Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The gala line-up is released two days later. 

Of course, Mikhail was offered a guaranteed slot as the winner, which he’d taken eagerly. His Kung Fu Panda gala programme isn’t necessarily up to the prestige of the Olympics, but that doesn’t bother him. It is fun and authentic to him; it’d show off his personality well to the audience (who would be seeing a lot more of him, if he had anything to say about it). 

Plus, his team didn’t lug that ridiculous panda costume all the way to Milan for him not to use it.

Ilia is invited too. His spot was secure before, then thrown up in the air after the final results came out. They still let him keep it, which Mikhail is happy for, because Ilia has indicated something important about his gala performance.

In true character for him, Ilia also elects not to give any information about what this importance was, only that he’d choreographed it himself (which is a big step for a skater, but definitely not what he’s referencing).

Mikhail is curious about it and finds out more at the rehearsals, which is the next time he sees Ilia in person since the free skate. 

The change in his demeanour is night and day from before the competition, but the shift in the atmosphere is evident too. Everyone is light and loose because the pressure is finally removed from Milan, and everyone is determined to make the most out of what they have left of it. Music echoes throughout the arena, skaters weaving in and out of each other’s space and laughing through language barriers. 

Ilia fits into it, too. He is smiling and happy, and as Mikhail practices his own gala performance, he can see a glimpse of Junhwan flying around with a camera, capturing the rest of the skaters, including Ilia. Mikhail will show his face too, once his time to practice with his music is over. 

He also understands, distantly, that this is the version of Ilia that is reserved for friends again. To some level, this is a performance, even if he is feeling better. There is more underneath the surface that is not being expressed, pushed aside just enough to be manageable and certainly aided by the fact that everyone here has enough empathy to know not to breach the topic of medals with him. 

Still, it’s hard to feel anything other than relief and joy when Ilia skates up to him after he finishes his rehearsal with a smile on his face, telling him, “Your programme is so much fun to watch.”

Ilia doesn’t skate his own programme full-out, as usual. He moves through sections to do a marked run-through without fully committing to any of the jumps or the hand-movements for the choreography. The song is a rap song, and Mikhail can’t really understand what it’s about because the words are too fast, but he’s certain, from pure sound alone, that Ilia’s gala performance is far less “fun” than his. 

Ilia is incredibly focused as he flies around the rink. With no cameras and no press outside of the ones that individual skaters had to share on Instagram stories or whatever, Mikhail can watch Ilia skate fully without pressure for the first time since they arrived at Milan. 

The best word for the programme is intensity. Even without jumps, there’s a fire in Ilia’s eyes, and he’s rapping along to the music as if he could feel it with every fibre of his being. Mikhail recognises the artist distantly, NF; he was fairly certain based on Ilia’s past programmes. 

At least Ilia will close out his Olympic performances with a skate that is wholly his own. His own choreography, his own meaning, to his favourite artist, with no pressure to perform any specific jumps or any particular way.

Will they mention the events of the individual event before he skates? Perhaps, though Mikhail hoped not. Is the programme directly connected to the individual event? Probably. 

He mirrors Ilia’s actions and comes up to him right after he finishes skating, Ilia’s chest still rising and falling with exertion.

“It looks…” he pauses, searching for a good word. “Emotional.”

Ilia nods slowly, “It means a lot to me,” he replies, quietly.

Mikhail is not much busier immediately following his gold medal win than he was before it, but the difference lies in what will wait for him.

His coaches and agent speak to him in excited voices of what to expect next, a press tour unmarvelled waiting for him in Kazakhstan upon his return. He has interviews lined up back-to-back, chances to meet people he’s only ever seen on television, been told promises of riches that don’t feel real after years of struggle.

New apartments. New cars. Money that can change his life. Backing from his country that feels surreal ever since they pulled it when he was injured all those years ago and left him to fend for himself. They’re eager to claim him again. 

His life is going to change irrevocably. He’s going to be busy, and it’s slightly disconcerting, rather than purely thrilling like he’d expected.

It’s like every time he checks his phone, his Instagram following has nearly doubled again. He’s going to be known. Things are going to be very different. 

When he gets back, he’ll have a full schedule, something like Ilia’s jam-packed one from the beginning of January up until February 13th.

For now, he continues to make the most of Milan and his last time to relax for the next…month, perhaps?

Ilia, meanwhile, has some obligations that he can’t quite escape. There are interviews he has to attend, ones that can’t be cancelled, even if Ilia probably wishes that they could be, more than anything. He appears on NBC alongside the rest of Team USA and speaks carefully of their shared achievement, tone neutral and with a pointed lack of interest taken in the results of the individual event. 

There are commercial shoots too and brand deals, ones that will probably not air until later than they originally planned, until the air of expectation and loss dissipates. 

He’s also managed to get out of some of them. He sends Mikhail a new schedule that, shockingly, has breaks in it. 

This is a joy for Ilia, he’s sure, who says he’ll be watching the women’s skates now that he can actually find the time for them. That his dad and he are going to go out and sightsee, and that he’ll be keeping busy, but at least it’s with things that he wants to do.

(And Ilia may be running from his problems a bit. Mikhail doesn’t address it, but Ilia’s drive to stay busy, to hang out with people whom he’s friends with…all normal, but all distractions nonetheless. When he goes back home, what else would he find to distract himself with?)

They see each other again just before the gala. They aren’t alone together, unfortunately, because the rest of the skaters who’d been offered a slot for the gala are there too. It’s dinner again, but the atmosphere is looser this time. Worlds are still ahead, so no one is completely off their diet, but there’s a shared understanding that this moment is meant to be fun. They’re all basically eating cheat meals, anyway. 

Mikhail has already finished his food and is eating a cupcake while he stares across the table at Ilia, who is still picking at his main course. It’s a plate of fries and chicken tenders, notoriously Ilia’s go-to meal, yet the majority of it was still sitting on his plate.

It’s still not Mikhail who points it out, this time. Instead, it’s Amber who says something.

The meal is halfway eaten, if Mikhail is being generous (which is more than some of his other meals), when Ilia shoves it away.

She looks at him and asks, teasingly, “Are you finally getting sick of tenders and fries?”

Ilia blinks at her, rolling his lips together for a second, filling in the words that she’s left unsaid. 

“Maybe my taste is developing.” He replies, reaching for his small dessert plate and picking up a cannoli.

“Right…” Amber says, slowly.

He makes eye contact with her deliberately as he takes a bite, exaggerating the gesture and widening his eyes in mock enjoyment.

Forget about it, he seems to say.

This now makes at least three different people, including Mikhail, who’ve noticed. That does not mean nothing. Of course, it doesn’t mean something either, but it does indicate a pattern that Mikhail does not like.

It also means that the idea that Ilia is eating more when Mikhail is not around is likely false.

Mikhail doesn’t know how to broach this topic, either. It wasn’t like it’d gone particularly well when he’d pointed it out earlier, nor has it seemed to be productive with Amber or Alysa.

So, much like Ilia’s general mental health, it sits as a giant elephant in the room.

He’s not sure if Ilia has realised his concerns yet, though he’s certainly noticed the USA girls, because Alysa is looking at him too and—oh, Mikhail can see what Ilia meant when he described the looks he was getting as pitying, because there’s no other way to describe Alysa’s expression as she looks at him.

