Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau

Additional Tags:

Episode: s01e05 I'll Believe in Anything (Heated Rivalry), High Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, POV Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, Hurt Shane Hollander, Hayden Pike Finds Out About Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Supportive Hayden Pike, Good Friend Hayden Pike, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Soft Ilya Rozanov, Surgery, Concussions, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-06-09 Updated: 2026-08-05 Words: 14,831 Chapters: 4/6

you will never fade from my soul (numquam ex anima effluebis)

Summary

--or, Shane has only been in love with one person and he'll never stop, even if it hurts

Notes

the basics: Rose has that "you're gay" conversation earlier than canon, they break up before January, MTL plays in BOS early January 2017, Shane gets hurt during this game instead of the one later on in the season (in MTL) in canon

please accept my humble offerings fellow loons 🦆 🏒

Chapter 1: one

January 2017

Boston Bears vs. Montreal Voyageurs

Shane

Shane begins the new year as a new person. Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic. He, at the very least, enters the new year content with the fact that he’s gay; not bisexual, not pansexual, but ‘fully’ gay. Sure, he’d had to basically be told by his own girlfriend that he’s probably gay, but it still counts. There’s something inside of him that settled significantly with this realization, a question about himself he’s had for ages that finally has an answer.

This realization also came with a new goal: reconciling with the love his life. It’s going to be quite the feat considering the way things had gone so horribly wrong the last time they’d seen each other, but Shane certainly isn’t one to run away from a challenge.

He has a plan, because of course he does. He’s thinking it over now as he puts his gear on in Boston’s away team locker room. The All-Star Game is only a couple of weeks away and both he and Ilya are slated to attend the entire weekend. They’re apparently going to be playing on the same team this year, as well, much to Shane’s excitement. He plans to track Ilya down during the limited downtime they have so he can apologize about the last time they were together and then, hopefully, they’ll talk about everything else. He’d considered trying to contact the man before tonight’s game but had figured that All-Star weekend affords them a lot more of space to properly have such a conversation, so for tonight’s game Shane’s going to suck it up and allow the distance between them to continue.

Shane tries not to let the cold shoulder Ilya is giving him bother him. I’m going to fix it, he keeps reminding himself, or I’m at least going to try everything I can.

The Voyageurs are leading 3-1 going into the third period. There are only six minutes left on the game clock when another player barrels into Shane and sends him sprawling. He’s completely caught off guard, flung violently to the ice before he even manages to catch a glimpse of who the fuck just hit him. He lands in a heap and his vision goes dark for a moment as his ears start to ring. Ow.

_/ * \_

Hayden

Hayden sees the hit from across the ice. His brain immediately begins doing the mental math as his eyes flick from Shane’s crumbled form on the ice to the visibly regretful Cliff Marleau and then, for some reason, to a shell-shocked Ilya Rozanov. Those first two are pretty simple, Hayden thinks, so he turns and gets directly into Marleau’s space with a few harsh strides of his skates; he can think about that third thing later.

J.J. beats him to it, though, shaking off his gloves and grabbing handfuls of Marleau’s jersey with obvious rage on his face. Hayden’s momentarily a little pissed off by his friend taking his chance to fight the Bears player that just laid out his best friend, but the irritation melts away when he turns and sees that Shane still hasn’t gotten up yet.

Hayden makes his way over to Shane’s sprawled out body. He can see the Voyageurs trainers making their way onto the ice, as well, which is good because this definitely seems like the kind of injury that requires the hospital. Ilya Rozanov still standing only a few feet away from Shane doesn’t escape Hayden’s notice, but there are bigger fish to fry right now.

Shane comes around just as the head trainer arrives at his side and kneels down beside him. Hayden stoops down, bent over with his stick propped horizontally across his hips as he watches the medical professionals do their thing. He keeps enough of a distance from his best friend as they work that nobody shoos him away. He stays right where he is, stealing glances at an Ilya Rozanov who appears more stupefied with every passing second, until the medical staff transfer Shane onto a stretcher and then raise it to move him off the ice.

“Hay’dn,” Shane’s voice calls, slurred but unmistakable. Hayden moves without any hesitation, skating over to the side of the stretcher. The paramedics allow it, so Hayden stoops down near his best friend’s head. Shane’s head and neck are restrained with a c-collar and his eyes are hazy when Hayden finally gets a look at his face.

“What’s up, buddy?” Hayden says, trying not to give away how worried he is. Him panicking would just make Shane freak out, and that’s not a difficult thing to do under normal circumstances.

The paramedics start to move across the ice with the stretcher, slow in the way they always move on the ice, and Hayden moves with them, skating alongside the group to keep up.

“Make sure he knows m’okay,” Shane says quietly.

Hayden’s brow furrows and he moves closer, confused but aware that they have limited time to talk. Calling Shane’s parents after an injury like this is already a given and Hayden knows Shane would be aware of that, so who is the ‘he’ that Shane is talking about? Maybe he’d meant ‘she?’ He and Rose broke up a month ago, though, but maybe Shane is just confused about the date and time right now?

“Make sure who knows, Shane? I thought you and Rose broke up,” Hayden says, quiet and close to Shane because he knows his best friend is a stickler about privacy.

Shane’s eyes are still unfocused when they slide over to look at Hayden but there’s something desperate in them. It’s not an expression Hayden has seen on his best friend before, so something has him moving even closer almost on instinct. When Shane speaks next it’s practically right into Hayden’s ear, hushed and quiet enough that the only person who could possibly hear him is Hayden himself.

“Ilya,” he says, his speech still slightly uncoordinated but clear enough for Hayden’s spine to go rigid.

They reach the end of the rink and Hayden stops at the lip separating the ice and the rubber mats covering the concrete flooring beyond. The stretcher continues on without him, wheeling Shane directly to the ambulance that will bring him to the hospital. Hayden stares after it for a moment, still completely dumbfounded, before rounding and immediately catching sight of the Russian in question.

Rozanov has been pushed back towards his own bench but he’s still standing on the ice directly next to it, a hand on the boards but his eyes still on where Shane has disappeared surrounded by a flock of medical staff. The look on his face is something Hayden’s never seen from the cocky Russian menace that Ilya Rozanov has always presented himself to be: anguished, petrified, like it’s the love of his life that just got bodied across the ice by his own teammate and—

Oh.

Hayden still has no idea what the fuck is going on, but he definitely has an inkling at the very least now.

He shakes off the sudden realization because of the sheer improbability of it and also because there’s still five minutes of game to  play. Like it or not, this is the NHL and the show must go on. Hayden heads back to the Voyageurs bench as the ref blows the whistle. He tries not to think of the Ilya Rozanov sized problem on the horizon, because what’s the possibility that he is the man Shane had been referencing? Maybe Shane had fucked up and meant ‘Lily,’ not ‘Ilya,’ who knows? Actually, you know what? That’s probably it, right? Hayden is not going to worry himself about something so unlikely until he absolutely has to.

The minutes wind down on the clock painstakingly slowly, though, and it’s impossible for Hayden not to notice the fact that Rozanov plays like shit the whole time. The final buzzer sounds with the Voyageurs taking the game 3-1, and nobody is surprised. Play on both sides after a big injury like the one Shane just had is usually pretty subdued, even between rival teams.

Hayden is the first down the tunnel to the away team locker room and he’s immediately rifling through Shane’s game bag to find the man’s cell phone. It’s tucked into the same pocket it always is, and Hayden has a lot of inertia until the phone is finally in his hands and a lockscreen asking for a four digit password pops up. Right.

His focus turns to his own cell phone, the one holding a number he’d secretly squirreled away about a year ago. The mystery surrounding ‘Boston Lily’ had possessed him and he’d found himself jotting the number down when Shane had left his phone unlocked and faceup to his text thread with ‘Lily’ like an idiot. Hayden never would’ve guessed that Ilya Rozanov may be the one on the other end of those text messages, but the longer the idea lingers the more he’s starting to believe that it may be true.

“You going to see Shane?” J.J. asks, coming up behind him in the locker room.

“Yeah, I’m gonna head over right from the hotel after I, uh, call his parents,” Hayden replies, staring down distractedly at the list of contacts he has saved in his phone. “I’ll put an update in the group chat once I can.”

He showers in a slight daze, intimidated by the prospect of what he’s going to have to do when he finally gets back to the hotel room he’d been sharing with Shane. The idea of it being even a possibility that Ilya Rozanov picks up when Hayden presses call on the ‘Boston Lily’ contact he has saved in his phone is admittedly freaking him out a little bit, because god dammit, Shane, really? Not the gay thing, Hayden couldn’t give less of a fuck about the gay thing, but the Rozanov of it all? There weren’t any hot Russian men in Montreal?

Hayden ponders the issue further on the bus ride back to the hotel. Shane had been dating Rose Landry, a movie star for fuck sake, and yet he’d barely ever looked super enthusiastic about her at all. Shane had actually seemed kind of miserable if anything. There was also that day back in Boston earlier in the season when Shane had been distraught when he’d returned to their hotel room after a visit to his ‘Boston Lily.’ Hayden had asked him about it, but all he’d managed to get out of the guy was that he’d broken up with ‘Boston Lily.’ He never looked truly happy after that, not even when he’d started seeing Rose, and he never got that stupid grin he would never realize was on his face when his ‘girl’ from Boston texted him anymore.

