✩Joana✩

Ilia: At some point you have to talk to me

You stare at the screen again, Cam's voice slowly fading into the background. She's on FaceTime with you, showing you two dresses she has as options for a last-minute wedding invitation. Originally, she had planned to decline, but your and Ziggy's points were convincing enough that she decided to put her gaming console aside for one night, opting instead to spend time with her relatives.

"Is it, like, too slutty for a wedding?"

"No, it's perfect."

"But the cut is low."

"Well, it's not like you have the boobs to fill it out."

"Bitch," she chuckles, throwing you a half-annoyed, half-offended look. She squints at the screen because she still hasn't picked up her new prescription glasses, being the procrastinator she is. "Are you still dwelling on Ilia's text?"

"What am I supposed to reply?!"

"Tell him you'll talk to him once your exams are over."

"My exams are over in, like, two weeks," you sigh, leaning back in your gaming chair as you shut your eyes tight for a few seconds. You feel entirely overwhelmed by the single text message you haven't opened since this morning. It's almost 5 p.m. now.

The truth is, you're not really ignoring him. Sure, maybe you ran away after he confessed to you and kissed you, but it's not like you've seen him since then or have been deliberately avoiding him. And it's only been two days. You're just not actively seeking to resolve whatever happened because the whole situation scares you even more than the reality excites you. The embarrassment still lingers every time you relive those few seconds when you tugged the door handle and ran away as he called out your name.

"Why are you so uptight about this whole thing? It's Ilia."

"Yes, exactly!" you huff, rolling your eyes. Explaining something to your best friend is hard, especially when you don't even understand it yourself. "He kissed me and I ran away like an idiot!"

"And now you're acting like a bigger idiot because you keep ignoring him."

"I mean, I'm not exactly ignoring him."

"Oh, shut up," she exhales, throwing you a dirty look before she puts the black dress away in the closet, presumably brushing aside your opinion that it looks appropriate for a wedding. "Tell him you needed time to think and you'll talk to him soon."

"When is soon?"

"Honestly, I'm running out of patience with you."

"Alright, alright," you admit in a defeated voice, straightening your spine as if it somehow gives you the confidence you desperately need. "I'll figure something out."

"Yes, like you always do."

"But this is, like, an exceptional case."

"Are you going to keep ranting about that Russian boy, or will you help me finish my wedding look?"

You nod, leaning forward so you can see the jewelry options she's showing you. You try to bite back the comment that all of them are ugly—but you do, because it fits Cam's style perfectly and you are a good friend.

The call with her ends approximately twenty minutes later. You find yourself spinning in your gaming chair, thumbs hovering over the keyboard as you type out several responses before aggressively hitting the delete button, never satisfied with the outcome. Eventually, you stop and ask yourself if it's really that serious. The next second, you've sent a message before fully thinking it through. Your heartbeat quickens just enough when you see that he has read it almost immediately.

You: I'm sorry. I know we need to talk.

Ilia: Are you home?

You: I'm kind of in the middle of something.

You panic when he doesn't respond. Your eyes widen as you realize he hasn't even opened your last message, meaning he's probably already on his way over. Cursing under your breath, you leap up from the chair. You frantically look around the room to find something to put on instead of your washed-out t-shirt, which has holes in the collar thanks to your habit of chewing on it whenever you're bored. A dark blue t-shirt that you snubbed from Jace's room at some point is in much better condition, complementing a pair of gray shorts that were also his before puberty fully had its impact on him.

The doorbell rings just as you're sprinting down the stairs. He knows your dad is still at work, and he also knows that Jace hits the gym around this time every Tuesday. There's not really a reason for him to hide or hold back, meaning you're forced to have this conversation even if you're not fully prepared for it. Maybe it's better this way, before you start overthinking and potentially ruining something that hasn't even started yet.

"Hi."

You give him a somewhat shy smile, stepping aside to silently welcome him in. He eyes you for a second, opening his mouth slightly as if he's about to say something, but ultimately decides against it. He's wearing one of the many Toothless t-shirts he owns, his shorts hugging him perfectly. You subtly eye him as he steps inside, wondering when exactly his glutes managed to grow like that.

"What are you up to?"

"Um… just the usual stuff," you shrug, heat rushing to your face despite trying so hard to sound casual. It's almost like you've completely forgotten how to talk to him.

He gives you an expectant look, the kind that encourages you to start talking, but the silence hangs heavy in the room. Your palms seem to grow sweaty, so you hide them at your sides as if they are the sole thing giving away your uneasiness and not the panicked expression plastered on your face.

"Can we just talk?" he asks abruptly, as if he's finally had enough of the awkwardness. He sighs, looking at you with slightly raised eyebrows—an expression you know well from when he's feeling sorry or worried about something. You shift uncomfortably, pressing your lips together as he continues. "It's me. Things don't have to be awkward."

"I know."

"Then why are you avoiding me?"

"I'm not," you exhale, resisting the urge to bury your face in your hands. Looking him straight in the eye is deeply embarrassing, especially when he shakes his head, his gaze hardening. "I'm just…"

"You're just what?" he presses, vaguely gesturing with his hands. "Look, I understand if you needed time to think, and I wanted to give you space, but you haven't talked to me in almost three days. You ran away after I kissed you. I just… I don't know what to think."

"I know it was a stupid thing to do."

"Are you still mad at me?"

The question takes you aback. You pause when his voice comes out quieter. The answer doesn't come easily because you haven't actually thought about it. All you could think about these past few days was the fact that Ilia kissed you, and that he actually liked you back—just as you had always wished he would.

"No," you reply after a while, concluding that you don't feel an ounce of the rage you felt a few days ago. "I ran away because I was confused and… scared. I'm just stupid."

"You're not." He shakes his head and steps forward, gently pushing your blue-light glasses back up after they had slid down your nose. You only wear them because of your dad's insistence; he always uses the excuse of being a doctor who "knows better" when he forces you and your brother to do things you don't really want to do.

"Usually I'm not, no, but running away that night was one of the most embarrassing things I've ever done."

"It doesn't top the talent show you did back in middle school."

"Oh, shut up," you groan at the memory, avoiding his gaze as he lets out a laugh. He tugs at your arm, pulling you toward him. It's as if the heavy tension completely breaks with the solo memory, a stark reminder that this is Ilia—the guy you grew up with, the boy you never need to shy away from. He stares down at you with a soft expression, fixing the pieces of hair that messily frame your face. "You weren't so great at that talent show either."

"I got first place."

"Just because you sucked less than the other kids doesn't mean you didn't suck."

The corner of his lip lifts, a smile stretching across his face as his voice loses its teasing edge. "As much as I enjoy this conversation, can we go back to where we started?"

"You like embarrassing me, don't you?"

"No, I just want to establish the fact that I like you," he repeats, more confident this time. His eyes search yours while you stare at him quietly, your chest tightening at the words that make you dizzy. They still feel unfamiliar, but you could easily get used to them. "And I'm sorry for being a coward and not sticking up for us when it mattered. I was a jerk that night."

"It hurt. A lot."

"I know."

"I've spent the last few years having a massive crush on you," you admit openly, your heart hammering against your ribs. Something twists in your stomach as you hold back, choosing not to tell him that your feelings are actually much greater than a silly crush. It's too soon, you tell yourself, clinging to the excuse. "And hearing you say that… it just destroyed me. You brushed me off like I was just Jace's annoying little sister you're forced to tolerate… And then you just confessed out of the blue when I was so mad at you, and I just…" You can't even finish the sentence, unable to find the words for what you felt in that moment. "It was a lot to take in."

"I'm sorry. I hate myself for how I handled that," he says, his voice apologetic. He reaches down, gently taking your hands in his, forcing you to look up at him. "The second Jack brought you up, I panicked. He kind of already knew, and I was afraid he would see right through me. And if Jack found out, Jace would find out."

The image of your brother flashes across your mind. He loves Ilia; there's no doubt that in any world, he would consider his best friend worthy of you, but you also know him well enough to know he won't be happy about this. Both you and Ilia know that if Jace finds out, things are going to get ugly.

"I took the easy way out because I was terrified," Ilia confesses, his blue eyes sincere, pleading with you to understand. "I was terrified of how messy things would get if they found out how I actually felt about you."

"Jace won't approve."

"I know."

You exhale, your shoulders dropping, heavy with a secret that already feels like a burden. He lets go of your hands only to cup the side of your face, his fingers sliding into your hair. "Look at me."

You look up, meeting the intense blue of his eyes.

"I've felt this way about you for a while, and I always tried to tell myself it was wrong," he says softly, his thumb tracing your cheekbone. "Yeah, maybe I'm not supposed to have feelings for my best friend's sister because of some unwritten moral code, but it's not wrong. It doesn't feel wrong anymore. The whole time I was on tour, I missed home terribly, and then I realized it was you I was homesick for."

The honesty in his voice completely undoes you, stripping away the last string of your hesitation. Suddenly, you find yourself leaning in, sneaking your arms around his back and burying your face in his chest, inhaling his familiar scent. His response is immediate. He pulls you tighter against him, rubbing your back affectionately and pressing a light kiss into your hair.

You don't know how much time passes before he gently lifts your head up, caressing your jaw with his palm. His blue eyes sweep over your face, his thumb eventually coming to rest on your bottom lip.

"Can I kiss you?"

"It's not like you asked the first time, either."

He grins, leaning in and pressing his lips against yours. Closing your eyes, you sigh into the touch. His mouth is warm against yours, his hands roaming over your back as they clutch your t-shirt. Your hand flies into his hair, the short strands soft between your fingertips as you gently tug at them. You only pull back when you're left breathless, your chest heaving up and down just like his. A smile breaks across his face.

"By the way," his voice turns teasing, his fingertip tracing a slow line up your arm. "You're wearing my t-shirt."

"What?" Your brows furrow, genuine confusion making your lips pout.

"Yeah. Jace ended up borrowing it a while ago, but he never gave it back."

"Well, I'm not giving it back either."

"Good," he smiles, his eyes almost shining. "I don't want you to."

You grin at him, intertwining your fingers with his—at first shyly, then gripping him tightly, leading him up to your room to show him the new Lego set you've built before Jace comes back.

Neither of you talk about it, neither of you openly discuss it, but you quickly slip into a routine.

His texts come in every morning and night, the day never ending without late-night conversations with him, your friends teasing you that you have temporarily replaced them. He gives you rides to the university—half the time you secretly slide into the passenger seat, and the other half of the time you casually mention to Jace that you two happen to have the same schedule. Your brother doesn't think anything of it, you're sure, casually waving you off before his stare fixes back on the computer screen.

On the rare occasions that you're free from studying and working and the house is empty for you to use as you please, he comes over. You watch movies, play games, cook pasta for him, and teach him how to play Sudoku. He brings you your favorite snacks and you cuddle on the couch, always glancing at the clock to make sure you don't get caught. Sometimes it's hard, pretending nothing exists between you two except a platonic relationship, and perhaps there's no reason to wait anymore, because Jace will rage at both of you anyways—but still, neither of you speak about it. Perhaps you like the thrill of sneaking around behind everyone's back. Perhaps, despite how much you don't want to admit it out loud, the idea of things getting real scares you both.

"Come on, just one more lap."

"I can't!"

"Stop whining."

Jace exhales, nudging you to continue running while your chest heaves up and down, your whole body sweaty as you try to fight off your legs from giving up. You watch him run ahead of you, wiping the sweat from your forehead before you straighten your spine, jogging after him in a way less energetic way.

Jace thinks of himself as a caring brother, which is why he has decided to take care of your physical health, forcing you to run with him almost every day and feeding you the protein smoothies he enthusiastically makes every morning. You're doing laps around the neighborhood, having just passed your house, when you see Jace stopping. You squint your eyes to confirm that the blonde talking to him is Ilia.

"Hey."

"Hi," you wave at him, still breathless. His face is completely relaxed, unlike yours, a smile plastered across it. You're wearing nothing special—just shorts and a sports bra—but his gaze still shifts, subtly eyeing you before he fixes his stare back on Jace. He's wearing Snoopy pants and a plain white t-shirt, making it evident that he just rolled out of bed, holding some letters in his hand. Tatyana must have sent him out to collect the mail.

"You should run with us," Jace tells him, nudging him on the shoulder. Then he gestures toward you, pointing a finger. "I have to keep this one in shape, and I need help because she's awful company."

"Oh, shut up."

"You've been whining for the whole run!" he insists, throwing you an annoyed look while Ilia witnesses the sibling interaction with an amused expression. "No, ever since this morning, before we even started running."

"Because instead of helping me gradually build stamina, you just force me to run for over an hour and I'm exhausted!" you argue, looking over at Ilia so he can prove your point. "You're an athlete. Tell him that he's an awful instructor."

"I fear she's right, Jace."

"What's up with you always agreeing with her lately?" Jace rolls his eyes, throwing him a dirty look. The smile washes off your face, but he doesn't notice it. He doesn't notice either when Ilia nervously shifts, his smile turning awkward. "You're supposed to be my best friend."

"It's not like you own him."

"I own him more than you do."

Jace winks at you, convinced that he's made a point, while you bite down on your tongue before you regret the next words escaping your throat. Ilia must notice that Jace's words leave a bitter taste in your mouth, because he swiftly changes the topic, talking about their next hangout as you look at your watch, contemplating that you should just go home.

"I'm streaming this afternoon."

"What are you going to play?"

"Probably Fortnite again."

"Bro, people are tired of watching you play that shit," Jace groans, his dislike of Fortnite shining through. It's a topic he and Ilia still haven't agreed upon after all these years. "Even Geometry Dash is more entertaining."

"I was going to play FIFA with Jacob, but he ditched me for practice," Ilia sighs, and even though your eyes are fixed on your phone screen, you can feel him subtly glancing at you. "I asked your sister to accompany me, but she turned me down… playing Valorant would be fun."

Feeling both of them burning their stares through your skull, you lift your head up, shrugging as you purse your lips. "I don't really want to engage with your crazy fangirls."

"People usually behave, and I have mods."

"Yeah sis, show him some generosity," Jace backs him up, to your surprise, your eyes squinting at his behavior, which seems suspicious. "Teach him how to play Valorant properly."

"I can absolutely play Valorant!"

"I said properly," Jace grins, slapping his back in what is supposed to be an affectionate way. Then he backs up a few steps, looking at you with determination as he motions for you to follow him. "Now come on, one last lap."

You throw Ilia a helpless look, a subtle smirk tugging at his lips as he mouths words you absolutely cannot decipher. Then you leave him there, jogging after Jace as you glance behind your shoulder every few seconds, only to find him staring right back at you.

You: NO

Ilia: Come ooon

Ilia: It's gonna be Fun

Ilia: I want to stream with you

Ilia: Please :(

You stare at the screen, then back to the clock, contemplating whether you're ready to give in and accept his invitation or not. Occasionally streaming with Ziggy and Cam is fun because the chat is chill, and mostly the conversation is just about Valorant or other games you play together. But even from just watching bits of Ilia's stream a handful of times, you know his is drastically different. You know you'll probably get dragged online for no reason, because some fans can just be that crazy.

Maybe you just don't have the heart to turn him down, or maybe a secret, deep part of you wants to remind others of your existence and your place in his life. It sounds stupid, but when another text comes through—this time a picture of him making a pouty face—you find yourself smiling. You agree without giving it any further thought.

Jace helps you set up the camera, removing a few plushies from your bed because he insists they leave a "loser impression" of you. He takes Dusty too, with the excuse that she might be frightened by the loud noises you and Ilia will probably make, but really he just wants to cuddle her.

"You're all set up!" he exclaims with unusual enthusiasm, patting you on the back as he leans in to wipe the lens once again. "Destroy his ass."

"Why are you so excited about this?"

"Because you're a good gamer and I want people to appreciate you."

"Are you soft-launching that you want me to become a full-time Twitch streamer?" You squint your eyes at him, an almost disgusted expression plastered on your face.

"Nah, you donut, you're way too intelligent to be a Twitch streamer," he ruffles your hair, earning a sharp slap on the arm in exchange. He backs off toward the door, clutching Dusty in his hands while she looks at you with a helpless expression. He's about to walk out when he stops, whipping his head around as he squints at the t-shirt you're wearing. "You stealer, that's mine."

"Start learning how to do your laundry, maybe then you won't lose your clothes," you grin at him, completely omitting the fact that it isn't his shirt at all, but Ilia's. "Okay, go now, Ilia is calling."

"Alright."

He disappears, the door softly clicking shut behind him. It takes you and Ilia approximately five minutes to figure everything out, him ceaselessly reminding you that it's nothing to worry about even though you aren't showing an ounce of uneasiness. You're not so bad at pretending.

"Okay, I'll start the stream in a minute."

"Alright."

"You should start streaming, and then I'll send you an invite you can accept."

"I know how this stuff works," you laugh out loud, rolling your eyes at him while he stares back at you with a wide smile. "You should clean the mess behind you before they start making fun of you for having a messy room again."

"Literally, what am I supposed to do with these?" he gestures helplessly behind himself. "It's a mountain of plushies!"

"And a half-ass made bed, along with empty chocolate wrappers on the nightstand."

"Okay, stop judging me!" he huffs, giving you a pouty look. "Do you want to do a shared chat?"

"Sure, it's not like people will be watching my stream anyway."

"No, I'm sure they will." He says it with a determination that amuses you, but you don't argue.

You try to recall the last time you did this—not streaming on Twitch in general, but doing it with him. It was back in 2023, when he was supposed to play with Jace. Since your brother caught a cold, you were summoned to sub in for him. It lasted maybe an hour before Ilia got bored. Jace joked that he ended the stream early because you beat him at every single game.

The moment you go live, you have three viewers: your best friends Ziggy and Cam, and another online friend you sometimes play with. They immediately flood the chat, the inside jokes never ceasing until you tell them to keep their mouths shut. Ilia sends you the invite soon after, and then his face pops up on your screen. His chat starts flooding in, and your throat goes dry for a second before you manage to smile, your voice coming out softer than usual.

"Hi."

The all-caps messages quickly catch your eye. Most of them are asking who you are, some of them already know, and a few are showing you love that takes you aback. Ilia quickly introduces you, a bitter taste lingering in your mouth when he refers to you as his friend—but it's fine. You both know it's not true. You shouldn't care about what outsiders believe.

"Why are you reloading? You had twenty-two bullets!"

"I forgot about it, okay?!" Ilia's voice comes through your headset, sounding slightly panicked.

You sigh, keeping your eyes locked on the screen. "Don't you dare peek."

But it's already too late. The second Ilia swings the corner, a shot rings out. You watch him drop right in front of you. You hear him groan, irritation seeping into your own voice. "I told you not to peek!"

"I thought I could get him," Ilia says, immediately trying to defend himself. "I had the angle."

"No, you had confidence. That's different," you note, a layer of smugness coating your voice. You peek at his webcam for a second to find him smiling. "You're so bad at this."

"Everyone starts somewhere!"

"Guys, even Liza plays better than him," you snort, leaning back against your seat as you watch your own agent die, surrendering the round to the opposite team so you can start another one with Ilia. So far, you've only won three times.

"Let's take a break for a while and answer some questions," Ilia announces, leaning close to his screen so he can read the comments. He squints until his face falls, a disappointed expression shooting in your direction. "Never mind. I shouldn't have."

You laugh, reading the comments that keep roasting him in contrast to praising you. He spends the next two minutes scanning the questions, trying to involve you, but mostly you keep to yourself. It's his stream, after all. And it's not like most of these people care about you.

"Someone's asking about our favorite superheroes," Ilia laughs like it's obvious, his gaze wandering behind you, looking at the Spiderman poster displayed on your wall. "I think yours is Batman, right?"

"Yes, either him or Quicksilver," you grin, going along with him, purposely sliding around in your chair so you can give them a better view of the poster. "I like lots of superheroes, with a few exceptions. Spider-Man is, like, so overrated."

"Yeah, totally."

"I feel like it's one of those superheroes targeted specifically for a children's audience."

"Yes," he says, a subtle smile tugging at his lips before he bursts out laughing. "I think we can play FNAF next, yeah."

"Oh my god, I love FNAF," your voice immediately gets excited. Leaning toward the screen, your eyes practically sparkle under the dim lights as you scan the comments. "Resident Evil too… Dead Space is definitely underrated, I agree… The last horror game I played, mhm, I think it was Soma."

"I have not played any of them."

"Sure you haven't," you snort at Ilia's comment, your eyes crinkling. "You get jump-scared all the time."

"I am gonna let that slide."

"Jace is working on a deadline, guys," you answer one of the comments, and the chat immediately floods with his name like they just remembered his existence. Then you squint at another message. "Oh my god, we do not look alike!"

"Who is she?" Ilia reads out loud. He spins around in his chair, a subtle smirk tugging at his lips when his eyes snap back to yours through the screen. "Jace's annoying little sister."

You laugh, not even slightly offended by it, because you know this time he doesn't mean it. You find yourself enjoying the secrecy you two share right in front of a chat of a few thousand people. Ilia proceeds to answer some questions regarding his training and skating, and then you two are just about to boot up Five Nights at Freddy's when a blur of motion cuts across your vision. Dusty comes sprinting across your keyboard, pausing for a second to look at the bright screen.

"Oh, hi Dusty," Ilia coos from the screen, his voice turning high-pitched just like when he talks to his cats. "That's her chinchilla, guys."

You scoop her up before she flees, gently pressing a kiss to her fur before you let her go. She immediately sprints down from your shoulder, jumps onto the bed, and settles somewhere behind the pillows.

"Ilia is scared of Dusty, guys."

"Stop spreading misinformation!" his voice rises in disbelief, shaking his head like he's deeply disappointed in you. "I'm not, guys. I love animals."

"Yo, what's up, bro?"

Suddenly, a loud noise breaks the flow as Jace comes into the frame, slapping his hands down on your shoulders. He makes you jolt, and you throw him an annoyed look through the lens.

"Hi, Jace."

"Hey, everyone," he waves at the camera, hovering over your chair as he looks at the chat, his smile wide and impossible. "Did my sister beat your ass?"

"I fear she did."

"Well, it's my turn then," he grins, motioning for you to get up. You look over your shoulder, giving him an offended look, but he completely ignores you. "I finished the deadline. Let me play with him, sis."

"We were about to play FNAF."

"Ilia sucks at that game."

"Bro, can't I just enjoy games?!" Ilia complains, shaking his head. "I don't have to be good at it."

"That's an excuse bad gamers use."

"My god, you're so annoying." You stand up from the chair, removing the headset and handing it to him because you know he won't leave you alone anyway.

A twinge of irritation sets in as he settles into your chair, seamlessly resuming the stream with Ilia as if you were just a temporary placeholder for him until he arrived. You know Jace doesn't have ill intentions, and he definitely doesn't realize the weight of what he's doing, but a sharp prickle of anger burns through you nonetheless. You close the door behind you and head down the stairs with an excuse of getting something to eat. He yells after you to make your signature pasta and leave some for him.

You ignore him. But when you get into the kitchen and start prepping the sauce while the water boils in the pot, you find yourself rationing enough for more than just yourself.

Your phone buzzes on the counter.

Ilia: Are you mad?

You almost roll your eyes at the question, but a smile still tugs at your lips because he noticed, and he cares.

You: just a bit annoyed

Ilia: I'm sorry

You: it's fine, it's not your fault

Ilia: He just invited me over For a Movie night

You: should I make pasta for 3?

Ilia: Yes please

You grin at the messages, locking your phone away and setting it on the table. He hasn't slept over since that night, and the thought of him staying in the room right next to yours while Jace sleeps dead to the world leaves you both excited and nervous.

Ilia arrives shortly after they end the stream. The pasta is ready, and the three of you eat at the table, no longer waiting for your dad because he decided to get drinks with his friends and called to say he might crash at a friend's place tonight in Washington—which means he definitely isn't coming home.

"What's up with him always staying somewhere else lately?" Jace asks, giving you a weirded-out expression as he shrugs his shoulders. "He has conferences, like, every two weeks."

You stop eating, briefly sharing a glance with Ilia to see that he confirms your thoughts. You straighten your spine, wiping your mouth with a napkin as you pause, unsure of how to strike up a conversation about it.

"Jace…"

"What?"

"You really think he's traveling for medical conferences?" You raise an eyebrow, trying so hard not to make him feel stupid, but failing anyway.

"What do you mean?" He furrows his eyebrows, looking at you first before his eyes lock back onto Ilia, who stays silent, letting the two of you settle it. "Where else would he be going?"

"Jace, he's seeing someone."

"What?" He snorts, rolling his eyes like you've said something impossible. Maybe it isn't supposed to, but it makes a spark of anger ignite within you. "Come on."

"Why is that so funny to you?"

"Because it's dad we're talking about."

"So?!"

"Why would he be sneaking around behind our backs?" he asks, looking at you in confusion. While you don't have a definitive answer to that question, you still can't believe he hasn't realized it until now. "He's an adult."

"I don't know, but do you seriously think he attends all these medical conferences and goes out to grab a drink with Dale every week with an excuse not to come home at night?" You roll your eyes, huffing at how stupid it sounds. "It's clear that he's seeing someone. I don't know why he feels the need to hide it from us, and I'm not going to bring it up until he does, but I thought you knew about it and we just didn't discuss it."