Mikhail does not know a lot about Alysa, either. He knows from the media coverage that her original coach was horrifically abusive, that she’d returned with the goal of skating more freely than she had before. He knows that she used to struggle in this way, many years ago. If she is noticing…maybe it is something she saw in herself back then.

He hopes that he is wrong. 

Ilia texts him the name of the song, Fear, shortly before the gala begins.

Mikhail googles the lyrics and has the translator convert them to Russian, and can instantly see how this programme means so much to Ilia just from the words alone that convey so much about Ilia’s life, about his mindset, about the Olympic performance and the expectations on him. 

Mikhail watches the performance from backstage with bated breath. He’d already performed his gala piece, his Kung Fu Panda programme with guest stars who were willing to be silly and fun with him. Everyone so far had been spectacular (especially Niina’s, who Mikhail was always partial to), but he’d been biased in waiting for this one, as he’d been since he’d seen it.

Is this what you wanted?

It’s vulnerable and raw. Ilia addresses it, finally, how badly the hate online would suffocate him on the days he wasn’t feeling his best. How quickly everyone could get into his head and refuse to let go. How badly he wants to be enough, for everyone to like him and to appease what they want; his fans, his sponsors, his family, his friends, the federation, himself.

It’s artistic. Ilia can be when he’s not competing and there are no major jumps to worry about. He still does them in the programme, even includes a backflip that inspires the same cheer from the audience that it does when he includes it in his competitive programmes. When he finishes, looking up to the sky, his eyes glisten with unshed tears, and he skates around on the ice for a moment before his finishing pose. 

Mikhail can see it, the mirror to the free, the intentionality behind it. 

He takes out his phone quickly.

Ilyushka, you were spectacular.
It was just as powerful as you said it would be.
I loved it so much. People are going to connect with this.

It feels a bit sappy already, admittedly, and Mikhail is in a mood to fawn, high on life and love just like he has been for the past few days. He tacks on at the end the typical, ‘I love you,’ even though it’s obvious that would be the case.

After the gala, they go out for drinks. Or, all of them except for Ami, who is left behind for obvious reasons. 

Mikhail can hold his liquor well; they do shots together, and they burn, but nothing beyond the expected.

Ilia doesn’t like the taste of alcohol, usually goes for drinks that are sweet and fruity enough to cover it up, but he does shots because everyone else is. Mikhail laughs at his face as he cringes after each one, utterly disgusted. 

He’s so fond of Ilia, always is.

Even more so when Ilia gets (inevitably) wasted off the shots. Mikhail pretends like one of the reasons can’t possibly be how low of a body fat percentage Ilia is probably at by now. It’s easy not to think about, because Ilia’s liquor tolerance has always been egregiously bad. His Slavic blood clearly did not grant him any ‘good with alcohol’ genes. 

So, a drunk Ilia ends up surprisingly clumsy and clingy to most people, even if he’s especially clingy towards Mikhail, which makes it easy to justify the touch as “drunk Ilia is overly friendly.”

“Mishenkaaa,” Ilia slurs, fingers a ghost along Mikhail’s chest as he drags one of his hands down the fabric of Mikhail’s shirt limply. “Y’know, I’m really sooo happy for you, right?” 

Mikhail tilts his head back and laughs, shaking his brown hair out of his eyes. “Yes, you told me.” He replies.

“Cus, it’s like…” He drags out, trying to gather a coherent thought. “The fucking worst thing ever in my life, but you just look so pretty when you’re happy. Wanna make you happy all the time for it.”

The sentence is not concerning enough to pierce through the alcohol and bring down the mood, though maybe it would if Mikhail were marginally closer to sober. 

Ilia’s other hand is holding some cocktail he takes a sip of, and Mikhail thinks that Ilia’s probably had enough to drink as is, but he’s swaying closer, and Mikhail lets one of his hands slide back around Ilia’s waist to make sure they maintain a…semi-respectable distance.

“I’m always happy when I’m with you.” Mikhail replies, braced teeth still showing in his grin.

Ilia nods. “That’s good, because sometimes I get really, really sad,” he hiccups, “but then I see you, or think about you, and I feel so much better, because you’re like…” the words trail off, and Mikhail tries to prompt him.

“Like…?”

Ilia devolves into laughter instead. “I don’t know.” He giggles. “But it’s so nice, that’s why I love—”

“Yeah, I love your skating too!” Mikhail says, over the words, still sober enough to know that appearances are relatively important, and it seems to shock Ilia into some form of cognisance again, as he takes a step back. 

“Right.” He beams and then takes another sip of his cocktail. “‘M gonna go find Amber!” He yells and then vanishes off into the air.

Mikhail gets more drunk throughout the evening, too. Despite his best attempts to pace himself, it doesn’t really work out, and then one moment he’s at the club, and the next moment they’re all stumbling down the street far too late into the night. 

They end up at some cheap Asian place, which is a ridiculously confusing meal to get in Italy, only because Ilia is draped over Mikhail and whining that he’s hungry (which was surprising in a way that saddened Mikhail, because it’d been hours since they’d had dinner that Ilia’d barely eaten any of, and somehow he was still surprised that Ilia would want to eat…) and then Amber declared that she could eat too, and it was the first place that they saw on the way back.  

The poor man forced to take their order looks utterly unimpressed by their attempts to communicate, but they get their food, and Mikhail’s walking while watching Ilia’s efforts to eat a noodle dish with chopsticks while walking and drunk, and also stealing one of Ilia’s mozzarella sticks (which was a confusing dish to get at an Asian place, and also did not go with noodles, but Mikhail wasn’t judging). 

Ilia certainly would’ve offered to give him some of them if he’d asked, too, but what was the fun in that? 

Mikhail only sort of knows what anyone is saying, too; half of them are speaking Russian, and the other half English, and even still, those languages are barely helping them through the fog of liquor, broken grammar, poor vocabulary and dimmed down cognition. 

Mikhail can’t help but think that Ilia looks so pretty like this, his blue eyes all fuzzy, flushed cheeks, and his long blonde hair flowing in the wind of the night. He’s such a sight.

Mikhail wishes he could tug Ilia away from the crowd, that they could grab each other and kiss passionately under the moonlight of the streetlamp-lit cobblestone streets. They’d forget about the world and the medals and be together without judgment. 

Such is not reality. 

Reality is instead that Mikhail makes his way back to his room, and almost thirty minutes later, there is a harsh knock on the door that opens up to reveal a slightly less drunk Ilia. 

“You don’t have a roommate, right?”

Mikhail nods his head, because it was true. After he won, he wasn’t sure what strings had been pulled, but they told him he could pack up and move into a single for the remainder of the time. He’d done just that. But he hadn’t expected—

“Great,” Ilia grins. “No one else knows I’m here.” Then he shoves his way in, slams the door closed, and they’re already making out. 

It’s pure bliss. Mikhail’s not sure that life could get any better.

Mikhail wakes up first, naked and hungover.

He slides on his glasses and turns his head to the side.

Ilia is still asleep next to him.

The sunlight streams through the windows in thin, golden streaks, spilling across the bed and illuminating Ilia’s silhouette. It catches in his hair, light glossing his blonde hair fanned out around his face, almost as if it were a halo. His face is slack with sleep, unguarded in a way Mikhail rarely gets to see. 

