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A good night doesn’t always bring good dreams. Ilya remembers this, now, distantly, as he’s wrenched into consciousness, face already wet and hot with tears. His shirt sticks to his back with cold sweat. It has been a while since he woke up like this, with a churning stomach and an aching heart.
Beside him, Shane stirs, and Ilya feels too far from himself to stifle his sobs. He sits up, if only to put some distance between his loud mouth and Shane’s peaceful ears, and his vision swims. He’s going to throw up, he realizes as his heart begins pounding in anticipation. Why won’t his legs take him to the bathroom? Why won’t his body stop trembling?
“Wha’s happening?”
In response, Ilya can only gag, nausea heavy in the back of his throat. Despite having just woken up, Shane stumbles out of bed at lightning speed. He’s in the bathroom when Ilya throws up, bright light streaming through the open door, burning in Ilya’s eyes. “Oh shit!” he calls and then he’s there, trash can abandoned, one hand on Ilya’s sweaty back and the other on his sweaty forehead.
Ilya cries through each awful heave, throw-up sour and cooling quick on his chest and down his chin. The back of his throat stings like alcohol on a cut. He trembles so violently he can barely breathe. He feels so strongly like he’s standing on the beach as the waves recede around him, pulling sand from underfoot, the whole world shrinking. Shane kisses his temple, and that there’s a temple to kiss at all feels unfathomable to him, as if he’s lost somewhere inside of himself, the vastness of his body.
“That’s okay, we’ll change the sheets. You’re okay. Get it out,” Shane murmurs, and Ilya coughs until his abs burn. Each breath is like drowning. His dream replays over and over again behind his eyes and, through his unfound terror, all he can think about is his mother. He wants his mother.
“Mama,” he mouths subconsciously, as Shane gets to work quickly around him, pulling the dirtied comforter off the bed and guiding him to the bathroom. “Ty mne nuzhen. Prosti menya, mama.”
“C’mon, in the bath. I got you, babe.”
Ilya barely feels the heat of the bathwater as Shane guides him in. He’s quick to join him, wiping the vomit from Ilya’s neck with a warm, soapy washcloth before he’s even got both feet in the water. Ilya’s whole body shakes, goosebump-covered and tight with longing. His mouth feels sticky and slow as he says, slurred, “Obnimi menya i potseluy, pozhaluysta.”
Shane furrows his eyebrows, lips pouting into a look of pure sadness. “You want… a kiss?” he says softly, and Ilya nods, dissolving into more tired sobs when Shane pulls him into his arms. He’s freezing even in the hot water of the tub, only warm where Shane’s skin touches his—his back, his shoulders, his cheek as Shane kisses it, leaving his lips against his tear-dampened skin, kisses some more. As he collapses into him, Ilya is hit with a wave of despair so intense he wails.
Something in him is wrong and he can’t understand what it is. Nothing makes sense. All his emotions feel larger than him.
“U menya bolit serdtse.”
After a moment, the time it often takes for Shane to mentally translate, he seems to understand. He pulls back and his eyes get all big and wide and then he sits up on his knees, wrapping Ilya in a proper hug. “Why?” he coos. “What’s goin’ on?”
“Mne prisnilsya plokhoy son. Ya chuvstvuyu sebya stranno.”
When Shane kisses his neck, Ilya zeroes in on the feeling of his heart beating against his lips. The cool, wet skin of Shane’s shoulder is a salve on his hot face. He rubs his nose against his collarbone and inhales as best he can through his shortness of breath, trying to breathe in as much of Shane as possible. He’d breathe him in entirely if he could.
“That’s just for now, okay?” Shame pulls back to hold his face, pressing their foreheads together and then looking at him straight on, big brown eyes so calm and full of love. If Ilya were feeling more present, he’d notice the way Shane is giving back the words Ilya gives him during panic attacks, comforting him the way he comforts. Instead, his words are just static, just a voice, another part of Shane Ilya can hold onto while his head swims. “Just let yourself feel it. It’ll come and go.”
