Rating:

General Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander & Shane Hollanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander

Additional Tags:

Featuring Yuna Hollander and relational risk-taking, Yuna is doing her best, Ilya so badly needs a mother and Yuna would like to apply for the position please, 5+1, Canon Divergence, But it's a small and slow canon divergence, Yuna POV, Some angst but consistent with the show / consistent with the taking of relational risks, Yes this is two 5+1s smooshed together because I wanted to, David POV, The real slow burn here is Yuna/boundaries and Ilya/emotional vulnerability with parental figures

Language:

English

Series:

Part 4 of It starts in an elevator

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-21 Completed: 2026-02-01 Words: 29,613 Chapters: 13/13

come home by inches

Summary

An unexpected encounter with Ilya Rozanov - and a newly changed perspective of him - leads Yuna into a series of conversations with both halves of the rivalry - and slowly into both an unexpected friendship and a new understanding of what the 'rivalry' entails.
Or: (5 times Yuna reached out to Ilya, +1 time he reached out to her first; 5 times Yuna tried to get Shane to talk to her, +1 time she didn't need to.)

• Translation into Русский available: Долгая дорога домой by masturblaine

Chapter 1: Ice pack

Chapter Notes

Hi all! I'm so excited to be posting the next work in this series. Thanks to all the amazing commenters who convinced me to keep going.

The in-story timeline of this work is running over more than a year, with some chapters happening simultaneously and some quite spaced out. I'll flag up timings as I go - this chapter picks up the morning after 'the best person to be stuck in an elevator with' - (if you've not read that - this story will be confusing).

I originally intended to have this be two 5+1 fics which coincide at the end... but I couldn't make the structure and timeline work like I wanted, which is why Shane only gets 4 initial scenes. Sorry Shane! (Edit: while finishing this up I did manage to modify the structure to give Shane his 5th scene!)
It's all done apart from the epilogue - I'll be posting daily chapters to give me a chance to edit and code in between.

I'm using a workskin for this one - hopefully my coding holds up but if it doesn't, please tell me! If I need to I'll strip it back to normal text.

Yuna has a smile on her face and a light in her heart as she walks into the hotel bar to see David waiting for her with a newspaper and a coffee.

“Did you already pay for that?” she asks, and he smiles at her as he draws out a seat.

“I did,” he says, and she sighs faintly in disappointment. “I have faith in you, but I was thirsty. Besides, I can’t imagine that a coffee stacks up to much compared to whatever you managed to bully them out of.”

“I don’t bully people,” Yuna contradicts him. She doesn’t. She just has extremely clear expectations of how things should be, communicates this firmly and politely, and doesn’t stop communicating firmly and politely until other people decide to live up to her expectations in self-defence.

“Sorry, honey. I mean, negotiated them out of.” Yuna smiles, both at his teasing and at his correction, and kisses him on the cheek. “Feeling better?”

Because it’s David who’s asking, Yuna deliberates before answering. Being stuck in the elevator had left her… shaken. Not about her ultimate safety, which after the initial moment of panic wasn’t ever really in doubt, but because it was so fundamentally outside of her control. As Roz – as Ilya had pointed out, with a perceptiveness that still left her baffled. Negotiating the compensation for herself might have been less financially effective than calling a lawyer, but it had definitely been more emotionally effective. “Yes, I do.”

“Good,” David says. He covers her hand with his, and she links their fingers together. “How much did you take them for?”

“Cash settlement of $800 and a written apology,” Yuna says with satisfaction. “The initial powercut wasn’t the hotel’s fault, but as soon as I suggested that my lawyer might ask for elevator maintenance records they rolled right over.”

“That’s my girl,” David grins at her. “And did you negotiate the same for Rozanov, or did old grudges get the better of you?”

“Pretty much the same,” Yuna says, and pensively shrugs off David’s teasing look of surprise. “I just… There’s something about him. I think we might have misjudged that boy.” All of us, maybe. “I left him a note about it. But I wanted to at least… try to get him something.” David gives her a ‘waiting’ look, and she realises that she’s chewing on her lip. “I got the feeling that maybe he’d just have – let it go? Just shrugged it off. No injuries, didn’t miss a game or a flight. No biggie.” She let out a sigh. “It just didn’t seem right.”

