Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike & Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike, David Hollander & Yuna Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

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

Additional Tags:

Protective Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Protective Shane Hollander, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Hurt Shane Hollander, POV Ilya Rozanov, Good Friend Hayden Pike, Hayden Pike Finds Out About Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Protective Hayden Pike, Frenemies Hayden Pike & Ilya Rozanov, No Beta, Happy Ending, Stalking, Kidnapped Shane Hollander

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Heated Rivalry - But Make It a Procedural TV Show Universe

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-16 Completed: 2026-03-23 Words: 24,989 Chapters: 6/6

what’s gonna be left of the world (if you’re not in it)

Summary

“What? Hollander too scared to face me?” Ilya chirps, because if he goes another minute without at least mentioning the man that has been consuming his every thought for two weeks he might go insane. He needs someone else to acknowledge his existence, his absence, to fucking tell him what’s going on so he can finally get it off his mind. It’s just a stupid mystery. That’s why it bugs him.

And then Hayden Pike looks up. Dark bruised circles under his eyes, face pale like a sheet, eyes red rimmed and puffy like he has been crying all day. The face of a man mourning.

Ilya feels like the ice might crack under him. Something’s wrong with Shane.

***

Set pre-Tuna melt: something has happened to Shane Hollander, but of course no one is telling his life long rival what happened.

Notes

Listen, I’m writing this because I love angst and action thrillers and overly dramatic procedurals so if you’re here for realism I’m so sorry. This is a world where two hockey players will solve a mystery before the police do. Because it’s fun.

Also, for context: this is mostly set in the TV show world (having a whole sexcapades building complicated the plot a bit too much) at some point pre-tuna melt for extra situationship angst.

• Translation into Русский available: Что Останется От Мира, Если В Нем Не Останется Тебя? by carassment

Chapter 1: watching though my fingers

Chapter Notes

It starts, like so many things in their lives do, with hockey. Or, more accurately, with a big hockey headline.

Montreal Metros: Shane Hollander set to miss the next two games over illness.

Ilya frowns down at his phone, chewing the inside of his cheek. He can’t remember the last time Hollander missed a game over some sickness.

(He once confessed, years ago, to playing with a fever and a stomach flu, puking his guts out in between periods. Ilya’d been torn between the utmost respect —no one loves the game more than Hollander, and he apparently loves the game more than he does his own health— and anger —at Hollander, mostly, for being so stupidly reckless but at his coaches too for allowing it. Of course, he’d told him about neither feeling.

He’d said, “I would’ve thrown up too if I’d played that way against fucking Florida.”

“We won!” Shane had complained.

“Barely. You should’ve destroyed them.”

He hadn’t said, you shouldn’t have played sick, you idiot.)

Ilya hums, looking at the headline again. Whatever Hollander caught must be bad if they are benching him. If he’s letting them bench him.

The last time they’d met, a month and a half ago, he hadn’t been sick. At least, Ilya doesn’t think so. He’d been… off, maybe. Too hungry, at first, even more than usual. He’d always been a bit desperate, hungry for Ilya’s cock like a good little slut, but even by Hollander standards that day had been different. Messier. The kind of heat behind his kisses that only ignites when one wants to forget something else. Of course, Boston had just beaten Montreal that night and perhaps Hollander just wanted to take his mind off of it. Ilya was more than happy to comply.

After, though, Hollander had been quiet. Distant. Not a cold silence, the way he got when he wanted Ilya to get a hint and leave his hotel or his house already. This was a particular silence Ilya had quickly come to know as his ‘thinking silence’, like he had retreated deep down inside himself where his brain was quietly ticking away with anxious destructive thoughts, trying to unravel them like a tangled web of painful ‘what ifs’.

“Seriously?” Ilya had finally asked, impatient. “I make you come twice. You still mopping?”

“What?” Hollander had blinked back at him, dazed.

Like he’d forgotten where he was. Ilya had hated it. He wanted Hollander to be present when he was here in his arms, to remember this was Ilya Rozanov’s bed where he got all the pleasure and fun no one else could come close to give. Whatever was troubling Hollander could wait for the world outside.

“You lost, so what? Hollander, c’mon, it’s no big deal. You should be used to it by now.”

“Oh, fuck off!” Shane had laughed, taking the pillow from under his own head to slam it against Ilya’s chest. “It’s not- it’s nothing, alright? I’m just distracted.”

“Then maybe I should capture your attention again,” Ilya had hummed, kissing down Hollander’s stomach until his mouth found his cock.

After that, there’d been no more talking.

In that same bed, now Ilya sighs and throws his head back. Maybe he was already feeling sick back then. Hopefully. It should mean Hollander will be back in full form by the time they play each other in Montreal in a couple of weeks. When he beats him, he wants him to be at his best.

Lily: you finally sick of losing? 😘

Hollander still out for the next game. No word from coaches.

Lily: incredibly, your team is even more boring to watch without you

Montreal vs Bears: Shane Hollander unlikely to play against rival Rozanov while still recovering from illness.

Lily: what? Too sick to write back?

Lily: if this is an excuse to avoid the embarrassment of me beating you it’s a poor one

Lily: how are you still sick anyway?

Lily: don’t worry, you just need some vitamin D 😉 I can give it to you.

Lily: I know you like chocking on it

Ilya is in a mood by the time he lands in Montreal. Three weeks of radio silence from Hollander is getting on his nerves. It’s stupid because they’ve gone much longer periods without speaking, mostly just texting when their schedules finally align, and even at the beginning Hollander didn’t always acknowledge his text, let alone sext him back… but back then at least he could still see the man play on tv, or give his post game interviews. Right now, with Hollander completely gone from the public eye for some reason, he feels like he’s going insane, looking for someone who doesn’t even exist. This is a whole new level of ghosting.

The worst part isn’t even the absence but the wrongness of it all. It sits deep in his gut like a stone. Shane Hollander is nothing if not dependable, comfortably boring in how predictable he is. Him taking two weeks out, missing nearly five games, including three home ones he hasn’t even shown up for, is too wildly out of character for him. If Ilya knows him, and he likes to believe he does, he must be fighting his coaches like hell to be let back on the ice.

Whatever is happening feels off, and Ilya intends to figure out why.

Lily: I hope you’re watching the game tonight, wouldn’t want you to miss how we destroy your team

Still no answer.

Ilya is tempted to ask if he did something wrong, if the silence is Hollander’s way to punish him beyond his absence in the ice, but he holds back. He’s probably just pissy. A Shane Hollander that hasn’t been allowed in the ice for this long must be a fucking nightmare.

He steps on the ice, prepares for the first face off. And then Hayden Pike joins him at center ice. Of course, he’s alternate captain, it makes sense. It still annoys Ilya. 

They bend down, ready for the puck to drop.

“What? Hollander too scared to face me?” Ilya chirps, because if he goes another minute without at least mentioning the man that has been consuming his every thought for two weeks he might go insane. He needs someone else to acknowledge his existence, his absence, to fucking tell him what’s going on so he can finally get it off his mind. It’s just a stupid mystery. That’s why it bugs him.

And then Hayden Pike looks up. Dark bruised circles under his eyes, face pale like a sheet, eyes red rimmed and puffy like he has been crying all day. The face of a man mourning.

Ilya feels like the ice might crack under him. Something’s wrong with Shane.

“Not tonight, Rozanov.”

Before he can ask what that fucking means, what’s going on, what the hell is happening, the puck drops. Pike wins the face off.

By the third period, the wrongness has sipped into everything. The Metros have never quite been at Hollander’s level, without him they are an average team, still good but nothing to write home about. Tonight, they are a mess, disorganized, distracted, hypereactive. Meanwhile, he’d be lying if he said he’s giving a good game. He tries to rally his team, to keep his head in the game, to give it his all but without Hollander here to challenge him it feels pointless. His heart isn’t in it.

Something’s wrong, his head insists. Something has happened. Something is off. 

It’s a bad feeling, deep in his gut, one he last felt when he was twelve.

When he can’t take it anymore, he forces an offside just to meet Pike back in center ice for the face-off. What is happening? He wants to ask. Where is Hollander? Why isn’t he here? Why won’t he reply to my messages? Is he okay? Just tell me he is okay, dammit.

That won’t take him anywhere. There’s only one way he knows how to push:

“You think Hollander is disappointed? Watching you lose tonight?”

Pike doesn’t reply. Pike always replies, always bites back when he baits him. The silence throws Ilya off, he loses a second face-off to Hayden fucking Pike and he knows Hollander will never let him live it down.

He tries to fix it, but it’s suddenly like Pike has been possessed. He speeds across the court, shakes off Marleau with a shove, without stopping, and gives an assist to a very confused Comeau who looks unprepared for it but miraculously shoots just in time to score before anyone’s had time to react in the rink.

Hayden doesn’t join his team’s celly. Ilya skates by him, keeping his shoulders carefully relaxed despite the growing unease in his chest. He needs to push more. He needs an answer. Any answer. Time to change strategies.

“Okay, I was wrong,” he forces a grin. “Maybe you don’t need Hollander after all, yes?”

It’s barely a chirp. Hell, it’s almost a compliment. He half expects for Pike to boast, to fire back with the heat of the goal, to let his guard down and give Ilya a morsel of information without meaning to. What he doesn’t expect is for Pike to drop his gloves.

A fist crosses his jaw, another hand grips his jersey. Past the daze of the pain, Ilya has time to think what the fuck before his body reacts on its own, fighting back. He gets half a punch in before they are being pulled apart by the referees. Pike looks like he’s crying.

Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is definitely wrong.

They both get put in the penalty box. Ilya’s ears are ringing. He turns to Pike, to see if he can gauge anything else, if he will start screaming and yelling at him, if there might be information in his anger. Hayden is doubled over, head nearly between his knees, hands laced over the back of his head, legs bouncing anxiously.

Fuck.

Boston wins. 2-1. It’s a bad game for both teams. If Hollander is watching, he probably hated it.

Ilya tries and fails not to rush to his locker. His team celebrates around him. He grins, pats backs, pretends his heart isn’t hammering against his ribs as he reaches for his phone. He walks out of the dressing room, where he can write to Hollander without prying eyes. He usually wouldn’t bother but he’s feeling on edge. He can’t do this around the boys.

Behind him, the Bears laughter and celebration is just slightly muffled. Across the hallway, the Montreal dressing room is far more quiet, filled with hushed voices, angry and disappointed. He would usually relish it. But there’s a voice missing tonight. The only one he wanted to beat out there.

A noise to his left startles him. He catches the back door closing behind the unmistakeable silhouette of Hayden Pike leaving the arena alone.

He expects a text. There should be a text. Something bitchy about not getting too cocky. Something properly angry over the fight with Pike. A time and place to meet. Something. Anything.

Dammit.

“Hey, Rozi!” Cliff Marleau claps him by the shoulder, joining him in the hallway. “Ready to party?”

“Got plans. Maybe I catch you later,” Ilya makes sure to grin, to make it fun, to make it clear he’s about to go celebrate too.

Cliff laughs. “Say hi to your Montreal chick from me.”

“Don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Marly.”

“Sure,” Cliff rolls his eyes and lets him be.

Ilya frowns back down at his phone.

Lily: what? No answer?

Lily: I can still come over.

Lily: Russians don’t get sick.

Lily: if you say nothing, I take your silence as an invitation

He expects that last one to at least get him a reply. If Hollander truly doesn’t want to see him, now is the time to let him know.

This is a terrible idea.

The taxi leaves him two blocks away from Hollander’s building. Just as he approaches, he catches sight of red and blue lights by the front of the building. A grim reminder of exactly why this is a terrible idea.

They don’t do this. They don’t show up unannounced. Uninvited. Probably unwanted. They don’t drive all the way to the other because they have some stupid probably baseless gut feeling that something might be wrong.

(Except Hollander did, once, during the Olympics. And Ilya, scared out of his mind by how much he wanted him to, had closed that door on his face. Maybe tonight was his turn to have Hollander push him away, remind him they are nothing. That they don’t do this).

Ilya pulls out his key to the back entrance of Hollander’s building. He’d received it almost a year and a half ago, after Hollander got all worked up because Ilya had been standing on the street almost fifteen minutes waiting for him to open it after a game.

“It’s not my fault you’re so slow coming down the stairs,” Ilya had complained.

“What if someone had seen you?” He’d snapped back.

“There’s a snow storm coming. It’s fucking cold outside. Only idiots would be walking the streets at night. No one saw me. Fucking relax, Hollander!”

Finally, the golden boy had gotten a funny look on his face and stopped arguing. Ilya’s thought that was the end of it. But then he’d gotten a keychain with two keys before leaving for his hotel. And an extra hoodie.

They did not do this.

“Just come in the next time and don’t be so fucking obvious,” Hollander had rolled his eyes.

As Ilya reaches Hollander’s floor, he pauses and leans his forehead against the stairwell door. He breathes slowly and takes in his last moment of not knowing before he has to face the thought that’s been biting at his heels since he saw Hayden Pike’s wrecked face in the ice tonight. A single terrifying word: terminal.

He learnt it three years ago, after googling his father’s symptoms. An ugly, definitive, inescapable word, that’s been haunting his thoughts tonight.

But it can’t be. Because Shane Hollander is a world class athlete, so fucking obsessed with his health and his performance, so soft spoken and sweet and polite and caring. So he has to be okay, he has to be safe. Ilya closes his eyes, counts three seconds in, four seconds out, and steps into the hallway.

His stomach drops.

There’s yellow police tape across Hollander’s door, which probably does little to keep anyone out of it since the lock is quite obviously busted. Ilya approaches the half shattered piece of wood like it’s a wild animal that could bite him or run away any second.

Something deep in his brain, either the result of watching too many movies or something his brother and father have said, reminds him not to use his hand to push the door open. He pushes carefully with his elbow and steps over the yellow tape without disturbing it.

Inside, at first, the apartment looks normal. But Ilya has been here too many times, and has committed every single one of them to memory, dissected every corner of this place in his lonely nights, remembering Shane’s naked trembling body against nearly every surface of it.

The couch looks disturbed, like someone just took a nap on it. One of the cushions is still pressed by the weight of a head that no longer rests on it, a knitted blanket bunched on the opposite armrest. Then, the coffee table is pushed way too far from the couch, like someone shoved it aside in a rush. Ilya’s heart speeds up as his eyes notice the framed photographs and paintings on the walls, all slightly tilted to odd sides. He’s watched Shane straighten them without his lips ever leaving Ilya’s, like it’s second nature. He’d found it equally endearing and infuriating. No one has straightened these frames.

Ilya’s eyes follow the trail of disruption up the stairs. Stairs he has climbed kissing Hollander, distracted by his body’s heat. They feel cold and impersonal now as he climbs to the room level.

“Hollander?” He calls. He doesn’t expect an answer. He doesn’t get one. “Shane.”

There’s further disruption in the bedroom. The carpet Hollander has on his side of the bed so that his feet don’t land on the cold floor first thing in the morning is wrinkled. There’s a phone charger still connected to the wall behind the night table. No phone. A damming yellow cone, not bigger than a beer can, sits by the corner. Ilya bends closer, realizes why it’s marking: evidence. Blood on the table’s corner. Another cone on the floor points to a collection of droplets that once must have been bright red, before turning and ugly dry brown.

Blood.

Ilya feels his own drain off his face. The world spins around him and he has to fight the urge to sit down. He can’t risk ruining the room. The crime scene.

Fuck.

Breathing becomes hard. He stumbles sideways until his shoulder is pressed to the wall.

Breathe. Breathe, dammit. You can’t be weak. Not right now. Not until you know-

He needs answers. One name comes to mind. Someone knows. He knows.

Ilya doesn’t have Hayden Pike’s phone number but Shane- fuck. Hollander writes everything down. Everything but Ilya. In his bedside table’s drawer there’s a phone book. And there, on neat and careful handwriting that makes Ilya’s heart twist, a phone number.

His trembling fingers fuck up twice until he gets it right.

It rings once.

“Hello?” The voice on the other side cracks, anxious and eager.

“Pike?”

