Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble & Ilya Rozanov, Wyatt Hayes & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Wyatt Hayes, Troy Barrett, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Anya | Ilya Rozanov's Dog

Additional Tags:

Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Depressed Ilya Rozanov, PTSD, Anxious Shane Hollander, POV Alternating, Hospitalization, Flashbacks, Blood and Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Franz Kafka References, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Religious Guilt, Irina Rozanova Haunts the Narrative, Good Friend Wyatt Hayes, Hockey, Suicidal Thoughts, Nobody Dies, Angst, Paranoia, Shane Hollander Calls Ilya Rozanov "Baby", Ilya Rozanov Has PTSD, Chronic Pain, Slurs, Ilya Rozanov Has Chronic pain

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of This is Love

Stats:

Published: 2026-07-07 Completed: 2026-08-01 Words: 16,714 Chapters: 8/8

Love, Vodka, or the Sea

Summary

Recovery isn't linear.
Knowing this, and believing it, are two different things.

Shane moves to Ottawa, ready to finally spend time with his soulmate, properly. Maybe the excitement is why he doesn't always notice.

Ilya wins the Cup with Shane at his side, but it doesn't matter as much as it should have. Not when his body hurts and his mind is fragile and he feels one moment away from collapse.

Timeline goes back and forth, but we start off one year after the events of the previous story.
In the end, everything will be okay.

Notes

Hi friends!
Back by popular demand (like 4 different comments promising me love/money/organs/children) the third and final installment in this series! I spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted this to look like. A lot of people have been hoping for happiness and fluff and... um... sorry. This is not that. They will be happy, at the end of this story, but because I want to stay faithful to the tone of the first two installments, they will be decidedly unhappy for the majority of it.
I guess you could read this without having read the other two, but I think you would probably be very confused, so do with that what you wish.
As in the first two stories, there will be sequences with graphic violence and gore. These will usually be italicized, and if they are not, I will make a note in the beginning so you can avoid them if possible. This first chapter in particular starts off EXTREMELY dark, but not too too graphic. This is probably the most intense chapter of the entire fic (at least to me).
Expect updates a few times a week!

Chapter 1: Drown

Ilya: June, 2017

The summer is quiet. It always is. It’s been a week since they won the Cup. Since one of the best days of Ilya’s life. He doesn’t think there is much in the world that can compare to winning the Stanley Cup with his soulmate at his side. Maybe, winning it twice, but he isn’t stupid enough to even think that could be a real possibility. Not now. Not when everything is so-

Shane has only been on the team a year, but it’s made all the difference. It’s gotten them a record-breaking season. He has won the Cup three years in a row now.

Ilya is proud of him for that. Three in a row is no small feat, especially with moving teams for the last one. It’s something, at least, that Ilya was able to help get this team where they are today, so that Shane could win again. So that Shane could be happy here. So that Shane wouldn’t have to sacrifice his career for them to be together.

Now, Ilya lies on the couch. It’s late, but not too late. He had watched the sun dip lower and lower in the sky until the surrounding buildings obscured it from view. His body hurts. It always hurts. This is to be expected, of course, the doctors have said as much, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Shane had left some time ago to run some mysterious errand, forgoing their usual evening run through the neighbourhood. It’s strange, this break in routine.

The door opens, and Ilya sits up. He watches silently as Shane toes off his shoes. Shane holds some horrible anxiousness in his body, in his shoulders. It’s impossible to miss.

“Hey,” he says, and Ilya quirks an eyebrow.

“Hi.” A pause. Ilya watches Shane wreak havoc on his bottom lip. Pulling at it with his teeth. “Is everything okay?” he asks.

Shane starts, at that, shaking himself visibly. “What?” he cards a hand through his hair, “yeah, yeah of course.”

Ilya gets up from the couch, bringing Shane into his arms. The man relaxes at that, but not as completely as Ilya had hoped.

“Talk to me?” The words pass from his mouth with a low rumble, and he feels Shane take a deep breath within his hold.

“I got you something,” Shane says, stepping back slightly to pull a small box from his jacket pocket.

For one terrifying moment, Ilya thinks this might be Shane about to propose. He would say yes, of course, but it’s certainly unexpected, and he’s certainly unprepared. The timing isn’t great, what with everything. Cup win notwithstanding, Ilya knows that Shane knows that things are not, strictly speaking, good right now.

Then the box opens, and the truth is much more complicated.

Shane hinges up the lid. There, on a small satin cushion, is a thin cross necklace.

The world seems to fall away. It’s not his mother’s, not exactly, but the resemblance is striking.

“I just thought,” Shane says cautiously, when Ilya doesn’t blink or breathe or react in any visible manner, “I notice that you still reach for it, sometimes. Your mother’s.” 

It’s true, of course. In the moments fresh from a nightmare or panic attack, Ilya still forgets, sometimes, quite how much he has lost. He still reaches for comfort and finds it missing. Shane has become intimately familiar with these moments, now that they’ve been at each other’s side for an entire year, no longer separated save for summers and the few weekends they can manage throughout the season.

“I’m sorry,” Shane is still talking, and Ilya feels bad for missing it, “if this is too much. I know the other one was… important. I know this can never-”

And then Ilya is gone again. He’s there, in their home, but he isn’t. He’s floating. He reaches to the box and pulls the cross between his fingers. The metal is cool on his palm. It’s a little too big and a little too heavy and-

Are you a man of god? 

Spit flies out of a mouth, a hand tugs on the cross around his neck, the table is metal and the floor is concrete, and Ilya is cold.

Ilya, eleven years old. His hand, clutched in his mother’s, even though he’s too old for that. 

“Why are we here?” Ilya asks, tone rife with childhood boredom. He looks around the ornate church, the gilded walls, the icons in the corners. They’ve been coming here every Sunday since before he can remember, and nobody has ever told him why.

“Because, Ilyusha,” his mother replies, tone soft so as not to disrupt the service, “we are all children of god.” 

She says it in a way that suggests that this makes sense to her. It’s strange, though, because Ilya thought he was her child, and his father’s. 

“I don’t understand,” he admits, and his mother’s hand tightens around his own.

“You will when you’re older,” she assures him, “now pay attention.”

Ilya doesn’t pay attention. He keeps his eyes open and tries not to grow restless as the service wears on.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” the words ring out through the room, and the settle like a pit at the bottom of Ilya’s stomach. 

He doesn’t think he’s a sinner. He doesn’t think his mother is either.

Ilya blinks. The words reverberate in his skull. He hasn’t thought about that in over a decade. He didn’t know he still remembered any of the prayers his mother used to care about. Now, it’s all his brain can focus on: the way the sounds had fallen from his mother’s chapped lips in the dead of winter, as she begged for mercy, and for what? For the crime of being depressed? He doesn’t believe that could possibly be a sin, and he doesn’t believe she had any other failings. She was too kind.

Are you a man of god?

Fire in a barrel, reflected in his eyes, pain across his back as he kneels as though in prayer, welts rising and breaking with each hit of the belt as he watches his legacy burn. 

No. No, he isn’t. Ilya doesn’t know the traditions or the words or how any of it is supposed to make him whole. He doesn’t think he wants to, if being a man of god makes him a sinner. He has done nothing wrong. He has nothing he wishes to confess. Despite everything, he cannot allow himself to entertain the idea that loving Shane might be a sin. Shane, who is so good for him. Shane, who loves him, a fact Ilya knows without hesitation, because of the words on their chests.

If Ilya is a sinner, then Shane is a sinner too. If Ilya is going to hell, then Shane is going right with him, and while the idea of eternity together is pleasant, the rest of it is not. 

Ilya has already been to hell, and he does not want Shane to ever know it’s wrath. Shane is too good for that. 

The church is grand, opulent, obscene, almost. Right in the heart of Moscow. Portraits line the walls, and the icons of saints fill the gaps. Saints with scornful expressions with eyes Ilya can never bring himself to meet. Hundreds of people are here today. It’s a special day, but Ilya can’t remember which one or why. All he knows is that it is important enough that Alexei was made to come as well, but not important enough for his father to set foot in this place. 

The priest opens his mouth and blood stains his teeth. It drips from his nose. Slowly, wounds tear themselves open across his face. Red blooms from under his robe. 

Nobody acknowledges this. Nobody blinks. He counties speaking as though nothing is happening, until he suddenly falls to his knees.

As the blood pools at his feet, he looks up at the cross and begs for mercy. No mercy comes.

Here is a man of god, and what good did it do him? 

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe there is no salvation. Maybe, maybe, maybe, but then what did Ilya’s mother even believe in? If it’s all a lie, if it has no meaning, then-

When Ilya comes back to himself again, he’s on the floor. His back to the wall. Shane, crouched across from him, looks on the verge of panic. Anya sits heavy on his legs. It’s been a while since he’s gone this far away. Ilya never enjoys it, but like this, when he wasn’t expecting it, it’s always worse. He sinks his fingers into Anya's fur. Soft. 

“Come here,” he asks, and Shane’s eyes dart up to meet his own, relief flooding them as he sees awareness, finally.

“I’m sorry,” Shane says softly, noticeably trying and failing to look calm, “I didn’t mean to spring this on you, I just thought-”

“Is okay,” Ilya assures him. He knows Shane didn’t mean this to happen. “Come here,” he repeats.

Shane settles to his knees, head resting on Ilya’s shoulder. It’s a nice sensation, the weight. It soothes the ache that never quite goes away, these days.

Ilya looks at the necklace, still clutched in his hand. The metal isn’t cool anymore. He doesn’t know what this is, or what it means, or much of anything, really. 

With shaking hands, he reaches around and affixes the necklace on Shane’s neck, straightening the pendant where it sits on his collarbone. It rests just inches away from Ilya's name, standing stark on his skin. The cross looks good there, reflecting the soft light of the lantern in the corner. He does this just in case his mother was right, after all.

“I need to go for a walk,” he says, and Shane’s eyebrows furrow like he wants to protest. Ilya doesn’t let him.

Still shaky, he slips on his runners and steps out the door. Behind him, he can hear Shane saying something, but he doesn’t let himself listen.

He doesn’t know anything except that he needs to move. To run. To get away, or to get somewhere, or both.

The night air is cool, and he walks without a destination in mind. His phone, keys, wallet, all still lie in the warmth of his home, with Shane. He is everywhere, and nowhere, and after two minutes or maybe two hours, he’s standing on one of the bridges from Ottawa to Gatineau. The Ottawa River is impossibly far below him. 

Maybe this was the real thing his mother was right about.

There are barely any cars, this late at night. Ilya stands on the border between cities, between provinces. He’s been on the border of a lot of things, for a long time.

The water rushes by. Dark. Peaceful, in its own way.

Ilya forces himself to blink. He presses his head to the metal rail, hoping to jolt some more awareness into his body. The bend makes his shoulder, and his back, and his hip all ache in tandem. This is dangerous. He knows it’s dangerous.