“Well, honey, if you of all people are willing to bury the hockey stick, he must be something special,” David says, and squeezes her hand.

“Maybe I’m just being an overbearing mother hen,” Yuna says ruefully. “Or maybe I read him totally wrong, and he’ll sue the hotel and make what I got for him look like chump change. I’ll probably never know either way.”

“Unless the hotel chain goes under from the weight of the lawsuit,” David suggests teasingly and she smiles and lets it go as he keeps speaking. “Anyway. I texted Shane like you asked and he’s still up for brunch. I know you’d get it for free here but I don’t know what he’ll think about the menu…”

In fact, she hadn’t been entirely forthcoming with David. She’d left more than just a note.

But she had been sincere when she doubted she’d hear from Ilya about it either way. Honestly, it’s probably better that way – she’d started second guessing herself the moment the bag was handed off to the receptionist.

 So she’s surprised after brunch with Shane to find a text message waiting from an unknown number.

The sheer effrontery of it makes her gape, then laugh, and then without thought type back.

There’s a lengthy pause, and Yuna regrets for a moment using a word that Ilya might not know. Her thumbs hover over the keyboard as she tries to compose any kind of clarification that doesn’t sound painfully condescending.

Yuna types it out and hits send before she can stop herself, and then bites her lip.

The phrasing is a little odd, but before she can parse it David looks over from his crossword. “Working again already?”

His tone is teasing, but Yuna recognises the subtle nudge for what it is. They’ve had too many frank conversations over the years about her workaholic tendencies for her to miss his concern, however lightly expressed. “It’s actually Ilya,” she admits. Then, in response to David’s encouraging eyebrows, “He texted me a critique of the bottle of vodka I had comped for him.”

David’s eyebrows lift higher, but then whatever he reads in her expression has him breathing out a near-silent laugh. “And you are… reluctantly charmed,” he concludes.

Yuna shakes her head ruefully. “I don’t know whether I want to smack him over the back of the head or ruffle his hair,” she admits.

“Wouldn’t that take Shane by surprise,” David says mildly, and Yuna laughs at the twinkle in his eye. “But how come I get theoretically comped coffee and Ilya gets comped vodka?”

“Get stuck in an elevator with me and I’ll get you whatever spirits you want after,” Yuna shoots back, and returns to her phone.

She can see the dots of Ilya’s typing turn on, turn off. She imagines, for a moment, him wondering if she is still there, still interested in talking with him. Even as she tells herself he’s probably just being polite or bored, she can't help but respond to that imagined concern.

Yuna rolls her eyes at the sheer rudeness of it, but before she can respond there’s one more text.

Yuna lets the phone conversation drop, and thinks about other things.

(A few days later, when a bottle of high-end Russian vodka arrives addressed to David Hollander, it is David’s turn to be reluctantly charmed).

Chapter End Notes

Tomorrow's chapter will be the missing scene where Yuna and David have brunch with Shane! In the meantime, I genuinely am thrilled by comments and kudos.

Chapter 2: Brunch

Chapter Notes

Time-wise, this chapter happens in the same time frame as chapter 1!

Lots of people commenting on Ilya being a little shit in the texting with Yuna! 😂 I definitely see Ilya as finding it both fun and deeply validating to be told off for being annoying. Being cared for is profoundly unsettling, and being screamed at is unpleasant and needs to be endured, but having people tell you off for being a little shit is great! People are noticing you and engaging with you but no one's getting too close so it's perfectly safe! No need for any kind of self-examination about this, there's nothing to see here, officer!
Specifically when he sends Yuna terrible joke texts, it's Shane he's imagining telling him off about it, if he knew. He'll stop doing it and find other ways to annoy Yuna when he starts feeling more genuinely interested in a connection with her separately from his connection with Shane.

Circumstances had aligned in such a way that brunch with Shane had no obstacles.

The All Star game was over, so Shane wasn't distracted by planning; the right team had won, with Shane himself scoring two rather nice goals; Shane reported himself as fully recovered from his headache; none of them had flights until evening, which meant no worries about time pressure; and they managed to find a restaurant only a short walk from the hotel with menu options to suit his diet.

Best of all, Yuna thought ruefully, was the previously disregarded joy of not being shut in an elevator.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Shane asked her, and Yuna touched his hand for a moment, warmed by his concern.

