Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike, J. J. Boiziau, Wyatt Hayes, Brandon Wiebe

Additional Tags:

Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Spoilers for Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), The Centaurs plane crashes just a little bit, Shane Hollander Whump, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Character Study, Ilya is fine but Shane doesn't know it yet

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Crashing 'Verse

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-22 Completed: 2026-01-28 Words: 24,449 Chapters: 6/6

Crashing

Summary

“Oh shit.”

Shane looked up, turned his head to where J.J. was sat across the aisle. The blue glow of his phone lit up the too-wide whites of his eyes staring down intently at whatever was on his screen. Shane’s stomach lurched again, anticipating a sudden stop his body hadn’t quite caught up to yet.

“The Centaurs’ plane crashed in Tampa.”

There was a moment where everything was still moving, where Shane and the world were still spinning at the same speed they both always had, and then it all came crashing down. Shane wasn’t sure whether it was him that had stopped, or the world around him, but either way, in a matter of seconds the distance between himself and the bus he had only a moment ago been sitting in became staggeringly, dizzyingly vast.

 

The Centaur's emergency landing plays out a little bit worse, and Shane is left with the harsh reality of the cost of loving Ilya in secret.

Notes

This fic is really an excuse to put Shane through the torment nexus. No major character death, just major character owies.

Chapter 1: Spinning

Shane liked to think he handled loss well. But, game well over, wounds well licked, and ferried onto the team bus back to the hotel, the sting of the night’s defeat was still itching on his skin. 

Washington weren’t a bad team, but they also weren’t a great one. Shane sat heavily in his seat, replaying the game on loop in his head. Clearer than any post-game recording. Than any replay on the jumbo-tron. He ran lines, and formations, and fumbled assists, over and over and over again. Looking for the gap, for the weakness, for the moment he could point to and say this, right here, this is where we lost.

Hockey was a formula, a choreography. Shane had never been particularly good at math, or dance, but when he played hockey it was the closest he ever felt to understanding both. An equation of movement only he could solve. Could resolve. Adjust for the loss and run it again. Run it over and over until there was nothing else. 

And yet, here in the dark of the team bus, creeping through his thoughts like it was the only thing that belonged there, was the teasing lilt of Ilya Rozanov’s voice. Louder than the loss, louder than hockey. Ilya, Shane thought, was the only thing that was. He closed his eyes and tried to shake it off, focus on the game, the solution to the loss sitting just out of reach, but the spectre of Ilya’s warm, accented, words, both cutting and keen, was as undeniable as the man himself. Shane smiled quietly to himself in the dark of the bus, took a moment to let himself fall into imagining the smug gloating coming his way once he called Ilya back at the hotel.

And Ilya deserved to gloat, after everything. Shane would put up with it, would put up with anything, to get a proper glimpse of the smile he had only seen the ghost of over the past few weeks. And until then, Shane deserved to sit here, running plays, reviewing weaknesses, shouldering defeat. He wasn’t sure why the claws of this particular loss were refusing to retract. But they stung, deep in his skin, even now.

He took a steadying breath, rolling his shoulders deeper into his seat. He was slouched down, knees pressing against the chair in front of him, neck cricked just the wrong side of awkward as the stiff cushioning of the bus seat curved at the wrong height for his shoulders. Every bump or turn in the road as the bus trundled through the D.C. streets had his head knocking uncomfortably against the wrong part of the headrest. He felt like a puppet with loose strings. Nothing quite moving the way it should. 

He’d been feeling that way since the fight.

It wasn’t the cause of his loss to Washington. And no, that wasn’t right anyway. Not his loss — the team’s loss. Shane Hollander was not the only factor in a Montreal defeat. But even with the guilt of his fight with Ilya settled over him like a blanket, like a cold sweat he couldn’t quite scrub from his skin, unshifting in the days, games, since — he’d played. Like he always played. Like he would always play. Because playing was the only thing he’d ever really known how to do right.

That’s why, he thought, to the ghost of Ilya's voice still floating through his mind, that's why it’s so fucking hard to let go. That’s why I hesitated, Ilya. And it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t. But, even when everything else is falling to shit, even when we’re losing, sometimes I feel like this is the only fucking thing that makes sense. Like out on the ice is the only place in the world where I don’t feel like a stranger in my own skin. Or it used to be, before you. And I’ll let it go if you ask me to, but it’s also not fair that that’s a choice I might have to make. That either of us might. I will choose you and choose you and choose you again. But why do either of us have to lose this as part of the deal.

The bus broke just a little too close to the light, and Shane felt his stomach lurching just a second before the rest of his body as he swung forwards. When he leaned back in his seat, he could feel the tag at his shirt collar curling against his skin. It scraped and caught against the hairs at the base of his neck and suddenly everything — the compression of his shoes, the tug of his leg hair against the elastic of his socks, the indent of his trouser seam where his thigh was pressed into the armrest, the hushed chatter of his teammates, the irregular flash of the streetlights through the dark of the bus — was all too much too harsh too loud against his skin. 

His leg kicked up a nervous tapping, he began rolling the cuff of his shirt over and over between his fingers. He closed his eyes and breathed again. But that sting on the back of his neck just would not shake.

He missed Ilya. Fuck, he missed Ilya. 

“Oh shit.”

Shane looked up, turned his head to where J.J. was sat across the aisle. The blue glow of his phone lit up the too-wide whites of his eyes staring down intently at whatever was on his screen. Shane’s stomach lurched again, anticipating a sudden stop his body hadn’t quite caught up to yet.

“The Centaurs’ plane crashed in Tampa.”

There was a moment where everything was still moving, where Shane and the world were still spinning at the same speed they both always had, and then it all came crashing down. Shane wasn’t sure whether it was him that had stopped, or the world around him, but either way, in a matter of seconds the distance between himself and the bus he had only a moment ago been sitting in became staggeringly, dizzyingly vast. 

No, was all he thought. Was all he had the space to think. A blatant refusal in the gaping dark. 

There was a part of him that was still tethered there, to the world that had stopped spinning, or the world he had stopped spinning with. Shane could see J.J. across the aisle, rapidly scrolling down his screen. He could hear Hayden shift from where he had been leaning against the window beside him. He could feel the harsh knock of Hayden’s elbow against his own as he leaned in closer to listen. These were all sensations happening to Shane’s body. He knew that. But Shane was somewhere else. Spinning slowly out into the ether. An astronaut without a tether, falling through an abyss with endless momentum and no way to pull himself back. 

“Are they okay?” he heard Hayden ask. Both far too close, and all too far away. 

There was a scratch to his voice, an undercurrent of tension only Shane could understand the real weight of. Shane knew Hayden’s eyes were on him, and not J.J., as he asked the question. And Shane hoped that in the dark J.J. wouldn’t notice the difference. God, are they okay? Is he okay?

“Two dead. Four critical. It doesn’t say who.”

The lilt of J.J.'s accent felt much too light for the heaviness, the brutal finality, of the words being spoken. Like birdsong during a lightning strike. Like violins on a sinking ship. Down in the bus, Shane felt a rattling breath claw it’s way out of his throat. Out in the ether, Shane began spinning faster. Faster. Faster. In both places, his hands began to tremble. 

J.J. looked over. “An engine caught fire. And then their wheels didn’t deploy properly when they tried to make their emergency landing. Or, at least, that’s what the best guess is right now. Fuck… the photos look rough. Wait, I think there’s a video.”

“J.J.!”

Hayden’s voice was crisp, sure. Somewhere in the back of his mind Shane recognised it as the voice Hayden used when Jade or Ruby had really, truly, misbehaved. The Shane in the bus gurgled out a hollow laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all. The Shane in the ether had never felt like laughing less.

Two dead, the abyss around him whispered, harsh against his ears. Two dead two dead two dead two dead two—

In the bus, Hayden pressed his leg against Shane’s. It closed some of the distance. Slowed some of the spin. The ether began to retreat. 

And four critical, came a voice that sounded a lot like his mother’s. Critical, not…

“Shane.” Hayden’s voice was low, pressed nearly against Shane’s ear. A tether in the dark. “Shane.”

The world was moving again. Shane was catching up to it. The Shane on the bus curled in on himself, braced his head down against his knees ready for the crash.

Please please please—

The two Shanes collided with a whine and a shuddering breath. Every piece of his body felt too loud, too large. There was a hand on his back. Hayden’s. There was a voice, distant, asking if he was okay. J.J.’s. He catalogued these things, along with the shuffle of his feet against the floor, the gentle thumping of his head against the seat in front of him, the bruising press of his elbows into his knees. He knew, logically, he must be breathing, but he couldn’t feel it.

“Is he worried about Rozanov?” he heard J.J. ask Hayden, confusedly, quietly, over his head. 

Flashes rushed behind his eyes. Perfect curls. A warm laugh. A mole dancing on a smiling cheek. Golden skin on sweat-soaked sheets. The grip of strong arms, the caress of careful fingers. A biting wit and gentle, loving eyes and the best fucking thing that had ever happened or would ever happen to Shane Hollander. 

The sheer Ilya of it all slammed into Shane brutally and all at once. A gaping hollow carved out from the inside of him. A desperate and starving emptiness that only one person could ever begin to sate. He heard more than felt the hard knock of his head against the seat as he sat up much too fast, almost falling over into Hayden as he twisted to pull his phone from his pocket. 

Some part of him was aware that there were eyes on him now, more than just Hayden’s and J.J.’s. That more of his teammates had been listening to J.J.’s announcement, had taken notice of Shane’s reaction. He was too busy trying to school the trembling of his fingers enough to call Ilya to care. 

The line rang. And rang. And rang. 

“Hi. This is Ilya. I will never list—”

Shane called again. 

“Hi. This is Ilya. I will ne—”

Fuck.

He lowered the phone.

'I will never listen…'

Ilya would never listen…

He sniffed and heard the wetness of it. His trembling hand lifted to scrub at the blur building behind his eyes. His body moved without thinking, maintaining itself through the turmoil as Shane stared unblinking at his phone. He willed it to light up, to buzz with the tone of an incoming call. He watched the screen until it faded. And then he watched it some more. 

I will never listen…

The black screen stared unflinchingly back at him. Behind it, a terrible, unconscionable lack of Ilya Rozanov. Shane's shaking hands gripped the phone tighter. 

The bus had pulled to a halt outside the hotel by the time Shane remembered Instagram. He fumbled to unlock his phone, but Hayden was already there, a hand closing over the screen. 

“Shane…” His voice was so tender that it made Shane’s skin crawl. He flinched away from it. “Let’s go inside, bud.”

Hayden reached with his other hand to tug at Shane’s arm, gently pulling him out of the seat. Shane could feel the disconnect — the parts of his mind that hadn’t quite settled all the way back into his body — as he climbed clumsily out from the seat, as he almost tripped over his own feet as he stepped out of the bus. The entire walk through the hotel to their room, Hayden’s hand never left Shane’s arm. 

Let go, he wanted to say, they’ll know what this is if you keep holding on. But also, if you let go, I’m scared I’m going to shatter apart.

He wanted to ask if Hayden thought Ilya was dead. He wanted to scream out into the world that he wasn’t. That he couldn’t be. He’s not dead, he would say, because if he’s dead then we never got to have it. What we wanted. What we deserved. What everyone else on this fucking team gets to have without a single fucking problem. If he’s dead then I never got to move in with him, propose to him, marry him. I never got to learn how his hair will go grey, how his wrinkles will set in, how many of those goddamn moles he’ll need to have removed. If he’s dead I’ll never get to see him hold a child that’s ours, change a diaper, soothe a nightmare, scare away the monsters under the bed. We had a whole fucking life together, and if he’s dead then we never got to live it. Live it the way we could have already been living it if I wasn’t such a fucking coward. If he’s dead, then I am, too. 

It was only when the harsh click of the hotel room door was echoing behind them that Hayden finally let Shane go. 

Shane stumbled haphazardly over to one of the beds. Dropped heavily to sit and pull up his Instagram. He felt Hayden’s eyes on him as he found the messages there. Opened them. Fuck.

Shane. You are the best thing in my life.

He exhaled a trembling breath as he felt the familiar warmth of Hayden settle next to him on the end of the mattress. 

I love you. Always. Maybe from the first time I saw you.

Shane saw Ilya, then. Seventeen and so full of bravado. Cigarette hanging between smirking lips as he shook a hand too sweaty for the crisp chill of the air around them both. God, he had loved him too, then. In some tremulous, naive, way. Not fully yet. Not truly. But the magnetic pull of Ilya Rozanov had been there from that first moment. Would always be there, even after their last.

I am thinking only about you right now. A million memories. Thank you for those.

Shane felt the sharp heat behind his eyes finally manifest into tears. They burned hot in his eyelashes, against his cheeks. 

Whatever happens, I am with you. Safe in your heart. I believe it.

“I can’t—”

They were the first words Shane had spoken since the bus, and the grind of them against his throat was raw and grating. 

“I don’t— I can’t do this if he’s dead, Hayden. I just can’t.”

Hayden’s hand was firm where it gripped Shane’s shoulder, where his fingers dug just shy of biting into the muscle there. 

“We don’t know that, Shane. Okay. We know there was a crash. We know that, somehow, a hell of a lot more people were fine than weren’t. And Rozanov's one stubborn son-of-a-bitch. There's no way he'd die without getting the last word in.”

“He did,” Shane choked out, holding out the messages. Ilya's last fucking words. Shane didn't deserve them. Wasn't worthy of them. I failed you, right up to the fucking end. How did you stand it? he thought. How did you stand me? You're the best person I've ever known and you wasted your last fucking words on me. 

Hayden gripped him a little tighter. “The last time I checked, even Apple hasn’t designed a phone that's plane-crash-proof. Odds are he's fine, he wants to call, he just can’t right now.” Even Hayden didn't sound like he fully believed himself, this time. 

Shane took a breath. Another. Tried to pull the air as far as he could into his lungs, his stomach, down deep into his gut. He tried to imagine it filling all the empty space Ilya's absence had left him with. It didn’t work. The space was too large, too empty, too staggeringly awful to comprehend. His breath came faster.

There was a soft thud as Shane watched his phone fall against the carpet. He supposed he had dropped it there. His hands were still shaking as he buried his face in them and cried.

Chapter 2: Burning

Chapter Notes

Is the author blatantly using Shane Hollander as a vessel for their own explorations of grief and neurodivergence? Yes. Do I care? No. Sometimes it's healthy to put your blorbo through the horrors.

Loss was a funny thing, Shane had always thought.

He’d been through enough of it. A lot of it. More than the average person, he supposed, when you considered the hockey of it all. And yet, at twenty-nine, there were times when he still didn’t think he’d ever quite figured out the correct way to handle it. Hadn’t quite figured out how to lose things the right way.

In hockey, loss was perfunctory. Routine. Felt keenly, abstractly, but shrugged off quickly if you wanted to keep moving, keep improving, keep winning.