"Yeah, I haven't really thought about my dad sneaking behind my back like a teenager," his voice turns frustrated, something bitter laced in his tone.

He resumes eating, your eyes snapping back to your plate as you feel Ilia squeezing your hand under the table. Abruptly, Jace drops his fork, the clinking noise loud against his empty bowl. "I don't understand why he would hide it! It's not like we're children and we'd get mad or something!"

"I don't know, Jace."

"So, Dad is having a secret relationship behind our backs," he snorts, repeating the words like he's trying to let the information sink in. He leans across the chair, squinting his eyes as he looks at you for a second. Panic almost settles into your body because you can't quite decipher his expression. "Are you, by any chance, too?"

You roll your eyes, shrugging off his question as a joke. Thankfully, he doesn't dwell on it, and most likely, he doesn't notice the quick glances you and Ilia share with each other either.

Since you usually don't tag along with them when Ilia comes over and the movie Jace chose is boring to you, you go upstairs to your room, finishing the book you started a few days ago before you play with Cam and Ziggy for a while. You barely get a chance to talk to Ilia, and it only happens when you go downstairs for a snack while Jace is in the restroom.

"Streaming was fun," he murmurs, leaning against the counter while you cut up some fruit. You give him a piece of peach, which he takes without hesitation. "We should do it again."

"Maybe."

"Don't tell me you didn't enjoy it."

"I did, before Jace crashed it."

He sighs, giving you a pouty look as he leans in, quickly pressing his lips to yours, letting you taste the sweetness on his lips. You smile through the kiss, fixing his hair that's been growing out steadily over the past few weeks. A part of you wants to beg Tatyana to cut it again.

"Are you going to sleep?"

"It's not even 11 p.m. yet."

"Would you, um… would you like a cuddle buddy afterward?" he asks almost shyly, your heart on the verge of bursting at how adorable he is. His blue eyes sweep over your face, his cheeks flushed with heat.

"Are you asking for permission to sneak into my room?"

"Respectfully."

"Then you have it."

You reciprocate his grin, leaning in one more time to kiss him again before you hear Jace's heavy footsteps on the stairs.

They stay up way past midnight, both of them entirely engaged in their game, not even noticing you when you go down to get a glass of water and slip right past them.

It's way past 3 a.m. when you lock your phone and put it aside, Ziggy finally recalling that he has to wake up early tomorrow for his fencing practice. It keeps raining, the drops hitting against the window making a pleasant sound to fall asleep to, but you keep tossing in your sheets, unable to find a comfortable position.

Your eyes are shut tight when you slowly feel drowsiness wash over you, and just as you're about to drift off, you're snapped back to wakefulness. The floor creaks, the footsteps light as he quietly closes the door behind him. You keep your eyes shut, pretending to be asleep when you feel the mattress dip down. He carefully climbs under the blanket, the weight of his legs subtly pressing against yours. You feel him shift closer, slowly circling an arm around your waist as he leans down and presses a light kiss to your cheekbone. You can't contain the smile that breaks across your face when he tucks his chin over your shoulder, his breath fanning over your neck.

"I know you're awake," he murmurs, his voice sending shivers down your spine.

Switching sides to face him under the moonlight that spills into the room, you make out his nose and blue eyes, his grip tightening around your waist. Throwing your leg over his waist to chase his warmth, you snuggle deep into his chest, a content hum escaping your throat as his familiar scent floods your nostrils.

"I couldn't sleep," he whispers, his lips brushing against your forehead. "I thought you were long asleep but I'm pretty sure I heard you giggling, like, fifteen minutes ago."

"Yeah, Ziggy said something stupid," you smile, a chuckle escaping your throat at the memory. Sliding your hand under his t-shirt because his warmth is comfortable against your skin, you trace lines on his back, wishing you could somehow close the distance that doesn't exist between you two anymore—wishing you could completely let him swallow you in. "You can't fall asleep here."

"Just let me stay for a little bit," he mumbles. "I'll sneak out early." "Mhm."

The silence, the soft sound of the rain, and the warmth of his body against you feels just right, leaving you ready to let sleep consume you. But then, you notice his body suddenly stiffen. His breathing hitches. He stops moving completely, freezing like a statue against you. Before you can even ask what’s wrong, you feel the hardness pressing against your thin shorts, your eyes slowly opening as the realization sinks in.

"Oh, fuck," he murmurs, gently pushing you away, untangling his legs from yours and rolling onto his back. He groans, covering his face with his arm, refusing to look you in the eye. "Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—I mean, fuck, I'm sorry."

"Hey, it's fine."

"No, it's not," he insists, clearly unable to let the initial embarrassment go. "We were having this sweet moment and I got a boner like a schoolboy."

"I mean, I'm honored."

He huffs, a breathless chuckle escaping your own throat at his stubbornness. You glance toward the closed door, your pulse picking up just enough for you to feel the heat radiating from your body. Licking your lips, you glance back at him, sprawled on his back, still refusing to look at you. You stretch out your hand, gently touching his arm. "Do you, um… do you want me to help?"

Ilia drops his arm from his face, his blue eyes widening. He looks at you like he can't quite process what you just said. "What?"

"I mean…" You shift a little closer, your voice dropping to an absolute whisper, shy as you feel your face burn with heat. "Jace is right down the hall. We can't do it. But I can… you know."

He sits up, biting down on his lip as he stares at you. "You're sure?"

"Yeah."

"You don't have to, really—"

"Ilia," you stop him, pressing your palm against his mouth until his body relaxes. "I want to."

You remove your hand, leaving his mouth slightly agape as he stares up at you. Before you can overthink it, you nudge him back into a comfortable position, throwing your leg over his thigh to straddle him. Your fingers are almost trembling when you reach the waistband of his shorts, slipping your hand underneath to wrap your palm around him. The moment your hand makes contact with his burning skin, a low breath hitches in his throat. His mouth falls open, his teeth digging into his bottom lip.

"Ilia…" You lean in, your face so close to his that you can feel his hot breath on your skin. Your own body is slowly setting on fire, something twisting deep in your stomach as you feel your shorts getting damper. Brushing your lips against his ear, you whisper, "You have to be quiet."

"I am trying," his voice is weak, so soft that it makes your chest tighten. "It’s just… you’re really warm."

You take his hand, placing it on top of yours where it's wrapped around him, silently asking him to guide you. With pure instinct and the direction of his trembling hand against yours, you begin to move, the rhythm clumsy at first before you adjust to the unfamiliar feeling. The moment you find a steady pace, his eyes flutter shut.

"Like that?" you whisper, your face burning as you watch him completely unravel under your touch.

"Yeah," he chokes out, his other hand digging into your hip. "Exactly like that. Just… don't stop."

His head rolls back against the bedframe, his chest heaving up and down in shallow, ragged breaths. His hand falls away to his side, letting you fully take control. The sight of him is enough to make your mouth water, your own breath uneven as you pick up the rhythm.

He lets out a soft whimper, the stillness of the room pierced by the sudden rise in his voice. You lean in to kiss him, sucking his bottom lip into your mouth to keep him quiet. You continue moving your hand up and down, feeling his hips subtly shift against your palm. As you swirl your tongue over his, he abruptly pulls back, his mouth glistening in the dark.

"Wait," he mutters suddenly, his eyes snapping open. His gaze looks almost drunken in the moonlight. He grips your wrist, slowing you down for a fraction of a second. "Hold on, I don't want to—"

"It's okay," you whisper fiercely against his cheek, leaning your weight into him to keep him right there, refusing to let him pull away.

He lets out a defeated, ragged sigh, his fingers locking tightly between yours as you guide him through the final moments. His entire body goes rigid, a tremor running straight through his muscles as he buries his face deeply into the crook of your neck, smothering a heavy groan right against your skin.

For a minute, he stays just like that, the ragged sound of his breathing slowly quietening down. Gradually, the tension in his body drains away, leaving him completely relaxed against you. He pulls his hand back, his face still half-buried in your shoulder as he lets out a long, exhausted breath.

"Wow," he murmurs, finally looking up at you. His hair is a total mess and his cheeks are flushed a deep red. A quiet, shy smile touches his lips. "That was… woah."

You let out a quiet, breathless laugh, reaching over to grab a tissue from your nightstand to clean your hand. As you're about to climb off him and slide back into the warmth of the bed, he stops you, keeping his grip on your waist tight so you don't move.

"You think I'm just gonna let you sleep after that?"

He leans in, his voice soft and his mouth warm against your skin as he places a gentle kiss on your neck. One of his hands slides up underneath your top, your eyes fluttering shut when he slowly trails his fingers to your breasts. A shiver runs down your spine, your breath hitching in your throat when he cups them with his palms. His fingertips brush across your hardened buds as you throw your head back, biting down on your lip so a moan doesn't escape your throat—because if it does, you know it'll be impossible to contain yourself.

You offer no resistance as he pulls the shirt over your head, his stare almost hungry. He gently nudges you down onto the mattress, hovering over you while he continues trailing kisses down your chest. The moment his mouth closes around your nipple, your back arches instantly. You bury your fingers into the bedsheets, gripping the fabric until your knuckles turn white to stifle the muffled gasp tearing from your throat. His hands slide down to your hips, removing your shorts in one smooth motion that leaves you entirely exposed to the cool air of the room.

author's note: I'm alive 😭 I haven't abandoned this fic, I've just been fighting the worst writer's block imaginable. I genuinely thought I'd have way more time to write over the summer... turns out I was very wrong. I'd rather spend my free time outside enjoying the sun or watching the World Cup instead. English isn't my first language, and I'm honestly way too tired to proofread the whole chapter one more time, so... yolo. This chapter was originally over 20k words long, but I ended up moving all the drama to the next part... so get ready for yet another Ilia x reader argument. One of the last ones before the big love confession hahah. Hope you enjoy!! 🫶💕

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You hadn't believed Ilia would actually show up. You had been convinced he would ignore your embarrassingly persistent request, roll his eyes at your message, and go to bed like any sane person would at that hour.

And yet... he came.

You noticed him halfway through the song. Whenever you performed, you disappeared into a world entirely your own, never paying much attention to the audience because doing so distracted you far too easily; you preferred to lose yourself in the music itself rather than the spectacle surrounding it, in screaming fans with phones raised above their heads, in applause that came and went as quickly as summer storms, and besides, you were far too focused on keeping time with Patrick's drums while simultaneously singing and navigating the bassline to spend your energy scanning a bar that was nearly empty.

Ilia sat at the first table nearest the entrance, a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead with the hood of his sweatshirt drawn over it as well, as though he genuinely feared someone might recognize the famous Olympian who had landed a backflip only to bottle his own free skate.

The moment your eyes met his bright blue ones, something inside you faltered. An unfamiliar knot tightened in your stomach, while heat bloomed across your face with startling intensity. Fortunately, the stage lights had been merciless from the very beginning, leaving your cheeks flushed long before you'd noticed him watching.

You had never performed in front of him before. You weren't even sure whether he had ever listened to a single song your band had released — perhaps the most popular one from your debut album, the one that had unexpectedly gone viral on TikTok for a while.

When you had begged your high school's principal to let you, Ian, Penny, and Dan perform at prom, Ilia had been earning his first appearance on Stars on Ice, making it physically impossible for him to attend; according to the rumors floating around school, that had been the primary reason his relationship with his then-girlfriend had fallen apart, although what the official version of the story had been, you hadn't the faintest idea.

As Message in a Bottle came to an end, the applause was almost nonexistent. Only William, the owner of The Hideout, and Ilia clapped. A quiet laugh escaped you before you let out a long breath directly into the microphone. Your fingers had grown damp with nerves.

Turning over your shoulder, you caught Patrick's eye and offered him a smile filled with genuine admiration. He looked as though he might collapse from excitement. For a debut performance, he had done pretty damn well.

Actually — really damn well.

William climbed the three narrow steps leading onto the tiny stage and thanked the two of you for performing before handing both you and Patrick a freshly poured pint of beer, free of charge. Parched, pleasantly warm from the performance, and quietly intimidated by the conversation with Malinin that awaited you, you lifted the glass to your lips and drained it in one uninterrupted swallow.

Wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, you looked up. Once again, your eyes met Ilia's. He was watching you with one eyebrow raised.

You weren't ready to leave the stage yet, even though almost nobody had been listening. You loved the adrenaline that accompanied performing. More than that — you simply loved playing bass. That was when you felt free. Happy. The first time you had managed to play the riffs from People Are Strange by The Doors and Come Together by The Beatles flawlessly at thirteen years old, you had felt as though you had discovered an entirely new planet. As though you had accomplished something magnificent. As though, for the first time in your life, you mattered.

Before the thought had fully formed inside your head, pleasantly lightheaded from the beer warming your veins, you thrust the empty glass back into William's hands and asked,

"Yo, grandpa, mind if I do one more?"

You sounded sincerely excited despite the terrible sound system, the almost nonexistent audience, and the rat darting along the length of the bar. You sincerely hoped Ilia hadn't noticed it. Honestly, you were impressed he'd stepped foot inside this dump in the first place.

William waved a dismissive hand.

"Knock yourself out. Just don't expect a second beer."

You grinned.

"Deal. Thanks."

Patrick looked thoroughly bewildered. He climbed out from behind the drum kit and, chased off by the severity of your expression, hurried down the three narrow steps before coming to a stop beside the bar, where he leaned both forearms against the countertop, still tacky with spilled beer. You wiped your damp palms against your jeans before settling your fingers around the griff of your bass, and even until the very last moment you had no idea what you were going to play.

There were simply too many possibilities.

You had always possessed an almost unsettling memory for music; after reading a bass tab only once, you could already picture where your fingers belonged and hear, somewhere inside your mind, the notes waiting to be born.

"Alright..." you said into the microphone once you had finally made up your mind. Ilia's attention shifted immediately. He looked up from his phone and fixed curious gaze on you. "I've got one more for you guys." A crooked smile tugged at the corner of your mouth. "An encore literally nobody asked for."

The joke landed with a deafening silence. Not a single laugh. You cleared your throat awkwardly before pressing on.

"We're sticking with Sting tonight. Hopefully you've all got him on your completely crazy Spotify playlists."

Ilia, half embarrassed and half amused, narrowed his eyes, pouted his pink lips, and shook his head. Proud of your own joke and already tipsy, you winked at him. It completely froze him in place.

"Just sing already!" one of the drunk bikers yelled from the back of the room.

You rolled your eyes so hard they almost hurt before raising your middle finger in his direction.

"Jesus, alright already!" you shot back, your voice ringing sharply through the tiny venue. "Relax, dude. What, your underwear cutting off your circulation or something? Is the chair digging into your ass?”

"Y/N." William's warning came low and pointed as he glanced at you from beneath knitted brows while pouring Patrick the second beer he'd just ordered.

"Right." You offered him an exaggeratedly innocent smile. "Sorry, chief."

Fueled primarily by beer and something far more dangerous than alcohol, you began playing Shape of My Heart — the song from Léon: The Professional. One of your favorite films. The one that had reduced you to tears more times than you cared to admit.

Just as Sting had done decades before, you poured every hidden emotion you possessed into the music, allowing every unspoken grief, every quiet longing, every fractured piece of yourself to bleed through your fingertips and disappear into the strings.

The bassline was notoriously difficult to execute cleanly, and that was precisely why you loved it. It demanded precision, patience, discipline. It left no room for hesitation. The beer humming pleasantly through your veins did nothing to dull your concentration or compromise your technique. If anything, Ilia's presence accomplished the opposite. His quiet, watchful, almost judging gaze forced you to lock in completely.

Every note mattered. Every vibration beneath your fingertips. Every subtle shift in pressure against the strings. You treated each one as though it carried something sacred.

Your singing wasn't nearly as flawless — you knew that. You simply didn't care. Besides, in your humble opinion, you still sounded better than Penny. And — modesty aside — even better than Ian, whose voice became almost angelic inside a recording studio but who, on stage, had an unfortunate tendency to get carried away, overperform every phrase, and bury perfectly good melodies beneath layers of unnecessary vocal mannerisms.

Throughout the entire performance, you barely moved. You stood almost perfectly still, like some forgotten goddess of music turned to stone, an image entirely at odds with the reckless whirlwind you usually became during concerts with your band, where you threw yourself across the stage with wild, chaotic energy as if your body had become another instrument.

Tonight was different. You had no desire to fool around, not during this song. Not with your mother's vicious words still echoing through every corner of your mind after the way she had shattered your composure only hours earlier. Not when every lyric seemed to carve open wounds you had spent years pretending had already healed.

And certainly not when, somewhere deep inside yourself, you wanted Ilia to see what no one else ever seemed willing to notice — that beneath the anger, the sarcasm, the leather jackets, the middle fingers, the shouting insults, and the carefully cultivated image of the difficult rock girl everyone thought they knew, there had always existed a quieter kind of artist.

When you finished, you bowed on legs that trembled ever so slightly beneath you. Intoxicated by the rush of adrenaline still coursing through your veins, you hardly felt the alcohol at all — at least not until you descended the narrow steps from the stage and the grimy floor, sticky with spilled beer accumulated over countless nights, lurched alarmingly beneath your feet, forcing the room to tilt in slow, nauseating circles.

You knew perfectly well that drinking before and after performing was reckless. You simply hadn't known what else to do with the wound your mother had torn open inside you.

Perhaps, you thought suddenly, anger flaring toward yourself instead of her, you weren't all that different from her after all if you instinctively reached for the same poison whenever your emotions became unbearable.

Why? Why did you always do this to yourself?

The pounding of your own heartbeat echoed loudly inside your ears. Patrick sprang from his barstool just in time to catch you before your knees gave out completely, steadying you with careful hands before helping you over to the bar, where he generously offered to carry all of the equipment back to the car himself.

Not that you had intended to help him anyway. You had just gotten a fresh manicure, after all, and there was absolutely no way you were about to haul his drum kit back and forth across the parking lot.

Having apparently decided to throw yourself even deeper into the abyss, you ordered another beer and cheerfully instructed William to put it on Patrick's tab. William regarded you with unmistakable disapproval but wisely kept his opinion to himself, simply retrieving a fruit beer from the refrigerator — a lighter one, lower in alcohol than the regular stuff — and flicking the bottle cap off with practiced ease.

"So..." he said, turning toward someone beside you, "what can I get you, kid?"

You turned your head to see who he was talking to. Ilia. For one blissfully brief moment, you had forgotten he was even there. He had taken the empty stool beside yours and, with visible awkwardness, quietly asked for a glass of water. William looked at him as though he'd just requested sacramental wine at a biker bar but, remarkably, resisted making a sarcastic comment.

Ilia accepted the glass before pulling off both his hood and baseball cap. Your eyes widened. For the first second, you genuinely thought you had drunk enough to start hallucinating. Without asking permission, you reached toward him and brushed your fingertips through the short, damaged strands of his newly cropped hair.

Ilia shifted uncomfortably beneath your touch, though he made no attempt to push your hand away.

"What the hell did you do to your hair?!" you squeaked, nearly sliding off your barstool altogether. "You look like a hedgehog! A silver-and-purple hedgehog."

"Yeah... nice to see you too." He shrugged. "My mom cut it. Said it'd gotten way too long. Besides, you told me it was fried too." He absentmindedly rubbed the back of his neck. "And I saw some TikTok saying hair holds memories, so... whatever. Worlds are coming up. I need to lock in."

You stared at him in open disbelief. You had never imagined Malinin would actually take your teasing comment seriously. After several long seconds of shameless observation, once the initial shock had worn off, you reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that he still looked... good.

No. Better than good. Divine. Almost ethereal. It was so unbelievably unfair that it physically hurt.

Jesus, you were definitely wasted.

"And somehow getting a new haircut is supposed to help you with it?" you snorted at last, suddenly realizing you had been staring at him for far longer than was socially acceptable. "God, you're literally acting like some heartbroken girl after a situationship. Hair holds memories. Yeah, sure." You lifted your bottle and took another sip of raspberry beer. "That's just something people tell themselves. Although..." You paused thoughtfully. "I kinda get it. This fucking biker from Austin Penny introduced me to ghosted me after we spent the whole summer together right after graduation, and I dyed my hair red."

You visibly winced at the memory of that heartless prick. He had been your first real crush… well, your first one, if you conveniently ignored Ilia. At first, he'd pretended to be interested. He'd treated your entire relationship like some fun little adventure, hitchhiking across the country with you and your band, sleeping in the worst roadside motels imaginable, smoking whatever weed Ian managed to get his hands on.

Eventually, though, he got bored. For a moment, he had made you feel seen, valued. And then he disappeared without so much as a goodbye.

Typical.

"I'm not being dramatic, Jesus," Ilia protested, sounding genuinely offended. "It's just hair."

"Sure." You smirked over the rim of your bottle. "But I guarantee your fans are mourning your golden locks as we speak. You looked like an actual prince at the Olympics."

You fell silent, waiting for his reaction. Ilia scrunched his nose, squeezed his eyes shut, and let out a dry, helpless laugh that carried equal measures of embarrassment and genuine bashfulness. With every sip of beer, you found him increasingly adorable.

"Stop."

"What?" you huffed quietly. "You seriously don't know how to take a compliment?" You tilted your head, studying him with unmistakable amusement. "Oh, come on. You repost thirst traps and edits of yourself on TikTok all the time, and now you're getting shy on me?"

As though to prove your point, a warm flush spread across Ilia's cheeks, and it certainly had nothing to do with the suffocating heat trapped inside the bar. You had the distinct impression that even your eyelashes were sweating, especially under the stage lights, where the temperature climbed several degrees higher than in the rest of the room, although William was far too stingy to invest in something as extravagant as air conditioning.

"Real life is different from the internet... or the rink," Ilia replied, his voice quieter now. "Besides..." He looked at you with unexpected seriousness. "I seriously don't get you, Y/N. First you pick a fight with me, tell me you hate me, then you ask me to come watch you perform, and now you're saying stuff like this." He let out a small, bewildered laugh. "You're honestly so damn confusing."

The sly, provocative smile slowly slipped from your face. Sooner or later, you knew, you would have to admit you had been wrong. You hated doing that. Another dreadful habit inherited from your mother. She could argue with your father for entire days and sleepless nights rather than concede that he had been right about something, and he, stubborn as granite, never backed down either.

When you were a child, you had fallen asleep almost every night with headphones pressed tightly over your ears, desperate to drown out their endless shouting. You could listen to Aerosmith on repeat for hours.

"Yeah..." you admitted at last, shame creeping into your voice as you lowered your gaze to the beer bottle between your hands, now almost empty. "I don't really get myself either." A quiet sigh escaped you. "I got carried away." You swallowed hard. "S-sorry." The apology tasted unfamiliar. "I wanted to piss you off until you finally admitted you treated me like shit back in high school, but instead I realized I'd hurt you too without even meaning to." You absentmindedly traced your thumb around the rim of the bottle. "I could've said something when my friends made fun of you... but I didn't." Your voice grew smaller. "Because I was a coward."

You hesitated before forcing yourself to continue.

"And... I was insanely jealous of you." Slowly, cautiously, you looked back at him. His expression had softened. "You had everything I'd ever wanted. You were living your dream, your parents actually supported you, and people..." You laughed bitterly beneath your breath. "People really liked you." A strange silence settled between you. "I mean, except my group. I still don't like you, though," you added quickly, afraid he might start pitying you. "Just so we're clear. Maybe you had your reasons, but you were still an asshole to me."

Behind the counter, William continued polishing glasses that were already spotless while pretending very unconvincingly not to eavesdrop.

"Yeah..." Ilia said with an almost amused shrug. "You weren't exactly Miss Sunshine either." His lips twitched. "I couldn't stand looking at you."

He said it so casually that it almost sounded as though he meant something entirely different. The words settled heavily somewhere deep inside your chest. The thought that he hadn't even been able to bear the sight of you hurt far more than it should have.

You didn't understand why — you hadn't felt anything for him in years. That stupid little crush had died back in 10th grade. It had been buried forever at the skate park where the two of you had once spent an afternoon together. The same afternoon during which, according to Ilia's completely fabricated version of events, you had stolen his phone and snooped through his playlists.

Even though the two of you had, apparently, reached some sort of unofficial truce (at least that was how it seemed to you) you had absolutely no intention of letting that ridiculous accusation slide.

"Okay, let's not do this," you interrupted before another argument could take root, draining the last of your beer. "We'll just end up fighting again, and I'm already tipsy, and I'd honestly like to stay in a good mood." Beside you, Ilia had barely touched his glass of water. "Just tell me what you thought about the performance." You dramatically poked him in the shoulder. He didn't even flinch.

"It was really good." He nodded once. "Like... I really, really liked it."

Your eyebrows rose. You looked almost offended by how brief his answer had been.

"That's it?" you complained. "You're not gonna tell me I was brilliant or something?"

Ilia visibly panicked. He shot you a quick side-eye, something that had driven you absolutely insane back in high school but that, oddly enough, barely registered anymore. You had eventually concluded it was simply a nervous habit. Whenever he felt uncomfortable, whenever he didn't know what to say — his eyes darted away.