"I really am. Not that it wasn't horrible - but it's over now, I've slept..."

"- she's ripped the hotel manager a new one -" David interpolates.

"That helped, definitely," Yuna admits. "Honestly... it could have been worse. I'm just glad I wasn't in there alone." Shane gives her a very strange look. "I don't mean it like that! Obviously I'm not glad that Ilya was stuck..."

David laughs softly, brushes his knuckles lightly over her arm. "I think he's staggered by your one-eighty on Ilya Rozanov," he points out teasingly. "Honestly, I am too. Having spent years trying to match your outrage, I might need more than one night before I'm able to reverse course into matching your calm."

"You didn't think he was an asshole?" Shane asks, looking at her like he's trying to solve some kind of word puzzle.

"Oh, no, he's definitely an asshole," Yuna says immediately, and then takes a moment to think about it. "But I guess it's that it wasn't just random. It was very... calculated for effect."

Shane's expression does something that Yuna would quite like to parse in more detail, but David distracts her away. "Honey, you do know that that makes it sound worse, right?"

She huffs a little. "What I mean is, I didn't get the sense that he is just an asshole all the way down."

"It's something he does. Something he... uses," Shane says quietly.

"Yes, exactly," Yuna says. She looks at Shane with keen interest; he often struggles to read people or to interpret nuance, so it's striking to her that on this occasion Shane is quicker to grasp her meaning than David is. "You've... seen that yourself?"

Shane's eyes are on his food, but he's toying with his fork more than he is using it. "His chirps are too targeted," he says. "Some players... it just spills out all the time, I guess, and so it just becomes white noise. But Rozanov is too good at getting under people's skin. He'll goad someone into throwing a punch and then score a goal with the power play when they're in the sin bin. And then he'll tell them exactly how they've fallen for it, and then he'll do it again."

Yuna starts to feel a familiar build-up of indignation at the idea of Rozanov goading Shane that way... but before she can pick up speed David says "You don't seem to let it get to you, though," and Shane snorts.

"Oh, it absolutely gets to me," he says. And it's... not a lie, probably, Shane is a terrible liar - he goes all tense and stilted. But Yuna doesn't think it's the truth, either, at least not in this moment. Shane is engaged but relaxed, as if he's watching back a particularly good game from a previous tournament and making mental notes on the play styles. Annoyed, maybe - but the kind of easy, focused annoyance that she's seen on his face as he watches clips in slow motion, trying to memorise the exact motion of the stick handling while the camera keeps on being blocked. "I just don't throw a punch."

"I'm still not seeing why he'd be good company in an elevator," David says. 

Yuna smiles at him; she knows he'd comfortably take her at her word about it, but he's doing what he always does - giving her a chance to talk through her thoughts until she understands them herself. It's awkward to say, and simple enough that it feels kind of foolish. So she hesitates a moment, chewing on it... but ultimately she's honest enough with herself - and with David - to not deny it. "For the full two hours... every time I started to get panicky, he would say something so annoying that I had to focus on that instead."

Shane's expression is... odd. A flash of recognition, perhaps? He ducks back down to his food before she can be sure, and David rubs her arm again to soothe away the memory of the anxiety.

"So... what? You like Rozanov now?" Shane asks. His voice is a little stilted, and Yuna can't help but smile.

"I don't hate him," she temporises. "...Well. Captain Rozanov can still take a long walk off a short pier. Ilya seems alright."

Shane seems oddly tense at that. "He's both, though," Shane argues. "Can you really like... Ilya... when he's also Captain of the Raiders?"

"Sworn enemy of the Metros?" David adds. He's teasing, plainly, but Shane doesn't take up the invitation to join in on poking at Yuna about her well-known partisanship. He looks, if anything, more tense.

"You think I'll be tarred and feathered next time I go to the Bell Centre?" Yuna asks, trying to lighten the mood.

"I've seen them burn him in effigy there," Shane says quietly.

"Honey, you don't need to worry for me," Yuna tells him, warmed by his concern even as she feels amused and regretful in equal measure that Shane's inherited her tendency to catastrophise. "I'm not going to start wearing a Rozanov jersey. Honestly I'll probably never speak to him again after this." 

"...yeah. Okay," Shane says finally.