But there were times Shane hadn’t even got that right.

He remembered his first World Juniors. His grandfather had died the month before. And Shane remembered being seventeen, perpetually out of step, watching his father carry the weight of losing the man that had raised him. Shane watched the way the grief tore at him, at his grandmother, at all the people his grandfather had touched. Had loved.

He remembered thinking to himself that he was probably supposed to be feeling a certain way about that. That he was probably supposed to be crying alongside his parents at the funeral he’d barely made time for between practices. He’d remembered thinking maybe he was too focused, too locked into the game. Remembered reasoning with himself that he hadn’t been that close to his grandfather anyway. That he couldn’t sit and point to a way that the man had left the kind of imprint on Shane that he had on his dad, on all the other people sitting in the pews. Shane couldn’t even remember a conversation between the two of them that had lasted more than a few minutes without someone else being there.

Shane knew he had loved his grandfather. But maybe love and loss were different things. Maybe Shane only knew how to do one of them.

And then Shane had lost at juniors.

And all at once and far too keenly he’d realised what it was meant to be like. Had felt it hit him, close over him, roll through him like thunder crashing through his head and his chest and his gut and his veins until it felt like the storm inside him was going to tear his skin apart from the inside out.

He remembered feeling broken, then. That he could feel this way for hockey, but not for his grandfather. Not for a living, breathing, person. That maybe he was the robot all his teammates said he was. A tin-man with a heart that only really beat for hockey.

He had shaken it off. Grit his teeth through the worst of it. Told himself that loss wouldn’t be like that again. Found ways to turn it into just another part of the living, breathing, system that was hockey. Shane Hollander lost things readily, unflinchingly, with a momentary sting that fed right back into that drive to do better, to play harder, to win cleaner. Because that was the routine. That was the rule. That was how you became the best goddamn hockey player in the NHL.

Except to Ilya, Shane thought. He’d never quite figured out how to lose to Ilya.

Losing at the World Juniors was an outlier.

Losing at the World Juniors was the stress test, the calibration, the extreme response Shane had now adjusted for. Protected against.

Losing at the World Juniors was less than fucking nothing compared to losing Ilya Rozanov.

His back ached from where he now sat, hunched on the floor, leaning into the stiff mattress of the bed behind him.

His head was pounding, sinuses burning with the sting of tears cried too hot and too fast and too desperately. Now dried, crusted over his eyelashes, his cheeks. Every other moment he would blink and feel the burn of them, the blur of the final few that sat waiting behind his waterline. Too exhausted, or too depleted, to follow after the rest.

He could hear Hayden shuffling on the other side of the room. The lights were off. And Hayden had pulled the curtains closed. Shane’s eyes kept catching on the dull, warm glow creeping beneath the door to the corridor. On the cold spill of blue radiating from Hayden’s phone. They threw strange shadows across the unfamiliar room, kept the gloom from swallowing him whole.

How long had it been since the crash now? Three and a half hours? Four? How long did it take someone to bleed out in a plane seat? In an ambulance? In an operating room in some unknown hospital in Florida?

The light dimmed as Hayden raised his phone and pressed it against his ear.

There was the hollow echo of the phone’s ringing. The soft click of a call sent to voice-mail. The murmur of a voice Shane couldn’t quite make out doling out instructions Shane didn’t need to hear to understand.

Hayden took a deep breath, straightened out his spine. Shane could see the weight of the evening sitting far too heavily on his friend’s shoulders as he began to speak.

“Hey Hayes, it’s Pike. I… Fuck. I hope you’re okay man. I really fucking hope you’re okay. And if you are… I’m sorry, I know this is probably really fucking weird, but I need you to call me back.”

Hayden glanced over to him, and Shane lowered his head back down between his knees. Breathed a little deeper as he rolled his forehead against the rough fabric of his trousers. The motion felt like the only thing keeping him from spinning away entirely.

“Again, I really hope you’re all okay man. I’m sorry I don’t really have a better explanation for leaving you this message right now. I just… Just, call me back. If you can. Jesus. Thanks."

He hung up the phone.

“Fuck!” Hayden sighed, as Shane heard him walking over, sock feet scraping dully against the thin carpet. He sat back down on the bed above him, and Hayden’s calf pressed steady against Shane’s side as he settled. Shane breathed against it. Focused on the way his lungs expanded into the tense muscle there. In and out.

“I don’t have anyone else’s number,” Hayden said, apology heavy in his tone.

“I should,” Shane whispered down into the patch of floor between his feet. Like if he focused there and nowhere else his shame wouldn’t be able to reach any further than the small pocket of space he had reduced his universe down to. “They’re his team. I should have someone else’s fucking number.”

Hayden waited as Shane took another breath. In and out.

“He wanted me to go there at Christmas.” Shane felt the words falling out of him without permission. Flat and stale. Hollow. Everything inside him was hollow without Ilya, he was realising. “To Boodram’s. I said no. That I wasn’t ready. But... if I’d gone I’d have talked to people. They’d have known me. Known that I mattered. Known that I was someone they needed to call. If I’d gone I would have someone else’s fucking number right now.”

“Shane.”

The words had been muffled, mumbled low into his knees. Shane wasn’t even sure if Hayden had heard them all. He thought maybe that was better. If Hayden didn’t know the guilt that was burning him alive. I don’t want you to know, he thought, that I’ll never forgive myself if he’s dead. It will be a sin I can never atone for, if that was how I forced him to live, at the end of it all. Because I was scared. Because I was a fucking coward. I don’t want you to know that even when it comes to the best thing in my life I am nothing but a complete fucking coward.

Shane closed his eyes and pressed his back harder into the mattress behind him. If he shut his eyes tightly enough, breathed in deeply enough, he could almost feel the wall back in Ilya’s house. Ilya’s warm hand pressed against his chest. Ilya’s heavy breath desperate against his face. Ilya’s heartbroken eyes boring into his own.

That was the last time they had touched. The last space they had shared. If Ilya was dead, those were the last seconds they spent breathing the same air. It was unforgivable, that that was the last moment together Shane had given him. He leaned his head back on the bedspread and imagined, instead, what it could have been.

A chilly evening, bundled up in coats and toques, noses pink as they sat on Boodram’s back deck. Shoulder to shoulder. Shane would have been grinning — or groaning, more likely — as Ilya poked fun at his teammates, quipped and chirped and tried to make Shane miserable in that specific way of his that actually made Shane incandescently fucking happy.

They would have gone back to the house, afterwards, well-fed, and buzzing with the adrenaline of a night spent more exposed than they’d ever been before. But, perhaps, more accepted, too. If Shane had just let himself risk it.

It would have fueled them, pushed them smiling and joyous through Ilya’s front door. Maybe that’s as far as they would have made it. Maybe that’s just where they would have started, giddiness eventually floating them up the stairs, to fall together into Ilya’s bed hungry and hopeful and so fucking happy.

They would have woken up together. Ilya would have smiled, sleepy and sun-kissed by the gentle rays pouring through the open curtains. Curls tangled, eyes soft. He would have leaned in and kissed Shane, all morning-breath and contentment, in warm sheets that smelled like the both of them.

Shane would have laughed, protested, would have dragged Ilya out of bed to clean his teeth before falling back into him again. They would have made the most of their lazy morning before Shane had to collect his bag, don his coat. He would have held Ilya close, as tightly as he could, nose buried deep into the warmth of his neck as they said goodbye.

He would have kissed him, smiling. Just to see Ilya smile back. All loose, and happy, and bittersweet, the way their goodbyes always were these days. But this time there would have been something else behind it. Something fiercer. Freer. Shane would have known what openness, acceptance, looked like when it sat loose on Ilya’s shoulders. He might have been reminded, for one beautiful moment, what Ilya’s eyes looked like without that unnameable sadness caught behind them. Not gone forever. But perhaps Shane could have given him a day where it was held at bay. A day, where, for once, he could put it down and rest.

I’ll fix it, Shane whispered to the phantom Ilya in his head. If you just come back to me I’ll fix it. We’ll tell whoever you want. We’ll go to every single fucking barbecue I’m in town for, and even the ones that I’m not. I’ll fly in from any corner of whatever goddamn province or state or country I’m in just to sit with you while you swallow food I can’t eat and laugh with people I don’t know. I’ll do all of it, Ilya. But you have to come the fuck back to me.

His phone buzzed with an incoming call, still abandoned where he had dropped it on the threadbare carpet. There was one heart-stopping moment where he thought… maybe. But his eyes dragged themselves up to see his mother’s name flashing across the screen.

Hayden shifted next to him. A half-aborted movement. Like he was going to reach for the phone in Shane’s stead, but was giving him the chance to take the call first.

Shane breathed, let the air rattle through his hollow lungs, before slowly picking up the phone.

He let it sit in his hand as it buzzed. The letters in his mum’s name blurred and swam, rearranged themselves into a nonsense language as he stared down at the glowing screen.

“I can answer it, if you want.” Hayden’s voice was careful.

Shane shook his head. And Hayden didn’t push.

He watched the call run itself out. Watched the screen fall dark again in his hand. He bit into his top lip as he unlocked the phone and pulled up his messages with his mum.

There was the usual good luck text. Sent hours ago now. This time with an additional congratulatory line about Ilya’s win against Carolina. It sat heavy with Shane, as he looked at the screen, that he should be congratulated alongside any of Ilya’s achievements, when he had been the one who had spent the last few years so dedicatedly hiding Ilya’s light.

There were more messages following.

Gentle condolences right after the game.

A short, concerned text when she must have stopped watching the footage and started seeing the news.

And then more and more.

Did he know anything?

They didn’t.

She was making calls.

Could he call her.

Was he alright?

Had he heard from Ilya?

Could he call her.

The news still wasn’t saying anything.

Two dead. Four Critical.

Was it Ilya?

Could he call her.

Could he call her.

Shane please, honey. Please just call us.

A missed call.

A voice-mail. Buzzing in at the bottom of the screen as he held the phone.

He didn’t listen to it.

Instead, he messaged back. He was alright. Hayden was with him. They hadn’t heard anything. They’d left a message with Hayes. He would call if he heard something. I promise I’ll call, Mum.

He didn’t tell her he was shifting over to his maps app. He didn’t tell her that the drive to Tampa was only thirteen hours because the thought of flying there made his stomach curdle. And because if he started driving soon it would probably get him there faster anyway.

He didn’t tell her that there was a 24-hour car rental place a couple of streets away. That perhaps that was the only other call he was going to be able to make tonight.

He was so deep in his phone, finally focused on something he could tangibly fucking do, that he didn’t notice Hayden’s shadow leaning over his shoulder before his phone was being snatched away.

“Hayd.”

Hayden dropped down to kneel next to Shane on the floor. To match his eye-line with Shane’s own. A dad trick, Shane thought. He didn’t need Hayden treating him like a fucking child right now.

“Shane, buddy,” Hayden said, firmer with Shane than he had been since they heard about the crash. “You can’t be serious.”

“Hayd. Give me back my phone.” Shane’s words were deliberate, slow. Still plagued with that hollow echo he couldn’t figure out how to shake.

Hayden put a hand on Shane’s knee. Gripped it tight enough to jostle him, just a bit.

“You can’t drive thirteen hours to Florida. Not like this, man. You’ll crash. Or you’ll get lost. Or you’ll burn out half-way through and be stuck on the side of the road in the middle of fucking Virginia.”

Shane scoffed, reaching for his phone. “I’d get further than Virginia.”

Hayden raised his eyebrows. Lifted the phone, and held it back out of reach across the bed behind him.

“I would,” Shane insisted. “I will. I need… Hayden I need to be there. Please. You know I need to be there.”

Something conflicted flashed behind Hayden’s eyes in the dark. And then, horrifically, something far too much like pity settled across his face, furrowed his brow, pinched in his lips. Shane looked away before he did something awful like punch the one person in the same room, same state, same country as him that knew the true extent of what Shane was going through right now.

“Shane.” Hayden’s voice was careful. So fucking careful. “I… I feel like I have to say this. And I hate that I’m saying it. I — God, fuck — I hate that this is something I have to think about, have to bring up. But, you’re upset right now. And you’re scared. And you’re exhausted. And I don’t want you doing something you can’t take back just because you’re desperate. But if you drive to Tampa, right now, Shane, to see Ilya fucking Rozanov… You’ve both been so fucking careful, Shane. And this would be the opposite of that. This could… Shane you know what people might think this looks like.”

Anger burned through Shane, cold, and vicious, and ugly. It wasn’t at Hayden. Not fully. Maybe not at all. Mostly, it was at himself. At the life he had built. So particular, and precise, and so goddamn fucking careful. And what had it fucking got him? The love of his life, half-way across the country, maybe dying. Maybe dead. And a best friend who was scared of letting Shane go to him, not because of the time or the distance or the fatigue, not really, but because he thought that Shane would regret it tomorrow. Would regret going to be by the love of his life’s side as he potentially lay injured or dying in a hospital room because maybe, just maybe, someone might see Shane there. Might make an assumption. Draw a conclusion.

That maybe Shane would leave Ilya to die alone just to make sure that not one person found out that maybe he cared more than he fucking should for Ilya Rozanov.

How does Ilya look you in the eye? Shane thought, burning from the inside out. How does he even fucking touch you when this is what you’ve turned yourself into? Turned the both of you into.

“Give me back my phone, Hayden.”

Hayden’s arm went limp where it was stretched across the bed. His eyes kept a clear hold of Shane’s as he slowly dragged the phone across the bedspread and handed it carefully back.

Hayden nodded as Shane took the phone, shifted back until the two of them were sitting side-by-side leaning against the bed. The gentle push of Hayden's shoulder against his own released more pressure from the room than Shane expected. 

“I’ll talk to Theriault,” Hayden said. “In the morning. Gives you a bit of a head start before he freaks over his captain going AWOL.”

Shane nodded. “I have personal leave. A shitton of it. Tell him… family emergency. I’m not sure how much time I’ll need yet, I’ll—”

“Shane,” Hayden said, hand still firm on his knee. “I’ve got it. Just, get to Florida in one piece, yeah. Because if it turns out Rozanov’s fine but you got yourself dead getting to him, he might actually fucking kill me.”

Shane snorted. A pathetic excuse for a laugh, but enough of one that some of the rage faded away with it. Enough to dull the ice in Shane’s blood. Enough to settle the burning under his skin.

He pulled the car rental website back up. Clicked on the number. Pressed call. Breathed.

Chapter 3: Falling

Falling in love with Ilya had been a losing battle from the beginning. Or, Shane supposed, the battle had been not falling in love with Ilya. Because Ilya was so fucking lovable. Remarkable. Beautiful. Some days Shane would sit and watch him cooking dinner, or cleaning his teeth, or emptying the bin, or hanging his washing — existing in any and every capacity — and he would be struck with just how phenomenal it was that this man had chosen him. Was here with him. For him. Loved him back just as fiercely. More-so, even.