There’s also the little bit Hayden knows about “Shane and Ilya” that’s outside of the whole “Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov” capital-R Rivalry™ bullshit. On it’s face the idea of the two of them together, even as friends, is laughable, but there are little things, maybe. Shane stopped jumping on the ‘Rozanov hate train” whenever the Voyageurs players would start talking shit somewhere around 2015. Hayden hadn’t noticed at first but it’d suddenly struck him that it’d been months since he’d heard anything negative about the Russian comes out of Shane’s mouth. There’s also the way the two always act when they’re around each other, at least up until last fall….wait.

Wow, okay. Okay. Maybe this whole Rozanov theory might actually be true, because they didn’t start ignoring each other until the game they just played tonight, the first game the Voyageurs have played against the Bears since last fall.

Hayden calls Shane’s parents first when he gets back to his room. He knows they’re in Mexico so he calls and leaves a voicemail, then texts Yuna to let her know to call him when she can. The next step of this process is even more stressful than that one, so he steels himself before scrolling to Lily’s contact in his phone and pressing the call button.

The phone rings once, then twice, and then someone picks up.

“….hello?” a distinctly Russian voice says.

Hayden’s brain feel like it disconnects from his spinal cord for a moment, but he locks in just as quickly out of sheer necessity. This is the one fucking thing his best friend had asked him to do while he was lying concussed on a stretcher so he has to keep it together.

“Please don’t hang up, but this is Hayden Pike. I’m, uhh, I’m 99% sure that I know who you really are, and before you freak out, I don’t care and I’m not going to tell anyone, okay? Whatever the fuck you two have going on or went wrong between you two is your business, all I know is that he asked me to make sure you know he’s okay.”

There’s a long pause of unbearably heavy silence that follows. Then the man on the other line finally speaks. “Is he okay?”

“I’m heading to the hospital right now to see if they’ll let me see him and wait if they don’t so that I can find out. His parents are in Mexico,” Hayden says as evenly as he can possibly manage. Then, “There are privacy laws in the US, so if you, uhhh, wanna come with me, you can.”

That finally gets a slight reaction out of the otherwise silent man, an amused huff out of his nose that’s just barely audible over the line. “You are serious?” he says, incredulous. “Hayden Pike wants to sneak me into hospital to see Shane Hollander?”

“So it is you, then?”

“You are as perceptive as ever, Pike,” Ilya Rozanov says with a snort.

“I just wanted to make sure man, fuck you!” Hayden exclaims, still in slight shock at what’s happening right now. “Listen, Rozanov, I only know you as a player, but Shane clearly knows you as…something else. The look on your face when he went down convinced me plenty.”

“You hate me.”

“Okay, I severely dislike you, sure,” Hayden says with a huff. “Shane obviously doesn’t, though, and I don’t know if you’ve met him but he doesn’t really just trust many people, so if he likes you then clearly there must be a good side to you I’ve never met or something, right?”

Rozanov says nothing.

“Listen, do you want me to help you see him or not? I haven’t got all day, Rozanov.”

“Yes,” Rozanov says in a rush. “Tell me what I have to do.”

_/ * \_

Shane

Everything between the hit on the ice and the ambulance ride to the hospital is a blur.

They transfer him from the stretcher he came in on to the ER bed in the trauma bay. He’s hazy, everything is blurry and his head fucking hurts, but he’s still there. There’s a flurry of movement as the ER staff set to work assessing him and attaching this and that to wherever it goes.

He’d said Ilya’s name. He hadn’t meant to do that.

His eyes drift to the right where the nice EMS staff that took him here in the ambulance are making their way out of the room.

He thinks he’s might’ve said it on the ride here, too. Maybe. Just once, he’s sure. Probably.

“Hey buddy, how’re you doing?” someone says, drawing his attention back to the people moving around him. “Can you tell me your name?”

That one’s easy.

“Shane Hollander,” Shane says. And then, because he’s familiar with these questions and ever the overachiever, continues unprompted, “we’r in th’ hospital, uhhh, Mass Gen’? An’ it’sss 2017.”

“Right, that’s great, Shane,” the doctor, or, Shane assumes it’s at least one of the doctors, encourages. “Do you remember what happened?”

Oh, no. Had he said Ilya’s name to Hayden?

“Shane?”

Oh, right.

“Got hit on th’ ice,” Shane says, fully aware of the way his words are slurring slightly but unable to do anything to stop it. “’Treal ‘gainst Boston. Who t’fuck hit me?”

There are a few chuckles around him and he relaxes slightly. Okay, at least these are real people with a sense of humor and not some stiff cliches like that doctor TV show Ilya keeps trying to get him to watch.

Or. ‘Kept.’ Ilya hasn’t spoken a word to him in two months. He deserves it, he thinks. No wonder Ilya wants nothing to do with him anymore; Shane had freaked out and gotten way too invested.

Shane wonders as they’re taking his vitals and drawing his blood and apparently getting him on the list for a head CT whether Hayden had heard him. He doesn’t know which possibility is worse, that Hayden heard him and finds a way to contact Ilya Rozanov, that Hayden heard and just doesn’t, or that Hayden didn’t hear and there isn’t a single chance that Ilya will be coming anywhere near Shane anytime soon, because why would he?

Shane lets himself drift through all the scans and prodding and rearranging. He zones back in when they inform him he has a concussion but no brain bleed and a collarbone that needs surgery to fix. He swallows thickly, suddenly feeling very small and terribly alone, when they ask if they have consent to do the surgery. He’s never had surgery before, nothing that required general anesthesia. His parents are in Mexico, Hayden is with Jackie and the kids, and Ilya…Shane doesn’t have a spot in Ilya’s life anymore.

He signs the forms. They start to prep him and finally give him some pain medication.

Shane’s mind veers to the thought of an alternate reality where their roles were reversed, where it was Ilya who had walked out on Shane, Shane who was ignoring Ilya, and Ilya getting hurt on the ice. Shane thinks about a reality where this injury happened years ago, back when he and Ilya were still kids and during that six month period when Ilya had ghosted him after taking his virginity. Shane tries to imagine a world where his first impulse wouldn’t be to want Ilya at his side. What does that mean? Surely that must mean something.

He thinks about love as they’re wheeling him to the elevator that will take him to the surgical floor. It must be the medication messing with his head because he’s not normally this sappy, not anymore. That sappy, overly earnest part of him went deep into hiding somewhere between Ilya’s hotel room in Vegas and the humiliating elevator ride back to Shane’s own room, or maybe it’d been when Ilya gave him a taste of what it’d be like to be something together only to pull the rug right out from under him with the reminder about how much he loves fucking women. Shane had had to suffocate that childish part of him, the one with the naïve unrealistic ideas of what romance and love are like.

Shane has always wondered what it’s like to be in love with someone.

They have Shane scoot from the ER bed to the OR table. Shane tries his hardest not to think about how hard and metal operating tables really are. It’s kind of unsettling, he thinks, sitting back when instructed so the back of his head hits the little cushion.

What’s it called to miss someone even when they won’t acknowledge your existence?

They hook up all the leads that were monitoring his vitals in the ER to the machines in here. He stays reclined the way he is and allows things to happen around him.

A nurse approaches with a syringe without a needle attached to it in her hand. Shane eyes it.

“This is IV Versed, we give it very often for pre-op anxiety, does that sound okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Shane says, a little hoarse. Maybe that’s the fluttering in his chest. Anxiety. Right. He literally has diagnosed anxiety and this whole hospital thing is definitely a huge anxiety-inducing situation, he thinks.

She attaches it to his IV line and starts to push it. A bit of warmth spreads through him and his body relaxes significantly.

What’s it called when you somehow just want them to be happy even if that doesn’t involve you?

They place one of those oxygen masks over his face and inform him it’s just oxygen. Things feel a little like they’ve slowed down around Shane.

The man who must be the anesthesiologist, right, he introduced himself when Shane first came in here, approaches with another syringe. He asks how Shane’s doing, Shane rattles off something agreeable.

They tell him they’re going to start giving the medication that will put him to sleep. Shane tries not to freak out and have those kinds of thoughts people sometimes have before surgery about whether they’ll become the small statistic that doesn’t wake up or where something goes horribly wrong. He’s fine. Every NHL player does this at some point. So what if this is the first time he’s ever had surgery?

His body starts to feel heavy. It becomes difficult to keep his eyes open.

What’s it called when they’re the last thing you think of when you’re being put to sleep before surgery?

His eyes shut.

Does any of that even mean anything at all?

Chapter 2: two

Chapter Summary

Hayden and Ilya have a heart to heart

Chapter Notes

short chapter, next will finally be the hollanov moment we've been waiting for :)

Hayden

Hayden takes an Uber straight to the hospital. He talks to the clerk at the front desk of the emergency room and waits patiently as she calls up to the orthopedics floor to check on Shane’s status. The charge nurse on the ortho unit verifies that Hayden is listed as an emergency contact first and then the clerk relays the information she has to Hayden: Shane is stable and in surgery for his collarbone, which is progressing as expected. She informs him that he can wait in the waiting room on the ortho floor until Shane’s out of surgery and graciously gives him the directions to get there.

“Would it be possible to have another visitor wait with me?” Hayden asks once the woman hands the map to him.

“Only family and emergency contacts are permitted onto the floor to visit in this case,” she replies, sounding very much like she’s said the same thing millions of times before. Hayden was expecting that answer but had also been kind of hoping that maybe this hospital has different rules than most. “Patients can add people to their approved visitor lists, though, so once he wakes up he can do that if he wants. People who aren’t emergency contacts are welcome to wait in the general waiting room down here, as well.”

Hayden nods. “Okay, thank you,” he says. He gestures back to the way he’d came from with one hand. “I’m gonna make a phone call outside first, is that okay?”