“Rozanov?”

“Yes.”

The call goes dead.

Fuck. Fucking Pike. But his voice, the anxiousness, it confirms that he knows something. He must. He has to. Ilya takes a picture of his address and carefully puts the notebook back where it was. He focuses on action, movement, purpose. Like he’s in the ice chasing the puck. Like a shark. So long as he doesn’t stop moving, he will survive.

He knocks. Insistently. Hard. Until the door swings open.

Pike is annoyed even before he registers it’s him.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” He yells, taking a step forward, blocking the entrance “What the fuck do you want, Rozanov?!”

He looks even worse than he did on the rink. He’s been crying again.

“Actually,” he jumps before Ilya can even reply, “better question: how the fuck do you know where I live? How did you get here? Why did you- why are you here? If this is some kind of sick victory lap I really, truly, honestly, couldn’t fucking care less.”

The man is on the edge of breaking and Ilya hasn’t even said a word. He would make some cutting remark about it, tell him to pull himself together, if he didn’t feel close to unraveling himself. It takes all of his self control to remain somewhat composed as he says:

“Hollander. What happened to him?”

Pike’s face twists, like it did in the ice. He steps forward and grab him by the jacket.

“What the fuck do you want? What do you fucking know?”

Ilya’s first instinct is to fight back. Instead, he raises his hands.

“I don’t know! That’s why I am asking you, Pike! This is how it works, yes? I ask because I don’t have the fucking answers.”

Pike narrows his eyes at him, jaw tense, before he lets go.

“Why should I- What do you even care?”

“Something has happened and no one is saying it. Tell me.”

“Why?”

“Because I fucking care, Pike! Because I’m here at fucking one in the morning asking because I obviously care. Is that so hard to believe?!”

“Yes!” Pike snaps. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself. Why should I believe you care about Shane? You hate him.”

“Fucking think for once in your life, Pike. If I don’t care, then why am I fucking here?”

“Hell if I know! To gloat?!”

“Gloat about what?!” Ilya promised himself he would not yell, that he would keep his cool so that Pike would trust him, but the man is infuriating beyond a saint’s patience. “I don’t even know what happened! Just fucking tell me, or tell me how I can talk to him and I will ask him myself!”

Pike’s mouth twists, but it looks less like anger and more like pain. Like Ilya just  punched him.

“Is he-“

“I don’t know!” Pike runs his hands over his hair and walks inside the house. He doesn’t slam the door shut, which Ilya takes as an invitation (as he tries not to think too hard of the implications of that admission). “No one- wait. You haven’t explained. Why do you care?”

Ilya closes the door behind himself and takes a deep breath. Half truths. He can do this.

“Pike, I have known Hollander since we were both seventeen, yes? We were drafted at the same time, spent our whole careers facing each other, have played at the same all-stars, attended the same events… is it really that hard to believe we are friends? That I care about him?”

“Friends?” Pike sneers. “You hate him.”

“I don’t.”

The truth. Simple. Complicated.

“Pike, listen to me, I am here, yes? I am here at your house, when I know that you do hate me, and I am asking. Why else would I be asking? I just- please.”

And it’s that word, more than any other, that finally seems to get through. Hayden Pike swears loudly, pacing still by his house’s entrance, runs his fingers through his sandy blond hair like he wants to pull it out and take a good portion of his idiotic brain with it. Finally, he turns to Ilya and says gravely:

“Shane is missing.”

“Missing?” Ilya repeats. The word feels wrong. It’s the wrong word for sure. He is no expert in English, even after five years speaking it, but he knows this word can’t be right.

Missing is for socks stuck in the dryer, for children lost in the supermarket, for puppies that escaped their backyard, for passports that slipped behind a couch when you were packing. Not for people. Not for Canada’s golden boy. Not for the best hockey player in the league. Not for nice polite men who laugh when Ilya teases them behind closed doors. Not for Shane Hollander.

“What do you mean missing?”

“Taken. Someone took him.”

As if it was that easy. As if someone could just reach between Ilya’s ribs and take his still beating heart away.

“What?”

“Someone took Shane. No one knows where he is, or if he’s-“

And that’s as far as Ilya gets before he forgets how to breathe.

Chapter End Notes

Comments feed the writer’s souls and encourage inspiration for new chapters ❤️

Chapter 2: you'll be missing from the photographs

Chapter Summary

“What happened?” Rozanov’s voice is rough, as if he’d been screaming, though he hasn’t made a sound this whole time.

“Pretty sure you just had a panic attack.”

“Not to me, you idiot! What happened to Hollander?”

Aaaaaand there he is.

“I already told you!”

“And that’s all you know?! Pike, you’re fucking useless.”

Chapter Notes

Ready for the buddy cop hockey players?

I apologize in advance for the amount of swearing in this fic but English swearing doesn't sound like real swearing in my brain and, to be fair, these two would be swearing sooooo much, given the circumstances. So there's that.

Also, hi Hayden's POV!!

In the long list of things Hayden would like to be doing right now —kissing his wife, tucking his kids into bed, hugging his best friend— the very veeeeery last is talking Ilya Rozanov out of having a full-blown panic attack in his living room.

(It’s not. The very last is having to plan his best friend’s funeral but he will not let himself entertain that thought for longer than half a second).

“Rozanov, I need you to fucking breathe, bud,” he says, voice snappier than is probably helpful right now.

The man doesn’t even react. He’s still hyperventilating on Hayden’s couch, his head between his knees, eyes lost somewhere far, hands shaking. Hayden’s hands hover around his hunched shoulders, unsure on whether to touch or not.

His brain is still playing catch-up. Rozanov says he’s Shane’s friend. Hayden doesn’t buy it. But, then, here is Rozanov claiming he cares, asking about Shane and fucking losing his mind over it. And, well, he’s kinda really really freaking Hayden out because Rozanov never loses his cool unless it’s to fight someone on the ice and even then he has that shit-eating grin like he meant for everything to happen exactly that way. This? This is far more terrifying.

“I need you to breathe, man, I’m serious,” Hayden insists, because he’s pretty sure Rozanov’s lips are looking a little pale, not blue yet but close, and he really doesn’t need the Boston Raiders’ Captain to pass out on his couch right now.

Something snaps in his brain. He will deny it later, on account of this being Ilya fucking Rozanov, but Hayden’s parental instincts kick in. Because he has been faced with toddlers crying so hard they can’t breathe before and Rozanov might not be crying (thank god) but that’s pretty close and so he rushes to the kitchen for a glass of cold water and all but forces it into the Russian’s trembling hand. Rozanov must really be out of it to obey Hayden’s firm “drink” order. But once he does, forcing him to hold his breath, it manages to even out his breathing. Just enough to pull him from the brink of hypoxia, hopefully.

Finally, Rozanov’s eyes focus on him, like he’s waking up from a nightmare. He looks young and vulnerable, which are two things that do not fit him at all inside Hayden’s brain.

“What happened?” Rozanov’s voice is rough, as if he’d been screaming, though he hasn’t made a sound this whole time.

“Pretty sure you just had a panic attack.”

“Not to me, you idiot! What happened to Hollander?”

Aaaaaand there he is.

“I already told you!”

“And that’s all you know?! Pike, you’re fucking useless.”

“Hey!” Hayden snaps back, but whatever he was doing to reply just dies before it even reaches his tongue. “Look, man, I can’t do this. Not tonight, okay. I just-“

He is not going to cry in front of Rozanov.

“Sorry,” Ilya Rozanov says, shocking him back into stunned silence. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, he adds: “I just need you to tell me. I need to know. Please, Hayden.”

It’s either the use of his first name or the pleading that twists the final cord inside him. Fuck this. Fuck it. Fine. Fucking fine.

Hayden sits down on his coffee table, right across Rozanov, and runs a hand through his hair, straightening the facts into something that resembles sense before starting.

“Someone was stalking Shane,” he finally sighs.

Rozanov’s eyes focus on him, suddenly, and it’s clear he’s going to interrupt with questions, but if Hayden is doing this he needs to stay on track before he loses his mind. So he pushes on.

“I don’t know who and I don’t know for how long. He didn’t tell me, or his parents, or fucking anyone, at first, because, apparently, when you’re Shane Hollander and everyone has been obsessed with you since you were, like, seventeen, you don’t think it’s a big deal when some rando manages to get a hold of your phone number and starts texting you out of the blue. And that’s insane, right? But this is Shane and he probably didn’t want to bother anyone, so he just blocked the guy and moved on. Except, apparently, the guy kept getting new phone numbers to text from and just continuing the conversation like nothing had happens. And it was harmless stuff, according to Shane, shit like commenting the Metros games, or asking what he’d done during practice, or what he ate in a regular day. He thought it must have been a journo or something, so he just kept replying ‘no comment’, and blocked them and tried to move on. Which is, like, classic Shane, by the way, because he’s way too fucking polite. But then the calls started coming.”

“What calls?” Rozanov’s self control finally gives in.

“To his fucking house.”

Something flickers across Rozanov’s face.

“He told you?” Hayden asks, hurt.

“No. Not really. He just- he texted me, two months ago, asked if I’d called his house.”

“Why would you call his house?”

“That’s what I said! He thought it was prank.”

“You guys prank each other?”

“We are not children, Pike. We don’t prank. We… tease. We joke,” Rozanov seems to be choosing his words carefully. Hayden cannot imagine what him and Shane could possibly joke about. “I told him: Hollander, why do you even have a landline. What are you, ninety? He said it came-“

“It came with his wifi,” Hayden sighs. “Yeah. Did he say anything else?”

“I didn’t ask.”

Hayden feels anger swell in his chest. What kind of friend is Rozanov that he didn’t push the matter? Maybe they just aren’t that close.

(He knows, deep down, how secretive and private Shane is even about the most normal things so maybe it makes sense that he didn’t give Rozanov enough information to even suspect something weird was happening, but he isn’t feeling very magnanimous at the time).

“Well it wasn’t a fucking prank!” He snaps, standing up. “It was the same fucking asshole, apparently, who kept calling and calling and calling, not saying a word, just being a creep until Shane hung up. Until he had to fucking unplug the landline.”

Rozanov stands up. For a second, Hayden thinks he’s gonna punch him or something for yelling, but instead he pushes past Hayden and starts pacing around the living room.

“That’s when he told you?” He asks, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“No! Fucking, Shane still didn’t want to fucking bother anyone about it. Except you, apparently. And then-“

“Then what?”

“Well, then it started involving- Hey!” He reaches and slaps the cigarette out of Rozanov’s mouth. “What the hell, man? You can’t smoke in here, you asshole. I have kids!”

“They aren’t home,” Rozanov says flatly.

Hayden reels back. It’s true, but hearing it is like a punch to the gut. He clenches his jaw, narrowing his eyes at Rozanov, a million suspicions bubbling up.

The Russian has the nerve to roll his eyes.

“You have been yelling and swearing at one in the morning, not caring about waking anyone up. Pretty sure lady Pike isn’t here either or she would have come down to kill you already.”

Hayden blinks, swallowing around a lump in his throat. The house’s silence seems amplified around them. Something like pity crosses Rozanov’s face.

“Where are your wife and children, Pike?”

“They are staying with Jackie’s parents for a while. At least until this is solved.”

“‘This’ meaning Shane.”

The fight drains out of him in one fell swoop. Hayden catches the name, like it slipped out of Rozanov’s mouth without permission. Doesn’t comment on it for now.

“Yes.”

“Why?” Rozanov pushes. “What happened after the calls?”

“The photos. That’s when Shane finally freaked out. He got… packages with pictures of himself. At home. With his parents in Ottawa. With my fucking kids, when we took them to the aquarium,” his voice shakes but he fights to keep speaking. “It was so fucking creepy man. They even-“

He shouldn’t.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Pike, I swear, if you don’t fucking tell me-“

“It’s none of your business, okay?! Just his girl.”

“His… girl?” Rozanov repeats slowly, like Hayden said something completely incomprehensible.

“Yes, man. His… not girlfriend, I don’t think so, but this chick, Lily, he’s been talking to her forever, always visits her when we go to Boston.” Rozanov’s eyes open wide, he goes very very still. But he doesn’t interrupt and Hayden keeps talking because now the floodgates are open. “Fucking Boston, man! They had pictures of him at her house or something. Like, they followed him all the way there. And Shane was fucking furious. Which, like, I get it. If it was Jackie I would’ve done something drastic, too. But he was- he was losing it, for real. And I told him- I told him he had to go to the police, take it all, especially the Lily thing because if anyone was willing to follow him that far, well that had to be fucking dangerous, right? They had to take it seriously. But he wouldn’t. He didn’t. And I just- I don’t get why. I don’t-“

Rozanov tackles him. Hayden trips and falls on the couch. He’s an athlete, though, a hockey player, and he’s back on his feet and ready for a fight in a second. Except… Rozanov isn’t there. He’d apparently kept running, to the kitchen where he-

Oh. Ilya Rozanov is puking his guts out in the trash can under his sink. Fuck.

Hayden approaches, hesitantly. Rozanov doesn’t acknowledge him. A string of Russian mumbled words comes out in between retches. After a minute or two that feel like an eternity, he stops. Hayden retrieves the panic attack glass of water, refills it and hands it to Rozanov, who takes it wordlessly and drinks it full. His face is wet with what could be sweat or tears. Hard to tell.

“You good?” Hayden asks, unsure on how to react. “Are you… drunk?”

“No,” Rozanov replies, roughly. To either of the two questions. Hard to tell which one. “I-“ he takes a deep breath, standing back up.

Rozanov carefully takes the trash bag out, closes it and carefully ties it, (a polite move that strikes Hayden as so Shane-like that he momentarily wants to cry again), clears his throat and finally meets Hayden’s eyes. He seems to be searching for something there. Hayden holds his gaze until he speaks again.

“You love Shane, yes?” He sounds… careful. 

Hayden’s eyebrows rise high, he can’t believe the fucking question.

“You are Hollander’s friend,” Rozanov insists. “You would not- you would not say something to hurt him, or hate him if he wasn’t… how you would like. You would protect him. Yes?”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?!” Hayden screams. “Are you —you of all people— seriously asking me if I love Shane? If I am his friend?! He is my best fucking friend! Do you even understand that?! What it means to me?! He’s the godfather of my children! If he killed you, I’d be grabbing a shovel and asking where to hide your fucking body! And if I had to kill you to get him back, you would already be six feet under! How fucking dare you ask-“

“And if he slept with me?” Rozanov asks, slowly. “If he had been with me all these years behind your back? You would still protect him.”

“Is this some kind of fucking sick joke?!”

“Sick joke?” Rozanov takes a step forward and, for a second, the wreck of a man turns back into the dangerous, murderous, Russian that has been terrorizing grown men the better half of a decade. “You think it is sick? Depraved? Something to make fun of?”

The seriousness in his voice, the fury in his eyes- shit. Hayden raises his hands.

“No. Fuck you. I didn’t mean- I would never-! That not what I fucking meant! But why would you even say-“

“Because it’s the truth!” Rozanov yells, but the cold murderous rage is gone. “Jesus, Pike, you’re such an idiot. Boston Lily. Why do you think Shane didn’t want to take the photos to the police? Did he show you the pictures? No, right? Think! What am I telling you?!”

Realization is like a bucket of ice thrown over his head. Lily. Ilya. Ilya Rozanov.

“You two are… together?”

“Is just sex,” Rozanov says. Even he must know how false it sounds, right?

But there’s something else, something bigger, taking form in his brain now.

“He was protecting you. That’s why he wouldn’t show the police.”

“Protecting us both,” Rozanov amends. “Neither of us is interested in this getting outed. But yes. I was… I suppose I was in the pictures.”

“Fuck. Fuck, man.”

“Yes, is my fault. I didn’t know but… it is. So I puke in your kitchen. Sorry.”

“Fuck,” Hayden repeats, feeling how the world as he knows it reassembles itself into something different and unknown.

“Pike, focus, you can have life crisis later, yes? If he didn’t go to the police, what happened then?”