Half the time Shane felt like the love he gave to Ilya — and it was all he could give, all he had in him, every piece of him that could love — paled in comparison to the love Ilya gave back. Like Ilya’s capacity for it was simply greater. Fiercer. An all-encompassing force that Shane didn’t know what he’d done to deserve. Didn’t know sometimes why Ilya stuck around when Shane wasn’t living up to his end of the deal.

And lately, he definitely hadn’t been.

I’ll love you harder, louder, larger, he thought, over and over. I’ll love you in front of your team, our peers, the world. I’ll love you in every way I’ve denied you, and every way I’ve never thought to, and then I’ll run the line and the formation and the plays over again and again and again until I find a way to do it better, do it harder; maybe, finally, do it right.

Shane looked out the windshield of the 2017 Prius he had hired, eyes trained on the dark, flat, road ahead. The Prius had great fuel economy, decent speed, handled well, had got him most of the way through Virginia in two hours and was on track to do the drive to Tampa in just under eleven. He was sure Ilya could have done it faster. And in a car built much lower to the road. But, Shane could hear Hayden’s voice in the back of his head. Could imagine the look on his parent’s faces if they got a call saying their son had been in an accident the same night they might have lost Ilya as well.

Eleven hours was better than thirteen. And eleven hours was also better than dead, crashed in a ditch. Shane adjusted back to ten and two, kept his eyes on the road, blasted the AC a little higher and let the chill of it pierce through his exhaustion.

He reached over and took another sip of Red Bull. It was gross stuff. Overly sweet, and immediately heady. But he’d stocked up with a few cans at a gas station in Richmond. He’d happily drink all of them if he needed to. If they got him to Ilya. He could sleep when he got to Tampa. When he knew whether or not his life as he knew it was over.

I’ll love you in the daylight, Ilya. I’ll love you enough for a lifetime and then I’ll do it all over again. But you have to be alive. Just be alive.

Shane took a deep breath.

Another.

Tried to resettle.

The car smelled like new seat covers and pine air-freshener and the cloying apple of his energy drink. It was a combination that tickled a little too deeply into his nose. It had crept all the way up and was clouding in the front of his head. Not a full headache. Not yet. But it sat there like a weight, slowly growing heavier, building tension in his jaw, his neck, his shoulders. Making it harder to think, harder to pull back from the emotion of all of this and figure out the game plan here.

Step one: He was driving to Florida.

Now that he was on the road, some distance between himself and the desperation of the bus, the hotel room, the stasis of his uncertainty — now that he was moving somewhere, with purpose; using the energy that had been so close to tearing him apart only two hours ago — he could see where Hayden had been coming from. What the fuck was he going to do when he got to Tampa? Walk into every emergency room he could find and ask for Ilya Rozanov? Hope no-one recognised him? Hope no photos or videos showed up of Shane Hollander asking to get to Ilya Rozanov’s bedside while the Voyageurs announced he was taking personal leave for a family tragedy?

The general population, hockey fans, they might not put it together. But he knew the whispers about him being gay had made it further than the Voyageurs’ locker room. He was already pushing it abandoning his team mid road-trip for Ilya. And you know you blew it on the bus. You know they’re going to put two and two together even without any photos of you distraught in a hospital in Florida.

He could be pretty confident that after tonight his team might figure it out. Or, enough of them would suspect that it would make it through the locker room anyway. Maybe not provable, but only if it didn’t get out that Florida was where Shane had gone.

If it did… He knew that rumours of his sexuality had made it through other teams, other rooms. Quietly enough. Subtly enough. And he was sure a lot of the guys outside his locker room probably didn’t believe it: thought it was a targeted rumour, or discounted it as an empty whispering. But he couldn’t help himself from running the play, regardless. Setting up the formation and calculating how it would all play out. All the capacity for error. For disaster. For loss.

His team knew he was gay.

His team knew he was upset that Rozanov’s plane had gone down. They were friends. The team knew they were friends. He was allowed to be worried about that.

He was driving to Tampa to see Ilya. Not just ‘driving to Tampa’, Shane reminded himself. Leaving in the middle of a road-trip to rent a car at eleven-thirty pm and driving thirteen hours overnight to Tampa. Not subtle. Not casual. Not plausibly deniable in any fucking way.

If Ilya was injured — or worse — Shane was going to visit him in the hospital.

If he got recognised someone might take photos of him in a hospital in Tampa the day after the Centaurs’ plane had crashed.

His team might find out that he had gone to Tampa for Ilya.

His team might conclude that he and Ilya were more than just friends. A lot fucking more.

His team might start talking.

Other locker rooms might start talking.

Other locker rooms — or his own — might start talking in front of the wrong fucking people.

The wrong fucking people might see the photographs of him in a hospital in Tampa the day after the Centaurs’ plane had crashed.

The wrong fucking people might decide to make that public.

Ilya was still a Russian citizen.

Ilya didn’t have permanent residency yet.

Ilya wasn’t picking up the fucking phone to say that he was okay with Shane maybe being photographed in a hospital in Tampa the day after his team’s plane had crashed, and it maybe, somewhere down the line, being the way the world found out about this. About them. 

Ilya might be dead and then none of this matters anyway.

Shane squeezed the wheel. Heard the leather groan under his grip.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he whispered to himself. The words were quiet, swallowed up almost immediately by the hum of the air-conditioning. “What’s the fucking plan here, Shane?”

He could feel the sweat under his palms. The uncertain kicking of his heartbeat, thumping faster in his chest. The weight in his head grew heavier and heavier.

“Breathe.”

It was Ilya’s voice that Shane’s mind supplied him. It settled in the base of his skull and rolled down his neck like a balm. “You are overthinking this, yes? So someone sees us together in hospital. So what? Unless you are planning to get photographed sucking my dick in the hospital bed, Hollander, I think we will be fine.”

Shane furrowed his brow. Risked closing his eyes on the empty road for a moment to take a steadying breath. Whether real or imaginary, Shane had a hard time resisting giving Ilya what he wanted.

And, as per usual, Ilya was right. The spinning in his head stopped feeling quite so dizzying. 

Shane opened his eyes. Refocused on the road. Blinked against the glare of his own headlights and took a moment to wipe the sweat off his palms, one at a time, against his trousers.

“But what—” his voice wavered, cracked against his vowels as he spoke to the empty car. To the Ilya that wasn’t there. “What if I fuck this up for you? You’re maybe okay being out to your team. But you trust them. They won’t tell anyone. What… what if this is the thing that outs us. Outs you. We’re not ready for that. It’s not safe yet.”

“Tchhsk.”

Shane couldn’t help but chuckle at the sound his brain supplied. That small tut Ilya made in the side of his cheek whenever Shane was over-complicating something, or overreacting, or being all too goddamn boring.

“You are thinking to hard, Shane,” the phantom Ilya said. “You need to stop doing that.”

“Okay,” Shane said. Voice a little smoother. Breath a little steadier. “Okay.”

Okay.

Shane rolled out his shoulders. Took another sip of Red Bull. Shook off the over-complication, and ran a different play.

The plane had crashed six hours ago now. If Ilya was able to get in contact he would have. He wouldn’t leave Shane to panic like this. Would know exactly how bad things would be getting in Shane’s brain, in Shane’s overwrought heart, without any news. And Shane knew, really knew, that if it was as simple as a broken phone Ilya would have found a way to solve it in the six hours since. So Shane could safely bet he was injured. At the very least. Maybe worse. Probably worse. God, he really could be dead couldn’t he.

So, who would know, about Ilya?

They’d tried Hayes. But Hayes wasn’t answering, wasn’t calling back, could very likely be in the exact same fucking predicament as Ilya was.

So that left Wiebe.

They’d agreed, when Ilya had joined the Centaurs, that having any of the Hollanders on a medical form was just a little too close to inviting someone to ask questions. That Ilya’s coach being his emergency contact was safer. Would be on the road with him, as well. Was the wise choice, regardless, as he’d be the one close by for any potential injuries or emergencies in a way Shane and his parents couldn’t.

When the Centaurs had hired Wiebe they’d talked about it again. Shane had pushed for Ilya to just make it the new coach, keep to the system. There had been something then, hiding behind Ilya’s eyes, that said maybe he wasn’t so happy to agree to it this time. Shane wished he’d paid closer attention to that hidden hesitation now.

But he didn’t. Hadn’t. And so, right now, if he wanted any information about Ilya Rozanov he needed to get a hold of Brandon Wiebe. Whose number he didn’t have. And who he knew wouldn’t be checking his email right now. And so Shane was back to needing Hayes, who would have Wiebe’s number, if he would just fucking call Shane back.

Without Hayes there wasn’t a Wiebe, and without Wiebe there wasn’t an Ilya.

Shane supposed the hospital may have also called Ilya’s next of kin. But Shane had a sinking feeling that it might still be Alexei. It was something he and Ilya hadn’t talked about. It was something they should have.

Just like they should have talked about death, and emergencies, and one of them being critically injured in a plane crash in the middle of the season half-way across the fucking United States.

Did Ilya want to be buried? Cremated? Would he want to be with his mother? At the cottage? In a couple of week’s time would Shane be watching as Svetlana boarded a plane to Russia with an urn and a gold crucifix to lay Ilya to rest on home soil. In the dirt next to Irina Rozanov.

He had thought about calling Svetlana. Was still thinking about it. But he figured she would be in the same situation he was. No information. Stuck in limbo. He also wasn’t sure he actually had her number. He had thought he’d asked Ilya for it, after they met. But, had he ever actually got it? Fuck, Shane thought. Ilya's oldest friend in the fucking world and you don’t think you even have her number. Jesus fucking Christ.

“Stop it, Hollander.”

Shane shook out his neck. Took another deep breath before the phantom Ilya could tell him to this time.

This was the part that Shane was the worst at — in hockey, with Ilya, with any aspect of his highly regimented and particular life — being completely and totally unable to do anything.

The longer he ran the plays in his mind, the more he realised there was no one else to call, nothing more he could do tonight, but wait. Wait for Hayes to call him back. Wait for the news to finally start releasing names. Wait for it to turn out that Ilya just fell asleep in a hotel room before he had time to call Shane and so Shane’s phone would start ringing just before dawn with a hundred apologies in Ilya Rozanov’s beautiful, perfect, voice.

But for all of that — for any of that — to happen, he had to wait.

Wait, and drive.

He refocused on the car, the road. On the slow flash, flash, flash, of the cat’s eyes rolling under his high-beams, disappearing on the empty highway behind him. Each one calling him closer to Tampa. To answers. To Ilya. 

Chapter 4: Breaking

Shane had never really taken the time to consider what it would be like to lose Ilya Rozanov.

That was fucking stupid, he now realised. Really fucking stupid.

Because here, now, out on the open road, driving through the night and into the early morning, Shane had had nothing but time to consider it. Over and over and over again.

When they’d just been rookies, quite literally fucking around, it had never even crossed Shane’s mind that Ilya Rozanov could be someone he could have. And then, when they were a little further into their careers, and Shane came to the realisation that while Ilya was still not someone he could have — but, it turned out, was someone he desperately wanted to — he was too busy trying to push that longing down and away from him to consider that he and Ilya could ever really be something more.

And then it was Rose, and the All-Stars game, and Ilya in Russia, and Shane was so caught up in the giddy, tremulous, intoxicating thing that he and Ilya were, despite all odds, managing to build to think about how it might, one-day, end.

And then they had the cottage, and the plan, and Shane’s entire focus went into contingencies and secrets and not being outed and all the while figuring out how to spend any and every second with Ilya that he could. On gripping this wonderful, impossible thing with both hands and making sure it stayed.

And so he’d forgotten to consider it. That last factor. Losing Ilya.

Even now, eight hours into his impulsive road-trip to Tampa, it was difficult to fully comprehend it. That Ilya could be gone. Ilya was just, so alive. Shane didn’t think he’d ever known anyone who lived quite the way that Ilya did. It was one of the things he loved most about him.

Envied a little as well. Particularly now, in this stuffy car, with his stiff back, and his tense shoulders, and his grimy, sweaty skin, and his wired, anxious mind that never seemed to stop running itself in circles and circles and circles—

“Are you ever going to fucking relax, Shane?”

Ilya’s voice broke through the early morning fog, cleaner and more efficiently than the roll of Shane’s car as it cut through the low clouds slowly fading from the roads outside of Jacksonville. Shane looked out across the gentle haze of the dawn on the Florida Highway, and smiled, slightly, despite himself.

The memory the words came from was a fond one. Precious and dizzying and entirely mundane in that contradictory way that only memories with Ilya could be. It had been near the end of the summer before Ilya’s first season with Ottawa. Shane had been due back in Montreal for training camp in a few days time — all too soon.

They were in Ilya’s new house, moving him in. His parents had been there with them all day, as they had all unpacked kitchenware and set up exercise equipment, and dusted off Ilya’s many, many, many trophies.

Ilya had made Shane do that last part, had stood back with a grin watching Shane line them all up on the shelves of the trophy cabinet he had insisted be one of the first of the larger pieces of furniture moved into its new place in Ilya’s home.

“Why am I the one doing this again?” Shane had asked, an eyebrow cocked, unimpressed, at how little Ilya was doing to help in that moment.

“I thought it might be nice for you,” Ilya had replied with a grin, and a shrug of his shoulder, “to see what real hockey player’s trophy room looked like.”

“You asshole,” Shane had laughed, haphazardly pushing the trophy he had been holding into the closest empty space on the shelf so that he could advance towards Ilya. Back him up, still laughing, into the corner of the room and kiss the smugness right off his lips.

But, it had been the end of that day. Shane’s parents had stayed for a take-out dinner, eaten cross-legged on the floor of Ilya’s half-furnished living area. And then, had left, hugging them both goodbye, lugging away trash bags full of packing pellets and plastic that hadn’t quite fit into Ilya’s outside bins, with a smile and a promise to be there by ten-o’clock tomorrow morning to do it all again.

Once the door had closed behind them, Shane had taken the take-out cartons and the few glasses they had used to the mostly unpacked kitchen to deal with their minimal clean up. To get a moment to himself to breathe. To recentre.

Ilya had moved to the couch, sprawled out in the corner with his legs stretched out along the sectional, arms extended to the sides behind him, and head rolled back into the cushions. Shane could see the back of him from his place at the kitchen island. The tangled mess of Ilya’s curls after a long day of lifting furniture. The gentle rise and fall of his shoulders under the scrunched cotton of his shirt. The arrhythmic tapping of Ilya’s fingers against the couch cushion, playing out some music only he could hear, every now and then his right foot lazily joining in.

He had looked so calm. Relaxed, but alive. Present in that moment of peace in a way Shane struggled to ever quite be. Was finding impossible to be right then.

