Chapter 2
Finn went to the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror—pale, eyes wide and strained, the ghost of the game still haunting his reflection.
He splashed cold water on his face, trying to scrub away the static.
It didn't work.
When he walked back out, bracing himself for the assault of the overhead LEDs, the kitchen was dimmer.
The harsh, clinical brightness had been replaced by the softer, golden glow of the under-cabinet lights.
Alexei must have noticed the way Finn was squinting, the tightness around his eyes that screamed
"too much."
The physical relief was instant, his optic nerves stopping their screaming, but it was immediately chased by another sour wash of guilt.
Alexei was already adjusting his life just to accommodate Finn's moods.
He didn't want to be the high-maintenance boyfriend.
He didn't want to be the guy who needed the world softened just to function.
He wanted to be easy.
He wanted to be
normal
Swalloing his thoughts, he sat down on the island, his movement feeling heavy and clumsy—so different from the fierce, untouchable athlete he was not less than an hour ago.
Even with the lights low, his ears were still ringing, picking up frequencies that shouldn't matter, makin the clinking of silverware on plates sounded like gunshots in the otherway quiet room.
Alexei placed the bowl in front of him with a flourish, beaming smile like he'd just scored an overtime winner.
"Carbonara," his boyfriend announced, gesturing grandly at the dish.
"Real thing.
No cream, just egg and cheese.
Like Italian grandmother taught me on ClipHub."
That, at least, startled a genuine, albeit small, huff of laughter from him.
It felt good, a brief, clean release of pressure in his chest.
"You watched a tutorial?" Finn asked, a small smile tugging at his lips.
"Many tutorials.
I am expert now," Alexei declared proudly.
But then Finn looked down and the smile died a little.
The sauce was thick.
Glistening.
The smell billowed up, hot and overwhelming, reclaiming the air in the room.
His stomach seized and his throat closed almost instantly.
But Alexei was watching him, waiting.
And the plate sat in front of him like an accusation.
What for anyone else it may had been just innocent pasta.
To Finn, right now, it was a sensory nightmare.
The smell of the cheese was too sharp, too heavy, clogging the air in the kitchen until he felt like he couldn't take a full breath.
The texture, he knew without tasting it, would be wrong.
Slimy.
As Finn made the effort to remind normal, they talked.
They talked about the flight, about the weather in Alderwood, about Finn's parents and the holidays.
Other than the few words when he first arrived home, Alexei wove a tapestry of conversation that conspicuously avoided the one topic hanging over them like a guillotine blade.
The game.
The monumental loss.
Finn's impediment to perform how he should, how was expected of him.
Alexei may think he was protecting him, that by distracting him he was being helpful.
It was sweet.
It made Finn want to crawl under the table.
He did his best to play his part in this dance that he had learnt how to perform in, back when he was a kid and social interactions were much more difficult to process.
He nodded at the right times.
He forced a smile when Alexei made a joke about his mother's cooking.
He asked follow-up questions, keeping the rhythm natural, keeping the silence at bay so the static in his head wouldn't drown him out.
And he ate.
Or rather, he performed the act of eating.
He cut a microscopic piece of bacon.
He wrapped a single, lonely strand of fettuccine around his fork.
He placed it in his mouth and swallowed it whole, bypassing the taste buds that were screaming
wrong, wrong, wrong
, treating the food like medicine he had to choke down.
He thought he was being subtle.
He thought he was managing the variable, keeping his problems hidden behind a facade of polite participation.
This act had worked for him a thousand times before, he had mastered at lunches with his parents, at dinners with the team.
He knew how to make everybody around him think he was eating and engaging in the conversations while actively rotting inside.
But he forgot who he was sitting with.
Alexei Kurov was not like everyone else, he made a living finding the smallest weakness in a defense, made millions noticing a shift in weight, a drop of a shoulder, a micro-expression of hesitation.
And for ten years, his favorite subject of study hadn't been game tape; it had been Finn Merrick.
So of course he would notice, there is little Finn could shield from him nowadays.
Alexei stopped talking mid-sentence.
The story about Finn's mom died in the air.
"Stop playing with it," Alexei's voice came from across the kitchen island, tight with sudden impatience.
"You are not five.
Eat."
Finn flinched.
He was used to the tone.
Or rather, he was getting used to it.
He was learning not to take the sharp, blunt edges of Alexei's English personally, to understand that the lack of softness wasn't a lack of care.
It was just the language barrier that would always stand between them, the direct, unvarnished way Alexei translated thought into sound.
It was just how they spoke in Dravonia.
Or at least, how Alexei spoke.
Efficient.
Commanding.
Under normal conditions, Finn would have brushed it off.
He might have even teased him back about being a dictator.
But these were not normal conditions. His buffer was gone.
The sound of Alexei's voice felt like something scraping against his nerves, prickly and irritating.
It bypassed his rational brain completely and hit his fight-or-flight response like a physical blow.
"I'm not hungry."
"You are lying," Alexei snapped, looking at him with something in his eyes that Finn didn't have the capacity to understand right now.
He looked huge in the small kitchen, his presence taking up all the oxygen.
"You played hard tonight.
You burned everything."
"Not hard enough," Finn muttered.
The words slipped out before he could filtered them, his toxic, relentless internal monologue leaking into the room.
Something crossed Alexei's eyes then.
Something dark.
A flash of that protective, possessive aggression that usually happened when an opponent took a cheap shot at Finn.
But there was no opponent to fight or scream at a screen to here.
Just Finn, beating himself up.
"So you starve yourself?" Alexei asked, the question sharp with frustration, landing like an accusation.
"I'm not starving myself Alexei, don't be dramatic." Finn shot back.
He gripped the fork so hard the edges dug into his palm, it was a grounding point of pain to focus on.
"I just...
I can't eat it.
It's too much.
The day was too much."
"And you punish your body for it?" Alexei moved closer, his frustration boiling over.
"You carry the whole team, you skate until your legs shake, and then you come home and refuse food?
It is stupid, Finn.
It is reckless."
"Stop analyzing me!" Finn stood up, the chair legs dragging across the floor with a screech that made his teeth ache.
"I handled myself for ten years before you showed up!
I don't need a babysitter.
I don't need you watching every bite I take like I'm some... some broken project you have to fix."
"I am not trying to fix you!
I am trying to love you!" Alexei yelled, throwing his hands up.
"But you make it so hard!
You lock the door.
You hide inside your head where I cannot reach.
Why are you with me if you want to be alone so bad?"
The words hit Finn like a physical blow to the chest.
The air in the room seemed to vanish, as the hum of the refrigerator got louder, buzzing in his ears and the lights felt searingly bright.
The anger that had been holding him upright simply evaporated, leaving him hollow and trembling.
He wasn't trying to lock Alexei out, he was just trying to keep the overwhelming noise of the world from crushing them both.
He was trying to be the Finn Merrick that everyone expected—solid, unbreakable, easy—and he was failing.
His throat constricted, tight and painful.
He tried to swallow the feeling down, to push it into the box where he kept the panic during games, but the lid wouldn't stay down.
"I'm not..." Finn's voice broke.
"I don't want to be alone."
He looked up at Alexei, and the fight went out of him completely.
His eyes burned, and before he could turn away, the tears spilled over.
They felt hot on his skin, humiliating and undeniable.
He stood there, shoulders slumped, looking at Alexei with wet, wide eyes, radiating a misery so raw it felt like he was skinless.
His bottom lip trembled—a small, involuntary spasm that betrayed just how close he was to shattering completely.
He didn't look like the Captain of the Kingsford Voyageurs.
He looked devastated.
He looked like something small and kicked that didn't understand why it was being punished.