“Okay,” Ilya whispers wetly. He doesn’t want to detach from their embrace, as if his body will fall apart if Shane’s not wrapped so tightly around it. The bathwater grows cold and even then, he doesn’t get up until Shane does. His brain can only follow, not lead him anywhere on his own. For the first time, Ilya thinks, he feels entirely dependent on Shane.
They don’t return to bed. Shane guides Ilya to the couch, kissing his damp forehead before leaving and coming back with a giant armful of blankets and pillows. He’s got a teasing grin on his face as he throws them on top of Ilya, but his amusement doesn’t dilute his overwhelming adoration, so obvious in the pink of his cheeks. When he sets a cup on the coffee table—a tumbler with a lid, hard to spill—and climbs under the thick comforter, his eyes stay on Ilya’s face, glittering with wonder.
Shane runs hot. Ilya thinks his eyes can sense his warmth like he has infrared vision, drawn to him innately. He goes to pull Shane into him, but Shane beats him to it, all but lifting him into his lap, guiding his head to the crook of his elbow. Any other day, Ilya would be grimacing and perturbed that his partner is cradling him like a baby, patting his back in a steady rhythm like he’s trying to put him to sleep, but now it just feels right.
“This is how my mom held me when I’d throw up. Nice right?”
Ilya can’t tell if his question is rhetorical, but it doesn’t matter. That longing is back, for safety and love and for his Mama, who feels so close, yet so distant, like she’s standing outside the door and he can feel her warmth through the metal of the knob. The softness inside him—the one he can’t name, can’t understand—aches, tender like a bruise. Cold tears roll down his cheeks and through his nose. Watching Shane’s smile turn to a frown of guilt makes his stomach churn again.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he says. His voice is as docile as Ilya feels.
He lifts Ilya like he’s trying to move him off his lap and Ilya grabs on tight to his shirt, a big sad breath punched from his lungs. “No, I want,” he says—whines—and Shane straightens out in that way he does when he’s trying to act competent about the unknown. He hoists Ilya up a bit further and bounces his body a few times, not unlike the way he’d soothe Hayden’s baby. His hand cradles the back of Ilya’s neck, fingers combing through his wet curls, and with a deep sigh, he begins rocking their bodies side to side.
“I’m not going anywhere, Ilya,” he says. “I’m right here.”
There’s that feeling again, like he’s ankle-deep in the ocean, but now it’s more pronounced, this uninhibited feeling in him that’s all nature, nothing constructed. He’s completely out of control of himself and of every guttural sob that wracks through him and of the way he speaks, nonsensically, words made entirely of emotion. His tears slow, gradually, and then all he can do is stare at Shane, who glows golden in the soft lamplight, and let himself be soothed.
Each breath comes out in stuttered little gasps. Shane puts a hand on his chest and rubs, deep, as if he’s trying to smooth wrinkles out of him, and that helps a little. The pressure feels like his heart is being swaddled. It fills his lungs with cool air. Ilya is left numb and warm and blurred around the edges, every word he tries to speak disappearing on his heavy tongue before it can come to fruition.
Being held like this makes him feel delicate as a butterfly’s wing, like he’s floating in cloudy warmth, chin-deep in a bubble bath. His sadness feels less heavy, like it’s sitting on his skin instead of under it. The nest of blankets surrounding him is a shield of protection. Shane sighs comfortably and Ilya feels his exhale on his face, breathes in quickly to be full of him.
“That feel okay?” Shane says, hand petting gently down the middle of Ilya’s chest. When Ilya nods, he smiles fondly, eyes crinkling, and leans in to kiss his forehead. His lips stay close, gentle and soft when he whispers, “I love you,” against the arch of his eyebrow.
