of just his voice was out there. Mickey was on a different floor, so it wasn’t like he was going to listen in, but he wanted the intimacy of it.

It was a first step. He wasn’t sure that the step was a good one, but he loved Ilya. He had to get himself happy before he and Ilya could be together like they were, but they could do that while apart for this. Being together but also working on themselves.

“I’ll call you when I’m ready,” Shane said.

“I’ll answer. …Can I say it?”

Shane closed his eyes. “I do love you.”

“Thank you. I love you too. I’m sorry that I hurt you.”

Shane waited for Ilya to say something else, but when he didn’t, he put his finger over the button to hang up. “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

—

Ilya picked up the papers that he had been told to print off. So he had done it. He looked at the papers about depression, and then he looked at the ones about bipolar. He wasn’t sure that he was going to like what he read, but he knew that he needed to look at things.

A lot of things on the bipolar side of things made sense. He could see the peaks and the valleys in his life and the ways that he had made sure that he took care of himself. The sex and even the drugs. The drinking when he stopped the drugs during the season. He was not sure that he wanted to have that diagnosis, but he had been coached on it. Not on the diagnosis but taking what was given when it came to what was wrong with him.

His brother had used drugs for a lot longer than Ilya, but he had no rush of hockey to pull him out of the depths. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say about weed, but he felt like Shane was right that the smoking wasn’t going to be good for him long term. He had tried to quit smoking in general. It was bad for his lungs, and he knew that, but he wasn’t sure that he could do weed with whatever meds he ended up being on.

A knock on the door had him heading from the kitchen. He opened the door to find David and Yuna on the porch. They had bags of food with them.

“Have you eaten?” David asked.

“I have not. I talked to Shane yesterday.”

“We know. He called us. He was very open about things with us in all ways. We are going to step back from a lot of things with him, but he told us to keep things with you about how we have had them. So, we thought that maybe things might be good to focus on you since you are around here. He didn’t tell us anything that he felt you wouldn’t want us to know,” Yuna said.

Ilya stepped back to let them into the house. They headed right for the kitchen and then started to pull out the food. Ilya noticed that it was from the sushi place that Shane loved. The one that they hadn’t gone to in a while because the last time that they had been there, Ilya had needed so badly that he hadn’t eaten any food beyond the seaweed salad and the soup. Ilya had felt like it was a good thing that it had happened because it proved that Shane’s diet was bad, not because it was Ilya who made Shane not eat anything. They had not gone back after that, even when they had meetings about the foundation, the only time that Shane and Ilya ate out together.

“I want to say that I’m sorry,” Yuna said.

Ilya looked at her. He wasn’t sure what she had done to need to apologize. He opened his mouth, and David held up a hand. Ilya nodded. He let Yuna tell him.

“I have my own faults for some of the things said to Shane about his diet. I didn’t realize how much I was backing you up or how much you were needling him about it. I never liked that he was on it as strictly as he was, and I didn’t read well to him pushing back on things. I’m used to him doing what I want. I’m learning to let go. I’m going to take more time on about the camps to allow Shane to have his own life. I love the foundation, and I will be retiring from my job at the bank soon. I’ve been there long enough that I’ll get fine along with the salary I will be taking on, which is still going to be a low end for what someone like me would given how I would be giving to the foundation. Shane wants a few years to not have to do much beyond being the face of it. We agreed that you both would step back beyond the day of camp stuff. I will be sending out information about the camps and various other things, you will still help make the big decisions, and you will have control of who the coaches are.”

“You had a good conversation with Shane,” Ilya said.

“Yes, we did. I have to stop being passive when it comes to things that I notice are hurting him, and you both are doing it. Silence meant he thought that I didn’t care. Yuna had her talk, and I had my own.”

Ilya started to plate up food, checking what each roll was before he snagged some of the seaweed salad. Yuna handed over a bowl of the soup as well as the other salad that Ilya liked a lot. He settled in at the stool and looked at the people he loved a lot. He knew that it had been a circle of pain all around. Shane pushed back until he was made to think that it was all in his head, and then they kept on doing it.

“We all have to learn how to be better,” Ilya said.