“The stalker got mad. Shane said- he said that after Boston the messages were getting worse. Like, scary bad. He finally went to the police. He didn’t tell them about the photos, but he showed them the messages, told them about the calls… they put officers outside his house for security but-“

“But what?”

“Two or so weeks ago, someone got in. Through the building’s back door or something.”

“Who?”

“I don’t fucking know. I just- I don’t get it. Shane is usually such a paranoid guy. He’s careful about everything. But he had no security cameras. Not on the backdoor, or the hallways, not even inside. I just-“

“My fault,” Rozanov’s voice is so low that he nearly misses it. Hayden turns his attention to the Russian, who looks like he’s about to be sick again. “We would, ah, meet. At his place. Sometimes. He did not want cameras because… me.”

“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Fucking Christ, Shane.”

“Yes,” Rozanov murmurs, and he sounds so pathetically broken that Hayden doesn’t even have it in him to be angry. He is already angry. As in general.

They stay there, standing silent in the empty kitchen, feeling the weight of this whole mess settle between them. Fuck, Hayden misses Jackie. He needs to hold her, to cry on her shoulder, to let her assure him everything will work out.

“Has there been a, uh, call?” Rozanov finally asks. “What you call it? Ransom. Proof of life.”

Hayden shakes his head. He sighs, tries to get his head straight.

“Okay, so the police don’t have the fucking photos and we don’t have any fucking video of what happened because Shane is fucking paranoid that someone would find out about you two. Which, I guess, someone did, because he said there were pictures of Lily’s, well, your house, I guess-“

“The cameras,” Rozanov gasps.

“I told you, there are no cameras.”

“Not those ones. Mine. I am… not as paranoid as Hollander. I have security cameras.”

“Wait. Wait. You think you could have caught it?” Hayden blinks, feeling suddenly very awake.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Where were the pictures taken?”

“Hell if I know! He didn’t show them to me. Obviously. Pretty sure he destroyed them or something.”

“He wouldn’t. Shane is paranoid, like you said. He would keep them just in case.”

“What? Where?”

“His house. Somewhere close, where he could check them when he got anxious.”

“Rozanov that’s- I mean, the police searched the whole place. They didn’t find anything.”

Ilya Rozanov meets his eyes, suddenly looking whole again as he states with a ridiculous certainty: “They don’t know Shane Hollander like I do.”

Later, Hayden Pike, husband and father of four, will worry about his life choices and priorities. Later, he will tell himself it is probably a terrible choice as a father to risk going to prison for a hunch. Later, he will admit that breaking into a crime scene with Ilya fucking Rozanov is up there in the top three most idiotic things he has ever done.

But here’s the thing: when he said he would do anything to get his best friend back, he meant it.

He tries not to think too hard about it.

(He is working overtime at ‘not thinking too hard’ about a lot of things, like the fact that Ilya Rozanov has a set of keys that open Shane Hollander’s backdoor, or that the way he moves around Shane’s place is entirely too familiar, or how he hesitates just for a second before stepping into the master bedroom, which he clearly knows well too.)

“What are you doing?” Hayden finally hisses, when Ilya rolls under the bed.

“He tapes things here,” Rozanov says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “When the cleaning service comes. He doesn’t want them finding his… sex stuff. So he made a bag, he stuffs it… here…”

“Dude, what the fuck,” Hayden kneels to peer under the bed, finds Rozanov blindly touching under Shane’s bed. He pulls out his phone to give the idiot some light. “I meant- I mean, that too, but mostly, like, this is a crime scene. You’re gonna leave your DNA all over the place or wherever.”

Rozanov turns his head towards him, a shark-like grin across his face, which is extremely out of place given everything fucked up that’s going on.

“Pike, I assure you, my DNA is already all over this place.”

“Wha- oh, gross, man!” Hayden winces.

“Ah, here!” Rozanov says. “Move.”

Hayden stands up as Rozanov rolls out from under the bed, holding a beige envelope. He takes it from his hands, and spreads it over the bed as the Russian stands back up. His stomach turns when he sees his and his kid’s faces again. Shane had shown him these pictures. A nice day together, they’d had fun, they’d talked about Jackie’s new pregnancy, they’d laughed. Now it is here, staring at him like a threat.

Rozanov starts shuffling through the pictures until he finds- oh, fuck, yeah… okay, yes, that is definitely his best friend sucking face with Ilya Rozanov, seen through a window. Hayden’s chest twists and he isn’t sure if he is angry or hurt or sad. But Shane… he looks so damn happy.

He looks… alive.

Fuck it. Hayden blinks back tears. He doesn’t care. He really doesn’t give a damn. He just wants his best friend back.

He turns around, probably too late to hide from Rozanov’s apparently all-seeing eyes. He is expecting a chirp, an insult, a demand he pull himself together and stop being a fucking baby. Instead, he feels the unexpected weight of a hand on his shoulder. It startles him enough to make him turn around. Rozanov’s eyes are red rimmed too, but there’s steely determination there as well, as he shows him an app on his phone. A home security app.

“We will find him, yes? He is okay. He has to be. And we will get him back.”

And, damn, it’s a cold day in hell when he trusts a word out of Ilya Rozanov’s mouth. But it’s been a damn cold winter. So be it.

“Alright. Okay. Let’s find Shane.”

Chapter End Notes

cat's out of the bag, unless you read the tags and this was truly no surprise at all because we don't care about the obvious we are just here for the riiiiide right?

also, we'll hear from Shane next chapter in case you miss him (his boys do too)

As always, thank you for the comments guys <3 they really keep this story in my brain, bugging me until i'm typing it on my notes app at work instead of, well, working... heh

Chapter 3: every stumble and each misfire

Chapter Summary

“What is this about?”

“Shane Hollander.”

“What about him?” He replies, maybe a little too fast. Impatient.

“Mister Rozanov, what is the nature of your relationship with Mister Hollander?”

Chapter Notes

You may have noticed the chapter count went up. This chapter was just getting a little too long and it made more sense to split it up.

There’s just A LOT going on.

And a lot more coming.

I was maybe just a little too optimistic about chapter length when I first split them in my mind. But the story is still the same.

So enjoy!

Ilya Rozanov has built his whole life around the need to never feel powerless again. He’s a world class athlete, far from Russia and his father and his brother, he has fame and money of his own, he has a pretty amazing life that he gets to decide how to live. Maybe that’s why Shane Hollander scares him so much. The way he was helpless to fall back into his orbit, again and again and again, terrified him.

He should’ve known… he should’ve known there was something worse: losing Shane Hollander and being powerless to stop it.

Hayden Pike drops him off at his hotel when dawn is already breaking through the Montreal sky.

Ilya is struck by the ridiculousness of the whole situation. Shane and him had been so careful. They would’ve never be seen like this, Shane would’ve never driven him to his hotel, they wouldn’t have risked being seen together. And yet, here he is, being dropped off by Hayden Pike. Like it’s nothing. No one will believe they are secret lovers, that they’ve been meeting for years in secret to suck each other’s dicks. Okay, maybe some people in the internet would, but no one pays attention to that.

Would it be the same with Shane? Ilya would like to find out. When he’s back. Because he will be back.

“You sure this will work?” Pike asks, eyeing him in the parking lot.

“No,” he says, honestly, and sees how Pike’s face twists with irritation. “Would you rather I lie, Pike? Of course I don’t know. But… I know police, how they work. And Cliff’s messages said someone was looking for me last night at our hotel. So probably, yes.”

“Okay, but-”

“If not, we figure it out. Pike, I swear, you sound like Hollander right now.”

Pike winces. Ilya does his best to pretend that the name doesn’t hurt him too.

“Fine, whatever. Just… remember to text me later.”

“Yes, yes, so needy,” Ilya grins at him as he gets out of the car.

He feels wrung out, physically and mentally, he needs water and food, and sleep probably. But that will have to wait. So he will get his kicks where he can: making Hayden Pike looks like he wants to simultaneously die and kill him.

“Fuck off,” Pike huffs before driving off.

Alone, the exhaustion weights heavier on Ilya.

He fends off questions about his whereabouts all night with a smirk, lets his teammates reach their own conclusions as he packs the few things he’d bothered to take out of his bag and heads downstairs. He heads to the reception: “I heard someone was looking for me last night. My name is-“

“Ilya Rozanov, yes,” the woman behind the counter looks a little starstruck as she blinks up at him. He gives her a smile, tries to play into it. “Right, sorry, let me… hmm, I’m sorry sir, but if someone was looking for you, I’m afraid they didn’t leave any contact information.”

His stomach twists but he manages to nod and walk back to his team. Blyat.

He makes the ride to the airport feeling his nerves build with every passing minute. Now what? He’d counted on the police wanting to question him. He’d been so sure.

Ilya hadn’t been lying when he told Pike his ADN is all over Shane’s place, probably. One way or another, a proper forensic team should’ve found it, tested it. Ilya knew he was in the Canadian system after a stupid bar fight his first year playing for Boston. So they had to know. And, right, maybe crossing jurisdiction to another country, especially the United States, wasn’t something the Canadian police had been eager (or able) to do before but he is here now, in their city, which should give them the perfect chance to question him. Why let him go now?

Ilya glares out the bus window. Powerless. He couldn’t just show up at the police station with his camera recordings shouting he had new evidence about the disappearance of his rival which no one was supposed to know about.

(Pike hadn’t been able to tell him if the silence was the Hollander’s choice, the police’s or the Metros PR team. Regardless, he’d found it stupid and infuriating that the world —that he— should go on with their lives not knowing that Shane Hollander has been… taken. Kidnapped).

They arrive to the airport. Ilya walks out. He can’t feel his legs. Fuck it, he will do it himself. He will make some excuse up. Hell, he will tell the truth. Shane will never forgive him, but if he lives long enough to resent him Ilya will be happy to shoulder the blame for it the rest of his days.

He’s about to do something stupid when a voice reaches him, just as he’s crossing the sliding glass doors:

“Mister Rozanov,” a man in a navy blue uniform cuts him off.

Ah, thank god.

“Thank you for joining us, Mister Rozanov,” The detective says.

She looks like a serious woman, her brown hair is carefully smoothed back into a bun, peppered with silver. She’s wearing no makeup, so Ilya can clearly see her face is dusted with freckles (beautiful but wrong).

“I know you’re a busy man and that we made you miss your flight.”

“Yes. Your guy didn’t make it sound like I had much of a choice,” he says, making sure to sound annoyed. He knows the part he has to play here. “What is this about?”

“Shane Hollander.”

“What about him?” He replies, maybe a little too fast. Impatient.

“Mister Rozanov, what is the nature of your relationship with Mister Hollander?”

“You don’t know this? You live in Montreal. Not a hockey fan, uh?” He pushes, maybe a little too much. The woman arches her eyebrows, waiting for an answer. “Officially? We are rivals, yes? I mean, technically colleagues, I guess, since we are both hockey players. But enemy teams… so rivals.”

“And… unofficially?” She catches.

Good.

“Well, we are friends, of course.”

“Of course,” she repeats.

“Yes! Professional respect and all that. Equals. We… well, we get along. We have known each other long time. We are friends.”

“This is… not what the people around you have said.”

“Well, Hollander is very private. Me too, not so much, but we… we don’t tell people we are friends, it would look bad, yes? Fraternizing with the enemy.”

“And what do you do together?”

We make each other cum in many ways.

“We hang out. Talk about hockey. I go to his place or he comes to mine, so we aren’t seen in public.”

She looks at him for a long moment, in a way that unnerves Ilya a bit.

“And how long have you two been… fraternizing?”

Ah, she knows. Well. A part of him (a part that sounds a lot like Shane) wants to panic about the dangers this entails, the possibility of public exposure, the risks. The Russia of it all. Then he remembers that any of those perils pales against the fact that Shane is gone and no one knows where. Fuck it. He doesn’t have to give more than necessary, but hiding won’t do Shane any good either.

“Since the beginning. Summer before rookie year.”

“And no one knows? Not even his parents?”

“Hayden Pike knows. He is Shane’s best friend. He knows Shane visits me when in Boston.”

Half-truths. Close enough. After seeing their photos last night, Pike can at the very least attest to it. Hopefully.

The detective hums.

“Why all these questions?” Ilya finally asks. “Did something happen?”

“We don’t know yet,” the detective straightens in her seat, expression shuttering. “We cannot locate Mister Hollander at the moment.”

“You can’t… find him?” He feigns ignorance. Maybe a little too much. “He hasn’t replied to my texts for a while. Is he okay?”

“I’m sorry, Mister Rozanov, but I cannot share details of the investigation with you. But… do you know if someone would want to hurt Mister Hollander?”

“Besides anyone he’s scored against?” Ilya doesn’t mean to huff a laugh, but he can’t help it. “We play a competitive sport, detective. You make fans, you make enemies. But still, Hollander… he is very nice, handsome polite Canadian boy, yes? I guess, I make enemies he just makes people jealous.”

“So you don’t think someone would want to hurt him?”

“I hope not. But sometimes he is too nice. It is risky, people think they can push you around.”

The detective nods, stands up, clearly signaling the interview is over. Ilya gets up, too. Pretends he is about to leave, pauses just as he’s reaching the door.

“Did he ever find who was following him?”

There, the bait.

“What do you mean?”

And the hook.

“Last time we met, in Boston, after the game. He said he thought someone was following him. A brown car. He thought it might be paparazzi, but it made him nervous.”

“We… did not know about this,” she frowns.

Because it’s a lie. A perfect innocent lie.

“He did not like to bother people with his worries. But I have security cameras of my street. Maybe I send them to you. Just in case,” he shrugs, like it’s no big deal, like this whole thing isn’t a big convoluted way to hand over evidence to the police without exposing their relationship.

“Okay. Yes, if you want to hand the tapes over willingly. I suppose we can look into them. Thank you.”

“It is no problem.”

“Oh, and Mister Rozanov, if you could stay in town for a few days… I know you are expected back in Boston, but we might need to call on you again.”

“My coaches will not like that,” he says, honestly. “But I will say.”

They would have to drag him kicking and screaming out of this city before Hollander is safe.

“Very well. Thank you.”

“Good luck.”

After sending his camera tapes to the police’s digital forensic department, Ilya walks out the station’s door and finds two people he has never met in his life. He has seen them multiple times though, in a picture on Hollander’s dresser. David and Yuna Hollander stare at him. They look every bit the wreck Pike did, even worse, holding each other like if they let go they will both collapse. His heart twists into knots.

“Mister Rozanov,” Yuna says, her eyes hard despite the exhaustion, suspicious as they roam his face.

“Yes. Ilya, please.”

“You say you are a friend of our son’s,” it’s not a question but an accusation. He wonders if they were listening the whole time.

“Yes. Hollander and I are… close.”

Lying to them is harder than the police. Impossible.

“Is that so? He never mentioned you.”

Ah. Fuck. He can’t do this. He can’t. He has held it together up until now (puking in Pike’s kitchen not withstanding) but looking at Shane Hollander’s parents in the eye and lying is asking too much. Acting like their son doesn’t mean too much for Ilya to put into words is too much. He wants to turn around and leave, or lock himself up in that suffocating little interrogation room and hide until they are gone. Anything except this. But… but Hollander loves them, and they love him, and he’s missing and he might never get to explain-

“Yes, I know. Holl- Shane is very private about his life and very serious about his duties. He loves you a lot, that much I know. He just… he was afraid you wouldn’t approve. And he did not want to let you down.”

He is not sure if it’s the right answer. He’s not sure if he’s doing more damage than good.

Yuna’s mouth is still a thin line. Ilya’s fingers play with the hem of his shirt, anxious. He turns to Shane’s father.

“He said you read the New Yorker. And you like puzzles. And- and he mentioned that you have banned Monopoly from your game nights because him and Yuna were too competitive about real state.”

It’s nothing. It’s everything. Little crumbs he has collected like treasures over the years.

Finally, their shoulders relax minutely.

“Alright,” David sighs.

“I am sorry. I wish I could be more help. If you need anything… the detective has my number. Please, call me if- if you know something.”

