Chapter 3
The silence that crashed into the room was sudden and absolute.
Alexei's mouth snapped shut.
The fury in his posture dissolved instantly, replaced by a shock so profound it looked painful.
It was like watching a string being cut.
The arrogance, the frustration, the hardness—it all fell away, leaving him looking horrified.
"Finn," Alexei breathed out.
The name was a prayer.
He moved fast, closing the distance between them and crashing into Finn's space, blocking out the bright kitchen lights, blocking out the overwhelming room.
His hands hovering for a split second before cupping Finn's face, treating him like he was made of spun glass.
"No, no, hey.
Don't.
Please." Alexei's voice was a wreck.
"I am sorry.
I am so sorry.
I am idiot.
I am brute.
I am sorry." He repeated it like a mantra, his thumbs brushing frantically at the tears, smearing the wetness across Finn's cheekbones as if he could erase the evidence of his own stupidity.
"I am sorry, solynshko.
I didn't mean to...
I pushed too hard."
"I didn't mean to yell," Finn whispered, his voice thick.
Is okay, I deserved it" Alexei murmured against his skin, kissing a fresh tear right as it escaped.
He tasted the salt, lingering for a second too long, his hold tightening possessively on the back of Finn's neck.
"I was loud.
Too loud.
I know you hate the noise."
The apology made it worse.
It was a confirmation of his own defectiveness.
I know you hate the noise.
It sounded like an accommodation for a child, or a warning label on a fragile piece of equipment.
Finn felt the warmth of Alexei's chest, the solid, grounding weight of his hands, and a desperate part of him wanted to burrow into it and hide until the world stopped spinning.
But his skin was crawling.
The physical contact, as much as he craved it, was just
More heat.
More texture.
More weight.
More input on a system that was already flashing red warning lights.
The sensation of Alexei's scruff against his wet cheek, usually a comfort, felt like sandpaper grating against a sunburn.
"I can't," Finn choked out.
He jerked back.
But it wasn't a gentle retreat; he flinched, a desperate, physical scramble for personal space.
He stumbled back until his hips hit the edge of the granite counter, putting a sudden, cold foot of distance between them.
"Finn?" Alexei's hands fell to his sides, looking empty.
"Don't," Finn gasped, wrapping his arms tight around his own middle, holding himself together because he felt like he was physically spilling out.
He turned his face away, unable to bear the weight of Alexei's concern.
"Just... don't look at me.
The shame was a hot, acidic wave rising in his throat.
He was twenty-eight years old.
He was the Captain of the Kingsford Voyageurs.
He played through broken bones and torn ligaments without flinching.
And now?
Now he was cowering in his own kitchen, crying and hyperventilating because his boyfriend raised his voice and the pasta smelled wrong.
It was pathetic.
It was humiliating.
"I'm sorry," Finn whispered again, the words scraping his throat.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the image of Alexei's devastated face, but the darkness just made the ringing in his ears louder.
"I'm sorry, I just...
I need a second.
Everything is just too much."
He didn't make a conscious decision to sit.
Gravity just took over where his will finally failed.
He slid down the front of the counter, his spine scraping against the marble, until he hit the cold tile floor.
He pulled his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them in a tight, desperate knot, burying his face in the space between his arms and his thighs.
He curled in on himself, trying to make his body as small as he felt.
The tears kept coming, hot and stupid, soaking into the denim of his jeans, but the sobbing was silent now.
A jagged, gasping fight for air that hurt his ribs.
Inside his head, the static had turned into a screaming, coherent loop of self-hatred.
Alexei had flown across the continent.
Alexei had gone grocery shopping.
Alexei, who hated cooking, had watched videos of Italian grandmothers just to make Finn smile.
He had set the table.
He had waited.
He had been so proud.
And Finn had thrown it back in his face because he couldn't handle the
smell
He wasn't enough.
He was never going to be enough.
He couldn't even do the basics of being a human being, let alone a partner.
Normal people came home from work and ate dinner with their boyfriends.
Normal people didn't need the lights dimmed and the world silenced just to exist.
Normal people didn't treat a gesture of love like an assault.
He was a bad boyfriend.
He was a defective boyfriend.
He had failed to keep his problems out of their relationship.
Alexei doesn't need this,
Finn thought, the realization settling in his gut like lead.
He has his own pressure.
He has the media, the trade rumors, his own bruises to heal.
He needs a partner who supports him.
Someone easy.
Someone fun.
He didn't need a basket case who required a manual to operate.
Finn squeezed his eyes shut tighter, wishing he could just disappear into the floorboards.
He was just another problem for Alexei to solve, another weight on Alexei's shoulders, and the guilt of it was crushing him faster than the anxiety ever could.
He waited for the footsteps walking away.
He waited for the slam of a door.
He waited for the inevitable sound of Alexei giving up on him.
But the footsteps didn't leave.
They got closer, then stopped.
There was a soft
clink
of ceramic on wood—the sound of the pasta bowl being moved far, far away to the counter on the other side of the room.
The smell receded, just a fraction, but enough to let a thimbleful of oxygen back into the kitchen.
Then, a rustle of fabric.
A soft exhalation of air.
Finn squeezed his eyes tighter, bracing for a hand on his shoulder, for the demand of comfort he couldn't give right now.
But the touch never came.
Slowly, carefully, Finn peeled one eye open, peering out from the fortress of his own arms.
Alexei was sitting on the floor.
He was sitting directly across from Finn, back against the oven, legs crossed loosely.
But he wasn't close.
He had left a deliberate, wide expanse of tiled floor between them—a no-man's-land of safety.
He wasn't crowding Finn.
He wasn't looming.
He wasn't even looking directly at him; his gaze was fixed on a spot on the floor near Finn's foot, soft and unfocused.
He had made himself small.
He had made himself quiet.
And he was breathing.
It wasn't his normal breathing.
It was deliberate.
Rhythmic.
Alexei took a deep, exaggerated inhale through his nose, his chest expanding visibly, holding it for a count of four.
Then a slow, audible exhale through his mouth, like he was blowing out a candle.
In... two... three... four.
Out... two... three... four.
He didn't say a word, didn't issue a command like
"breathe with me."
He didn't try to fix it with logic or apologies.
He just sat there, a few feet away, and became a living metronome.
Finn watched him, mesmerized.
The only sound in the room was the steady, rolling tide of his boyfriend's breath.
Finn's lungs, which had been locked in a spasm of shallow, panicked gasps, began to stutter.
Biology took over.
The mirror neurons in his brain, desperate for a pattern to latch onto, began to sync with the only steady thing in the room.
He took a shaky, wet breath.
It hitched painfully, but it went deeper than the last one.
Alexei didn't react, didn't jump on the progress or praise him.
He just kept the rhythm going, steady as a heartbeat, unshakeable as a mountain.
He was offering Finn an anchor, but he wasn't forcing Finn to grab it.
He was just floating it out there in the empty space between them.
The knot in Finn's chest loosened, just a millimeter.
The crushing weight of
I ruined it
didn't disappear, but the panic began to recede, replaced by a dull, aching exhaustion.
Alexei wasn't leaving.
Alexei wasn't angry.
Alexei was just breathing.
It took a long time.