He's used to danger. He shouldn't be. Ilya considers how Shane would react. The way his face would crumple, the way his knees would give out. The way he would cry, probably. Definitely. 

Ilya may not worship any god the way his mother would have liked, but he does worship Shane: as his icon, as his window into a life he could have had, if only he possessed a more pure soul. Shane is the closest he has ever been, and will ever get, to salvation. And Shane-

Shane would never absolve him of this. Would never forgive him. Not entirely. Not if he went through with it.

Once that thought has made it though the murky mess of consciousness, everything becomes very still. Very calm. Very simple.

Ilya walks back the way he came, and the nearest fire station is a block away. The lights are on. 

“Hello,” he says mildly, as though he were reporting the weather. He prepares himself for one of the most brutally honest sentences of his life. “I think, if I do not go to the hospital now, I might kill myself.”

Chapter 2: Rewind

Chapter Notes

The Shane POV chapters will answer (in part) the great question: how on earth did we get here? But also Shane in canonically (and even more so in this AU) just horrifically unobservant when not on the ice. So. this should be fun!!!
Enjoy the chapter and let me know what you think!!!

Shane, Eleven Months Ago

Shane carries the last of his stuff over the threshold of Ilya’s house. Their house. The box gets put down carefully, because it contains fragile plates and bowls. Ilya is in the kitchen, fiddling with Shane’s stand mixer.

“Hollander,” he calls out, “why do you even have this? Have you baked anything in your life?”

“Shut up,” Shane grumbles, coming around to grab Ilya from the waist, arms encircling him from behind, “my mom bought it for me.”

“Ah,” Ilya leans back, pressing a kiss to the side of Shane’s face, “maybe she was trying to tell you something, yes?” Shane grins, waiting for the punchline. “You could have a very good career as a baker, if the whole hockey thing doesn’t work out.”

“If it doesn’t work out?” Shane asks, disbelieving. “Remind me, whose team am I signing with tomorrow? How many Cups have I won?”

“Don’t worry,” Ilya noses his way down the column of Shane’s throat, pressing his weight into Shane’s arms, “I have not forgotten that my soulmate is back to back Cup winner Shane Hollander.”

“Good,” Shane breathes, and he offers a final kiss to the back of Ilya’s head before releasing him. He walks over to another box, open on the counter. It contains three mugs, wrapped in dishcloths, and his nice blender that he bought in 2013. 

“The team found out today,” Ilya says, “I do not know who told them, but they are all very excited. They want us to come to Bood’s for the off-season barbeque next week.”

“You want to go?” Shane asks, somewhat surprised. The largest group he’s seen Ilya voluntarily socialize with since Russia has been maybe eight people. It makes sense, of course. Ilya is a sociable person, even now, and he wouldn’t have been given the A if he were a total recluse, talent notwithstanding. Still, Shane realizes that he’s about to meet a new version of Ilya. It’s a little exciting.

“Of course,” Ilya replies, “it’s a good team. Good guys. If I leave early… they do not make it a big deal. And they will like you, I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Shane smiles, “we’ll go.”

Ilya smiles then, bright and genuine. “Can I add you to the group chat tomorrow, or do you want to wait to meet them first?”

“Would it be weird if I was added before I meet everyone?”

“I do not think so, but it’s no big deal if it is. You might have noticed, they put up with a lot of weird.”

Shane shakes his head. “You’re not weird,” he argues. Ilya just raises an eyebrow in response. Still, he seems to understand the reason behind Shane’s protestations, because he changes tact.

“Maybe, but you’ve met Wyatt.” 

Shane huffs out a laugh. “I have.”

Nine Months Ago

Shane thought he had seen Ilya in a panic attack. He thought he had seen the worst of it. A week before the regular season begins, he realizes that everything he’s ever seen has barely scratched the surface. They’ve mostly chalked it up to low-stress summers and luck. Even the most intense panic attack Shane has witnessed, on the floor of the bathroom in the aftermath of the plane crash-

It hadn’t been bad at all. Not compared to this.

They’re cooking together, shoulder to shoulder even though they don’t have to be, their kitchen big enough for personal space. Shane is reading the recipe, passing Ilya ingredients to chop, and then depositing them in the bowl when they’re ready. It’s just a salad. It’s just a salad to go with the spaghetti squash in the oven, and the chicken on the stove, because it’s a meal they both like well enough. 

It’s just a salad as Shane passes Ilya the celery, and it’s just a salad as the knife hits the cutting board, cleaving through the vegetable easily. Chop. Chop. Chop. 

Shane tosses in the almonds and stirs them into the mix with the onions and parsley. The celery makes up the bulk of the salad, and it really is just a salad. 

Then, a hiss.

The knife clatters to the floor, and Shane steps away on instinct, not wanting to have it hit his socked feet. 

He looks at Ilya to see what is happening, and he doesn’t know what part of his soulmate concerns him the most.

A thin trail of blood seeps from Ilya’s thumb. Barely anything. Just needs a bandage, probably. A hint of blood is on one of the bits of celery, but that’s not an issue.

The rest of Ilya’s body is still. Too still, really, except for his eyes. 

While Ilya stands, frozen in place, his eyes dart between the blood and the knife on the ground and a thousand other places Shane can’t quite discern. 

It’s hard to tell if he’s even breathing. 

Shane frowns, immediately out of his depth. He’s seen Ilya scared, hyperventilating, jittery. He hasn’t seen this. He has to stay calm.

The first order of business is probably the knife on the ground. 

“Hey,” Shane says, speaking soft and moving slow, “baby, I’m just going to pick that up, okay?”

Ilya doesn’t react, but Shane really doesn’t want to risk him stepping on the blade, so he keeps his movements predictable, taking the long way around the island and crouching low to grab the knife.

This is a mistake, probably. 

As soon as he starts rising, knife in hand, Ilya jolts back as though burned. His eyes get wider, shooting around the room faster.

“Okay, okay,” Shane places the knife back on the counter, sliding it out of both of their reach, “you’re alright. It’s just me.” 

It feels like he’s calming a skittish animal. 

“Deep breaths, yeah?”

Still, Ilya doesn’t react. At a loss for anything else to do, Shane slides down the doors of the kitchen cabinets until he’s seated on the floor. He breathes exaggeratedly, hoping that Ilya will follow suit. 

He tries not to wonder what this means. If this is normal. Does Ilya always have attacks like this during the season? Can they always be set off by something as simple as a cut thumb? Has he done anything right here, or has Shane only made this worse? It’s impossible to know because the only person he could ask is currently somewhere else, unreachable.

He could call Wyatt. 

Shane knows that Wyatt has been Ilya's biggest help and best friend on the team, these past few years. He knows that Wyatt is probably better at helping Ilya through these types of things. He refuses to feel jealous, because that would be stupid. He refuses to feel useless, because that isn’t helpful.

Shane tells himself that if Ilya isn’t back in ten minutes, he’ll make the call.

After six minutes, Ilya sinks to the floor across from Shane, curling into a facsimile of the fetal position. It feels like progress.

Shane watches the man he loves suffer, powerless to do anything to help. He keeps up a litany of soothing words, but it’s unclear if that helps.

At the eight minute mark, Ilya heaves in a desperate, rattling breath.

Shane feels his shoulders drop in relief.

It takes only another thirty seconds for Ilya to croak, “sorry.”

Shane shakes his head, even though Ilya can’t see from his position.

“Hey, no, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

Ilya doesn’t respond to that, and Shane doesn’t push.

“I know you are not used to this,” Ilya says lowly, “but it will happen again. It’s always worse during the season. Stress, Galina says.”

“Okay,” Shane replies, because there’s nothing else he thinks he can say. “I know in the past-” he swallows. “Before, when you had panic attacks, they were more- I don’t know. Panicky?”

“Those happen too, sometimes,” Ilya says, “but it depends. I don’t know why sometimes it’s different.”

“Before,” Shane trudges on, because he needs to know, “you didn’t want me to touch you. Is it the same when…”

Ilya seems to understand what he’s asking. “I think probably yes,” a beat, “but the only person who has tried is Wyatt. Maybe we see, next time?”

“Yeah,” Shane breathes, “yeah, okay.” He slides across the floor, next to Ilya. Their arms brush. “This is okay?”

“No,” Ilya responds, and Shane moves to pull away, but Ilya tugs him closer, until the sides of their bodies are practically fused together. “It’s okay now.”

Eight Months Ago

The second time Ilya has a panic attack, Shane almost doesn’t notice until it’s over, and neither does anyone else. Maybe it’s because, since they’ve moved in together, there’s really only been the one incident. Maybe. 

They’re at Wyatt’s place, playing some video game. Shane thinks it might be Call of Duty or Fortnite or something, but it’s impossible to know for sure. Whatever it is, he’s content to lie half in Ilya’s lap and make small talk with Lisa while Wyatt and Ilya trash talk fourteen-year-olds through their headsets. 

“I am telling you, Mr. Snappy75, you are lost. You are looking for game tutorial, yes? This is an online game, for people who actually know what they’re doing.” Ilya sounds way too pleased with himself. In a chair next to them, Wyatt laughs so hard he starts choking. Shane can faintly hear the chatter of Ilya’s victim defending themself. They’re so busy being enraged, however, that they don’t notice Wyatt’s character coming up behind them and dropping some sort of firebomb on them. The two men let out a cheer, and then immediately try and shoot each other, cackling all the while.

It’s a good night. They’ve won their last five games, and despite Ottawa being a statistically worse team, Shane hasn’t felt like his gameplay has suffered from changing teams. If anything, having to learn the Cens’ playstyle has probably made him a better player. He’s sharing the A, now, him, Ilya, and Wyatt all rotating it out depending on the game. It’s a good system. Less traditional, and nothing Montreal would have ever gone for, but it works for them. He’s telling Lisa as much, while also finding ample time to discuss quite how atrocious Toronto is as both a team and a city. 

On the whole, he really isn’t paying attention to what’s happening on the TV. Suddenly, Ilya’s hand is in his hair, tightening. It doesn’t hurt so much as surprise, and Shane frowns up at his soulmate. Ilya’s other hand drops the controller onto Shane’s stomach a fraction of a second later. 

In Ilya’s half of the screen, his little character is standing in front of some sort of crashed truck. It doesn’t look like anything special, but Shane can feel the tension radiating off of him. He grabs the controller and moves the character away from the truck. Shane takes Ilya’s hand from where it lies on his chest, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. Their eyes meet as Shane asks a silent question. Ilya responds with a twitch of the mouth.

“Try it, Shane,” he says, “will be good practice. You can work on your fighting before our next game.”

“Oh yeah?” 

“It would be hot…” Ilya trails off, teasing. It only seems a little forced.

Crisis averted, then. Good.