"Anyway. He doesn't hate you, and didn't they once burn you in effigy in Boston?"

Shane gives her the strangest look. "Rozanov...  said that? He was saying things about me?"

Yuna thought of all the insults about Shane's hockey with irritated amusement, but decides on balance not to repeat them. "More about the rivalry. Saying it was..." Fun? Exhilarating? The only chance he had to meet someone at his level? But Ilya hadn't really said those things in those words, had he, and Yuna doesn't quite feel comfortable about sharing a private conversation in so much detail with the subject of it. Even if the subject is her son. "Saying that it forces you both to up your game," Yuna decides in the end. "Anyway, he said it was a rivalry, not an emnity."

Shane looks as if he didn't quite know what to make of that answer. He's not quite finished his food, and he seems abstracted as he turns the fork over and over in his hand. Yuna and David exchange glances.

"I kind of got the impression you felt the same way," David comments, and Shane's head comes up quickly. "I mean, you were kind of joking with him as you left. It certainly didn't look like you hate him."

Shane looks startled and somehow wary. "He can be funny, I guess. But still an asshole." 

Yuna smiles. "Honey, you act as if you're about to be jumped by reporters questioning your team loyalty! No one thinks that."

Shane manages, eventually, an answering smile.

"Shame, though," Yuna goes on idly. "If he wasn't with the Boston Raiders, maybe the two of you could be friends."

"Yeah. Maybe." Shane has never been particularly invested in friendships, and maybe that's explanation enough for why his smile weakens at the idea.

Chapter 3: Press

Chapter Notes

This chapter is set within a couple of weeks of the elevator incident, after the regular season has resumed.

Yuna’s first indication that something unusual was happening was her Instagram follower count.

She has two - @shanehollandermanagement, obviously, but then a personal account that she uses occasionally for friends and family. Notifications on @shanehollandermanagement are both frequent and routine and she tries to ignore them other than at scheduled times – but her personal account isn’t really advertised anywhere, and most people aren’t interested in photos of the hikes she and David go on, or the books from her book club. So when she gets a series of new follows, tags, and DM notifications, she realises something must be happening.

It's a message from a woman at her yoga class who she barely knows – ‘omg Yuna is this about you??’ – that leads her to the source. It’s a video clip.

Featuring Ilya Rozanov.

Yuna feels a disconcerting swoop of trepidation, thoughts starting to race. Is it about Shane? Some kind of swipe at him that they’ll need to craft a response to? Or if it’s about her… what has Ilya said? And for goodness sake, why?

She takes a breath, tells herself not to spiral yet, and presses play.

It’s a clip from an interview – or more accurately, from a post-game media scrum. Yuna lets it run through the couple of questions about a game she hadn’t watched. Rolls her eyes at Ilya’s arrogant answers, annoyed with herself when she realises she is actually starting to find him funny now. Absently wonders how he got a lip that looks split and a bit puffy.

He probably deserved it, Yuna tells herself resolutely, and then with the next question the reason why she’s watching this video becomes clear.

“Mr Rozanov! Is it true that at the NHL All Stars game you ended up stuck in an elevator for two hours with Shane Hollander’s mother?”

Ilya looks perhaps slightly startled by this question – something about the lift of his eyebrows – but it’s only a moment and she can’t be sure before he’s flashing that little smirk again. “Yes, is true. So sad for Toronto that I am not still stuck in elevator.”

“I’m sure some of us are dying to know - what did you and Yuna Hollander find to talk about for all that time?”

Ilya shrugs. Is he covering a hesitation with the movement? Yuna can’t tell. “Hockey talk. She told me she was big Metros fan, told me they would crush the Raiders. I told her Raiders would make Metros cry.” He looks straight to camera for a moment, all confident smirk and arrogance. “And we will.”

If he’s hoping for the interview to be cut with that as the final note, he’s out of luck; another reporter slides in as if she smells blood in the water.

“Mr Rozanov, did your famous rivalry come up in the conversation?”

Ilya’s expression is turning bored, almost sneering, as the questions continue. Punchable, Yuna might once have said once. “It was elevator. No ice, no skates, no rivalry.”