He was too busy thinking: overthinking. This was Ilya’s new home. Shane would be visiting, as often as he could. Would have drawers in the dresser and space in the closet, and a toothbrush in the cabinet, and protein powder in the kitchen cupboards, and ginger ales and ‘bird food’ in the fridge. But here, today, unpacking Ilya’s new life alongside Ilya and his parents, it had felt, for more than a moment, like they were unpacking a life together.

Shane, for a few miraculous seconds, had let himself imagine that this was their home. That these were their things. That there was no drive to Montreal looming in the distance because this, right here, in this house in Ottawa, was Shane’s forever. Was the rest of Shane’s future. That there was no hockey or distance or debilitating need to hide this perfect, wondrous thing from the world. That Shane and Ilya were unpacking their things, in their house, for their life.

Shane had thought about it then: how cruel the current plan was. How much he hated the sheer length of time waiting ahead of them before he and Ilya could do this for real. Before it could be their boxes Shane had been unpacking. Before he could have made Ilya unpack his trophies in turn, and then chirped him about the fact that Shane’s took up far more space on their shared shelves.

Shane had known he’d been standing in the kitchen too long when he'd heard Ilya’s voice floating up from the couch.

“Are you ever going to fucking relax, Shane?”

He had glanced over at Ilya again, then. At the cheeky glint in his eyes, looking at Shane over the back of the couch. A glint that said he’d caught Shane doing something entirely too boring, even for him, and if Shane just came over to where Ilya was, he’d fix that problem efficiently and effectively. Most preferably with his mouth and his dick.

Shane had chuckled. Huffed. “Sorry.”

“Tchhsk. Is fine,” Ilya had sighed, with mock disappointment. “Should have known that being back in your hometown would exacerbate the boring. This is where you get it from, yes? Things in the water, or whatever? I will need to be buying a filter, I think. Would not want to catch it.”

Shane had rolled his eyes. Raised his eyebrows. “Exacerbate?”

“Mm-hmm,” Ilya had grinned, slyly. “Now are you coming over here, Hollander? Or do I have to come suck your dick in kitchen.”

As Shane had walked over to Ilya’s sprawling form — already, mortifyingly, half-hard in his gym shorts — he had thought again about the time stretching out ahead of them. The probable ten years or more left until retirement, barring debilitating injury. About how it felt so fucking suffocating, even here in the safety of Ilya’s house, and Ilya’s smile, and Ilya, Ilya, Ilya.

But Ilya was sitting there, the same weight hanging over him, and he was still so goddamn relaxed. So calm. So fucking alive under the pressure of it all.

And so, as Shane jumped over the back of the couch, dropped himself onto Ilya’s thighs and ground down into his lap, he had decided to let it go. Or at least try to. He could be okay with this. He would be okay with this. They were playing the long game on this one. And if Ilya could wear the years and the distance and the secrets so easily then so could Shane. He had pulled off his shirt as Ilya palmed greedily at his chest, had thrown it across the room and decided not to care at all about it getting crumpled. He had smiled into Ilya’s hungry kiss. He had relaxed.

Shane looked out at the road, at the sunrise just about to break over the horizon, and wondered how he had got it so fucking wrong.

There was a crumple of grease paper as Shane reached into the seat next to him to grab the last bite of his double-cheeseburger. He threw it into his mouth and chewed, tried to use the rhythm of it to chase away the memories that wouldn't stop plaguing him. He swallowed and even as he grimaced against the texture — cold meat and rubbery cheese and slightly-too-crisp onion and just-too-dry bread — he couldn’t help but understand why Ilya still ate McDonald's any time Shane let him, and some times when he didn’t.

It was good. Disgusting. But good.

Comforting.

It sat heavy in Shane’s stomach and soaked up the third can of Red Bull Shane had housed during the drive.

He thought of Ilya again.

He had never stopped thinking of Ilya. But he thought particularly, now, of the way the corner of Ilya’s nose scrunched as he smiled his all-too-smug ‘I told you so’ smile. Pulled up at one corner, mouth mostly closed, but eyebrows raised and open as if to gesture, abstractly, at whatever it was that had just proved Ilya’s point. In this case, the cheeseburger.

Shut up, Shane thought. And then, more tenderly. More ashamedly. You told me a lot of things. I should have listened to more of them. Even the ones you didn’t say out loud. Because you shouldn’t have needed to. Not about something that important.

Shane wiped the grease from his fingers onto his trousers, before putting his hand back on the wheel, gripping it just a little too tightly. He thought about how often Ilya needled him about his diet. About his regimens. About Shane for once in his life letting go and easing up and just fucking relaxing, Hollander.

Shane thought about the fact that Ilya had probably been talking about more than just Shane’s food. Maybe not clearly. Maybe not even purposefully. But Shane thought about all the other parts of their life that Shane had tried to regiment, control, had kept strictly and purposefully closed to anything more than the plan Shane had already set into motion.

Shane thought about how trapped Ilya must have felt in his own goddamn life.

And Shane knew, with an awful certainty, that he must have been the world’s biggest fucking idiot to have ever looked at Ilya, sprawled out on the couch that day, and thought that he was happy.

You don’t deserve him, he told himself, not for the first time during this gut-wrenching odyssey. And honestly, after all of this, even if Ilya is alive, is fine, you might lose him anyway. And it would all be your fucking fault. For keeping the best person you’ve ever known from living the life he deserves.

Shane blinked against the growing tears, against the first rays of the sun pushing harshly through his windshield.

You’re going to lose him, regardless, his mind whispered. And Shane couldn’t help but agree.

It opened up to him then, the weight of a world without Ilya Rozanov. Shane really wasn't quite sure how he himself would continue to exist without Ilya. It felt like, in some way, that every piece of Shane that existed now, existed because of Ilya, in tandem with Ilya, for Ilya. And he knew he was being dramatic, somewhat. That his life wouldn't literally end without Ilya Rozanov in it. But, it would be unfathomably, irreconcilably different. Like losing a limb, an organ, his memories. The loss of Ilya would carve pieces out of Shane's life so large and so deep that there wouldn't be any filling them. Any fixing them. Maybe one day they would heal over, slowly, but scarred in a way that was unmistakable. That still ached, sharp and painful, years and decades later. 

Hockey, his cottage, his family, his home, his heart, the absence of Ilya from all of them would be something Shane would be confronting every minute of the rest of his life. 

I will spend a lifetime mourning you, he thought. And I still will never come close to grieving the true weight of your loss. You are so much a part of me that I don't think I could separate us now if I tried. Even death won't do it. Not really. I'll spend the rest of my life half-dead, the pieces of you inside me eating me alive like a necrosis. Like a cancer. I'll rot away from the inside because even if I could cut the pieces of you out of me, I wouldn't. I'd rather be dying for the rest of my life than live a second of it without loving you the way I do right now. 

And I would do it alone, he realised. My heart would be eating itself alive, slowly, painfully, my whole life, and I would have to suffer it in secret. Even while grieving you, I won't be able to love you the way you deserve.

It was the buzzing of his phone that finally broke through his thoughts.

For a moment he thought it was his alarm. Set for the airport wake-up the day before and never turned off. But as he glanced at the car’s clock — 7:28 am — he realised it couldn’t be.

He reached so quickly for his phone that he almost ran himself off the road. Didn’t look properly at the name before he was swiping accept and throwing the call on speaker.

“Hello?”

“Hollander?”

The voice was not Ilya’s.

Shane couldn’t help the bile that rose at the back of his throat. Even though, deep down, he had known with dreadful certainty that it was not going to be Ilya that was calling.

“Hollander, it’s Hayes. I got a message from Pike. And when I called back he said to call you.”

Shane swallowed. Coughed. Swallowed again. Couldn’t shake the acidic sting building on the back of his tongue. Maybe the McDonald’s had been a really bad fucking idea. He could feel it pushing up his esophagus. Knew the wrong words from Hayes would have it spilling, sour and burning, out of him. And with it his heart; his soul.

“Yeah. Hayes. It’s good—” Shane choked against his words. “It’s good to hear from you. Glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks,” Wyatt said. His voice was flat. Even over the phone Shane could hear the exhaustion pouring off him. “I assume you weren’t calling about me, though.”

Shane grimaced. Flexed his hands against the wheel.

Ilya had wanted them to know, he told himself. Ilya trusted them to know. The least you can do for him now is trust them, too. Too little too late. But you can fucking do it anyway.

“No,” Shane said. And his voice only shook a little. “No, I— Fuck, Hayes, is… is he— Is Ilya…”

The blood started to rush in Shane’s ears. The sun was still pushing through his windshield, glaring and violent. The morning had never looked so harsh as it did behind the wheel of an unfamiliar car, on an unfamiliar road, in an unfamiliar state, waiting for Wyatt Hayes to either hand Shane back his life, or end it right there on the outskirts of Jacksonville.

“He’s alive, Hollander. Shane.”

All of Shane’s breath left him in a rush, winding him for a moment, before he breathed back in and for the first time since the crash, the air managed to actually settle properly into his lungs.

Fuck. Fuck. Ilya was alive. Ilya was alive.

Wyatt’s voice was gentle — kind, even through the exhaustion — as he continued. “He got banged up pretty bad, though. Was unconscious after we hit the ground. The paramedics got him out pretty quick and we got a message from Wiebe saying that he was in surgery. And then there was another one late last night, to say that he was out. I haven’t heard anything new this morning. I, uh… I assume it went okay. I… I think Wiebe would have told us if it hadn’t.”

“Do you know,” Shane asked, tears of worry, and relief, and bone-deep exhaustion, beginning to burn behind his eyes, “do you know what his injuries were?”

There was a moment of silence from Hayes, the shuffling of what sounded like bed sheets. Shane wondered if Wyatt had checked his messages, called Hayden back, called Shane, the second he had woken up.

“I, um. I know he hit his head, because it was bleeding. A lot. But head injuries always do. And Barrett pulled him out of his seat first thing. Had him laid out, got pressure on it. The kid was kind of incredible, actually.”

Shane felt his eyebrows raise in surprise. Yet, at the same time, he couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by an intense wave of gratitude for Troy Barrett. He owed him a slab of beer, or some fucking expensive chocolates, or whatever other vice Shane could drop an ungodly amount of money on and have mailed to wherever Barrett was living in Ottawa. Shane blinked, and the sun through the windshield stopped feeling quite so harsh.

“When the paramedics got to him I think I heard them say something about his ribs. Internal bleeding. They got him on a board and moved him out of there pretty fast. But they weren’t, like… it didn’t look like they thought he would die. Just that they needed to get him to a fucking hospital. Which they did.”

“Okay.” Shane readjusted his grip on the wheel, reached up to swipe a tear from his cheek, and then another. “Okay… Thank you, Hayes. For calling back. I, fuck, I was going out of my mind. I really thought he might be—”

Shane cleared his throat against the second wave of tears that was threatening to fall. He was having enough trouble seeing the road ahead of him as it was.

“I’m sorry,” Hayes said.

It caught Shane off guard. Came at him from a direction so unexpected that it cleared up the tears faster than he ever could have on his own.

“For what?” he heard himself ask. Shane was sure it sounded more accusatory than he would have liked. He was running on too few fumes to regulate his tone, to know with certainty that his words were being understood the way he wanted them to. He thought, in this moment, however, that Hayes would cut him some slack.

“I just… You said you were going out of your mind, but… but none of us even thought to call you. I guess, I didn’t realise you and Roz were that close.”

Shane bit the inside of his cheek. Hated himself, as he breathed in and out.

“So, I’m sorry. It must have been a long night for you.”

“It was,” Shane said. And this time he knew the words came out harshly, disdainfully. He didn’t know how to communicate that the contempt was directed solely at himself.

He heard Hayes swallow on the other end of the line. There was a deep breath and a heavy sigh. Shane hated that apparently it was everyone around him that he seemed to hurt without meaning to these days. “Sorry,” Shane said. It came out flat. Expressionless. But it was still an apology. Still something.

“It’s fine, Hollander.” Hayes had always been far too fucking nice. “You’re good.”

Shane let the silence sit for a moment as he merged into the lane that would keep him on the highway, have him skirt the busyness of the city and get him to Ilya just that little bit faster. There were more cars on the road now, the traffic of a world waking up around him. He looked through the back window of the SUV in front of him, caught the shadow of the driver and wondered where they were heading. What kind of day there were planning to have. If they were following some mundane routine, or if their life had also been thrown violently off kilter. If Shane was the only one on this highway who was this far from home, from normalcy.

Shane shook out his shoulders. Looked down at the call, still open, but silent on his lap. He needed to ask this next question before Wyatt hung up.

“Can I…?” Shane closed his eyes for a heartbeat, furrowed his brow as he tried to, for once in this conversation, get his words in order. “I’m just driving past Jacksonville, maybe another three hours out from Tampa. Can I… can I get Wiebe’s number? I don’t— I don’t know what hospital Ilya’s in. And I don’t want to make a scene when I get there.”

There was a beat. Two. Three.

“You’re—” There was no mistaking the surprise in Hayes’ voice. “You’re driving to Tampa?”

Shane swallowed. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Hayes said, breathing out his shock. “I… okay, yeah. I can send you Wiebe’s number. I think he stayed the night at the hospital. Chouinard, LaPointe, and Young were all taken to emergency too, so I don’t think he wanted to leave.”

Shane nodded, felt his shoulders go slack and his hands drop to the bottom of the wheel. He leaned back in the car seat and let himself relax for the first time in hours.

“Thanks Wyatt. You have no idea how much I appreciate this.”

“No problem.” The silence sat for a moment. “You know I’m gonna ask you, though. Next time I see you. What the fuck this is all about, yeah?”

“Absolutely,” Shane said. Huffed out the beginnings of a laugh. “That seems fair enough… I really am glad you’re okay, Hayes.”

“Drive safe, Hollander.”

“Thanks,” Shane said, before he heard the call disconnect.

Ilya was alive. Banged up. Had had to have surgery. But he was alive. Hayes was pretty sure he was alive. Mostly sure. Something still could have—

Shane shook off the thought. Refused to let it hold. In his lap, he heard the buzzing of a text coming through. He didn’t need to look down to know it was Hayes sending through Wiebe’s number.

Shane breathed in and out. Swallowed down the last of the acid.

He wasn’t losing Ilya Rozanov.

Not today. Hopefully not ever. Not if he could fucking help it.

Chapter 5: Landing

Chapter Notes

So, if all goes to plan the next chapter will be the last one. Thanks to all of you who came along for the ride!

Shane was forty minutes outside of Tampa, stretching his legs at a run-down rest stop, when he finally called Wiebe.

The last two hours had been the hardest leg of the drive so far. Soon after Shane had finished his call with Hayes all of the night’s exhaustion, adrenaline, worry, guilt — grief — had slammed into Shane at once, as the news about Ilya slowly sunk in. Outside, the dawn had well and truly broken, the day beyond the confines of his rental car had begun, sunny and cheerful. But Shane had finally found himself struggling to keep his eyes open.