He doesn’t mean for his voice to shake so much. He’s giving too much away. Blinking back tears, he decides on retreat before he does something stupid like cry and confess that he might be in love with their son. That this is killing him. That his heart isn’t beating right ever since he found out. That he is slowly unraveling, like a thread being pulled too far.

He feels their eyes burning on him as he hurries away.

Ilya makes it back to his hotel in a daze. He gets a new room, settles in and sits on the bed in silence.

It’s the first time he has been truly alone since he found out.

Reality comes crashing on him, hard.

He closes his eyes and thinks of Shane, of the way his eyes sparkle when he laughs, how his beautiful freckles almost fade when he blushes, how he is always polite except when Ilya manages to make him relax and misbehave, how he’s always eager to please and desperate to be fucked and so scared of truly asking for what he wants because he still doesn’t understand that he deserves it. Shane. His Shane. Missing, alone, scared, maybe hurt, possibly even- Ilya cannot even touch that possibility. He can’t. A world without Shane Hollander isn’t one he’s interested in living in.

Two and a half weeks. Ilya slept, ate, trained, laughed with his team… all while Shane was being held against his will somewhere. How could his heart keep beating all that time? Shouldn’t his soul have known something had been stolen from him?

There’s a knock on the door.

“Rozanov,” Pike calls, which is annoying but at least doesn’t let him get his hopes up in some crazy fantasy where Hollander finds his way back to him.

Ilya opens the door and Pike enters uninvited.

“So? How did it go?”

“Well, I gave them the tapes. They should see the guy in the car, same as us.”

“Okay, and then they will catch him?”

“It’s not like the movies, Pike. They probably can’t, like, identify him from his face alone. They will see his car, yes, but I don’t think he would have driven to Boston. It’s too many hours. It was probably a rental.”

“Wait. Then what’s the point of all this?” Pike blinks.

“The point is that, you idiot. It is rented. So he must have gotten it somewhere. They will find this and then they will have his name or his bank account or his license. Something!”

“Right,” Pike runs a hand through his hair. “Okay. Right. Yeah. That’s something…”

“Why are you here, anyway?”

“Because we are doing this together, Rozanov. Whether you like it or not. What else am I supposed to do? Just act like nothing is going on while you look for my best friend?”

“Yes.”

“No. No way. Listen, the thing with your cameras, it got me thinking. There were pictures of Shane coming out of training, right? The police don’t have them, but we know there are. And I have… pull, with the training rink security guards.”

“Pull?”

“I get them tickets from time to time, okay? Not the point. The point is we could check those too, for the days the pictures were taken. There are cameras in the parking lot. We can see if we can find whoever was following Shane. The police doesn’t have the dates when he was definitely there, but we do. We have the photos, I was there. I can tell you which days they were taken.”

“That’s… not a terrible idea.”

“Fuck, you don’t have to sound so surprised.”

“Well, I am. It’s compliment, take it,” Ilya says, grabbing his jacket, thankful to have an excuse for movement before his thoughts consume him.

“It doesn’t sound like a compliment,” Hayden groans, following him into the hallway.

Ilya climbs inside Hayden Pike’s soccer mom van again. Such an undignified ride. When Shane is back, he will complain about the things he puts up with for his sake.

They are two minutes into the drive when Ilya’s phone buzzes.

Cliff: hey, heard from the coaches you’re not coming back today?

Cliff: did something happen?

Ilya: police just wanted to ask me something

Cliff: the cops?!

Cliff: shit roz what did you do?

Ilya: nothing don’t worry

Cliff: does this have something to do with the guy who was looking for you yesterday?

Ilya: probably was police

Cliff: maybe

Cliff: didn’t look like a cop, tho

Cliff: didn’t say he was on either

Cliff: I would’ve warned you

Ilya: dw marly

Ilya: probably nothing

Ilya: i will be back soon. keep the guys sharp for me while i am here yes?

Cliff: you got it cap

“Everything alright?” Pike side-eyes him.

“Yes. My team just want to know why I am here.”

“Shit. You haven’t told them, have you?”

“No.” Ilya rolls his eyes. Then turns to Hayden with a frown. “You still think it’s best if no one knows? Shane Hollander, best player in the league, is missing and no one knows. How is that good?”

“I don’t like it, okay? But they said- Detective Grey said that it was risky. That if whoever took Shane got nervous, if this got too much media attention, they might panic and try get- to get rid of him. Whoever has him, they want them to think they are winning.”

“They are. They have him.” Ilya sighs.

Pike shoots him a withering look.

They keep driving in silence.

Ilya can see the rink in the distance when his phone buzzes again. He plans to ignore it, he doesn’t have time for Marleau’s anxiety right now, but then it keeps buzzing. It’s a call. From an unknown number.

His heart speeds up a little. Maybe the Hollanders need something. He told them to call  

“Hello?” He picks up, looking out the window.

“Ilya?”

“Shane!”

Hayden Pike nearly crashes against another car. He recovers quickly, violently swaying to the right, and pulls over to the side of the road. He stares at Ilya, half reaching like he wants to take the phone from him. Ilya would sooner bite Hayden’s fingers off than relinquish the phone right now.

“Oh, thank god!” Shane is saying on the other side. His voice unknots something inside Ilya’s chest. “Are you in Boston? Are you okay?”

“Am I-?” Ilya blinks. “Are you okay? Where are you, Shane?”

“Answer, Ilya!”

“I am okay. I am in Montreal. Who cares, Hollander, where are you?!”

“Okay, good. Good. Listen, I’m sorry. This is- this is going to sound insane but-“

Ilya meets Hayden’s eyes. Shane is spiraling. This isn’t good. He cannot help him if he doesn’t give him information.

“You have been taken. Yes, Hollander, I know.”

“You do?”

“Yes! Tell me where you are!”

“I don’t- I don’t know. Can’t see out the windows and I’m- i don’t think I have much time but I had to-“

“Why are you calling me?! You need to call the police!”

Next to him, Hayden nods enthusiastically.

“I don’t- I had to warn you. Ilya, he knows. He knows about us. He is- fuck, he went out last night, he never misses a homegame, but then he didn’t come back, and I thought-“ Shane’s voice cracks. “I got out of the room. I don’t think I can make it out of the house, and then it’s just highway, but the phone-“

“Where is he?” Hayden hisses, still looking like he wants to take the phone  

“Shane!” Ilya finally finds his voice again, pain and irritation swelling inside him. “Shane, you need to give me something. Anything. Tell me where you are. What you see. Use the GPS on the phone. Please.”

“It’s a landline,” Shane’s laugh is watery, humorless. “I remembered your number. It’s the only one I know. I had to know.”

Ilya closes his eyes. He hates what he is about to do, he wishes he could keep listening to Shane’s voice, but that will not make him safe.

“Shane, listen to me,” his voice is hard, commanding. He tries to pull on authority he only ever has in bed and hopes Shane will respond to it. “I am okay, yes? I am with Hayden. Everyone is okay. I need you to hang up and call the police. You understand? Answer.”

“Yes.”

“Good. Okay, now, you tell them everything you know and they will find you soon. I just need you to be safe until-“

Something happens on the other side of the line. A muffled voice. A man’s. Ilya opens his eyes.

“Fuck, he’s back,” Shane breathes, he sounds terrified. “I have to-”

“Shane!”

The voice grows closer suddenly, loud, thundering  

“-hell do you think you’re doing?!”

“No, no, wait, wait, I’m sorry. I swear, I-“

There’s a loud commotion on the other side of the line. Something crashes. Something falls with a loud thud. There’s a whimper.

“Shane?! Shane!”

The line goes dead.

Ilya is shaking, terror coursing through him in tremors. Hayden stares at him, pale, eyes wide, mirroring his horror. They both listen to the tone, helpless. Powerless. 

Chapter End Notes

(Sorry)

Chapter 4: I’ve lost control of all my senses

Chapter Summary

He doesn’t really come to until he is back in Hayden’s car, head between his knees, breathing heavy. Right. Okay.

This is a panic attack. Or he is dying. He knows which one he prefers.

Chapter Notes

So let’s take bets on who has the worst survival instincts

Ilya’s hands are still shaking as he hands over his phone to the police officer taking his statement. They write down the number, the call time, the duration of it.

He answers their questions automatically. Did he say where he was? No. Was he okay? I don’t know. Is he in immediate danger? I think so. Why did he call you? Ask him when you find him.

He tries to recall every possibly useful detail. Only keeping to himself Shane’s warning. Hayden corroborates his story, looking as ghastly as Ilya feels.

“This will help,” the officer assures them, once she’s done, handing him back his phone. “The line has been disconnected.” Ilya knew that. He’d tried to call half a dozen times on their way here. “But we can try to trace the call. If it’s a landline, like you said, we can even narrow it further. We are mobilizing units as we speak.”

Ilya just nods, lets himself fall on one of the waiting room’s chairs. Hayden sits next to him. They don’t talk.

Time becomes a blur. Ilya replays the conversation countless times in his head. Shane’s fear, his worry over Ilya as if he wasn’t the one in danger, his broken laugh. If he closes his eyes, he can picture it all, like a horror movie, leading to that end, the terrible whimper of the man he loves. Hurt. Out of reach.

Two hours later, Detective Grey walks out to meet them. Ilya and Hayden jump to their feet. She looks exhausted and… defeated.

“I am sorry,” she sighs, and Ilya’s world comes crashing down like a forgotten sandcastle under the high tide. “We found the place, but it had been already abandoned. We couldn’t find Mister Hollander.”

Hayden falls back down on the chair. Ilya fights against despair to stay on his feet.

“So that’s it? All for nothing?”

“It’s not nothing. We are analyzing the house. It looks like Hollander had been kept there all this time. We are confident this will give us new evidence that will help us locate him.”

“You are confident! Ah, good!” Ilya bites back, sarcasm and anger swirling inside him. “All very good. You haven’t done shit. Two weeks and he is still missing.”

“Mister Rozanov, we are doing everything we can at the moment. The evidence you have provided so far has been very helpful. But I must remind you that this is an active police investigation. So, unless you have something else to share, I need you to back off and let us do our work.”

Ilya clenches his jaw.

Hayden stands back up, puts a hand on his arm. Ilya turns, feeling murderous, ready to bite his head off, but Hayden doesn’t even flinch.

“Thank you, detective. I’ll make sure Rozanov makes it to his hotel alright. Please, if there’s any news…”

“We’ll let you know when we can.”

Hayden nods and all but drags Ilya out of the station. He wants to fight back, growl and punch and stay planted there demanding the police fix this, but he finds himself unable to even try. The fight just drains out of him as despair settles in his bones.

He doesn’t really come to until he is back in Hayden’s car, head between his knees, breathing heavy. Right. Okay.

This is a panic attack. Or he is dying. He knows which one he prefers.

“I’m gonna need you to breathe, buddy,” Hayden instructs, still driving. He’s using that voice. His ‘dad’ voice. “Ilya, I swear, if you choke and die in my car and I have to explain to Shane I let his boyfriend die while he was kidnapped I’m so gonna bring you back to life just to kill you myself.”

“I’m not his boyfriend,” Ilya says, and his voice sounds whiney in his own ears. It’s not a complaint, it’s a lament. “We are nothing.”

“You’re an idiot. He called you to warn you, when he is the one in trouble. He’s clearly chosen his priorities. You say you two are nothing again, and I will beat your fucking ass.”

“You couldn’t if you tried, Pike,” Ilya huffs, but he finds it a little easier to focus now. Enough so that he can straighten his back a little, look around. “We are not going to my hotel.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not gonna fucking help Shane. So we are gonna stick to my original plan and go get the footage from the rink parking lot camera’s.”

“Why are you not having panic attacks?” Ilya says and he doesn’t mean for it to sound as accusatory as it does. But fuck it. He’s living in a world where Hayden fucking Pike is holding himself together better than him and that’s one thing too many for his already crumbling psyche. Then Hayden says:

“Way ahead of you, man. I’ve been panicking for over two weeks. I am all cried out.”

Which… fair. Ilya straightens himself and takes a deep breath. He looks at Hayden, who gives him one quick nod and returns his eyes to the road, knuckles white around the steering wheel.

For the first time in his life, Ilya Rozanov is thankful that Shane has Hayden Pike as a best friend.

The tapes are easier to get than he expected. Hayden Pike strolls into the rink with a smile and his annoyingly American charm and walks out with two external memory drives with hours worth of security footage.

They take it back to Pike’s house, set camp in the living room and start reviewing.

The pictures help. Hayden provides some context: “I remember this day, I think it was a Wednesday, because I had to pick Jade and Ruby after their ballet class” or “Ah, that’s definitely Saturday, because I talked Shane into coming for a while after practice” or “That’s gotta be by the end of the first month because he hadn’t cut his hair yet.”

Ilya writes it all down, next to the angle and direction from where the pictures had been taken (never the same one, which points to the stalker being careful).

It’s still hours of footage to review.

He speeds up a little the hours Shane spends inside, though carefully tracking any movement from the cars. Then, when Shane comes out, he slows down, bends over as close to the screen as he can, wishing he could see his freckles though the screen. He’s always more relaxed on his way out, like the ice has healed a little in him. When he is with Hayden, he smiles, talking, mostly listening to the other ramble on and on. When he is alone, he is always checking his phone. Who is he texting? Is it Ilya? Is he checking for new messages? Are those smiles for him?

Not getting distracted is an uphill battle. He wants to pause, to sink in that moment, to stare at the screen and dream it’s him walking next to Shane in the sunlight. But he doesn’t. He grits his teeth, pushes on, watches him go and writes down which cars move after he leaves, discarding his teammates and coaches, growing slowly familiar with the rink’s staff and usual suspects.

Hayden falls asleep in his corner of the couch, the video still running on his laptop. His arms are crossed, his lips parted, his head thrown back. He snores. Ilya rolls his eyes, but can’t find it in himself to be truly mad about it. I’ve been panicking for over two weeks, he’s said before. Ilya is not sure he would still be sane if he’d known all along.

He takes Pike’s laptop, keeps going. At some point his eyesight begins to blur. He’s reminded he’s been awake since yesterday morning, before their early practice for the game. He feels like he has lived several lifetimes since then.

After a while, Ilya is sure he has it narrowed down to three vehicles. A black Sedan. A green Honda. A red Jetta. It’s something. It’s nothing. Not yet.

He doesn’t even know what he’s gonna do once they have it. Scavenge the whole city for every single car matching that description? Take the lead to the police and somehow explain how they got it without having to bring up the pictures they don’t even know exist?

This is what he gets for listening to Hayden fucking Pike’s plan. Half-assed ideas without proper solutions.

His phone buzzes. The ghost of the call from earlier today (god, was that really just today?) has his hands shaking as he pulls it out. His heart sinks to the floor when he sees it’s just Marly texting him.

Cliff: hey, cap, how’s everything going?

Cliff: any news when you are coming back?

Cliff: what should I tell the guys?

Ilya sighs. He really doesn’t have the time or the brainpower to deal with his teammate right now. It’s not like it’s going to-

Wait. He scrolls back, feels his heart speed up.

Ilya: how did you know the guy wasn’t a cop?

Cliff: ????

Ilya: the guy that was asking for me

Ilya: you said he didn’t look like a cop

Ilya: why

Cliff: he just didn’t

Cliff: I mean

Cliff: he looked more like a fan

Cliff: first I thought he just wanted your autograph

Cliff: but then I saw he had a fucking Montreal jersey

Cliff: so I guess not?

Ilya feels the gears in his brain spin so fast he might overheat.

“Pike! Wake up!” He shakes the man’s knee.

“Wha- what? What! M’awake! M’up!”

“The guy, the fucker that was texting him, you said he talked about the games?”

Hayden blinks, dazed, like his brain is rebooting.

“What?

“What. Did. He. Talk!”

“Sorry, yeah, yeah. Shit about the games, about how good Shane had played and shit. He asked about practice too, what drills we’d done, that shit. Why?”

“I think he’s fan.”

“What?”

“He’s fan. Metros fan.”

Ilya: what did he look like?

Cliff: idk… normal. Why?