It feels quiet and peaceful; it’s such a treat to get the opportunity for this, when it wasn’t something they were usually given. Mikhail allows himself the chance to look, to take in all the details of Ilia’s face again, before he can’t see it anymore. Not like this, not in person. 

The moment is tainted by the voice in his head that reminds him that when Ilia wakes up, he’ll have to leave again. They’ll have to go back to their usual. Back to being nothing more than amicable competitors, back to glances and brief touches. Back to acting like there aren’t years of history between them that run deeper than anyone else could possibly understand, as if love for each other doesn’t pulse fervently deep beneath their skin. 

The closing ceremony for Milan is tonight. 

That means that this morning will be the last time they get to exist in the same vicinity together until the next competition that brings them in. 

It was supposed to be Worlds, only a month out.

Now, even that’s uncertain. 

Mikhail’s team is already proposing that he skip it. 

Logically, it makes sense. Olympic gold medalists rarely went to Worlds after the games. The season had been very, very long, and it’s been a rough one at that. Ending on this—on the highest note possible, an Olympic gold medal that was going to be the highlight of his career, was probably the best idea. Another gold would be spectacular, especially back-to-back with it.

But it’s also unnecessary, and with both Ilia and Yuma still planning to go, any medal was as contentious as ever, and it would be another battle. 

Skipping Worlds had the downside that he would miss out on the last competition before the offseason, and thus, his last opportunity to see Ilia before the offseason.

The decision might not even matter, because Ilia doesn’t even know if he’s going, either. 

Mikhail can still remember the conversation from last night, before they went out for drinks.

“There are people online saying that I should skip it, since the Olympics went so badly.”

Mikhail nearly shrieked at him about it when he mentioned it. 

Ilia backtracked then, immediately, words tumbling over himself as he amended his statement. “It’s not just the online people, though. My dad said it too. He said he thinks that I would win, but I can tell that he’s thinking about what happens if I don’t. Raf is worried that I am too in my head already and that I need to regroup. Or maybe he thinks that I can do it, and I’m already overthinking. I don’t know.” He sighs. “I want to prove that I can, but that doesn’t seem to work out for me well, either.”

Mikhail did not want to argue, so instead of yelling at Ilia to think for himself, instead of thinking about what everyone else was thinking and expecting of him. He knows it’s not that simple, so there was no point. Mikhail told him, instead, carefully, “It’s your choice, but if you go in determined, then you can do it.”

It’s vague enough to be correct, but not enough to put any pressure on him.

Honestly, he still isn’t sure what the outcome of Worlds will be. He’s not sure if Ilia will go, or if he will. Mikhail wonders if Ilia’s headspace is productive for skating the way he is right now. If he’s able to overcome it by Worlds…time will tell. Mikhail would be right there beside him (figuratively) to help him out if he needed anything. 

Ilia is fine, sometimes. It switches quite quickly right now. He’s in a good mood sometimes, around other people. When there’s something to show. He’s emotive and passionate in his performance on the ice. He’s raw and open in his skating, emotions spilling out in ways that feel too honest. Then he’s bright and positive again when he’s drunk, laughing loud and unfiltered, like nothing is wrong. Around Mikhail, he is sometimes openly uncertain; doubt creeps in around the edges of his statements. 

But he’s not spiralling all the time, or sad constantly, which must mean something good, at least.

Right?

Ilia is peaceful, his chest rising and falling in a deep sleep. Mikhail looks back at him, and then with every passing second, his concern begins to rise. Mikhail can see his collarbones, far more defined than they used to be. He can see Ilia’s hip bones, sharp and noticeable under the skin. Last night, MIkhail could feel them under his hand, too easy to grab. Even his quads, still strong, were noticeably leaner beneath his fingers. 

Mikhail can’t imagine it as anything other than a physical manifestation of the mental battles that Ilia has been facing. 

Mikhail hopes, with optimism, that it isn’t that serious. It’s the same hope that Mikhail can see in Alysa’s face, that she worries about him and what might be rushing through his head. 

It’s still not working well. 

The bliss can’t last, though. No matter how much Mikhail wishes it could. Their final goodbye comes too fast; Ilia wakes squinting against the bright lights and whimpering about a terrible headache.

They can’t stay long, anyway.

It’s already suspicious enough that neither of them were seen last night after they went drinking, nor had they given anyone any excuses. Word could be spread. Not of the two of them together, unless people start connecting bizarre dots and too long glances very suddenly. 

There were already jokes both online and amongst the athletes themselves about how much…coupling…was being done at Milano Cortino, and Mikhail had no interest in becoming a part of that conversation, even if they were technically a part of the problem now…that was not the point. 

Instead, they have to get dressed quickly, as if nothing ever happened.

It’s emotional, as always. 

How do you say goodbye to someone that you’d rather see every day for the rest of your life?

How could they ever go back to distance after almost twenty days of existing in the same vicinity?

Mikhail wishes, rather selfishly, that Ilia could come back to Kazakhstan with him. They could spend the days at Mikhail’s botched ice rink in Almaty and one of his new promised apartments all alone. They’d be able to touch however they wanted, whenever they wanted, in the privacy of their own shared space. There would be no concerns about how to sneak around or avoid the prying eyes of their team members. It would be so lovely and isolated once the hype died down, and it would be so them, instead of phone calls across nine-hour time differences. 

Reality is harsher, a small hotel room and a goodbye that has to come, no matter what. 

Tears threaten to blossom in his eyes as they stand at the doorway, and Ilia holds him tight. “The best part of Milan has been you,” he murmurs. “I wish I could see you every day, you have no idea how much it—” he chokes, and the thought dies. “I love you,” is what he says instead.

Mikhail’s heart soars. “We’ll call,” he says, though it seems painfully insufficient. “I love you more.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.” Ilia laughs, and then his hand grasps the handle.

“I’ll see you soon,” he promises as he slips out of the room, and neither of them bother to address the fact that the statement is probably untrue.

Mikhail skips Worlds. Ilia doesn’t.

Mikhail is, thus, prepared to watch Ilia from afar, because Czechia is too far to reasonably justify travelling to if he wasn’t going to compete. Mikhail tries to give him space while he’s getting prepared for the competition, texting him back and forth, but not calling on the phone in a concerted effort not to disturb Ilia if he’s busy.

Instead, after training, Mikhail is getting back to his apartment, which still has boxes of unpacked stuff, when he gets a phone call instead.

It’s Ilia.

And it’s a little past 10 am, which is not a good sign at all…

“Fuck, Misha—I fucked up so bad—”

The phone is angled at the ceiling, fluorescent lighting beaming through the lights. Ilia is not in frame at all.

“Ilia? What happened? Are you okay?” Mikhail questions. It’d been a bit rough for Ilia since the Olympics, as much as he tried to hide it most of the time. He’d been doing much better after Artists on Ice, where he got to skate for himself, and then when he went home with his family, things seemed to be improving marginally. This didn’t seem to be a positive call.

“I don’t know why I did this,” Ilia laughs hysterically. “Ari’s gonna kill me!”

“Why would Ari be mad?” Mikhail asks, running through the potential reasons. Did Ilia repost or say something to cause a controversy? It wouldn’t be the first time, but it typically wouldn’t prompt this response. Had he angered a sponsor? Whatever it was, it surely wasn’t beyond repair.