You’re not losing him, a quiet voice kept whispering. He’s alive. You’re not losing him.

And as it did, whatever single-minded determination that had kept him alert and wired and wide, wide awake during the first eight hours of his drive had begun to entirely vanish away. Leaving nothing but a bone-deep exhaustion in its wake.

Shane hadn’t trusted himself to try and juggle making another call, to put himself back through the emotional wringer, until he was closer to Ilya. Until he could trust himself to stop and breathe for a moment without losing all of his momentum. Without crashing himself.

There were two other cars at the rest stop with him. An older man, heavy-set, with a thick, grey beard, was smoking on one of the nearby benches. After the stress of the night, and with the ache of Ilya still hollow in his chest, Shane found the few whiffs of smoke that carried past him on the breeze calming. He imagined he’d be turning a blind eye to quite a few of Ilya’s cigarettes over the next few weeks. The thought of Ilya simply being okay enough to smoke a cigarette was enough to turn up the corners of Shane’s mouth.

To his other side, a younger woman, rugged up far more heavily than Shane thought was needed for the — frankly, quite tame — Florida weather, had run over to the intimidating looking public restroom. Shane didn’t think either of them had recognised him, as he’d jogged a couple of laps up and down the small strip of land, pushing blood and feeling and momentum back into his stiff, tingling, legs. Still, he’d kept a toque and sunglasses on while he had. Had zipped his fleece up over his chin.

Now that he was in Florida, sun shining down warmly even on a winter morning, Shane probably could have shed it happily. But he still had the shirt from his game-day suit on underneath. And he didn’t want to think about the sweat stains that had more than likely set into the pits of the white cotton.

He considered the fresh t-shirt and pair of loose sweats in his bag as he grimaced against the digging of his belt into his hips as he sat himself down at the only other bench at the stop. But, as he looked a little more closely at the dingy excuse for a restroom nearby, he decided he could live with these clothes for now. He’d use the hospital restroom. Those, he knew, would be clean. He didn’t want to change if it was only going to leave him feeling just as grimy, just as uncomfortable in his skin, as he was now.

He pulled his phone out of his fleece pocket and looked down at Wiebe’s number, sitting on his screen in a text from Hayes.

You’ll need to tell Wiebe, he thought, just what you and Ilya are to each other. You won’t be able to avoid it again, like you did with Hayes. This time you’ll have to say it, Shane.

You owe it to him to say it.

Shane’s leg was shaking nervously, palms sweating with the warmth and with his mounting anxiety, as he tapped the number and pressed call.

It had just gone nine-forty-five, and Shane hoped that he had allowed enough time for Wiebe to have slept off the night’s chaos. He also hoped that, considering the events of the last night, Wiebe would be more likely to pick up a call from an unknown number.

The phone rang four times, five, before it was picked up on the sixth.

“Hello? This is Brandon Wiebe.”

“Coach Wiebe.” Shane’s voice was gravelled, strained by his lack of sleep. He cleared his throat and hoped that it would smooth out the worst of it. “This is Shane. Hollander. I’m, um… I’m calling about Rozanov. Ilya. I need… Are you at the hospital with him?”

Shane could hear Wiebe breathing, quietly, down the other end of the line. The sun beat down, warming the dark navy of his fleece, drawing a few beads of sweat from his temples, his forehead, the back of his neck. The bench was uncomfortable under his thighs where the weather had worn the wood grain down to a rough, uneven, surface.

“Coach Wiebe?”

“Yes,” Wiebe coughed out. “Yes, sorry. I— I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting… Yes, I’m at the hospital with him.” Wiebe paused, cleared his throat. “He got out of surgery at around two this morning. They have him in a private room in recovery. He’s still sleeping. They think he’ll wake up sometime today. But, it was a bad head injury. He’s got quite a severe concussion. So it might take a little longer. They’re not sure how much time his brain’s going to want to take to rest. Reboot itself.”

Shane let Wiebe’s words wash over him. He really appreciated that he hadn’t had to ask. That Wiebe seemed to have sensed the question Shane had really wanted answered. Shane could see why Ilya liked him so much. Wiebe’s voice was measured, gentle, but straight to the point. He told you what you needed to know and trusted you would be able to carry it. No coddling. No bullshit. But still, undeniably, kind. It already had Shane feeling a little steadier.

He gripped the phone tighter to his ear, folded himself in half until his forehead was resting against his knees. He held himself inside the quiet, dark, cocoon he had made for himself at this unfamiliar rest stop, and breathed.

“Thank you,” Shane said. “I, um — God — I’m so fucking glad he’s okay.”

“So am I. He gave us a bit of a scare.”

Shane laughed at that. And, echoing tinny and warm through the phone, he could hear Wiebe had joined him.

“How are the rest of the team?” Shane asked. He felt bad that he hadn’t asked Hayes about that when they’d spoken. He knew how much Ilya cared about his team. How much he respected them all. It would kill him to wake up and find out that he’d lost any of them.

“Okay, for the most part,” Wiebe said, voice a little heavier than it had been a moment ago. “A few more serious injuries. I doubt we’re making it to the play-offs this year, now. But… we didn’t lose anyone. Which is more than I can say for the pilots’ families.”

“Fuck,” Shane sighed. He hated that, as horrible as the news was, he was relieved it hadn’t been the team. Hadn’t been Ilya. He thought, from the commiserating sigh that came through his phone speakers, that Wiebe felt the same way. Carried the same guilt alongside his sympathies.

“That news isn’t public yet, though, Hollander. There’ll be a statement later today, so, if you can keep this to yourself for now.”

“Of course,” Shane nodded, sitting back up to lean against the back of the bench and tip his face into the sun.

“I, uh…” Wiebe’s voice sounded a little unsure as he continued. “When Ilya wakes up I can let him know you called, if you’d like.”

Shane swallowed against the lump that had almost immediately lodged itself into his throat. He slouched a little further down into the bench, and let the uncomfortable catch of the rough wood against his trousers ground him back into the call. Into the promise he had made to Ilya hours ago. Minutes ago. That he had been making to Ilya this entire, uncertain, journey.

“I’m actually just outside of Tampa,” he said, hoping the words sounded steady. He wanted Wiebe to know that he was sure about this. For there to be no doubt in Wiebe’s mind that Shane Hollander was one-hundred-percent sure about Ilya Rozanov.

There was silence on the other end of the line, and Shane didn’t need to see Wiebe to imagine the man’s eyebrows raised in surprise.

“Oh,” Wiebe said, carefully. “You’re in Florida?”

“Yes.”

“That’s…” There was a long pause. “Aren’t the Voyageurs playing in Detroit tonight?”

Shane bit his upper lip, chewed it lightly as he put the words together in his head. He wanted to get this right. For Ilya’s sake more than his own. You’ve already screwed up so much, he said to himself. The least you can do is get this bit right.

“I… yes, they are, but I took personal leave as soon as I heard about the crash.”

Well, technically he’d taken personal leave when Hayden had talked to Theriault earlier this morning. When Theriault had called him at eight-thirty, pissed off and impatient, to ask him exactly what the hell he was thinking and to get his ass to Detroit right the fuck now, Hollander. Shane had taken the coward’s way out. Told Theriault he couldn’t talk while he was travelling, and to call his mother to get the details of the time-off sorted. Shane trusted his mum to come up with a suitably believable fake family emergency that just so happened to be occurring at the same time as the Centaurs’ plane crashed in Florida. If anyone could, it was Yuna Hollander.

Ilya, Shane, he breathed to himself. Focus on Ilya.

Shane took a moment. Another. Got himself ready to hand over the secret that he'd been guarding so fiercely for so long. No matter how many times he had had some version of this conversation, it never seemed to get easier for him. The same cold dread always pooled at the base of his spine. The same blind panic that this time, this time, it would all go horribly, catastrophically wrong.

No. Not this time. Ilya trusts him, Shane. And so can you.

“Ilya’s…"

As his heart raced too fast, too loud, inside his chest, Shane imagined Ilya there on the bench beside him. The phantom Ilya had his shoulders slouched, legs spread so that their thighs were pressed warm and steady against each other. He pictured a gentle hand reaching up to brush a strand of hair out of his eyes, fingers lightly following the line of his brow, his temple, down the back of his neck to land solid and steady just below the collar of his fleece. Shane's pulse began to slow.

“Ilya’s my partner,” Shane said. “My, um. My boyfriend. I— Fuck. We didn’t know, last night, if… We just knew there were two dead and more injured. I had to— I needed to be here. Not in Detroit.”

“Okay.” Wiebe’s voice was surprisingly steady considering what Shane had just told him.

Is it suprising, though? Shane chided himself. Is Wiebe’s calmness really that surprising? Or have you just convinced yourself that your and Ilya's relationship would be this shocking, unimaginable thing. Couldn't you just have been wrong, dead wrong, about all of it?

Regardless of Shane's assumptions, Wiebe's calmness was an immediate assurance, without a shadow of a doubt, that Ilya had been right. His team was good. His coach was good. They hadn’t needed to hide this quite so fiercely.

I’m sorry, he thought, to the spectre of Ilya beside him. I’m so fucking sorry.

A deep breath from Wiebe came sighing out of the phone’s speakers.

“Well… I can’t say I thought that’s where this conversation was going.”

Okay, Shane thought, so maybe Wiebe was a little bit surprised.

“I assume you’ll be wanting to come to the hospital.”

Shane felt the last piece of the night’s tension fall from his shoulders. The phantom Ilya’s hand gripped his neck a little tighter. “Yes. Yeah," he said, just a little too desperately. "Where… um. Which hospital are you in?”

“Tampa General,” Wiebe said, voice back to that steady, matter-of-fact tone Shane was coming to greatly appreciate.

“I…” Shane’s breath caught for a moment. His leg had started shaking again. Get it out, Shane. “I know this is probably going to sound like overkill. But, Ilya still has a Russian passport, and it’s not exactly subtle if a bunch of pictures show up of me barging into a Florida hospital the day after your plane crashed. So, I just, if you could meet me at, like, a back entrance. Or… I don’t know. I don’t want to cause any trouble, I just—”

“Breathe, Hollander,” Wiebe said, interrupting Shane’s spiralling thoughts. “The staff here understand that we’re trying to respect player privacy. Keep things out of the media. Call me when you’re ten minutes out and we’ll sort out getting you inside. I’ve got you, kid. The both of you.”

Shane smiled. A real one. Wide and relieved and foreign after the grief of the last twelve hours.

“I need to get back on the road,” he said, words coming a little easier. “I’ll call you when I’m close.”

“Drive safe, Hollander,” Wiebe said, with the intonation of a coach calling an order across the ice. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Shane nodded. “Bye.”

Shane was the one to hang up the call this time, switching to maps immediately to pull up Tampa General. It wasn’t too far from where the highway had him approaching the city. He’d be there in just over an hour, he thought. Depending on traffic.

One hour.

Compared to the ten-ish hours he had already been driving it seemed like nothing. But, in the face of how close he was to Ilya, it felt like far too much.

Still, he forced himself to walk slowly back over to the car. And when he got up to the door, forced himself to wait another few minutes. To use the leverage of the car to stretch out his hamstrings, his calves, his thighs. He arched his back and felt something shift and crack, satisfying, at the base of his spine.

“Okay,” he breathed. “Okay.”

The last stretch of the drive really didn’t feel as long as Shane had thought it would. It was still frustrating, driving into the city, contending with real traffic for the first time in eleven hours. He could feel his fingers beginning to nervously tap out impatient rhythms on the side of the wheel. He cursed at every red light. Never managed to quite get comfortable again in the seat as he stopped and started, stopped and started, and then, finally, crossed the bridge over the river and approached the hospital.

He had already called Wiebe just before he reached the bridge and he pulled his phone out again to shoot him a text as he parked. Wiebe sent him back a photo of a fire exit, brief instructions on where it was, and told him to knock when he found it.

Shane felt a little guilty. He had a feeling the fire exits at a busy hospital were definitely not meant to be used for this purpose. But as he looked at the steady enough stream of people moving between the parking lot, the main entrance, and the emergency room doors, he was thankful he wouldn’t have to make his way in amongst them.

It was a fair walk through the parking lot until he found his entrance, sun still shining down steadily. Florida seemed to defy winters, he thought. The Canadian in him was already sweating just from the walk across the asphalt. He had turned a corner behind the front part of the building, hidden away from the main section of the parking lot, when he finally found the fire exit, small and unassuming where it was tucked into the stark outer walls of the hospital. He threw a look over his shoulder, feeling eyes on him that weren't there, before he knocked twice on the door. Barely a moment later Shane heard the sharp squeak of a straining hinge as the door swung open. Brandon Wiebe was standing on the other side.

He looked more haggard than he had sounded on the phone, his hair greasy and ruffled, his under-eyes bruised a light purple, his skin oily beneath his stubble. Shane realised that, like him, Wiebe was still wearing the suit he had been in last night, with a Centaur’s hoodie, rather than a fleece, pulled over his shirt. We make quite the pair, Shane thought, with a quiet laugh.

“Hollander,” Wiebe nodded, and waved him through into the corridor.

The door caught on Shane’s duffel as it swung closed behind him and Shane tripped awkwardly a little further into the empty hall. Wiebe clapped a sturdy hand onto his shoulder.

“You good, kid?” he asked.

Shane nodded, looked around the corridor and gripped his bag strap a little tighter. “Yeah, just. Long drive.”

“Sure,” Wiebe said, giving his shoulder another squeeze before gently letting go. “We’re this way.”

Wiebe put a solid hand between Shane’s shoulder blades as he pushed him into step beside him, guiding him side-by-side through the hallways of the hospital.

A few staff and patients moved passed them. But no one stopped. No one looked too closely. After a minute, Shane pulled his sunglasses off and tucked them into one of the side pockets of his duffel.

“You got fresh clothes in there?” Wiebe asked, nodding down to the bag.

Shane looked up, panic shooting through him. Had he missed something? “Why? Do I need fresh clothes?”

Wiebe laughed, but Shane could tell it wasn’t in anyway mean. “A little bit, yeah,” he said, with a friendly grimace. Wiebe leaned his head down towards his own shoulder and gave his hoodie a cursory sniff, scrunching his nose. “Though, I’m sure I’m not much better."

Oh. "Oh," Shane nodded, turning a little red as he ducked his head. Of course Wiebe had noticed that he stank — like sweat, and Red Bull, and the McDonald’s grease still stained on his trousers. Like fear. In the hospital corridors, however, all Shane could smell was a strong antiseptic cleaner; the harsh, chemical citrus of a building constantly erasing the stain of blood, and shit, and death.

No, not death. Not for you. Not today.