Back in sophomore year, you had been convinced he looked at you like that because he secretly hated you.

"Well..." he began carefully. "Maybe not brilliant, but..." He trailed off, desperately searching for a safer adjective.

"You dickhead," you laughed, the insult sounding far more affectionate than cruel. You weren't offended by his opinion in the slightest. Quite the opposite. There was something strangely endearing about watching him struggle so earnestly to avoid hurting your feelings. Alcohol had always made you gentler, softer around the edges. "I know," you admitted with a shrug. "It would've sounded better if I'd had a guitarist for Message in a Bottle, but at least I managed to recruit a drummer at the last minute, and in that song the drums do half the heavy lifting anyway."

"Hm." Ilia tilted his head thoughtfully before meeting your eyes again. "Honestly?" A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I liked it exactly the way it was."

The gentleness of his voice and the unmistakable sincerity woven through his words sent a pleasant warmth flowing through your entire body, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the beer beginning to cloud your head or the suffocating heat trapped inside the bar. You felt strangely flustered, a state so unfamiliar that it almost unsettled you, because moments like these happened to you so rarely that you could scarcely remember the last one. During tours, you usually avoided men like the plague — they were arrogant, they smelled, and despite possessing only the vaguest understanding of music, they constantly felt compelled to prove they knew more than you ever could.

"Thankss..." you replied bluntly, thoroughly lost in the strange tenderness of the moment. "But, to be fair, your opinion doesn't exactly mean that much to me." The words left your mouth before your brain could stop them. A heartbeat later, horror dawned across your face. "I mean..." You grimaced. "You, ym, just seem like someone who's really easy to impress."

Every additional word only dug the hole deeper. You also noticed, with growing despair, that your speech had begun to slur ever so slightly. Alcohol always did that to you. It also had the unfortunate tendency to make you sentimental, painfully self-pitying, and liable to burst into tears over absolutely nothing.

You desperately hoped you hadn't reached that stage yet.

"Maybe." Ilia sounded completely unfazed. "You should've invited my mom instead. She's, like, never satisfied with my skating." A faint smile ghosted across his lips. "She's kinda the bad cop."

"And your dad's the good cop?"

"Something like that." He shrugged. "He's easier to talk to, you know, on the rink. Sometimes he even forgets he's also my coach."

"I've got a feeling your mom hates me," you blurted out, idly fidgeting with your exhausted fingers, still aching from playing. "I insulted you right in front of her at graduation."

You remembered. Of course you remembered. You had no doubt Ilia remembered that afternoon just as vividly. It wasn't one of the memories you carried with pride. Although remorse rarely accompanied the more... morally questionable decisions you made, that particular moment had returned to haunt you far more often than you cared to admit.

"Yeah..." Ilia scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck. "She might... not think very highly of you."

"She's probably right." The words escaped in little more than a murmur. "I don't think very highly of myself either."

You immediately regretted drinking so much. The alcohol had begun dissolving every wall you'd spent years constructing, and thoughts that normally remained buried in the furthest corners of your mind were now slipping carelessly into the open.

So you fell silent.

Ilia, visibly thrown off by the sudden quiet, seemed equally uncertain how to fill it. He looked too tired to launch himself into another serious conversation, so he pulled out his phone and began mechanically scrolling through social media, though every few seconds he stole another glance in your direction.

Meanwhile, pleasantly drunk, you remained stubbornly focused on the worn wooden countertop before you, your vision softened around the edges, silently praying for something — anything — to rescue the two of you from the unbearable awkwardness.

Your salvation arrived… or so you thought.

Patrick.

Out of breath from hauling all the musical equipment back to the car, he squeezed himself onto the empty space between you and Ilia before casually reaching for the glass of water Ilia had ordered. Without asking.

Ilia blinked, utterly bewildered, but he said nothing.

"Quad God, right?" Patrick asked after taking a long drink. "Hey, man. I'm Patrick." He enthusiastically extended a sweat-dampened hand. Ilia accepted it with obvious reluctance and an uneasy, painfully forced smile. "We go to George Mason together. I know you took the semester off, but... maybe you recognize me?"

"Um..." Ilia looked at him apologetically. "Not really."

"Aww." Patrick sighed with genuine disappointment. "That's a shame." Then, brightening almost immediately, he added, "I'm a huge fan."

"Uh..." Ilia looked desperately toward you, his expression all but pleading for rescue. "Thanks? Nice to meet you."

You stared at your drummer with undisguised pity. After careful consideration, you concluded that the uncomfortable, brittle silence you and Ilia had been enduring moments earlier was infinitely preferable to whatever catastrophic social performance Patrick had just decided to stage.

"Dude, leave us the fuck alone!" Your command rang across the room with startling authority. Alcohol always had that effect on you. You always believed you were speaking quietly when, in reality, you were effortlessly overpowering every other conversation in the building. "Go annoy somebody else!"

"Wow." Patrick snorted. "Playing with you was such a pleasure too, Y/N." His sarcasm dripped like honey. "And you're welcome for carrying your bass and amp back to the car. You can come get it from the music shop tomorrow, because I'm not lugging that thing all the way to your house."

"I never said it was fun playing with you," you slurred, a lazy smile wandering across your lips as you wiped the sweat from your forehead. Why had it suddenly become so unbearably hot in here the moment Ilia walked in? "You were..." you paused dramatically, pretending to think, "...average."

Patrick placed a hand over his heart.

"Thanks. Coming from you, that's basically a standing ovation." He grinned. "I'm absolutely bragging about that."

"Okay." You pointed at him with exaggerated seriousness. "I take it back." You leaned your shoulder lightly against Ilia's. "Your drum part was even worse than his Olympic skate."

You expected Ilia to laugh, or at least roll his eyes. Instead, he remained perfectly still. His gaze drifted toward the illuminated shelves of liquor bottles mounted across the room. He looked embarrassed, quietly hurt. Regret struck you almost instantly. You should have bitten your tongue.

Silence settled over the three of you once more. You had absolutely no idea how to recover from what you'd just said. Then again, by now, you were far too drunk to come up with a solution.

"Well..." Patrick cleared his throat dramatically. "That was awkward. I should probably go check whether I'm somehow in the bathroom." As he passed behind you, he patted your shoulder before leaning close enough for only you to hear. "That was a really low blow."

You jerked away from him and stared with wide, horrified eyes.

"I knoooow!" you wailed far louder than necessary, making absolutely no effort to lower your voice despite Ilia sitting right beside you. "I'm such a biiiitch." Then, as though remembering something wonderfully important, you pointed a finger after Patrick. "Oh, and by the way..." A hopelessly guilty grin spread across your face. "I put my beer on your tab."

"What? Why the hell did you do that?"

"Because I wanted to."

Patrick let out a helpless sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers as he drew several slow, measured breaths in a valiant attempt to compose himself. You watched the spectacle with unconcealed amusement.

"I swear to God, Y/N," he muttered with theatrical despair, "you're seriously something else."

"And you still haven't given my Metallica cassette back," you shot back.

Truth be told, you no longer cared about the tape itself. You simply enjoyed watching it get under his skin. Driving people to the edge of their patience had always been your favorite pastime, and, quite possibly, your greatest supernatural talent. Sometimes all it took was a single look from you — a raised eyebrow, an innocent smile, a particularly insufferable smirk — to knock someone completely off balance.

"And you promised you'd grab a beer with me."

"I did." You smiled sweetly. "I even bought myself one." You tilted your head. "With your money, technically, so... you kinda already bought me that drink." You shooed him away with an impatient flick of your hand, as though dismissing an especially persistent fly. "Now quit bothering us, will ya?"

Ilia observed your bickering with Patrick in growing irritation. Although he pretended to be absorbed in idly scrolling through Twitter, every so often he stole another glance at you from beneath lowered lashes, and when your eyes finally met, you could have sworn you saw something flicker across the deepened blue of his gaze.

Jealousy. Or something dangerously close to it.

The moment Patrick finally wandered off and left the two of you alone, you seized the opportunity without hesitation, dragging your chair across the sticky wooden floor until it rested beside Ilia's, so close that your shoulders brushed together and scarcely an inch of space remained between you.

By then, you were drunk enough to briefly entertain the glorious idea of ordering another beer — or perhaps a shot of tequila — but the last stubborn fragment of common sense still clinging to your mind intervened just in time. You had a job interview tomorrow. You needed to resemble someone an employer might actually trust with responsibilities. No one wanted to hire the woman who staggered through life permanently hungover.

Besides, you didn't want to become your mother. You had to do better. For yourself, and for whatever remained of your conscience.

"I'm sooo sorry, Ilia." Your lower lip jutted out into an exaggerated pout. "About the... you know... Olympic comment." You looked down at your hands. "Sometimes I take jokes way too far." A tiny, remorseful smile tugged at the corner of your mouth. "That was mean."

"Yeah." His voice came quietly. "It kinda was." A stiff, almost reluctant laugh escaped him. "Honestly, it was some crazy work."

You fell silent. For a long moment, your mind drifted somewhere beyond the walls of the bar, beyond the music still echoing faintly inside your ears, beyond the lingering sting of shame, until, almost without realizing what you were doing, you began tracing lazy circles and wandering lines across his forearm with the tip of your index finger.

The fabric of his hoodie surprised you. It was unbelievably soft beneath your fingertips despite looking slightly worn, its fibers weathered by countless washes and long nights spent at ice rinks. Ilia didn't move. Not even an inch. He simply watched you with quiet, unwavering attention.

"Why did you come?"

The question slipped out before you had time to reconsider it, pulling you at last from the pleasant haze of your alcohol-softened daze.

He blinked. "Huh? 'Cause... you asked me to?"

"Yeah, I know..." Your voice became barely louder than a whisper. "But..." Your eyes lingered somewhere on the grain of the bar rather than on him. "You didn't have to."

This time, it was Ilia who disappeared into silence. Something thoughtful settled across his face as his gaze drifted somewhere far beyond the bottles lining the shelves, as though he himself wasn't entirely certain how to answer.

"Got bored," he said at last.

You narrowed your eyes suspiciously, then hiccupped. Reaching for the glass, you finished the water Patrick had so graciously left behind — or rather, the water he'd left for Ilia, considering it was his in the first place. Ilia didn't so much as react.

"But you've got practice first thing tomorrow morning," you pointed out, wiping the lingering moisture from your lips with the back of your hand.

"Well..." He trailed off, searching in vain for an explanation that wouldn't betray the truth. He wasn't about to admit that, despite the spectacular argument you'd had in the school parking lot, he simply couldn't bring himself to hate you. "I do," he conceded after a pause, rubbing the back of his neck, "but I probably wouldn't have fallen asleep anyway. I always end up doomscrolling TikTok until, like, three in the morning. Literally."

"The edits of yourself?" you teased, giggling like a child.

He groaned.

"Haha. Yeah." A sheepish grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Don't tell me you never watched the edits your fans made of you."

"What? No." You scoffed dramatically. "Are you insane? That's fucking weird as hell."

You conveniently neglected to mention that while you rarely watched edits of yourself... you had watched edits of him. More than a few. You had even saved several of them for reasons you still couldn't explain.

"Anyway..." You rested your chin in your palm with an exaggerated sigh. "I'm kinda bored." You subtly pointed toward a bald man seated alone at one of the tables in the middle of the room, his dress shirt hanging open beneath a wrinkled blazer. "And my dad's friend keeps staring at me like I personally ruined his life or something."

The man was spectacularly drunk, hunched over a glass of rum, and every so often he glanced your way with naked disgust. You remembered him from childhood. Every summer, he and his ex-wife had shown up at your parents' house for backyard barbecues while he and your father discussed business over grilled burgers and cheap beer.

Ilia followed the direction of your finger. The look he fixed upon the man was somehow even colder than the one he'd reserved for the relentless journalists and camera crews waiting outside the rink before his Olympic free skate.

Without another word, you slipped — or rather, gracelessly tumbled — off your barstool. William watched the performance with weary embarrassment. You responded by sticking your tongue out at him.

"So..." You grabbed Ilia lightly by the sleeve, tugging insistently. "You wanna go?" He barely had time to react before you were pulling harder. "Iliaaaa..." Your voice stretched into a drunken whine. "C'mon."

You practically draped yourself over him. Acting purely on instinct, he wrapped an arm around your waist to keep you from collapsing onto the floor. Without hesitation, you buried your entire face against the soft fabric of his hoodie. It smelled faintly of detergent and some perfume.

"So soft..." you mumbled, pressing your cheek against his chest. "...and warm."

"What about your friend?" Ilia asked, choosing to ignore every intoxicated observation you'd just made.

Yet when he said the word friend, an unmistakable edge crept into his voice — jealousy. It lingered there despite his obvious efforts to hide it. To your own embarrassment, you found it strangely flattering.

You pulled away just enough to frown.

Patrick. Right, you'd completely forgotten about him. Oddly enough, you weren't particularly eager to spend another minute in his company. Lately, you'd been seeing him practically every single day.

"What about him?" you said with a careless shrug. "He's probably jerking off in the bathroom or something." You waved a dismissive hand. "Besides, he's a grown man. I'm pretty sure he can find the exit on his own."

Ilia didn't budge.

"It still feels, I dunno, kinda shitty to leave him here when you came together."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Malinin." You rolled your eyes so dramatically it almost made you dizzy. "Since when did you become such a saint?"

"What do you mean?" He pulled off the perfect impression of an unfairly accused puppy, wearing innocence and mock offense so convincingly that, under different circumstances, you might have believed him. "I'm always a saint."

"Oh, please." You snorted. "Your Instagram username says otherwise. QuadDevil? Seriously?" You smirked. "How do you somehow manage to be cringe literally all the time?"

A flush immediately climbed Ilia's cheeks. He looked exactly like a little kid caught red-handed after pulling a prank on an unsuspecting adult.

"Hey!" he protested weakly. "That's my private account, you stalker."

"Private doesn't mean invisible." You shrugged innocently. "It literally popped up in my suggested yesterday." A mischievous grin spread across your face. "I'm honestly scared to know what you post on there." You shuddered theatrically.

The truth, however, was considerably less dramatic. Curiosity gnawed at you with relentless persistence. Every now and then, Ilia shared fleeting glimpses of the life he lived beyond competitions, beyond the cameras, beyond medals and expectations.

You couldn't help wondering what his ordinary days looked like. Whether there was someone waiting for him after practice. Some figure skater, maybe.

The two of you lingered inside until Patrick finally emerged from the bathroom, and after saying your goodbyes — during which he enthusiastically attempted to hug Ilia, who accepted the embrace with the enthusiasm of a hostage, while simultaneously mourning the fact that you were already leaving — he reluctantly admitted the bar would be closing soon anyway and declared that he'd make it home on his own.

Not wanting to be a complete bitch, you muttered a brief thank-you for the performance, much to Patrick's obvious delight.

"Pride comes before a fall, Pat," you tossed over your shoulder as a parting shot.

The smile faded ever so slightly from Ilia's face. He'd heard those exact words countless times from strangers hiding behind anonymous profiles after the Olympics.

"Can we hit the McDrive?" you asked the moment you stepped outside, your voice slipping into an almost childishly hopeful tone. "I'd literally kill for some nuggets."

"No." His answer came immediately. "It's late."

"Pfft." You wrinkled your nose. "You're no fun."

Your legs had become increasingly unreliable, forcing you to latch onto his arm once again with the unwavering determination of a baby koala.

"Oh, wait!" You gasped strikingly. "I didn't say goodbye to William!"

The realization arrived several seconds too late. Still, you had absolutely no intention of walking back inside. The bar had become unbearably stuffy, thick with heat, alcohol, and stale cigarette smoke.

Outside, the early March air greeted you with a crisp chill that bit pleasantly at your flushed cheeks, and you greedily filled your lungs with it, foolishly convincing yourself that enough cold air might somehow sober you up... or at the very least stop you from clinging so shamelessly to Ilia.

Not that you actually wanted to let go.

Together, you made your way toward his car, parked beneath the glowing Walmart sign a few minutes' walk from The Hideout. Neither of you spoke during the walk. Yet, for the first time that evening, the silence settling gently between you wasn't uncomfortable. It felt... peaceful.

You made two more determined attempts to convince Ilia to take you somewhere for greasy, artery-clogging junk food, but he remained infuriatingly unmoved. He did, however, grant you custody of the aux cord.

The gesture caught you so completely off guard that, for the first few minutes, you couldn't settle on a single song, your finger darting restlessly from one track to another before the opening piano notes of Tiny Dancer by Elton John finally spilled through the speakers. It was the song that had made you fall hopelessly in love with music itself.

Whenever you, Penny, Ian, and Dean reached yet another spectacular impasse and your rehearsals dissolved into shouting matches and wounded pride, you always put that song on, and somehow — almost miraculously — the four of you found your way back to one another. Rock had been the reason you'd come together in the first place.

Softly, almost beneath your breath, you sang along, your gaze drifting beyond the passenger-side window into the velvet darkness sliding past outside, your thoughts wandering somewhere only you could reach.

Every now and then, Ilia stole another glance at you. Each time, an involuntary smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He found himself strangely captivated by how effortlessly you disappeared into your own little universe whenever music filled the silence, by the way you suddenly looked impossibly young, wonderfully free, and genuinely happy, as though every burden you carried every waking hour simply dissolved into the melody, leaving behind only the girl you might have become if life had been kinder to you. The anger vanished from your face, so did the exhaustion you wore like armor.

By the time he pulled up outside Andrea's house, the memory of your very first encounter after all those years resurfaced for both of you with startling clarity — the evening you'd stubbornly sat on the rain-soaked sidewalk outside the ice cream shop, drenched to the bone as you hurled every insult you could think of in his direction.

It had happened only a handful of days ago. Yet somehow, it felt like another lifetime.

Neither of you moved. The warmth inside Ilia's ugly Honda had settled around you like a blanket, and despite everything that had happened between you, despite every argument, every misunderstanding, every sharp word neither of you could take back, there was something unexpectedly comforting about simply sitting beside him in the quiet.

Still, you couldn't postpone going home forever. No one would be waiting for you inside anyway. Andrea was working another late shift, which at least spared you the humiliation of having to explain why you were returning home less than sober.

You unbuckled your seatbelt. Reached into your purse — and froze. Your purse. Gone.

Your entire body went rigid.

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" The panic exploding from your lungs made Ilia nearly leap out of his own seat.

He instinctively lurched forward, his eyes darting frantically across the windshield in search of whatever imminent disaster had just unfolded, while the seatbelt dug painfully into his chest.

"OH MY GOD, WHAT?!" he squeaked.

"I left my purse at The Hideout!" Your voice cracked with horror as the realization hit you in full force. "I gave it to William to keep behind the bar." You buried your face in your hands. "Shit. My phone's in my jeans, but..." You looked back up at him, visibly stricken. "My house keys were in that bag." Hope flickered uncertainly in your eyes. "You think they're still open?"

"I dunno, probably not. Bro, don't scare me like that!" Ilia exhaled in a long, trembling rush, the breath escaping him with an audible hiss, his entire body still taut with the remnants of alarm, his face pale with genuine fright. "Jesus, I thought you'd spotted some killer clown outside the window or something. Art the Clown type of shit."

You cringed.

"Sssorry," you mumbled, shrinking into yourself for half a second, "but honestly, this is almost as bad as a psycho clown."

"Can't your aunt just let you in?"

"She's a nurse, and she's working the night shift at the hospital tonight," you explained before letting out another defeated, "Fuck," and, unable to contain the frustration clawing beneath your skin, clenched your fists and smacked them against your knees.

"Don't you guys keep a spare key somewhere? Under the doormat or inside a flowerpot?"

Slowly, deliberately, you turned your head to stare at him as though he'd just confessed to believing the moon was made of cheese.

"Dude, nobody does that unless they're complete idiots or characters in stupid movies." You sighed, resignation settling over your shoulders like wet cloth as your hand drifted toward the door handle. "Whatever." Your voice softened into a murmur meant more for yourself than for him. "I'm a big girl."

Then, with theatrical dignity utterly at odds with your increasingly intoxicated state, you announced, "I'll just sleep on the porch."

This time it was Ilia who looked at you as though you had completely lost your mind. And perhaps you had. The alcohol, though gradually leaving your bloodstream, had dulled every sensible instinct you possessed, and somewhere beneath the haze you already knew tomorrow would greet you with a splitting headache and an even worse moral hangover.

"Are you actually insane? It's the middle of March."

"So what?" you protested, lifting a careless shoulder. "I'm warm. I can handle myself, lutz boy."

"Nope. Absolutely not." He shook his head with quiet finality. "And don't call me lutz boy."

"Oh? Then what do you want me to call you?" you shot back with drunken malice dancing in your eyes. "A loser? Or maybe Ilyusha? Ilyushenka?"

Ilia rolled his eyes with the weary indulgence one reserved for particularly impossible people, choosing not to acknowledge the Russian diminutives rolling so effortlessly off your tongue. No one besides his parents and Rafael ever called him that anymore, and yet, strangely enough, hearing it from you didn't sound nearly as foreign as it should have.

Without another word — and without giving you the slightest opportunity to object — he shifted the car into gear before you could climb out.

"Hey- stop!" Almost instinctively, your hand landed against his thigh, warm even through the fabric of his sweatpants, but realization struck a heartbeat later and you snatched it away as though burned. "Where are you going?"

"To my place." His answer was maddeningly calm. "You're sleeping in my room."

A dark, incredulous laugh burst out of you.

"Oh, hell no." You shook your head so violently it nearly made you dizzy. "Turn around. I'd literally rather die."

A few minutes later, despite every protest you had managed to slur out along the way, Ilia was quietly guiding you through the living room of his house, navigating you almost entirely by memory and the faint wash of moonlight spilling through the windows, neither daring to switch on a single lamp for fear of waking his parents and inviting questions neither of you was remotely prepared to answer.

You stumbled twice over the scattered toys belonging to his ragdolls, your balance already unreliable from the beer, and silently prayed the two cats had retreated somewhere deep within the house, because by now you had exposed far too many vulnerable pieces of yourself to Ilia in the span of a single evening, and the last thing you wanted was for him to discover yet another humiliating truth — that despite your sharp tongue, reckless bravado, and carefully cultivated reputation for fearing absolutely nothing, you were terrified of cats.

Tatiana and Roman's house was immaculate, spacious, and tastefully furnished, every room wrapped in a palette of soft whites and muted greys that lent the place a quiet, understated elegance. On one of the hallway shelves, your eyes caught a row of framed family photographs, and one in particular held your gaze — a tiny Ilia standing on an ice rink, no older than three, already balanced on impossibly small skates. The sight tugged unexpectedly at your heart. He had looked unbearably adorable.

You, on the other hand, had been a decidedly unfortunate-looking child.

A staircase led down to Ilia's bedroom. It was generously sized, though pleasantly cluttered, carrying the unmistakable feeling of a room that time had politely forgotten. Skateboards still decorated the walls, a corner crowded with stuffed animals remained untouched, and meticulously assembled model cars rested on shelves exactly as they must have during his high-school years. Your attention was inevitably drawn to the enormous banner bearing his likeness — the one he'd received after winning the World Championships in Montreal — and then to the towering cat tree standing beside the window, its blinds tightly shut against the night.

Perched on top of it was his younger sister.

The moment you stepped inside and Ilia switched on the warm yellow LED lights fixed to the ceiling, the little girl slowly turned toward the two of you, entirely unfazed by the fact that she'd just been caught occupying her brother's room in the middle of the night. A black cat rested comfortably in her arms as she absentmindedly stroked the velvet-soft fur with gentle fingers. You hadn't paid her much attention when she'd come into the ice cream shop, nor later in the school parking lot, but now, standing only a few feet away, you could clearly see how strikingly she resembled Tatiana.

"Liza, what the hell are you doing in here?" Ilia asked, his voice rising in alarm. "You are gonna drop the tree."

"I'm not gonna drop the tree, I'm not that heavy," she fired back without missing a beat, looking at him as though he were the dumbest person alive. "I'm just playing with Mysti."

Ilia dragged a hand down his face and let out a long, defeated groan. He stepped in front of you almost instinctively, shielding you with his back as though there were still a chance you'd magically disappear before he had to explain your presence — or why he'd come home in the middle of the night.

"Uh... just don't fall, okay?" he said more gently this time. Irritated as he clearly was by his sister's unexpected visit, concern still outweighed annoyance.

"Hey." You smiled at Liza, effortlessly ruining Ilia's increasingly hopeless attempts to hide you. "Cute PJs." You pointed toward the oversized Keroppi T-shirt she was wearing.

"Thanks." She beamed at you. You smiled back.

Ilia wandered over to pet Mysti, but the moment his hand reached toward the cat, Liza's expression soured dramatically, her childish face twisting into pure, unfiltered disgust as she shifted away before his fingers could so much as graze the black fur.

"Why aren't you asleep?" he asked.

"I woke up and went to the bathroom." She shrugged, carefully adjusting Mysti in her arms. The cat lazily lifted her head without sparing her owner so much as a glance. "Why'd you just get home? And why'd you bring the ice cream girl here? You told me you didn't like her because she's mean and weird."