Shane meets Wyatt’s eyes across the room. Is he okay? The goalie mouths, holding up the TV remote, I can turn it off. 

Shane shakes his head, smiling faintly. 

“Ready to lose, Hayes?” he asks out loud.

“We’re on the same team, dude.”

Shane raises an eyebrow. He’s pretty sure this game doesn’t have teams. He looks at Lisa for confirmation.

“He’s fucking with me, right?”

“Oh absolutely.”

“Yeah,” Shane says with more confidence than he should, given that he has never played this game in his life and only knows what half the buttons do, “get ready to be fucking destroyed.”

“You wish Hollzy.”

Shane dies about a minute later, but he isn’t all that bothered. He lets himself bask in the feeling of Ilya’s hand in his hair, and the feeling of safety in this basement, and above all, the knowledge that this is exactly where he is supposed to be.

Chapter 3: The Sea

Chapter Notes

new chapter??? Yippee!!
Motivation for this guy was lowww but it's moving everything in the right direction so there's that.
Enjoy!!!

Ilya: June 2017

“Ilya,” says the psychiatrist, clearly exasperated, “I can’t make you talk to me, but it would certainly make both of our lives a lot easier.”

Ilya doesn’t like this psychiatrist. He hadn’t liked the first three either, refusing to say a word to them. The first doctor had spoken in a thick Quebecois accent that Ilya genuinely couldn’t understand. The second had started off well enough, before letting slip that he was a massive Centaurs fan. The third, by far the worst, had asked Ilya if he had a way of contacting his family, since blood relatives are typically the most important touchstone for healing. Ilya hadn’t lashed out at any of them, not even the third guy, but only through sheer force of will. He’s tired. It’s been nearly a full day since he’s got here, and they’ve barely let him sleep.

He wishes Galina could just come talk to the doctors here and explain that he can’t just say what he’s thinking outright. Unfortunately, they don’t want him seeing non-hospital personnel. Not for the next nineteen-odd hours.

Mandatory psych holds have consequences, apparently. The largest of which has been that these people really, really, want him to tell them all his deepest darkest secrets. Idiots. 

Ilya groans. Maybe if he gives this guy something, they’ll leave him alone to regret this whole debacle in peace. 

“You do not need to worry so much,” he says, “I do not actually want to kill myself.”

Psychiatrist guy hums, raising his eyebrows. “That’s not what you told the paramedics yesterday.”

“That wasn’t-” Ilya sighs. This would be easier to explain if he could occasionally lapse into Russian. “I was tired. Had a panic attack. This is normal for me, but it came on very fast. After, I was…” he shakes his head, searching for a way to make this make sense. “I was not fully myself. Not like I am now. So there is a problem, yes, but it is not,” he waves a hand around the room, “it is not as big of a problem as you all think.”

Psychiatrist guy frowns at his obnoxious little notepad. He clicks his pen. Ilya wonders if stabbing the man with that pen would extend his stay here. Probably.

“How would you describe the ‘problem’ then?” little air quotes. 

Ilya closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Is like I said,” he replies, “sometimes, after I panic, I am a little bit not here,” he taps his temple with a finger, “and it can be… scary.” It isn’t the right word, but it’s close enough for this exercise.

“So you told the paramedics you were actively suicidal because you were scared?”

When it’s phrased like that, it makes Ilya feel like a child.

“I realized that the not-here part of me was thinking dangerously,” Ilya says, trying not to sound defensive and, in all likelihood, failing spectacularly, “and I took the quickest solution to making sure nothing bad happened.”

The psychiatrist looks at his notes some more. Silence, finally. Ilya looks at the ceiling and counts all forty-eight panels. Forty-four if you don’t count the lights.

“Have you tried an anti-psychotic before?” 

The question is extremely unexpected. Ilya shakes himself, trying not to be offended by the implication. “Briefly. I did not like it, it didn’t do anything. I’ve been fine with just my SSRI.”

“Clearly you haven’t been.”

Which, fair enough. Still. This guy rubs Ilya the wrong way.

“What happened yesterday-” Ilya almost bites himself off there, because he realizes that he’s fallen into this guy’s trap of talking about it. He’s in too deep to stop now. “I do not think this is a meds problem. More a do not run away in the middle of the night with no phone after a panic attack problem.”

“Okay,” Psychiatrist guys says, “and how can we help you with this problem?” 

It’s the first thing anyone’s said to Ilya all day that isn’t completely useless.

“I want to go home,” Ilya replies, “I can bump up my appointments with my regular therapist. Two times a week, maybe.”

“Your file says you live with your soulmate?” 

“Yes.”

“Are they someone you can rely on right now, or would going home to them make your situation more difficult?”

Ilya thinks about Shane. Perfect and caring and always trying so hard that Ilya never knows quite what to do with it all. He thinks of quiet afternoons and the thrill of their shared powerplay and the joy of waking up next to each other.

He thinks about how Shane must have reacted when, as Ilya’s emergency contact, he got the call that he had been admitted. It probably wasn’t great. He’s probably going out of his mind, worrying about the worst possible scenarios.

“He is the most reliable person I have ever known,” Ilya admits softly, “but I don’t want him to worry about me so much.”

“He’s your soulmate. I’m pretty sure he’s already worried.”

Admittedly, this is a solid point.

“What have you told him?”

“I haven’t spoken to him, but one of our nurses would have given him a call when you were brought up to this floor. He knows you’re safe.”

“Can I talk to him?” Ilya asks, “even just on the phone?”

Psychiatrist guy looks at his notepad again. He looks like he wants to say no, but as far as Ilya can recall, the ban on talking to people was an in-person rule.

“Please?” Ilya adds, letting himself sound just a bit pathetic in the hopes that it’ll work. 

“I’ll talk to the nurses once we’re done here,” says Psychiatrist guy, and that’s about the most Ilya can hope for. He nods and tries to cooperate and succeeds well enough that when the doctor leaves, he does so with a promise to bring back a phone.

This is good, because it means that Ilya will be able to reassure Shane that he’s fine now, but it’s also bad because reassuring Shane means confronting the fact that Ilya himself is the reason why Shane needs reassuring. He wonders what this little stint will do to their relationship. He wonders what it will do to his career.

He wonders what the league doctors, who still can’t, or perhaps won’t tell him why his body aches all the time, will think of all this. They certainly won’t be happy.

They’ll probably be happy he isn’t dead, but that’s a pretty low bar.

Now that Ilya’s thinking about his aches, he can’t stop. He rolls his neck and shoulders a few times and, as always, it doesn’t do shit. 

Ohh it’s just a natural part of being a professional athlete. 

Ohhh you just need to stretch more.

Ohhhh have you tried heat?

By the time this year is done, Ilya is beginning to doubt that there will be a doctor left in this city that he doesn’t have a grudge against. 

Psychiatrist guy comes back holding a cordless landline, talking into it.

“- just walking into his room now. I’ll pass the phone over,” to Ilya, he adds, “talk as long as you want, but a nurse will be in to collect it in forty-five minutes.”

Ilya takes the phone with two hands and a grateful nod. He holds it like it’s the most precious thing he’s ever seen, and that isn’t even too far off. Ilya brings it to his ear slowly, ignoring the way his hand shakes. For a moment, he doesn’t say anything. He can hear Shane’s breathing, timid. Then, softly, gently, “Ilya?” A pause. “Baby, are you there?”

“Shane,” Ilya breathes, and he doesn’t mean to sound so distraught, but his voice breaks as the word slips from his lips. He wishes desperately that Shane could be here. Shane would help him fight off the annoying doctors and distract him from the facts of his existence until the clock runs out and they can all forget this ever happened.

“Oh my god, I was so worried, I-”

“I’m sorry,” Ilya cuts him off, “I didn’t mean for this to happen, I…” he stops talking when he realizes that he doesn’t know what, exactly, he had meant to happen.

“Hey,” Shane says, voice firm, yet kind over the phone, “you don’t need to apologise, okay? Yeah, I’m a bit freaked out by all this, maybe even a little mad, but,” Shane sighs, and his voice gets all muffled like he’s buried his face in his arms, “I’m happy to be freaked out if the alternative is that you’re dead, and I’m only mad at myself.”

“At yourself?” 

“I thought I was getting better at noticing what you need. I guess I haven’t gotten good enough.”

“I wasn’t going to actually do anything,” Ilya assures him, hoping that it’s truer than it feels, “I was just scared.”

“Because of me?”

Ilya feels his mind go blank at that. What? What could Shane have possibly done?

“What do you mean, ‘because of you’?” He’s too tired to dance around the issue.

“Like,” Shane sighs, “I know I, like, triggered you into a panic attack. With the necklace. I shouldn’t have done that, and…”

“And you did not know. I didn’t know either. But no. I wasn’t scared because of you, I was just,” Ilya groans into the sad pillow the hospital has provided him, “I was just scared. I do not know how else to explain it.”

It’s a little snappier than he would have liked. Shane doesn’t seem bothered.

“Okay,” Shane says, not fighting back like Ilya wishes he would, “well, your doctor mentioned that I can visit you tomorrow?”

“I-”

It’s technically true. “It will be late by the time the forty-eight hours are up. I don’t know if they’ll let you.”

“They’ll let me,” Shane says, confident. Then, more cautiously, “unless you don’t want-”

“Don’t be stupid, Shane,” Ilya cuts in, “of course I fucking want to see you. I always want you with me.”

“So I’ll be there then,” Shane promises, “and maybe we’ll talk more?”

“These people will not let me leave until I have talked about every feeling I have ever had. Twice. Don’t worry. We will talk.” Ilya had started saying it as a joke, but it just comes out sounding bitter, which he doesn’t love. Oh well. Ilya bites into his bottom lip. He wants to pretend this is normal for a second. “What are your plans today?” he asks.

“What?” Shane doesn’t seem to immediately grasp the genius plan.

“It’s eight in the morning. You will already have worked out. Media stuff is basically done. We didn’t have any plans until next month. What are you doing today?”

“I was probably going to take Anya out for a long walk,” Shane says, and it’s so delightfully boring and normal, “and then maybe give Hayden a call. I don’t know. It’s weird doing things when I know you’re-”

“Ah. Yes. Sorry.” 

“Don’t-”

They speak over each other, words tumbling across the line in a jumbled mess. Ilya can’t help himself. He laughs, just a little. “Wow, Hollander,” he teases, “telling me not to apologise? They will revoke your citizenship.”

“Shut up,” Shane replies, but his tone drips with a fondness that Ilya only feels he really deserves half the time.

From there, they mostly succeed at not talking about the elephant in the room. Shane tells some story from his dad: one coworker heinously wronged another by backstabbing them in front of their boss in an important meeting. Ilya, in return, offers short, cutting jabs about these people that neither of them have ever met. It’s nice. Pleasant. 