Ilya: is important

Ilya: please

Cliff: tall

Cliff: big

Cliff: like muscles big

Cliff: short blond hair

Cliff: Hollander jersey

Cliff: I think he had a neck tattoo but I’m not sure

Ilya starts scourging through the tapes, looking for-

“There!” He points at the man on the screen. He usually stayed in the car but Ilya had see it get out two or three times to have a smoke. “That’s him.”

Hayden frowns, squinting at the screen.

“You sure?”

“Is the guy. Marly said he was looking for me at the hotel. Shane said so too. And he’s there every day of the pictures.”

“Holy shit.” Hayden murmurs. And then, “Holy shit!”

Ilya stares at the screen. Jaw clenched. Still unsure what to do now. But Hayden is still high with their little victory, on his feet now, pacing around.

“Okay, okay, this is big. We’ve got the asshole. Wow. Holy shit. Oh, man, I’m so scoring twice tomorrow like I promised Taden.”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. Taden. Security guard. I just said I’d score tomorrow against Florida.”

“You’re playing tomorrow? Here in Montreal?”

Hayden winces. “Yeah. I don’t- I haven’t wanted to play, all this time, but Coach insisted and, well, Shane would kill me if I didn’t at least-“

Ilya isn’t listening anymore. He’s stuck in a loop. The phone call.

“He never misses a homegame.”

“What?” Hayden blinks at him.

“Shane said, the guy never misses a homegame. He’s a fan. He’s…”

“He’s gonna be there tomorrow night,” Hayden gasps, wide eyes pinning Ilya in place. “He- we can find him.”

“Better. We can follow him,” Ilya stands up, grabs Hayden by the shoulders, because he needs the contact to ground himself. “We can find Shane.”

Ilya takes a drag of his cigarette, watching the empty parking lot. He cracks open the window. The muffled cheers from the crowd inside the Bell Center pour in. He exhales, lets the smoke curl against the windshield. His eyes never leave the green Honda. His heart is beating hard in his chest.

The game is over. People are already starting to pour out.

This is the last homegame in three weeks.

He will not let Shane be lost for that long again. He isn’t sure Shane has that much time left.

Pike: I’m changing

Pike: I’ll be out in two minutes

Pike: do you see him?

Ilya barely spares a glance at his phone, his eyes quickly bouncing back to the Honda. He feels his body start to shake with anticipatory adrenaline. Another drag of the cigarette helps settle his nerves. Barely. He can’t fuck up. Not this. He will never forgive himself if he does.

A face appears in the crowd. Short hair, metros jersey. Neck tattoo A fucking twenty four on his chest. ‘Hollander’ sprawled across his shoulders. Ilya clenches his jaw so hard that his teeth ache.

Without taking his eyes from the man, as he walks past him, five cars down, he texts Hayden.

Ilya: i see him

Ilya: hurry

Ilya: im not losing him

The man walks looking around slightly, tense. Ilya bends over slightly to stay out of his sight. Finally, he climbs in the Honda. Ilya turns the ignition on. The soccer mom van pours to life under him. It’s just another car in between dozens waking up around the parking lot.

The Honda’s headlights turn on. Ilya waits. Wheels start to turn, clumsily getting out of the parking spot. Ilya holds his breath. When the Honda starts moving away, he takes his foot off the breaks.

A loud THUD on the passenger window makes him jump out of his skin.

“Jesus fuck!” Ilya bounces, glaring at the man tapping at the window. He unlocks the door. “Get the fuck in!”

Hayden Pike, still sweating and with his equipment half on, jumps into the seat, slams the door shut and pants: “go, go, go!”

Ilya doesn’t need to be told twice.

The house is… normal. Small, shitty, in a dark neighborhood. Ilya parks two blocks away. The night falls on them, a quiet blanket filled only by barking dogs faraway and the odd passing car on a nearby street. 

Ilya opens the driver’s door.

“What are you doing?” Hayden hisses.

“Making sure he’s here.”

“Rozanov, you can’t just- you can’t just walk in there!”

“I won’t,” he says. It’s maybe a lie. He isn’t sure yet. “I will just take a look. Stay here.”

“Wait, don’t-“

Ilya closes the door and walks away. He’s done waiting. He needs to know. He can’t go another minute wondering whether Shane Hollander is alive or not. He can’t. He won’t.

Half hunching, he sneaks across the street, jumps the dry hedges and rushes across the weedy yard until his back is pressed against the house’s back wall. His heart beats so hard inside his chest, he can’t hear the barking dogs anymore.

Deep breaths. Be here. Focus.

Ilya edges closer to the window and chances a look inside. The window looks into an old kitchen, and past the kitchen there is a dark living room with the flashing light of the tv. A man, the man, stands between both spaces, a glass already in his hand. Whiskey. Rum. Something dark with a big chunk of ice.

He watches the man walk to the living room, cross it and reach a door on the opposite side. The door opens. And there, tied to the wooden chair with duct tape, is Shane Hollander. Ilya’s sight tunnel-focuses on him. He’s so far, he can’t see him well enough, but he’s here.  Shane. Shane.

Ilya: Shane

Ilya: here

Ilya: call police

Hayden: what? He is?

Hayden: fuk what do I say

Hayden: what do I tell them

The man walks into the room. It looks like a studio. He walks out of view. Shane’s eyes follow him. Ilya types hurriedly.

Ilya: anything

Ilya: anonymous caller

Ilya: worried neighbor

Ilya: just say you hear screams

The man comes back into view. He has a hammer in his hand. Shane starts trying to shake in his chair.

Hayden: but there are no screams

Ilya: CALL THEM NOW

He stops thinking. Ilya slams his shoulder against the kitchen door like he’s trying to tackle a player through the boards. Once. Twice. Trice.

He stumbles in, huffing. So much for being stealthy.

His eyes find Shane, through the door across the living room. Looking at him. Wide eyed. The man is gone.

Ilya looks around until he finds a knife. He takes it and with it in hand hurries forward.

Shane is trying to scream through the piece of duct tape across his lips. Ilya kneels before him. His hands immediately go up, trembling. He cups Shane’s face in his hand, runs his thumb across his freckles. There’s dried blood on his forehead and a swollen bruise on his left temple.

“Shane,” he breathes, as something in his heart slots back into place.

His fingers ghost across Shane’s cheek, trying to free him from the tape but it’s too stuck to his skin, he can’t find a way to do so without hurting him. One thing at a time.

“Is okay. I got you,” he whispers, taking the knife to saw through the binding of his right hand.

Shane struggles the whole time, hand flying up as soon as it’s free. His hand rips the tape from his lips with a roughness that has to be painful. The first thing he does is scream:

“Ilya, behind you!”

The warning saves his life. Ilya barely has time to turn around to see the hammer falling on him. He brings up his left arm, blocking the hit that still manages to knock him off balance.

He doesn’t get a hammer to the skull but his head hits the concrete floor all the same. Not like that would stop him. Ilya’s back on his feet in a matter of seconds, yelling as he tackles the man who dared hurt Shane. They both crash against a piece of furniture that might as well be a bookshelf or a bannister or a desk. All Ilya knows is that they hit wood and then the floor, surrounded by a menagerie of objects that fall and crash into pieces around them.

His fists find flesh. Once. Twice.

Something harder than a fist connects to Ilya’s head with force, knocking him off the man. His vision swims. With a groan, he falls on his back and before he can collect his bearings there’s pressure around his throat. He gasps for air, finds none in his lungs.

Far away, Shane’s voice is screaming something he can’t quite make out.

Then the pressure is gone. Something —someone— crashes against the furniture again. Ilya gasps for air, coughs desperately. On his right, the trashing continues. He finally turns to see Hayden Pike and the other man struggling against each other.

Ilya gets up, stumbling a little, turns to Shane, whose eyes are bouncing between the fistfight and Ilya.

“Shane! I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” he kneels again, trying to rip the tape off with his bare fingers. He lost the knife somewhere.

There’s a crash behind them.

“Hayden!” Shane screams.

Ilya turns, just in time to see the man, face bloodied and red with anger, reaching for him. He stands up at his full height and braces, ready to fight back.

It’s nothing like a fight in the ice. It’s clumsy and messier but his knuckles find bone at least three times before they fall back to the floor. This time, however, his knees are on either side of the asshole, and he punches down again. Once. Twice. Before the third time, something sharp and vicious lodges just under his ribs. He cries out in pain, as his legs give in, and he crumbles on the floor, involuntarily curling into himself with pain.

His vision swims in and out of focus. He sees Hayden’s back, as he bends over Shane, helping him to his feet. He sees the assailant on his feet, stumbling towards them. It’s more instinct than sense that makes him lunge forward and wrap his arms around the man’s ankles, making him trip before he can touch them.

“Run!” Ilya scream, holding to his legs like dear life.

Hayden, holding Shane up, looks at him with pure terror in his bruised face.

“Ilya!” Shane groans, through obvious pain, barely keeping himself up.

The man kicks and trashes. Ilya tightens his hold.

“Hayden, fucking run!”

Distantly, he hears Shane protest as Hayden forces him out of the room. A kick connects with Ilya’s jaw, sending him sprawling on the floor. He sees bright stars and dark spots, the world turns nauseatingly. The man gets up, grabs the hammer. Ilya’s eyes struggle to focus on it.

He sends a last helpless thought to his mother’s spirit. Please, look after him.

Then there’s more shouting in a language he can’t understand right now. Several navy uniforms break into the room, shouting all at once in a way that makes his head ache.

The last thing Ilya remembers before passing out is the way Shane’s skin felt under his thumb as he brushed his freckles.

Chapter End Notes

Well good news for everyone who asked for a Shane POV… next chapter!

Chapter 5: in my thoughts, you’re far away

Chapter Summary

“God, man, these last couple weeks have been the fucking worst. I’m just so glad we found you.”

We.

Shane looks at his hands, carefully folded on his lap over the hospital bed sheet. His heart hammers violently in his chest as he carefully sidesteps the question he actually wants to ask:

“So how did you find me?”

Chapter Notes

Yes, there is now one more chapter in this because, again, I miscalculated chapter length. You can consider it an epilogue :)

There’s flashing lights, red and blue. Firm hands usher them forward but Shane keeps trying to fight back, to go back into the place he was desperate to escape hours ago. He sees the flurry of movement, armed cops with their vests and their helmets, hears them yelling.

Then a bang rips through the night.

Ilya.

Next to him Hayden winces at the sound.

Shane stares into the house, trembling, waiting. A paramedic tries to guide him to an ambulance while three of his colleagues rush inside.

Someone is speaking but Shane’s ears are ringing. Someone pushes a gurney inside. Someone says the word “body”.

The final threads of his sanity shatter.

He wakes up in a soft bed. His eyelids feel heavy, his head like cotton. He tries to move and finds his arm bound. Panic shoots through him, making his heart rattle frantically in his chest. He needs to get out, he needs to escape, he has to-

“Shhh, baby, is okay,” his mother’s voice, her hands sooth him, brushing his hair off his forehead. Shane knows her touch even with his eyes closed. “It’s just an IV. You are in the hospital. You are okay.”

“Mom?” He says, but doesn’t get to hear the answer before sleep claims him again.

The next time he wakes up it’s better. He is able to open his eyes, there’s light in the room, space to breathe, and his parents stand at either side of his bed, teary eyed.

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing he says, because he knows how much pain they must have been in, how scared.

“Oh, honey,” his mother cries and bends down to hug him. His father holds his hand tightly, like he’s afraid Shane will be taken away any second.

The touch is comforting and welcome and it eases a fear that’s been gnawing at him for literal months. But something in his heart is still painfully splintered. There’s a hole there. Something is missing. Shane feels numb.

The first few hours are nerve wracking and emotionally exhausting. His head is a bit slow on the uptake as his mother explains his medical situation: broken ribs, a couple dislocated fingers, a moderate concussion, dehydration and mild malnutrition. They don’t say it, but it’s implied that he’s quite lucky that this is the extent of it after being held captive for two weeks by a psychopath. His mother also says they had to give him a sedative in the scene. He doesn’t remember that, but the knowledge sits heavy in the pit of his stomach, nagging at him, threatening to confirm an idea that keeps slipping away between his fingers.

They keep talking but none of the information they are giving him is the one he truly needs. Suspicion pools in his stomach like poison.

Shane sees that his mother is aching to mange the fall out, to tell him the details, the game plan, to ask him to explain what his been through. Luckily, it’s his father to intervenes and convinces her to go get some tea in the cafeteria while Shane rests up a bit more. He is infinitely thankful for the chance to close his eyes and sink back into oblivion for now.

His parents leave, after letting him know there’s two cops keeping watch outside his room.

Shane sinks back into the pillow and blinks back tears until he falls asleep.

Hayden comes to visit that afternoon. He has a nasty bruise blooming on his jaw and an even nastier cut across his cheekbone, held together by stitches, but he smiles brightly when his eyes find Shane.

“Hey, man,” he says, voice wavering like he’s barely holding back tears. “It’s so good to see you.”

“You look like hell,” Shane quips, in a stupid attempt to hold his own emotion at bay.

“You’re one to talk,” Hayden’s face finally crumbles as he crosses the space between the door and the bed and all but collapses against his chest. “Fuck, I missed you.”

“So much you had to come get me?” Shane smiles, tries very hard to keep his tone light even as tears escape his control.

“Always, man. I’ve got your back. You know it,” Hayden’s voice is muffled by his clothes. Finally, he sits on a chair by Shane’s bed and seems to calm down a little. “God, man, these last couple weeks have been the fucking worst. I’m just so glad we found you.”

We.

Shane looks at his hands, carefully folded on his lap over the hospital bed sheet. His heart hammers violently in his chest as he carefully sidesteps the question he actually wants to ask:

“So how did you find me?”

“Well… I kinda bribed Taden to get me the rink’s security footage. I’m pretty sure the police had it already but they didn’t know… couldn’t use the photos to compare. We found them in your place, cross checked them with the video.”

The photos in his house. Cold dread drips down Shane’s spine as he turns to look at Hayden. In his defense, his best friend doesn’t lie. He meets his eyes and says:

“Yeah, I know about Rozanov.”

Shane clenches the bedsheet, fighting to control his breathing. His eyes focus back on his lap, as if that could be enough to deny reality. He can hear the heart monitor speeding up, but the sound is distant, disconnected from him.

“Hey, hey, man, look at me,” Hayden tries to grab his arm.

Shane flinches away instinctively.

“Sorry, sorry,” Hayden’s voice sounds small. “Please, hey, Shane, listen. I don’t care, okay? I don’t give a damn. I mean, I was pretty shocked, but given the last forty eight hours, this is like the last thing you gotta be worrying about, okay? Shane. Shane, please, look at me. It’s fine. No one else knows. He said you are friends. That you have been for a long time. That’s it.”

It’s not that. The panic. It’s not that. It’s worse.

“Friends don’t die for each other.”

“Of course I would d- wait you mean he- Shane! Shane, look at me, Rozanov’s alive.”

The words don’t quite land. It’s like the wrong key or the wrong lock. Or maybe he’s too numbed by pain to understand them. All he does is turn his eyes to Hayden, hoping to make sense of it.

There was so much blood. And then the shot.

“What?”

“Shit, man, no one told you? He’s okay. Shane, he’s okay.”

The words finally land… like a gut punch. Shane lets himself look at the thought he’s been dodging all this time. The pain. The loss.

“He had surgery yesterday. They won’t tell me shit because of privacy reasons or whatever but they did tell us he’s okay. He got like crazy lucky, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked. He’s fine. He’s gonna be fine.”

Shane finally breaks. Hayden nearly jumps onto the bed to hold him and lets him cry on his shoulder.

Two hours after visiting hours are over, Shane is dozing off when the voices outside his door set him in high alert. The police officers are arguing with someone and Shane sees it clearly: he’s back. He’s back for him. His pulse skyrockets as he stares at the door, frozen in terror, unable to even run or hide if-

A third voice replies. Shane would know it in a crowd of thousands. His words are incomprehensible across the closed door but his accent is unmistakable. Ilya Rozanov.