“Sure, no problem, just keep that visitor’s badge on,” the clerk says with a nod.

Hayden heads back out to the parking lot to deliver the news about the hospital’s visiting rules to Rozanov. He knows one way to get the Russian man into Shane’s hospital room, he’s just not sure whether Rozanov will go for it.

***

Ilya

Ilya watches as Hayden Pike slowly makes his way to where he’s sitting on a bench, the brim of his hat pulled low as he continues to try and appear as inconspicuous as possible.

“He’s okay,” Pike says as he comes to a stop right in front of him. Ilya’s rigid posture relaxes by a fraction. “He’s getting surgery on his collarbone right now, but he’s alright.”

Ilya nods several times, sniffing as his eyes cut to the side. “His head?”

“Concussion, obviously, but nothing life-threatening,” Hayden replies, sticking his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “Listen, man, they only let in family and emergency contacts. The only way you can wait for him on the actual floor is if you say you’re his partner, and I don’t know if that’s something you want to do, or something he’d want you to do.”

Ilya’s head snaps up, already shaking it. He doesn’t say anything, though, trying to fully absorb the reality of this option. He and Shane haven’t spoken in months and Ilya still isn’t 100% convinced that Shane’s request to Hayden about him hadn’t only been the confused ramblings of someone with a brain injury. Even if Shane had been sincere, Ilya doesn’t think Shane would appreciate him taking the risk of accidentally outing them just so he can wait for him to get out of surgery.

Ilya is horribly torn. “I do not know what he would want me to do,” he says softly, scraping the bottom of his shoe against the sidewalk beneath it. “We haven’t spoken in many months.”

“You can wait in the general waiting area down here until he wakes up and I can ask him what he wants to do,” Hayden offers, which Ilya figures is probably the most reasonable option.

Ilya stares at him for a moment, feeling very off-kilter. "Why are you so…okay with this?”

Hayden doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “He asked for you on the ice, Rozanov. Not his parents, not Rose, you. That means something. He’s got a tight circle of people, you know that, and he asked for you, to make sure you knew he’s okay,” Hayden says. His voice is a little broken up when he speaks again. “He’s my best friend, man, he’s like my brother, and he asked me to make sure you know he’s okay, so this is me doing that.”

That’s kind of hard to argue with, Ilya thinks.. “Okay,” he says finally.

“Okay?” Hayden asks, checking to be sure.

“Yes. I will wait in lobby, you wait for him upstairs and…and if we wants to see me, I will tell them I am his partner.”

And so it’s decided.

Hayden splits the time he spends waiting for Shane to get out of surgery between the waiting room on the ortho floor and the one down on the first floor. He brings Ilya a cup of coffee the second time he comes down, and Ilya thanks him quietly. The general waiting room is somehow entirely empty except for them.

They’ve been sitting in those seats across from each other for around five silent, slightly tense minutes before it seems that Pike finally gets bored of the awkwardness.

“So how did you two meet, anyway?” Pike says, breaking the silence of the otherwise empty waiting room. Ilya’s eyes jump up to meet his in surprise. “Or, how did you two get…involved, or whatever?” Pike amends, flapping an arm around in the air dismissively.

Ilya stares for a few beats without responding before he finally speaks. “World Juniors, 2008,” he says quietly, eyes flicking away. “The other, ah, after CCM shoot in 2010, before our rookie season started.”

“Before your rookie seasons?” Pike repeats, mouth dropping open slightly. “That’s almost, like, seven years, man!”

Ilya nods slowly, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket. He’s never talked about Shane with anyone but Shane himself, so this is all pretty fucking new to him. He thinks he’s still in a little bit of shock right now, too, maybe. Seeing Shane on the ice like that…going down and not getting back up, and now this reveal of them to Shane’s best friend and when he and Shane aren’t even talking anymore no less! What a fucking nightmare. Not just for him but for Shane, too.

“Yes, it has definitely been, hm, long time,” Ilya says in agreement, because what else is there for him to say? ‘Seven years and we were never even really together at any point? Seven years of a relationship where I hurt him and he hurt me right back, and all of that hurt is just because we are terrified all the time?’ Ilya doesn’t think that that’s what Hayden Pike wants to hear from him.

“So what happened, then?” Pike says next, and Ilya almost chokes on his mouthful of shitty hospital coffee because damn what a change in gears. “Something happened last fall, obviously. He wouldn’t have dated Rose Landry and looked as miserable as he did the whole time if something didn’t happen, yeah?”

Ilya grimaces. Shane had looked miserable when he’d been dating Rose? Had he? It hadn’t seemed like it, but maybe Ilya had just been lost in his own heartbreak over it all.

“I had him over, last fall, when you were in Boston. I treated him nice, beg him to sleep over after, made him lunch, and he got scared and ran,” Ilya says hoarsely. “When we first starting seeing each other, I was not very nice to him about…about what we were doing, lied and acted like it meant nothing, so I don’t really blame him even if it…it was not good.”

“He was a disaster when he came back to our room that day, you know,” Hayden says after a beat. “He wouldn’t tell me anything except that he and Lily broke up.”

Ilya’s eyes drop to the floor. Shane had said ‘broke up’ like they’d been in a relationship, and he knows that both of them were well aware that they weren’t, but Ilya also knows that the only reason Shane would say that is if that’s how he’d felt. If that and him asking after Ilya on the ice directly following an injury aren’t confirmation to Ilya that Shane feels the same way Ilya feels about him, he doesn’t know what is.

“Yes, and now he is dating Rose Landry,” Ilya says, unable to keep the bitterness out of his tone.

“They broke up in December,” Hayden says immediately. “And he didn’t seem too upset about it, by the way. Actually, he looked, like, way too excited about coming to Boston this time.”

Ilya lets out a shocked laugh, unable to keep the disbelieving look off of his face. Is this Hayden Pike speaking as if he’s…rooting for Ilya? It feels slightly like they’ve just slipped into some insane alternate reality.

“You think he, what, was so excited to come here and talk to me?” Ilya says incredulously.

“You’ve never seen the ‘Boston Lily’ smile, man, but Shane doesn’t do it for anyone but you,” Hayden replies. “So, yes, I think he came here this time excited to try and talk to you.”

Ilya doesn’t say anything in response because he, once again, has no idea what to say.

“Do you love him?”

Ilya’s mouth moves of its own accord, responding before his brain has a chance to catch up. “Yes,” he says evenly, the lack of hesitation surprising even himself. “Yes, probably since first time I met him, maybe.”

Hayden stares at him for a moment as it’s seemingly the other man’s turn to be at a loss for words. “Jesus christ, this is like some Romeo and Juliet level romance, man.”

“I guess is kind of, yes. He and I…we spent so much time trying to stop wanting each other, so many years resisting it. We wasted so much time we will never get back. If he, ah,” Ilya says, pausing to clear his throat when his voice breaks, “if he wants me back, I do not think I will ever be able to let him go.”

“Well, as much as I can’t believe I’m saying this, man, I don’t think Shane will ever let you go, either,” Hayden replies. He checks his phone and then gets to his feet, giving Ilya an apologetic smile. “I’m gonna head back up and check in, it’s a short surgery so he should be out soon. I’ll come grab you when he tells me it’s okay.”

“If,” Ilya corrects.

Hayden flashes him an amused look before he begins to walk away. “Nah, bro, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be ‘when,’” he calls as he goes, nonchalant and far too confident for someone who had only just found out his best friend is even gay, let alone gay for Ilya Rozanov specifically.

Ilya shakes his head in plain disbelief. This entire night started feeling like some weird fever dream somewhere around the time he picked up a phone call that had Hayden Pike on the other end of the line, or maybe even as far back as the moment Shane’s body crumbled to the ice right before his eyes. Either way, this all still has yet to feel 100% real. He finds himself hoping, desperately, that it is.

***

Hayden

Hayden has only been waiting up in the orthopedics waiting room for around ten minutes when a nurse comes to inform him that Shane is out of surgery and the PACU. Shane is being settled into a room on the ortho floor and Hayden can see him in around fifteen minutes.

He thanks the nurse and pulls out his phone to text Ilya an update. He does the same in the team group chat and then sends one to update Jackie, as well.

The fifteen minutes he has to wait gives Hayden some time to think about how exactly he’s going to fucking do this. Shane had been concussed when he’d asked Hayden to talk to Ilya, so who knows if he even remembers it. And even if he does remember it, it’s probably not going to be an easy conversation. Shane has clearly put a lot of time and effort into making sure no one finds out that he’s, what? Gay? Bisexual? Whatever it is, he’s Ilya-sexual at the very least.

Hayden is still not particularly thrilled by all of this, but he’s also not an asshole. His opinion of Rozanov has already shifted somewhat after their interactions this evening, and Hayden has a feeling that’s going to continue to happen for a while going forward.

Chapter End Notes

thanks for the reads and comments, hope y'all liked it <3

next part up next probably this weekend or sooner 😉

Chapter 3: three

Chapter Summary

our favorite idiots finally talk, Hayden Pike isn't an asshole about it, Shane is on pain medication

Chapter Notes

thanks for the lovely comments and all your kudos! I love reading/seeing them, I will try to go back and reply to a bunch at some point but work is kicking my ass these days (and not in the fun way)

please accept my humble offering 😇

on to the Shanebug 🐞

Shane

Shane wakes up. Of course he does. He’d been ridiculous to even think about a possibility where he wouldn’t. Dramatic. That’s kid stuff.