Ilya’s shoulders start acting up again, and he only mostly succeeds at hiding the hiss of pain his body makes as he shifts position to hold the phone on the other side. It doesn’t even help. 

“The pain?” Shane asks sympathetically, as though it could be anything else.

“It’s not too bad,” Ilya assures him, “it’s been worse.”

“So the stretches are still helping?”

“Maybe? Maybe. It’s hard to say. It usually just feels random if it hurts or not.”

“Have you asked any of the doctors about it? This seems like a good opportunity for a second opinion."

“They aren’t really that kind of doctors.”

“Ilya.” Shane says, and his tone fills in the rest. If you don’t tell them, I will. 

“Tomorrow?” Ilya asks somewhat desperately, “we only have a few more minutes to talk and I want to spend them telling you how much I love you. Not fighting.”

“I’m not just going to drop this,” Shane warns, “but okay. Tomorrow. I love you too.”

The nurse takes the phone away shortly after, and Ilya tries really, really hard not to feel like she's taking his heart away with it.

Chapter 4: Noticing

Chapter Notes

hahahaha triple employment summer is doing things to my sanity. About to go out and buy a kids play tent at Ikea for Reasons (TM)

Shane, Five Months Ago

Shane’s been working really hard to notice. To notice faster, and react better, and figure out all the little things he can do to help Ilya in the bad moments that neither of them really talk about. At the team holiday party a few weeks ago, he had noticed that Ilya was getting twitchy, tapping his fingers against his collarbone and biting his lip. Before even Wyatt could figure it out, Shane had already grabbed his coat, leaning into Ilya’s side. “I’m tired,” he had said, “do you mind heading out a little early?”

Ilya had rewarded him with a grateful look and a little smile and the knowledge that he was finally getting the hand of the whole having-a-life-together thing. 

Shane has been working really hard, and that hard work has been paying off, except-

Except he doesn’t love what he’s noticing. 

Intellectually, Shane’s known that Ilya had been, to a point, putting up something of a front during their stolen nights together. He’s known that Ilya had been trying extra hard to seem okay. He hadn’t known what to do or say about it at the time, and he doesn’t have any better ideas now, but all this noticing has led to a truly horrifying realization:

Ilya is still hiding.

It’s little things, really. When Shane asks about a panic episode, or a nightmare, Ilya is usually honest. 

When Shane asks about the back pain Ilya is clearly pretending not to have in practice, he gets dismissed. Ilya says he “pushed too hard on the bench press. Just sore, Shane. Don’t worry.”

When Shane asks if Ilya managed to sleep well, after waking up to find the other side of the bed cold, Ilya grins at him, “just felt like getting in an early run. You are telling me to do this all the time, now you are confused why I followed your advice?”

Shane had just rolled his eyes with a fond smile and a shake of the head. He had dropped it, for the time. He hadn’t stopped noticing.

It all comes to a head the last week of January. It’s just practice, or it should have been. They’re running checking drills. Shane watches as Ilya takes the puck up along the boards, attempting to evade Dykstra. He’s all speed, which is why he’s the one the defensemen like to run this play with: if they call pull it off against Ilya, they can pull it off against anyone. As Ilya reaches the corner of the ice, Chouinard slingshots around the net, forcing him to curb his speed so as not to collide. Right on cue, Dykstra pitches to the side, slamming Ilya into the boards with half the force he would use in a regular game, just enough to prove the tactic would work. He snatches the puck away, shooting it to Chouinard. From the other side of the ice, Wiebe blows his whistle, nodding. 

Shane doesn’t notice what happens after that, because Ilya has barely moved from his spot along the boards. He’s tossed off his gloves, holding on to the wall with a white-knuckle grip, face pinched. 

Shane’s first thought is that the check triggered Ilya into a panic. It seems unlikely, and he doesn’t think it’s actually happened before, but anything is possible, probably. He abandons the other forwards to their passing drills, and meets Ilya where he’s half-keeled over against the boards.

“Ilya,” he says softly, not wanting to draw attention unless it’s needed, “are you-”

Ilya shakes his head aggressively, hissing through his teeth, “I don’t know,” he grits out.

Shane frowns. “You don’t know?”

“I’m not panicking,” Ilya starts, “but I don’t know what’s wrong. I’ve been a little sore. No big deal. Today, maybe it’s a little worse. But then that check, fuck,” he ducks his head, pressing his helmet to the wall, “everything hurts. Bad.”

Shane feels the ice give way beneath his feet. For Ilya to admit that, he must be in agonizing pain.

“Okay,” he says, “let’s get to the bench then, okay? Can I help?”

Ilya squeezes his eyes shut, but makes a nod of affirmation. Shane puts a hand on his waist, hoping to take some of his weight and lead him to a spot to sit down, but the second he makes contact, Ilya flinches, letting out a whine.

“Sorry,” he says, “I don’t know why this is happening,”

“You’re okay,” Shane says, hoping that it’s true, “I won’t touch you if it hurts.”

“No, I think- I need your help. It’s fine. Let’s just go?”

They make steady progress to the bench. Once there, Ilya collapses onto the seat, breathing heavily.

“I’m going to get a medic, okay?” 

Ilya makes a noise that could mean anything, but Shane chooses to interpret it as agreement. Heart racing, he tears off his skates and jogs in just his socks to the team doctor’s office. Terry is a good guy. He’ll help. 

The doctor looks abruptly when Shane barges into the room, taking in Shane’s state with wide eyes.

“Ilya- I don’t know. He’s hurt.” It’s not accurate, but Shane doesn’t know what is, so it’ll have to do. Terry is already standing, grabbing a bag.

“Did you see what happened?”

“No? I mean,” Shane takes off his helmet and runs a hand through his hair, “he didn’t get hurt. He got checked into the boards, and it was barely a tap, really, but now he’s in pain. A lot of pain. I just-”

“Hollander,” Terry interrupts, “breathe.”

Shane does as he’s told. He meets Terry’s eyes. “Something has been off with him for a while. He says he’s just sore, but I don’t buy it.”

“Okay,” they step into the tunnel, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Two days, a blood test, and four scans later, and Ilya is sitting on the side of the bed with a scowl on his face.

“So,” Terry says, and Shane tries really hard to notice how Ilya reacts to the words, so much so that he doesn’t pay as much attention to them as maybe he would have, “like I said, our tests were mostly inconclusive. This doesn’t mean everything is fine, it just means we haven’t figured out what’s wrong yet. But Ilya,” and here, the doctor hesitates long enough for Ilya’s scowl to go from performative to genuinely concerned, “we can’t ignore the fact that your body has been through some incredible trauma. It’s entirely possible that this could become a chronic issue for you, and if that’s the case-”

“It’s not,” Ilya interrupts. 

“Ilya,” Shane hisses, knocking their ankles together. This is important. 

“If it is because of what happened in Russia,” Ilya continues, despite the chastising, “why is it only starting now? I have been in Ottawa for years. And I’m fine now. Pain is gone.”

“Trauma affects everyone in different ways,” Terry sounds like a motivational pamphlet, and even Shane can agree that it’s a little bit much. “I can’t say for sure, but I would guess that now, you know, it’s the first time in your life where you’ve been completely safe. You’re close with the team, you’re living full time with your soulmate, maybe,” Terry raises his eyebrows, “maybe your body finally feels safe enough to let itself feel all the pain it’s been holding back for years.”

The scowl is gone now, replaced by a blank, unreadable expression. Shane breaks his own PDA rule, taking Ilya’s hand in both of his own. He wonders if it provides the comfort he hopes it does. 

“So what, then?” Ilya asks, defensive, “I am just broken now? There is no fixing it?”

Shane squeezes his hand tighter.

“I never said that,” Terry replies, “and it isn’t true. From here, we can continue trying to diagnose the problem, and we can begin treating the most unpleasant symptoms right away. That said, we should have a plan in place in case you have another flare up while on the ice-”

“No.”

Shane startles a bit at Ilya’s harsh tone, and the sudden, crushing grip on his fingers.

“I don’t need a plan. If it happens again, I’ll take a tylenol like last time, and I’ll be more careful doing warmups.”

“I worry that-” 

“We’re done.” Ilya says, standing up. He pulls his arm from Shane’s grasp and moves for the door, not bothering to close it on his way out.

Shane watches him for half a second, biting his lip. “Sorry,” he says to Terry, “he’s just. You know. This is a lot.”

“I get it,” Terry responds, “you both have my number if you want to discuss this further. And Shane?”

“Yeah?”

“Keep me updated?”

“I-” Shane sighs, “I’ll try. Thank you. I’m going to…” he gestures at the open door with his thumb.

Terry nods, and Shane follows his soulmate down the hallway.

He understands why Ilya doesn’t want to talk about it. Doesn’t want to think about it, probably. Ilya has lost so much, to Russia, and even now, it’s like his trauma is still taking more from him. Shane thinks, privately, that if his body ever started betraying him like Ilya’s is, to the point where he couldn’t play, he would lose his mind.

At the end of the day, Shane isn’t a doctor. He can’t fix whatever is going on. What he can do, is support Ilya, and encourage him, without forcing him into anything he truly doesn’t want. He can continue to watch, and notice, and maybe, eventually, he can help Ilya take back some of what Russia took from him. 

Maybe, if it doesn’t feel like Russia stole quite so much from Ilya, it will lessen the blow that this health issue might turn out to be.

Maybe, maybe maybe.

Shane resolves to keep noticing. 

Shane can’t move. 

He’s on the street, in some big city. Not Ottawa. Toronto, maybe.

It doesn’t matter. He’s probably here for a game.

He can’t move.

Around him, people walk back and forth on the sidewalk, their faces blurring together. He knows all of them. He knows nobody. 

A sound, then.

Only when he hears it does he realize that despite the busy street, it’s otherwise completely silent.

Shane fights himself, as though every bone in his body is made of lead, but he manages to turn. This isn’t a good sign for his game tonight.

The sound is coming from below. A drainage grate.

Shane steps towards it, onto the curb, and as he places his weight on it, he looks up. A car. White. Old. Unimpressive. He tries to see the plate, thinking distantly that he should have that information for the insurance claim he’s about to have to file. 

There goes the game.

Before the car can hit him, he’s falling.

Shane can’t move.

Maybe it’s the same dream, or maybe it’s something new. He could be in the pipes, now. 

Stone, concrete. Wet dampness that seeps into him. Light, only distantly coming from above.

Shane stands, looking around. He blinks. He can’t tell if he’s extremely hot, or extremely cold.

At first, Shane had thought he was alone in this place, something of a round cavern, connecting to several unknown locations through dingy tunnels.

He isn’t. 

In one corner, not that this place has corners, there’s a mass.

Rags, maybe.

The mass of not-rags moves. It sniffles. It shifts, a little, and the scraps of fabric fall away to reveal a bloodied mess of skin.