“Yes, Shane said that he is going to work on boundaries and enforcing them,” David said.

“I need to learn how to know when I hurt people,” Ilya said. He picked at the seaweed salad with the chopsticks. “I thought I had depression and was handling it. I’m seeing someone now, and we are going to see if I have something else besides or on top of depression.”

“What is he thinking?”

“Bipolar, not sure of which one,” Ilya said. He grabbed the papers he had laid down on the counter with their faces down. He handed them over. “I’ve not told Shane. I have been looking at these. The way that I reacted to things, the blacking out in anger once.”

Yuna’s head shot up, and she looked at him. Ilya had to look away. He picked at his food again but made himself take a few bites of the seaweed salad. Getting food in him made him actually hungry despite everything.

“I did not hurt him, but taking that and the puck and putting them together doesn’t paint a good picture.”

“Puck?” David asked.

“During the camps. I convinced myself that a reporter was flirting with Shane, and it was just not that. I am always thinking that he’s going to find someone who he will like better. Someone who will be able to love him better than I can. I always try to make myself think that I am not worth his love. So, I shot a puck at the glass.”

“Despite the fact that it could have broken? I mean, you guys use a good facility, but the glass can only take so much before it breaks,” David said.

“It scared Shane so much that he screamed in terror,” Yuna said.

“And you what? Told him you were sorry?”

“No, actually, I didn’t want to apologize, I just wanted Shane to stop being mad at me. I only apologized for the thing that he thought would leave me. That he had to bear that while also dealing with everything else, which I guess he did leave me for, but only because he thought that I left him first. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is what Mattie called it when she and I talked about it. She said that I do that, I push at people and do things to make them leave me all the while telling myself that they are going to leave me anyway, so why do anything else? Then when it happens I tell myself I was right.”

“That’s why you don’t have a lot of friends,” Yuna said.

Ilya shrugged. He hated feeling like this, but he was very figuring out that he was reacting a lot like others were telling him he was reacting. He had to make sure that he was not doing that, even if he had to have Shane tell him more and more.

“But the puck, and then on Boxing Day, I blacked out while fighting with him. I was so fucking angry. I was away from him, and then I had him backed into a corner, and I had a hand on his chest. He didn’t look scared, but I think that was because he didn’t have a reason to.”

“It was the first time,” David said.

Ilya nodded. “I’m sure that many abuse victims dismiss that first one and even the ones after, but they are making them think it’s normal. I never, ever want to hurt him like that. I will do whatever I need to do to make sure that I never will. I will have to tell him all of this, the things that I don’t want to. I’m working on that. I have a letter that I’m working on for many things. If the letter goes well, I will keep on writing them based on other things and his reactions to the things I already said.”

“Has your therapist suggested a pet?” Yuna asked.

“Yes, and no,” Ilya said.

“What does that mean?” David asked.

“He thinks that having someone here at home would be good for me but that it would have to be a pet that I wouldn’t need to do anything with. My depression lays me low, and I cannot just give up on taking care of the pet because I am depressed, which will also make me hate that I cannot take care of the pet or make me angry at having to deal with the pet. He suggested fish actually. There is a pet store in the area that will help me with cleaning the tanks, and there can be a timer set up for the feeding of the fish for when I am gone. The staff who come to clean and do all of that can make sure that things are working fine, and if not, call the pet store. There is a process where they can set up a visit, and I pay for it based on the contract that is signed. I guess that a lot of rich people have fish.”

“Do you like fish?” David asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never actually thought about fish as pets because no one around me ever had them. I would love a dog, but my therapist tells me that the kind of dog that would make me happy would add a burden to me unless I hired someone to be on call to take care of walks and other things when I don’t feel like it. Therapy can only help so much, and I might end up not doing well or just being able to do my job, and that’s it. I’ve already set out the plan for a chef to come and do more food in the house based on the meal plan I should be on for the team.”

“You aren’t?” Yuna asked.

“No, I never have been. I mean, I eat what is there for me at the arena on game days and other days when I am at practice, and I just don’t feel like eating something else. I don’t snub that food. I just never wanted to be that kind of player, but I think right now, due to the ease of many things, I might need it. Also, having better food in me might just help with my body feeling better.”