Nothing hurts and he’s surprised until he realizes the sheer amount of the good drugs they have him on. He lays around and wonders why there isn’t anyone here with him and then remembers: parents, Mexico, Hayden, family, Ilya…Shane forfeited his rights to expecting anything from Ilya Rozanov.

He resigns himself to that, figures loopily in his drugged up state that surely the hospital will make sure he’s sober and coherent enough to drive himself home before they discharge him. He clicks through channels on the TV, volume turned way down low, and leaves Grey’s Anatomy, that’s it, that’s the show Ilya watches, on as background noise. He knows better than to actually watch the TV considering his concussion, but the audio on its own is better than complete silence.

A post-op nurse checked on him a couple of times before they’d transferred him to the ortho floor, and then another nurse after that, but the door to his room has been shut for quite some time at this point, Shane is pretty sure. The doctor will be around in a while, his nurse had said.

The door opens and Shane of course expects it to be his doctor or maybe his nurse again. It’s Hayden Pike instead, and, okay, that’s not too outlandish, Hayden’s his best friend. Shane has Hayden listed as a tertiary emergency contact for this exact scenario, and vice versa.

Shane’s happy to see him until he notices the weird fucking expression on the man’s face. It’s some odd mix of relief and resignation and understanding that Shane doesn’t know what to do with.

“Hayden!” Shane calls softly, raising the arm attached to his good shoulder in a slurred little greeting. Yes. Definitely drugged.

“Hey, buddy,” Hayden says, shutting the door behind before walking over to the side of Shane’s bed. He pats Shane’s good shoulder carefully and Shane’s lips pull up into a soft smile. He’s definitely not incoherent but he’s still altered and noticeably soft around the edges. “How you feeling?”

“I’m feeling greattt,” Shane says.

“That’s good Shane, I’m glad,” Hayden says quietly. He looks around the room as if he’s making sure they’re alone, which Shane thinks is kind of odd. “Listen, man, you asked me to do something before they took you off the ice. Before you freak out, I was close enough only the EMTs would’ve been able to hear.”

“I what?” Shane asks, brow furrowing.

“You asked me to make sure ‘Lily’ knew you were okay,” Hayden says, and then his eyes finally meet Shane’s head on with an intensity that freezes something inside Shane. “You’d told me you guys broke up a few months ago, so I asked you what you meant.”

It begins to dawn on Shane with terrifying, startling clarity. “And I…I said ‘make sure he knows I’m okay, he’ll be scared.’” Shane remembers it as he says it out loud, hazy as the memory is. He feels a rush of relief that Hayden made sure to clarify in advance that nobody NHL related had heard it but him.

“Yeah, bud, you did,” Hayden confirms, nodding. He loses some of that intensity, maybe slightly relieved that Shane remembers and he doesn’t need to be the one to break it to him. “I also, um, I also couldn’t exactly ignore the way a certain player was reacting on the ice after the hit, and that his name seems so close to the name ‘Lily’ that it’s almost embarrassing that it took me this long to put two and two together.”

“Hayd,” Shane begins, low and wary.

“I called Lily and Ilya Rozanov answered the phone, and that’s fine, Shane,” Hayden says, barreling on despite the visible hesitation on his best friend’s face. “After the look on his face while you were down on the ice, I was already thinking it was a possibility. I’m not angry, okay? It’s okay.”

Shane stares blankly, feeling far too high and out of control to be confronted with something of the sheer magnitude of this.

Ilya will never forgive him.

“Shane, man, relax, alright? It’s okay,” Hayden says, very clearly panicked at the sight of Shane’s own panic. “Listen, do I think it’s a little bit of a shock? Okay, yeah I do. But I’m not angry, or upset. I’m not gonna tell anyone, nothing between us has changed, okay, Shane?”

Shane still doesn’t speak, feeling an unmanageable mix of relief and panic and stress. He doesn’t know what to say.

“I saved ‘Lily’s’ number in my phone years ago, just in case of, well, a situation like this, to be honest. I talked to Rozanov and told him that I don’t care and I’m not going to tell anyone, and that you’d asked for him. So, uh, to make a long story short, he’s sitting in a dark corner of the main lobby right now.”

Shane continues to stare. Then, unbidden, “He—he’s here?” he whispers, tentative and disbelieving. “Really?”

Hayden visibly relaxes. He even cracks an incredulous smile as he huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, man, he’s here.”

“He…he’s probably only here t’ make sure ‘m alive,” Shane murmurs, his eyes drifting away. “He’s…’s my fault we don’ talk anymore, Hayd, I ran, he started acting so real an’ I was so confused, so I ran, and he hates me.”

“Shane,” Hayden says, shaking his head. “You didn’t see that man’s face, okay? He’s distraught, alright? And I bet if we turn your phone on and check the messages, there’s gonna be an obsessive amount from ‘Lily.’”

Shane snorts. “Never thought I’d see th’ day Hay’dn Pike pleads Il’ya Rozanov’s case.”

“Oh, fuck you, Hollander,” Hayden says, laughing despite himself. “You asked for him on the ice, for fuck sake.”

“I asked you t’ let ‘im know ‘m okay, Pike,” Shane argues, but he’s also fighting a smile.

“Semantics, Hollander, now are you gonna let me go down there and grab him so we can put him out of his misery, or what?”

Shane sobers. “You’d do that?” he asks, surprised.

“Have you seen yourself the past few months, Shane?” Hayden says, mostly joking, but Shane, drugged as he is, can still see some of that brother-like concern shining through his best friend. “You could tell me I got this all wrong and that it’s actually Scott fucking Hunter and I’d still find a way to track that man down.”

Yeah. Hayden has a point. Shane has been a mess these past few months, he’s self-aware enough to admit that.

“Check my phone first,” Shane says.

Hayden pulls the device out of the front pocket of his hoodie. Shane offers his fingerprint to unlock the phone and allows Hayden to navigate his way to the messages app. His face reveals that his inclinations about how many messages there would be were right before he even has to say anything.

“Two missed calls, a voicemail that I’ll let you listen to on your own,” Hayden lists, eyeing Shane in some playfully accusatory way that breaks the tension, “and, yeah, thirteen texts from ‘Lily.’ And, yup! Last one says, oh, jesus, this is depressing, actually. It, uh, it says, ‘you do not even need to talk to me ever again, just please let me know you are okay Shane.’ Right, that’s sad as hell.”

Shane almost can’t believe his ears.

“Yeah—” Shane begins, pausing when his voice cracks. “Yeah, can you get ‘im, Hayd?”

And Hayden fucking smiles, which Shane honestly thinks he must be hallucinating because what a weird fucking reason Hayden Pike would be smiling for.

“Yeah, buddy, I’ll be back, okay?”

Shane watches him go and tries to wait as patiently as possible. The drugs help smooth out the passage of time. His head starts to ache and his collarbone, as well, though. His nurse, Donna, comes in and gives him his scheduled IV pain medication, which dulls out the edges a lot more than he’d expected it to. Christ, he’s going to be fucking out of it by the time Ilya gets here.

Because, right, Ilya is here, Ilya wants to see him, he called me Shane—

His nurse Donna is back.

“Hey, honey, your friend Hayden said that you want to add someone else to your visitation list?” she says in greeting, her expression a little…strange. “They’re saying that Ilya Rozanov is your romantic partner, and it’s protocol that I check with you just to confirm that you agree. You’re okay with Ilya being added to your visitors’ list?”

Right. Boston. Ilya Rozanov. Shane Hollander.

“Yeahhh,” Shane says, drawing the word out. “He wants t’ see me.”

She laughs lightly, nodding her head.

“Yes, it seems he does. Do you want to see him?” she says, clarifying still.

Shane nods his head slightly, a tiny movement considering his injuries. “Yeah, can’t believe he wants to, I missed ‘im sooo much,” Shane says in confirmation, eyes sliding closed for a moment as he smiles softly. The drugs are well and truly hitting him now. “I love ‘im.”

He opens his eyes again when he remembers he’s having a conversation. Donna briefly looks like she’s been hit in the head with a frying pan. Then something endeared takes its place. “Alright, honey, I’ll get him added right now.”

Donna leaves the room without any further questioning. Shane is glad.

There’s a knock at the door a few minutes later. Or, at least Shane thinks it was a few minutes. Time is passing kind of weirdly right now. The door opens without him offering a reply and a very familiar figure enters the room. Someone pulls the door shut behind him. Hayden, probably.

At first Ilya just stands there at the foot of Shane’s bed, unmoving. He’s wearing that coat he wears when he travels during the season. His face is drawn and serious.

The easy feeling Shane’s sunk into with the aid of the drugs darkens slightly as the stretch of silence continues. “I’m…’m sorry Hayd figured it out,” Shane says miserably, his voice wavering significantly with uncertainty. “I, um, I know I fucked it up, b’tween us, my fault, but ‘m okay if that’s…if tha’s the only reason you’re here.”

Ilya still doesn’t say anything. Shane begins to panic.

“I…I broke up wi’h Rose a while ago, ‘m so sorry I ran away, I was just…I was jus’ so confused, ‘lya, you wer’ so nice but then you were talkin’ about girls, I jus’…I jus’ din’t know what you wanted, I though’ I did but then you were talking about girls and saying you d’int like me,” Shane rambles, words picking up speed as he spirals. His eyes start to burn halfway through, completely overwhelmed and disinhibited by the medications he’s on.

Ilya crosses the room in three long strides, stopping at Shane’s bedside and reaching a hand out with a hesitancy that’s unfamiliar to the two of them. He follows through, though, taking Shane’s hand in his. He finally speaks. “Shane, sweetheart, you scared me so much.”