Ilia's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. His horrified gaze bounced frantically between you and Liza while a vivid crimson spread across his cheeks.

"Liza!"

"Yeah, honestly? Not exactly shocking." You laughed quietly beneath your breath. "I know he hates me. He's probably planning to murder me in my sleep."

"I think he was lying when he said that," Liza continued, much to Ilia's growing despair. "He got so excited when we ran into you. Last time he looked that happy was when he landed his first backflip two years ago and made dad and me record him." She shifted her attention from you back to her brother with perfect sibling cruelty. "And just so we're clear..." she declared matter-of-factly, "you looked like a complete idiot in that video."

Ilia looked utterly helpless. You couldn't stop the small smile tugging at the corners of your mouth.

"I wasn’t exc- okay, you know what? That's enough," he decided in a low, defeated voice before pointing toward the bedroom door, the inside of which was plastered with faded Naruto drawings. "Out. Now."

Liza answered with an irritated hiss and, still clutching Mysti in her arms, hopped off the cat tree with all the grace of a tiny hurricane, nearly toppling the entire structure in the process. Ilia instinctively threw out both arms, prepared to catch either his sister or the cat tree — or both.

"Hey! I told you to be careful!"

"Oh, shut up," she shot back, squeezing between the two of you without the slightest apology and deliberately bumping her shoulder against his as she passed. You silently prayed she couldn't smell the alcohol lingering on you. The thought alone filled you with shame.

"I'm taking Mysti with me," she announced with ceremonial importance. "She doesn't even like you anyway. You can stay with Miu Miu."

And just like that, she disappeared into the hallway, only barely resisting the temptation to slam the door behind her.

The moment she mentioned Miu Miu, you visibly stiffened. Your eyes darted frantically around the room until you finally spotted the cat beneath Ilia's gaming desk, sprawled lazily beside the swivel chair, her impossibly fluffy tail flicking back and forth with slow, indifferent swishes.

You silently begged every higher power that existed for one simple miracle — that she wouldn't decide to approach you, much less attack you the way your uncle's cat once had.

Choosing self-preservation over dignity, you strategically retreated to the opposite side of the room before settling, somewhat self-consciously, onto the edge of Ilia's bed. It was broad and luxuriously soft beneath you, nothing like your own narrow mattress that barely accommodated your body and punished you every morning with an aching neck and a back stiff enough to make getting out of bed feel like a full-contact sport.

Meanwhile, Ilia crossed the room to a pair of sliding wooden doors and pulled them open, revealing a spacious recessed closet hidden within the wall. He pulled off his baseball cap, ran a hand through his flattened, freshly cropped hair, and tossed the cap onto the highest shelf before beginning to rummage through untidy stacks of clothes in search of something to sleep in.

"Brooo..." you eventually said, unable to bear the silence stretching between you any longer, "your room is so messy."

Ilia glanced back over his shoulder, raised one hand dramatically into the air, and pulled the most spectacularly offended expression you had ever seen.

"How is it messy?" he protested. "I literally cleaned it yesterday."

"Really? 'Cause I can't tell," you scoffed, shifting into a more comfortable position on his bed. "Although, to be fair, mine's even worse — except mine doubles as an actual walk-in closet." Your gaze wandered back toward the enormous banner hanging proudly on the wall. "By the way..." A crooked grin spread across your face. "Why do you have a giant picture of yourself hanging up in here?" You tilted your head innocently. "How old are you, five?"

Ilia chose to ignore your remark altogether and fished a wrinkled yellow T-shirt out of one of the precarious piles of clothes, its faded Toothless print barely clinging to the fabric after countless washes. You recognized it instantly. He had been wearing that exact shirt during the Instagram livestream where he'd laughed at you alongside his friends.

Before the memory could awaken the familiar sting of humiliation and send anger coursing through your veins once again, you ruthlessly shoved it back into the darkest corner of your mind.

"You want something to sleep in?" Ilia asked, still digging through the chaotic mountain of clothes with absent-minded determination.

Among the heap, you caught sight of the black trousers splattered with white blotches — the same ones he'd worn during the Olympic exhibition gala. The first time you'd seen them, you'd genuinely assumed they were dusted with snow.

"Yeah. Just give me literally anything..." you replied before wrinkling your nose. "...as long as it isn't those ugly Balmain jeans." You simply couldn't resist taking one more shot at his gala outfit.

Ilia shot you a look that managed to be simultaneously exhausted and mildly offended. You answered with a smug little grin. Without another word, he grabbed the first navy hoodie within reach and tossed it in your direction.

A heartbeat later, exactly what you'd been dreading finally happened. The moment Ilia's attention drifted away from the wardrobe, he noticed his cat, who had apparently decided she'd spent enough time beneath the gaming desk and was now padding delicately across the middle of the room on impossibly soft little paws.

You immediately tucked your legs beneath your chin, every muscle in your body going rigid with instinctive fear. The tiny creature glanced at you only briefly.

Ilia's face, however, lit up with unmistakable delight. He crouched down, scooped Miu Miu effortlessly into his arms, and the resemblance between them struck you all over again. She looked absurdly like him. Their eyes shimmered with almost the same crystalline shade of blue, and the white-brown fur covering her tiny body was uncannily close to the color his hair had been before he'd butchered it.

He scratched behind her ear before pressing a gentle kiss to the top of her head.

"Hiiii, Miu Miu," he cooed, his voice climbing into an almost painfully high register. "What's uuup? Did you miss me?"

He lifted her higher, and Miu Miu immediately burrowed into the crook of his neck as though she'd been waiting for that exact moment all night. Then he looked at you again, his voice dropping back into its usual register.

"You wanna pet her?"

"No." The answer escaped you far too quickly and panicked.

Miu Miu responded with a loud, rumbling purr that sounded almost suspiciously like mockery.

"Why?"

"'Cause I don't." You swallowed. "I'm scared of cats."

"Mhm."

Ilia clearly didn't believe a single word. Before you could protest — or flee — he casually sat down beside you with Miu Miu still comfortably curled in his arms. The instant the cat stretched one tiny paw toward you, you practically threw yourself across the bed, scrambling to the opposite side as though escaping a venomous snake rather than a seven-pound ragdoll.

The naked terror written across your face erased every trace of skepticism from Ilia's expression. In that single moment, he realized you hadn't been joking at all.

"Oh." The smile on Ilia's face softened, shrinking into something quieter. "You're actually serious."

Miu Miu shifted restlessly in his arms, wriggling in an increasingly determined attempt to free herself. Her enormous sapphire eyes remained fixed on you with such unnerving intensity that you became convinced she was only seconds away from launching herself across the room and clawing your eyes out.

You were certain she sensed you as a threat.

"Of course I'm fucking serious!" you squeaked, your voice coming out considerably louder than you'd intended. "Take her away, Ilia. Please."

"Okay, okay, just don't yell," he said, lowering his own voice instinctively. "You'll wake my parents." He looked at you with gentle disbelief. "She's not gonna do anything to you."

"I don't believe you." You lifted your chin with stubborn defiance, meeting his gaze head-on. "She's staring at me like she's plotting my murder." You pointed accusingly at the cat before adding, almost absentmindedly, "It's honestly even worse than your slavic stare."

"My... what?" Ilia asked, eyebrows climbing toward his hairline as he continued absentmindedly stroking Miu Miu's back.

"You know." You gestured vaguely toward his face. "Your slavic stare. The look you get whenever you're mad. Or, like, ridiculously focused. You seriously look like you're trying to kill people with your eyes."

He chose not to interrogate you any further about your so-called slavic stare, though the remark lingered in his thoughts longer than he cared to admit, because it surprised him that you'd paid enough attention to notice how subtly his expression shifted with every emotion that crossed his mind.

Then again, he'd been doing exactly the same thing to you. He noticed the way your eyes narrowed whenever you were thinking hard about something, the faint tremor that slipped into your voice whenever an argument struck too close to home, and the crooked little half-smile that always appeared a heartbeat before you delivered something drenched in sarcasm.

Miu Miu, meanwhile, refused to stop watching you with open curiosity, squirming more insistently in Ilia's arms until keeping hold of her became something of a losing battle.

"C'mon," he urged. "Just pet her."

You looked horrified.

"I promise she won't eat you." A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. "She likes Sheba way more."

"No." Your refusal came immediately.

Eventually, you gave in.

Miu Miu slipped free from Ilia's embrace before he could stop her and padded gracefully toward you, her soft paws making almost no sound against the comforter before she reached you. She stretched out her little nose first, cautiously sniffing your knee, then brushed her impossibly fluffy tail against your leg.

Your entire body remained tense. Carefully — your fingers trembling ever so slightly — you reached out and let your hand glide over the silky softness of her fur. She tolerated the affection for all of ten seconds. Then, apparently deciding you were no longer remotely interesting, she wandered away with regal indifference, sprang elegantly from the bed, and disappeared through the bedroom door Liza had left ajar.

"See?" Ilia said, unable to suppress the small note of triumph in his voice. "That wasn't so bad."

Reluctantly — very reluctantly — you admitted to yourself that he was right.

It was late, and sleep had begun to claim both you and Ilia with quiet, irresistible hands. As silently as he could, Ilia slipped away to the bathroom to change, while you took advantage of his brief absence, peeling off the uncomfortable jeans and tossing them onto the carpet before trading your flared-sleeve blouse for the oversized hoodie he had lent you, the hem falling to the middle of your thighs, its fabric still carrying the faint scent of his cologne, which, much to your surprise, didn't bother you in the slightest.

There was no way you were sleeping on the floor, not when it was scattered with Mysti's and Miu Miu's fur, so you slid beneath the comforter and claimed the left side of the bed, hoping Ilia wouldn't mind sharing it. You knew he would never invade your space — he seemed far too decent for that — and you, in turn, were far too exhausted to care. During tour, you'd slept in stranger places beside stranger people, and as long as they didn't snore in your ear or cling to you like their favorite stuffed animal, it never fazed you. Whenever someone crossed your boundaries, you simply knocked them out.

Even if you were half asleep.

Curled beneath the blankets, your eyes fixed on the white-painted ceiling, you found yourself swallowed by bleak, alcohol-soaked thoughts. You should have been happy after your performance at The Hideout, yet all you could taste was disappointment. Only a few months ago, you'd been playing small arenas, signing autographs, posing for pictures with fans.

Now you were nobody — the only person who had truly listened to your performance had been Ilia Malinin, the very man you had genuinely hated until recently. And now you were sleeping in his parents' house, entirely at the mercy of his kindness.

It was his soft voice that finally pulled you out of your thoughts. You hadn't even noticed when he'd returned to the room. He stood there watching you with undisguised concern.

"Yo, why are you looking like that?"

You lifted your head, propped yourself up on one elbow, and pushed yourself into a half-sitting position. Tears burned behind your eyes, but you refused to let them fall.

"Like what?" you asked quietly, your voice scarcely louder than a whisper.

"Like you're about to die of heartbreak or something."

"And you're the one saying that?" you shot back before thinking twice. "At the Olympics you looked like you were about to backflip straight into misery..." You grimaced the instant the words left your mouth. "Shit. Sorry. Low blow again," you added quickly, suddenly afraid Ilia might throw you out of his bed. "Okay, no more Olympic jokes. I'm sobering up... and I'm turning back into a bitch."

Ilia muttered something beneath his breath and switched off the LED lights. The only illumination left came from thin ribbons of moonlight slipping through the narrow gaps in the drawn blinds. Without a word, he climbed onto the bed and settled on the opposite side, leaving as much empty space between the two of you as physically possible.

You sank back against the pillows. His question still echoed inside your mind, refusing to fade. An overwhelming urge rose within you to answer it — to finally confess everything that had been gnawing away at you. For all the toughness you pretended to possess, each passing day made it harder to carry the weight of your life, and there wasn't a single person you trusted enough to unload it onto. Maybe saying it aloud would make it hurt less. You didn't want anyone's pity, or even their help — but understanding... would have been nice. Since you were already lying in Ilia Malinin's bed, you might as well tell him something about yourself. Something you had spent years trying to hide even from yourself.

"Sometimes I just feel like nothing I do means anything anymore," you admitted quietly, almost startling yourself with the confession.

Ilia immediately turned onto his side to face you, squinting slightly now that he'd taken out his contact lenses.

"You invented your own element in skating, broke records, and you can still break even more," you continued, your voice growing quieter with every word, "but in my world... everything worth accomplishing has already been done. There'll never be another bassist like Phil Lynott or John Entwistle. No band will ever become as iconic as Pink Floyd, AC/DC, or Nirvana. Nobody will carve themselves into history the way Queen did at Live Aid. Even if I somehow managed to create something revolutionary — which I probably can't — I still have to start from absolute zero." You laughed bitterly. "Not that anyone even wants to listen to me anymore... except maybe you, and a bunch of drunk old guys drinking themselves unconscious in bars out in the middle of nowhere. I've been canceled everywhere that matters. Ian and Penny made sure of that."

It felt as though an enormous weight had fallen from your chest, one you hadn't even realized you were carrying. Sadness still flooded your veins, yet beneath it there was an unexpected lightness, and this time it had nothing to do with the alcohol. Ilia, clearly surprised by how completely you'd opened yourself to him, let your words linger in the silence instead of rushing to fill it. Several moments drifted past before he finally spoke.

"Why don't you just tell people what really happened?"

"What would that even change now?" you let out a dry laugh that fractured into something perilously close to a sob. Tears slid silently down your cheeks, and you prayed the darkness hid them from Ilia. "Everybody's already made up their mind about me..." You swallowed hard. "That I'm some homewrecking slut. It'd be my word against the three of theirs. Nobody would believe me." You forced another hollow smile. "But it's okay. I got over it." You paused. "Well... okay, not exactly. If I ran into them right now I'd probably smash a fucking shovel across their faces, but I still believe karma's a bitch, and sooner or later it'll come for them. Apparently..." You looked away into the darkness. "...it already came for me first. Guess that's what I get for being a bad person."

The mattress dipped beneath his weight. Ilia shifted closer, leaning over your tightly curled figure, and, in a quiet gesture that carried more comfort than words ever could, rested his hand gently on your shoulder.

"You're not a bad person, Y/N," he said softly.

That nearly shattered what little composure you had left. You were already certain you'd soaked his pillow with tears.

"You don't know that," you sniffled, pulling the comforter higher beneath your chin as though it could somehow hide your shame.

"No," he admitted, "but I do know nobody's a saint either. Everyone's done something stupid. Everyone's done things they regret. We're only human." His voice turned quieter still, thoughtful in a way you'd never heard before. "Lately I've been thinking maybe... maybe I had to fail at the Olympics to finally understand that." He smiled faintly to himself. "That I'm only human... not some jumping machine."

His words caught you completely off guard. They were measured, gentle, unexpectedly wise. Maybe the Olympics really had changed him. He seemed calmer now. Older somehow. Wiser.

"I mean..." You let out a watery laugh through your tears, making one feeble attempt to lighten the mood before you completely fell apart. "To be fair... you did keep calling yourself a god."

"Yeah..." He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "At first it was just a joke, but once I started winning every competition... somewhere along the way, I kinda actually started believing it."

"I guess we both needed a reality check," you sighed, long and weary. "When my band blew up, I got arrogant too. I honestly thought I was better than everyone else." A small smile tugged at your lips. "Looks like we've got more in common than either of us wanted to admit, lutz boy." You tilted your head with the faintest trace of mischief returning to your eyes. "Except our music taste, obviously." You flashed him a teasing grin.

"Well, I do like some rock songs. Honestly, I like pretty much every kind of music."

"Except Taylor Swift, huh?" You nudged him with your elbow.

"Yeah." He let out a quiet chuckle. "I lied. There is some music I don't like." A small, knowing smile tugged at his lips. "You know an awful lot about me for someone who supposedly hates me."

You deftly steered the conversation away before it could go any further. You might have been tipsy, but you had no intention of confessing to the steadily growing obsession you'd developed with Ilia — that you'd watched nearly every interview he'd ever given, that you'd combed through practically every inch of his social media, quietly piecing together fragments of a life that had never really belonged to you.

"Good night, lutz boy..." you murmured before correcting yourself. "Sorry... Ilyushenka."

You turned your back to him before he could answer.

"Night, Y/N."

You nestled your cheek into the pillow and closed your eyes. Sleep, however, stubbornly refused to come. You had never been able to fall asleep without some kind of stuffed animal tucked against you. Back at Andrea's house, you always had your old teddy bear.

"Ilia?" you asked hesitantly, breaking the silence. You could still hear the uneven rhythm of his breathing, so you guessed he hadn't drifted off yet.

"Hm?"

"Can I borrow one of your plushies?"

He answered with a sound that was half sleepy hum and half yawn, then slid toward the edge of the bed and stretched an arm toward the pile of stuffed Toothless dragons scattered nearby. His fingers found the tail of the black plushie, and he handed it over without a single question.

He never asked why you needed it. For that alone, you were immeasurably grateful.

"Thanks."

You’re the first one to wake up in the morning. Jace is snoring on the couch, Max and Jack squeezed together on the other side of it. You wonder where he is, glancing at the hallway to check whether his shoes are there or not, but it’s impossible to tell. All of the four pairs of trainers are the exact same type that guys with no fashion taste usually wear, scattered messily across the floor with a few of them flipped upside down like they just kicked them off the second they stumbled through the door. Someone must’ve left early—either Josh or Ilia. You don’t bother fixing them; you don’t lift a single finger to tidy up anything around the house today. Instead, you go through your usual morning routine and lock the front door behind you, slamming it a bit harsher than necessary in hopes of waking at least one of them up. The raw hurt and disrespect from last night are lingering, settling into your chest even heavier than yesterday.

Due to a deeply warped rear wheel rim—the metal frame having bent into a useless "S" shape after you hit a brutal pothole a few days ago—and the incredibly slow service of the local repair shop, you’re forced to walk to the cafe instead of cycling. Your prized vintage sage green Electra cruiser bike, with its thick cream-colored tires, had to be left at the mechanic for five whole days while they wait for matching parts to arrive.

The confectioner has already arrived an hour before you, the fresh, comforting smell of warm cinnamon buns hitting your nose the exact second you step inside the cafe.

The day moves painfully slow. You spend the hours taking orders, decorating buns, trying out new latte art techniques, and thinking about last night for the thousandth time. Despite the years of hearing him shyly gushing over his school crushes, despite the fact that he had a girlfriend for almost two years, and despite the years of him never showing a single shred of romantic interest in you, you always had this small, stubborn spark of hope. You always believed that some day, one day, he’d finally look at you differently.

But his comment last night—the careless, easy way he brushed you off to his friends like you were never even an option—finally broke something inside you.

Maybe it was the exact wake-up call you actually needed. It was time to get over this pathetic teenage infatuation that you had labeled as something greater just because you liked the idea of being in love. You needed to move on, completely and permanently, instead of dwelling on some guy who didn’t even acknowledge you as a girl.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey,” you hear his voice through the speaker, the tiredness heavy in his tone. “I’m at the airport. Just waiting for Jace.”

“How was the flight?”

“Average. I didn’t like their sandwich. You make better ones.”

You chuckle, a soft smile stretching across your face as you pull your clothes out of the locker, ready to change out after a long, boring afternoon. “I just finished my shift. I’ll make them for you when you get home.”

“No, don’t bother. I’m not hungry, just rest.”

“Have you talked to Jace today?”

“Yes, why?”

“Well, he was pretty hammered last night,” you shrug, not exactly proud to tell on your brother, but unable to completely harbor the lingering resentment over last night—over him for bringing those guys home in the first place. “Just wanted to make sure he was actually awake this time to come and get you.”

“Did he throw a party again?”

“Haha, no,” you laugh, mentally recalling when you had successfully talked him out of it by bringing up the strict threats your dad had made throughout the years whenever Jace acted irresponsible. “Okay, I gotta go change. I’ll see you later.”

“See you later. Love you, kid.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

You hang up, locking the locker door behind you. Wriggling out of the staff t-shirt—which is a size too small for you—takes a bit of effort, leaving your breath slightly uneven. By the time you’re changed into your regular clothes, you wave goodbye to the rest of the staff, their almost envious stares following you out because you finally get to go home.

Busy scrolling through your playlist to choose a song for the walk, you don’t see him at first. Not until you look up from the screen to push through the glass exit door, almost colliding straight into his chest.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” Your voice is almost confused. You furrow your brows, quickly taking in the sudden, unexpected sight of him. “What are you doing here?”

“I was nearby. Thought I could swing by.”

“Yeah, I think they still have some buns left.” Your voice is flat and dismissive, practically blowing him off as you slide right past him through the door.

He calls out your name before following you onto the sunlit pavement, placing his palm gently on your shoulder to stop you in your tracks.

“I’m not here for the buns, obviously,” he laughs, his teeth on display. No matter how furious you are, no matter how desperately you stare at his face trying to find some flaw—some pathetic attempt to start forcing yourself to forget about him—all you can think of is how pretty his eyes look in the daylight.

“Did you finish your shift?” he asks.

“Obviously...?”

“Where’s your bike?”

“At the repair shop.”

“Oh, what happened to it?” His brows draw together, shielding his eyes from the harsh sun that’s hitting him directly in the face, making his skin almost glow. “Wait, you’re walking home?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m going home too. Let’s go.”

He subtly wraps an arm around your shoulder, leading you toward his parked car like it’s not even up for discussion. You want to protest, desperately trying to come up with a valid excuse he will actually buy, but your mind goes completely blank. Before you can even open your mouth to argue, you’re already sitting in the passenger seat, buckling your seatbelt.

He must be waiting for you to start the conversation like you usually do. You can feel him repeatedly glancing in your direction as he pulls out into traffic, but you stubbornly keep your eyes pinned to your phone screen, mindlessly scrolling through social media in total silence.

“So…” you hear him start. His voice is a bit more strained than it was minutes ago, almost like he recognizes the heavy tension in the air, acutely aware there’s a reason behind your unusual attitude. “How did you spend last evening?”

“As usual.”

“So, Valorant night?”

“Yes.”

“Cool.”

You almost snort at him, his voice painfully awkward. Subtly glancing at him, you realize he’s nervous; his posture is almost stiff as his fingertips drum on the wheel, his lips pressed tightly together.

“Did you, um… did you enjoy the gaming session?”

“Did you enjoy playing Fuck, Marry, Kill in my living room?”

The words snap out of you before you can stop them. You turn toward him with your full body, the demand in your voice impossible to brush off. You watch his face get hotter, his throat bobbing hard before he looks at you with an apologetic expression, sighing like you’ve just confirmed one of his worst fears.

“You heard?”

“The part where you all discussed girls like a piece of meat?” The resentment slips into your voice, your palms growing sweaty at your sides. “Or the part where you involved me in your disgusting jokes?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t fix anything!”

“Jack was drunk, okay?” He sighs again, and before you have a chance to open your mouth to rage at him, he pulls up to the side of the road. Shifting in his seat so he can look at you directly, his expression softens into the exact same look he always gets when he realizes his mindlessness has caused you real harm.

“It doesn’t excuse it,” Ilia rushes out, his voice lowering. “I’m not defending him. Jack was being an idiot. He always says stupid shit when he’s had too much to drink, and you know how he gets. He was disrespectful and disgusting. But the second your name came up, I told him to shut his mouth. I completely shut it down.”

“Oh, so you want me to praise you for doing the bare minimum?”

“That’s not what I said at all!”

“Is that what happens every time Jace passes out?” Your voice changes, shifting from defensive anger to raw hurt, and his expression instantly falls at your vulnerability. “You guys reduce me to a joke everyone laughs over?”

“What?!” He shakes his head fast, looking at you as if you’re losing your mind. “You think I’d let them do that?! You seriously think I’d sit there and laugh at you??”

“Well, yeah. To be fair, you don’t even have the right to laugh at me—you’re a bigger loser than I could ever be!”

“Okay, this is insane.” He lets out a breathless chuckle, shaking his head as if it helps him erase what you just said. “I understand that you’re upset about it, but I swear to you, no one thinks of you like that. Literally everyone adores you! It was just a stupid, thoughtless game because they were drunk!”

“You weren’t drunk though, were you?!”

“I wasn’t!” he finally raises his voice, matching your energy. Unlike your deep hurt, it's pure, desperate frustration seeping from him. “And that’s why I shut it down! I did what any decent person would do! What else did you want me to do over a stupid drunken joke?!”

You stare at him, your chest heaving up and down. Your throat tightens at his utter obliviousness, your inner self screaming at him to just open his eyes—to see it, to realize that you wanted him to defend you because you wanted him to see you as something more than just Jace’s little sister. You wanted him to see you as a option. As a woman.

But you don’t tell him. Even though the confession is threatening to burst right out of you, something in your stomach twists almost painfully, forcing the words back down.

He sighs heavily when you don’t answer him, running a hand through his hair and leaning back into his seat like he’s done everything in his power to fix this. You turn away to stare through the windshield, your heart thumping violently against your ribs as hot tears prick your eyes. You desperately try to blink them away, swallowing the lump in your throat.

“Just drive,” you mutter, unlocking your phone again to continue what you were doing, trying your best to ignore his presence, which suddenly feels suffocating in the car.

“Are you still mad at me?” he asks quietly.