“What about a cat?” David asked.

“What?” Ilya asked. He looked at where David was before finding more food to put on his plate. He was really fucking hungry. He needed to figure out how to order this stuff because he knew there were changes to a few of the rolls because there were things that Shane didn’t like in some of them. He remembered that. He hadn’t paid attention back then because of hating Shane’s diet.

“A cat. They are less needy than a dog, but they can cuddle too. You can get automated litter boxes, water dishes, and feeders. There are a lot of things that you can do that help with a part of things. They don’t need to be walked like a dog would, especially the breed you would like, which is closer to a working dog because you would want them to go running with you. The cleaning people can come and take care of the parts of the litter box that you might not want to handle because of your down moods. You can also get a lot of toys that would keep them entertained. It might take a little, but maybe that’s something to work up to. Also, Shane loves cats.”

“He does?” Ilya thought back to when Shane had talked about them getting a cat when they retired. He had dismissed it because Ilya wanted the dog. It was still a long commitment, and that was also the thing. The fish was one thing, but if he got a cat, no matter what, he needed to talk to Shane. They lived together in the summer, and the cat would be going to the cottage with them. The fish would not, and he would have to make sure that the people came to check on the fish more. Which was fine. Ilya didn’t need the pet with him at the cottage because it was him and Shane there. He didn’t need someone who was there for him like that.

“I will talk to Shane about that. I think for now maybe the fish. Shane would not hate fish, and they are less of a burden on him as well because I will make sure of it. I will tell him I’m getting fish, but I don’t need to ask him.”

“No, you don’t. He loves watching fish. He used to have a DVD that was like a fish tank. There were also games he used to play that were fish-related. I don’t think it will be that bad,” Yuna said. She smiled at him and picked up a roll with her chopsticks before dipping it lightly in the eel sauce. “We need to step up better checks on things. We have all done things to allow this to go on, and I know why Shane never talked about the things that you were doing to him. He didn’t want us to dislike you, and just like with things that Shane has done, we would never drop you over things. We love you like you are our son, but maybe we need to act like you are our son-in-law more than a son. We don’t want to take sides, but maybe we need to in certain ways.”

Ilya liked that. He liked that they were not wanting to take sides but that sometimes they had to take care of their son above Ilya. If only his parents had done that. They had been used fully in the fights between them sometimes. which pitted Ilya against his brother.

“Okay, so let’s talk fish,” Yuna said before she pulled out her phone. “Fresh or saltwater.”

“Flashy fish, so I think that saltwater are the prettier ones.” Ilya smiled as he grabbed more food.

It was a good dinner, even if they talked about the hard things.

—

Shane settled into the seat on the plane. He was given a whole row to himself, which was just two seats in this area, to make sure that no one hit his arm. If he took the inside seat, he could hit his arm off the side of the plane, and if he was on the outside one, his seat partner was going to hit his arm. It was better, but the pain was still there. There was a lot of pain sometimes if he hit it because of the surgery suite and the hairline fractures.

The team doctor was very happy with the progress of the concussion, which was down to pretty much no symptoms, as well as how his arm was healing. For now, while he was with the team, the doctor would take care of his arm instead of him having to have someone else help him with it. Mickey had been good when they were at home and he was getting ready to shower. Still, Shane was very happy with how things were going with the team.

Shane was pulled in, and he loved them. He didn’t need to come out to them. He didn’t need to tell them anything; Mickey was different. There was no reason to tell them anything because while Shane was happy with the team, he didn’t want to stay in San Jose. He wasn’t sure where he wanted to go after San Jose, but unless Ilya was moving there, he would need to get back to where he could be close to Ilya. It might not be the best idea in the world, maybe they needed a year of being apart while they both worked on themselves and got the talking time that they needed without the physical side of things getting in their way.

“You gonna play?” Mickey asked as he dropped into the seat across from Shane.

Shane looked at the case, and before he could answer, there was a sound from the back of the plane.

“Oh fuck yeah, Mario Kart!” someone yelled, and then a few guys came toward the back of the plane.

Shane looked at Mickey.

“I told you that Mario Kart was serious here. No one is going to give a fuck about you playing Zelda.”