They made another few turns, Shane doing his best to track the winding journey to Ilya’s room. Cataloguing everything he could. Until, finally, they came up against a set of closed doors — recovery — and Wiebe moved over to press a buzzer on the wall. It was a good thirty seconds before the automatic doors swung open to let them in.

“You’ll need to buzz to get in every time,” Wiebe said. “There’s a small kitchen in this ward, though. Tea, coffee, etc. And a few vending machines. So, it’s really if you want to leave for the night. Or get food that isn’t full of MSG and empty calories.”

Shane grimaced at the thought of eating out of a vending machine. But he could probably stomach a tea. Later, though. Right now, the only thing he wanted to do was see Ilya.

They moved through the recovery ward, Wiebe nodding at the nurse behind the desk. She smiled warmly back at him. It seemed the staff at Tampa General were also not immune to the coach’s calming presence. Shane was really beginning to understand how Brandon Wiebe had managed to land a head coaching job in the NHL by the time he was forty.

He would need to tell him that, he thought. Thank him for just how fucking fantastic he had been to Shane. To Ilya. To, Shane imagined, the whole team through the course of this emergency.

“Here we are,” Wiebe said, stopping in front of a closed door. The curtains to the room were also drawn tight. “They’re keeping the lights off in there while he’s recovering. And they don’t want too much noise in there either. So, if you watch something on your phone, just make sure the volume's low or that you’re using headphones. And they’re keeping the door closed. I can ask the nurses to knock before they come in. Give you two a little privacy.”

The look Wiebe levelled at him had a gentle weight behind it. It hit Shane like a puck to the chest, just how easily Wiebe was offering them this. Was finding ways to protect the secret Shane had so nervously shared. Shane smiled, shakily, and felt a familiar heat build behind his eyes.

“Thanks," he said, tongue clicking against his top lip. "I’d really appreciate that.”

Wiebe nodded. “Of course, kid. I’m gonna go check on Young, they were taking him for some kind of scan before you showed up. I’ll come and check back in with you both in a while. Text me if he wakes up. Or if you need anything. I’m here, okay.”

“Okay.”

Wiebe grasped his shoulder once again, and the pressure he pushed into Shane’s muscle was grounding. Shane breathed steadily against it.

“I’ll see you later, Hollander. Take care of our boy.”

Shane watched Wiebe walk down the corridor, his rapidly blurring figure disappearing as he turned a corner into another section of the ward. Shane waited outside the door another moment, swiped quickly at the tears threatening to fall as he listened to the low hubbub of the busy ward around him, and then quietly pushed through the door. As it closed gently behind him the sounds of the hospital faded away and left Shane in the first true bubble of peace he had found since he had heard the news. Of course, he didn't know if that peace belonged to the room itself or to the fact that he had finally, finally, made it to Ilya.

The room was dark. There was some low light spilling in through the translucent curtains pulled closed against the window across the room. But for the most part everything was dull, shadowed. It left the room looking hazy. Like an old black-and-white photo just out of focus. And there, tucked into the bed against the wall to Shane’s left, was Ilya.

He was pale. Wan. Even his lips, that were always so vibrantly, impossibly pink, looked washed out. Like the blood wasn’t quite pumping through Ilya’s body the way it should. Shane wondered if that was in fact true. Hayes had said something about internal bleeding. Or, perhaps, it was just that the blood that should have been in his lips had instead shifted, moved to bloom into the dark and tender bruises that spanned across the bridge of Ilya’s nose, under his eyes, on the side of his temple. And Shane was sure if he lifted Ilya’s hospital gown that the curve of his ribs would also be covered in the dark, angry, marks.

Beyond it all, though, Ilya just looked beautiful.

Shane took a shaky breath, watching him from his place just inside the door, and decided that here, in this hospital room, washed out and bruised and so painfully fragile, Ilya was perhaps the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

He felt the tears that had begun gathering when he was in the corridor with Wiebe finally spill over, tender and warm, against his cheeks. He didn’t bother to wipe them away as he finally stepped further into the room.

“Hey,” he whispered, as gently as he could. “I’m here now. I’m here.”

Shane walked slowly over to the corner by the window, where a larger armchair sat pressed against the wall. He put his bag down on top of it. Toed off his shoes and lined them up, carefully, next to it. He looked down at himself, still trapped in yesterday's clothes.

There was a door in the corner next to Ilya’s bed that Shane was sure led to a bathroom. But… he didn’t want to leave Ilya alone right now. Didn’t think he could stand letting him out of his sight.

Shane glanced at the closed door and at the thick curtains drawn over the window to the corridor. No one could see in. And Wiebe had said he would tell the nurses to knock. Shane thought about it for another few seconds before quickly stripping out of his stiff, sweaty clothing. He took a moment to roll some deodorant on before pulling out his change of clothes. The Voyageurs' t-shirt and sweats felt like heaven as he pulled them on, hugging softly against his overstimulated skin.

It was warm enough in the room that he didn’t need to pull on his sweatshirt, and so he stuffed his dirty clothes on top of it, zipping up his bag. He rubbed a tired hand over his face and grimaced uncomfortably at the amount of oil that pulled away on his palm. He debated with himself for a moment, before fussing around in one of the end pockets and pulling out a microfibre towel. He wet it with what was left in his bottle and slowly wiped the damp fabric across his face and down the back of his neck. The coolness of the cloth soothed some of the anxiety still beating in his chest.

He was here. With Ilya. And he was okay. Ilya was okay.

Shane took a breath, stepped to pick up one of the smaller chairs pushed against the wall by the window and walked over to the bed. His legs shook slightly as he lowered himself down. And his arms felt heavy as he quietly shuffled the chair as close to the bed as he could.

Ilya’s chest rose and fell steadily. His eyes rolled slowly behind his lids. Shane thought maybe Ilya was dreaming. He hoped it was a pleasant one. After everything.

Ilya’s skin was warm, just slightly clammy, as he reached out to brush his fingers through the curls at Ilya’s temple. As he flattened his palm softly against the side of Ilya’s face and brushed his thumb, oh so gently, across the bruising under Ilya’s eye.

“I’ve got you,” Shane murmured. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m sorry it took me so long, Ilya. I’m so sorry I made you wait.”

Ilya’s eyes darted a little faster behind his lids. Shane wondered if that meant he’d heard him.

Shane lifted his other hand to where Ilya’s lay on the bed and slipped his fingers between Ilya’s own, mindful of the heart-rate monitor on his finger. He lifted the hand to his lips and kissed it gently. Pressed it into his mouth and breathed in Ilya’s skin.

“You’re not allowed to do this again,” Shane said, a little louder this time. “You’re not allowed to leave me, okay.”

He took another moment to just press Ilya’s hand into his lips. To hold this piece of Ilya Rozanov as close to him as he possibly could for just another second. For as many seconds as he was allowed.

There was a buzz in his pocket.

Shane pulled back the hand that had been resting on Ilya’s cheek to retrieve his phone. It was a text from Hayden. Doing the math on the length of the drive. Asking if Shane had made it there safely yet.

He sent back a yes. And, figuring that Ilya wouldn’t mind, a picture of Ilya’s hand in his own. He didn’t have the energy to explain anything more to Hayden right now.

While he had his phone in his hand he also sent the picture of he and Ilya’s joined hands to his mum: I’m in Tampa. I’ve got him. I’ll call you in a bit.

It was only seconds later when he got a reply. Multiple: I’m so glad you’re with him. So glad our boy’s okay. Take care of him. Take care of yourself. We love you both so much.

Shane watched his mum’s typing bubble appear and disappear for another minute. He thought about putting the phone down, checking it later. But he felt guilty at how little he'd communicated with her through this. How he hadn’t even told her he’d gone to Florida until this morning, when he’d shot her a quick text to warn her about Theriault. Speaking of…

The text came through: You have a week’s personal leave. Theriault wasn’t happy, but you’ve never once taken time-off like this so he didn’t exactly have a leg to stand on. I told him your grandmother was sick and that you were coming home to Ottawa. So, if you need to talk to him, or anyone on the team, that’s the official story.

If anything comes up about you being in Florida, Farah and I will handle it.

You just take care of our boy.

Shane dropped his phone into his lap and dipped his head downward with a groan until it landed on the bed beside his and Ilya’s joined hands. It had been a long fucking night. And, all at once, Shane didn't know how his eyes were still open. How he hadn't fallen completely apart against the hospital room floor. 

Shane breathed for a moment before he lifted his head and leaned a little further forward. He shifted until his cheek was leaning against Ilya’s thigh, warm and solid underneath him. And he pulled Ilya’s hand until it sat, clasped in his own, tucked gently under his chin.

His mum, the team, the world outside could wait for a little while.

Shane closed his eyes and buried his head a little deeper into Ilya.

He slept. 

Chapter 6: Breathing

Chapter Notes

So this chapter is a MONSTER.
I hope y’all enjoy!

Shane dreamed about Ilya.

They were at the cottage, out on the dock. It was warm, calm, the afternoon sun glinting lazily off the lake. They were laid out together, skin damp and chilled in the gentle breeze, but warm where they were pressed against each other — chest to chest, hip to hip. Shane’s face was buried in Ilya’s neck, nosing along the relaxed tendons, pressing into the hinge of his jaw.

He could hear Ilya laughing, could feel Ilya’s hand tracing down his spine. But there was a resistance in Shane’s neck, something stopping him from looking up at Ilya’s face. It tickled, slightly bothersome, in the back of Shane’s mind. But, lying there, Ilya surrounding him, Shane couldn’t quite bring himself to see the problem with not being able to look. Especially when Ilya’s golden neck was stretched out so temptingly.

Shane zeroed in on one of the moles there, leaned closer in to brush his nose against it, and then his lips. He kissed it gently once, twice. He opened his mouth a little wider to suck, tonguing the spot languidly.

Above his head he heard Ilya groan, felt him harden against him. Shane sucked harder. Drew back to nip at the spot. This was the cottage, they were safe. He could leave as many marks as he wanted to. He nosed his way to another mole a little further up and closed in again.

Ilya’s grip on him was tighter now. His noises louder. Shane still couldn’t lift his head. Still couldn’t look. But he didn’t want to. Not while he was drawing these hungry moans out of Ilya. Not while the sun was shining down, and the breeze was tickling through their hair, and the crash of their bodies together was oh so wonderful.

Ilya’s hand moved up from Shane’s back to grip, hard, into his hair. And as it did, Shane moved outside himself. He could see the image of his dream self, still splayed out over Ilya, still mouthing desperately at his neck, rolling into his hips. But underneath the dream Shane, Ilya looked wrong.

He was no longer golden. No longer flush. His skin, normally so warm and soft, was stretched pale and paper thin against his muscles. His figure, a figure that since that first time — nineteen and fumbling — had always been so strong, so full, was withered. His muscles hung loose on his frame, his bones began to protrude through the outline of his flesh.

Outside his body now, Shane could finally look up at Ilya’s face. It was sallow. Fading into nothing more than bone. And inset deep into their sockets, Ilya’s eyes were pale. Tired. Shane could see tears building behind them. It was the same heartbroken look that Ilya had levelled at him the day of their fight. The day when Ilya had laid out so clearly just how much Shane had been asking him to give. Just how completely Shane had been sucking him dry.

And that’s what the dream Shane was doing, lying there on that dock.

The sun faded. The wind kicked up. The lake behind them started to chop and roll, crashing against the dock like ocean waves in a storm. And Shane kept sucking. Kept taking and taking and taking.

When there was finally nothing left of Ilya, when the dream Shane had faded him completely away, Shane woke up.

It was quiet in the room, as Shane breathed against the lingering ghost of the dream.

It was still dark, but the temperature had raised a little. He felt warmth against his back, where he guessed the sun had dipped low enough to now be directly spilling through the window, pressing heat through the closed curtains.

His head had dropped down from Ilya’s leg, was now resting at an awkward angle on the edge of the bed. The hand in front of him, that had been tangled with Ilya’s while he slept, was now lying empty. He closed his eyes, flexed his fingers, laid his palm flat against the sheets and took another deep breath. The dream Ilya still danced behind his eyelids.

It was another moment before Shane registered that he was being touched. Gentle fingers running through the hair at the top of his head.

Fuck.

The second the movement clicked in his mind he shot up in his seat. The sudden shift had black spots dancing at the edge of his eyes, his head spun for a moment as his eyes tried to draw the world back into focus. When they did, his gaze immediately fell on Ilya.

Ilya.

He was awake, eyes open and bright even in the gloom and crinkled at the edges where he was smiling gently at Shane.

“Hello,” Ilya whispered, reaching his hand up to brush the backs of his fingers against Shane’s cheek.

Ilya’s voice, warm and tender and deep, echoing through that hospital room was maybe the best sound that Shane had ever heard. Ilya’s touch, soft and dry and adoring, against Shane’s skin was maybe the best sensation Shane had ever felt. Love and joy and relief crashed through him so suddenly, so acutely, that for a moment he forgot how to breathe.

Ilya.

“I think maybe you slept longer than me,” Ilya grinned.

Shane stared at him dumbly. Hopelessly. He swallowed as his eyes began to burn and reached up to press his hand against Ilya’s, palm to palm, fingers tangling together desperately.

”Ilya.”

Shane held his hand fiercely, took a moment to just breathe Ilya in — in and out, in and out — trembling and relieved against the back of Ilya’s hand. Ilya's skin was pale under Shane's grip, his face was tired, drawn, where it lay against the pillows. Shane grimaced at how similar he looked to the Ilya from the dream. At how it felt like Shane had made him that way. He choked back a sob.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, trying to shake off the tears. The lingering fog of his sleep. The terror still gripping at the edges of his mind. Ilya was awake. Ilya was awake.

”Like shit,” Ilya grimaced. “Everything is too loud. And breathing hurts. And the last time I moved to much I vomited. Unfortunately only a little got on you. My aim is not what it used to be.”

Shane huffed a laugh against Ilya’s skin. It trembled, barely made it past his lips, but it managed to warm Shane regardless, fluttering, tender and hopeful, to slow the beating of his tired heart. Shane pressed his nose deeper into Ilya's skin. It smelled clean, warm, like a piece of home. I love you, he thought.

“You are here,” Ilya said, eyes filled with something like wonder. Shane was sure he didn’t deserve it.

“Yeah,” he croaked, turning his head to kiss the back of Ilya’s hand. Once. Twice. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“You should not be, I don’t think,” Ilya said, frowning slightly. As Shane looked closer at him he could see that Ilya’s eyes weren’t quite focused all the way. He wasn’t dopey, wasn’t all the way high, but the drugs seemed to be fading off the edges of Ilya’s normal vigour. Spacing him out. “You have game in Detroit, yes?” Ilya asked quietly. “Unless, I was not awake longer than I thought.”

“No,” Shane said, “No, you weren’t. But, I’m… I took personal leave. I’m not playing in Detroit tonight. I go back next week.”

“Why?”