The phone moves, and Ilia’s tear-ridden face pops into frame, and oh.

“Oh, Ilia—”

He doesn’t really get to come up with a good way to compliment Ilia’s…special…new look before he’s already getting cut off again.

“See, you think I look insane!”

“I don’t—” 

“You hesitated! That means it really looks bad, oh my God, what did I do?”

“It does not look bad!” Mikhail defends, “It’s just very different.”

Ilia has impromptu decided he needed to make a change, clearly, and cut his hair. It’s quite the dramatic haircut, too, especially with how long it was before. And botched is not the word that Mikhail would use, because it really isn’t that bad, but…choppy was probably an accurate term.

It’s uneven and sticking up a little wildly. The blonde makes it look very wispy, almost see-through in the bathroom’s fluorescent lighting.

“The best you can come up with is different? Fuck, it looks terrible!”

He sets the phone down haphazardly, and it makes a loud noise over the speaker. 

“It’s not bad, Ilia, it’s just a big change! It does look good!” Mikhail tries to console. “I’m just surprised, that's all. I thought you liked the long hair?”

“I did like the long hair!” Ilia wails, Mikhail’s efforts to be placating clearly not working out. “I don’t know why I did this! I just—I don’t know—I’m so fucking stupid! I’m like some dramatic teenage girl, I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s not stupid, and I doubt your publicist is going to care that you cut your hair. It looks good. It makes your face look very defined. But it’s okay—”

“It’s not okay, everything is a wreck!”

Mikhail’s brows furrow at the statement, and everything clicks. 

“This isn’t really about the hair, is it?”

Ilia sobs.

“I mean, it is! I fucked it up, just like—” Ilia chokes on the words, his hand tangling into the uneven strands of hair. Loose pieces fall away and flutter to the countertop, and Ilia stares down as if they’d personally betrayed him.

Mikhail opens his mouth, ready to offer more help, but Ilia doesn’t give him the space to even begin to formulate a thought.

“I was online again—because I can’t fucking help myself—and you know I leave for Prague tomorrow morning and I’m already nervous about the competition, but then online everyone is talking about how it’s going to be a defining moment for me because of the fucking Olympics, and how if I do badly I’m gonna be washed, like done, forever since I already fucked up the other defining moment of my career—”

His voice starts climbing again, “and I got so sick and nauseous I went to the bathroom just in case I was gonna throw up, and just to get away from it, and then I saw myself in the mirror, and all I could see was that free skate!”

The scoreboard? The arena lights? His face crumpling, or his dreams? Mikhail’s heart breaks at the idea that he’s not even sure which one it could be.

“And I just kept remembering how fucking pathetic I looked and how they could all see on the cameras, a-and—”

“Ilyushka, love—” 

“I just—” His shoulders jerk with a sharp inhale. “I just got so worked up I couldn’t even think, I was just staring at myself and I felt like there were these eyes on me and my skin was itching and I regretted so much, and I hat—” His voice splinters, cracking out to nothing. “I don’t know, I just feel like I blacked out?”

Mikhail goes very still at the implications, because this is not something that Ilia has ever communicated before, of course, because Ilia tried too hard to hide from him, even when he knew he would never be judged. 

“I don’t even remember why I started, or when I got the scissors, it was just like I blinked and I was already crying and cutting it, and I didn’t even feel like I could stop. It just kept falling, and I thought that maybe if I cut enough, then I wouldn’t see that version of me when I looked in the mirror.” His hands press against the countertop covered in bleached strands. 

“It’s just worse now.” He sighs, his breath ragged in the silence, because Mikhail knows there’s more to follow, tries to give him a bit of space.

“I just don’t know why it’s so hard,” Ilia whispers. “I don’t know why it’s so hard to be normal. It feels like everyone else messes up and then they move on, or they handle it maturely, and it’s like I fuck everything up and then I just make everything worse because I can’t just leave it be—I have to open my stupid mouth or try to prove someone wrong or try to…I don’t even know.”

So then, it really isn’t about the hair. Or even about the panic attack. It’s about this character piece, and the rumination that eats him up inside. Mikhail can feel how tense Ilia still is, the way he was back at the phone call after the free skate, where the moment is tender and the wrong words could send him into a frenzy or a shutdown. 

“You didn’t ruin anything.”

Ilia laughs at him, “Misha—”

“I’m serious, really.” Mikhail insists firmly. “You had one bad skate.”

“That’s not—no one else thinks that, they all—”

“I don’t give a fuck about that.” Mikhail spits, vitriol flaring at them. Ilia flinches over the phone. “It doesn’t matter what they think. I care about you, and Raf, and your family, and your friends. Everyone who is actually in your life who is not looking at you like some failure for one mistake, or whatever.”

Ilia’s lip trembles as he drags in shuddering breaths, his eyes glossy as he stares downward.

“You didn’t cut your hair because you’re stupid. Maybe it was impulsive, a bit, but it’s your life and your own hair, and you can do what you please with it, even if it’s on a whim. You told the media that skaters are human. Let yourself be human.”

For a moment, there’s no response, just silence over the phone.

“But it looks bad,” he mutters, weakly, circling back to the arbitrary point in a way that’s almost childlike.

Mikhail huffs at a small laugh of amusement. “It doesn’t look bad,” he says. “It looks like you. It’s a little bit rough, but it’s still you.”

“I can’t go to Worlds like this.” Ilia bemoans.

“It’s a little uneven,” Mikhail finally admits.

Ilia clenches his eyes closed and drops his head against the counter. “I’m fucked. I’m going to Prague and I look like I got electrocuted.”

“It’s fixable, even.”

“It’s not.” Ilia sniffles, clearly a little bit self-aware of the dramatic sound of it, even if it seems to feel that way. He looks pale and exhausted over the phone, and Mikhail wonders how much sleep he could’ve gotten over the past week. The answer was still probably not enough.

“I just wanted it all gone. I don’t know what I did. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Ilia repeats, hollow and defeated.

“Well, you know what I think?” Mikhail says softly, letting the moments stretch out, and Ilia just shrugs miserably.

“I think you’ve been trying really hard to hold yourself together since the Olympics.”

Ilia’s voice after comes out so quietly that it almost doesn’t pick up on the microphone. “But you know I haven’t been,” he says. Not even as a question. Not denying it, or that Mikhail knows.

Obviously, he did. 

“I know you.” Mikhail smiles sadly. “You never have to hide from me.”

“Everyone keeps acting like I’m better now,” Ilia admits. “My parents don’t talk about it because they want me to move forward, and my friends don’t ask because I’m smiling again and I’m skating decently in practice, and doing interviews where I don’t sound depressed and bitter. They think everything’s okay, and how am I supposed to let them down again?”

His hand moves instinctively to brush back hair that’s no longer there, and he cringes at the sensation. “I don’t feel much better at all. I’m fine, and then I’m having a meltdown at 3 AM because I think people online think I’m a has-been at twenty-one.”

“You’re not.”

“I know that!” Ilia exclaims. “I know that it sounds stupid. And I know there are skaters who would love to be able to do some of my tech content and have some of my scores, and I know that one competition doesn’t change what I’ve done, but my brain won’t just shut the fuck up!”

