Chapter Text
“I need you,” Ilya hisses into the receiver the second the call connects.
Svetlana laughs, warm and entirely unalarmed. “No hello?” she replies in Russian, “You are in Montreal, no? Should I be flattered or concerned?”
“Sveta, please” his voice cracks on her name. He hates how quickly she’ll hear it, how easily she’ll pick up on his desperation if not the cause. Saying I’m scared is too unbearable. Explaining, impossible.
“Ilya, what’s wrong?” she says, softer now. All traces of humor gone like they were never there.
“Are you alone?”
“Da.”
He switches to FaceTime without warning. The camera engages, and there she is: eagle eyed, searching his face for damage. He doesn’t let her look for long. She’ll start asking questions he can’t answer.
Instead he flips the camera.
“There,” he says, the word comes out quieter than he intends.
At first glance, there’s nothing. Just the anonymous luxury of a hotel room. White sheets, half-made bed, the sterile neatness he’d left behind that morning. For a second—a stupid, hopeful second—he thinks maybe he imagined it. That the sleepless night of Shane’s injury (or something worse) has finally caught up with him.
But it's still there: pale muslin, almost indistinguishable from the sheets unless you’re looking for it. A careful bundle, too deliberate to be accidental. He moves closer now, like the thing might react to him if he startles it. It doesn’t. It won’t. It hasn’t moved since he found it. He reminds himself it's not supposed to. Not yet.
“That’s a—” through the screen, Svetlana stops, recalibrates, “Ilya, is that a baby?”
He lets out a breath that could be a laugh if it hadn't scraped his lungs raw.
“Probably,” he says. The word hangs there, absurd.
There’s a small chance it isn’t. One of his teammates might have thought this would be funny. Some elaborate, tasteless joke waiting for a punchline. He clings to that possibility harder than he should.
He hasn’t touched it. Hasn’t lifted the swaddle, hasn’t checked for signs of life, because the moment he does, the uncertainty collapses. Either he’s been made the target of something cruel, or—
Or his touch, the choice to reach out, could be the thing that drags a life into existence.
“I don’t know what to do,” he admits.
“Are you in the right room? Who is your roommate?” The question lands, practical. Solvable. Ilya jumps on it.
“Connors,” he says automatically, and then, after an awkward beat, “was.”
He’d forgotten about him entirely. Connors had been packed and gone by the time Ilya got back from the hospital. Connors with his provincial accent and terrible music and a string of forgettable girls in forgettable cities.
Ilya tries, absurdly, to imagine the teammate he knows in this scenario. To recall anything at all that could suggest a private, carefully hidden domesticity. A girlfriend. A wife. A plan… Nothing comes to mind. Unless the pink-haired hostess from that hibachi place in Dallas had done more than flirt. Unless something had shifted in him overnight, something paternal and urgent and completely out of character. It’s almost easier to believe than…
Ilya takes another step toward the bed. The bundle doesn’t react.
Of course it doesn’t. It’s not a bomb. It’s not going to detonate because he gets too close, because he breathes wrong, because he exists. If this is what he thinks it is, if it’s real, then proximity isn’t the danger. Contact is.
His chest tightens.
If Ilya didn’t wish this baby himself, if he didn’t want it into being, then his touch won’t do anything. That’s the rule. The only rule: desire and touch. He knows that much.
And he didn’t wish for this. He would know…Wouldn’t he?
Connors won’t be far. The team plane doesn’t depart for another twenty minutes. There’s still time to hand this off, to correct whatever mistake has been made. Ilya latches onto the thought with relief.
He’ll call. Congratulate him, even. Pretend this makes sense.
On the phone, Svetlana has gone silent, holding herself back so she doesn’t startle him into doing something irreversible.
Ilya reaches out anyway.
The cloth at the top of the swaddle is loosely tucked, careless in a way that feels out of place. His fingers hesitate for half a second, hovering. Then he pulls.
The sound is immediate. Sharp. Indignant. Alive.
It slices through the empty room, and whatever fragile distance Ilya had managed to hold on to in those last quiet moments crumbles. The baby’s cry is unmistakable. A protest against the sudden intrusion of light and air and him.