He gets up, grabbing the IV bag with his left hand, both for support and to be able to move. His ribs hurt like hell, his body is still weak and fuzzy, but he would crawl if he needed to.

This is not the way to act about your rival, a voice inside his head cautions, wary of prying eyes.

This is not the way to act about a guy you just hook up with every couple months, reminds him another voice, afraid of humiliation.

This is not what we do. We are supposed to pretend.

But then he remembers Ilya smashing through the door, looking both feral and beautiful, like a vengeful angel. He’d come for him.

Shane opens the door, just as Ilya is pleading:

“…ask him if he-“ Ilya stumbles when his eyes meet Shane, his mouth remains open mid word.

On either side of the door, the police officers turn around and arch their eyebrows with equal surprise. All three stare at him. Shane feels suddenly very exposed in his hospital gown. He’s barefoot and he hates it deeply. The floor is too cold, probably dirty from countless shoes coming in and out all day. He’s regretting his choices right about now.

“Ask who what?” He says.

The officers look at each other.

“Sorry, Mister Hollander. We were explaining to Mister Rozanov that you are not taking any more visitors today.”

“I am not visitor, I am patient too, look!” Rozanov raises his arm, showing a paper wristband. “The rules are not for patients. Hollander, tell them.”

Shane’s heart does a little flip when he’s addressed.

“He can come in. He’s a friend.”

Hayden said that’s what Rozanov had told the police and his parents all this time. Everyone had had trouble believing it. Such a simple lie and even that was being analyzed.

The officers hesitate too, sharing a look. Clearly, they had to be aware of the rivalry, Metros fans even, judging by the nasty looks they shot Rozanov as they finally let him inside.

Shane closes the door and, again feeling a little too exposed, he turns back to his bed. He wishes he had pants. At least Ilya seems to be wearing some sort of paper discardable pajamas.

“You shouldn’t be walking around,” Rozanov says, following him.

Shane bristles immediately.

“Me? I’m not the one that got fucking stabbed! What are you doing here, Rozanov?”

“It was only a little stabbing,” Rozanov shrugs, like Shane hasn’t been torturing himself replaying that moment in his head for hours. “Some stitches and I am fine.”

It would be more convincing if he didn’t look in so much pain as he walked, favoring his right side. A violent bruise bloomed like a flower across his square jaw, and another shiner framed his left eye in greens and purples, but he looked entirely too unbothered by it.

“I’m not the one that was kidnapped by a psychopath,” he shrugs, eyeing him intensely as he climbs back into bed. Shane refuses to let his pain show, holding on to whatever dignity he has left.

Ilya sits on the chair Hayden had used earlier. When he bends down, his face betrays pain. Shane fights back the instinct to jump off the bed to check on him. He busies himself with the bedsheets to keep his hands to himself.

“You haven’t told me what you’re doing here right now,” he says.

“Concussion protocol is boring. I’ve been alone in my bedroom too long. I needed to move and I… well, they wouldn’t tell me how you were doing. So I thought I check myself.”

“Oh,” Shane says because he’s unsure what else to add. It hadn’t occurred to him that Ilya might be worried (lies lies lies). “I’m okay. Thanks to you.”

“Yes, was very heroic,” Ilya grins, leaning back on his chair. “Very dashing. Maybe the city will stop burning my dolls and start making statues in my honor.”

“You wouldn’t like that,” Shane laughs. “You like that they hate you here.”

“I like that I am good enough to be worth hating.”

“You’re an asshole,” Shane rolls his eyes. What he wants to say is that Ilya is good enough to be worth loving too. He decides for something halfway there. “I mean it. Thank you for finding me. You… you didn’t have to do that.”

“Of course I did,” Ilya replies, immediate, firm. A little too earnestly in a way that makes Shane unsteady. Then he seems to catch himself. “I’m good at finding what is mine. Like your cock. Which just happened to be attached to you.”

Shane laughs again, harder, then winces. “Fuck, don’t make me- hah, ouch. Fucking ribs.”

Ilya leans forwards slightly, eyes on Shane as if he could measure the damage, see the bruises blooming under his cloths with x-ray vision. The idea of Ilya having a look at his naked body sends a shiver up his spine, heat blooms between his legs and he has to make an effort to hide any slight chubbing with the bedsheets. His face feels burning red.

But when he looks back at the man, there’s no actual hunger in his eyes. Something dark has settled there.

“You didn’t tell me. Why?”

Oh. Right. Fuck.

“I’m sorry. I know I should’ve warned you, but I never thought he’d follow me all the way to Boston. And then the photos, I just freaked out and I didn’t know how to tell you without-“

“I don’t care about the fucking photos, Hollander. Why didn’t you tell me you were being stalked?”

“What? Why would I tell you?”

“Because-!” Ilya starts, then stumbles.

Shane feels like they both just stepped on a landmine. He’s not sure what to say, that he didn’t think it was any of Rozanov’s business? That he didn’t think Rozanov would care? Since the man apparently cared enough to make a weird alliance with Hayden Pike and go out of his way to find him and save his life, the argument feels a little void now.

“It wasn’t just you. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t wanna- I felt like, if I did, it would become real, you know?”

“You told Hayden.”

“Yeah, well, only when the pictures involved his fucking kids. And I- I was going to tell you about them too. I just thought it was better to do it in person next time we…played. I didn’t really think this was something I should tell you in text.”

And he’d been scared. Scared of Ilya’s reaction, of the possibility that he’d freak out and decide this thing between them has finally become too risky. That Shane being followed by random stalkers meant their hookups were no longer convenient. If he’d known about the threats… Shane had later wanted to kick himself for not telling him, not warning him to be safe.

“I’m sorry.”

Rozanov’s eyes soften, he leans back on his chair, slowly. Shane suspects he’s in more pain than he’s letting on.

“Is okay. You’re back now. Which is good because Montreal was so boring without you, Hollander. Total snooze fest.”

Shane laughs and then complains about his ribs but can’t even bring himself to regret it. They keep talking about hockey for a while. He doesn’t remember falling asleep.

The hospital room opens.

Shane jumps awake immediately on high alert, only to find Detective Grey standing by the door. Her eyes don’t fall on him, though, but to his left where Ilya has jumped to his feet. His hair is messy, his eyes still puffy from sleeping, his stance a little awkward through the pain, but he’s standing there by his side like he’s gearing up for a fight. Grey looks between them, expression blank.

“Good morning, Mister Hollander. I didn’t know you still had company.”

“I was bored,” Rozanov says flatly.

“We fell asleep,” Shane tries to amend but it sounds lame even to him.

“I see,” Grey nods. “I am sorry to interrupt your sleep, then, but we were hoping to get your statement today if you’re feeling up to it.”

Shane is too media trained to sigh heavily. He gives one firm nod, squaring his shoulders.

“Of course.”

Detective Grey, however, takes one look at him and seems to hesitate. “We don’t have to do it right now, though. We could wait until your parents are here.”

Shane tries not to let the comment sting. He knows it’s a kindness on her part. It just makes him feel like a little kid.

“It’s fine. I don’t think they need to know all the… details.”

Rozanov balances his weight next to him, brow furrowed. Grey pulls out a recorder and a notebook. “Do you mind?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“I should…” Rozanov starts to head for the door and the threat of his absence sends a spike of panic through Shane.

“Actually, could- could Rozanov stay? Would that be okay? I just- it’s a lot. I could use a friend here.”

Maybe Shane should’ve asked first, give. Rozanov the option to say ‘no’. He figures he could still make an excuse to leave. Instead, he freezes where he stands, in the middle of the room, and suddenly looks like they would have to drag him kicking and screaming out of this room. His steady resolve is so dependable that it makes something inside Shane’s chest ache. Grey is still watching them.

“Alright. He can stay. As long as he remains quiet and doesn’t intervene.”

“He won’t,” Shane assures her, firmly.

Rozanov seems happy to obey. He saunters back to his chair and sits down, this time not letting any signs of discomfort show.

“Okay, let’s begin,” Grey clicks the recorder on. “This is detective Lucy Grey, taking Shane Hollander’s statement. Mister Hollander, when did you first come into contact with Mister Adam Creek?”

Shane takes a deep breath, trying to order the facts in his head, to sift through the horror and guilt that surrounds them. He should stick to the facts, right? That’s what they need.

“I got the first message on January 8th. It was… harmless, just a ‘hello’ from some unknown number. I didn’t know who it was from, I thought maybe someone I had forgotten to save, so I continued the conversation normally, trying to figure out…” he feels nauseous recalling it. Would all of this had happened if he’d been smart enough not to encourage it? “I probably shouldn’t have. I didn’t mean- anyway, then it started getting weird, he started asking very personal questions and I still had no idea who they might be. So I freaked out. I blocked him. But then, next morning there was a new message, from a new number, pushing the conversation. I thought it must have been some nosy fan or a journalist from one of those tabloids, because the questions were so weird like ‘what do you eat before your games’ or ‘do you always wear the same sweatpants on Tuesday’s’ or ‘I bet it was nice having the afternoon off today’. It started to freak me out. I felt watched. I kept blocking him but then a new number would appear like nothing.”

“Stupid questions, probably very boring answers, too,” Rozanov says, shifting in his chair.

Shane closes his eyes, thankful for the interruption, and breathes deeply. His voice is shaking and he hates it. He hates how exposed he feels.

“Anyway, I- I thought it would die down. But then I started getting pictures of myself delivered in the mail. Going to practice, after the games, going for a run around my neighborhood. There were even some with Hayden’s kids, and I- fuck, I was pretty paranoid and freaked out by then. I wanted to tell someone but it felt like… too big. I thought I’d do it after our trip to Boston in February.”

“Why after Boston?” Detective Grey frowns. 

Because I needed my rival to fuck my brains out and help me stop thinking about this for a fucking minute, I needed to feel safe from the world and I only feel that way with him.

“Distance. I thought I’d be safe there, so far from Montreal. That he wouldn’t follow me all the way there. I was so sure…”

He very pointedly doesn’t look at Rozanov as he speaks. He just keeps his eyes forward.

“I got more pictures delivered that night. Of- of me visiting Rozanov after the game,” he feels sick all over again remembering.

“More valuable pictures. Idiot. He could have sold them, they would’ve made more money with my face on them,” Rozanov says, matter of factly.

Shane glares daggers at him. There were pictures of them kissing. It’s a miracle that Adam was too busy harassing him to even think about selling them.

“Mister Rozanov,” Grey warns.

“Sorry,” he says, sounding anything but.

“Please continue, Mister Hollander.”

“Okay, well, after that he got mad. He couldn’t understand that Rozanov and I are friends. He started calling me a traitor, said I’d been playing both teams, probably throwing games or something. He was- the way he talked, I could tell he blamed Rozanov, as if he’d tainted me or some bullshit. It started getting threatening.”

Maybe if you can no longer suck his cock you will remember who the enemy is. He has always been a problem anyway. Dont worry. I will make sure he gets what he deserves for breaking you. He will pay for it.

“That’s when I went to the police.”

“You didn’t tell us about the pictures, though. Or about Mister Rozanov.”

“I-“

Shane gathers his thought desperately trying to come up with something that makes sense. Hysterically, he tries to think of what Rozanov would say in his place. He’s always been the better deflector. He finds his eyes now, steadies himself. He can do this to protect them both. He’s not ready to lose it. Facts. Stick to the facts.

“I am a private person. So is Rozanov. I did mention to the police in my initial statement that there had been pictures, but my intimacy had already been violated and at the time I did not want to share more of my or my friends’ lives. It was… probably stupid, or risky, but that was my thinking at the time.”

Detective Grey hums in response and gives the slightest nod. Shane still isn’t sure if she believes him or sees right through him, but she doesn’t push.

“What happened after that?”

“It got worse. The messages. The photos. The anger. And then one day, he-“

Fuck.

Shane closes his eyes, tries to swallow around the lump in his throat. Rough steady fingers wrap around his forearm. He’d know that touch anywhere. Shane opens his eyes and sees Rozanov’s hand wrapped around his arm, close to his friction-burned wrist. When he ventures a look at him, he finds Rozanov’s face set, not giving anything away. A friend supporting a friend.

“I was taking a nap after practice when the door busted open. I got up, tried to get away but he was blocking the door. I tried to fight back but he was- he was bigger than I expected, stronger. So I just ran upstairs, I tried to get to my phone to ask for help, but he tripped me before I could reach it. I hit my head against the night table, I think. I’m not sure. After that I was kinda out of it. Concussion, probably. I don’t remember a lot after.”

Rozanov’s touch is still firm, grounding. Part of Shane feels like he’s preparing to fight back, to hold on tighter if someone tries to yank Shane away from him.

“I woke up in a house. It was- I don’t think it was his to begin with. It looked like a hide out. It was filled with Metros merch and photos and posters and stuff like he’d bought old broken sticks online and used gym towels and shit. I just-“ he shudders. “I think I was just meant to be part of the collection. Some big prize.”

Rozanov’s breathing is a little louder now. Deeper. Like he has to breathe on purpose.

“I begged him to let me go, but he wouldn’t budge. He kept me in a room, let me move around it, but then when he came in he’d have a gun, make sure I didn’t try anything. He’d give me food, try to make small talk. He checked on my concussion, said he didn’t want me damaged.”

Damaged. Tainted. Like he was nothing but spoiled goods.

“He never missed a game on tv. I knew our schedule so that’s kinda what helped me keep track of time. Then, for the home games, he would leave. He’d tie me up to the bedpost before, said he didn’t want me getting any ideas while he was gone.”

Rozanov’s thumb moves slightly, almost brushing the reddened skin of his wrists. Shane keeps his eyes on Detective Grey, afraid that if he looks down at his hand, she will too and Rozanov will let go.

“Then we played Boston. He was frantic all day, I could hear him buzzing with anticipation. He said- He told me he would fix it. That l would be so happy when I was the only one on top. And I knew he meant-“

Shane has to look at Ilya now. He can’t help it. He needs to look at his face and remind himself he is alive and here with him before he can continue.

“He left me again. The game was on in the other room, I could listen to it. So I knew Rozanov was alright but then, after the game Adam didn’t come back. And I started freaking out. All night, he was out and I kept thinking he was going to fucking kill Ilya. For me. I just couldn’t- so I kept trying to get out. It was almost morning. I was still tied with a rope to the bed, so I…” he raises his right hand, shows his splinted thumb and index finger. “I dislocated my fingers to get out of it.”

Rozanov makes a sound, then. Like a kicked animal. Shane ventures a look and finds his eyes closed, his jaw clenched. Better get on with it then.

“I’d busted them before, training or in fights. It’s not really- it’s no big deal, it was easy,” he explains to Grey. “Then I kicked the door open. It took… several tries. Way too long. It was already morning when I got out of the bedroom but Adam wasn’t home yet and I thought- fuck I thought he was burying his body or something. So I- first I saw if I could get out but the place was pretty damn shuttered and I didn’t have much time. So I tried calling Rozanov.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Grey asks. 

“I had to warn him. I had to try at least. I was going to call the police after but-”

“And you knew Mister Rozanov’s number?”

“He’s had the same one since we met,” Shane states firmly, like it’s not a damming confession. “I just memorized it. I like numbers, stats, measurements. I just remembered it.”

“Okay,” Grey concedes.

“Anyway, like I said, I was going to call the police after but Adam showed up and he- that’s probably when he broke my rib.”

He takes a moment to breathe. Rozanov still hasn’t opened his eyes.

“He was frantic after that. He kept me in the trunk of his car most of the day, just driving around. Then, at night, he finally let me out and he took me to… that other house. I think that one was actually his home. I don’t know. He locked me in a room. Didn’t give me any food or water all day. Then the next day, before the game, he tied me up to a chair. Like, way more. He said I’d lost my right to move. Then he said- he said maybe I shouldn’t be walking around ever again. And he left me there, he went to the fucking game and I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything until he fucking returned. And when he did he was- he grabbed a hammer. And I knew he wouldn’t kill me, he wanted to have me there, but he said I didn’t need to skate anymore and so I didn’t need my legs to-“

Shane isn’t sure when he started crying. He cleans his face, profoundly embarrassed. Rozanov is looking at him now, intensely.