Shane is still in fix-it mode, though. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

Ilya’s eyes find his, the usual brightness to his blue eyes noticeably muted. Shane is shocked into silence from the eye contact.

“No, do not be sorry. Marly is…he feels awful for the hit, he did not mean to hurt you, Shane,” Ilya says fiercely. His eyes soften by a fraction. “I…I am sorry you were confused, back then. I did not realize until later, how I was sending mixed, ah, mixed signals like this.”

Shane isn’t as soothed by this as Ilya clearly hopes based on his facial expression. “’m sorry I ran, I just love you s’much, and it hurt s’bad.” He shuts his eyes and a tear that’d been teetering on the edge of his waterline finally breaks free and streaks down his cheek.

Ilya makes a panicked, wounded noise and uses his free hand to swipe the tear away with his thumb. “No, Shane, don’t say sorry, okay? I was trying to tell you that I like being with you even if I was also with women, was trying to see if you, ah, if you liked both also. Realize now I said it all stupid, though.”

“So you—so you were tryin’ to act like…like we were something that day?” Shane says slowly, his eyes sliding open.

“Yes, Shane, I was,” Ilya confirms. “But I realize now that I did not really, ah, show this right, yes? Was miscommunication, I think.”

“Are you…do you wan’ me back now?” Shane says, trying not to sound as hopeful as he feels. “We…we can jus’ pretend I din’t just, like, love confess you, yeah? It can be like—it can be like before, I won’ make it weird, I-I promise.”

“Do not want to pretend, no,” Ilya says, and Shane’s heart drops. “I love you, too, sweetheart. I want to be with you like people who love each other.” Relief floods through Shane followed closely by some sort of lowkey shock; he can’t believe Ilya is saying what he is right now.

“You do?” Shane says, unable to keep the awe out of his voice.

Ilya laughs lightly, but it’s slightly wet and sounds less amused and more sad. “Of course, Shane, yes. I do not want to…I do not want to pretend we do not feel what we do, not anymore. Seeing you on the ice, I thought I lost you, dorogoy.”

“What does that mean?” Shane says.

Ilya smiles, looking more happy than sad now. “It means ‘sweetheart,’” he replies, brushing a few fingers down Shane’s cheek.

“Ilya,” Shane mumbles, his face crumbling as tears flood his eyes and his hand tightens on Ilya’s. “’lya, I love you, I missed you s’much, I can’ believe you’re here.”

“I know, baby, I know, I missed you too,” Ilya says sadly, leaning down and giving Shane an awkward hug considering his injuries. “I’m here, dorogoy, I love you, too. Ya tebya lyublyu.”

“I’m…I’m gay, I think, ‘lya, so you’re really it f’r me, I think, ‘m sorry. S’okay if you…if that’s not th’same for you, I know you like girls, but I jus’…I just want you.”

“No, Shane, I only want you too,” Ilya says. “I just want you, no one else, okay, Shanya?”

That only makes Shane cry harder. Ilya pulls back then, looking very much like he’s about to start comforting Shane again, but Shane reaches out with his good hand and pulls the Russian man into a kiss. Ilya’s surprised for only a moment before he’s kissing back just as enthusiastically. Shane laughs, wet and incredulous and delighted.

The door to Shane’s hospital room opens a crack. “Oh shit—” a panicked Hayden says, shutting the door just as fast.

Shane laughs until he’s lightheaded and Ilya is right there with him.

***

Hayden

He stands leaning against the wall outside of Shane’s hospital room for luckily only a few more moments before his phone is buzzing with a text from Rozanov letting him know he can come back. He’s cautious when he opens the door this time, only entering when he’s sure Ilya Rozanov isn’t sucking on his best friend’s face.

Hayden carefully ensure that he shuts the door fully behind him before saying anything.

“So,” he begins, but says nothing further as he looks from Shane to Ilya.

“So,” Ilya echoes.

“Hmm, soo,” Shane slurs.

Ilya’s lips twitch. Hayden snorts.

“Whatcha got there, Shane?” Hayden asks, nodding to the hand that Rozanov has clasped securely in his.

Shane follows his gaze, and a loopy, blissed out smile appears on his face. “’S my Ilya,” he says, smug and matter-of-fact. Hayden doesn’t miss the way Rozanov’s cheeks flush ever so slightly pink. Christ, these two are so adorable it’s almost disgusting. “We love each other.”

“I know, bud, I’m happy for you,” Hayden says patiently, walking over and sitting down in the empty seat on the unoccupied side of Shane’s hospital bed.

“Really?” Shane replies, wide-eyed and sounding genuinely surprised. It tugs at Hayden’s heartstrings. “You’re not upset?”

“We talked about this already buddy, remember? No, I’m not upset. I’m…I’m happy for you, man. I finally got to meet Boston Lily, of course I’m happy!”

“Sorry I lied for so long,” he mumbles, eyes drifting down to where his hand is still held in Ilya’s. “I thought he din’t want me, and I d’int want them to kill him in Russia.”

“Jesus, Shane,” Hayden says, gaze swinging to Rozanov who looks simultaneously gutted and tooth-achingly affectionate. “Man, he’s so high.”

“Mmm, yeahhhh,” Shane mumbles, lips quirked slightly as his eyes slide shut for a moment. “Both m’ favorite people in one place, this is s’good.”

Hayden exchanges a look with Rozanov.

“Hayd, he loves me, did y’know? S’mine now,” Shane continues, eyes opening as he rolls his head slightly in the other direction so he’s looking at Hayden.

“Who would’ve known you were such a loverboy, huh, Hollzy?” Hayden chirps, fondness bursting within his chest. His brother, stupid in love for Ilya Rozanov of all people and for longer than Hayden has even known him, even; who would’ve ever guessed that?

“So what’s the verdict, Roz?” Hayden says, turning his attention back to Rozanov. He raises an eyebrow. “You’re both clearly madly in love, so what’s the plan?”

“I think he may be too high to make major decisions, but as for what we are…he’s—we’re—I’m his boyfriend,” Rozanov stammers.

Shane gasps dramatically in what seems like awe. “We’re boyfriends now?” he says, head turning back towards Rozanov.

Hayden doesn’t think he’s imagining the wetness to Rozanov’s eyes as he brings Shane’s hand up to his face so he can kiss the back of it. “Da, Shane, we are boyfriends. Nobody else except each other.”

“Not even women?” Shane says.

“No, Shenya, no women, just you and me, that’s it, remember? We want each other all to ourselves, yes?”

“Wow,” Shane says. His head lolls even closer to the edge of his pillow and his lip starts to quiver. “I…I always though’ that even if I got you, I’d hafta share.”

Rozanov looks…well, frankly, Rozanov looks vaguely ill at the idea, and Hayden shares his sentiments. Shane had planned to do what he had to to get Rozanov back even though he’d thought that they would never be exclusive. Hayden hears the subtext just as loud as Rozanov also seemed to: Shane had been ready and willing to accept whatever scraps of Ilya he could get, because anything is better than nothing.

“See, Shane, when you say sad stuff like that it’s kind of hard for me to give a fuck about who you’re dating, yeah?” Hayden says, smiling even though he’d dead serious.

Shane grumbles slightly. “Whatever, Pike.”

Ilya laughs, delighted. He sobers when he turns his head to look at Hayden. “Thank you, Hayden, for helping me get to see him, and everything else.”

“Yeah, thanks, Haydennn,” Shane singsongs right after.

Hayden and Ilya exchange another look, overly fond of the man between them.

The doctor comes by and, after a brief but obvious pause at the sight of the Boston Bears captain sitting at Shane’s bedside, informs them that Shane’s surgery went just as well as expected and that they’ll keep him for the night and discharge him in the morning. Shane is clearly not pleased about having to spend the night in the hospital until Ilya promises to stay overnight with him.

He eyes Ilya, genuinely surprise. “You’re really allowed to stay?”

“Yeah, man. He’s your partner, he’s allowed to stay,” Hayden says, laughing lightly.

“Hayden,” Shane says seriously, head swinging over to look at him. “This is, like, the best day ever.”

***

Shane

Shane instructs Hayden to use his phone to text his parents once more time has passed since his latest pain medication dose and he’s a little more clear headed.

“What do you want me to say, bud?” Hayden replies, thumbs poised over the keyboard on the screen of Shane’s phone.

“Tell them I got hit on the ice and had very minor surgery on my collarbone but that I’m fine now and will be discharged tomorrow morning,” Shane replies, careful not to look at the screen of his phone. They’ve kept the lights low and curtains drawn in his room since he woke up after surgery and he’s eternally grateful because the concussion part of his injuries is definitely starting to rear its ugly head.

“Yeah, about that, are you gonna fly home tomorrow with the team or…?” Hayden asks, looking up to meet Shane’s eyes.

“Well, I mean, yeah, I guess—” Shane begins, but Ilya shakes his head.

“You could stay with me if you wanted,” Ilya says, looking nervous about the offer. “You will not be playing for a few weeks at least, yes? And would suck flying tomorrow day after surgery.”

“You…want me to stay with you in Boston,” Shane says, neutral but with an upward tilt like he can’t quite believe his ears, because he can’t.

“Is up to you, obviously!” Ilya quickly corrects, leaning closer in the chair pulled up to Shane’s bedside. “Only if you want. I figure would be easier and, well, okay, this part is maybe little selfish, but I have missed you, Shanya.”

Shane lolls his head to the side where it’s resting against the pillow so he can look at Hayden once again. His best friend’s eyebrows are raised but it’s in mild amusement rather than the disapproval Shane had been afraid to see.