Ilya drops to his knees like he’s been struck.
Svetlana is speaking, her voice rising, switching rapidly from Russian to English, like one language might reach him when the other doesn’t. It’s all drowned out by the rush of blood in his ears and the relentless, furious noise of a newborn.
Movement further loosens the blanket. A tiny fist fights its way free, jerky and uncoordinated, all instinct and outrage.
Ilya doesn’t think. He moves.
His hand comes forward, and for one impossible second he almost pulls it back. Remembers himself, the rules, the risk. But it’s too late, and the baby’s fingers brush his skin and then close, reflexive, around his own.
His finger looks enormous in that tiny, fragile hand. Yet the baby holds on, knuckles white with the effort, as if Ilya is the only solid thing in a world that has just begun.
The crying evolves into something new. Less fury, more insistence.
“Ilya.” Svetlana’s voice cuts through this time, commanding, “Ilya, answer me.”
He can’t. If he speaks or blinks or looks away…
“The name of the hotel,” Svetlana says, her words slow and deliberate, “That’s all I need.”
He swallows, and it takes so much effort. The baby’s grip tightens. Ilya inhales, shaky and shallow, and finally forces words out.
“—I don’t think this is Connors’.”
“No. It’s not.” There’s no hesitation this time. “Just please stay where you are, yes? Share your location when you can. The soonest I can get to Montreal is probably—” a sharp string of Russian swears, bitten off halfway through, “—late. Evening. Don’t move,” she adds, still direct, still calm. “I will call the team for you. Do I have your permission?”
The question is strange, like it belongs to a different conversation.
“What?”
“To talk to the Raiders on your behalf.” This is why he called her. She’s already thinking three steps ahead, rearranging his life with brisk, efficient strokes. “Donna from the personnel office and Coach if they’ll patch me through. You’re going to miss your flight.”
The words should mean something. They do, distantly. Like hearing about weather in another country.
Miss your flight.
Playoffs. Every game matters, every statistic tracked, every absence noticed and questioned and analyzed to death. He can picture the fallout: the speculation, the irritation, the way his name will be said differently if he isn’t there.
For a brief, vicious second, he hates it. All of it.
The MHL. The Media. The endless grind of it, the way it demands everything and leaves no room for anything else. The expectations, the noise, the relentless forward motion of a world that does not stop for confusion or fear or—
He looks down.
The baby is quieter now, if not quite calm. The tiny fist is still gripped around Ilya’s finger, having decided something about him that won't be reconsidered.
“It will be okay,” she says, the reassurance deliberate, “I will be there as soon as I can. You can do this.”
He's not sure he can afford to believe her. That would mean…acceptance. That this is real, not a mistake or a misunderstanding or a hallucination but something he deliberately willed into his world.
And Shane’s.
Because if this baby is Ilya’s, it doesn’t stop with him. That’s not how wishbabies (or rather, babies) work.
Is it possible Shane wanted this too? Something unspoken, barely formed, buried under all their shared secrets and fears. Something that met Ilya halfway without either of them understanding what they were doing. Or is it possible for Ilya's inconvenient desires to have caused this on their own?
He swallows, sharp and uncomfortable. If Shane sees what Ilya did and everything it says about him, about the way he wants too much, too blindly, will he hate him for it?
The baby shifts, a small, restless movement, fingers flexing against his. Present. Undeniable. Certainty creeps in amidst the panic.
This isn’t going away.
“Ilyushka,” Svetlana says finally, the first hint of desperation making its way into her voice, “Listen to me. You cannot solve everything right now, okay? Just the next thing.”
“Okay,” he whispers, because Svetlana losing her composure would mean he’s actually broken something beyond repair.
“I will call your team” she reminds him, “And you will focus on one next thing. Formula, maybe? The front desk can send some up.”
Ilya looks down at the baby. The small, impossible proof of what he’s done. He thinks of Shane, concussed and confused in a hospital bed across town. Whatever the next step is, for now it’s Ilya’s alone.