“That’s when Ilya showed up. If him and Hayden hadn’t- I don’t know what-“

“That’s okay, Mister Hollander, we can stop here. We already have statements from Mister Rozanov and Mister Pike about what happened after. They fought Creek off and got you out of the house right before our guys arrived.”

“What happened to him? Is he…”

“Dead, yes,” Rozanov says. Then turns to Grey, is if confirming. “The detective told me. He was, ah, going to use the hammer when they came in, tried to attack one of the officers too. They shoot him in self defense.”

“He’s dead,” Shane repeats.

Rozanov nods.

“Okay, I think that’s enough for today,” Detective Grey stands up. “I should let you rest, Mister Hollander. Mister Rozanov,” she acknowledges. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

She doesn’t really look too thankful for Ilya’s help. Mostly annoyed. But she gives them both one long look and what could almost pass as a smile before she heads out of the room.

Once they are alone again, Shane closes his eyes and sinks in his pillows. Rozanov bends over until his head is pressed against Shane’s side, his face against the mattress. 

“Fuck, Hollander.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“You can go back to being boring now. Please.”

Shane laughs. It hurts but he doesn’t care. He moves his hand, losing Rozanov’s grip but only long enough for his fingers to find the nape of his neck. Rozanov looks up at him, eyes red rimmed. It’s a fight to not read into it, to not let himself believe that everything that has happened the past several hours means they are anything more than what they have always been.

“Thank you for saving my life,” he says again.

“Of course,” Rozanov whispers, like it’s a confession.

Shane expects another joke to deflect, like before, but this time it doesn’t come.

They stay like that, in silence and company, until there’s movement on the other side of the door.

“Must be your parents,” Rozanov sighs, sitting up. “I should go. I have flight back to Boston soon.”

“Oh,” Shane’s heart falls. “Right.”

“We will be in touch,” Rozanov states. Firmly. Not even a question. Then, he bends over to kiss Shane’s forehead and stand up, just as the door opens.

“Rozanov,” Shane’s mom says with something that could be surprise or distrust or relief. All at once. All mixed up.

“Mrs. Hollander,” the big Russian shuffles like an admonished child. “I was just leaving.”

“I see,” she says, looking at Rozanov and then at Shane. “I wanted to say… thank you, for your help finding my son.”

“It was no problem,” Ilya says, like he didn’t get stabbed for his troubles. “Okay, just small problem, but because I had to deal with Hayden Pike. Was very hard not to kill him.”

Yuna looks surprised, like she can’t tell whether it’s a joke or not or how to react to it.

“I will leave now,” Rozanov doesn’t give them a chance to choose a reaction. He beelines for the door and disappears without looking back.

“He is… not what I expected,” his dad says.

Shane nods and tries to pretend watching that door close didn’t feel like dying a little too.

Chapter End Notes

That awkward moment when you just risked your life to save your situationship’s life and they did the same for you and it’s all one big damming love confession except for the fact that you haven’t even confessed that you like each other yet, so you have to fight back the need to constantly ask “so what are we?” after he saved your life.

Chapter 6: every minute and every hour (I miss you)

Chapter Summary

“Shane, I love you, you’re my best friend in the world, and I say this with love but you’re a fucking dumbass if after everything that happened you think that guy is just in this to fuck you.”

“I mean,” Shane bristles, “just because he’s not an asshole like you expected-“

“Oh, he is definitely an asshole! But that has nothing to do with it, man.”

Chapter Notes

Some smut in this chapter but I swear it sort of serves the plot (even though these two have never needed plot to fuck). You’ve been warned.

When Rozanov said they’d be in touch, Shane had expected to hear from him right before their next game against each other (whenever that would be, between their respective recovery time and the fact that their teams had literally just played each other). It’s what they do.

What they don’t do is call each other in the middle of an afternoon on a Wednesday. Shane’s heart does a small complicated thing when the name Lily flashes on his screen and be fails to conceal his anxiety when he replies:

“Hello?”

Is everything alright? Are you okay? Are you hurt?

“Hollander,” on the other side of the line, he could swear he hears Rozanov sigh.

“Yeah,” he replies even though it makes him feel a little dumb. “Why are you calling me?”

He doesn’t mean to ask it like that but as soon as the words leave his mouth he realizes the harshness of it.

“Ah, yeah, it’s just… how do you say? Ass calling.”

“A booty call?”

“Yes, this!”

“Rozanov, you do know we are like nine hours apart don’t you? Thats way too long of a drive just for random sex.”

“What?” Rozanov sounds genuinely confused.

“Booty calls,” and Shane can’t believe he is the one explaining this to Ilya fucking Rozanov. “They are meant to, well, call your ‘booty’ to see if they are down to… uh…”

“Fuck?” Rozanov, ever crass, provides. “Why are you shy now, Hollander?”

“I’m staying at my parents house,” he half whispers. “I don’t want them hearing about you booty calling me.”

“Hollander, even if they don’t know it’s me, I am sure your parents know you are having sex sometimes, yes?” Rozanov sounds way too amused by the entire situation.

“I really don’t want to think about them thinking about my sex life right now,” Shane snaps. “Anyway, what did you want? Like I said, we can’t have sex right now.”

“We could. Phone sex is very good. Lots of fun. Might help you losen up,” Rozanov’s voice is low and inviting and Shane hates the way his body responds to it.

“Stop it,” he demands even if it’s the last thing he wants.

To his dismay, Ilya obeys for once in his life.

“Fine. Was just joking. I did not mean the booty call. I mean ass call. Like, I sat on my phone and my ass called you.”

“A butt dial?”

“Yes! This one! My butt called you! Maybe my butt misses yours.”

That makes Shane laugh. Of course it’d been an accidental call. That, at least, makes sense.

“Okay, I let you go back to boring concussion protocol now,” Rozanov says. “Goodbye, Hollander.”

“Goodbye,” he barely has time to reply before the call goes dead.

It could be a fluke. It should be one. Except it keeps happening. Ilya’s “butt dials” become a weird daily occurrence.

Ilya calls, they make a bit of small talk, Ilya hangs up.

It’s a welcome distraction, in a way, because neither of them is allowed to look at their screens yet, but when they were Shane can’t remember a time when they talked this often. He tells himself Ilya must really be bored out of his mind.

(Shane isn’t really that naive. He knows, deep down, that these calls are daily check ups, just a way to make sure that Shane is still… here. But he can’t look at that thought for too long without it twisting something inside his chest. So he doesn’t.)

A week and a half later, the screen ban is lifted and the calls end. Rozanov still messages him daily and Shane does not read into it, like he definitely doesn’t read into the fact that he kinda misses hearing his voice.

Ilya Rozanov set to play first line against Toronto after injury recovery.

Lily: bringing sexy back to the ice

Lily: will score one for you

Shane: Just the one? No hat trick promises?

Shane: Disappointing

Lily: only one for you the others are for my fans that missed me

Rozanov is let back in the ice before Shane is, which is totally unfair because he’s not the one that got fucking stabbed but apparently broken bones take longer to heal than puncture wounds.

He’s seething with envy as he sits down with his parents to watch the Boston game against Toronto. Then Ilya gets checked against the boards by Kent. Shane’s heart nearly jumps out of his chest as he fights to remain quiet and still, as he’s learned to do all these years.

“If that boy isn’t careful he’s going to tear up his stitches,” his mother says.

Something melts inside Shane’s chest at Yuna’s worry over Rozanov. He doesn’t let himself look too much into it.

“Tell him to be more careful,” she says.

“Wha- why would I tell him anything?” He jumps, defensive immediately.

His parents look at him like he’s lost his mind.

“He’s your friend, right? I’m sure he’ll listen to you.”

“Right. Yeah. No. Maybe,” Shane mumbles, wanting to beat himself over the head with something hard. He forgot. To the world, at least to his parents and the Montreal PD, they are now officially… friends.

Weird.

That night, he texts first:

Shane: How are your stitches?

Lily: very sexy

Shane: haha.

Shane: My mom says you should be careful or you’ll reap them.

Lily: your mom talks about me?

Shane: She talks about hockey.

Lily: okay tell her i will be careful

Shane: I will.

Two weeks later, Shane comes back from his doctor’s appointment feeling wrung out and defeated. He’s still not cleared for the ice. Everyone is treating him like he’s made of glass or something and it’s driving him up the walls feeling this helpless. He needs to play. He needs to be in the rink and let himself get lost on the one thing in the world that makes sense to him. He hasn’t skated in almost two months.

Shane drops his phone on the couch, tired of the endless buzzing as the team plans their next trip with five consecutive away games, and goes upstairs to sleep. His dad is away in a business trip until next Friday, his mother is busy with meetings all day and won’t be back until late at night. He can just wallow in his own misery and sleep the day away.

Or not. Because at seven in the afternoon someone is ringing his doorbell like a maniac.

Shane blinks as he stands up, feeling almost dizzy with half-shaken sleep, as he stumbles down the stairs. He checks the peephole before unlocking.

“What?”

Hayden’s entire body sags with clear relief despite Shane’s glaring.

“Shane! Hi!”

“Uh, hi. Hayden, what are you doing here?”

“Had a day off. Thought I’d check in,” Hayden smiles.

Shane steps aside and lets his friend in. Helps hold the six pack while he toes off his shoes, then heads for the kitchen.

“You know I can’t drink with the painkillers.”

“They are non-alcoholic. I gotta drive back to Montreal later anyway.”

Shane feels a pang of affection for his friend. Coming all the way here to drink some shitty non alcoholic beer is definitely a bit much, but Hayden has been a bit on top of him since the whole incident.

He puts the beers on the fridge and comes back with one for each of them. Hayden has already made himself comfortable in Shane’s parents’ living room in a way that could be considered rude but actually makes something inside Shane ease. He’s always liked how good Hayden is at creating a comfortable vibe wherever he goes.

Hayden typing something quickly on his phone. Probably letting Jackie know he made it alright. Then he shoves his phone away and gives Shane a sympathetic look.

“I heard what the docs said, man. I’m sorry, that sucks.”

“Yeah, well…” Shane tries to find the right words to brush it off, but he can’t.

“Maybe we can talk to the coaches, have you come with the team for the next trip? I know it’s not what you really want right now, you probably wouldn’t be, like, skating and shit, but you’d get to be with us, on the bench, just closer to the whole thing.”

Shane wonders how long Hayden has been thinking about this. The way it comes out feels… rehearsed. But it’s a nice thought. And maybe he is getting a little tired of being cooped up at his parents’s house, like he’s a child again (or like he’s trapped, again, but he tries very hard not to think about that one).

“Yeah, that’d be nice! Do you think they’ll let me?”

“I guess we’ll see,” Hayden shrugs but his smile is hopeful and Shane feels a little better already.

Late that night, once Hayden leaves and his mother is back, he checks his phone and his heart drops.

He has a message from earlier today, in the middle of the afternoon:

Lily: what news from your doctors?

Then another half an hour later.

Lily: im guessing shit news

Lily: i guess there will just be more boring games

And then an hour after that.

Lily: Hollander?

Lily: You there?

Lily: Hollander

Lily: Hollander

Lily: Hollander

[Missed call from Lily]

Lily: Hollander

[Missed call from Lily]

Lily: Shane

Lily: Shane

[Missed call from Lily]

That is the last one. It’s from hours ago. Nearly two hours before Hayden even showed up at his door. Shit. Shit. A sickening pang of guilt hits him.

Shane: Hi sorry

Shane: I left my phone downstairs

Shane: didn’t check it until now

Shane: was sulking a little about the news

Shane: but then Hayden came over and we talked and I feel a little bitter

He feels like had last tidbit of information isn’t really necessary, but giving it feels like a sort of apology. Or an excuse. He isn’t quite sure.

Shane: sorry I didn’t reply earlier

The texts are read immediately. A bubble with three bouncing dots appears and disappears four times before he finally gets a text back.

Lily: is ok

Lily: dw

Lily: goodnight hollander

And that’s it? Shane’s heart sinks. Fuck.

Hayden is right, the trip with the Metros is a welcome distraction. The buzz of different cities, different rinks, different locker rooms… it helps him feel like everything that happened was another life, maybe just a bad dream. This. This is real life.

Rozanov doesn’t text him during the entire roadie.

Shane is hanging out with Hayden in their hotel room the last night when, out of nowhere, the question pops out:

“So, how’s the whole thing going?” Hayden asks, sipping his beer and not taking his eyes of the tv.

“What thing?” Shane frowns, looking up from the Ginger Ale he’s nursing half heartedly at this point.

“You know the… Rozanov thing,” Hayden gestures with one hand.

“It’s not a thing,” Shane frowns. “It’s just… not much to tell. I mean, we get together when our teams play. And we haven’t since… what happened. So that’s that.”

“What so you two don’t talk?”

“I mean, I guess sometimes, but it’s not like… what you’re thinking. It’s just sex.”

“Dude,” Hayden finally peels his eyes from the terrible cop show on tv to give him a look.

“What? It’s true. Look, people like us, we are just high profile. So finding someone… trustworthy to do what we do is complicated. Our arrangement is just convenient.”

Which is a load of bullshit. There is nothing convenient about sleeping with his very public #1 rival, but Shane still has some shreds of dignity left to refrain from admitting how helpless he is to resist Ilya Rozanov.

“Arrangement?” Hayden echoes. “You gotta be kidding me. That is not what that is.”

“Hayd, I love you, but you have no idea what we-“

“Oh, I think I have a pretty good idea,” Hayden sits up on the edge of his bed, movie fully forgotten now.

Dammit. No chance Shane is getting out of this conversation.

“You don’t, though,” Shane tries to shut him down. “We are not more. We can’t be-“

“But would you want to be?”

“We can’t!” Shane snaps because why would Hayden be so cruel, dangling in front of him what he can’t possibly ever had. “Don’t you see? It would end our fucking careers, besides Ilya is Russian he can’t just- and it’s not like he would. You know how he is. You’ve read the headlines. This is just… like that. Like I said, just sex.”

Hayden blinks, like he can’t believe his ears. Then he says: “Damn.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re blind.”

“What?!”

“Shane, I love you, you’re my best friend in the world, and I say this with love but you’re a fucking dumbass if after everything that happened you think that guy is just in this to fuck you.”

“I mean,” Shane bristles, “just because he’s not an asshole like you expected-“

“Oh, he is definitely an asshole! But that has nothing to do with it, man.”

“Yeah, of course it does. I mean, I guess he was just concerned that I didn’t reply for a while, and when you told him about the photos he realized he could help.”

“Concerned?!” Hayden sounds offended. “Shane, buddy, I had to talk Rozanov out of two whole panic attacks, one when he found out you went missing and one after the call.”

Panic attacks? Ilya hadn’t said-

“And speaking of which, that fucking call, like you weren’t choosing to protect him instead of saving your own life? And before that, hiding the pictures because he was in them? How is that hook-up behavior?”

“Hayd-“

“He threw up, by the way, when he realized it was his fault that you got taken.”

“If wasn’t his fault!” Shane jumps, heart hammering.

“Well, someone should tell him because Rozanov looked like he had killed you himself. I started to think I should put him in suicide watch or something. I couldn’t let him out of my sight. I thought he might do something stupid.”

Shane shakes his head, pacing around, trying to reconcile the Ilya Rozanov that has carefully laid out the ground rules for their relationship as it is and the man Hayden is describing.

“This is so fucked up.”

“Shane,” Hayden’s voice is softer now as he stands up too. He grabs him by the shoulders, forcing him to halt. “Shane, I’m sorry. I’m not- I swear I’m not saying this to upset you again. I just think you should know, in case- you know, in case that’s what’s stopping you, that I’m pretty sure Rozanov is very fucking in love with you. Like, pathetically so.”

Shane looks at Hayden, feeling unmoored. He can’t do this. He can’t face it. This isn’t want they do. He doesn’t know the rules for it.