Shane gripped Ilya’s fingers tighter. Let himself sit with the deep pit of guilt that opened up in his gut at the question. God, he thought, how had he fucked up this badly? How could Ilya not know why he wasn’t playing? Why Shane had fought so determinedly to be here, by his side, for this.

“I didn’t know,” Shane said, “if you were…”

It rolled over him all at once, then. All of the desperate grief of the day before. Ilya’s eyes softened as the weight of it all must have shown on Shane's face. He rubbed his thumb along the back of Shane’s hand.

Shane shook his head. Swallowed a shaking breath. The tender, loving touch was nearly enough to unmoor him, to send him shattering against the hospital room floor.

“I heard about the crash," he said, "and I read your messages.” He heard Ilya tut, gentle and pained, an unspoken apology. “And I just needed to be here. I want to be here. And you couldn’t get me to leave even if you wanted to, so don’t even try.”

“I wouldn’t,” Ilya whispered. “I want you to be here, too. So much. So much I thought, maybe, when I woke up, that I was still dreaming.”

“Not a dream,” Shane said, the image of the dock and the wind and Ilya’s pale body swimming forward again. “God, this had better not be a dream.”

“No,” Ilya said, eyes dancing, “you are right. Not a dream. If it was a dream you would be naked. And I would be able to move without throwing up. Throwing up is not very sexy. I would never dream myself this way.”

Shane laughed, deep and fully. This was what he had missed. All of the wonderful, and contradictory, and ridiculous pieces that made up Ilya Rozanov. The way that Ilya, without even trying could slip past all of Shane's defenses. Could fill him with such potent, immutable joy — always.

The sound of Shane's laughter carried through the room, bounced cheerfully off the walls. Shane could see Ilya wince at the suddenness of it. But as he tried to choke off the laugh Ilya shook his head gently.

“No,” he said. “Don’t. Is worth the pain, for that. Always.”

Shane nodded. Loved, so acutely, this wonderful, stubborn man. A sigh fell out of Shane, deep and aching, as he gently lowered his and Ilya’s joined hands down to the bed. And for the first time since he had woken up, looked around to take in more than just the captivating sight of Ilya Rozanov. The bed had been shifted so that Ilya was propped up at an angle, at eye level with Shane now that he, too, was sitting up. Next to Shane’s shoulder, between his chair and the top of the bed, a portable table had been wheeled up. Shane could see a cup of water, mostly full with a straw, sitting near to Ilya’s shoulder. On the far corner of the table sat a plastic bag. It held Ilya’s wallet, a now horrifically cracked phone, and the glint of a gold chain.

“I asked them to bring it up for me,” Ilya said, seeing where Shane’s gaze had landed.

Shane nodded, squeezed Ilya’s hand before he stood up to open the bag. “I’ve got a charger in my duffel,” he said, pulling out Ilya’s phone, pressing uselessly on the power button. It looked utterly wrecked. “We can see if we can get this back to life. It might be a long shot.”

Ilya nodded gently, and Shane walked over to grab the cord out of his bag. There was an outlet about half way down the wall near all the monitors by the head of the bed, close enough that he could plug it in and lay the phone on the table. As he did, he reached back into the bag and pulled out Ilya’s crucifix.

It was wrong, seeing it here in his hand and not around Ilya's neck. Like the whole world had moved just an inch out of place. 

“Are you allowed to put this back on?” he asked.

Ilya shrugged, softly, and looked nauseated by the motion. “I’m not sure. I think, maybe they want more scans later. I don’t know.”

Shane nodded, ran the chain softly through his fingers. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, “so I’ll just remind you to take it off if they need you to.”

Ilya’s whole face softened, eyes tracking Shane closely as he moved to sit back down, stretched over the bed to reach the chain gently behind Ilya’s neck and close the clasp.

“Thank you.”

“Of course,” Shane smiled, running his hands down the sides of Ilya’s neck, ticking his thumbs across the underside of his jaw. You are so fucking perfect, Shane thought. Ilya’s hands moved up to circle loosely around Shane’s wrists.

He held Shane there for a moment, eyes closed and face relaxed, before his brow furrowed slightly and he pulled Shane’s hands down to rest in his lap. He squeezed them. Cleared his throat and flinched as he shifted a little against his pillows.

“The nurse came in,” Ilya said, opening his eyes to look cautiously at Shane, “while you were asleep.”

Shane nodded. He had figured.

“She was lovely, you know. Funny. Great figure. Beautiful dark eyes. Exactly my type.” Shane raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. “Also, mid-fifties, happily married,” Ilya said with a wave of his hand. “Broke my heart when she told me.”

Shane laughed at him and shook his head. Shane didn't think he could be jealous today, even if he wanted to. There simply wasn't enough room for any more emotions inside of him. Ilya smiled, rolled his head on the pillow to face Shane a little more directly.

“She saw you, sleeping here,” he said, carefully. “Your head was in my lap. Was hard to miss.” The words sounded light, casual. But Shane could hear the tension behind them. The question that Ilya was asking.

“Okay,” Shane nodded. He waited for the worry to set in. He waited for the shiver to roll down his spine, telling him to run, run, run. The ghost of it was still there. But, it was more like the memory of a feeling. Shane breathed in far more easily than he expected.

“You are… okay?” Ilya asked.

Shane leaned towards him, lifted his hand back to Ilya’s face. “I’m okay,” he said. “I—”

Shane reached for the rest of the words but found that they weren't there. They had choked up, he thought, somewhere inside his throat. So, instead, Shane looked at Ilya, hard and determined, for a long moment, as Ilya’s eyes tracked slowly across his face, waiting. Fuck. He huffed, let out a groan that sounded far too close to a whine, and leaned down to press his head into Ilya’s hipbone. One of Ilya’s hands lifted up and buried itself into Shane’s hair.

Shane lost track of how long he sat there, buried in Ilya, letting the grief and the worry and the guilt of the past day roll over him. As Ilya’s fingers scratched over his scalp, pulled calming patterns through his dark strands, he could feel it all begin to shake loose from the back of his neck. There was a moment of pressure, and then, with a gentle release it all began to flow, like water from a drain that had finally been de-clogged, down his spine, his legs, through his toes, and spill out in an ugly mess across the hospital floor.

“I’m sorry,” Shane whispered into Ilya’s hip.

“For what?”

Shane groaned, gave himself another second to press his forehead, grounding, into the bone there, before he slowly sat back up. He took a breath, moved to take Ilya’s right hand in both his own.

“For everything,” he said, “for all of it.”

Ilya frowned at him. Shifted his hand where it lay between Shane’s. “I don’t understand.”

Shane sighed. You owe him this, he told himself. And then you owe him a hell of a lot more. But this is a good place to start.

“I was an asshole,” was what he started with, and as he did he could already see Ilya gearing up to fight him on it. He shook his head, held Ilya’s hand a little tighter.

“I was,” he said. “So, just let me apologise and we can argue about it later.”

Ilya nodded, eyes wide and waiting.

Shane took a breath in. Out. Looked down as he traced his index finger along the vein on the back of Ilya’s hand. “I took so much from you.”

There was a grunt from Ilya. Pained and sudden. Shane shook his head.

“I did, Ilya. I… I set up a life for us that kept me safe and comfortable and happy. And I never bothered to look and see that you were trapped in it. You were right, you gave up everything for me and I didn’t do the same for you.”

Ilya pinched Shane’s fingers, a sharp, demanding pressure. “We have already talked about this, Shane. Already apologised, yes? We are okay.”

“I know,” Shane whined, “I know that, but…”

“But what?”

Shane could feel his jaw tightening, locking around all the words he didn’t know how to articulate. But I didn’t apologise enough. But I don’t think I fully understood then what I was apologising for. But over the last day I have realised what exactly it would be like to lose you, what exactly I would be willing to give up to keep you with me. And it turns out it’s everything, Ilya. It turns out I’d give up all of it. And I don’t know where that leaves us because we’re still stuck here, hiding from everyone, separated by hockey and distance and secrets and I still can’t see the play that gets us out of it. Or, I can, but it’s terrifying. But I also think that terrifying might be something I can live with, if you want us to. Do you want us to? I think maybe I hope that you do. I think maybe I hope that you’re as ready to jump off this cliff as I am, and trust we’ll find a soft landing at the bottom. I believe we will, I believe we will because it’s us. Because it’s you.

“But...” Shane said, breathing deeply, “I think I’m ready to give up more. I don’t… I don’t really know what that looks like, yet. But, I know that we can’t keep going like this. And I don’t want to. I don’t think I ever wanted to, it was just ‘the plan’ and so we had to stick to it. I never really wanted it either. It was just, the thing we had to do, you know?”

“Yes,” Ilya nodded. “I know.”

Shane huffed, smiled even though he could feel it was a little shaky, a little sad.

“I think,” Ilya continued, turning his hand over in Shane’s grip to play with his fingers, rolling them gently in his own one after the other. “I think, I must also apologise again.”

Shane looked steadily at Ilya’s face, but Ilya wasn’t quite meeting his eyes.

“I realised,” he whispered, “when the plane was crashing. How I had wasted so much time not telling you things. I think, I kept waiting for you to see them, yes? But… was not fair. Was not… reasonable expectation.”

“Reasonable expectation?” Shane smiled, voice laced with humour at the phrasing. So entirely un-Ilya.

“Yes,” Ilya said, rolling his eyes. Jostling their joined hands. “Galina, my therapist, she is very good at her job. Teaching me lots of good phrases.” His face softened. “For when I am ready to tell you.”

Shane swallowed. Licked at his top lip. “Galina sounds smart.”

“She is. You will like her, I think.”

Shane nodded at that, and felt the corner of his mouth kick up in a smile. His thumb brushed against the back of Ilya’s hand. “I’m sure I will. I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell me about her. About you.”

“No. No.”

Ilya said something, then, quick and quiet in Russian. He did that, sometimes, when he couldn’t quite figure out how to say something in English. Like trying the phrasing in Russian first gave him more time to put it into his second language without stumbling. Shane caught a few of the words, more than he would have a year, six months ago. But on the most part it was still too fast for him.

“It was not you,” Ilya said, squeezing Shane’s hand for emphasis. To help ground him. “Was… me.”

Shane laughed, loud and sudden. It interrupted whatever Ilya had been beginning to say next. Shane tried to stifle it, but he felt the laughter running away with him, bending him over to lean his head against the bed.

Ilya frowned down at him, confused. Suspicious. “What?”

“No,” Shane chuckled, trying to school his giggles. He sat back up, feeling giddy, almost hysterical, after all of the tension, after all of the hurt. “No. Sorry. Just, ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ is not where I thought this conversation was going.”

Ilya grinned, then, too. His eyes sparkling against his pale face. He was so goddamn beautiful. “Ah, I hear it now. Like, bad rom-com, yes?”

“Yes,” Shane smiled. Kissed Ilya’s hand. “Sorry, keep going. Please.”

Ilya’s grin turned soft. His index finger flexed out where it was being held near Shane’s mouth to touch his cheek. To dance along the edge of his freckles. God, I missed you, Shane thought.

“I did not avoid telling you because of anything you did. I…” Ilya swallowed against his words. Coughed. It sounded harsh and a little too dry. Shane leaned over to the table and picked up Ilya’s water, lifting the straw to his mouth. Ilya squeezed his hand as he drank, a quiet thank you. “It was hard for me,” he continued, as Shane lowered the cup back to the table. “I did not want to burden you. Did not want to ruin our time together by being broken. I thought, first, maybe it will go away. I am sad a bit, but, it disappears, yes? And then, when it didn’t, I thought, I will get therapist. She will fix me. Shane will not have to worry. I will not ruin anything.”

Shane could feel his frown growing deeper as Ilya spoke. He tried to relax his face, tried to flatten out the furrow in his brow. But his face didn’t want to listen. He leaned down and pressed a kiss into Ilya’s hand. Another.

“You’re not a burden,” he said, voice wobbling. “I want— I want to know when you’re feeling that way. I don’t… I don’t need to know all of the details. I know you said there were some things that you didn’t want to tell me. That you needed to tell Galina, instead. And that’s— that’s okay. But, you can still tell me when it’s bad, right? When you’re struggling. Especially when I’m the one that’s causing it.”

“No!” Ilya said, trying to sit up. Pushing up on his elbows to lean towards Shane. Shane watched the pain of the motion flash across his face. “Don’t. You weren’t causing it. No.”

Shane frowned. Reached out a hand to Ilya’s shoulder to push him gently back into the pillow. “I kind of was.”

Ilya shook his head a little too violently. It made him wince, and Shane lifted the hand on Ilya’s shoulder to his cheek, stopping the movement. Stubborn, wonderful, man. “It was not your fault, Shane,” Ilya insisted, eye’s wide. “You asked, months ago, if I was alright. It was your idea to see therapist. I… I was the one who told you I didn’t need it. That I was fine. I was wanting you to read my mind. To know that I was not fine even though I was trying to seem like I was. Maybe… maybe you could have asked again. But, maybe, also, I could have brought it up.

“It is…” Ilya leaned his cheek a little further into Shane’s hand. Closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Galina says it is depression. Like my mother. I think, maybe, I was also scared that you would think… My mother was depressed because she was so unhappy, with my father, with her life. I was scared, maybe, that you would think I was, too. I didn’t know how I could be so happy, with you, with your parents, with the team, and still feel like this. Seems counterintuitive, yes?”

Shane could feel fresh tears sitting just behind his waterline. He was so fucking sick of crying. He didn’t know how he physically had any tears left inside him.

“Counterintuitive,” Shane murmured. “Seems unfair that you can have a severe concussion and your English is still this good. The last time I took a hit on the ice, the most Russian I could remember was ‘da’.”

Ilya chuckled and opened his eyes. Shane smiled. That’s what he’d been hoping for. There you are.

“Your Russian is not so bad,” Ilya said.

“It’s not great,” Shane grimaced, as he lifted the hand on Ilya’s cheek, turned it over to run the backs of his fingers across the bruise on Ilya’s temple. “From what I know,” he said, gently, “depression just kind of happens. It doesn’t matter how happy or sad you are outside of it. It’s like, its own thing.”

Ilya nodded. “I know. Galina says same thing. I just…” He took a deep breath, flinched at the shifting of his ribs. “I still feel broken, yes. I am trying not to.”

Shane ran his hand over the side of Ilya’s face again, stood up to stretch over the bed and kiss Ilya’s forehead, to lean into him and bury his nose in his curls. He stayed there a moment, breathing Ilya in — would have stayed there forever — before he sat back down.

“I’m here,” Shane said, with all the love, and certainty, and determination that he had found on his long, desperate journey. “I’m not going anywhere. Ever. And, I’m going to ask more. About how you are. About what you’re feeling. And I’m going to listen.” Shane tightened his grip on Ilya’s fingers. “I know you said this wasn’t my fault, but… you asked about me meeting your team. You told me about all the things you gave up for me. You told me you hated that you had no one to talk to about this. About us. Those were all things you said, Ilya. And I fought you, on all of them.”