When you don’t answer, he stretches his hand across the console, his palm gently touching your shoulder to get your attention. Even though his face is completely full of regret, you can’t find it in yourself to just forgive him. You know this isn’t actually about the crude joke Jack made. It’s about something much bigger—something he doesn’t see, or maybe something he just doesn’t want to see, completely refusing to acknowledge it.

“I’m just upset at the situation,” you lie, your voice dropping into a quiet, empty tone. “I know you meant no harm.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you wave it off, forcing your tone to slip effortlessly back into your usual, casual baseline. “Let’s just go home. I have to cook for Dad.”

“Okay.”

The rest of the ride is short, spent in a heavy silence. He doesn’t ask you anything further, even when you briefly thank him and say goodbye. It’s obvious that he isn’t convinced by your fake assurance, but he lets it drop anyway. Maybe he thinks you just need a little time to cool down. Or maybe, you think bitterly, he just doesn't care all that much.

Once inside, you feed Dusty, cuddling with her on the couch for a while before your dad gets home. You don’t intend to, but the sheer exhaustion of the day and the suffocating weight of your conversation with Ilia finally catch up to you. You fall fast asleep, only jerking awake when Jace rolls the heavy suitcases into the house. Presuming you’re upstairs, he yells out that they’re finally home.

“I’m right here, you donut,” you mutter, blinking away the sleep.

“Oh, didn’t see you there,” he grins, walking over to the couch to lean against the back of it and stare down at you. His gaze shifts to Dusty, who is unusually calm, almost politely sitting on your stomach. He extends an affectionate hand, rubbing her head. “Hey, Dusty—”

Before he can even scoop her up, Dusty bolts off your stomach, sprinting out of the living room. You yell at Jace to close the front door, and he starts cursing loudly, chasing your chinchilla around the house. He ultimately slips on the floor, groaning in pain just as you see her stop right at the top of the stairs, looking down at him with what feels like a subtle smile.

“Hey.” You feel a soft, comforting kiss on your temple. You briefly pull your dad into a warm hug before walking up to scoop Dusty up, completely ignoring Jace, who is still sprawled on the floor, glaring at you like you’ve personally betrayed him. “How was work?”

“Moderately mundane.”

“Is that so?” Your dad raises his eyebrows, unzipping his suitcase. You roll your eyes, already anticipating exactly where this conversation is heading. “Maybe you should quit.”

“You know, other parents beg their children to get a job.”

“You don’t need a job yet,” he counters smoothly. “You’re responsible and dutiful, and you have to focus on your studies.”

“Now, where was that attitude towards me?” Jace complains from the floor, already sighing because he knows the inevitable answer.

“Unfortunately, you’re none of those things listed above, Jace.”

“Thanks, Dad. Super supportive of you.”

“Here,” your dad says, extending his hand toward you. The book feels solid and slightly heavy as you take it, a grin breaking across your face. It’s a Sudoku book, one of your absolute favorite leisure activities. “Bought it at the airport.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“The house seems clean. Did Susie drop by?” He looks between you and Jace with an expectant expression.

You glance pointedly at your brother, waiting for him to give you the credit you deserve. Susie helps out around the house a few days a week to clean and prepare meals, and you always end up gossiping with her about her daughters while you share updates about your university studies and creative stories. Jace merely points a finger at you, no words needed for the implication, and your father chuckles, shaking his head in that way that indicates he’s long since gotten used to his son being lazy.

“Tatyana invited us over for dinner on Saturday,” your dad announces.

“Is she the one cooking?” Jace asks.

“Obviously,” he replies, both of them visibly excited about the prospect of a good meal.

You don’t stay to listen to the rest, heading up to your bedroom to finally put Dusty back in her cage. You flip to a random page in the Sudoku book and start solving it, trying to drown out your thoughts. Even though you’ve really missed Tatyana’s cooking, you’re already mentally scrambling for excuses to bail out. You just don’t have the emotional bandwidth to sit at a dinner table with him, pretending everything is completely fine while the anger still burns hot within you.

The evening passes quickly enough between filling out the grid numbers, playing a few rounds of Valorant with Cam and Ziggy, and eventually watching a sitcom with Jace and your father. Then the house goes dark, and it’s night. You find yourself texting Allie, who is aggressively pushing plans on you that you never actually agreed to, insisting on taking you to a concert for some artist you’ve never even heard of.

Before finally closing your eyes, you go through your follow requests to delete people—a chore that has become part of your nightly routine ever since the Olympics. Ever since Ilia completely blew up, you’ve been forced to keep your social media strictly private. Strangers keep trying to comment on your profile and share your photos online; half of them speculating about a non-existent relationship between the two of you, half of them laughing at the mere possibility of it. Some people call you ugly, while others praise you for doing absolutely nothing. Yet, the requests keep piling up, people desperate to get even a tiny glimpse into his life through you.

Jace, of course, happily benefits from the secondhand clout of being Ilia's best friend. He regularly entertains his thousands of followers with mindless thirst traps, even pulling in a few dedicated fan pages. Edits of him being shirtless flood your TikTok feed periodically, making you internally cringe every single time you swipe past them.

Locking your phone, you slip it onto the nightstand and stare into the dark. Deprived of distractions, your mind inadvertently wanders right back to the afternoon in the car. A heavy, suffocating feeling tightens around your chest. A single, hot tear rolls down your cheek into the pillow, no voice escaping your throat as the quiet house swallows your heartbreak.

Tatyana is disappointed when she first hears you aren’t attending dinner. Lying with an excuse about an unexpected shift at work is the most solid way to bail out, and you go all the way with the cover story, swapping your regular shift with Betty just in case anyone decides to double-check your whereabouts. Allie is the only one thrilled about the sudden change of plans, always vastly preferring your company over Betty, who spends the better part of her shifts whining relentlessly about either her boyfriend or the customers.

“Should I get a bob?” Allie asks.

“No,” you reply without looking up from your screen, your fingers mindlessly scrolling through X for any new Spider-Man promotional content.

“Why not?”

“Because longer hair suits you better.”

“You’ve never even seen me with short hair,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes as she pops her gum with a loud, echoing smack.

It is almost 10:00 PM, and the cafe is entirely empty, scheduled to close in approximately fifteen minutes. Allie has already changed out of her uniform; her tight, black leather jacket makes a distinct, stiff noise every time she raises her hands—which, given how animated she is, happens a lot.

“I have an excellent imagination.”

Deciding it is finally time to change out yourself, you hop down from the high barstool. You pull your clothes out of the staff locker, slipping out of your uniform and into a washed-up, oversized graphic t-shirt and a pair of denim shorts. Jace sometimes jokingly complains that those specific shorts are too short, clearly enjoying playing the role of the overprotective older brother—a role he rarely actually occupies unless it really, truly matters.

When you walk back out, you are surprised to find Jace himself leaning comfortably across the counter, talking to Allie and flashing her his signature, effortless smile. Unlike you, Jace has an inherently flirty nature, possessing a natural ability to engage absolutely anyone in easy conversation. Maybe he should give his best friend some pointers, you think bitterly, a flash of resentment crossing your mind as you recall every single unsuccessful moment Ilia has ever tried speaking to a girl in front of you. Back in middle school, you used to tease him mercilessly about his awkwardness around girls—right up until you found yourself slowly crushing on him.

You snap back to the present, realizing neither of them has noticed you walk up. Allie doesn't seem particularly impressed by Jace’s charm, laughing over something he says in that polite, practiced way she always laughs at mediocre jokes to please tipping customers.

Jace finally notices you, his face instantly lighting up. He must be tipsy, you assume, tracking his loose posture.

“Hey, sis.”

“Are you drunk?”

“You think Dad would let me drive his car to pick you up if I were drunk?” Jace gives you a look of exaggerated disappointment, glancing over at Allie in a desperate hope that she will take his side.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the dinner?”

“Yes, and I’m here now so we can both go back together.”

“Yeah, no. I’m tired.”

“That’s nonsense,” he shakes his head, slinging a heavy arm over your shoulder and nudging you toward the glass entrance before you can even protest.

You wriggle free from his grip, double-checking with Allie to make sure the registers and doors are fully secure before you officially close up the cafe. Jace waits patiently by the door, acting the part of the chivalrous gentleman he claims to be by offering Allie a ride home—which she immediately accepts. Throughout the entire drive, the two of them chat away. Their words barely register to you as you keep your eyes glued to your phone, stubbornly scrolling.

You realize then that there is absolutely no way to bail out of this dinner anymore. Not without Ilia suspecting that you are still harboring massive anger toward him—assuming he even remembers the car ride at all.

Once Allie is dropped off, thanking both of you as she hops out, Jace immediately continues talking your ear off, physically unable to sit in a quiet car.

“The mechanic called me, by the way. Your bike is fixed.”

“Really?” you exclaim, your eyes practically sparkling as the heavy cloud over your mood lifts for a split second. “Thank God, finally! I’ll pick it up first thing in the morning.”

Jace chuckles. “I already picked it up.”

“Wow. When exactly did you become so considerate?”

“I’ve always been considerate, you ungrateful brat.”

You laugh, leaning forward from the backseat to playfully ruffle his perfectly styled hair. He immediately slaps your hand away before you can even touch his curls.

The ride ends disappointingly quickly, and before you know it, you are stepping through the front door of the Malinin household. You greet Tatyana and Roman, quickly deflecting the attention away from yourself by focusing entirely on Liza, who immediately starts animatedly telling you all about how she has started playing Valorant. You completely ignore Ilia, who is sitting at the dining table right next to Jace. He is stubbornly staring in your direction, clearly waiting for you to say literally anything to him besides the dry, fleeting "hello" you muttered when you walked through the door.

You try your absolute best not to look at him, which is incredibly difficult considering the vibrant red t-shirt he is wearing and the blond curls falling softly over his shoulders make him look maddeningly cozy.

“Eat, dear,” Tatyana says warmly, emerging from the kitchen with a plate piled high with food. The rest of the table is already moving on to dessert, Ilia mindlessly picking at a slice of cherry pie. “You must be starving after that shift.”

“Well, not really—I ate a little something at work—but I’m never going to say no to your cooking,” you joke. The comment elicits a bright chuckle from her as she rubs your shoulder in an affectionate, maternal way, sliding into the empty seat right next to you.

“Eat fast so we can play Valorant before my bedtime,” Liza chimes in, leaning over her own plate.

“Liza, let her be, she’s tired from work.”

“She’s never too tired for Valorant.”

You chew slowly, looking around the floor. “Where are the cats?” you mumble between bites, suddenly realizing the family pets haven’t run to greet you at the door like they usually do.

“Probably in my room,” Ilia answers. The sudden sound of his voice cuts through the air; he has completely stopped engaging in the sports conversation with the rest of the men at the table, his full attention snapping to you. “How was the shift?”

“Good.”

“I thought you didn’t work on Saturdays.”

“My schedule changes pretty often,” you lie smoothly, wiping your mouth with a napkin as you give him a perfectly casual, detached look.

Something in his expression shifts instantly. You couldn’t exactly pinpoint what the subtle change means—maybe it is the slight, tense pull of his lips, or the way his eyebrows knit together just a fraction of a millimeter—but it is clear that he is highly skeptical of your words.

“I see,” he murmurs, his eyes locking onto yours, silently calling your bluff.

You don’t reply, fixing your eyes back on your plate and listening to Liza. Eventually, you follow her up to her room, despite Tatyana’s protests for you to stay and eat the cherry pie.

Liza fires up the game, eagerly asking for your tips and following them with thorough consideration. She eventually lets you take over the keyboard; you lean over the back of her chair to guide her, your expression intensely focused as you show her the skills you’ve obtained throughout the years. You completely lose track of time. You don’t even notice anyone entering the room—certainly not Ilia, who observes the scene quietly from the doorway until Liza calls him out, snapping you right out of your concentration.

“Leave us,” she almost groans, waving him off. “Go play your stupid Fortnite that you’re not even good at.”

“I’m literally just watching.”

“Well, I don’t want you to watch me,” she huffs, her eyebrows drawing tightly together. “Go!”

“She’s just mad because I was busy and couldn’t play Roblox with her earlier,” he quickly explains to you, raising his eyebrows to highlight the sheer dramatics of his little sister.

“You weren’t busy, you were shopping online for ugly clothes.”

“Liza!” He shakes his head, sighing in disappointment. Then, he points triumphantly to the clock on the wall. “It’s way past your bedtime, by the way.”

“Worry about your own sleep schedule.”

Right on cue, Tatyana walks into the room, gently reminding her daughter of her bedtime routine. Liza shuts off the computer with an annoyed expression, barely paying any attention to Ilia, who looks thoroughly amused by her temper tantrum. You say a warm goodnight to Liza, prepared to call off your own night and finally head home since Jace and your dad are way too busy engaging in a deep conversation with Roman over glasses of red wine. You prepare to say your goodbyes and leave, but the moment you leave Liza’s room, Ilia stops you. His fingers lock gently around your wrist, and an involuntary shiver runs through your entire body at the sudden contact.

“Don’t you want to see the cats?”

Despite the lack of any deeper meaning behind the question, the moment takes you completely aback. You find yourself shyly nodding at him, quietly following him downstairs to his room as the loud laughter and clinking glasses from the living room slowly muffle out. Mysti is asleep, lifting her head to look at you for a fleeting second before she closes her eyes again, cuddling further into her cat tree. Miu Miu, however, trots straight toward you, going completely limp the exact moment you scoop her up and cradle her against your chest.

It is undeniably weird. You are standing there petting his cats while he just observes the scene, both of you completely silent. Only the soft purrs and occasional quiet meows of Miu Miu pierce the stillness of the bedroom.

“Did you finish university?” he asks suddenly.

“No, I still have final exams left.”

“When?”

“In a week.”

“I’m streaming on Twitch next week,” he goes on, pivoting seamlessly as if he entirely switched the subject just because he didn’t know what else to say. He smiles at you, oblivious to the internal war you are currently fighting with yourself. You silently curse your own heart because, despite everything that happened, butterflies still flutter wildly in your stomach. It feels incredibly pathetic. “Maybe you can join me for a bit if you’re free. We haven’t played together in a while.”

The invitation takes you completely by surprise. As much as you desperately want to agree, and as hard as it is to turn him down when he is looking at you with such a genuine expression, you firmly shake your head. His lips press together into a thin line.

“You know I don’t like streaming on Twitch.”

“But you do it when Ziggy asks you to.”

“Yeah, because he’s my friend.”

“And I’m not?”

The tone his voice carries is accusatory, the way his eyebrows furrow together almost making it look like you’re the guilty one. A spike of panic floods your brain for a second, but it quickly mutates into anger. Your voice comes out completely flat as you keep stroking Miu Miu’s fur.

“Well, not exactly,” you shrug, your voice stripped of any emotion.

“What?” His face falls completely, his eyebrows raising like he can’t even comprehend what you’re saying. “What do you mean? We literally grew up together!”

“Yeah, because we’re neighbors and Jace is your best friend.”

“What does Jace have to do with us?”

“What us, Ilia?” you snap, your tone cutting and annoyed as you mentally remind yourself to keep things under control. “There’s no us. We talk sometimes and we hang out sometimes because you’re my brother’s best friend. That’s it. What is so surprising to hear about that?”

“Because I consider you my friend, and apparently, I’m just a 'brother’s best friend' to you.” He looks visibly frustrated, a sudden twinge of guilt creeping into your chest when you see just how deeply the comment has rubbed him the wrong way.

“You consider everyone your friend, Ilia. That’s not how it works.”

“You’re not everyone, are you?”

“I don’t see the point of this conversation,” you huff, rolling your eyes as you set Miu Miu down on the bed, ready to call it a night. “I’m going home. Goodnight.”

“No, you’re not.”

Before you can even protest, he crosses the room in two sharp strides and closes the door behind him, standing firmly in front of it to block your exit. He looks angry—maybe even angrier than you are—but before you can rage at him, he beats you to it.

“Why are you being so cold? Are you still mad because of Jack, or what?”

“Stop insisting that I’m some kind of loser who keeps dwelling on mediocre, tasteless jokes!”

“Then what is it with you?!” He throws his hands in the air, exhaling a sharp, frustrated breath when you don’t immediately answer him. “You’re always so sweet, and now you’re basically blowing me off because apparently we’re not friends? You’re reducing me to just one of Jace’s friends when we literally grew up together?! You’ve been acting weird ever since that stupid thing!”

“It’s not stupid!” you yell out, immediately regretting the volume in fear of someone downstairs hearing you. You can only hope the loud way Jace laughs in the living room is enough to overshadow any voice coming out of this bedroom. “It’s not stupid when you brushed me off as a joke! Like I don’t even exist outside the role of Jace’s sister!”

The words come out incredibly bitter, but a strange wave of relief washes over you the exact second you admit it out loud for the very first time. Days of built-up frustration and hidden resentment finally rip right through your defenses.

His face softens instantly at your reaction. The frustration drains from his features, leaving him looking almost apologetic. He licks his dry lips, his voice coming out much quieter. “That’s not…”

“You don’t even see me as a girl, right?” you cut him off. Your voice is almost quivering now, hot tears pricking your eyes before you desperately swallow them down. “I’m just Jace’s little sister. That’s all I’ll ever be to you.”

You try so hard to mask it, but it’s completely impossible to control the raw hurt in your voice—the sheer heartbreak. He looks at you with an intensely guilty expression, his lips pressed tightly together as he avoids your gaze. He fixes his eyes on his shoes for a long second while you stand there, waiting for him to do something. To say something. Anything.

You stare at him for seconds, maybe even minutes, completely losing track of time in the heavy silence. Finally, you sigh in utter defeat. Turning your body, you try to move past him to go through the door and just forget this ever happened—forget the burning humiliation and embarrassment tearing through you.

You push at his shoulder to clear a path, ready to tug at the doorknob and leave him behind, but his hand tightens around your wrist once again. This time, his grip is firm and powerful—almost forceful, completely desperate—as you try to wiggle your arm free.

“I didn’t mean that, okay?!”

“Just let me go—”

“No, you don’t understand!”

“What do I not understand?!” You push hard against his chest, barely making him budge before he catches your other hand, pinning them together to stop you from fighting him. “Spare me the humiliation and just let me go, alright—”

You don’t get a chance to finish. He doesn’t give you one.

Ilia slips his hand into your hair, his fingers tangling in the strands to tilt your head up when you stubbornly refuse to look at him. He crashes his mouth into yours like it’s the only thing he knows how to do—the only thing he can desperately hold onto when his words have completely betrayed him.

You freeze instantly at his touch. The situation barely registers as your skin burns hot, the breath knocked clean out of your lungs as your body goes totally limp against him. Then, it hits you vividly. The solid, warm pressure of his mouth against yours, his familiar scent surrounding you, the subtle taste of cherry pie lingering on his tongue. You clutch at the fabric of his red t-shirt—first hesitantly, and then almost desperately—leaning your entire weight into his body. His hands lock tightly around your waist, flushing you completely against him as his lips move against yours. The feeling is entirely unfamiliar, beautifully strange, the exact kind you could easily get used to.

He finally pulls away when you are both entirely breathless, both of your chests heaving up and down as you stare at him, not quite knowing what to make of what just happened. He reaches up, his knuckles incredibly gentle against your skin as he brushes a stray strand of hair away from your face. His deep blue eyes sweep over your features, intense and completely focused on you.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, his lips red and wet just like yours. “I was a coward. I didn’t mean it.”

You don’t know what to say. You’ve dreamed of this exact moment for years, imagining it over and over again in your head, but you never actually prepared yourself for what comes afterward—when the reality is so wildly different from what you hoped for.

“Why did you kiss me?”

The question comes out hesitant, almost childishly quiet, entirely unlike you. Both of you already know the answer, but you need the reaffirmation. You need to hear the words come out of his mouth.

“Isn’t it obvious?” His voice drops, coming out almost shy as a faint trace of color hits his cheeks. “I lied that night because I didn’t want them to know. Because you’re Jace’s sister, and even though I’m not supposed to… I like you.”

Your heart drops at his confession, your face burning hot as you stand there, completely lost for words. Isn't this exactly what you wanted? Then why do you stand there frozen, unable to do anything, unable to say a single word?

Sudden panic floods your brain, and before the reality of it can trap you, you react on pure instinct. You tug down on the door handle, breaking his grip, and bolt out of the room. You sprint up the stairs despite him yelling out your name behind you.

Tatyana is in the kitchen tidying up, while the rest of the men are still deeply engaged in a loud, heated discussion over some sports team you have no knowledge of or interest in. Moving on sheer adrenaline, you quickly say goodbye to Tatyana, thanking her for the evening, and offer the others a breathless, barely coherent explanation about missing some type of tournament you forgot was scheduled. Jace calls out to you, confused, but you don't stop.

The moment you push through the front door and step outside, you let out a ragged exhale, closing your eyes. You cross the dark lawn separating your houses without looking back a single time, terrified that if you do, the gravity of what just happened will pull you right back under.

Only when you lock yourself away in your room does the realization fully hit you. Ilia just confessed to you. He kissed you. After all this time, after years of pining and scripting a moment like this in your head, it actually happened—and instead of reacting like any sane person would when they're madly in love with someone, you did the exact opposite and ran away.

A wave of intense embarrassment consumes you. You cover your face with your hands, letting out a muffled groan of frustration into your palms.

content: spiderman!ilia, slight enemies to lovers (reader hates spider-man, not ilia), star-crossed lovers, angst, death, no use of Y/N, reader studies Biophysics at Columbia, reader is strongly inspired by gwen stacy, hurt/a little comfort, violence, blood, sex, photographer!ilia, spidey is a college student and a former figure skater, no uncle ben, but there is harry osborn tho, green goblin makes an appearance (my fav marvel villain alongside doc oc), superheroes

word count: 6,2k

author’s note: This was originally supposed to be a short one-shot, but then I came up with a much longer tragic love story and suddenly needed way more chapters 😭 I didn't want to cram everything into a single 30k-word post, so here we are. I tried my best to somehow merge the Spider-Man universe with the figure skating world, and I hope I managed to make it work without it feeling too ridiculous 😅Also, English isn't my first language. I threw in one scene written in my native language just for fun 😉 Hope you enjoy!!! (highly recommend putting on the Spider-Man 2002 soundtrack while reading for maximum emotional damage)

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In 2022, Malinin found himself at the very pinnacle.

At long last, all of his hard work was beginning to pay off. He started posting truly impressive results in competition, became a recognizable name, and stopped stumbling over the small steps that had once held him back. The turning point of his career came when he landed the quadruple Axel — a jump so difficult that it had long been considered impossible.

Almost overnight, Ilia gained a level of fame he had never even dared to dream of. His ambitions grew with it. A gold medal at the junior championships was no longer enough. He wanted to win the Grand Prix. To become a World Champion. To compete at the 2026 Olympics.

He was on a clear path toward all of it, and nothing seemed to suggest that his career might end prematurely — after all, he was not particularly prone to injury. And yet, that was exactly what happened.

Six months after astonishing the figure-skating world with his quad Axel, Ilia Malinin, to the dismay of his fans and coaches alike, announced from one day to the next that he was withdrawing from competition. Just like that, he brought an end to the era of the golden boy — an era that, in truth, had only just begun.

Tatiana and Roman had no idea what was happening to their son.

It was not merely the sudden end of his career — Ilia had become a shadow of himself, a ghost.

On the surface, everything appeared perfectly normal. He went to school, earned excellent grades in the sciences, and spent his free time hanging out with friends at the skate park. Like most boys his age, he stayed up late into the night playing video games and rose early in the mornings to train at the rink. He had once been radiant. Happy. Incredibly gifted. When he landed his first quadruple jump, he had nearly broken his leg from jumping up and down in excitement. He never complained about anything.

Then, one day, without warning, all the light vanished from his blue eyes.

He began avoiding practices, excusing himself with headaches. He spent entire days sitting in the mournful silence of his bedroom, listening to melancholy music. In the evenings, he would disappear for hours, wandering aimlessly through the streets of Queens.

He cut himself off from most of his friends. He hardly smiled at all. Even his appearance changed. He bleached his hair, started wearing baggy clothes, and despite his poor eyesight, stopped wearing his glasses altogether. Tatiana had never once seen him put in contact lenses.

This was not ordinary teenage rebellion, nor was it a passing rough patch. It was something deeper.

And his parents were slowly being driven out of their minds with worry.

They tried to talk to him, to reach him in every way they knew how. They never raised their voices — never once. Instead, with unwavering patience, they made the same futile attempt over and over again, hoping to uncover whatever burden he was carrying.

To no avail.

Ilia stubbornly insisted that nothing was wrong, that competitive skating simply was not for him. They did not believe him. Roman and Tatiana knew their son. Whenever something troubled him, whenever he was hurting, he had always come to them. That was why this situation frightened them so deeply.

“Maybe the pressure finally got to him,” Roman speculated one evening. “Or maybe he just got bored. He’s only a kid, after all.”