“But it’s been like this for a while?”

“It’s so much worse now. I don’t know. Before, I could make it stop. Now, it just keeps running.”

Mikhail wishes that he could be there, crossing continents to give Ilia the comfort that he deserves. He wants to sit on the bathroom floor with him and hold him until he stops shaking, to take his phone and smash it against a wall until he can no longer see what anyone else has to think. He wants to change the world, change how people speak about skaters. 

Instead, all he can do is talk to Ilia through a screen, try to help him out from unreasonably far away, and recommend the assistance of someone more qualified than he is. 

“Nobody is looking at Worlds as the determiner of your entire career. It doesn’t decide whether you earned your name.”

Ilia swallows. “I know.”

“But it feels like it?”

He nods slowly, eyes still red-rimmed and watery even as he calms down from the original tone of the call.

“For the record,” Mikhail adds, trying for something to lift the mood again. “You’re attractive enough to survive impulse hair changes.”

It does earn him a smile and an indignant noise. “Misha!”

“Most people would look terrible. Luckily, you’re not most people.”

“You’re ridiculous.” Ilia sniffles.

“But you love me. That’s why you called me.” Mikhail responds, fast on his feet.

Ilia blinks, “Yeah, that’s why I called you,” he agrees wistfully. 

Ilia doesn’t give any interviews before his short programme at Worlds, and he knocks it out of the park. The interviews that come after say that he’s skating this competition for himself, that he wants to enjoy the end of the season instead of worrying so much about scores.

The idea of it sounds amazing, Ilia focusing on himself and what he wants, rather than the expectations of others. It’s a far cry away from the man who called him a few nights earlier, sobbing over a haircut. 

I saw your performance, it was great.
I liked your answers to the interviewers, too.

Ilia sends him back something later, 

do you think that if I say i say im skating for me enough ill actually believe it?
im trying to convince myself it doesn’t mean anything

I think that you need to stop forcing yourself to feel any specific way.

i’m so sick of this season
i just wish it was over
i can’t wait to skate this stupid free program so i never have to hear it again

Mikhail reacts to the last message with a crying emoticon and responds

Aren’t they going to make you do it at the ice shows?

Ilia’s message bubble deletes and comes back two times before the response comes through.

don’t remind me.

Mikhail waits a full day for the men's free programme and is relieved to see that Ilia comes out looking far more relaxed than he did right before the free programme at the Olympics. The final group is a bit surprising as well, since Gogolev and Selevko both were in it, and more than that, ahead of Kagiyama. Mikhail hopes optimistically that all of them can perform their programmes the way that they want.

And he watches.

Watches Yuma finally get the clean free programme that he’s clearly been wanting all season, sky rocket up the ranks again and see Gogolev perform clean again, after many seasons in a row that had not worked out for him, a feeling that Mikhail is all too familiar with. Selevko pulls off a solid skate, gets a better placement than he’s ever managed to do before, and Adam…well, Adam had an amazing short programme, and Mikhail feels bad that it seems to be a repeat of exactly what happened at the Olympics for him.

That does mean that they’ve reached the end of the line…and it’s Ilia’s turn. It feels foreboding again, to have him skate right after Adam, who hadn’t managed to do as well as he’d wished. Ilia doesn’t look nervous at all, though, or at least, no more than he had been before any other competition.

He looks well rested at least, even in the harsh lighting, and if Mikhail looks harder, he can see that Ilia’s costume is not as baggy as it was at the Olympics. It sticks in Mikhail’s mind, not particularly because of the aesthetics, but because, at the Olympics, the loose fabric had hung from Ilia’s body ominously.

But it’s not fixed, only better than before.

The only truth is in knowing that you. know. nothing. 

Mikhail, in the privacy of his own apartment, gets to pace back and forth during the programme. It’s embarrassing, maybe, because he’s not really competing, but there’s too much nervous energy thrumming beneath his skin to care at all about how ridiculous it is that he’s pacing around. Roman looks calmer than he does.

The skate isn’t perfect, and Ilia (thankfully) does not attempt his quad axel, jumping a nice triple instead and then adding in other elements here and there. He ends up doing a double at some point, one that was clearly meant to be a triple, but he doesn’t get caught up in it, and by the end of the programme, he’s already smiling and looking happy with what he’s done, despite some of the ways it didn’t quite turn out. 

Mikhail is smiling along with him, and when Ilia hits his finishing pose, throwing his hands back in the air with another World title under his belt, Mikhail physically jumps for joy.

“Oh, thank God,” he breathes out. What an utter relief.  It’s not particularly because Ilia needed to win Worlds to ‘redeem’ himself, as others seem to think, but because he knew how badly Ilia needed it personally. The Worlds title is proof that Milan hadn’t shattered him into little slivers. 

Ilyushka you did it!!
You looked so good!
I’m so proud of you
You should be proud of yourself!
What a great end to your season

It’s still midday in Kazakhstan when the competition ends, so he’s able to wait around for Ilia to call him afterwards. 

He’s productive at least, while waiting. He unpacks some more of his stuff that had been sitting around and manages to put up some of the decorations that he’d ordered online and gotten shipped in. His apartment is slowly looking less like a white box and more like a home.

Ilia calls him as he’s making his egregiously late dinner (which consists of rice, egg and some other random things he’d thrown into a pan on the stove) at close to 10:30 PM.

He picks up and finds Ilia also getting ready for dinner. 

“You saw me?” He asks, giddy, smile damn near blinding over the phone. 

“Of course I saw you, I texted you when you won.”

“You did, you texted me a lot! I’m so fucking hype!” Ilia yells. 

“I’m happy for you, Ilyushka.” Mikhail smiles.

“Yeah, baby!” Ilia beams, reaching out of frame for a second and pulling out his gold medal. He holds it up to the screen. “Shit is sick!”

He’s so enthused it fills Mikhail with reassurance and joy. Ilia grabs the camera and walks with him around, and Mikhail looks down at his food on the stove and cringes as he realises he’s probably burnt the underside of it to oblivion. 

“I’m just so fucking glad it went good! And the press lady had the nerve to ask me if it made up for the Olympics, like, well, no, because it’s not a fucking Olympic gold medal, but it’s still pretty damn important!”

“Why would they even ask you about a bad competition at the one that you just won?” Mikhail complains, dumping his rice mixture that is miraculously not burnt into a bowl.

“Cus the Olympics are a pretty big deal, baby,” Ilia laughs, too excited to mourn the results like usual, and he puts something in the microwave. “I mean, surely you haven’t forgotten the gold medal you have sitting on display—”

“It’s hard to forget,” Mikhail agrees, haphazardly setting his pan down in the sink. “It was certainly an eventful moment,” he adds as he walks to the bed to sit for dinner (listen…a couch was next up on the list of things to get).

He props Ilia up against the pillows and leans back to enjoy his meal as Ilia eats his too. 

“Anyway. I told you I was so sick of the season, and I can’t wait for Stars on Ice because I’m going to be busy, but at least I don’t have to worry about these stupid competitions anymore. I made my dad go out and pick this up since I’m finally free.”

Mikhail can see the bag now, with some branding in Czech written on the front that he can’t discern. “And what is this?”

Ilia squints at the text as if he could read it either, then shrugs and holds the contents up to the screen. “It’s a cheeseburger and cheese fries.” He grins, and it does look like it would be horrifically bad for you, which means it was also probably delicious.