“Hayden,” Shane stage whispers. He blames the drugs on his complete lack of ability to maintain any form of secrecy. “Is all of this really happening? Ilya Rozanov is inviting me to his place so I can rest after an injury?”

Hayden snorts. Then he leans forward and rests a hand on Shane’s ankle before he speaks. “Yeah, buddy, all of this is really happening,” he says, squeezing Shane’s ankle lightly. He glances over at Ilya and then looks back at Shane, lowering his voice to the same stage whisper Shane had used before continuing. “I suggest you give the guy an answer, too, because he looks a second away from passing out.”

Shane immediately looks back over at Ilya, who’s wide-eyed and, yeah, looking kind of like he’s about to fall over. “Can I stay with you?”

“Yes, Shane, yes, would like that very much,” Ilya says quickly.

“Alright, well then someone’s gonna have to convince my parents to stay in Mexico and let me recover at the house of my secret Boston boyfriend,” Shane says, words a little uncoordinated but clear nonetheless.

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna say quite all that, but I get the picture,” Hayden says, letting go of Shane’s leg and turning his gaze back down to Shane’s phone as he begins to type.

Shane’s attention goes back to Ilya as his best friend types out god knows what lies to convince his parents not to look too far into Shane’s decision to stay in Boston. He doesn’t think dropping the ‘I’m gay and for Ilya Rozanov specifically, surprise’ bomb over text would be a great idea.

Hayden ends up feeding them a lie about Shane being friends with one of the other Bears players that he had played with in Juniors. It takes some convincing and Yuna of course has a lot of questions, but Shane and Hayden are able to calm her worries enough that she agrees they’ll stay in Mexico for the next week like they’d planned so long as Shane checks in every day and they have a conversation about this ‘friend.’

“I expect a daily text, as well,” Hayden says, eyeing Shane and then Ilya very meaningfully. “I need signs of life, Rozanov, you hear? I lied to Yuna Hollander for you, don’t make me regret it.”

“Understood, Pike,” Ilya says very seriously.

Shane giggles throughout the whole exchange, much to Hayden and Ilya’s amusement. Hayden leaves for the night shortly after and only once he’s convinced that Shane is in capable, responsible hands.

Shane’s nurse Donna comes back to offer him something to eat. It’s well past dinner time so his options are extremely limited. Chicken tenders and fries seems to be a standard option they keep around the clock for patients, though, so he agrees to that without too much thought. He also accepts the offer of another dose of pain medication. It’s pills this time instead of the IV and Shane is glad; the IV medication hits him so hard and makes him so loopy. The pain isn’t even really that bad anymore, so he feels just fine once the pills start to take effect about thirty minutes later.

The hospital chair in the corner of Shane’s room folds out into a narrow bed of sorts, so Ilya drags it over so he’s close to Shane’s bedside when they start to wind down officially for the night. He sets it up with the bedding Donna was nice enough to bring them and it all feels so incredibly domestic in a way that makes Shane’s stomach feel weird.

“I thought about you,” Shane mumbles a little bit after Ilya has laid down for the night. They’re both still awake, Ilya’s arm stretched across the small gap between his chair and Shane’s hospital bed so he can hold the smaller man’s hand.

“Hm?” Ilya hums in response.

“B’fore surgery,” Shane mumbles again, words slurring together with fatigue and the lingering effects of the pain medication. His eyes slide shut under the weight of his exhaustion. “Thought of you.”

“I am here now,” Ilya says quietly, brushing a thumb over the back of Shane’s hand. “Forever, if you let me.”

Shane hums softly and smiles. “Mon âme sœur.”

“What’s that, baby?”

Shane only hums again. “I’ll tell you t’morrow.”

Chapter End Notes

ch. 4 will be up likely this time next week. I started it but it's definitely still a WIP. it will be about the week Shane spends in Boston with Ilya (a toned down sickfic version of their canon cottage experience feat. Shane locking in and figuring out their future, talks of Irina and depression, a conversation with his parents, etc.)

Chapter 4: four

Chapter Summary

a modified version of Shane and Ilya's canon week at the cottage: Boston in January

Chapter Notes

sorry about the long gap between updates! deciding on content for seven days in Boston took me a bit. hope y'all like it!

thanks for all your comments and kudos! <3 I appreciate them soo much :)

Shane

Day 1

Shane and Ilya spend the night at the hospital. Donna comes in a couple of times to check on him and a nice patient care tech takes his vitals at six a.m., but other than that he and Ilya are left alone. It’s the first night they’ve ever spent together, and it’d taken Shane being concussed and requiring surgery on his collarbone for it to happen. That fact hurts slightly, for both him and Ilya, but Shane’s so thankful that it’d happened at all that he doesn’t dare complain.

He has Ilya text his parents for him to check-in at around eight a.m. He’s awaiting discharge paperwork and a ride via wheelchair down to the lobby so Ilya can take him home, so Ilya relays an edited version to Yuna using Shane’s phone. His mom is still asking a lot of questions about who exactly it is that Shane’s entrusting his care with, but Shane uses the explanation Hayden had given to dance around the issue. Yuna is not amused, but Shane is an adult and Hayden had approved it, so she lets it go.

Ilya also sends Hayden a text of his own with a similar update, to which he receives a very neutral thumbs up emoji in response.

The day shift nurse Paula discharges Shane at nine a.m. Ilya pulls his car around and Shane shuffles from the wheelchair his nurse had insisted he come down to the lobby drop-off area in into the passenger seat. They thank the nurse and drive off without any issues.

Ilya settles Shane into his bed the moment they arrive at his penthouse apartment. Shane is exhausted despite the decent night of sleep he’d gotten overnight in the hospital, but he isn’t surprised by the lingering fatigue; he’s never had surgery before now, sure, but he has definitely had a concussion in past. He’s probably going to be this tired for the next couple of days.

“Stay with me until I fall asleep?” Shane asks once Ilya steps back from the bed, stretching his good arm out to loop his hand loosely around Ilya’s wrist. He blames the morning dose of his pain pills before discharge for what he says next, “I keep thinking you’re gonna disappear.”

He feels bad for saying it immediately when Ilya’s face falls slightly, but Ilya doesn’t give him the chance to take it back, crawling onto the other side of the bed and curling ever so carefully around Shane. He brushes some of Shane’s hair back and the smaller man hums softly, eyes sliding shut.

“I am not going anywhere until I have to leave to pick up your medicine later,” Ilya says quietly, now running a few fingers through Shane’s hair over and over. “I will leave a note on nightstand, will not be gone long.”

“Mmm’okay,” Shane replies, lips dragging lazily upwards. “You’ll come back, s’okay.”

“Da, Shane,” Ilya murmurs. “I will come back.”

He falls asleep shortly after to the repetitive motion of Ilya carding his fingers through his hair. It’s great. He doesn’t wake up when Ilya leaves to pick up his prescription from the CVS they’d told the hospital to send it to, instead waking up hours later having spent the entire day asleep in Ilya’s bed. He wakes to Ilya rousing him for dinner and Shane, after a quick trip to the bathroom, shuffles sleepily behind the man out into the kitchen.

Ilya feeds and waters him and then generally dotes on Shane for the remainder of the evening. Shane lays on the couch with his eyes close and the lights off and they watch a movie with the brightness on the picture settings of Ilya’s TV turned way down low. Ilya sits close by and pulls Shane’s head into his lap when he complains of a headache and it’s too early for another dose of the mild pain medication he’d been prescribed. Shane is so disgustingly endeared as Ilya rubs gentle circles between his eyebrows with a thumb, the rest of the fingers on his hand splayed in his hair. It’s a trick that Shane’s heard of at some point during career, one that functions more as a placebo than anything else, but it’s incredibly soothing and, yeah, even pain-relieving when it’s delivered by Ilya Rozanov at the very least.

“That’s sooooo great,” Shane mumbles at one point, cracking his eyes open to look up at Ilya.

Ilya smiles softly down at him. “Good, am glad,” he says quietly. “Marly showed me, when I get that concussion in 2011.”

Shane smiles lazily back. “Aw, that’s sweet.”

Ilya laughs lightly, nodding his head. “Yes, Marly is sarcastic asshole, but can be nice when wants to be.”

“Hayden’s the same way, I think,” Shane replies, closing his eyes once more. “At the very least ‘nice when he wants to be,’ because he made sure you got to see me, which, woooow, I didn’t see coming, but s’amazing, right?”

Ilya snorts above him, his thumb continuing the motion on Shane’s face.

They transition back to bed at a reasonable hour. Shane has to sleep on his back so Ilya does the same, their sides pressed against each other to maintain points of contact. Shane falls asleep almost immediately, thinking it’s odd that he’s concussed and post-surgery on a broken collarbone and yet he doesn’t feel quite as shitty as he’d expected to when he’d first woken up.

*-*-*

Day 2

They take a shower together the following morning and they don’t have sex during it. The concept is damn near revolutionary to Shane. Ilya treats him with a gentleness Shane hasn’t seen from him since their first time in his condo back in Montreal, it feels.

Shane dictates what he wants Ilya to text from his phone to his mother once again afterwards, checking in as promised. His mother is temporarily satisfied by the general update and reassurances Shane has Ilya type out, so that’s good.

“Hayden said ‘are you two still alive in your love nest?,’” Ilya says, reading out a text from his own phone off to Shane.

Shane snorts. “Tell him ‘yeah, we’ve had lots of gay sex,’” Shane replies.