Shane opened up the zipper on his case before he pulled out the Switch. He had been playing on the DS more than anything else lately. He turned on the Switch and waited for it to load before he found Breath of the Wild. He got it going, and then he took the controllers of the sides and set up the Switch so he didn’t have to hold it. It was too heavy and made his arms ache, so he had to play without the controllers attached. He settled in while waiting for them to get ready to get going; he could slip the device into the back of the seat when it was time to take off to make sure it didn’t get dropped or something like that.

“Fuck yeah,” Mickey said, and he leaned over.

Shane looked at him, and he looked at the seat. He arched an eyebrow. Shane wasn’t going to sit where his arm was in the aisle, but they could at least share a seat a little later in the flight. The game was going to go slow as he worked on the control and the rest of the ways that this game was different from other games.

“You look happier,” Mickey said.

“I’m working on myself.”

“Okay, well, you look happy, so that means that you are going to get a treat.”

Shane laughed, and he looked to see what was going to be passed over to him. Shane had given him control of Shane’s snacks. It was letting a little control go, and it was a small step on his plan to get back to a normal diet that didn’t make him feel like shit for tasting things on Ilya’s lips. To where he could enjoy food again. He knew that things were going to be a little different for him, and it was going to be small steps to let go because with the job that he did, he needed to have a lot of control. He needed to have more than enough control to make sure that he wasn’t fucking his chances of a well-played game. Right now he needed to make sure that he was keeping his body good. He worked out with the team, just not doing anything that needed his arms for it, or at least something that didn’t need both arms.

The start of the game was fun, and Shane forgot how much he loved getting lost in worlds. Yeah, he had been playing Ocarina of Time a lot over the last while, but he also didn’t get to experience it for the first time again. He loved this so much. The world was nice, and he couldn’t wait to get to the hotel and get it up on the TV screen. The base was in the case so he could do that. He would do things with the team when they were doing things, but there would be plenty of time after games where he was winding down without doing the actual game and therefore not having the utter exhaustion that came with it.

He looked at his phone as the attendant came down to tell them to get ready for takeoff. Shane put up the Switch, happy he could just pause the game and turn off the screen before putting it up. He slipped the controllers down into the pocket, and he made sure his drink was settled before he looked at his phone.

There was a picture of a fish. Shane smiled at the fish. Ilya had gotten fully focused on picking out the best tank of fish. The tank had been set up just hours before with two fish in there because the pet store he had gone to had not had a lot of fish he liked.

There were the fish he was looking for, but he didn’t like the attitude of those fish. No, Ilya wanted fish who made him feel something, so it was going to take a while to get the fish he wanted, and he was going to visit all of the pet stores in the city as he had time. The first fish were them. A pair of male fish that Shane hadn’t been given the name of, but he would make sure that he knew more about them by the time that he went to Ilya’s place.

The bedroom fish tank had been easier, it was fresh water, and it was full of fish who were active and soothing at the same time. There was a male betta fish in there whom Ilya had fallen in love with and had wanted to make a tank around. It was a smaller tank, just something that was close enough to the bed that when Ilya was having a bad day, he could turn on the light in the tank and lie in bed and watch it.

Shane was glad that Ilya was doing things that made him happy. Shane liked fish. He liked arching them and could lose hours in it. He had just never thought about getting a tank for himself. Ilya already had the cleaning schedule laid out and settled with the one pet store who did that kind of service. The staff was being checked out, and NDAs were being signed. It wasn’t the only high-profile people that the pet store serviced, so the place was used to it. Farah was looking into anyone who was going to have access to the house.

“Him?” Mickey asked.

“Yeah, he’s showing me the fish he picked up. The tank’s going to be a little light for a while because he’s picky about his fish.”

Mickey laughed. He smiled before putting in headphones to get his zen on for takeoff. Mickey didn’t mind flying, he just didn’t like the takeoff or landing part. Shane thought about Ryan and his fear of flying and the shit that was said about this in the league. That was something that they were working on with the foundation, but it was slow to change. The league was slow to fucking change, and it wasn’t going to get easy when they were being fought at all sides.