“You’re in Prague…and you made your dad pick up a hamburger and fries,” Mikhail repeats, and Ilia nods eagerly. “You really are American,” he sighs.

“Devastatingly,” Ilia laughs, taking a very large bite out of the burger. “Fuck, that’s so amazing,” he moans. Mikhail snorts, looking down at his bowl of rice slop. 

“That good, huh?” he teases.

“Easy for you to say, you’ve been done with the season for a whole month already.” Ilia scoffs, practically inhaling three fries at once. “And you’re not the one holding the best burger of your life.”

“It’s literally only that good because you’ve been on a diet for—”

“Ever!”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far.”

“I’m going to reach through the screen and strangle you. How dare you talk to me like this? On such a special day, too? Why do you hate me?” Ilia bemoans, dramatics increasing with every phrase.

“Sure, Ilyushka, you’re the worst.”

Ilia laughs, bright and pretty, and Mikhail adores him so much. He talks with his hands when he’s excited, gesturing wildly with a french fry as he rambles about the crowd and the energy and his performance. 

“You looked happy again while you were skating. Nothing like last time.” Mikhail agrees.

“I looked happy while I was skating?” Ilia repeats. “Usually, I just look focused?”

“No, you looked more than that.” Mikhail shrugs. “You looked like you again.”

“You’re such a romantic, Misha.” Ilia smiles, taking a bite of his burger.

Mikhail feels alive, and the distance doesn’t feel so far for once.

Ilia doesn’t get much time to himself, honestly. He goes right from Worlds practically immediately to Japan for their Stars on Ice performances, posts live updates and borderline doxxes himself on Instagram for it. 

Japan basically doesn’t allow any recordings of any venue performances, which means that it will be damn near impossible to see what Ilia has planned, and much like his performance of Fear, he’s keeping it closely guarded. 

Once again, he’s choreographed it himself, and this time, when Mikhail asks about it, the description he gets is “Silly.”

‘Silly’ is accurate, because once Mikhail actually gets a clip, it really is a bit ridiculous, campy, goofy fun that he didn’t think Ilia would even be willing to do, let alone choreograph himself.

It reminds him a bit of his Kung Fu Panda exhibition programme, in the same way that it’s deliberately over the top and playful and it will get the audience laughing while still including at least some amount of skill in it. 

He can see, at least, in the opening, that Ilia has on a crop top, sleeveless, and he finally doesn’t look so…gaunt. It’s a solace, of course. He looks like Ilia again, and not a pastiche of Ilia standing in his place. 

Ilia is generally in a good mood these days. He seems enthused, and he genuinely seems happy that he gets to debut another programme that he choreographed himself without it being devastatingly sad. Japan has always been one of his favourite places; he loves the food, the atmosphere, the fans and the group of skaters he’s touring with. Altogether, it generally seemed to be improving his mood.

Mikhail himself is doing well, too. He’s thinking about what programme he’s going to do next season and fighting to get another fun music choice. He’s also been working on adding in even more technical content, chasing after quad-quad combinations. He’ll leave the quad axel to Ilia, but there’s nothing saying he can’t do a quad toe quad flip. 

He is struggling terribly with the consistency, too, which only makes him want it more. 

He’s also flirting with the idea of actually taking a vacation. A real one. He can’t remember when he’s ever had a true vacation that had nothing to do with a competition in any regard. It would be so nice to just relax, go somewhere alone and live life without training or ice for just a little bit. He now has the money to go too, and he doesn’t have to take anyone with him. 

He’s halfway through looking at resorts in Bora Bora or Turks and Caicos when Ilia calls again. 

Mikhail picks up and gets ready to say hello, happy to hear about Ilia’s day and the show, or Japanese convenience store snacks, or whatever else Ilia has been doing when—

“Do you think I’m insane?”

It catches Mikhail so off guard that he almost yells into the phone, “I think what?”

Ilia laughs, a little scattershot. “Do you think I’m mentally unstable?” he amends. 

It does not clarify any of Mikhail’s concerns. He abandons his laptop to sit up and pay attention to the conversation instead.

“Why on earth would I think that?”

“I don’t know. I think everyone does?”

“Why would anyone think that?” Mikhail questions, now even more confused than he was before.

“I don’t know!” Ilia exclaims. There’s a rustling noise.

“Well, do you feel…” he trails off, trying to come up with how to word it to sound less impersonal than Ilia did. He can’t come up with anything.

“Crazy?” Ilia fills in frantically. “I don’t know. Sometimes!” He laughs again.

“And sometimes I think that everyone who’s normal gets sad and doesn’t want to get out of bed and thinks everyone hates them and can’t find joy in anything, but then twenty minutes later feels perfectly fine and great! I mean, mood changes are normal, right? But how fucking normal is normal? Like, how strongly can your mood change before you’re not normal anymore? And I don’t know how to ask people about it, because how the fuck do you ask someone, ‘Hey man, do you think this shit is normal?’ because what if it isn’t and then you really do sound insane!” His breathing hitches. “I mean, do you feel like you’re crazy sometimes?”

“Ilyushka, I honestly don’t even know what you’re trying to describe,” Mikhail admits. Sometimes Ilia’s Russian gets frantic and a little slurred, and the grammar is a bit off. More than any of that, Mikhail’s not even sure what he’s trying to communicate would’ve made sense if it were fully grammatically correct.  “You’re not really making much sense to me…?”

“Fuck me!” Ilia yells, and then the line abruptly disconnects.

Mikhail hears the beep noise and then sighs, stares at the screen for a second with an internal debate and then calls him back. He gets a dial tone that stretches so long that he expects Ilia to either decline or not pick up at all. Right before it goes to voicemail, though, the dial tone ends, and he hears the telltale sniffle of a sad Ilia. 

“Ilyushka—”

“I think I need therapy.” Ilia says, sadly. He doesn’t sound panicked anymore, just defeated and wilted.

Mikhail nearly gets whiplash from the abrupt change in the tone, but he tries to adjust either way.

“Well, there’s no shame in getting a psychologist. You know that I had a sports psychologist too, it’s okay—”

“No, not a sports psychologist.” Ilia interrupts, hastily. “Like…a real one.”

“Oh,” Mikhail says, realising that this is a bit more serious than he had accounted for. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with starting therapy either. There are a lot of people who do therapy; even people who don’t have any diagnoses who go.” 

“Even?” Ilia repeats weakly, “Oh god, so you do think there’s something wrong with me.”

Sometimes, it’s hard to be Ilia’s boyfriend. And it’s not really Ilia’s fault, especially not after what he went through at the Olympics, but it’s so draining on some days. The ones where Ilia gets in his own head and convinces himself of things that aren’t true, when his self-doubt is at a high and his faith in others is low. He’ll get snappy and defensive, and maybe it’s paranoia that the people around him feel the same that he might feel about himself. 

Or, the behaviour is unconscious self-sabotaging. That if the people close to him like him now, they won’t eventually, so he should get it over with as soon as possible and just do something to get them to leave. Ilia’s done it to him before, been nasty and sarcastic in the midst of a breakdown and then snapped out of it in an instant, tears clinging to his lashline as he begs Mikhail not to do the thing that he’d just aimed for. 