It’s not the most polished response, Yuna thinks absently. Probably an unsatisfactory one for the reporters. Doesn’t live up to the narrative about the rivalry, and doesn’t live up to the narrative around Ilya, either. She imagines the kind of responses the reporter might have hoped for – a comment about making Shane cry alongside the Metros? A boast about what rivalry, there’s no one who can rival me? Something easy to clip and make into a fun little soundbite, all with Ilya’s trademark smirk or perhaps a wink.

Yuna thinks off the ice and wonders whether Ilya had been thinking of that, too.

The first reporter slides back in, and this is clearly what he’s been manoeuvring towards all along. “Now, I don’t know who’s seen photos of Mrs Hollander,” he says slyly, “But she’s a great-looking woman for her age. With your reputation, Mr Rozanov – and with that rivalry – are we really to believe that all you spoke about for two hours was hockey talk?”

And that’s when Yuna understands.

One part of her freezes still while another part starts racing through a mental checklist. She had been in her management inbox just this this morning and her personal one after that – there hadn’t been any emails from reporters looking for a comment, though she supposes there might be now. Missed calls? Maybe on the landline – she hasn’t checked for messages. Not on her personal mobile – she’s looking at it right now, after all. Could she have missed a call from a reporter on her work phone? Maybe, but she wouldn’t have missed a voicemail…

Or, most likely, that son of a bitch decided to go straight to Ilya fucking Rozanov and see if they could get hockey’s favourite chirp machine to say something to fan the flames of their stupid fucking rivalry - throwing Yuna into the public eye to do it. And here she had foolishly allowed herself to believe that no one would care about her enough for a two hour interruption to her day to be newsworthy; had allowed this to get out ahead of her.

All of that passes through her mind within about the space of time it takes a third part of her brain to think oh, shit, and in about the space of time it takes for the reporters to get an answer.

In the clip, Ilya’s expression goes blank and then closed. It’s a convoluted sentence, and Yuna recalls that first press conference she saw of him alongside Shane – that blankness, before Shane took up the question in his place. But Ilya doesn’t look to anyone else or end the conversation. “Ah. I see you do not understand metaphor,” he says. His Russian accent is a little stronger than usual. “When people call me ‘motherfucker’ it is not, how would you say, literal.”

And Yuna’s racing thoughts come to a halt like they’ve run straight into a pillow.

The reporters laugh and finally the PR manager or someone must shut things down, because that’s when the clip ends.

After a moment, she presses replay.

It honestly hadn’t occurred to her that anyone would look at her next to a man no older than her own son and imagine chemistry. Ilya’s handsome, of course, and perhaps she should be flattered, but all she can feel is vague disgust at the idea.  

And insulted. And… angry, she realises as she sees again that tiny expression of surprise on Ilya’s face. It was clear to her, studying his face, that he also hadn’t seen it coming. Hadn’t realised that people might look at someone with a reputation as a womanizer and think he might see his rival’s mother as a valid target. That he might look at an upset woman stuck in a room with him as anything like a sexual prospect.

And then… guilt. Because though she’d not assumed Ilya would actually see her that way, she had thought for a moment he would make a cruel joke of it. But instead he’d handled it… well.

Better than Shane would have, that’s for sure.

Handled it well enough – she hopes – to have the reporters turning to fresher and bloodier prey. Oh, some carrion-eater will no doubt come knocking at her door – and Yuna makes a note to craft a suitably uninteresting comment confirming Ilya’s account without amplifying it – but it’s clear this isn’t going to be a story with legs, even with the rivalry aspect.

Thanks to Ilya.

With that thought in her mind, Yuna opens her text messages, scrolls down to find the conversation labelled ‘Ilya R.’

She doesn’t really expect any kind of response. Not soon, anyway; their last text conversation was clearly while Ilya was twiddling his thumbs in an airport lounge – it doesn’t mean much for how interested he’d be in texting with her on an average day.

David’s playing a round of golf, so she can’t decompress by talking to him or work off the nervous tension by thrashing him at cards, so instead she breaks her usual rules around office hours and tries to immerse herself in organising her inbox.

She’s not made very much progress by the time her phone vibrates again.

The three dots flicker on, flicker off, and Yuna wonders then if she’s overstepped. But – the back and forth banter had seemed so natural that she hadn’t even questioned using the word.

Ilya’s not the fastest texter, Yuna has learned, but there is still a noticeably long pause after that.