It was going to be one thing at a time, one team at a time, one coach at a time, and one player who looks around the room and tells them to shut the fuck up when they say something and really stick to it.

Shane scrolled up to where Ilya had told him about his fears, the idea of losing Shane and not being able to get him back. It felt like it was ripping Shane’s heart open again. Ilya was being open with him in the best way. It sucked, but it was the things that he had never been able to get from Ilya.

Doing them over text seemed to be working well. Ilya was writing a letter to send as soon as he got it done, and he would figure out how to get it to Shane as soon as possible, even if it ended up being email. He wrote the words out, and he said he would type them up if email ended up being best. Shane didn’t like that with all of the hacks and shit. He would rather have a physical letter because then they would know if it was opened and read. So, Shane was looking into services that would be fucking overkill but that Shane could easily pay for if Ilya wasn’t willing to get them to talk to each other.

Small things came over text like this, little things that Ilya wanted to explain. Like why he had gotten so pissy when Shane asked about the men he had been with before.

Even just with a few visits each, they were doing better with therapy. Shane checked his headphones and connected them to his phone instead of the Switch, and he found a movie he had downloaded to his phone to listen to while they took off. Once he was up and it was going again, he would swap back to his Switch.

He closed his eyes for a few seconds and thought about kissing Ilya. It was going to be a short time before their teams played each other for the second and final time that season. Shane hated it that the first had been before he joined the team. It was the way the schedule fell. There had been times when even division rivals faced each other in the first two months of the season or the last two and no other point in time. He remembered the time that they had played Toronto four times in five weeks and then didn’t even meet up in the playoffs. It had felt fucking weird.

A text came through, and Shane paused the movie, and he opened it up. He saw it was from Ilya, a container of food that looked a lot healthier than the stuff he usually made himself. Shane zoomed in on the image, and he knew that it wasn’t something from the team either. He frowned and swiped back to text him.

Shane: Where is that from?

Ilya: Chef. I am working on a more balanced diet, still with the things that I like but more spread out. It’s helped my body feel a lot better lately. I realized that I was eating crap a lot more, and it wasn’t helping with my body and all of the issues I was having.

Shane sat with that for a few minutes. He knew that Ilya had a strange diet, but it worked for him, even if he had to work out more than Shane did to not gain too much weight. There were times when it was good to add on weight but just straight fat, and a lot of it was going to fuck their game.

Shane: I’m proud of you. You are getting more strict and I’m lessening up. Mickey’s got my snacks. He already gave me one for the flight. I needed to give up control so that at least one aspect was something that I didn’t have control of. It’s helped a little. I can think that I don’t have control of my snacks, so I eat what I am given. Of course it’s all stuff that I like, it’s not like Mickey is going out and buying things. I’ve already worked on what I’m going to eat on the roadie when it comes to the meals as well.

Ilya: You sound better talking about food. I know that I have said it, but I’m sorry that my picking your food hurt you. I did it because I hated you for not focusing on me. I know that. I wanted your entire attention when we were together, and it manifested wrong. I’m learning. I’m learning how to use words and how to not feel the things that make me not good. I know that I need to work more, and I’m glad you called me out last night.

Shane remembered that one. When Ilya had been picking at something again and Shane told him to stop because it hurt. There had been typing, and then the typing had stopped. Shane hadn’t been sure what was going on, but he had been happy that Ilya had controlled himself and didn’t react like he would at first. It had helped him not feel bad about talking about how he felt. He knew that his conflict avoidance in his personal life had caused issues, but he was working on it too. Telling people that they hurt him, making them take control of what they had done. He pushed back on his mother a lot, and he made sure that his father knew that his own conflict avoidance had made Shane’s life harder. If the other three people were all on the same page in his life, well, the issue was him, wasn’t it?

Ilya: When I have time, I’m going to do more testing, all like paper tests, written in Russian, and I can answer in Russian. Mattie has taken more control of my sessions, which is fine because I connected with her really well. She is leaning more towards bipolar than just straight depression.