“No,” Mikhail replies, relatively exasperated. It begins to bleed through his tone before he can regulate it. “Why do you keep assuming that I think the worst of you? For fuck’s sake, Ilia, I wouldn’t have dated you this long if I didn’t actually like you!” He runs a hand over his face. 

“I don’t like it when you ask me things like this! You make me feel like a terrible boyfriend sometimes, Ilia! Why would I ever think that you’re crazy? What have I ever said to you that indicated that I thought you were crazy?”

Ilia says nothing for a second. “Misha, I don’t know—”

“Even if you do need therapy, or if you have some kind of disorder, I wouldn’t think anything less of you, and you shouldn’t think anything less of yourself, either!” Mikhail continues. He can feel the aggravation beginning to amplify because it just felt so absurd. 

“You know what, if you really genuinely believe that you need help, and you think that for some reason I and everyone in your life who has been supporting you this whole time secretly hate you, then maybe you should go to therapy! Clearly, you need to talk to someone who is qualified to make you understand that it’s not true, instead of talking to me about it! Because, apparently, you think that I listen to you, give you advice and sympathy and show you love, and I choose you every single time and still internally think that you’re a fucking lunatic!”

‘Ilia is being ridiculous,’ a voice in his brain snaps. Mikhail kicks himself for it for a second. It’s a rude thought, isn’t it? Mental illness can make someone react or think odd things. It’s not really Ilia’s fault, and he’s not trying to be ridiculous. But at the same time, it isn’t Mikhail’s either. It’s a tough pill to swallow. This is no one’s fault. Ilia feeling this way is not really a reflection of Mikhail’s effort, fuck, he knows he puts in effort. It’s Ilia’s own brain working against him, against them.

Because the truth is that he never would be convinced to leave Ilia for this, nor is he incredibly surprised by anything Ilia could say. He’d already seen glimpses of this, even before the Olympics. Ilia’s self-doubt has already been relatively high in anything that wasn’t skating. He already had imposter syndrome, already was too online and cared too much about others and thought that it was only a matter of time before they left. It never really felt like Ilia knew why Mikhail stuck around; could never seem to see the extent of the positive qualities that Mikhail could find in him. 

“I don’t think you hate me.” Ilia whispers. 

“So then why do you say it, Ilia?” Mikhail asks, frustrated and weary and so utterly wounded all at once. “Because if you thought I hated you, then wouldn’t you have broken up with me? Fuck, if you think I hate you, wouldn’t I have broken up with you? Why would either of us have kept up this relationship if I hated you? Do you not believe me when I tell you that I love you and I’m here for you and I want the best for you?”

“I do believe you, Misha. I promise I do, I just—” Ilia trails off, breathing shakily over the line, and then comes back. “It’s hard to even tell it to you in Russian.”

“I know you don’t think I’m crazy, and I know you want the best for me, but—ugh, I don’t know—I get in these moods where I can’t believe that anyone would actually like me unless they like me for my skating. I just get so convinced that everyone secretly finds me unbearable to be around and exhausting and overdramatic, and that you all secretly hate me. I know it’s irrational, but I can’t stop myself from feeling like you hate me, and that I bother you, so then I fuck up like I always do, because I’m just so frustrated with myself, and I don’t even know what the point is anymore, and so I feel like I just make it worse. Then I just convince myself of it more and more, and it gets so hard to crawl out of the loop.”

“And it’s like…” Ilia laughs through hitched tears. “It’s like so fucking stupid! And my brain starts yelling at me that I don’t even like myself all that much, so why would anybody else like me? And if I ruin the one good thing that I can do somehow, like, like I did at the Olympics, or if I wasn’t famous or something, then who would stick around? And then I feel like I’ve oversold myself, because I’m not even that great or famous or anything—I mean, fuck, I didn’t even come close to a podium finish at the Olympics, I’m no fucking Yuzuru, or Yagudin, god, I’m not even fucking Plushenko! How could I ever think I was that important of a figure skater—and I feel like a shitty person for even thinking about being relevant. And yeah…” Ilia fizzles out. “I don’t think you hate me. Or well. I know it’s not true. I don’t know why I say the shit I do sometimes.”

Mikhail clenches his eyes closed, torn between the way his heart caves for Ilia and the exhaustion that’s been wedging into his body from having to be there in this way. “But, Ilia, you have to understand, I can’t fix this! I don’t know how to do that for you. I can show you that I love you every day until we die, but that won’t do you any good if you don’t address the real problem.” He sighs. “You’ve done a great job of being your own psychologist until—”

“I lost the Olympics?” Ilia bitterly interrupts.

“No. You’ve been off for almost a year. It doesn’t even matter though. What matters is that whatever was working before is not working well right now. I’m just so worried about you. I don’t know how to help, and some days I think you’re doing better than you were at the Olympics, but then I remember how low that bar is because I’ve never seen you look worse.” He rubs at his eyes beneath his glasses. “You have these periods where you seem happy and stable, and your mood seems to be improving, and then it’s followed up with these sudden phone calls where you’re suddenly spiralling all over again.”

“I hate seeing you feel so upset, and I just want you to feel better, but I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know what to tell you at all.” And he takes a deep breath, finally voicing what he’s been thinking. “And honestly, you’re scaring me.”  

“I know,” Ilia says. “I know I scare you. I scare me, too, sometimes. And I know it’s not fair to you at all, I have to stop putting so much on you.” He sniffs again. “And I’m sorry that I say things that upset you, and sometimes I don’t even realise how terrible it sounds until I say it, or I don’t even apologise, and I’m trying. I promise. I’ll get…I’ll get to a place where I can be better to you.”

He sounds sincere, and Mikhail wouldn’t assume anything less from him. It makes any anger he is holding completely wilt. “You aren’t a bad boyfriend, Ilyushka. You’ve been amazing, it’s just you’re struggling right now. That’s why I’m here to support you. But I can’t replace actual help.”

“I know.” Ilia sighs. “I love you, okay? I’m going to see if I can call my dad.”

Mikhail doesn’t want to hang up the phone, but he knows that it’s for the best. He swallows the lump in his throat and offers a soft goodbye.

Ilia’s next repost on TikTok is one of his running performances. 

Ilia gets a therapist, thank God. One of those virtual ones that are run through an app and qualified, but probably not the most ideal option unless you’re someone so busy that you can’t make any dates in a real doctor's office, since you’re constantly out of town on random tour dates and competitions.

Ilia calls him after his first session, and he doesn’t sound terribly upset about it, which Mikhail counts as a victory.

It’s a strange hour for Ilia to still be awake, but the therapist is based in Virginia, and Ilia is still in Japan for their Stars on Ice. The time difference means that it’s late enough that Mikhail should’ve really been asleep, instead of staying up with his phone pressed to his ear. He’d be tired in the morning, undoubtedly, but at least it wasn’t egregiously late.

He also knows how important this call is, because Ilia almost cancelled his appointment nearly three separate times. He’d attempted relentlessly to convince himself that he was fine, that he didn’t need therapy because he was improving instead. That the fear wouldn’t come back, or the anxiety and paranoia wouldn’t crush him. He’d done it before. He could be okay without anyone else. 