“It was sudden,” Ilya said, softly. “Was not fair to bring them up like I did.”

“Maybe,” Shane conceded, “but I still should have listened. I want to listen. To do better.”

They both sat with their words for a moment. Shane could hear muffled footfalls beyond the door. Could feel the sweat building between his and Ilya’s palms. He could see the gentle sheen of tears sitting behind Ilya’s eyes as they sat in the silence. Shane ran his thumb across the back of Ilya’s hand. 

“I, uh…” Shane began, feeling, not for the first time in the past day, a little too big for his skin. “I told Wiebe. About us.”

Ilya’s gaze was piercing, intense, flicking back and forth across Shane’s face. Waiting for him to keep talking.

“I didn’t want to lie,” Shane continued, his voice wobbling just a little, “about why I needed to see you. If, if something worse had happened, I needed someone to know why I was here. How important you are to me.”

Ilya’s grip was fierce, Shane could feel his fingers beginning to ache with it. “You…” Ilya swallowed. “You are… okay, with him knowing?”

“Yeah,” Shane said, and smiled gently to reflect it. It was the only way Shane knew how to express to Ilya just how fucking okay he was with Wiebe knowing, with all of it, especially after he had spent so long insisting that he wasn't. “He… he was great about it, actually. Oh," Shane thought, suddenly, "And Hayes might know, too. He’s who I got Wiebe’s number from. I didn’t say it out loud, but, driving across the country in the middle of the night isn’t exactly ‘just bros’ behaviour.”

“Ah,” Ilya nodded, his mouth turning up at the corners. “So, you are just telling everyone now. Doing all my coming out for me. I say: ‘Shane, moya lyubov, I wish to come out to my team. Tell them I have have hot hockey player boyfriend with good mouth and fantastic ass. So-so personality, but I overlook’.” Shane laughed. “And then I get into one little plane crash and suddenly you are taking all my thunder.”

“Stealing, asshole,” Shane said, grinning. “Stealing your thunder. And it was only two people. Technically only one.”

“Oh, technically,” Ilya rolled his eyes.

Ilya was smiling, too. And this time when Shane stood up he leaned over to kiss Ilya properly. It was just a soft slide of lips. Chaste. Slightly too dry. But warm, and gentle, and perhaps one of the best kisses of Shane’s life. Because Ilya was here, giving it, when not so long ago Shane had truly believed he wouldn’t be.

He kissed Ilya again. And then one more time, before sitting back down.

They were both still smiling, even wider than before.

I love you, he thought again. Fuck, I love you.

Shane cleared his throat, turned his face away from Ilya to try and school his giddy grin. It didn’t work. I can’t keep hiding this, Shane decided, all at once and with utter certainty, I can’t keep pretending that this man isn’t absolutely everything. He hoped Ilya was ready to take this leap with him.

“I have an idea,” Shane began.

Ilya groaned, deep and exasperated. “No,” he said. “No, I am not doing this today. I am sick, Hollander. I am broken. Have pity.”

Shane laughed, rolled his eyes. “I was thinking,” he continued, ignoring Ilya’s dramatics. “What if we came out this summer?”

Suddenly, Ilya was alert. All traces of humour gone. Shane took a deep breath and looked down at his hands as he pressed on. He wanted to get through all of this, to lay out the new play — this wonderful, terrifying plan — before he saw Ilya's answer.

“I know that that's soon," he said. "But, Mum and Farah already have contingencies in place, and we can ask them to start reaching out properly to the sponsorships, to team management, now. To take everyone's temperature while we figure out our game plan. I think they'll both be happy to move up our timeline. I know Mum will be. There'll be backlash. Maybe... maybe not as bad as I've been convincing myself. But, Montreal... There's still gonna be assholes. People who make a lot of noise, about this. And I know you still have a Russian passport. Which, you shouldn't, if we do this. Not if we can help it. So, I figure we start your permanent residency application now. You’re a skilled worker, and they can probably expedite it, considering who you are. And that should keep you safe until, in another year or so, you can apply for citizenship. Or… I mean, we’ll probably be married by that point, so it’ll be a different process anyway—”

“I’m sorry, we will what?” Ilya interrupted, grinning from ear to ear.

Shane stopped. What had he missed? He frowned to himself as he played back in his head the last thirty seconds of conversation. Oh. Oh Fuck. He could feel his face flushing a brilliant red. Hot and bright. Pomidor, Shane thought, nonsensically. That was the word for tomato, right? He could feel his breath starting to come a little faster, his heart starting to beat a little quicker.

“Um,” Shane stuttered. “I… I mean.”

“No, no,” Ilya smiled, “you don’t get to back out of this, Hollander. We will probably be married in a year, that is what you said. That means I will be expecting ring, soon, yes? If we want enough time to plan big, fancy ceremony. Will need to be an impressive proposal, though. Now that I know it is coming. You will have to sweep me off my feet, Shane. I want the works.”

Shane laughed, still just as red in the face. But Ilya’s words had pulled some of the blind panic out of his chest. Married in a year. The longer he thought about it the more it sounded like something Shane really, really wanted to do. The more it sounded absolutely fucking incredible. “The works,” Shane promised, smiling, “got it.”

Ilya’s grin turned a little softer. Turned the whole room a little softer with it. “Are you sure?” he asked, removing his hand from Shane’s grip to cup his cheek. The heart-rate clip pulled uncomfortably against Shane’s hair. He didn’t give a single shit. “About this summer. Are you sure?”

Shane nodded. Turned his head to kiss the centre of Ilya’s palm, and then lean his face into Ilya’s gentle hold. “I’m sure.”

Ilya’s thumb swept across his freckles. “Ya tebya lyublyu. You are a miracle, Shane. My miracle.”

Shane’s tears came back, and he buried even further into Ilya’s hand. “This summer,” he said.

“This summer,” Ilya said back.

And then forever, he thought, desperately. I’m getting my forever with you.

After a moment Shane looked back up at Ilya. “I love you, too,” he finally whispered, swallowing against his trembling breath. “So much. So fucking much.”

They sat like that for a while, Ilya’s thumb tracing gentle pattern’s across Shane’s cheek, connecting the dots between his freckles. Shane brought a hand up to fiddle with the blanket by Ilya’s hip, to feel the warmth of him through the sheets. To ground himself in Ilya in every way that he could.

A few minutes later there was a knock at the door.

Shane felt no hurry to separate from Ilya as the nurse let herself into the room. According to Ilya, she had already come in and seen Shane passed out with his head all but in Ilya’s lap. How they were now really wasn’t that much more of a give-away. And Shane was too tired to care. Too comfortable pressed against Ilya’s skin to worry about one nurse figuring out their secret.

The nurse, Sophia, was friendly, full of good humour, as she checked Ilya’s vitals, ran through his concussion protocols, asked him about his pain levels. When she was done Ilya asked, charming and hopeful, about when food was coming. Sophia laughed, and promised she would see about getting him something before mealtime. She also made a point to say his appetite was encouraging. That they would happily bring him an extra portion at dinner if he felt like he could eat it. Ilya assured her, grinning, that he would be able to. Shane wasn’t so sure, but he wasn’t going to say anything.

Instead, he sat back and watched the interaction with a solid warmth spreading through is chest. It ached, the love that spilled through him as he took Ilya’s hand and let himself just be. Be a regular man, sitting with his boyfriend in the hospital, rolling his eyes as the love of his life flirted shamelessly with his middle-aged nurse. He wanted his life to be full of moments like this. And now, maybe, it would be. The thought swum in his head so giddily he felt faint with it. He was sure if he was the one with the heart-rate monitor on, it would be spiking off the charts.

As Sophia left with a final smile and a wink from Ilya, Shane heard a buzzing coming from the portable table. Ilya’s phone had finally come back to life. Ilya turned to look at it as well, as the phone began registering message after message after message.

“Would you…?” Ilya asked.

Shane nodded, reaching over to pick up the phone. He had to shift his chair, move it closer to Ilya’s head, so that the charger would reach. He fussed for a moment, before simply pushing the table a little further out so that he could turn his chair and bring it right up next to the head of Ilya’s bed, so they were all but shoulder to shoulder. As he sat back down he reached his right arm over the rail to lay alongside Ilya’s, to tangle their hands back together.

“Messages from my parents, from Marlow,” Shane said, unlocking the phone and beginning to scroll through the notifications. “Oh, there’s a lot from Svetlana.”

“Call her,” Ilya said, immediately.

“Yeah,” Shane nodded, already pulling up her contact.

He hit call. Put the phone on speaker. It was only two rings before she picked up.

“Ilyusha!”

Svetlana’s voice was urgent. A terrible blend of panic and relief that Shane was all too familiar with. He could see the weight of it break across Ilya’s face. Ilya closed his eyes and swallowed, and Shane gave his hand a gentle shake.

“Sveta,” Ilya whispered, “Sveta, ya v poryadke.”

As Ilya and Svetlana spoke, gentle, urgent Russian filling the room around him, Shane scrolled through the rest of the messages on Ilya’s phone. He looked through the texts from both of his parents, from Marlow, and then through the messages from seemingly all of Ilya’s other old teammates in Boston. There were messages from Scott Hunter, from Ryan Price. From other players across the league that Shane hadn’t realised Ilya was in contact with, and some he knew that he wasn’t, but that had found a way to reach out all the same. Some were texts, some were over Facebook or Instagram. There were a slew of unread emails sitting in his inbox. Shane looked at Ilya’s home-screen and shuddered at the sheer amount of notifications that Ilya had over multiple social media platforms. Shane’s head swum just looking at the numbers, red and glaring, on the corners of seemingly all of Ilya’s apps.

Shane was so caught up in the sea of affection Ilya had been swarmed with, with how many people in the world were worried so deeply and earnestly about Ilya Rozanov, that he didn’t notice when the call disconnected.

“Shane.”

Shane looked up to see Ilya smiling at him fondly. It was only then that he realised Svetlana’s voice was no longer echoing through the room. He ducked his head.

“Sorry,” he said, gesturing with the phone. “You just— I think it’s going to take a few days to get through all of this.”

“Don’t need to get through all of it,” Ilya said, shrugging. “Just the important ones.”

His eyes were rimmed red, his voice still a little shaky after his call. But as he held Shane's hand he seemed to come back to himself. Shane bit the inside of his cheek as he looked down at Ilya's phone.

“Only the important ones,” Shane smiled. “So, we should call Scott Hunter next.” Ilya’s eyebrows twitched, raised. He smiled back, gleeful.

“Don’t you dare,” he said, reaching to grab the phone.

“Nope,” Shane laughed, and pulled it as far from Ilya as he could without disconnecting the charger. “No screens,” he said grinning.

“I hate you,” Ilya grumbled, but the wide smile still painted across his face betrayed him.

“We should message your team, though,” Shane said, remembering, suddenly, how tired Wyatt Hayes had sounded over the phone. Remembering that Troy Barrett had held Ilya’s head together with his bare hands. “They’ll want to hear that you’re awake. That you’re okay.”

Ilya leaned back into the pillows, turned his head to gaze softly at Shane. “Okay.”

Shane pulled up the Ottawa Centaurs group chat. There had been a flurry of messages over the last twelve hours. Check-ins about the four team members in hospital, reassurances, logistics of hotels and transport and the cancelled game. Relief, at being alive after everything. Shane swallowed.

“What...” he asked. “What do you want to say?”

Ilya sat, quiet, for a moment. “Can you…”

“Can I what?”

Shane watched as whatever Ilya had been going to say passed behind his eyes. He could see the moment that Ilya let the words fall, disappear from where they had been sitting on his tongue.

“No, nevermind,” he said, instead. “It doesn’t matter…”

After everything, Shane wasn’t going to let him get away with it. “Can I what, Ilya?”

Shane held Ilya’s gaze, face as open and honest as he could make it. He squeezed Ilya’s hand, and he felt Ilya squeeze back. “Tell me,” he said.

“I would,” Ilya said, eyes wide and nervous as they looked at Shane. His next words came out slowly, carefully. “I would like to say ‘of course I am okay, my boyfriend is here.’”

The words hit Shane gently. And where Shane had thought there would be panic sitting in his chest, there was only relief, tenderness, hope. Shane nodded. Smiled. Jostled Ilya’s hand. “Then that’s what we’ll say.”

Ilya’s gaze never left Shane as he typed out the message. It was short. Direct. Shane was sure it sounded nothing like Ilya, but he was also sure that no one on the team would care.

Hi everyone. I am awake and okay. I’m not sure when they’re releasing me yet. My boyfriend is here with me. I hope you are all alright. Tell Barrett thank you for keeping my head in one piece.

Shane didn’t read the last part of the message out to Ilya. He didn’t think Ilya would mind. It was really from Shane anyway.

Ilya smiled at him. Shane breathed. He sent the message.

A flurry of replies started rushing in almost immediately, lighting up Ilya’s severely cracked screen.

The first through were the expected ‘glad you’re okay’s and ‘happy you’re awake’s. And then the focus shifted. Shane saw a few ‘I knew you didn’t move to Ottawa for the hockey’s and other gentle chirps beginning to pepper in. Nothing angry. Nothing cruel. A knot that had sat at the base of Shane’s spine for the last twelve hours — for the last twelve years — finally, blessedly, released.

A shower of hearts from Barrett fluttered up the screen, one of those over-the-top animations Shane hated, and also, not-so-coincidentally, didn’t know how to use. But as Shane watched the dancing hearts he realised it was with a lot less resentment than he would have had twenty-four-hours ago. A: Goddamn Roz. You dating the road runner or something? How’d your Ottawa boy get down here so fast? came through from Boodram. Shane chuckled.

“What?” Ilya asked, tilting his head to try and get a glimpse of the screen. Shane angled it away with a tut. “What are they saying? Hollander?”

There was a bit more noise, some good natured chirps. Shane saw a couple of messages come through that betrayed a clear shock at the revelation. Not many, though. And not cruelly. Nothing like Shane had feared.

And, sneaking in amongst the chaos, was a message from Wyatt Hayes: Good to hear you’re awake Roz. And glad your boyfriend made it to you safely.

Shane smiled, and a moment later felt a buzz in his pocket. He put down Ilya’s phone on the table beside him and pulled out his own. He couldn’t help the snort that left him when he saw who the message was from. He opened his texts with Hayes.

There was one new message sitting at the bottom of the screen: Holy shit.

Shane leaned back in his chair, held Ilya’s hand a little tighter, and laughed.

“What? Hollander, what?”

Shane shook his head and just kept laughing.

It was all going to be okay.

They were going to be okay. 

Chapter End Notes

Whelp, we’ve made it to the end of what is now officially the longest fic I’ve ever written!
I love these boys so much. I also definitely gave myself a toothache writing this last chapter 😂