Ilya. 

Shane knows, before he even knows that he does.

He’d never seen Ilya’s injuries this bad, but he’s imagined it far too often.

He tries to speak, but his mouth won’t cooperate. 

Ilya looks up, finally, and his face is a bruised mess.

It’s a bruised mess, but not in the way it was back then, when Shane hadn’t even known they were soulmates. Not in the way it had been, when Shane picked him up at the Montreal airport that summer.

It’s bruised like it was after a game. After a fight. After a win.

There’s a smirk on his face, and light in his eyes, and a golden cross against his chest.

Dream-Ilya lets out a sharp laugh.

“Like what you see, Hollander?”

And usually, Shane does. Of course he does. But this Ilya, Dream-Ilya, is wrong. The wounds on his back, torn open and raw, his face younger than it’s been since before the Olympics and everything that came after.

Dream-Ilya is both Ilya at his most vulnerable, and at his most closed-off. It’s disconcerting.

“What is this?” Shane finally manages to ask, but he doesn’t want to. They aren’t the words he means to say, but they’re the words that leave his mouth.

Ilya grins again, a sharp, feral thing. There is blood on his teeth. He runs his tongue across them provocatively. “The truth.”

Shane wakes, and all he remembers of the dream is the damp darkness, and the light in Ilya’s eyes, and the glint of gold around his neck.

Chapter 5: Rational

Chapter Notes

happy 10pm on a friday you guys!!!
Please enjoy this chapter and ignore that it barely moves the plot along at all!!!

Ilya: June 2017

Ilya wakes up three hours before Shane can come visit. It’s far too early. It’s not nearly enough time.

Ilya isn’t crazy. He knows that much. Outside of his panic episodes, he can almost always tell when his worries are rational, and when they’re certifiably insane. 

Shane coming here, and seeing him like this, won’t spell the end of their relationship. Ilya knows that this is true, in his mind. Of course Shane, who fell in love with him at his worst, is not going to be completely scared off by this. This worry is, thus, irrational. 

However, Ilya can also understand how visiting your soulmate in a fucking psych ward might change things. It might be subconscious, even. It will probably happen. Ilya doesn’t think it’s irrational to worry about this.

And then, of course, there’s the fact that once Shane gets here, he’ll blab to the nurses and doctors and whoever about Ilya’s weird mystery pains that come and go on a whim. The ones that Terry couldn’t solve with a scan or a prescription, and so Ilya had just accepted would be a part of life.

If Shane tells the nurses, then the nurses will want to investigate again, and that’s stupid. As upset as Ilya had gotten when Terry suggested it, he knows what this is: his time in Russia, finally catching up to him. The end of his insane luck. 

If Shane tells the nurses, and the nurses investigate, then one of two things will happen. In Ilya’s estimation, the most likely scenario is that they’ll tell him to stop playing hockey. He thinks that if Terry weren’t employed by the Centaurs, this is the advice he would have given. Ilya doesn’t think Shane knows how great this possibility is.

The other possibility is that the nurses think they have some way to fix him. They give him false hope, and worse, they give Shane false hope, only for whatever miracle cure they have to fall short. This scenario is perhaps the worst: Ilya would think he’s getting better, and then one day, without warning, his joints and muscles and flesh would cave in on him in the middle of a game, possibly injuring him permanently.

Probably, the smartest thing to do would be to retire right now. It’s a high point, after all. A Stanley Cup, alongside his partner and soulmate. It’s more than anything Ilya thought he would have. He should quit while he’s ahead.

Ilya has never been very good at doing the smart thing.

He knows that the only reason Shane ever looked twice at him in the first place was because of hockey. He knows that the only reason he is able to live this life that he loves is because of hockey. Ilya’s body is falling apart, sure. His mind has been falling apart, fine. But Ilya has two things in his life that are sure and perfect and good: Shane Hollander, and hockey. He isn’t going to lose either of them without a fight.

There is a part of Ilya that almost doesn’t want Shane to visit today. Almost. 

He can picture, already, the way tears will well up in Shane’s eyes when he sees that Ilya hasn’t been afforded the dignity of shoelaces or a razor to shave with. He imagines how sad, and scared, and irrationally guilty Shane will look standing in the doorway, trying and failing to put on a brave face. It isn’t hard to remember Shane’s broken voice on the phone, and the tension of everything.

The inevitable knock on the door comes three minutes early. That, or the large clock on the wall is three minutes late. Ilya could see either thing being true. Ilya is sitting in an uncomfortable chair next to the bed, because he hopes that it will signal how not-awful he’s feeling. Maybe it works.

The door opens slowly, cautiously, and when Shane slips into the room, he looks like shit. His hair is a mess, deep shadows under his eyes. He’s wearing Ilya’s Cens hoodie from when he first joined the team, before he got the A.

The first thing Ilya feels is relief, but it’s very quickly replaced by horrible, burning guilt, that he’s the one that made Shane look this disheveled. 

“Ilya,” Shane breathes, and he lurches forward before catching himself, as though he isn’t sure whether to move deeper into the space or not. 

Ilya answers the unspoken question by standing, and crossing the room until they’re no more than a few inches apart. He reaches down to take Shane’s hand in his own, brushing his fingers over Shane’s knuckles.

“Hi,” he says, pressing a kiss to the skin. “Come sit?”

Shane responds eagerly to the direction, and the two of them squish against the headboard of the bed, because the alternative is being separated by the flimsy plastic armrests of the chairs, and that simply won’t do.

“How…” Shane doesn’t seem to know what to do with his body or this conversation, but Ilya doesn’t know what he needs either. “How are you doing? The nurse I spoke to said you could maybe go home today.” Shane has a hopeful lilt in his voice, and big, scared eyes.

Ilya hums in affirmation. “Things are going okay. They want to try me on another anti-depressant, plus the one I already have. And if they let me out, they want daily appointments, at least for the next ten days.”

“Okay,” Shane lets out a breath, “and that’s good, right? You’re happy with the care you’re getting?”

“I mean,” Ilya shrugs, “I don’t like my doctor very much, but I liked the ones before him even less, and so I’ve stopped complaining. I think I’ve managed to convince him I’m not crazy.” A thought occurs to Ilya, and he frowns, turning his head so his chin rests on Shane’s shoulder. “You don’t think I’m crazy, right?”

Shane stiffens, pulling away so that their eyes can meet, and for a second, Ilya feels that horrible, irrational fear. Then, Shane takes Ilya’s face in his hands, thumbs soothing over Ilya’s cheekbones.

“Of course I don’t, baby,” he says, “of course not.”

It’s too gentle a moment for the environment, all sterile and soulless.

Ilya swallows roughly. “Good.”

Thirty minutes later, there’s a knock on the door. Psychiatrist guy, again. Great. Ilya groans quietly, but not so quiet that Shane misses it.

“Is this the doctor we don’t like?” he asks, “do you want me to tell him to fuck off?”

“You can’t do that,” Ilya says regretfully, “he’s the one who decides if I get to go home. And he’s not actually that bad. Just…”

“Just…?”

“You’ll understand when you meet him.”

Psychiatrist guy takes that moment to barge in like he owns the place. Maybe he does, who can say.

“Ilya,” he greets, before turning to Shane, “and you’re the soulmate, I suppose?”

“Yeah,” Shane nods, “I’m Shane. Hollander.” Shane quints his eyes in that adorable way where he tries to figure out if it’s necessary to add his last name, or if the person he’s talking to knows enough hockey that the information isn’t needed.

“Nice to meet you, Shane. I’m Dr. Mathias Holmsdale. I’ve been Ilya’s primary psychiatrist for most of his time with us here.”

They shake hands like good, respectable people.

“We’ve spoken on the phone,” Shane replies.

“Yes, well,” Psychiatrist guy waves a hand in the air vaguely, “I’m here to chat with Ilya a bit, so we can make a strategy for his hopeful discharge later today.” He turns to Ilya, “since you live together, it could be beneficial to have Shane be a part of this discussion. What say you?”

“I can totally step out if that’s better,” Shane adds quickly, and Ilya rolls his eyes fondly.

“You can stay. Please.”

Psychiatrist guy looks pleased at this. He spends the next ten minutes talking about “safety strategies for dissociative episodes,” and “coping mechanisms for panic recovery,” and Shane pays attention to the whole thing with incredible diligence. It’s important stuff, of course, but it’s nothing that three different psych nurses haven’t already told him. Shane nods along to a lecture about not letting Ilya run away when he clearly isn’t one hundred percent coherent, and Ilya doesn’t have a medical degree or whatever, but he’s pretty sure that’s obvious. They’ve both learned their lesson on that front. It’s also irritating because the way Psychiatrist guy says it, “don’t let him,” makes it sound like Ilya’s some disobedient child, and not a whole grown man. In previous versions of this lecture, the focus had been more on communicating his whereabouts and keeping his phone with him just in case.

It’s fine. Annoying, but fine, because Shane looks annoyed too. Ilya’s enjoying a very pleasant thought about how amazing his soulmate is for getting right with the program of resenting Psychiatrist guy for no reason, when Shane goes and opens his mouth.

“Do you have any questions for me?” Psychiatrist guy asks, “If not, I’ll let the nurse know to send over the paperwork, and you should be good to go home after lunch.”

“Actually, Dr. Holmsdale,” Shane says, “Ilya’s been having some on and off body pains. They can get really intense. The team doc had a look, but couldn’t find anything wrong. He thinks it might be related to the PTSD. Do you think that’s possible? Could this new medication you’re prescribing help with that?”

Psychiatrist guy raises his eyebrows at Ilya, as though to ask why this hadn’t been brought up at any point. Ilya, to his credit he thinks, manages not to glare at Shane for this potential delay in his escape from this place.

“There are certain chronic pain conditions that have been linked to trauma,” says the doctor, making a note on his little pad, “and these are occasionally treated with duloxetine, which is one of the secondary anti-depressants we were considering trialing. I’ll send you guys home with a prescription, and we’ll play around with dosage a bit over the next few weeks. Hopefully, that can make a difference. If not, there are some great specialists in this hospital that I can refer you to.”

Ilya nods, because Psychiatrist guy had been mostly directing his answer at him, even though Shane was the one who asked.

“Sounds good,” Shane says with a smile, and then, finally, Psychiatrist guy leaves them alone.

Ilya nuzzles into the crook of Shane’s neck, pressing his forehead into the other man’s skin. “I do not want you to get your hopes up,” he confesses.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ilya sees Shane crunch up his face in confusion. “About what?”

“Me. Whatever is causing the pain. Sometimes, these things just happen, and I do not want you to be sad if I can’t be fixed.”