Ilya tips his head back and purses his lips, so much love in his heart he aches with it, and Shane kisses him, an innocent, closed-mouthed thing. It satisfies the animal in Ilya’s chest, the one who needs to be touched. Finally, he is safe in his body and the haze he’s stuck in.
Shane holds him and rocks him for what feels like hours. Eventually, Ilya begins to come back to himself. His body feels more like his, more present; his breaths even out and deepen until the pain in his chest is just a memory; the smallness he felt crumbles away into something almost normal, still tender with grief but no longer so lost.
When he’s more himself, he buries his face in Shane’s stomach, wrapping an arm around his waist. “I’m sorry, zolotse,” he says. His voice is scratchy from crying and vomiting and silence.
He doesn’t look at Shane, but he can hear his smile when he says, “Are you back with me?” and rubs his back a bit quicker, pats him, and stops altogether to rest against his spine. It feels like a loaded question. Ilya never left, and yet he knows exactly what he’s talking about.
“I had… a dream of my mother,” he replies even though it doesn’t answer his question. “Was not myself when I woke up.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cry that much.”
Shane’s voice is so soft, but sweet, like he isn’t upset, like Ilya didn’t burden him. He guides Ilya upright and hands him the cup of water, holding the straw as he drinks. Now, the coddling makes Ilya’s face burn and his skin spike with shame. This isn’t how it goes, he thinks, and swallows heavily. This isn’t how I’m supposed to be.
So he deflects. “You like to see me cry,” he says. “You say I should open up myself more. You want me to peel back layers like an onion. Like in Shrek.”
“That’s- not what happens in Shrek. And you know that’s not what I mean. I just…” Shane sets the cup back on the table and looks at him, big eyes still so forgiving even as Ilya scoffs at him. “I don’t mind taking care of you. You take care of me all the time, it’s nice to return the favor,” he finishes.
Ilya takes another gulp of water, thirstier the more he settles back into his body. He nudges Shane’s socked foot with his own bare one. As he gains clarity, the discomfort of being seen creeps back in. Even with Shane, he prefers being in control of his vulnerabilities. This was different, not only in that he didn’t choose to show a part of himself, but that the part he showed was one he himself hadn’t met yet. Confronting this reality, that he was so out of control that he acted completely unlike himself, sets his face ablaze. His eyes are hot, like he’s sitting by a fire and the smoke is singing him. He purses his lips and sighs, shakily, from his nose.
“There is no favor to return,” he croaks.
Shane tilts his head until Ilya meets his eyes, smiling playfully. “You’ve talked me down from hundreds of panic attacks, Rozanov. Maybe let me hold you every once in a while.” He takes the cup from his hand and sets it back on the table, grabs his forearms and pulls him in, down, on top of him. “I like how you can be soft with me,” he whispers.
“I have never felt that way before.” Ilya nuzzles his cheek against Shane’s chest and listens reverently to the thumping of his heart. When Shane runs his fingers through his hair and scratches lovingly at his scalp, he melts against him, suddenly exhausted. Each breath beneath him is full and steady. “I felt confused, like a child. My emotions were… too big.”
I’m embarrassed, he thinks, but doesn’t say it.
The hand in his hair deepens in pressure, massaging up from the base of his neck, thumb rubbing in mind-numbing circles. “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Shane says softly. “I feel that way too sometimes.”
Ilya’s chest aches. He pushes down the compulsion to posture and act tough and replays Shane’s earnest words: I like how you can be soft with me. Nothing else has been proven true, only this. Shane smiles when he’s sappy and croons when he’s emotional and is always exactly what he needs. How is this instance any different?
“I think I like when you hold me,” he confesses, and the world doesn’t end. Shane just nods, as if it’s not a big deal, not a disruption. He traces the shell of Ilya’s ear with a warm, soft finger. His other hand pulls at his back like he's trying to bring him closer, no matter that they're chest-to-chest, heartbeats close to syncing. Nothing hurts anymore.
“Then I’ll hold you,” he says.