“So vulgar, golden boy Shane Hollander, I am truly offended,” Ilya says, scowling even as his eyes gleam playfully. He turns his gaze down to his phone as he continues, “I am definitely not typing that out word for word and hitting send, definitely not.”

Shane damn near giggles.

Ilya’s phone vibrates in his hands almost immediately. He grins as he reads a new text out to Shane, “He said, in all caps, ‘SHANE!’ and then a sobbing emoji.”

It vibrates again. Ilya damn near cackles. “He says, ‘he’s corrupted your mind, Shane!’”

So they spend the early morning tormenting Hayden Pike via text message. Ilya has to leave for a late morning practice a little while later and Shane naps while he’s gone. The Bears happen to be on a homestand right now so they luckily don’t need to worry about Ilya disappearing for an away game anytime soon.

*-*-*

Day 3

Shane wakes up the following morning with a raging hard-on. He groans slightly when he shifts in bed and notices it, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.

“Mm, moya lyubov’, I see the rest of you has finally woken up,” Ilya practically purrs from beside him.

Shane cracks open an eye and glares at his boyfriend. “Haha, you’re so funny,” he deadpans. He pointedly doesn’t move his upper body no matter how badly he wants to. “Please, Ilya.”

“Please what?” Ilya says innocently, placing a hand on Shane’s inner thigh.

“Please suck my fucking dick, oh my god,” he says in a rush, tipping his head back slightly as he shifts his hips. “Don’t worry, Rozanov, I’ll pay you back in full once I can. Now that you’re mine I’m gonna spend as much time you allow on my knees for you.”

Ilya’s mouth pops open in visible surprise and he doesn’t hesitate any longer, pulling the waistband of Shane’s boxers down below his balls and then taking his dick all the way to the back of his throat. Shane moans lowly, eyes sliding all the way closed once more. Ilya keeps a firm arm braced against his hips so Shane can’t move too much, so the smaller man simply lies there and takes it, along for the ride.

“Fuck, Ilya, I can’t wait till you can fuck me again,” Shane groans, eyes sliding open as he grabs a handful of Ilya’s hair.

Ilya hums and hollows his cheeks around Shane’s dick. The vibration from it makes Shane’s eyes roll back. In the end it doesn’t take long for him to come down Ilya’s throat. Give him a break, it’s been a while and he’s pent up. Plus it’s Ilya Rozanov sucking his dick, who the hell would last long?

***

They eat lunch together at Ilya’s place once he’s back from a late morning practice at the Bears’ practice facility. Ilya props Shane up with pillows and blankets on the plush couch in his living room when he’s getting ready to leave for the game later on in the evening.

“You will text Pike if you need anything, yes?” Ilya says, one knee on the couch as he hovers over Shane.

“Yes, yes, I promise, but I’ll be fiiiine,” Shane insists, placing both hands on either sides of Ilya’s face. “Go score me a goal, Rozanov. That’ll make me feel even better.”

Ilya’s lips quirk as he nods seriously. “Yes, sweetheart, I will do this for you,” he agrees. “As long you remember to take your medication at seven.”

Shane rolls his eyes, letting go of his boyfriend’s face. “I’ll remember, Rozanov, I promise.” He’d taken Oxycodone for the first few days and is now transitioning to extra-strength Tylenol every six hours and Hydrocodone every twelve. He can’t take the frequently prescribed Ibuprofen because of the injury to his head, but luckily the Hydrocodone seems to be pulling its weight so far. He has ice secured to his collarbone and the TV remote, his cellphone, and an insulated cup full of ice and ginger ale all within arm’s reach, so he thinks he’s more than set for Ilya to leave him alone for a few hours.

Shane listens to the game on the TV in Ilya’s living room with the display on the TV turned off. The pain from his collarbone has been mitigated quite well by the pain meds he’s on but his head is a different story. He’s already had a good few headaches since arriving at Ilya’s place and Shane’s definitely not trying to tempt fate into bringing another one on.

Ilya overdelivers on his promise, scoring two goals in the first period and then another in the third. The Bears beat Dallas 5-3. Shane’s looking forward to watching the goal on YouTube once he can look at screens again because something tells him that those goals had likely been scored with a special kind of determination simply because it’d been Shane who’d asked for them.

Shane had used the two intermissions between periods to think up some plans that would allow him and Ilya to be together for real. It would start with getting everyone familiar with the idea of them being friends first, and then they’d hopefully become teammates, and then maybe at some point they could be out to their hypothetical team. Getting to that end point is going to be the hard part, though.

*-*-*

Day 4

Ilya skips an optional practice the next morning. It’s raining and generally gloomy outside, the patter of rain loud against the roof, and the weather only serves as an excuse for Ilya and Shane to laze around in bed all morning.

“I have those old incandescent string lights and I put them in my living room during the fall, orange ones. And when it rains like this the room looks so cool,” Shane says distantly.

“That does sound cool,” Ilya replies, nodding lightly.

Shane sits up ever-so slightly and turns his head to look at his boyfriend. Ilya looks over, as well, and meets his gaze with a question in his expression.

“Do you ever think about, you know, living together?” he says quietly.

Ilya’s expression goes soft. “Of course I do, Shane,” he replies, a small smile on his face. “We could have those lights in our bedroom, I think would be cool, yes? Make things a lot less, hm, depressing?”

Shane smiles back. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”

Ilya’s face goes serious and Shane’s attention sharpens. “That is something you should know, probably, if you want to be together. Depression, that is something that may be a problem for me sometimes. My mother, she was depressed, so is…is genetic.”

“Of course I want to be together, Ilya, having depression doesn’t change that,” Shane says, laying a hand on Ilya’s arm. His lips quirk before he continues, “I don’t think there’s many things that would change that, if any, to be honest.”

Ilya huffs a laugh. “We are so gross for each other.”

Shane laughs, nodding. “So gross.”

They smile stupidly at each other for a moment until Ilya lays his own hand over the one Shane has on his arm. A shadow passes over his face before he speaks. “My mother, she was depressed, like I said. She was so depressed that one day I came home and found that she had accidentally swallowed an entire bottle of pills. I don’t want you to think she was weak. She was so kind and beautiful, but she was also just so sad.”

Shane’s heart kicks against his ribcage. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” he says, flipping his hand over and lacing their fingers together. “How old were you?”

“Twelve,” Ilya grates out, his throat clicking as he swallows thickly.

“You were just a baby, Ilya,” Shane says softly. “Fuck, I wish I could fucking hug you right now.”

Ilya huffs wetly and the corners of his mouth quirk slightly. “Just that you are here and you are mine now is enough, sweetheart,” Ilya replies, sitting up fully so he can lean in and kiss Shane. Shane places his free hand on the side of Ilya’s face and kisses back with a quiet hum.

*-*-*

Day 5

Shane is finally feeling up to taking a phone call from his mother, so he has Ilya basically schedule one via text message using Shane’s phone. Yuna calls while Ilya is out of the apartment at an early morning practice.

“How are you, honey?” his mother says the moment he accepts the incoming phone call.

“Hi, mom, I’m doing pretty okay, actually,” Shane says in greeting.

“I’m so glad to hear it, we looked up the hit on YouTube, it was bad, Shane,” she says.

“Yeah, I definitely wasn’t expecting it,” Shane agrees.

There’s a pause where it’s clear his mother is trying to figure out how to say something.

“And how is that friend of yours in Boston?” she says finally, and Shane smiles softly to himself. His mother is nothing if not observant.

Shane sighs quietly, rubbing anxiously at the bridge of his nose. He’s been thinking about telling them for the last day or two. Shane is still slightly nervous with the idea of it, but he’s kind of in too deep at this point what with the whole ‘staying with a friend his parents know nothing about in Boston’ thing.

“He’s…he’s not my friend mom,” Shane says haltingly. He licks his lips before he continues, “He’s, uh, he’s my boyfriend, actually. It’s kind of, uh….it’s kind of a long story. But that’s who he is. Hayden knows.”

“Oh, wow. Oh, Shane,” Yuna says, obviously taken off guard. She doesn’t sound out-of-this-world shocked, though, and Shane figures that’s probably a side effect of him never bringing home a girl to them who he’d been seriously dating.

“And—oh, is dad there? Did he hear this?” Shane asks, realizing suddenly that he’d very much prefer to only have to say this all to his parents once.

“Yeah, honey, he’s here, I have you on speaker,” Yuna replies.

“Good. Okay, well, it’s uh, it’s Ilya Rozanov. That’s, um, he’s the boyfriend, Ilya Rozanov is my boyfriend,” Shane stammers stupidly, but he’s proud the words even made it out of his mouth in one piece at all.

“Oh, uh…” his father begins, and Shane smiles slightly to himself, amused by the ridiculousness of their current situation.

“Yeah, I figured I’d get that out of the way early, so you have as much time to get used to the idea as possible,” Shane says, sniffling slightly and ignoring the slight sting of his eyes. “It’s, uh, it’s new but it’s also not new, it’s…complicated. But we love each other and we’re not letting the risk of being together keep us apart anymore.”

“New but not new?” Yuna echoes.

Shane grimaces slightly. “Yeah we’ve been, uh, involved since the summer before our rookie season, non-committed, though, obviously. The new part is us being in an actual exclusive, committed relationship, but it doesn’t…it doesn’t really feel new, being with each other, so, yeah, complicated.”

“Okay, because I was going to say that, well, Rozanov seems to be quite the, uh, ladies’ man,” David says with an awkward chuckle.

“It’s Ilya,” Shane corrects automatically. “He’s bisexual, but I’m just—I’m just gay. Fully. Rose was…we didn’t work out because I’m gay.”