“Ilya,” Shane manages to sound kind and loving and annoyed all at once, “I’m obviously going to be sad if you’re in pain, that’s not really in question, but…” he bites his lip, looking like he wants to find the perfect way to phrase what he wants to say. “But even if we go to a hundred doctors, and none of them have even a single idea of how to prevent you from hurting, you won’t be broken. You don’t need fixing. I can’t-” Shane shifts them, then, so that he can hide his face in Ilya’s chest instead. Ilya takes the opportunity to card his fingers through Shane’s hair. “I worry that you still don’t understand just how incredibly perfect you are, for me. To me. I love you.”

“What if I can’t-” Ilya doesn’t want to voice the fear. He doesn’t want to even put it out there. Shane must not want that either, because he interrupts.

“Yes, even then.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” Ilya complains indignantly. 

“I did,” Shane assures him, eyes all soft and mushy and honest, “and I would. No matter what, you’re it for me. Okay?”

And, really, after all these years, Ilya shouldn’t doubt anymore. He doesn’t, not most of the time. 

“Okay.”

Chapter 6: Perfect

Shane, four months ago

The first time they play Montreal, in Montreal, doesn’t happen until late in the season. Shane is grateful. If he had to walk on to what had been his home ice for most of his career, before he found his footing in Ottawa, it would have been horrible. Not that it’s easy, now, but at least the fact that there’s an A on his chest and not a C doesn’t burn anymore. At least he knows the guys, and their families, and their play style. 

The crowd still cheers for him as he takes to the ice. Holl-and-er, Holl-and-er. It’s not as loud as it used to be, but it’s a whole hell of a lot louder than they chanted for Drapeau, inexplicably made captain over Hayden or JJ. He never stated, explicitly, why he left, It had been unprecedented: the captain leaving the season after winning the Cup. Probably, people online have been able to put the pieces together and form a guess. Shane wouldn’t know. He’s mostly been able to stop following all that bullshit.

Shane takes the faceoff, for the symbolism of it all, but also because Ilya’s on the second line this game, cutting back his minutes to account for the pain he’s obviously in but won’t acknowledge. 

The Metros’ new center is some cocky kid from New Hampshire. He smirks, giving Shane a clear onceover. “Ready to lose, fag?” he chirps.

Shane laughs. He can’t help himself. This guy is all of twenty years old, yet he’s already been traded twice because of how much of a disaster he is in the room. Not exactly a threat. 

“Come on kid,” he says, “you can do better than that.”

The kid sputters, and Shane wins the faceoff.

Unfortunately, that’s about as good as the game gets. It’s not that Montreal is better than them, because the teams are decently matched right now, but Ilya is not quite running at a hundred percent, and Shane in a weird headspace, and the Metros are the more experienced team. 

They get their first goal ten minutes into the first period. Ilya is on the ice when it happens, and Shane watches him tap his helmet against Wyatt’s. The men tap gloves. 

When play restarts, Ilya wins the puck, shooting it to LaPointe, who quickly gets boxed into a corner, radiating indecision. Shane stands up, banging his stick into the boards. “Fucking pass!” he yells, and thankfully, LaPointe does. It’s sloppy, and a lesser player wouldn’t have been able to receive it, but Ilya is there in a flash, zipping down the ice. He swings around the back of the net as Troy gets open in front of it, and Shane watches as the goalie clearly expects Ilya to pass to Troy for the shot. Instead, Ilya tips the puck in himself, a sneaky little thing that happens so fast everyone nearly misses it.

When the goal horn blares, Shane is back on his feet, cheering over the groans of the Montreal crowd. Ilya returns to the bench, and Shane scoots over to make room. They don’t normally sit next to each other like this, in the middle of the game, but why shouldn’t they? They’re professionals. Shane deserves to sit next to his soulmate if he wants to.

Ilya must agree, because he takes the offered spot.

“You like that?” Ilya asks, grinning wide, “sexy, yes?”

Shane turns to face him, affronted. “Are you really asking me if I’m turned on by you scoring a goal?”

“You’re right,” Ilya knocks their shoulders together, “of course you are. Silly question.”

On Shane’s other side, Bood chokes on nothing, eyes wide. Shane rolls his eyes, thumping the captain on the back a few times.

Maybe they aren’t as professional as he thought. Oh well.

“You’re such an asshole,” Shane groans, but he can’t wipe the smile off his face.

In the locker room, things are tense. They’re tied going into the second period, which, in Shane’s book, basically means that they’re starting the game fresh once they’re back on the ice. 

Ilya’s in one corner, hyping up the rookies. It’s a good sign, suggesting that the pain he was in this morning has probably faded. Shane smiles. Sure, his old team hates him, and spit slurs at him whenever they can, and that sucks massively, but at the end of the day the Cens locker room is a better place to be than Montreal ever was.

Ilya wins the first faceoff of the second period, and manages to draw a penalty about fifteen seconds later. Shane watches one of the Metro’s new defensemen get escorted to the box, and then he’s on the ice for the power play. 

As always, it’s absolutely electric. Technically, there are other players on the ice, but it’s hard to remember that when Ilya is there. They shoot the puck back and forth so quickly Shane knows even the talking heads in the press booth will have trouble following it. The first time they did this, the opposing team had questioned if it was fair; if being soulmates helped their game too much.

Nobody tries to stop them anymore, but people sure do complain. Shane doesn’t care. He sends the puck cleanly through several sets of skates, right into the curve of Ilya’s blade. Ilya takes it across the ice, but loses it to Hayden. A shame, but at least Shane can be sure Hayden didn’t sling any slurs while he stole possession.

There are defensemen for this, for getting the puck back, but Hayden is probably Shane’s best friend, and he knows the other man’s style well. He checks Hayden into the boards, fighting him for the puck. When he wins, he sends his friend an apologetic look. Hayden sends one back, though for a different reason. 

Shane slips around the Metros as they converge on him, lines up his angle, and takes the shot. He misses, the puck bouncing off the posts, but Ilya doesn’t let it get far, scooping it back up and sending it back to Shane. Second time’s the charm.

Goal.

Good.

There are only about fifteen seconds left on the powerplay by the time the game resets, but that’s fine. Shane is sure those fifteen seconds will be a whole lot more fun than any fifteen seconds he played with Montreal.

By the end of the third period, the game is tied 2:2. There’s five minutes left, and Shane knows that if the third line doesn’t score in the next minute, Wiebe will be putting him back on the ice to hopefully finish out the game in regulation time.

Ilya is sitting next to him, which is really nice and makes him wonder why they haven’t done it more often. 

On the ice, Young steals the puck and passes it to LaPointe, who, as a rookie defenseman has not ever actually scored a goal in a game. Miracles can happen, though.

LaPointe barrels through Montreal’s defense, and Shane gets to his feet.

“Shoot the fucking puck!” he yells, and thankfully, the kid listens.

With two minutes left on the clock, they’re up 3:2.

Ottawa wins, of course. In the handshake line, several guys refuse to tough him, and Hayden offered him an embarrassed grimace that might have been an attempt at a smile. Shane doesn’t care. Here he is, on his old ice, where the fans still love him, with Ilya at his side. Why should he bother with what some old coworkers think of him?

Winning always feels good, but today is something else. Shane feels alive. He feels invincible. 

He takes his post-game interview shirtless, and he doesn’t bother hiding Ilya’s name on his chest. He hopes that someone will ask so that he can rub it in Montreal’s face how happy he is. Tragically, today’s reporters are too respectful for that. 

Lucky, then, that Shane has never been a quitter.

“How does it feel,” asks one reporter, “winning your first game on this ice since your move to Ottawa?”

“Well,” Shane grins, “you know, it’s always a little nervewracking, but it went really well. This team is connecting great, and the fans here are really passionate, so you sort of feed off that, even if they aren’t cheering for you.”

“Oh but some of them absolutely were cheering for you, weren’t they?”

“A few, yeah,” Shane says, humble, “for a long time, I thought I’d retire here, but it’s nice to know that the city still likes me.” 

The reporter laughs, and Shane laughs with her, just a little.

“Any big plans to celebrate the win?”

“Oh, well actually-” and really, Shane was just going to mention dinner at Hayden’s tonight, or maybe just allude to a calm night with friends, but then he catches Ilya coming out of the locker room. Ilya, wearing one of his tank tops with the obnoxiously large arm holes that show off practically his entire chest, and a pair of shorts that are definitely from Shane’s own bag. 

At the end of the day, Shane is only a man. “Hey baby,” he calls out, and Ilya stops, turning to look back at him, eyebrow raised. Probably because they’ve never really used petnames in public before, nevermind live on television. Who cares? They won. Montreal lost. Shane is having a great fucking day. “Come over here?” he asks.

With a confused little smile, Ilya obliges. It’s cute. “What’s up?” 

“I was just asked if we had any plans to celebrate tonight’s win.” Shane meets his eyes and attempts to telegraph his plan so that Ilya can back out if needed. He doesn't. If anything, Ilya’s eyes get brighter, his smile a bit more genuine. Full steam ahead, then. “I thought,” Shane continues, “I would demonstrate.”

Before the guy operating the camera, or the guys in production, or whoever is in charge of the network can stop him, Shane has his hands buried in Ilya’s freshly showered hair, desperately pressing their lips together in a quick, hungry, aggressive kiss. When he pulls back, both of Ilya’s hands are still on his waist, thumbs making circles on his bare skin. 

“Anyway,” Shane can’t help but smirk and the now-shellshocked reporter, “that’s most of the plan for celebration. That and a drink with old friends.” The reporter hasn’t blinked. “Thanks guys,” Shane tells the group of media people, “but that’ll be all for today. I’ve got to go shower now.”

They’re at Hayden’s having very good chicken and rice when the team group chat starts going insane.

The first time Shane’s phone pings, he’s in the kitchen with Jackie, and he ignores it. The second time, he and Ilya are together at the table, phone’s going off at once. 

“Just the team,” Ilya says to Jackie’s questioning look, “some of them are at a club, probably just that.”

After the third ping, he silences his phone, and then reaches over and does the same to Ilya’s. 

Hayden and Jackie’s kids are at their grandparents’ for the night, and so Shane doesn’t want to stay too long and impose on the very limited time that the two have together. 

He opens his phone to call an uber back to the hotel, and figure he’ll click through the team chat while he’s at it. He opens it, and his own face stares back at him. Ilya’s face, too. As he scrolls through the messages, most of them feature the same few stills.

There are gifs. There are memes. There is a screenshot of a Twitter user saying Was NOT expecting a Hollander/Rozanov makeout session in the postgame interview but I’m not about to complain either. There is a screenshot of an Instagram comment on what looks to be a clipped video of the kiss: I want someone who looks at me like Rozanov looked at Hollander when he realized he was about to get kissed on live television #truelove.

Shane figures he must be making some sort of face, because beside him, Ilya frowns. “Everything is alright?” he asks.