“No,” Tatiana said in Russian, with a weary shake of her head. “He’s far too ambitious, far too passionate to simply get bored. I think he’s unhappy.” Her gaze drifted toward the window, distant and troubled. “Not long ago, I read an article about depression in teenagers...” she continued softly. “I don’t know, honey… maybe we never should have pushed him into figure skating.” A heavy sigh escaped her. “It’s our fault. We should find someone he can talk to. A professional. Someone who might be able to help him.”

With time, Tatiana and Roman’s worries slowly began to fade. To their immense relief, Ilia, as if nothing had ever happened, gradually started opening himself up to people again, emerging from the safe yet unbearably lonely bubble he had built around himself. He smiled once more. He sat at the dinner table with his parents. He played cards with his sister. He streamed Fortnite on Twitch with friends from the Japanese skating federation.

He still skated, too. He loved it far too much to hang up his figure skates forever and never set foot on the ice again. But now he skated only when no one was watching. He would show up for the final public session of the night, just before the rink closed. No coaches. No competitions. No expectations.

Rumor had it that the rink owner's son once saw Ilia land a quintuple Lutz — but rumors were only rumors.

And then, just as Tatiana and Roman began to believe that the worst was finally behind them, everything fell apart once more. This time, irreversibly. Ilia began having trouble at school. He got into fights. And one of his closest friends — a boy from his skating club, the son of a respected and wealthy scientist, as well as a dear friend of the Skorniakov family, Harry Osborn — was killed during a robbery.

A bullet struck him in the chest. He died in the arms of eighteen-year-old Ilia.

Roman and Tatiana knew only what the police had told tchem: there had been a robbery at a small Polish grocery store in Ridgewood, and the shopkeeper whose testimony might have helped solve Harry’s murder had refused to speak to any officers at all. Ilia and Harry had been outside, fooling around on their skateboards, when it happened. The masked gunman not only robbed the owner of his money but, during his escape, fatally shot Harry when the boy attempted to intervene.

The perpetrator fled the scene, and his identity was never established. The store’s security camera, unfortunately, had not been working.

That day changed Ilia forever. Consumed by grief and trauma, he allowed an unbridgeable chasm to form between himself and the people who loved him. After graduation, supported financially by Tatiana and Roman — who intended to stand by him for the rest of their lives, no matter what — he moved out of the family home and enrolled at Columbia University.

He never told anyone what had truly happened on the day Harry died.

The day that marked the birth not only of Spider-Man — but of the Green Goblin as well.

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Ilia had always been terrible with remembering dates.

He forgot his sister’s birthday more often than not. The birthdays of old high-school girlfriend slipped from his mind just as easily. Holidays such as Mother’s Day or Independence Day existed for him only because the internet — or the reminders in his phone’s calendar — told him they did.

This anniversary, however, he remembered perfectly.

Ilia stared blankly at the crumpled sheet of paper bearing today’s date. March 15th, 2026. Three years ago, on this very day, his life had changed beyond recognition. Exactly six months after landing the first quadruple Axel in a competition, his body had been altered so profoundly that jumping quadruple jumps had become almost impossible.

Not because he had grown weaker — quite the opposite. He could perform six and a half rotations with ease.

To this day, Ilia could not fully explain what had happened. One day, he had been on a high-school field trip to Columbia University — the very university he now attended — touring a genetics laboratory with his classmates. The next, he had developed spider-like abilities. All because of a single genetically engineered spider that had lost its way and sunk its fangs into his hand.

From that moment onward, Ilia became unimaginably strong and impossibly fast. His senses sharpened to an almost supernatural degree. He could cling to walls and shoot organic webs from his wrists.

Worse still, he could not control any of it.

For the first week after the bite, he did his best to pretend that nothing had happened. Training, however, became a living nightmare. He never got out of breath anymore: every jump over-rotated, every landing was flawless. Sometimes he would suddenly throw a backflip without even thinking about it — something he could never adequately explain to his father. He could perform a hydroblade as though it were effortless, because his knees could finally bend that far. Skating a four-minute program posed no challenge whatsoever. He could have remained on the ice for hours without growing tired. Seven quads in a single skate? No problem. He could have landed ten if the rules had allowed it. A quintuple Axel? Child’s play.

Any other kid would have used the mutation to their advantage. With abilities like these, winning Olympic gold would hardly have been an achievement at all.

But Ilia saw it differently. He believed it was unfair. He had gained an advantage over his rivals through no choice of his own, through something he had never asked for. He had never taken the easy road. Everything he knew, he had wanted to learn with his own hands, through his own effort. The only victories that ever meant anything to him were the ones earned through time, sacrifice, and persistence.

The prospect of winning every competition brought him no joy whatsoever. Instead, it made him feel like a fraud. Like something enhanced. Something no longer entirely human. This was not the same figure skating he had fallen in love with.

And so he walked away — out of respect for the other athletes, and out of respect for himself.

He deleted all of his social media accounts and severed ties with the image of the Quad God once and for all. He stuffed every medal he owned into a box and shoved it beneath his bed. Sure, he missed competing more than anything, but that was not the worst part.

The greater problem was that he could not give his parents a rational explanation for his decision. He did not want to lie to them — he almost never did. Every time his mother tried to coax the truth out of him, his heart broke a little. And every time, he brushed her off with some hastily invented, easy lie.

Eventually, he began locking himself in his room, convinced that it would change something, that he would no longer be forced to explain himself. Because what exactly was he supposed to say? Mama, papa, funny story, I was bitten by a mutated radioactive spider, and now I can spin webs and leap from building to building.

They would have sent him to a psychiatric ward, convinced he had lost his mind. Or worse — to his grandfather in Novosibirsk, so the old man could beat such nonsense out of his head. Ilia could not have endured either fate.

In time, however, he managed to accept what he had become. Day by day, he grew to understand his body a little better. He no longer needed glasses or contact lenses. Lifting heavy objects required no effort whatsoever. He could cling to any surface with his entire body. Eventually — after several unfortunate accidents — he discovered that whenever he bent his middle and ring fingers, spider silk would inexplicably shoot from his wrists.

Ilia found the whole thing rather amusing. A thought even began to take root inside him: perhaps this was not a curse… perhaps it was a gift. No one else in the world could do what he could. No one else could swing from the rooftops of skyscrapers or lift a car with one hand — not that he had ever actually tried, but he was convinced he could.

His ego, already massive after landing the quadruple Axel, swelled until it nearly touched the heavens. He considered himself better than everyone else. He showed off in front of the entire school, he even beat up his high-school bully, Flash Thompson, simply because he could. It was his way of paying him back — with his fists — for stealing his girlfriend, the charming but not particularly faithful MJ Watson, and for every cruel remark about figure skating being a sport for girls and weaklings.

Ilia became simply unstoppable.

Until one day he learned, painfully, that actions came with consequences. That with great power came great responsibility.

It happened on May 1st, 2023 — the second date forever carved into Ilia’s memory.

That day, he argued with his parents. Roman scolded him for forgetting to pick up Liza from a friend’s house and for the incident with Flash. Tatiana threatened to take away his game console if he got himself into trouble at school so close to graduation. Ilia simply grabbed his skateboard, slammed the front door, and stormed out of the house. He had no intention of letting his parents restrict him when he had essentially become a superhuman.

Later that day, he met up with his friend Harry Osborn, whom he had met at the City Ice Pavilion several years earlier. Harry came from a wealthy family. He lived in Manhattan and attended private schools. On paper, he had nothing in common with Ilia, yet the ice had brought them together. Harry skated as well, though he had never reached any great heights and achieved little as a junior competitor. He had never even attempted to move up to the senior level.

For hours, Harry and Ilia wandered through Queens. Eventually, they drifted into Ridgewood, showing off skateboard tricks as they went. At some point, Ilia decided he was hungry and ducked into a small Polish grocery store on the corner, while Harry remained outside.

To this day, Ilia did not know what possessed him to pick up a case of beer. He had never tasted alcohol before and strongly suspected he would hate it, considering he could barely tolerate the taste of tea or coffee.

But he was angry. Filled with boundless rage toward stupid Flash, toward his teachers, toward his parents. He was not thinking rationally, he needed to rebel. Everything that had been building inside him for weeks — the spider bite, his bitter retirement from competitive skating, the arguments at home — suddenly surged to the surface. Ilia stood on the brink of an emotional explosion.

“I’m not selling that to you,” declared the elderly, balding shopkeeper in a thick European accent. His gaze shifted from the beer to Ilia and back again. “I can see perfectly well you’re still just a little dipshit. Get out of here.”

Fury boiled inside Malinin.

“Отвали,” he snapped in Russian, his voice dripping with contempt. “Whatever.”

Before Ilia could even step away from the counter, a broad-shouldered man in a hooded sweatshirt, who had been standing behind him in line, shoved his way forward and drew a gun.

Ilia’s eyes widened in panic. His entire body froze. He had always known that New York was not the safest city in the world, but until that moment he had never witnessed serious violence firsthand.

“Open the register and give me everything inside,” the attacker ordered, pointing the weapon at the store owner.

Ilia could have done something. He could have acted, could have stopped him. He had the means — all he had to do was fire a web and take the gun away. But he was drowning in too many negative emotions. He felt an inexplicable resentment toward the shopkeeper who had dared to throw him out. It’s not my problem, he thought.

And with a bitter smile, he stepped aside and allowed the robber to leave through the door.

“Thanks, kid,” the thug said. Ilia’s eyes caught a glimpse of a star-shaped tattoo on the man’s hand.

“Why didn’t you stop him?!” the shopkeeper screamed once he finally found his voice again, fear no longer strangling the words in his throat. “Ja pierdolę, cholera jasna, trzeba było siedzieć na dupie w Bydgoszczy, Nowego Jorku mi się, kurwa, zachciało” he cursed in his native language. “I’m calling the police.”

Ilia merely shrugged.

Then, from beyond the glass door, he heard the crack of a gunshot, and suddenly he remembered that Harry was waiting outside.

Something ugly twisted in his stomach. A terrible premonition seized him. Panic flooded through his entire body as he realized something he should never have forgotten. His spider-sense had never failed him.

He already knew what had happened. He knew that because of his own foolish pride — and a stupid case of beer — his best friend had been shot.

By the time he burst out of the store, it was already too late. Harry lay sprawled on the asphalt beside his skateboard. A crimson stain had blossomed across the front of his Metallica T-shirt.

Before Ilia could even reach him, Harry was already standing upon that fragile boundary between life and death. And before he drew his last breath, he lifted his clouded eyes and looked at Ilia.

It was that look — that single look — that, three years later, still drove Ilia to run through the city in a skin-tight spandex suit, hunting down every criminal in Queens, Manhattan and beyond, reading stories about himself in the newspapers.

At first, he had only wanted to find Harry’s killer, to punish him. And truthfully, he was still searching. But with time, he came to understand that abilities like his were meant for something greater.

“Yo, bro, somebody keeps calling you!” The shout of his roommate, Bobby, tore Ilia from his grim reverie.

With a loud groan, Ilia pushed himself up from the creaking bed and reached for the phone lying on his nightstand. He glanced at the screen: two missed calls from his mother, one from his old skating friend, Jacob, and a text message from Liza. He opened it and found a blurry photograph of his two cats, Mysti and Miu Miu.

A sharp ache of homesickness tightened around his heart. More than anything, he wanted to go home. Back to his parents, his sister, his pets, back to the warmth and safety of the life he had left behind.

But he knew he could not. The moment he chose to become a local superhero and walk a path paved with danger, he had made another decision as well — to keep his parents at arm’s length. To limit contact as much as possible.

He could not bear the thought of putting them at risk. If someone ever discovered his identity and decided to hurt the people he loved in order to hurt him, he would never forgive himself.

“Hey, are we grinding Geometry Dash tonight?” Bobby asked. “I invited Ned for a gaming session.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” Ilia replied. His thoughts were a thousand miles away from the cramped apartment they rented near campus.

“Uh, shouldn’t you have class right now?” Bobby asked, stuffing a fistful of cheese puffs into his mouth.

Ilia frowned and checked the screen again. It was nearly ten in the morning, and his lecture on General Relativity was about to begin. Because he had spent the previous night stopping a bank robbery on 5th Avenue, he had gone to bed far too late and completely lost track of time.

“Shit,” Ilia muttered.

He threw back the blankets and scrambled out of bed, and did not even bother thanking Bobby for the warning.

In a blur of motion, he pulled on a hoodie from an NF merch collection, a random pair of pants, and whatever shoes happened to be lying on the floor. He ran a hand through his bleached hair, snatched the lonely banana sitting on his desk — and quite literally jumped out the window.

Bobby never asked why Ilia never used the stairs like a normal human being. He never asked why his roommate was constantly covered in bruises. Nor did he ask what exactly was hidden beneath the bed inside the massive briefcase secured with a padlock.

But he had his suspicions.

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Ilia sat hidden between the towering shelves of the Columbia University Library, hunched over his laptop.

Originally, he had intended to work on a project for his astrophysics elective, but after five minutes of research he got bored and drifted toward something far more entertaining: scrolling through the photographs he had transferred from his camera the previous week.

Photographs of Spider-Man in action.

At first, photography had been nothing more than a silly hobby — an escape from the endless cycle of lectures, assignments, and exams that defined his freshman year. He had only become interested in professional photography because his old skating rival and good friend, Yuma Kagiyama, had created an Instagram account where he posted pictures he had taken himself.

Naturally, Ilia had decided he wanted to try it too. Not long ago, he had read online that Yuma had put his career on hold for a year following the Milan Olympics, and Ilia found himself wondering whether his friend planned to become a professional photographer instead.

Either way, he had discovered that wandering through the corners of New York with a Canon camera was a surprisingly effective way to spend his free time — and an even better way to cope with missing Harry and longing for home.

One day, purely for the laugh of it, he had webbed his camera to a streetlamp and set the timer, hoping to capture himself in action while wearing the Spider-Man suit. The photo had turned out so good that — ridiculous as it sounded — he had decided to become his own photographer.

Spidey and his figure-skater ass, caught in glorious action.

“How do you even do this?”

The absolute silence of the library — broken only by the faint scraping of shoes, the rhythmic ticking of a clock somewhere in the distance, and the soft tapping of keyboards — was shattered by a feminine, silky voice Ilia knew all too well.

Slowly, almost lazily, he turned his head. She was standing right behind him, leaning over his shoulder, squinting at the laptop screen and studying the photograph he had been editing.

It needed a little more brightness, but it was already a pretty solid shot — a picture of Spider-Man crouching atop an overturned car. Ilia was proud of that one. He had managed to stop two dangerous street racers that night.

And, incidentally, save the deeply annoyed police department the trouble of chasing them.

“Uh... do what?” Ilia cleared his throat, trying desperately to sound casual. Internally, however, he was screaming. Every interaction with her — even the shortest, most awkward one imaginable — made him feel as though he might pass out from excitement.

“You somehow manage to get close-up photos of Spider-Man every single time,” she explained, shifting her pale, silver gaze from the laptop screen to Ilia.

For several heartbeats, they simply stared at each other. He could smell the sweet, floral perfume she wore.

“I’m starting to think it’s AI,” she added. “Nobody else gets that close to him. My ex-boyfriend, Eddie, tried once, and Spider-Man straight-up destroyed his camera.”

“It’s not AI,” Ilia protested. The corner of his mouth twitched upward despite himself as he remembered yanking Eddie Brock’s camera away with a web and smashing it into the ground. The jerk had deserved it. Eddie was an intern at the Daily Bugle, just like Ilia, and for reasons beyond comprehension had made it his personal mission to uncover Spider-Man’s identity. “I just...” he hesitated, unable to suppress a hint of pride. “Well, um, I kinda know him.”

She smiled thinly and rolled her eyes. Her reflection shimmered faintly across his laptop screen.

“Yeah, sure,” she said. There was not the slightest trace of amusement in her voice.

“I’m serious,” Ilia insisted. “He’s actually a really cool guy.”

The artificial glow of a nearby lamp glinted against the dark frames of his glasses. Even though he no longer needed them, he occasionally wore plain lenses anyway — a small reminder of a time when he had simply been a normal teenager who loved figure skating.

“Oh yeah?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “And how exactly do you know him?”

Panic immediately surged through him. He had spent years carefully protecting his second identity, yet every single time she appeared nearby, his brain seemed to short-circuit.

Ordinarily, Ilia considered himself a fairly rational person. But the day she first walked into the rink with her little brother — the rink where Ilia worked part-time as a skating coach, thanks to his father dragging him through certification courses despite his passionate objections — he had become an absolute idiot.

Hopelessly, catastrophically in love.

Yes, the moment he first saw her — her soft hair, her eyes that sparkled like cut diamonds — he had known. Absolutely known. It was love, just like in the movies. The conviction only strengthened when he ran into her again on campus. She studied biophysics, and also helped run the student newspaper.

Naturally, Ilia had volunteered to join the paper almost immediately, despite possessing approximately zero writing talent. His poetry was a crime against humanity. Once, in an attempt to impress a girl he had matched with on Tinder, he had written: you are something, but not nothing.

She blocked him.

“Yeah, umm- I mean… I don’t actually know him, like, personally. Obviously!” Ilia burst into laughter that sounded about as convincing as a broken smoke alarm. “Never took his mask off around me or anything. He’s probably some old dude.” He stopped abruptly, scrambling to invent a believable story before the silence could expose him. “Once he saved my...” he hesitated. “My cat. Miu Miu.”

He nodded proudly, as if the lie suddenly made perfect sense.

“Yeah. She got out through the fire escape, and he brought her back.”

She straightened immediately, rigid as a drawn bowstring, and looked at him with unmistakable pity. Ilia felt like the biggest idiot alive.

Every time he tried talking to her for longer than a few seconds outside the rink, he either started stuttering or completely lost his train of thought. In his eyes, she was simply too perfect, and that perfection intimidated him.

The daughter of a captain in the New York Police Department. Top of her class. Author of scientific articles. Fluent in several languages. Friends with practically everyone on campus. The only side of herself she ever allowed the world to see had been polished to a mirror shine.

Ilia had absolutely no idea how he was supposed to impress her. He was convinced that if he remained himself, she would never truly notice him. Maybe if he tried flirting with her as Spider-Man instead, he might stand a chance.

“Mhm.” She crossed her arms. “Well, that’s nice of him. Saving your cat and all — which I totally don't believe, by the way — but I still don’t like him.”

Ilia went pale. The horrifying realization struck him that even his second identity was apparently doomed.

“Sure,” she continued, “he’s got a nice ass, but he makes the NYPD’s job harder with all that vigilante nonsense. My dad catches heat because of him. He leaves a mess everywhere he goes and constantly provokes law enforcement.”

For one glorious second, Ilia was completely distracted by the fact that she had just complimented his ass. Then his brain caught up — she was insulting his alter ego.

His forehead darkened into a frown. An overwhelming urge to defend Spider-Man — or, more accurately, himself — rose inside him.

“But he’s not exactly judging people himself,” Ilia argued. Or at least attempted to. “I mean... I guess. He mostly just helps catch criminals.”

“Right. Amazing.” Her voice dripped with frost. “He wraps some robber up in a giant web cocoon, hangs him from a streetlight, and disappears. What a hero.” The contempt in her tone struck Ilia like a punch to the stomach. “If he had nothing to hide,” she continued, “he wouldn’t be hiding behind a mask.”

“Well...” Ilia murmured. “Some people think he’s pretty cool.”

His confidence had evaporated entirely. At this point, he was certain that if he heard one more accusation aimed at Spider-Man, he was going to say something catastrophically stupid.

Still, he couldn't really blame her for believing those things. Her father had probably spent years feeding her that perspective.

God, Ilia hated the police. As far as he was concerned, they were useless. If anything, they were the ones who kept getting in the way of his work.

“You know what was actually impressive?” She leaned even closer over him, and her hair brushed lightly against his shoulder. Ilia froze. For a moment, he was convinced he was hallucinating. “Your quad Axel.”

In one smooth motion, Ilia spun around in his chair so he could face her properly. Joy ignited inside him so violently that he nearly squeaked like an overexcited child. He had to bite his tongue to stop himself from launching into an enthusiastic thirty-minute monologue about his entire junior career — and the brief senior career he had ended far too soon.

“You watched my programs?” he blurted out.

His voice shot up several octaves, settling into the exact pitch he used during gaming sessions. Once, he and a friend had streamed on Twitch for four hours straight, during which Ilia contributed almost nothing except incomprehensible noises and the occasional OH MY GOD or OH MY DAYS, THAT’S INSANE! Controlling his emotions had never been one of his strengths.

Okay, sure. Maybe he was a superhero. Maybe he was an overworked college student. Maybe he was a serious figure-skating coach.

But he was also still the same chaos kid who did backflips in his bedroom after scoring a goal in FIFA. That part of him refused to die. Despite Harry's death and despite leaving home, he still fought desperately to preserve his optimism, his childlish, gentle nature.

“Relax,” she said dryly. “You're about two seconds away from hyperventilating.” Then, after a pause, she admitted: “Yeah. I've watched some of them.”

Ilia looked ready to ascend into another dimension.

“I liked that move you did. The raspberry... something?”

“Raspberry twist,” he immediately interrupted. The grin spreading across his face stretched from ear to ear. His chest felt as though it might burst with happiness.

“Yeah, that one.” She nodded and adjusted the black headband that had slipped down slightly. “It’s honestly kind of a shame you stopped competing. People in the comments under your Euphoria free skate were convinced you were going to make the Milan Olympics.”

A flood of hazy memories washed over him. Back then, he had practically memorized every comment: the supportive ones, the fangirls hopelessly crushing on him, and the hateful ones.

Sometimes he caught himself feeling grateful for his early retirement. Of course he missed the adrenaline. He missed fooling around with soccer ball and eating a Hershey’s bar before competitions. But at least nobody compared him to Yuzuru anymore, nobody called him a self-centered quad flop.

Now, instead, half of New York wanted Spider-Man dead. And J. J. Jameson, editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle and technically Ilia’s boss, had probably already picked out a coffin for him.

The cheapest possible coffin, too. Jameson was outrageously cheap. Trade-offs.

“I can still land it, you know.” Ilia puffed out his chest like an especially proud peacock. He was fairly certain he looked like Toothless desperately trying to impress the Light Fury. “The quad Axel.”

For you, I’d land a septuple flip too, he thought.

Then immediately scolded himself. He was acting like a cringy fourteen-year-old with his first crush. In fact, he was down catastrophically worse than he'd been back in 10th grade when he'd tried asking MJ Watson out.

The girl's face brightened slightly. She took a step forward. Her legs nearly brushed against Ilia’s bent knees. Far too late, he wondered if perhaps he should stand up while talking to her.

“Then how come you’ve never shown it to me?” she asked teasingly.

“Umm... honestly?” He ducked his head, accidentally throwing her a side-eye. A blush flooded his cheeks. He looked almost as embarrassed as he had during the endless interviews he’d been forced to give after landing the quad Axel at seventeen. “I didn’t think you'd care.” He hesitated. “I could show you tomorrow night.” The suggestion came out almost painfully shy. “You know. During your brother’s skating session.”

“Actually, my other brother is picking Simon up tomorrow.” She spoke so casually that the words barely seemed important. “I’m going on a date.”

The smile vanished from Ilia’s pink lips instantly. The library suddenly felt gray, colorless, as though someone had drained the world of light. Time itself seemed to hesitate.

One word echoed relentlessly inside his head. A date. She was going on a date. Not with him.

Of course not with him. He was an idiot for ever thinking he had a chance. He knew he was attractive, the devoted fans who still made TikTok edits of him — even after he had deleted every official account he owned — reminded him of that fact constantly. Apparently, however, attractiveness was not enough. Not enough to make her interested.

It's okay, he assured himself quickly. He would not have had time for her anyway. He had crossed ‘dating someone’ off the list of possibilities a long time ago. To allow himself a relationship now would make him both selfish and a hypocrite. He could not afford to have a girlfriend. He would never forgive himself if she were dragged into the dangers that shadowed his life — just as he refused to endanger Liza. Just as he kept his parents at a careful distance.

Some sacrifices had to be made willingly. Others were made for you. This was both.

Besides, loving someone from afar was far easier than watching them get hurt because of you.

“Oh.” The word scraped painfully out of his throat. “Cool.” He tried to sound cheerful — he failed. The sadness lingering beneath his voice was impossible to miss. “I’ll show you the Axel some other time.”

“Besides,” she continued, seemingly oblivious to the dramatic collapse of Ilia’s emotional state, “I’ve got to study for a makeup exam with Connors, so I probably won’t be back at the rink for a while.”

The mention of doctor Curtis immediately caught Ilia’s attention and yanked him out of his spiral of romantic despair.

“Wait.” He blinked. “Connors failed you?”

“Sadly.” She let out a long, dramatic sigh. The warmth of her breath brushed against Ilia’s cheeks. Jesus Christ. She was driving him insane.

“But… you work for him, no?” he asked. “You’re, like, his assistant.”

“Yep.”

“So...” Ilia’s brain appeared to be lagging several seconds behind reality. “Why can’t he help you? Like, office hours or something?”

“He tried.” She groaned again, this time with theatrical despair. “And he failed. Miserably.” Another hopeless sigh escaped her. “I’m a lost cause.”

“Nah.” Ilia answered so quickly it was almost embarrassing. “You’re, like, the smartest person I know.”