“Huh, well, yes, that does…I guess that does make a bit of sense,” Yuna says absently.

Shane snorts.

“Is, uh, is Ilya there with you right now?” Yuna asks after a moment.

“He’s at practice, the Bears are playing Tampa Bay at home tonight.”

“What’s the plan here, Shane?” his mother says, finally shifting into manager mode like Shane had been expecting her to at some point.

“Well, for now things are just gonna stay like they are, but we don’t wanna do long distance forever, so…so at some point one of us is probably gonna change teams.” Shane pointedly neglects to mention the fact that he and Ilya had only just begun having this type of discussion less than five days ago. He can tell them the gritty details in the future at a point when he’s confident that his mother won’t lose her mind at him over how much he’s exaggerating just how long things between him and Ilya have been official.

“You would leave Montreal?” Yuna says in a rush. Then, “Ilya Rozanov would leave Boston?”

Shane laughs lightly. He almost can’t believe it himself sometimes. “Yes, we would.”

“Well…well alright.”

“We’re not making any rash decision or anything, especially not right now, I’m concussed,” Shane says, trying to assuage some of the anxiety he knows he’s giving his mother right now. “But, well, we’ve both already won the cup at least once, and we think it’d be a lot more fun to win more together. That’s not to say us playing on the same team is a definite, but it’s…ahm, it’s a nice idea. It’s all a long way off, though.”

“A long way?” David repeats.

“Yeah, well, everyone thinks, you know, that we hate each other. That’s obviously not true, but it’s gonna be a bit of a shock if we’re suddenly best friends. I’ve been trying to think of ways to introduce people to the idea of it, so only at some point within all that would we start figuring out trades and stuff like that.”

“You’ve put a lot of thought into this,” Yuna says softly.

Shane swallows thickly. “He’s, ah, he’s the love of my life, mom. He’s it for me.”

“Oh, baby, I am so sorry you felt like you—like you couldn’t tell us. It must have been hard, keeping it a secret this long.”

“Yeah, it’s—” Shane begins, cutting himself off when his voice begins to break. He squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath to calm himself. “Yeah, it has, it’s been ha-ard.” His voice breaks, anyways.

“Well, we can’t wait to meet him, son,” David says.

“We figured the next time the Bears plays in Montreal maybe we could all get dinner?” Shane says quietly.

“That’d be perfect,” Yuna agrees.

So the world doesn’t end. Shane is so relieved he almost sheds a few tears when Ilya returns from practice and he updates the man on how the conversation with his parents had gone. Shane blames his overly emotional behavior on his concussion.

Then he really does cry when he remembers that he’d essentially just outed Ilya to his parents, but Ilya is quick to wipe the few tears away and reassure him that it’s okay.

“If Hayden Pike knows, I think it’s okay if your parents know, Hollander,” Ilya says, smiling softly.

The phone call with his parents was a lot of thinking and a lot of talking and a lot of emotions which Shane had only followed up with even more emotions, so he has a headache by the time they’re finished with lunch. He naps with Ilya during the Russian’s pre-game nap and feels better when he wakes up as Ilya is getting ready for the game. He watches, eyes cracked open just enough to see Ilya, his boyfriend, as he gets dressed in a navy blue suit that hugs every inch of his body in just the right way.

Ilya looks over and meets his gaze as he’s adjusting the sleeves of his button-up shirt. “Like what you see, Hollander?” Ilya chirps, smirking slightly as he meets Shane’s gaze.

Shane huffs lightly. “Like that’s even a question, Rozanov.”

He listens to the game on TV but falls asleep sometime during the second period. Ilya slides into bed beside him later on in the night and Shane wakes only long enough to be informed that the Bears won 3-1 and be given a good night kiss.

*-*-*

Day 6

Ilya opts out of optional morning skate. Shane spends nearly an hour convincing his boyfriend to finger him. He’s determined and practical about it, insisting that if Ilya was okay with blowing Shane as he laid on his back, surely he can safely finger him, too.

This hard work is how Shane finds himself spread out beneath Ilya with two lubed fingers inside of him. Ilya finds his prostate easily and starts to work his finger against it.

Shane’s eyes are practically rolling around in their sockets when he says, audibly breathless, “Once I’m better I’m gonna ride you so hard you’ll have to hold onto something, Rozanov.”

“I look forward to it, but for right now how about you be good and come without my hand on your dick, hm?” Ilya replies, crooking his fingers meanly.

It only takes a few more minutes of this treatment for Shane to take Ilya up on the suggestion, coming with a punched out noise all over his own stomach. Ilya smirks and continues stroking his finger inside of Shane for a few moments longer than necessary, continuing until Shane basically whines from the overstimulation. He pulls it out and glances up, immediately locking gazes with Shane who’s staring down his body at Ilya.

“Take it out, Rozanov,” Shane says after he catches his breath, his gaze intent as it momentarily flicks down towards the visible bulge in Ilya’s underwear. “Jerk off, come on me.”

Ilya curses in Russian and yanks his boxers down to reveal his own straining erection. He does exactly what Shane had told him to, stroking himself off as his gaze sweeps up and down his boyfriend’s body where he’s still spread out below him.

“Fuck, Shane,” Ilya groans, coming all over Shane’s chest. He pants for a few moments afterwards, steadying himself with a hand on Shane’s bare knee as he recovers from his own orgasm.

“God, you’re so hot,” Shane says mostly to himself, tipping his head back as he hums dreamily.

*-*-*

Day 7

By day seven Shane is feeling markedly better than the first few days following his injury. He’s been off the Hydrocodone for a day and is taking solely Tylenol now. He’ll be re-evaluated by team medical once he’s back in Montreal during which he’s hoping they clear him neurologically enough to start taking Ibuprofen because, while the Tylenol is surprisingly doing its job, he definitely has a preference between the two medications.

Ilya kisses him on the forehead before he heads out to attend a late morning skate and then conditioning session afterwards. Shane sleeps in until around ten and then drags himself, blankets and all, to Ilya’s living room. Shane’s progressed to being able to look at a screen for up to thirty minute clips at this point, but it’d definitely been slow moving making that progress over the last week. He’d barely managed five minutes of checking his text messages without a headache on the third day after the hit.

Ilya greets him with yet another kiss when he returns to the apartment after practice, this time to his lips much to Shane’s delight, and then heads to the kitchen immediately after. He has a bag filled with ice from the freezer when he reappears, which he arranges every so precisely on Shane’s collarbone just like they’d been instructed to do. Shane smiles at him lazily in response.

“Thank you, bébé,” he says softly.

Ilya practically beams. “French? For me?” he teases.

Shane rolls his eyes and huffs. “It just slipped out.”

“Mm, seems like most of your French does,” Ilya replies, picking Shane’s legs up and sitting in the spot where they’d been, draping Shane’s legs over his lap. “You still never told me what you said in the hospital last week.”

It’s said lightly and without any actual pressure, but Shane huffs and looks down at his hands, a sheepish smile playing on his lips. “Mon âme sœur,” Shane says, repeating what he’d said back in the hospital. “’Means ‘my soul sister,’ or, uh, French for ‘my soulmate.’”

“Hollander,” Ilya chokes out.

“I know it’s kinda corny but in my defense I was on pain meds!” Shane says quickly, looking up and meeting Ilya’s gaze finally. Ilya’s eyes are visibly watery and it sends a pang through Shane’s chest.

“No, it’s not corny,” Ilya says, shaking his head as a wobbly smile appears on his face. “I love it because I love you so much, Shanya.”

Shane smiles back softly, finally allowing himself to feel emotional about it. “I love you, too, Ilya,” he says quietly, reaching out and taking Ilya’s hand so he can lace their fingers together in his lap. “What’s it in Russian?”

Ilya’s lips quirk.

“’Rodstvennaya dusha’ or ‘vtoraya polovinka,’” Ilya says quietly, brushing a thumb over the back of Shane’s hand. “They mean ‘related soul’ and ‘second half.’”

“I like those, too,” Shane murmurs.

“Mm, yeah, so many ways to say the same thing: we belong to each other,” Ilya replies, nodding in agreement.

***

Shane goes the whole day without a single headache for the first full day since the hit to his head. He’s thrilled, especially because he needs to get on a plane tomorrow morning. He’s not a fan of air travel in general, but he definitely isn’t when he’s injured and facing an awkward conversation with his parents once he touches down in Montreal.

He waits until they’re settled in bed together to bring up the idea he’d had when he’d been listening to Ilya’s latest game.

“I had an idea about how we could, you know, get people used to the idea of us being friends,” he tells Ilya.

Ilya hums, the sound tilting upwards with a wordless question. He cards his fingers through Shane’s hair and Shane’s eyes flutter closed in response. “Tell me,” Ilya whispers, his breath fanning against Shane’s face.

He doesn’t open his eyes when he continues. “Well, I thought suddenly becoming teammates on the same team would help a lot, but what I also thought would help is if maybe we start a foundation.”

Shane tells him about the mental health aspect of it, and of course the hockey summer camp aspect, but also mentions the name he’d been thinking about. Ilya gets slightly choked up, and tells his boyfriend that his mother would’ve loved Shane just like Ilya does.

Ilya cries and Shane demands that he drape himself against his uninjured side. The large Russian man does so without protest and Shane runs his fingers through his hair until Ilya drifts off to sleep. Shane finds himself feeling slightly grateful that Cliff Marleau had absolutely leveled him on the ice.

Chapter End Notes

next chapter will be Shane back in Montreal where he deals with his parents and then deciding who else he thinks should know about him and Ilya :)