Shane tangles their hands together, ducking his head down to place a kiss on Ilya’s shoulder. A year ago, this would have sent him into a spiral. He would have been a wreck. Now, things are much clearer. Much better.

“Everything is perfect.

Chapter 7: Enough

Chapter Notes

so has the chapter count gone down? yes. But this is for the best because honestly there was just a lot of filler that I didn't think fit the tone very well at all, and so I cut a bunch out, so the final product will be more in line with what I want.
This is just a lil baby chapter before the longer finale that is next chapter - I'm hoping to get it done tomorrow so I can start on my plane crash AU but work might be evil so we'll see I guess.

Let me know what you think of this, and enjoy!!!

Ilya: June, 2017

In general, news of his hospitalisation doesn’t seem to have reached the press or social media. Most people have just assumed his departure from Instagram and the public eye has been indicative of a luxurious summer spent basking in the Centaurs’ Cup win with Shane.

The first thing Ilya does when they get home is wrap Shane in a hug more vulnerable than anything he had been willing to offer at the hospital. No amount of physical closeness feels like enough right now, his mind flayed open and raw. “Take off your shirt,” he asks, voice somewhat muffled between Shane’s pecs.

One of Shane’s hands comes to rest between his shoulder blades. “I don’t think I’m- I don't think you should be-” Shane cuts himself off, but he’s frowning.

Ilya shakes his head. “No, not to fuck. I just. I want to feel you.”

“Oh,” Shane breathes, complying.

The soft cotton comes off, and something glints against Shane’s chest.

The cross.

They both freeze.

“You’re still wearing it.”

“You put it on me. I thought-” Shane brings his hands up behind his neck to undo the clasp, “I’ll take it off. You won’t have to see it again.”

“No, no, no,” Ilya stops Shane’s hands with his own, “keep it on.”

“But last time it made you…” 

“Last time, it made me think of my mother, which made me think of the church, which made me think about Russia. I spiraled, yes, but Shane,” Ilya laces their fingers together, “I could have spiraled about anything. Is not your fault that I spiraled about this.”

“So it isn’t upsetting? Seeing this?”

“No,” Ilya shakes his head, “no, it is good, I think. I like seeing you wear it. It’s like a part of her is with you.” The last part comes out as nothing more than a whisper. Ilya meets Shane’s eyes, and he can’t help but notice the tears welling up there. He places a kiss to the space on Shane’s chest just below the base of the cross, before moving his way upwards. Lips meet flesh along the hollow of Shane’s throat, and up to his lips. When Ilya finally pulls away, he adds, voice still low, “she would have loved you so much.” 

“You think?” Shane asks, a small smile on his lips.

“Well yes,” Ilya reasons, “you’re amazing, you know.”

“I know.”

*

Ilya wakes up to frantic mutterings and twisted sheets and, for once, he isn’t the source of it. He swings out an arm, colliding with Shane’s bare shoulder, tacky with sweat. Frowning, Ilya reaches to the other side and pulls the cord on the lamp, bathing the bedroom in soft amber light.

Shane is half-mummified in the bedding, his face pinched. His mouth moves, but the sounds are incomprehensible. Ilya runs the tips of his fingers across Shane’s face, but he doesn’t wake, or even seem comforted. 

“Shane,” he says, voice rough with sleep, “my love, wake up.”

Shane only twitches, curling further into himself.

Ilya sighs, considering his options. Usually, when Shane is upset, he finds comfort in physical contact. Maybe-

Ilya shifts up, rolling on top of his soulmate and plastering their bodies together. He presses a kiss to Shane’s neck and exaggerates his own breathing, the way Wyatt has done in the past for him.

It takes around two minutes for Shane to twitch abruptly out of sleep, shifting his arms with a groan. “Ilya?” he asks, groggy, “what the fuck?”

“You were having a bad dream.”

“So you decided to use your body as a blanket?”

“It worked, so…” Ilya trails off, his point proven.

Shane only hums in response, freeing his arms to wrap around Ilya, keeping them held together.

“You want to try and go back to sleep?” Ilya asks “still very early, but we can get up, too. I can make you your smoothie.”

“Just want to stay here,” Shane replies. Ilya smiles down at him.

“This is good too.”

*

Shane: Two Months Ago

Shane likes Wyatt’s house. He likes the way Ilya relaxes when they’re at Wyatt’s house. He likes the way their friends have made the time for this hangout before the first round of the playoffs starts in a little over a week.

Shane does not like Catan, the boardgame everyone else is playing, but he thoroughly enjoys lying with his head on Ilya’s lap, providing occasional encouraging commentary and only mostly betraying the fact that he does not understand a single aspect of the game. It’s good. Ilya calls the game boring and then gives his all to it, and Shane just humors him with a content little smile.

Tonight, it’s just the two of them, Wyatt, Lisa, and Troy. Manageable. Fun. Bood is at a wedding, Harris has a cold, and sure, there are other people they could have invited, but considering the upcoming playoffs, Shane is glad not to have to worry about some massive social occasion.

Ilya pulls off some trade deal that seems a little bit like cheating, but it results in the formation of one more settlement, and the end of the game. Shane presses a kiss to his knee in congratulations. Lisa takes the opportunity to saddle the two of them with cleaning up the game, dragging the others into the kitchen. 

The exciting news of the spring, aside from making the playoffs obviously, has been that Lisa is pregnant, after years of trying. Wyatt is ecstatic, carrying a sonogram in his wallet to show to anyone who will listen. He’ll be a great father, Shane knows. Kind and helpful and encouraging.

Not for the first time, Shane things about what kind of father he would be. Probably not as good as Wyatt. Definitely not as good as Ilya. Too anxious, probably. Ilya gets anxious too, but that’s for real, legitimate reasons. Never about kids. Ilya always seems so natural around children, so sure of himself, so perfect.

It’s not the first time Shane has thought about a real, long term future for them, but with everything else happening right now - namely, the pain Ilya is clearly in and pretending not to feel - life beyond hockey is becoming less intangible. It’s not impossible that they could retire in the next few years. Settle down. Have a kid of their own, or maybe two.

Of course, from Shane’s quiet, half-shamed research, he knows that their odds for adoption go up the most stable their relationship gets. Soulmates, committed, rich, these things work in their favor, but-

But being married would also help.

And Shane does, desperately, want to marry Ilya. He’d ask today, if they weren’t about to go into the playoffs, If Ilya wasn’t brushing him off when he tried to help with the sore joints. If he were just a little better at ignoring the hockey pundits, like he pretends to be.

Shane does know, as surely as he knows anything, that he has to be the one to ask. He has to be the one to prove, again and forever, as long as Ilya needs it, that he does choose this. Shane doesn’t know how traditional a wedding or a marriage Ilya would want, they’ve not really discussed those details, but he does know that he will be happy as long as they are together.

A plan forms loosely in Shane’s head as he puts all the little road pieces into little worn-out ziploc bags. Win the cup. Celebrate. Show Ilya just how amazing he is. Go to the cottage for their annual summer escape from reality. Have a serious talk, about the future. Retirement, and kids, and the medical care Ilya really, really shouldn’t keep putting off, not if he wants to keep playing. 

And then, after all that, maybe, Shane will get on one knee and open a little felt box with a solid gold band inside. “You are everything,” he will say, “my past, and my present, and my future,” and Ilya will probably get on his knees too, because they’ve always been equals, in everything. “I love you,” Shane will confess, “and so, Ilya Rozanov, will you marry me?”

Of course, Ilya will say yes. Ilya loves him. The ring will slide onto his finger, glinting in the light of the setting sun as it streams in the windows of the cottage. Shane will smile, and duck his head onto Ilya’s shoulder, and they will probably proceed to have several rounds of extremely hot sex, because they’ve never learned to do anything different.

This is the plan, and by the time the board game is packed away, it is so deeply ingrained in Shane’s mind that he can barely think of anything else.

He eats dinner and holds Ilya’s hand and thinks, I am going to marry you. Shane makes small talk with Troy, and chirps Buffalo’s goalie with Wyatt, and thinks, I am going to marry Ilya. Shane gets in the driver’s seat of the car and takes the long way home so Ilya can fall asleep in the passenger’s seat, and under the Ottawa streetlights he thinks, clear as day, you are the only thing I want for the rest of my life. 

Ilya is asleep again by the time his head hits the pillow, but Shane can’t tear his eyes off of his soulmate’s face, calm in the quiet of their bedroom.

He does, genuinely, try and sleep, but somewhere around three in the morning, when his brain still won’t stop thinking about the new plan for forever, Shane caves. He turns on his phone, lowering the brightness as far as it will go.

At 3:32, he’s on a jeweler's website. He scrolls through the men’s rings for half an hour, saving a few to a locked folder on his phone. Shane is just about to turn the phone back off and get some proper rest, so as not to completely destroy his sleep schedule, when something else catches his eye.

A familiar symbol, gold, on a chain. Symbolic Necklaces is the product category. 

On a whim, Shane saves that product listing too.

Chapter 8: Yes

Chapter Notes

The end!!!!! Bittersweet moment for sure, but this is the ending I've had in mind for these guys since I started writing this AU in February, so I'm really happy to finish it out like this.
If you are a fan of angst/hurt/comfort and alternating POVs my next fic will also have a lot of that! So stay tuned!

Have a great day!

Shane: Nine Days Ago

Thirty seconds left on the clock, and the Centaurs are up by two. The Cup is won, essentially, and what remains is little more than a humiliation routine for Colorado. Ilya is on the ice, and Shane is on the bench, because their lines are more balanced like that. Right now, though, Shane just wishes he could be there, right next to Ilya, when the timer runs out. He looks pleadingly over his shoulder at Wiebe, who must understand, because he pulls Luca off the ice and gives Shane a nod.

Shane returns the gesture gratefully, hopping the boards. Ilya looks up at him as he approaches, first with surprise, then with confusion, before finally landing on utter delight.

“What, Hollander,” he jokes, “you don’t trust me? You think I will find a way to blow your two point lead in under a minute?”

“Can never be too careful,” Shane jokes back, accepting the puck as Ilya shoots it straight into his tape. He makes his way to Colorado’s blue line, but he doesn’t expect to make it there. He doesn’t need to. The horns sound while he’s in the neutral zone, and then nothing else matters.

Shane’s helmet gets lost somewhere with his stick, and then Ilya crashes into him, slamming their lips together. They spin slowly with the force of it. Half a second later, the rest of the team converges with them, and then it’s just a mess of arms and bodies and laughter.

Some things never get old.

Bood takes the Cup from Crowell and passes it to Ilya, who shakes his head, nodding at the cluster of rookies. “Give it to the kids first,” he says, and Bood agrees easily. 

As the captain skates away, one of Ilya’s hands tightens on Shane’s bicep. Shane looks at him questioningly. “Everything okay?”