“And yet I’m failing his class even though I literally work in his lab.” She grimaced. For a brief moment, she allowed a crack to form in the flawless mask she showed the world. She looked genuinely stressed, disappointed in herself. She sounded nothing like the polished, perfect student she pretended to be around everyone else. “Maybe I should spend less time working on the student paper,” she mused aloud. “Besides, you’re probably gonna steal my editor position soon enough with all those Spider-Man photos.”

Playfully, she patted Ilia on the shoulder. His entire body spontaneously combusted.

“For the record,” she added, “I still think it’s AI.”

“It’s not!”

“Whatever you say, Quad God.” She reached up and ruffled his slightly overgrown hair. Ilia would not have allowed another living soul to do that. “Next time you see Spider-Man,” she continued, “tell him to stop messing with the police.”

And then, just like that, she turned on her heel and walked away. Leaving Ilia behind with his laptop. With a photograph of himself wearing a ridiculous spider suit.

And with approximately a thousand different thoughts colliding inside his skull.

“Wait!” He shot up from his chair so abruptly that it nearly toppled over. The word echoed through the library. He was fairly certain one of the librarians was about to materialize out of thin air and beat him to death with a hardcover encyclopedia. “If you want,” he blurted out, “I could tutor you in quantum mechanics. I took it in second year.”

She froze mid-step. Slowly, she looked back over her shoulder.

“Seriously?”

A violent blush spread across nearly Ilia’s entire face. Every ounce of confidence instantly evaporated. He refused to let it show. Pretending to be fearless came much more naturally when he was on the ice, or wearing a mask and hanging upside down from a web somewhere fifty stories above Manhattan.

“Yeah, totally.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I mean, not to brag, but I basically broke physics with my Axel.”

“Wow.” She laughed, softly, gracefully. “You’re unbelievably humble.”

“Thanks. I try.” The sarcasm sailed directly over his head.

“Text me when you’ve got time.”

“But...” Ilia hesitated. “I don’t have your number.”

He deliberately put on the most pathetic puppy-dog expression he could manage, desperately hoping she would finally give it to him.

“Don’t you have my brother’s number?” She smiled innocently. “Text him.”

And just like that — she was gone.

Ilia dragged a hand down his face and slowly sank back into his chair. For a moment he simply stared into space. Then he slipped in his wireless earbuds an logged onto Spotify. He started scrolling through his ‘crazy’ playlists and, finally, pressed play.

He chose I’m Not a Vampire. Years ago, he had wanted to skate a free program to that song. Unfortunately, life had possessed entirely different plans for him.

author's note: currently losing my mind before my last exams. Instead of studying i'm procrastinating, making objectively terrible life decisions (just like reader), ruining my sleep schedule to watch the World Cup at ungodly hours, and writing fanfiction. Special shoutout to everyone in central Europe who has to either stay awake until 2 a.m. or wake up at 4 a.m. to watch a match (manifesting a Portugal win). English isn't my first language, so you may spot some weird wording. Enjoy <3

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Avoiding Malinin proved far more difficult than you had initially imagined. Though your town was by no means small, and although he had spent most of his days at the rink in Reston ever since returning from Milan, Zurich, or wherever it was he had been for the entirety of February, you seemed to possess a peculiar talent for drawing him into every place you occupied. Barely a few hours after losing your job at the gelato shop and enduring that painfully awkward ride in Ilia’s Honda, fate saw fit to throw you together once more — this time in a drugstore, in the haircare aisle.

You hadn’t even had the chance to avoid him.

Too busy scrolling through a Facebook group in search of a post where some girl had recommended a new heat-protectant spray, you failed to notice Malinin standing directly in the middle of the aisle and walked straight into him. Your face collided with his shoulder. Thankfully, it wasn’t a painful impact; he was wearing an absurdly fluffy white sweater embroidered with the Olympic rings and the American flag.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t see-” you cut yourself off the second you realized who it was. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” you muttered, more to yourself than to him. Then, you added louder: “You again? What a coincidence. So when you said ‘see you around,’ you actually meant ‘see you tomorrow,’ huh? Did you stick a tracker on me or something?”

Startled by your sudden appearance, Ilia hastily tossed a bottle of purple shampoo into his basket with enough force to make it rattle. Inside lay a cooling toner for blond hair, a moisturizing conditioner for bleached hair, facial cleanser, salmon pouches, and several cans of wet cat food.

Being naturally nosy, you peeked inside and subjected his purchases to a critical inspection.

“Honestly, you should just dye your hair gray already instead of buying all this crap. Do you even know how much that shampoo’s gonna dry it out?” You clicked your tongue in disapproval, not even waiting for him to answer your previous question. “At this point, you’d be better off cutting it all off. It looks fried.”

As though horrified by the fact that you had caught him shopping for beauty products, Ilia narrowed his eyes and retaliated by examining your basket. A hand cream for Aunt Andrea. Tampons. The cheapest mascara available. A felt-tip eyeliner. Whatever criticism he had prepared seemed to die before reaching his lips.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” he replied, sounding almost childishly offended.

“You didn’t have to. I love giving it anyway.” You smiled — a smile so mocking it bordered on villainous. “But since you’re here, do me a favor and grab that hair gel for me.”

Though you had absolutely no need for hair gel, you deliberately pointed toward the highest shelf in the aisle — one he couldn’t reach.

Without thinking, Ilia rose onto his tiptoes and stretched for it. The moment he heard your laughter, realization struck. He was too short, and you had known it.

He looked at you reproachfully and puffed out his slightly pink cheeks like a disappointed father who had grown tired of his troublesome child. Still, he refused to give you the satisfaction of seeing him lose his composure. By now, he had become accustomed to the fact that you would exploit any opportunity to annoy him.

“So…” he said suddenly, studying you. “You’ve been stalking me on Instagram.”

Your reaction was immediate.

“Excuse me, what!?” you exclaimed, completely disregarding the handful of customers nearby. There weren’t many; it was still early enough in the morning that you were nursing a faint hangover courtesy of aunt Andrea’s wine. “I have NOT been stalking you!”

“You liked my Olympic photo dump yesterday.”

Your eyes widened in panic. You didn’t remember doing it intentionally. Maybe your finger had slipped while you were half-asleep. What surprised you most was that Ilia had even noticed. Considering the constant avalanche of notifications he received, it seemed impossible.

You gave no indication of the embarrassment beginning to consume you from the inside out. Instead, you doubled down. Maybe you hadn’t liked anything, maybe he was lying again. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time he had accused you of something ridiculous just to make you look foolish.

“Oh yeah? And maybe I also made an edit of you while I was at it?” Your voice remained caught somewhere between playful and cynical despite your simultaneous anger and humiliation. “Don’t flatter yourself, lutz boy. Maybe I looked at your profile once, but only because I wanted to read all the hateful comments under your posts.”

“Hm, it’s kinda funny,” he said. “Could’ve sworn you had me blocked or something. Up until, like, literally yesterday, I couldn’t even find your Instagram account.”

“Maybe you just suck at searching. Honestly, I’m surprised you know how to post stories at all. You look like you’ve got one brain cell fighting for its life.”

Malinin lifted an eyebrow. To your surprise, he didn’t rise to the bait, nor did he continue the conversation. Instead, he looked vaguely pleased by your sudden outrage. As if he had accomplished exactly what he wanted.

“Whatever,” he said with a shrug. “I’m late for practice.”

And just like that, as if nothing had happened at all, he walked past you and left you standing alone in the aisle.

You were so rattled by the stalking accusation — and by the mere fact that you had run into him again — that you completely forgot what you had come to buy in the first place.

Peeking out from behind the towering shelf, you watched him make his way toward the self-checkout. What soured your mood even further was the infuriating reality that despite it being eight in the morning, Ilia looked as though he had stepped straight off a magazine photoshoot, while you looked like someone who hadn’t slept in five years and had spent the night doing tequila shots until four a.m.

Life was unfair, and it seemed to take particular pleasure in kicking you while you were down.

⋆⁺₊❅⋆ ⁺₊❆⋆

After several miserable days in a row — days during which you cursed yourself and the entire world — something good finally happened to you. You saved your aunt’s neighbor’s dog from being hit by a car. You picked up your new bike from the shop. You won two hundred dollars on a scratch-off ticket.

And, perhaps most impressively, you managed to convince Sean — the perpetually grumpy eight-year-old you babysat every other Wednesday and Thursday — to accompany you to a small local music store.

It had been ages since your last visit, and besides, you desperately needed to brag to Patrick, the store’s sole employee, that the owner of a roadside live-music bar had agreed to let you perform there the upcoming Sunday.

You needed this; to be around people again. To stand on a stage again, even one barely larger than a broom closet and made slippery by spilled beer.

“It’s kinda tragic when you think about it,” Patrick remarked slyly, peering at you through narrowed eyes while you browsed the newest CD releases. “You start a band, make it big, put out two albums, go on tour, practically resurrect rock music...” He paused dramatically. “...and then end up getting kicked to the curb.”

He watched you carefully, waiting for your reaction. With you, nothing was ever predictable. When someone teased you, you either exploded into a profanity-laced rage capable of blistering paint off walls — or you appreciated the creativity of the insult and played along.

Fortunately for Patrick, you happened to be in a reasonably good mood today: you did not call his mother a llama, you did not topple the jazz display, and you did not rip down the Journey poster.

“Thanks for that wonderfully thorough recap of the worst few months of my life,” you snorted, turning over “The Things That I've Lost” — album released in January by Calling All Captains. “I’ll hit you up when I need someone to write my biography.” You raised the CD above your head and waved it at him. “Can I get a discount?”

Patrick smiled mischievously.

“What if you go get a beer with me?”

He was taking advantage of the suspiciously cheerful energy radiating from you — and the fact that, in the five minutes since you’d walked in, you hadn’t insulted him once.

“If you’re buying,” you replied flatly.

You had absolutely no interest in going anywhere with him. Still, he was the only person around your age who didn’t seem to despise you. All your old friends had turned their backs on you without ever giving you the chance to explain your side of the story — a version radically different from the one Ian and Penny had been spreading.

Not that you owed anyone an explanation. Sure, you'd become recognizable, you'd gotten verified on Instagram, but who you slept with — and who you didn’t — was nobody’s business but your own.

“Then you get five percent off.”

“Ten, or I start telling people you shower once a week and wear the same underwear for a month.”

“What people? You don’t have any friends. But okay, fine, you psycho. Ten percent off.” Patrick threw his hands dramatically into the air in a gesture of utter surrender, as though crushed beneath some merciless and unstoppable force. “Oh, by the way,” he added, “did you hear the rumor that Ian wants to leave the band and start making pop music?”

At the mention of that basilisk’s name, your head snapped upward. You stared at Patrick in disbelief, mouth hanging open like a fish gasping for air.

“No fu-”

You stopped yourself, glancing toward Sean, who was mindlessly flipping through vinyl records.

“-effing way.” You looked back at Patrick. “That rat. I knew his whole ‘rock and roll never dies’ thing was complete bullshit.”

“It’s just a rumor,” Patrick said quickly, worried you might suddenly fly into a rage and destroy the store. Instinctively, his gaze flicked toward the fragile storefront windows, as though expecting them to shatter into glittering shards under the pressure of your negative aura alone. The last thing he wanted was explaining damages to his father — the owner. “But y’know what they say,” he continued. “Every rumor’s got a little truth in it.”

“Not every rumor.” You laughed humorlessly. “There wasn’t a single fuuc… fricking true thing in mine.”

“Can we go now?” Sean whined, having lost interest in vinyl records almost immediately. “This place is booooring. You said we were getting corn dogs. I want a corn dog.”

“And I want to be rich,” you replied dryly. “We don’t always get what we want.”

“But I reeaally want a corn dog,” Sean insisted, stomping one sneaker against the tile floor.

You rolled your eyes and handed Patrick the Calling All Captains album along with your credit card. You still couldn’t figure out how to pay with your phone. That particular technology exceeded your capabilities. Besides, you were constantly forgetting where you left it — or forgetting to charge it.

“Oh my God, quit whining, you little dipshit, or I’m dropping you off at a baby hatch,” you threatened, wagging a finger at Sean. Sean puffed out his cheeks. Fortunately, he seemed to have no idea what that actually meant, so the threat failed to intimidate him. “And you,” you pointed at Patrick, “be useful for once and add some wood oil and a new microfiber bass-cleaning cloth to that, would you?”

Sean crossed his arms.

“I’m telling my mom you call me names.”

“Then I’m not letting you watch the second “Saw” movie.”

Sean’s eyes widened. “But… you promised!”

“And you promised you wouldn’t complain,” you reminded him.

Patrick, meanwhile, froze where he stood, the CD he had been slipping into a paper bag nearly sliding from his grasp. He looked like a marble statue, some Greek or Roman deity immortalized in a posture of pure alarm.

“Hold up, you let him watch “Saw”?!” he shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at you, though it had absolutely no effect. “What the hell is wrong with you? He’s, like…” He cut himself off, studying Sean carefully. “Five.”

“I’m eight,” Sean corrected immediately.

This did nothing whatsoever to soothe Patrick’s concern.

A faint flicker of guilt stirred within you. Sure, maybe Sean shouldn’t have been watching “Saw”, but he’d looked absolutely ecstatic when you promised that for his ninth birthday you’d sew him an Art the Clown costume from the “Terrifier” movies.

“Still,” Patrick said. “How did anyone trust you with babysitting?”

He shot you a deeply judgmental look. For some reason, it irritated you. Though you often judged books by their covers yourself, you hated when other people jumped to conclusions about you.

You were a hypocrite, and you knew it.

“The same way your dear father trusted you to work here,” you shot back, irritation sharpening the lines of your face. “You don’t know shit about music. Your Spotify Wrapped 2025 had Phil Collins at number one. “I Wish It Would Rain Down”, seriously? And quit acting all holy. You definitely poked around the dark web as a kid. It’s not a big deal. I watched “BoJack Horseman” in elementary school.”

You shrugged, dismissing the fact that you allowed Sean to watch gore-filled horror movies. In your opinion, Patrick had no reason to be concerned.

“Yeah, and that probably explains why you’re so messed up now,” Patrick muttered sarcastically, continuing to bag your purchases. He handed your credit card back. “And honestly? I’m not surprised they fired you from the ice cream shop.”

At the mention of your catastrophic dismissal, your indignation flared even hotter than it had at the mention of Ian. Financially, the loss hadn’t devastated you — after all, you had successfully begged Sophie’s mother (the nine-year-old girl you also babysat) to pay you extra for maintaining her garden.

Your ego, however, remained badly bruised. Mostly because it had happened because of Ilia. Had it involved any other annoying customer, you wouldn’t have cared nearly as much.

“It wasn’t my fault — it was that little dic- prick Malinin’s!”

At this point, you weren’t even attempting to censor your vocabulary in front of Sean anymore. You were fairly certain the boys in his class used language every bit as foul as yours whenever they got angry. And you were angry almost constantly.

“You are ins- wait, hold on. You mean the figure skater? Ilia Malinin?”

You nodded. Patrick’s face instantly lit up, as though touched by the first gentle rays of early spring sunlight.

“I go to college with him!” he announced proudly. You let out a dramatic groan and pinched the bridge of your nose as the dreadful realization settled over you: another fan of the Quad God. “I mean, I’ve never actually seen him,” Patrick clarified. “But apparently he studies there. Some people from his department organized a watch party for his olympic free skate on campus.”

You grimaced.

“That sounds awful.”

“It kinda was,” Patrick admitted. “But they gave out free muffins and lemonade, so it balanced out.”

“My condolences,” you replied with exaggerated solemnity. “I went to high school with him. Worst years of my life.”

The sudden softness of your own voice startled you. The words carried a strange, hollow aftertaste. You hadn’t spoken them with nearly the same conviction you would have a month earlier. The realization unsettled you. You slumped slightly over the counter and nervously bit the inside of your cheek. Patrick, however, failed to notice the subtle shift in either your posture or your expression.

“Come on,” he insisted. “He can’t be that bad.”

A short, icy hum escaped you. You fixed him with a look of profound pity, like a disappointed mother gazing upon her child.

“You’re right,” you said. “There are worse people.” You began counting dramatically on your fingers. “For example: Ian. My mother. Dean. Penny. You.”

“Me?!” Patrick spluttered. “I literally just gave you a discount!”

“Yeah, but you still haven’t returned my limited Skid Row vinyl and Metallica ballads cassette, you asshole.”

“I’ll give it back when we go get a beer.”

“If we go get a beer,” you corrected. “I can always change my mind.”

Your exchange was abruptly interrupted by a loud, despair-filled shriek from Sean. You spun around instantly, your eyes scanning his small frame for signs of injury. There were none. Nothing was wrong with him except a truly catastrophic level of boredom.

“PLEEEEASE, CAN WE GO GET A CORN DOG NOW?!”

“YES, WE CAN!” you shouted back, matching his volume perfectly.

Without another word, you gathered your purchases, walked over to him, placed a hand on his bony back, and began steering him toward the exit. Over your shoulder, you casually waved goodbye to Patrick.

“See ya, loser.”

“Wait!”

He nearly vaulted over the counter trying to stop you. You halted mid-step and frowned.

“You know I play drums, right?” he asked after a moment, suddenly sounding far less confident.

“Calling it playing is generous,” you snorted with complete certainty despite never having heard him perform. You assumed he had only recently picked up the instrument and had already dismissed his abilities outright. “So where exactly are you going with this?”

“If you ever think about starting another band,” Patrick said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I’m officially applying.”

You rolled your eyes, caught slightly off guard by the offer. Ever since Penny and Ian had effectively told you to pack your things and disappear, the thought of forming another band had never crossed your mind. You wanted nothing more to do with it.

Working with people had never ended well for you. You couldn’t get along with anyone for long, and you had no desire to expose yourself to another crushing disappointment. Perhaps you seemed like someone unsentimental, someone who cared for no one but herself, but that was only a façade. Deep down, you were far more sensitive than you would ever admit.

Sarcasm was your only armor.

“Yeah, sure,” you said absentmindedly, light enough not to give him any real hope. “Maybe someday.” You shifted your grip on the shopping bag. “Bye.”

⋆⁺₊❅⋆ ⁺₊❆⋆

The next encounter with Ilia came far sooner than you would have liked. You spotted him in the last place you expected to see him — on the parking lot of an elementary school.

Or rather, he spotted you first.

You were impossible to miss. Humming softly beneath your breath, you secured your brand-new bicycle to a metal post. This time, you had no intention of repeating your previous mistake and had invested in a proper lock. You stood out against the mundane backdrop like a figure torn from another era. A wide-brimmed black hat shadowed your face. A tattered, flowing bolero hung from your shoulders. Bell-bottoms embroidered with shimmering blue ornaments traced the length of your legs, and tall boots completed the ensemble.

Ilia found himself wondering whether riding a bike dressed like that was remotely comfortable.

Then he remembered. Back in 12th grade, during a school trip into the woods, you had worn a floor-length dress with a corseted bodice and a blood-red cloak that dragged through the forest floor behind you.

You had marched through the undergrowth without a care in the world, utterly unconcerned that the hem of your skirt kept snagging on branches or that the drizzle soaked the classic seventies shag haircut you wore back then.

“You look ridiculous,” one of his ex-girlfriend's friends had remarked.

You had merely grinned. Then you spun once on your heel, and the flared skirt danced around you. You had looked... happy. Free. Unburdened. Like a true rock star — untamed and unconstrained, dancing beneath a dark cobalt sky.

“Thanks,” you'd replied calmly, without a trace of bitterness or offense. “Stevie Nicks would be proud of me.”

Ilia had never understood why, years later, he remembered that moment so vividly, nor why replaying it now made his heart beat unevenly in his chest. Back then, he had hated you — at least, that was what he'd told himself. And even now he clung stubbornly to that resentment, still mildly offended by the deeply unfunny joke you'd made about his height.

Once you finished wrestling with the bike lock, you paused Elton John's “Tiny Dancer”, slipped your wireless earbuds from your ears, and tucked them into a small black charging case. The case disappeared into the tiny chain-strap purse hanging from your shoulder.

Then you felt it — a stare, persistent, unmistakable. You glanced around the parking lot in search of the suspected creep. The moment your eyes landed on Malinin, your good mood seemed to evaporate, the faint smile vanished from your face, tiny flecks of glitter still clung stubbornly to your skin, sparkling hypnotically in the sunlight.

The day before, you and Sean had made a glitter-covered get-well card for a girl in his class who had just returned home from leg surgery. Your innocent little arts-and-crafts session had somehow devolved into a full-scale glitter war, and the stuff was a nightmare to wash off.

You had absolutely no desire to talk to Malinin. Hell, you didn't even want to look at him.

And yet your feet carried you toward him anyway.

As you approached, Ilia visibly stiffened. With what was clearly meant to look casual — but was, in reality, an almost comically abrupt movement — he adjusted the black bandana that had slipped from his forehead toward his eyebrows. You laughed inwardly at his transparent attempt to impress you.

“So what are you doing here, quad flop?” you asked, folding your arms across your chest. The disdain in your voice was unmistakable. “Getting the kind of education that actually matches your intellectual level? Did they revoke your other diplomas?”

Ilia pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes at you, studying you with a mixture of amusement and pity. His hands disappeared into the pockets of an NF hoodie. The sight of it abruptly reminded you of a promise you'd made years ago — that you'd give NF an honest chance if he ever skated to Depeche Mode or Led Zeppelin.

Neither of you had kept your word.

“As if you don't know,” he said. “I've got a little sister. I'm picking her up after school. My parents are working with this new student today, so they couldn't come get her.”

As he spoke, he ran a hand through his hair, the bandana keeping the loose strands from falling into his face. The infuriating thing was that he looked insanely good wearing it, but you would have preferred swallowing a rusted bolt whole to admitting that aloud.

“Couldn't she just take the school bus home or something?” you shot back. “She's probably as lazy as you are.”

“I'm not lazy,” he said. “Okay, maybe sometimes.” A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “But honestly, you're the one who needs to explain yourself. What, scouting elementary school kids for your new band or something like that?”

He laughed at his own joke. When your expression didn't change in the slightest, he quickly regained his composure. Only then did you notice the striking difference in his eyes. When he smiled, they seemed to light up from within — every part of him smiled.

But when he was thoughtful, irritated, or simply indifferent — as he was now — their color darkened. They became quieter. Sadder.

“Believe it or not,” you muttered, “thirteen-year-olds can actually play “No One Like You” pretty damn well. Scorpions riffs aren't exactly rocket science.” You shrugged. “But seriously, I'm picking up a girl I babysit. Her parents still don't trust her enough to walk home by herself.”

Ilia, expressive as ever, reacted in the only way Ilia knew how.

His lips parted, his eyes widened so dramatically they nearly popped out of his head, reminding you of the moment he had landed his historic seven quads and stared at his scores after the free skate in Nagoya — his season's best glowing on the screen like a divine revelation.

Back then, he'd radiated pure joy. Now, he merely looked stunned, and you doubted very much that it was in a good way.

“You?” he managed at last, a laugh slipping into his voice. “A babysitter? Wait, seriously? Like, for real? No waaay. You don't even have a car.”

You waved him off dismissively. The heavy bracelets adorning your wrists chimed softly against one another.

“I manage just fine without one. I've got a new bike now, though.”

You puffed out your chest with unmistakable pride. Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed children beginning to flood the parking lot. Classes must have just ended.

“Naah,” Ilia said, shaking his head. “You're like, messing with me or something.”

“About making money babysitting the kids of rich, overworked parents?” you asked dryly. “There's literally nothing weird about that, my dear lutz boy.”

“I know, I know, but...” He looked you up and down, thoroughly entertained. “How the hell did you even get hired?”

“Kids like me.” You shrugged. “I let them eat chocolate, skip brushing their teeth, and stay up way too late. And if one of the little gremlins gets on my nerves, I just put on headphones and blast The Guess Who.” You delivered the statement with complete indifference.

The way he kept pressing the subject was beginning to grate on your nerves. Sure, maybe you hadn't liked children much back in high school. Maybe you could be irresponsible… and maybe you occasionally lost control of your emotions. But you genuinely loved spending time with Sean, with Elvira and her little brother, with Sophie.

Children existed in a gentler world. They had not yet learned the cruelty of adulthood, they didn't scrutinize every flaw, didn't dissect your mistakes and wear them around their necks like trophies. If anything, some of them seemed to admire you.

And perhaps that was why you adored them in return. Around them, you were not a cautionary tale. You were simply Y/N.

“Wow,” Ilia snorted. Part playful, part unimpressed. “You realize you're a terrible role model, right?”

His tone carried no judgment or condemnation, no genuine cruelty. Yet something inside your chest tightened all the same. A tiny wound reopening beneath scar tissue. Perhaps it was the approaching storm of your period. Or perhaps some hurts never truly healed.

A tide of old sorrow rose suddenly within you. For years you'd heard variations of the same accusation. From your parents, from teachers, from strangers online. From adults who spoke of you, Penny, Dean, and Ian as though you were some reincarnated devil. Rebellious. Troubled. Futureless — the kind of people who corrupted everyone around them.