He was horrifically in his head about it, and only made worse by the fact that Ari Zakarian would not stop giving interviews proclaiming that Ilia was fine and not in any need of any assistance, sports psychologist or otherwise. As if an overwhelmed twenty-one-year old was ever going to be perfectly well adjusted.

Ari Zakarian is one wrong move away from getting himself fired, and it’s honestly imminent. Mikhail thinks it’s overdue. He had it coming after all, after he spent the majority of the season capitalising on Ilia and adding to the pressure of his already busy routine. He only stoked the media and the flames around the ‘unbeatable QuadGod’. Letting fans swarm and harass him at the airport, letting them into elevators with him, spewing nonsense to the press.

Mikhail still seethes that Ari had the nerve to indicate to the press that Ilia would do two quad axels in one programme at Worlds after Ilia had decided not to give any interviews himself. Who in their right mind—

Luckily, he had not let this stop him from going to therapy, and despite being fearful, Mikhail managed to remind him that it wasn’t going to be as bad as he thought, no matter what. 

Thankfully, it does seem to help. Ilia sees her quite regularly, although he rarely tells Mikhail about whatever goes on during their sessions (which was fine; Mikhail didn’t need to know anything Ilia didn’t want to share). But something had to be changing, because the late-night spirals were becoming less and less frequent. 

The only facetime that Mikhail gets of Ilia in a panic is once, between the Japan shows and the second week of Stars on Ice. He answers to the sound of silence, aside from some shuddering breathing. “I’m gonna do it myself!” Ilia gasps. “I just want you on the line.”

He can see Ilia dissociating while looking off in the distance, mouthing words that MIkhail couldn’t make out, what must be techniques he’d learned that were new. 

It takes him a while, long enough that Mikhail wants to start trying to intervene and calm him down, but all it’d do would be take the success away from him if it works out. 

Ilia does it himself. He looks back at the phone with recognition in his eyes and a tired but happy smile on his face. “Thanks.” He says.

“I didn’t do anything?” Mikhail replied, equally as happy and confused.

“You stayed.” Ilia shrugged. “That was enough. Tell me about your day.”

Ilia is eating some Greek yogurt dessert concoction (which almost certainly is vanilla Greek yogurt and some sugar-free protein powder, which sounds horrifying to Mikhail personally, but Ilia seems perfectly content with eating) when Mikhail fucks up royally.

“I’m glad you’re eating well again.” He says without thinking, cringing instantly and already coming up with ways to backtrack.

Why did he say that?

Ilia hums absentmindedly in agreement at first, and Mikhail hopes he doesn’t notice either.

This hope dies when Ilia pauses, spoon halfway to his mouth and asks, “What?”

“Nothing,” Mikhail responds quickly. It doesn’t sound convincing at all. Ilia leans in on the phone. 

“You’re glad I’m eating again?” He repeats, still confused.

“No?” Mikhail replies weakly. “I didn’t say anything.”

Ilia puts the bowl down in his lap. “Well, no. You definitely did say something. I just don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re eating healthy again?” Mikhail offers as some sort of weak reason. 

He still wants to scream. That doesn’t make any sense.

Ilia’s blank stare indicates that he feels the same. “I almost always eat healthy, I’m an athlete.” Now he sounds somewhere between confused and mildly offended. “Do you think that I eat a lot of junk food?”

“No, oh my God, can we forget I said anything?”

“No.”

“No?” Mikhail repeats, entering distress mode.

“No, because I’m confused, and I’m just going to keep thinking about it until I figure out what you are talking about. You know what people online say.” He gestures vaguely with the spoon. “And I genuinely don’t know what you are saying. Are you telling me that my diet is bad?”

Mikhail has no idea how to back out of this. He stares down at the table instead of up at Ilia as he responds, “At the Olympics, I was worried that you were not…”

“Not…” Ilia repeats, gesturing for more with his hands. “Not what?” 

“Eating.” Mikhail mumbles.

He expects Ilia to flip out.

There’s silence for a long time instead, and then a still slightly confused but far more deadpan, “Why the fuck would I not be eating?”

“I don’t know!” Mikhail sputters. “It was just that you were so thin! Then, every time I saw you during meals you barely touched your food at all, and even Amber and Alysa were pointing it out, so I started to get worried—”

“Well, Alysa thought I was developing a fucking eating disorder, which was why I was getting so pissed off at her—” Ilia interrupts. “Wait, Misha, did you also think I had an eating disorder?!”

“I didn’t know what to think! You weren’t eating!” Mikhail defends helplessly. “And then every time someone tried to bring it up to you, you got upset! You literally stormed away from the table when I tried to ask about it, and you said that you didn’t want to eat, and no one could make you!” 

Ilia buries his face in his hand with a groan. “That was because you were, like, the seventh person to say something to me!” he says between his fingers. “I knew I wasn’t eating properly, but it wasn’t like that! I was stressed out of my fucking mind, so I wasn’t hungry most of the time, and then when I tried to eat, I’d be so anxious that I couldn’t take a few bites before I started getting nauseous! I was annoyed because when I said I wasn’t hungry, I really wasn’t hungry!” 

“How was I supposed to know that!” Mikhail whines. “All I saw was that you were getting really skinny and barely eating and upset when people brought it up! I was genuinely starting to think about how I was going to stage an intervention!”

“An intervention?” Ilia laughs suddenly. 

“It’s not funny, I really was worried!”

“I’m sorry, but it is a little bit funny.” Ilia giggles. “I mean, I knew Alysa was freaked out every time we were in the dining hall, but I had no idea that you noticed. 

“I can assure you,” he adds, still smiling, “that out of my many psychological issues, that is not one of them. If anything, I was just frustrated. Raf was even mentioning it because he wouldn’t stop bringing up how much my body composition was going to change, like I didn’t already know that too!”

“I’m just glad it wasn’t something more serious,” Mikhail admits. “I mean, it sucks that you were so stressed you couldn’t even eat properly, but at least it wasn’t…that.”

“Yes, Mishenka,” Ilia says, tone a little teasing as he picks back up the bowl. “I am eating well again. Trust, that will not be a problem.” He thinks for a second and then adds. “Honestly, I’m doing a little better with the other stuff, too. It’s really hard a lot of the time, because sometimes it feels the same…But I think that it will be okay eventually.”

Mikhail looks at Ilia through the screen. His blonde hair is in that awkward stage of growing out from a big chop, messy and a little too purple, an oversized hoodie and disgusting yogurt sludge in his hand, and Mikhail feels warmth settle in his chest.

It’s been hard. 

Hard for them both, Mikhail had struggled at the beginning of the season, frustration and anger and disappointment with himself and his programme for it not working out. Ilia’d been there. After the Olympics, it was Mikhail’s turn to provide the comfort until Ilia could find his own footing again and accept help in other places, too. 

Now, they’re both feeling better. 

Mikhail believes Ilia when he says that things will be better. Not really in a way where all his worries could dissipate at once. Perhaps that is impossible given that he’s seen just how badly Ilia can hurt on the surface, and how much he’ll fight to hide it from prying eyes. But he can already tell that things are different from Milan. 

His mindset is stronger, and the way that he approaches situations is a little bit healthier. It doesn’t feel like he’s moments away from drowning anymore. 

That was what mattered. Because it didn’t have to be completely fine right now.

Eventually, everything would be good again. 

For now, eventually is enough.