Ilya shakes his head minutely. “I am crashing fast, I think, from the adrenaline. The pain-” Ilya grimaces, and Shane understands immediately. More often than not, these days, Ilya has a pain flare up for a few hours after a high-stress game. They had hoped that the extra adrenaline of this particular game would hold back the flare, but apparently not.

“Okay,” Shane says, keeping his voice low, “why don’t we go back to the locker room, yeah?”

Ilya bites his lip, looking unsure. “I don’t want to take this away from you,” he argues, “you parents haven’t even made it down here.”

“I’ve done this before,” Shane reasons, “they won’t mind coming straight to the locker room to talk for a few minutes while the rest of the guys see their families.” Shane sizes Ilya up - the ashen look on his face, his lip, pinched between his teeth. “Besides,” he adds, “if we rest now, we’ll be more ready in a few hours to go to the party, right?”

Reluctantly, Ilya nods. His eyes are all wrong. He clearly sees through Shane’s we, that implication that both of them need this break from the celebrations.

“Okay,” he acquiesces, “we’ll go rest.”

*

Ilya does find some sort of second wind, though, and so the two of them meet the team at some club where seemingly hundreds of people want to shove drinks in their hands. Ilya is grinning, probably close to manic, taking shot after shot. Shane starts declining after his second drink. He vaguely points to the VIP area, and yells to Ilya over the music that he’s going to sit down for a bit. Ilya nods, grabbing Shane by the sides of his face and dragging him into a kiss.

It might be the first kiss they’ve ever shared that Shane hasn’t fully enjoyed. Too hard and too emotionless and it isn’t what he had been hoping for, but they’re exhausted and not exactly sober. There are a million excuses and maybe that’s why Shane reads the kiss as empty, rather than noticing the truth that would only find him later: the kiss had felt wrong because never before has Ilya kissed him like it’s goodbye.

Without the gift of prophecy, Shane lets it slide. 

From a booth near the back of the club, the music is almost slightly tolerable, and Shane watches Ilya dance with their teammates and whoever else happens to be around. Ilya drinks something that looks to be radioactive with how neon it is, but his face doesn’t react at all.

Shane plays with the rim of his glass of water.

Maybe Ilya is acting off because he has barely been drinking since starting on his anti depressant. The liquor is just hitting him harder than normal. Yes. That’s it.

Through a sea of heads, Shane meets his soulmate’s eyes. Something is wrong. He doesn’t know how he can tell, but as soon as the thought crosses Shane’s mind, it’s the truth. He turns to let Dykstra know where he’s going, but the man is busy making out with his wife, and may have not noticed Shane’s presence in the booth at all.

When he turns back, Ilya is gone.

Well. That’s not great.

Shane frowns, squirting through the poorly lit club. He catches a head of curly hair slipping out a side door. He shoves his way through the crowd, muttering apologies as he does. He can’t let Ilya be alone. Not right now. In a perfect, selfish world, never again.

The door is metal. Centered conveniently at eye level is a small window, the sort that is reinforced with the thin metal wires that surely don’t do anything at all. The handle is cool to the touch, but it turns easily.

The door opens outward, which means that Shane doesn’t notice Ilya at first.

When he finally does, Shane’s first thought is that his heart is breaking for Ilya, again. Maybe it will never stop.

Ilya isn’t panicking, and he looks as lucid as could be expected given how much alcohol he’s consumed in the last hour, but he is very much not alright.

He leans up against the brick exterior of the club, as though he needs the wall to stay upright. Ilya is breathing softly, silent tears pouring down his face. When Shane approaches, he closes eyes, ducking his head.

Wordlessly, Shane stands in front of him, guiding Ilya’s head down to rest in the crook of his shoulder, arms holding tight.

An unknowable amount of time passes before Ilya whispers, “I think this is…” a sigh, “what if this is my only one?”

Shane doesn’t know how best to respond to that. It’s his third. He can’t relate, but he can, unfortunately, agree. If Ilya’s pain keeps trending the way it has been, it’s entirely possible he’ll retire before the Cens can bring home another cup.

“If it’s your only one,” Shane breathes deeply, “then I’m grateful we won it together.”

“It is the only time I get to have this, and my stupid fucking body won’t let me enjoy it.”

At that, Shane lessens his grip abruptly. He hadn’t realized this was a physical pain situation. Its obvious now, though. It was stupid to think a nap would stop a flareup. He should have asked first, he should have been more careful, he is hurting Ilya and messing everything up and-

“Please don’t let go.”

The words are so faint Shane nearly misses them. “I don’t want to make your pain worse.”

“I don’t care. I need you.”

“Okay,” Shane pulls Ilya back into his arms, “okay.”

Shane gets them home, into comfortable clothes, and in bed. He lets the rest of the team think they’re leaving so early because they want to fuck. He thinks Ilya would appreciate that.

When they’re finally under the covers together, Shane wraps his limbs around his soulmate like some sort of needy animal, but Ilya just hums contentedly. 

Shane thinks about how he is going to make it so that Ilya never feels like he’s losing everything, even if he does wind up losing hockey before he’s ready. Shane thinks of the custom-order ring in a little velvet box that he keeps stashed in his gear bag, because that’s the one place Ilya would never snoop, too respectful of Shane’s hockey related neurosis. 

He thinks of the other box, too. Larger, parched on a whim when he saw the pendant pop up on the website like fate. Ilya would see a premature departure from hockey as something Russia took from him. Maybe, with this, Shane can give something back.

Shane vows to give Ilya the necklace before they head out to the cottage. He’ll use it as a test for the piece of jewelry that he really wants to give. Maybe it’ll help Ilya’s weird mood enough that they’ll be feeling normal by the time they make their escape from civilization.

*

Ilya, July 2017

The cottage is as peaceful as always. Maybe moreso, even. They got here late, and that’s Ilya’s fault, but they’re here now, and that’s what matters. 

If Ilya really thinks about it, he sort of has everything he’s ever wanted. A Stanley Cup, and a great team. Shane, his boyfriend, his soulmate. A home where he is, ultimately, safe and secure and wanted and loved.

Ilya wakes up with sun on his face, and Shane’s lips on his skin. “Good morning,” he says, and Shane smiles as he returns the sentiment.

Today is a Tuesday, and so like every other Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday, Ilya puts on a shirt and mentally prepares himself for his online appointment. He doesn't know what they’ll even discuss today. Things are good. The meds are working: Ilya is feeling more stable, both mentally and physically. At Shane’s insistence, he’s been doing yoga almost daily and it has, Ilya can admit, helped.

Doing anything with Shane helps.

When the session is over, Ilya wanders into the kitchen to find Shane making breakfast. Eggs, toast. Fruit. Elaborate, to some.

“How did it go?” he asks, as he does every time.

Ilya smiles, more genuinely than he has in the past. “Good. We are going to cut out the Thursday sessions for now. See how it goes.”

Shane looks at him appraisingly. “That’s great, Ilya.” He moves the eggs around in the pan. “I know I’ve said it before,” Shane continues, “but I really am so fucking proud of you. For all of this.”

Instead of responding with words, Ilya snakes his hands around Shane’s waist, pressing a kiss to the nape of his neck.

The eggs come out of the pan and the toast comes out of the toaster and Ilya steals three grapes from Shane’s plate.

“I know it’s early,” Shane says, and he’s cautious, which is never a good sign, “but have you given any thought to what comes next? With your pain, or…”

Ilya rests his hand in his palm. He certainly has given it thought. So have his doctors, and the team doctors, and probably other people too. “I think,” Ilya says carefully, “another season. Two, maybe. The pain is better now that it’s been in months, but it’s the off season, so I know…” Ilya shakes his head, “I know it might not last. But I love the team, and I love playing, and so as long as I can still get good minutes and put up decent points, I don’t want to give it up just yet. And when I do leave,” Ilya meets Shane’s eyes for this bit, because it’s the most important part, “I need to know that I am doing it because it is what is best for me. Not because I have to.”

Shane nods slowly, taking it in. Seemingly, he accepts it. “Then what?”

Ilya smiles. He knows exactly what. “Then,” he says, only half joking, “I will become the best WAG Ottawa has ever seen, and I will do that for at least another decade.”

“You think I’ll still be playing in a decade?” Shane asks, grinning but also teary-eyed in a way that suggests he doesn’t know it yet.

“Oh,” Ilya laughs, “at least. Come on Hollander. Believe in yourself.” He shakes his head, getting back on track, “but yes. I will be head WAG, and Bood will probably give you the C, because he wants to have kids and doesn’t want to do both, and you’re the obvious choice. And, of course, you will convince the GM to hire me as a…” Ilya snaps his fingers as he searches for the best way to phrase it, “a strategic advisor.”

“I will?” Shane asks, amused. Ilya doesn’t think he’s entirely joking either, though.

“Yes. Will be the first thing you do as captain. And, of course, I will have to travel with the team to every game. To advise. Strategically.”

“Oh, of course,” Shane agrees, light dancing in his eyes as he probably realizes that as joking as this conversation is, it isn’t impossible.

Ilya loves him. Nothing is impossible. But then, a thought occurs.

Ilya’s face shifts back into something serious, and Shane settles too. “Promise me something?” Ilya asks.

Shane hums, biting his lip. “Anything. You know that.”

“Promise me you really will play for another ten years. Or as long as you can. I would never-” Ilya grabs Shane’s hand in both of his own, “I would never be able to forgive myself if you ever felt like you had to quit because of me. This is the worst thing, you understand?”

Shane nods, “I understand.”

“I need you to keep playing for me, when I can’t anymore. I need you to win for both of us, for as long as it makes you happy.”

Again, Shane nods. He seems to think this doesn’t need to be said, that of course this is how it will go. Ilya needs to say it anyway. 

“Promise?”

“Yeah, baby,” Shane leans forward, kissing Ilya on the forehead, “I promise.”

A week before training camp is slated to start up again, Shane convinces Ilya to wake up at four in the morning to do a sunrise hike. It’s nice. Nicer that Ilya would have expected. The pinks in the sky and the light through the trees and the dew on the rocks. And Shane, of course. Always Shane. 

They get to the top of the hill they’ve been climbing, perched on a rocky outcrop, legs swinging over the side. It’s phenomenal. It’s everything. It’s-

Ilya blinks, and then Shane is pulling a little box out of his pocket.

Oh.

“Ilya,” Shane says, and he looks so fucking beautiful like this, his face open and eyes glistening and Ilya should probably pay attention. “I love you. So fucking much. Which you know already, obviously. I know this year hasn’t been… easy, but,” Shane’s eyes flick between Ilya and the box, “I don’t care. I love you, and I want to marry you, and so I’m asking for what I want.” The box opens. A matte gold band, shiny on the inside. Beveled edges. Classy. Ilya loves it immediately. “Marry me?”

Ilya kisses him, and then there’s only one thing left to do. 

“Yes.”