No bullshit...except the fun kind!

I’ve felt my whole life like I am not a proper female. I remember me, as young as three years old, arguing vehemently with my maternal parental unit that I am a BOY, gd it! I’ve had barbies and dresses and the color PINK forced on me my entire childhood. (I despise pink to this very day because of the association.) I wanted to play sports like wrestling and football, but I couldn’t because those were “for boys”. And then I learned when I was a teenager that I like both genders — but not sex. And I was apparently “wrong” for both of those things. I always had to talk and behave a certain way because of my genitals, which never sat well with me. When I finally started to live with the notion that I-have-a-uterus-and-sizable-breasts-so-logic-dictates-that-I-am-a-girl, I tried to embrace my “place” in the world and started focusing on how to be a “proper lady”, yet all the sudden I was “slutty” and a “hoochie” “outspoken” and “disrespectful” and should dress “conservatively”, even though girls who showed off their looks apparently got praise and approval (it didn’t help that the only affection I ever got was from the “family friend” who got way too handsy with me, but I took it because here was someone who was finally being nice to me).

When I finally got away from toxic relatives and out on my own, I tried to be a proper woman, but the label “woman” never settled in and I waited my entire twenties to feel “right”. Then tragedy hit me and my partner and living became survival again, thus I no longer cared what I looked like or what people thought. I stopped wearing makeup so much, I stopped shaving my legs and armpits, I stopped the painful process of waxing my face, and THEN!! For the first time, I actually felt comfortable in my skin. I stopped wearing bras so much. I started wearing geeky t-shirts and jeans and biker boots. I talk in a way that feels right to me, and not how a “lady” should. I stopped sitting like a “lady” and I don’t take shit from anybody anymore. I began to realize that I never liked being referred to as a “she” and would jokingly tell my friends to not accuse me of being a woman. Then I started an anonymous, faceless, genderless Twitter (before the muskrat takeover) as a social experiment, and learned that I LIKED it when everyone just assumed I was a guy. I didn’t correct them because I didn’t want them to change the way they talked to me.

Prologue

He awoke with a start, a gasp seizing his lungs as his eyes struggled to decipher the darkness. 

All was silent and still. Slivers of silver beams cast by the moon breached the many trees enveloping their tiny sanctuary. It cast just enough illumination to highlight the silhouette in bed at his side. 

The very…still…silhouette. 

His heart rate spiked and his body moved before his brain caught up with the waking world. He surged upright, one hand fumbling for the pulse point at a wrist, laying limply against a chest that he wasn’t entirely sure was moving. The other hand searched out a face — a cheek, a nose, an upper lip. 

The abrupt touch prompted a startled breath to jolt from the other occupant. Albeit slow to rise to attention, the captured wrist turned immediately, clasping onto the searching fingers with a Pavlovian instinct, “What! What, what, what?” The other hand blindly slapped the nightstand, searching for the touch light mounted upon it. 

The room lit up with a dull, yellow glow. The walls came into focus, followed by the sheen from the encompassing windows. The bed. The sheets. Shane.

Breathing. Alert. Alive.

Ilya’s body relaxed at last, even as his sleep-fogged brain struggled to come back online. 

Shane pushed himself up, shaking the slumber from his features. Ilya tracked his movements — the strength of his arms as he pushed himself up to sit against the headboard, the hand that offered reassuring squeezes, the light dancing in very lucid mahogany eyes. A breath Ilya didn’t realize he held whooshed out of him at the sight.

Shane was awake. He was breathing. He was okay. 

Ilya’s body felt too heavy. The world tilted, and he pitched forward. Shane caught him easily, all but expecting it. 

Strong arms — equally strong as his own — held him snug against Shane’s chest. Careful fingers wove through his damp curls over and over. Ilya kept his forehead pressed against one firm pectoral as it continued to rise and fall in steady rhythm. He breathed purposely in return, working to quell his racing heart. He greedily drank in the scent of Wilderness body wash, fresh linen sheets, and life-warm flesh stretching across athletic muscle.

“I’m okay,” his partner’s sleep-heavy voice assured, like a mantra. “We’re okay.”

“мне жаль,” Ilya croaked. He still didn’t have the wherewithal to lift his head. “I’m sorry — I had to be sure.”

“I know,” Shane affirmed. He took up one of Ilya’s hands in his own again, pressing the palm down flat against his chest. “I’m okay, see? Breathing just fine.”

Ilya turned his head just enough to shift from his brow to his ear, further cementing Shane’s assurances.

“No wheezing, no rattling.” Shane continued, his voice a soothing timber both above and beneath him. “Not even inflamed.” He continued to breathe deeply and steadily, guiding Ilya to follow suit. 

Minutes passed, and Ilya’s heart rate finally settled. 

“I’m sorry I woke you…” his gravelly Russian lilt pierced the silence after an eternity. 

“S’okay.” Shane needed to be up for an early flight anyways. He could always rest at the hotel.

It was a little surreal; incredible as it was to finally be back on the road — and finally back on the ice — this time was something else entirely. In just a few hours, Shane would be getting on a plane, and in two more days, so would Ilya. It wouldn’t be the first occasion they would fly out at different times, and henceforth headed to vastly different locations, but this time…

Shane craned his neck down to peer at Ilya’s face. His breathing had leveled out, deep and heavy. His eyes had drifted shut, but his brow remained pinched, as if he’d slipped right back into the nightmare he’d woken up from to begin with. Shane massaged the sweaty scalp again, hoping at least some of the soothing touch bled into his dreams. 

Tomorrow would be the first they’d been apart since the world went to shit. 

———