Shane looked at those words. He looked at his Switch and he knew that he wasn’t going to get back to playing for a while, which was fine. They needed to talk, and he had made sure that he could talk to Ilya at all times, with how much he was going to spend in the air over the next while. The app they used now to make sure that nothing that they talked about was ever leaked was end-to-end encrypted and connected to Wi-Fi, which ran all the time on the San Jose plane.

Shane: I’m glad you told me. I’ll do my own research into it and how to help you through this. If you need anything, you tell me. I mean that, Ilya. I don’t like being shut out, and that was the biggest issue before the others. You never let me in. I want to be there when you are down. We didn’t fight as much as we should have because we had so little time, so nothing was ever resolved.

Ilya: I will tell you what I can put into words. I promise. I will be making sure that I know what I am feeling. There are times I have issues with finding the exact emotion that I am feeling, and that’s when I go to being angry, and I push away. My parents, even my mother, weren’t good at emotions. She hid a lot to make my father not hurt her, and she taught me that as well. Only I also spent too much time under my father’s hand, and I don’t react well.

Shane: I wish I could take all of your pain away from you. That I could make your life perfect so the only low you ever feel is when I beat you.

The emoji that Ilya sent was laughing, and Shane smiled. He knew that the levity was needed.

Ilya: I wish I could do the same for you. Did you know that there is a fan page for you that collects all of the things that other players have said to you in the face-off circle? It’s all possible lip reads, but if even half of that stuff was said to you.

Shane felt the plane start to get faster, and he pushed himself into the seat to allow himself to get ready for the takeoff. He waited until they were in the air before he made sure that he was connected, and then he thought about what to say.

Shane: That’s the price of hockey when you can’t blend in. I’ve heard that shit since I was a child. When it was realized that I was fucking good, it got worse. I legit had parents yelling at me that I should die for being better than their sons. My mom has videos of my childhood that she has digitized and removed the sounds but kept copies of the original to make sure that if something ever came up, she could have proof of the shit I went through.

Ilya: Tell me more.

Shane knew that Ilya did want to know, but Shane had never wanted to bring that into them, but he was just as fucking hopeful that it would never be needed. He didn’t like the knowledge that Ilya knew what kind of childhood he had. Ilya’s childhood was shitty. This wasn’t some press to show who had the worst childhood.

Ilya: My childhood and my father’s way of treating me, and my mother’s death doesn’t mean that you didn’t have just as shitty a childhood but in a different way.

Shane laughed. He felt a touch and looked at Mickey.

“Are you good?”

“Yeah, I’m just… it’s fucking hard to tell people about my childhood sometimes, is all.”

“I get it. You send that and then tell him that you need a little time to decompress and that you are on the plane and going to play a video game. You can call tonight when we get to the hotel. We have dinner scheduled, but we have like an hour after we get to the hotel before we have to head out for that.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll do that. Thanks.” Shane looked at his phone. Ilya was waiting on him to say something else. He was glad of that. He hoped that things would be easier over text, but this was still just as hard.

Shane: Okay, but it’s going to be a lot of messages, you can ask questions, but don’t be overly emotional. I’m on the plane with the guys, and after we talk about this, I’m going to play on my Switch. If I prop it up, I can hold the controller and be just fine playing without it hurting my arm. The team doctor doesn’t think it’s going to hurt me and might help since it’s small repetitive motions with my hand and fingers.

Ilya: Okay, I’ll be good. I will ask things, and if I get overly emotional, tell me, and we can talk about this later. I’ll also talk to your mother about it. She’s told me that she’s willing to talk to me about things that she doesn’t think you will be upset about us talking about. Maybe I can watch one video she thinks is tame when it comes to what you went through.

Shane: We play with some of those kids, not a lot of them, but I’m not the only guy from Ottawa. I will make sure that she doesn’t pick one where you target someone who is active. I don’t need you getting more penalty minutes.

Ilya: I make no promises, but I’ll make sure that it’s not enough to tank my stats. I need to stay on pace with you.

Shane smiled because he could picture the look on Ilya’s face as he typed that. Shane got his hoodie string into his mouth, and he settled down to work on sending things to Ilya about the life that Shane had lived before him, before this. The one that made him not even notice the shit he went through in this. The wounds that he never thought he would pick open again. Maybe it was good, though. Maybe it was where his healing was really going to start.