“Look,” Hayden drops his hands with a defeated sigh, “I’m sorry, okay. Forget I said anything. You’re right, I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Shane feels a pang of guilt again, as his best friend shrinks a little and steps away. But maybe he’s too much of a coward because he’s also thankful to drop the subject.

“How’s Jackie? When was she due again?” Shane asks. A peace offering and a desperate attempt to change the subject.

Hayden, bless him, accepts it gracefully, even if his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Not until the summer. But she’s good. Happy to be home.”

Shane knows the feeling.

After the roadie, they land back in Montreal and Shane goes home alone for the first time.

In the weeks since his rescue, his mother has taken upon herself to set a new full security system in his place: a new sturdier lock, which requires both a combination and a keycard to get in, a set of cameras in every door and window, with a close circuit available only to him but easily sent to the police if necessary. There’s also a motion sensor alarm, a panic button in every room and sensors in his window locks.

Shane is safe. He is so safe he feels a little trapped. His house is a fortress for one.

He was half tempted to drive bad to his parents’s house in Ottawa. Which is exactly the reason why he came to his place instead. He had the sneaking suspicion that, if he gave in to that impulse, he would never return. What happened with Adam Creek already stole so much from him… he’s not willing to let it take his home too.

Shane paces a little after unpacking, unsure on what to do now. He could go out, take a walk around the city, enjoy some of his freedom. It doesn’t feel right, though.

He starts making himself lunch. Maybe he’s just hungry.

Lily: how was the roadie?

Shane blinks down at this phone, feeling his heart flutter. He hasn’t heard from Rozanov in days. Hayden’s words from yesterday echo loudly in his ears as he types.

Shane: Fine, a little frustrating.

Shane: But it looks like I should get the all clear this week.

Shane: so that’s good :)

This is easier. Talking hockey is simple.

Lily: finally

Lily: at least your games weren’t boring anymore

Lily: metros are still shit

Lily: but I got to see your pretty face on screen

His cheeks burn.

Shane: The metros aren’t shit.

Lily: ur are bad liar even in text

Lily: impressive

Okay, fine, his team has not really been up to their usual standards these past few games. Which Shane didn’t like to give himself too much credit, hockey is. Team sport and every player is equally important, but he couldn’t help but feel like if he’d been allowed to play they wouldn’t have sucked. Not like he’s gonna say that to Rozanov.

Shane: Asshole.

Lily: are you home now?

Shane: Yeah.

Lily: Ottawa?

Shane: No.

Shane: I’m back in Montreal.

Shane: It was about time.

Lily: that’s good no?

Shane: I guess.

Shane: I thought it would be.

Shane: I mean, this place is like super safe.

Shane: Seriously.

Shane: But maybe it’s me.

Shane: I feel wrong.

Shane: Ever since… that.

Shane: Is that stupid?

Shane stops typing. Ilya stopped reading halfway through the messages. He feels shame curl up hot in his gut. He’s such a fucking idiot. They don’t do this.

Idiot. This is what he gets for letting Hayden get in his head.

With a huff, Shane decides he needs to eat, work out and take a long shower. He will feel better after it. Normal.

After the shower, he finds a single reply from Ilya.

Lily: is not stupid

He’s not sure what to do with that.

By the time he finishes eating dinner he feels like he’s crawling out of his own skin. The house’s silence is oppressive, the corners too dark, the windows too big. He feels exposed and trapped at the same time. Like an animal in the zoo.

He makes some tea, tries to read in bed. His brain keeps buzzing with the undercurrent of memory. He half expects the door to burst open any moment.

When his phone buzzes, his pulse speeds up with terror. He knows what he will find. A message from an unknown number, either politely curious or directly threatening. He just stares at the phone. It buzzes again. And again.

Fuck it.

With trembling hands, he picks it up.

Lily: you changed your locks

Lily: good

Lily: but please open?

He stares at the messages, trying to make sense of them.

Lily: hollander

Shane: ????

Lily: I am downstairs

Lily: you see me waving at camera?

What?! Shane switches to his home security app and there, on the screen that says Backdoor. Stairs. 1. is Ilya Rozanov, waving.

Shane jumps to his feet, runs downstairs and grabs the phone connected to the entrance speaker.

“Rozanov?! What are you doing here?”

“Booty call.”

“Are you kidding- fine come in,” Shane sighs, buzzing him in.

He watches in the cameras as Rozanov pushes the door and makes his way upstairs. Shane tracks him though the cameras all the way to his front door, right up to the moment he knocks.

Shane checks the peephole anyway before opening all three layers of locks and letting him in.

Ilya Rozanov enters Shane’s apartment like a summer breeze, all fresh rosy cheeks from the chill spring nigh, and the smell of cologne and the vibrating energy that he always carries into every room. He kisses Shane immediately.

Oh.

Some of the buzzing energy inside Shane settles. They hadn’t kissed since Boston. He hasn’t even realized how much he missed it until now. Which is why he feels like dying a little when Rozanov pulls back too quickly.

The sound that escapes his throat is completely too humiliating.

“Hi,” Rozanov says.

“What are you doing here?” Shane says, which maybe comes out all wrong, as if he wasn’t happy that Ilya is here.

“I told you, booty call,” Ilya says, turning to close the door. He methodically closes all three of the locks.

“Didn’t you just play in Buffalo today?”

“Was early game,” Ilya shrugs, walking into the apartment, looking around as if he’d never been here before.

“Yeah, like five hours away.”

“So?” Ilya leans by the windows, peering out, as if he didn’t already know the view from here. His hands ghost over the new lock.

“So I don’t think you understand what a booty call is,” Shane says, but he can’t help but smile at the idea that Ilya Rozanov just drove five and a half hours just to sleep with him. They don’t do this. There’s nothing convenient about it. It shouldn’t make him as stupidly giddy as it does.

“Is visit for hooking up, no?” Rozanov shrugs, like it’s no big deal.

He stops by a framed painting and, gingerly, straightens it. It’s stupid, half an inch, but it unknots one of the many tangled strings inside Shane.

“I suppose,” he breathes.

Then, apparently satisfied with his new recognition of a place he has seen a million times (fine, not a million, but dozens at least), Ilya turns around and the full weight of his attention falls on Shane, who finds himself pinned by that stare in the middle of his living room.

“Is this okay?” Ilya asks, voice dark and wanting, like he is containing himself.

Shane nods. Ilya waits. “Yes. I- I want this. I want you here tonight.”

Ilya crosses the space between them, hands already reaching for Shane’s face. Their mouths crash again, this time with far more hunger. Ilya’s hands are everywhere, trailing up and down Shane’s body greedily. He’s doing his fair share of grabbing, touching, and it’s ridiculous how grounding it is. Ilya’s mouth is anvil, steading Shane in the middle of a storm. He melts into the kiss immediately.

Ilya’s hands find his thighs and with one fluid move bring him up. Shane wraps his legs around Ilya’s waist, hooking his ankles together for support. Without their mouths ever parting, Ilya carries him upstairs, carefully threading each step. Shane has half a mind to worry that they are going to knock down a painting or a picture frame, but miraculously Ilya manages to maneuver them without touching a single one.

Ilya takes him to the bedroom and gently drops him on the mattress. His hands cradling Shane’s head before it hits the mattress.

He takes advantage of the closeness to all but claw at Ilya’s hoodie and shirt, desperate to touch his skin. Ilya complies easily, standing up to shrug it all off. Shane sits up to get his mouth on Ilya’s chest, kissing and licking down his abs. Meanwhile, he feels Ilya help him off his own hoodie (thank goodness it’s a zipper, so Shane can keep his mouth slowly trailing down to the hem of Ilya’s pants). As soon as his arms are free, he brings his hands back up to hold Ilya’s wait, fingers tracing the familiar slopes of his body. And-

Oh. His fingers stumble upon the scar. Shane pulls back, heart still hammering with desire… mixed with something else. He looks at the long red line just bellow Ilya’s ribs, marked by stitches, still swollen. He feels Ilya still in front of him, holding his breath as Shane traces the lines of the scare carefully.

Ilya’s hand catches his and brings it up to his mouth. He takes his thumb and index finger, the ones he had snapped to escape weeks ago, and kisses them gently. Then he puts them inside his mouth and sucks them with a moan that sends a bolt of pleasure down Shane’s spine.

His entire body arches. He should probably be a little ashamed by how hard this makes him, but he’s way past that. Instead, he arches his hips upwards, looking for friction against Ilya’s thighs. His left hand searches for his cock, trying to get some friction, but Ilya catches his hand and brings it up too. Freeing his fingers with a wet pop, Ilya presses a kiss to both his wrists, reverently, then pushes them both up above Shane’s head.

Shane’s breath stutters. Ilya’s eyes are on him, scanning his face with the slightest crease between his eyebrows.

“Is this okay?” He asks, hands tentatively easing the pressure on his wrists.

“Yes. It’s good,” Shane whispers.

Ilya presses his hands down again and Shane is filled with relief.

“I’ve got you,” Ilya says, like he is echoing Shane’s discombobulated thoughts.

Without letting go, he kisses wetly Shane’s neck, slowly working his way down his chest and towards his painfully hard cock. He lets go of his hands but Shane keeps them there, obedient, while Ilya slowly peels off his sweatpants and his briefs in a single move.

Shane barely has a moment of relief before Ilya takes him in his mouth, tongue playing around his shaft as he moves with a steady and relentless pace. For a moment, Shane’s brain goes quiet, lost to pleasure. It’s like his chest is expanding after being constricted for too long.

Then Ilya lets go and, without ever getting off of Shane, he crawls upwards on the bed and reaches for the lube on the night table. 

Halfway through the movement, Ilya freezes. Shane feels it all around him. He looks up to find Ilya’s face hardened, his jaw set, his eyes locked on the corner of the night table. His eyes are far away for a second, before he keeps going, grabbing the lube and a condom and settling his weight back down on either side of Shane’s legs. But he doesn’t miss the determined look that has taken over the Russian’s features.

Shane moves his hands to bring them up to Ilya’s face, tracing his thumb across the clenched jaw before he pulls him down into a kiss. Forget that, he wants to say with his tongue tracing the inside of Ilya’s mouth, be here with me.

Ilya melts. He kisses him hungrily while his hands work beyond Shane’s eyesight and then his fingers are gently working him. Shane moans into Ilya’s mouth, brining his knees up to give him better access to his ass. Ilya bites his neck, adding to the sensation of his body slowly going loose for him.

“Ilya, please,” Shane finally begs when he can’t take it anymore. “I need you.”

Ilya pulls out his fingers and Shane is briefly brought back to reality before his cock begins slowly pushing into him, careful but deliberate. Shane moans again, louder, longer, letting his body take Ilya in painful and delicious inch to inch. Once he’s wonderfully full, he feels Ilya bend forward, bracing himself on his forearms at either side of Shane’s face. His body cages Shane’s, like a shield, an armor, but he doesn’t feel trapped, he feels contained, held together by the certainty that Ilya isn’t letting him out of his arms. He brushes his hands up Ilya’s muscular arms, until they find his neck, his hair. He grabs a fistful of blond curls and forces Ilya to meet his eyes.

Ilya’s face is still intense, but his eyes soften when they meet.

“Shane,” he says, in the exact same tone of disbelief that he did when he found him. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

Shane nods. And then Ilya starts moving and he’s absolutely lost again to pleasure, begging for more, angling himself to get Ilya to that spot that sets him alight. Ilya groans and pants, burying his face against Shane’s neck.

They come second apart, in the mess isn’t sure who gets there first. But they melt into each other after, panting and sated. He feels whole like he hasn’t in months.

Ilya pulls out carefully and goes straight to the bathroom. Shane closes his eyes, listens to the water run. What seems like barely a minute later, Ilya is there, pulling him on his feet.

“If you sleep like this you will regret it.”

Before Shane walks into the shower he turns and says, “stay the night?”

Ilya’s face does something complicated before he nods.

Which is why Shane is so confused when he walks out of the shower, towel wrapped round his waist, and finds his bed empty. His heart falls.

Booty call indeed.

Feeling like an idiot, he puts on pants and walks downstairs to check on the locks. They are new, Rozanov might not have known how to set them on his way out.

When he finds Ilya spreading a blanket on the couch, something inside him dislodges. Painfully.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Ilya freezes, clearly confused as he looks down at the couch.

“My bed?”

“Why would- why here?”

Ilya looks at him like he has lost his mind.

“It is just…” then he sighs, like he’s giving up. “It is close to the door, yes? No one can come in without passing through here. So you sleep and I can keep an eye out.”

“What the fuck? No!” Shane marches forward and takes the pillow out of Ilya’s hands. He knows he’s being nonsensical. He knows. But the last time he slept on that couch he spent the worst three weeks of his life thinking he would die. The idea of Ilya choosing to put himself in that situation, just to stand between Shane and danger, was worst than that fear.

“Hollander, is okay. Your building is very safe now. Probably no one will break in. Is just, how you say, for your peace of the mind.”

“This doesn’t give me peace of mind, Ilya! The idea of whatever is trying to get to me getting to you first is not comforting! You don’t get to-“ his voice breaks but he pushes through with sheer will. “You don’t get to die for me!”

Ilya reels back, like he’s been shocked. Then his face becomes an angry mirror.

“Oh, but you can?”

“What?”

“Don’t act all innocent now, Hollander! You hide evidence, you put yourself at risk, you have crazy guy coming after you and you don’t tell police because it might show my face?! You get one chance to escape and you call me? To warn me?”

“I can’t believe- how can you be mad at me for that?!” Shane yells.

“Because you’re selfish!”

“What?” Shane takes a step back. “How is that selfish?! I wanted to keep you safe!”

“Exactly! You are idiot. You only think of this and then you get taken, you get hurt,” Ilya’s voice cracks, “you hurt yourself and you make him hurt you and for what? For me? It’s not worth it, Shane!”

“I will not apologize for trying to protect you,” Shane says firmly, despite the tears threatening to fall. “I couldn’t live with myself if-“

“And what makes you think I would survive losing you?!” Ilya shouts, voice laced with desperation.

The silence that follows is weird and charged and painful with unspoken truths that they’ve laid bare without even voicing yet.

Shane makes a choice.

He steps forward and grabs Ilya’s hand. He takes him back upstairs. Ilya lets himself be dragged, but he does ask: “what are you doing?”

“You’re sleeping upstairs. With me. We will be together, in each other’s arms, and if something happens from now on, it can happen to us both. And we face it together.”

He is vaguely aware that he isn’t just talking about the far off possibility of a new crazy stalker breaking through his door. He is talking about life. About everything from now on.

Ilya settles down wordlessly on the bed next to him. They wrap their arms around each other’s waist as Shane tucks himself into Ilya’s broad chest. After a couple breathes, he feels all tension bleed out of Ilya in a single sigh. His arms tighten around Shane slightly.

“I cannot lose you again,” he says, voice heavy with so much pain that Shane shudders.

He grabs on to Ilya’s shirt and closes his eyes, feeling his heartbeat and the steady walk of his body still angled between Shane and the door, between Shane and the world.

“You won’t,” Shane promises. “As long as I don’t lose you either. We can promise that.”

“Okay,” Ilya says simply, setting further into the bed and Shane’s embrace.

Shane sighs, content, and for the first time in nearly six months, he sleeps feeling completely safe.

Chapter End Notes

In case it wasn’t clear, Hayden and Ilya are 100% tag teaming to keep an eye on Shane and reporting back to each other. If he ever ghosts them again, they will wreck havoc.

Also, no ‘I love you’s because these idiots still need time but nearly dying for each other and declaring they cannot survive losing the other kinda doubles for a love confession doesn’t it?

Anyway, I hoped you all enjoyed this adventure if Shane call my situationship while kidnapped Hollander and Ilya run head first into a psychopath liar Rozanov. With a side of a very exhausted Hayden Pike.

Thank you to everyone who left sweet and encouraging messages!!!! I was very nervous starting this and your responses have really made me enjoy the process a million times more.

Would love to hear your final thoughts on the whole thing!!!

Thank you for reading ❤️

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