You had never wanted to hear those words from Ilia. Not from him — not from the boy you'd once tried so desperately to impress. The boy whose attention you'd chased for years without ever truly reaching him.

Something sharp and bitter unfurled beneath your ribs. The March sunlight suddenly felt colder.

“Wow,” you scoffed. “Listen to the local hero talking.” Your voice sharpened like broken glass. “You think congratulating your buddy on an Olympic golden medal makes you a good person?” The words left your mouth before you could stop them. “The truth is you're a fake-ass dickhead.”

Irritation immediately twisted across Ilia's pale face. You knew, instantly, that whatever goodwill had existed between you after the car ride a few days ago had just gone up in flames. The memory of complimenting his short program seemed impossibly distant now.

“Why are you insulting me again?” he snapped. “I was literally just messing with you! And when exactly did I lie?”

“You told your friends I stalked you and stole your phone to see your playlists!” The accusation exploded from you before you could swallow it back. Years had passed, and still it hurt. The memory remained lodged inside your heart like a splinter buried too deep to remove. It poisoned every interaction, every glance, every attempt to see him differently. “You made me sound like some psycho!” Your voice cracked slightly, a tiny fracture in your armor. “And then you said Yuzuru was mad at you for landing the quad Axel.” You folded your arms tighter across your chest. “You lie about everything.”

For a moment, the parking lot seemed to blur around the edges. The noise of children. the distant hum of engines, the warmth of the afternoon — all of it faded beneath years of resentment and disappointment.

“You're actually pathological,” you quickly added. “A fucking pathological liar.”

“And you're always the first person to judge everybody else,” Ilia shot back.

His jaw tightened, a muscle flickered beneath his cheek. Had you been less furious, you might have noticed how unfairly handsome he looked when he was angry. The realization would have disgusted you.

Instead, all you felt was rage.

“Me?” You stared at him in disbelief. The laugh that escaped you sounded sharp and incredulous. “You've got to be fucking kidding.” You shook your head. “No, you've got that completely backwards.”

For one fleeting second, neither of you spoke. The air between you grew taut as a wire pulled too tight. Two people standing only feet apart, carrying entirely different versions of the same history — and, perhaps, that was the cruelest thing of all.

Ilia blinked and drew in a slow, measured breath. He looked profoundly frustrated, yet made a visible effort to rein himself in.

“So you didn't write on the door of the boys' locker room that Derek was a prick and a scumbag because he took a sticker of your band or something like that off HIS OWN locker?” he continued, glaring at you from beneath lowered brows. “And you didn't call Blair a dumb blonde because she said metalheads were kinda cute after third or fourth season… it was fourth, I guess, of “Stranger Things” came out?”

You lifted your chin defiantly, not a trace of remorse in sight.

“Okay, fine. I did. So what?” you shot back. “One day she was a Swiftie calling us rock kids weird, stuck-up freaks, and the next she suddenly became the world's biggest Dio and Metallica fan, walking around school in a Hellfire Club shirt and flirting with Dean from my band because he had long hair and bangs like Eddie Munson. It was fucking cringe.” A dry, almost sinister laugh escaped you — one that carried no amusement whatsoever. “She couldn't even name a single Metallica song besides “Master of Puppets”!”

“You literally told her in front of like, the entire class, that she looked ridiculous in combat boots and a patched-up jacket!” Ilia snapped, raising his voice to match the fury in yours.

“And I don't regret it!” you fired back. “She reduced an entire subculture — metalheads, rockers, all of us — to a stupid aesthetic. Because of trends like that, because of people like her, smaller communities are falling apart, and the values they stood for are being replaced by shallow fads. To her, it's just a leather jacket and a bandana stuffed into the back pocket of her jeans because some character she likes dressed that way. To us, it's the collapse of our identity. People don't come together because they share beliefs anymore — they come together because they like the same aesthetic!”

The rest of your words caught in your throat. You fell silent, your face burning red. Beneath every furious sentence you had hurled like machine-gun fire lurked something infinitely softer: grief. Rock wasn't just a Guns N' Roses shirt and an excuse to go to concerts. It was freedom, independence, defiance against the rules and expectations imposed on you by school, by parents, by the world itself.

It was authenticity. Individuality. A refusal to accept injustice quietly. It was a love for music so deep and all-consuming that sometimes tears threatened to spill down your cheeks while your fingers moved across the strings of your bass.

It was solidarity. Community. The comfort of belonging somewhere.

And even that had been ripped away from you when your own people — the very people who claimed to live and breathe rock music — cast you out, stripping you of the chance to express yourself through music and on stage.

For a brief moment, the weight of that loss hung between you like a ghost. It might have moved someone else — it did not move Ilia.

“It's not that deep, y'know,” he said, dismissing your feelings with an indifferent shrug. “You're being waaay too dramatic.”

Something ugly twisted in your chest. You were sick and tired of hearing the same thing over and over again — that what you cared about, what you were, what your connection to rock culture meant, somehow wasn't important. You had expected more from Malinin. Maybe some understanding. After all, as a professional figure skater, he knew what it felt like to have people dismiss the thing you loved most.

“For me, it is,” you whispered. The sudden vulnerability in your voice made Ilia feel unexpectedly foolish for what he had said, but he was still far too angry to let the argument die. “I had a valid reason for crashing out over Blair,” you added more loudly, slipping effortlessly back into the role you'd assigned yourself years ago — the perpetually angry, ill-behaved rockstar.

“And what about my girlfriend? I mean… ex-girlfriend,” he corrected almost immediately. “Did you have a valid reason there too? You told, like, the entire school she was ignorant, a pick-me girl, and an annoying theatre kid.”

At the mention of his ex-girlfriend, your expression darkened. You had almost forgotten about her, about how every single day at school you had looked at her with nothing but pure envy. She was rich, popular, beautiful. People liked her. She moved through social situations with effortless grace. Her parents put her on a pedestal while yours either forgot you existed or openly treated you like a disappointment.

Most of all, though, you envied the way Ilia looked at her, the way he treated her, as though she were something delicate. Precious. Almost divine.

While you, in comparison, received little more than irritation and disdain. At least, that's how it had seemed to you back then.

“Because she was, and you know it,” you said, rolling your eyes. To your surprise, he didn't argue. On that particular point, he actually agreed. “Besides, she talked absolute nonsense in World Literature Club. She acted like some kind of literary scholar, went on and on about Eugene O'Neill, and completely ignored the autobiographical aspects of “Mourning Becomes Electra”. Then when I pointed it out, she decided I couldn't interpret literature properly and didn't know how to separate the author from the work. Meanwhile she was giving Ali Hazelwood books five stars on Goodreads. Seriously, what kind of person calls Malcolm Lowry and Alexander Pushkin hacks and then writes on their profile that some smut novel for horny eighteen-year-olds is a masterpiece of modern literature?”

A boy wearing a Captain America T-shirt passed by and burst out laughing, thoroughly entertained by your argument. You and Ilia immediately shot him identical side-eyes.

“See?” Malinin said accusingly. “That's exactly what I'm talking about. You don't let people enjoy things just because you don't like them. Hate to break it to you, Y/N,” he said, crossing his arms, “but you were judgmental as fuck.”

You knew he was right, you knew it perfectly well. You were painfully aware of your own hypocrisy — but admitting defeat was out of the question. If you lost this argument, your pride would suffer a fatal wound.

The noise of the crowd drifted around you, distant and indistinct, as though the rest of the world had receded beyond a veil. Somewhere deep inside, beneath the anger, beneath the pride, beneath years of resentment and loneliness, you felt something crack.

“Oh, give me a fucking break. Like you and your pathetic little friends were any better.” You pointed an accusatory finger at him. “You play this sweet, innocent cat daddy online, but you were — and still are — a problematic douchebag who thinks he's God's gift to humanity. You called me and Penny crazy alt girls and stoner losers with no ambition on Snapchat.”

“C'mon,” Ilia groaned. “That was a joke, and that was, like, ages ago. We're adults now. Honestly, everybody gave everybody shit in high school. Are you seriously still salty about it?” He folded his arms across his chest. “Besides, you started coming after me first. You literally called me a stupid Russian rink fucko.”

You froze.

The world around you — the parking lot, the school building, the children weaving between parked cars — suddenly sharpened into painful focus. Every sound seemed too loud. Every color too bright. The air itself felt abrasive against your skin.

You could accuse yourself of many things. You had never struggled to admit when you had treated someone too harshly. But you had never said that. Never to Ilia. At least not back when you still thought he liked you.

“What?” you blurted. “I didn't! And who's supposedly still salty here?”

“Yes, you did,” Ilia insisted. He sounded disappointed, but not surprised. As if he'd expected you to deny it.

“I swear I didn't!” you repeated. “Don't put words in my mouth!”

You defended yourself with fierce stubbornness, your voice rising despite yourself. Something shifted across Ilia's face — the expression was impossible to decipher. You couldn't tell whether he was angry, hurt, frustrated, or all three at once. Whatever emotion was passing through him, it was tangled and contradictory.

“Yeah. Whatever.” He laughed bitterly. “It's not like you and Penny and all your friends spent all of high school making fun of me. You were completely innocent, right?” The mockery glittered in his bright blue eyes.

“I didn't make fun of you. I never said anything bad about you.”

For a long moment, you simply stared at one another. The silence between you was heavy enough to crush bone.

“Well, you didn't stop them either, no?” he said quietly. “You laughed along when they messed with me.”

The final drop spilled from the cup — yours. His. Both of you had reached the limit. You had never prepared yourself for this possibility — for humiliation wearing the face of an old wound. You never imagined that this conversation would happen here, now, in a school parking lot. It should have happened years ago, back in high school.

Instead, the past had waited patiently, festering beneath scar tissue until the wound split open again, and somehow it hurt more than it had the first time.

“That's not true.” Your voice faltered. “I never laughed. Maybe I didn't tell them strongly enough to leave you alone because I was scared they'd kick me out of the only friend group I had, but... I...”

You wanted to tell him the truth — that you had genuinely liked him, that you had desperately wanted him to like you back. That every cruel word between you had been tangled up with a stupid teenage crush you never quite managed to kill.

Instead, you swallowed it.

“Besides,” you said, forcing your voice steady, “like you said — that was ages ago. And you called me names too.”

“Because you started it!”

“I didn't start shit! You're the one who's at fault, but you're way too proud to admit it!”

“You keep talking about my pride and my giant ego, but you're so, like, self-centered, you think the whole world revolves around you!” Ilia snapped. “You never apologize to anyone! You think you're always right. You think you're the best at everything!”

Those words struck with surgical precision — not because they were entirely true, not because they were entirely false, but because they touched the part of you you hated most.

Humiliation and fury surged through your veins like wildfire. You stepped forward abruptly, your hat nearly flying from your head. Your trembling hands shot out and shoved him. You didn't put much force behind it — he barely moved, not even a stumble. You pulled your hands back immediately.

Your gaze, blurred by tears gathering in your eyes, could have cut glass. You were hopelessly lost inside your own emotions. You had known stage fright before concerts. Fear of your mother. The illicit thrill of smoking your first joint. The exhilaration of piling into a tiny tour van and driving from city to city. The joy of learning your first album would actually be released. The pride of hearing fans clap after a show and beg for an encore. The grief of being dumped by the first — and only — boy who had ever dated you, only for you to realize he had wanted little more than your body.

But you had never felt anything like this. Never hatred tangled so tightly with attachment. You despised Ilia, and yet, after all these years, some pathetic part of you still craved his attention. Still wanted his approval, wanted him to look at you and see something worth loving.

The realization made your chest ache.

“I hate you!” you shouted. The words came out cracked and broken. You quickly wiped at your cheeks as two traitorous tears escaped. You wanted the asphalt to split open and swallow you whole. “You are such an immature fuckwit!” Your voice trembled miserably.

Ilia's expression softened for the briefest moment. Just a little.

But his pride was every bit as stubborn as yours. He wasn't about to let your accusations slide. He was too consumed by his sense of superiority to allow it.

“I'm immature?” he shot back. “You're literally screaming at me in a school parking lot and bringing up stuff that happened, like, years ago when we were teenagers!”

“You keep bringing stuff up too, you fucking piece of shi-”

The words died in your throat. A small, warm hand wrapped around yours. You looked down — Sophie stood beside you, clutching what appeared to be a basket filled with tissue-paper flowers. Immediately, you forced a smile onto your face.

It took more effort than you cared to admit, you didn't want her to see you like this, to witness the ugly mess you had become. Children deserved worlds gentler than the one currently unraveling around you.

“Oh, there you are,” you said, your voice suddenly warm and melodic — so different from the one Ilia had heard only seconds ago. For a moment, the storm paused.

Sophie stood out from all the children in your care. She had an exquisitely sensitive heart, as delicate as an early spring blossom pushing its way through the last melting clumps of winter snow. Whenever you tried to be cross with her, your resolve would melt away — she had you wrapped around her little finger.

“How was your day?” You glanced down at the basket and tilted your head. “And what's that you've got there?”

Sophie's green eyes lit up with excitement. Lifting the wicker basket proudly, she presented the flowers she had made from sheets of violet tissue paper in celebration of the approaching first day of Spring, some of them decorated with tiny suns painstakingly cut from glittering gold paper, identical to the ones from “Tangled”, the movie she never seemed to tire of watching.

Meanwhile, Liza came running over to Ilia, who was observing your interaction with Sophie with undisguised fascination, his attention fixed on you despite every reason he had to look elsewhere.

"I wanted to cover them in glitter," Sophie complained, thrusting the basket closer for inspection, "but Brad stole it and threw it in the trash, and then he pulled my braids."

You frowned immediately.

"I told my teacher, but she said boys tease girls because they're trying to get their attention, which is literally not true because Brad is just stupid. People do that stuff in kindergarten."

"You're absolutely right. Brad's a little asshole." You reached out and gently smoothed a hand over her head, your fingertips brushing through the crown of soft golden hair. "Next time, you should punch him in the face. I would, but I'd rather not end up facing charges for assaulting a minor."

Sophie giggled. Then, without warning, she pointed toward Ilia.

"Is that your boyfriend?"

The question struck you with the force of a lightning bolt.

"No. Ew." You practically recoiled, suddenly aware of heat rushing into your face. "Why would you even think that? I don't know that guy."

The lie slipped from your lips with suspicious ease, and you could only hope Sophie hadn't paid much attention to the heated argument the two of you had been having moments earlier.

"Aww. That's too bad." She absentmindedly picked at one of the tissue-paper petals. "Maggie already has a boyfriend. I kinda want one too."

You couldn't help laughing softly at that.

"Trust me, it's way better to stay away from boys for as long as possible, especially the ones who don't like you back. All they'll do is break your heart."

The words escaped before you could stop them. Against your better judgment, your gaze flickered meaningfully toward Ilia, buy he wasn't looking at you anymore. Instead, he was busy bickering playfully with his sister, who kept sneaking curious glances in your direction every few moments, as though trying to solve a puzzle. Apparently, she had recognized you as the ice-cream girl.

A strange ache settled somewhere beneath your ribs.

You slipped an arm protectively around Sophie's shoulders and guided her toward your bike without sparing Malinin or Liza another glance. Timidly, you suggested a trip to the music store. Unlike Sean, Sophie agreed without a moment's hesitation. She was endlessly fascinated by the fact that you played bass guitar and always listened with wide-eyed attention whenever you showed her old albums, vinyl records, or magazines filled with photographs and posters of Stevie Nicks.

And perhaps your life was nowhere near what you had once imagined for yourself. Perhaps your finances were a disaster, perhaps your career had collapsed beneath your feet, perhaps every carefully constructed dream had crumbled into dust before you could truly reach it.

Yet you still had Sophie.

The realization settled warmly inside your chest, quiet and unexpected.

Who would have thought that instead of performing beneath blinding stage lights before thousands of screaming fans, you would find yourself forming an unlikely friendship with a nine-year-old girl?

Life, you had discovered, possessed a peculiar sense of humor.

⋆⁺₊❅⋆ ⁺₊❆⋆

your_username: Yo loser

your_username: come to The Hideout in an hour, I’m playing and I need an audience

your_username: other than some local dealer, my dad’s drunk friend and three bikers, I’ll be performing for a bunch of literal rats and the bartender hahaha

your_username: love that for me 🥳

ilia_quadg0d_malinin: are u fr rn? u know it’s already 10 pm right?

your_username: so? ur obviously not asleep, I can literally see u active lol

ilia_quadg0d_malinin: I have practice at 7 am

your_username: boo hoo, you're no fun

ilia_quadg0d_malinin: 😐😑🤨 are u drunk? or... under the influence of marijuana??

your_username: not yet but I will be soon

your_username: I mean drunk, not under the influence of marijuana. u know nobody actually says that, right? u could've literally just said stoned or high. God ur so dumb

your_username: …unless u can hook me up with a joint

your_username: jk

your_username: can u pls just come and spare me the eternal humiliation in front of the owner? everyone bailed on me

ilia_quadg0d_malinin: why are u asking me? I thought u hated me

your_username: hah u know what they say...

your_username: as the old saying goes, you're something but not nothing

ilia_quadg0d_malinin: 🫩

your_username: wait I think I mixed it up

your_username: it was "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" or smth like that

your_username: and I don't really have any friends left anyway so

your_username: look I'm sorry about earlier, I didn't mean to yell at u

your_username: or call u dumb

your_username: or laugh at those wise words from your skating program

your_username: okay I did mean it but now you're not replying and I'm kinda regretting it 😂👹👹

your_username: sorry wrong emojis. are u coming or not?!??

ilia_quadg0d_malinin: fine. send me your location

your_username: you've seriously never been to The Hideout???

your_username: honestly that doesn't even surprise me. you're way too put together and boring for that place

your_username: u don't even drink coffee or tea, let alone alcohol

your_username: not judging tho

ilia_quadg0d_malinin: sure. ofc u know that i dont like coffee. who's singing?

your_username: me, obvi

ilia_quadg0d_malinin: wait, really? u sing too?? 😲🫨

your_username: duh

your_username: who did u think was doing backing vocals for us, Penny?

your_username: that stupid cunt sounds worse than a fork scraping a plate

your_username: besides, tons of artists played bass and sang. ever heard of Sting?

your_username: haven't seen him on any of your crazy playlists

your_username: y'know, from The Police

your_username: actually nvm, we'll talk when u get here

your_username: grab me some cheese puffs on the way and a pack of slim cigs if u can

your_username: byeeee

your_username: see u later, lutz boi

With your eyes stinging beneath swollen lids and the bridge of your nose burning from held-back tears, swallowing down the bitter taste of grief, you stared at the glowing screen of your phone, reading through your Instagram conversation with Ilia for what felt like the hundredth time, unable to decide what was more shocking — that after drinking a single beer you had actually found the nerve to message him, or that he had opened your message.

And that he had agreed to come.

In your mind's eye, you could already picture the humiliating blend of hesitation and pity that must have crossed his beautiful pale face as he read through your desperate messages. You hadn't wanted to see him at all — not after your last vicious argument — but impulse had possessed you with the same recklessness that had ruined so many things before, and you had slid into his DMs anyway. You were messy enough, broken enough, humiliated enough to decide that if you had already fallen this low, you might as well sink all the way to the bottom and debase yourself before your old high-school enemy.

Everything had fallen apart only a few hours earlier.

Hiding from your parents around town had proven considerably easier than avoiding Malinin. Ever since you had been forced by circumstance to return to your hometown, you had devoted considerable effort to ensuring that you never crossed paths with your father — or worse, your mother.

At first, you had lived in a hostel on the opposite side of town, a neglected, crumbling place forgotten by God Himself, where neither of your parents would ever willingly set foot. Unfortunately, the appalling living conditions, the lack of hot water, the unsafe neighborhood, and your rapidly dwindling funds had eventually forced you to reach out to Andrea — your conservative, cantankerous, perpetually dissatisfied aunt.

Andrea had never been particularly fond of you, especially after you grew old enough to start listening to AC/DC, painting your nails black, and taking an interest in things more sophisticated than sandboxes and cartoons on television. In Andrea's eyes, rock music and its surrounding subculture constituted an environment that encouraged occultism, nihilism, and values fundamentally opposed to Christianity.

"That bass of yours is a tool designed to lead people away from God," she would often remark during your annual Thanksgiving dinners.

Fortunately, as both a devout Christian and a nurse, Andrea possessed enough of the Good Samaritan in her not to turn you away. She had agreed without hesitation to provide you with a roof over your head — on the condition, naturally, that you found employment and contributed to groceries and household bills.

Andrea despised rock music and your band — which, much to her satisfaction, no longer existed — but she despised your mother even more.

Her younger sister.

To this day, you had no idea what ancient grievance had poisoned the relationship between the two women so thoroughly that they could scarcely endure one another's company for ten minutes without erupting into an argument. Andrea knew exactly how your mother had treated you throughout your teenage years, and it was that knowledge, more than anything else, that had compelled her to help.

"But remember," she would repeat frequently, "this is only temporary. I'm renovating the house in the summer, and by then you're expected to be back on your feet and moved out."

You had promised.

Yet time was slipping through your fingers like sand. March was already half over, and you remained as broken as ever.

Regardless, Andrea had honored your pleading request and kept your return a secret from your parents. You preferred that they never learn about the miserable state of your life, nor the fact that you had returned to Virginia at all, although you suspected they had already stumbled across one of the countless articles claiming that you had deliberately seduced Ian in order to sabotage his imaginary relationship with Penny because you wanted Penny removed from the band — a lie so absurdly creative that you could almost admire it.

Still, secrecy had never been sustainable.

People possessed long tongues. And your mother, the reigning queen of gossip in Fairfax, had quickly learned that her prodigal daughter had returned and was serving ice cream in a pink apron.

Though even that information was already outdated.

Three months. You had managed to bury your head in the sand and tiptoe around your own life for three entire months.

Your streak of successfully avoiding your mother ended on the very day you were supposed to return to the stage and perform at The Hideout alongside Patrick, who had practically begged you to let him accompany you on drums in exchange for one of the oldest pressings of Led Zeppelin's debut album, the rare version featuring the manufacturing error on its stark black-and-white cover depicting the dramatically descending airship. When Patrick's father had purchased the record, Led Zeppelin had still been known merely as an opening act for Vanilla Fudge.

You had not believed it possible to despise your mother any more than you already did.

You had been mistaken. Painfully mistaken.

To say that seeing her had shaken you would have been a grotesque understatement. It had shattered you completely, in the worst way imaginable.

You could briefly remember how you had made it home afterward. One moment you had been eating ice cream with Sophie — ironically at the very ice-cream shop from which you had been spectacularly fired, though some naive fragment of you still believed that if you kept returning and demonstrated sufficient remorse, Carrie might eventually give you another chance — and the next you were racing your bicycle toward Andrea's house, your face red from crying, your body trembling violently, while your mother's cruel words battered against the walls of your mind with relentless force.

Your mother had run into you outside the ice-cream shop, apparently unaware that you no longer worked there.

Never in your life had you felt more vulnerable, more humiliated. Already slightly tipsy, she had called you an ungrateful whore in front of the little girl you looked after.

In that instant, you had been reduced to nothing. To a useless slut. Your authority had been stripped away before a child who was supposed to look up to you, trust you, listen to you — perhaps even admire you.

Anger and an immeasurable, indescribable pain burned beneath your skin, the sensation so sharp and merciless that it stole the air from your lungs and rendered you powerless against the cascade of hot tears spilling down your cheeks.

You had simply stood there, frozen in place — perhaps frozen in time as well — because suddenly you were sixteen again, listening to your mother enumerate every imaginable flaw and failure while you lacked even the strength to defend yourself against those unjust judgments.

All you could do was stare through a haze of tears and watch melted chocolate ice cream drip from the cone onto your fingers. In that moment, you had wanted only one thing — to disappear. To dissolve into nothingness. To cease existing altogether.

Now, sitting hunched over the sticky wooden counter at The Hideout with a glass of beer mixed with raspberry syrup in your hand, you felt no better. Your gaze remained fixed on the last message you had sent to Malinin while you wondered at what precise point your life had begun to unravel so catastrophically. You suspected the process had begun long before Ian and Penny had turned against you.

The beer and your confrontation with your mother had forced you to acknowledge another uncomfortable truth as well. You were not nearly as tough or indestructible as you had convinced yourself you were. For years, you had believed you had grown thick-skinned enough to stop caring about what other people thought.

The truth was far uglier.

A single careless remark could still send you spiraling into fury, as your argument with Ilia had so effectively demonstrated. You had never truly processed the wounds of your childhood, had merely crammed them into the bottom of the metaphorical suitcase you had dragged behind you for the last four years — that realization had arrived courtesy of your mother.

Your emotions resembled a fragile glass snow globe suspended above concrete, trembling dangerously close to slipping from uncertain hands and shattering beyond repair.

You were pulled from your bleak thoughts by Patrick's voice.

"Y/N, we need to start setting up the equipment."

Without a word, you finished the last of your drink and followed him to his car to retrieve your bass guitar and amplifier. As you walked, you quietly hummed the lyrics of "Message in a Bottle" — the song you would be performing in a few minutes for an audience of exactly five people.