Another long pause; long enough that Yuna is putting her phone away when she hears one last chime.

Try as she might, Yuna can’t help a smile.

@hollander_yuna
Can confirm that I did indeed spend two hours stuck in an elevator with Ilya Rozanov. As those in my close circle know, hockey is my main topic of conversation so I suppose it’s a good thing that I wasn’t stuck with someone who doesn’t know the game at all! Still, I have to admit – if I had to be stuck in an elevator with a hockey player, I’d have preferred to be stuck with the Captain of a hockey team I actually support! #metrosfanforlife

Chapter 4: Chirp

Chapter Notes

I'm being relatively loose on timeline, but 'Chirp' takes place 1-2 months after 'Press'.

Yuna had always encouraged Shane to keep his cool on the ice. Play hard but clean; show up chirpers with his skating, not his fists; don’t get goaded into a fight. Shane has a reputation for control and precision – for being a skater who doesn’t need dirty play or a punch-up to win, or to be one of the most compelling skaters on the rink. Yuna’s proud of that reputation, proud of Shane’s restraint.

Well. Mostly.

She and David are sitting rinkside in the Bell Centre when she watches Dallas Kent slam Shane into the boards only a couple of metres away. Toronto’s an inconsistent team – sometimes brilliant, sometimes hopeless – but Kent is consistently aggressive and with a reputation for on-ice assholery that rivals Rozanov’s. She sees Kent’s mouth moving, but the rink is much too loud for her to pick out words. She assumes a chirp – one that Shane will shrug off like all the others, shrug off like the dirty hit – but when Shane shoves free she sees his face.

She’s seen Shane angry before, of course. He was a good kid, but even the most easy of children lose their temper. Not to mention that he plays a sport where people insult him for fun. She sees Shane angry every single game he plays against Ilya - glaring at him, face flushed, mouth and jaw tight.

This time, it’s different. Jaw set, yes, but Shane’s colour has leeched away and his mouth is hovering on the edge of a sneer. She tries to think if she’s seen that look on his face before, and fails. She can’t see his frame under the padding, can’t see if his shoulders are bunching or his knuckles are white on his stick, but there’s something somehow coiled about him and ready to snap.

It’s only a moment, really, when he seems to hover on the brink of a fight – just a moment, before a ref swoops in and sends Kent to the sin bin for a late hit, and Shane turns and belts away after the puck.

Yuna lets out a slow breath. “I wonder what Kent did to piss him off?” David murmurs to her, and all Yuna can do is shrug.

She asks Shane about it the next morning, of course. They’d stayed over in Montreal – a rare Sunday morning where they can indulge in their usual family tradition of cheerfully re-hashing the previous night’s game until David gets bored and switches to the crossword puzzle. It’s almost like old times; Yuna and David alternate in weaving around Shane in the kitchen as Shane makes a disgusting looking smoothie for himself alongside his overnight oats, and David makes a much nicer-looking smoothie for him and Yuna to share alongside the granola she’s brought with them (too much sugar for me, Mom).

“What was Kent saying to you, anyway?” Yuna asks. “You looked pretty pissed off.”

He looks pissed off again at the reminder, the same flat, dark look briefly passing over his face. No gloves this time; Yuna sees Shane’s fingers tighten on his spoon before he seems to notice and carefully places it down.

“Kent is an asshole,” he says. “That’s all.”

“Like Rozanov?” David asks, and Shane’s expression eases again at the comparison – closer to the look Yuna’s used to seeing when something irritates him on the ice, that ruffled-up annoyance mixed with determination. Shane even relaxes enough that he seems to be hovering at the edge of a smile.

“No. You’re right. Rozanov is an asshole; Kent is…” he glances over at Yuna, then at David, and shuts his mouth. “Worse,” he finishes half-heartedly.

“Honey, I’m not going to faint if you use a swear word,” Yuna teases him.

“She might, from shock, if there are any you can find that she’s not used in front of you first,” David jokes. Yuna swats lightly at his arm, but she doesn’t dispute it. David might curse if he hit his thumb with a hammer or broke a dish, but Yuna has been known to be… expressive… when watching hockey games.

Shane smiles at them both, easy again. “I know. But Mom, it’s fine. He was just running his mouth. Kent’s mostly focused on shock value, rather than actually knowing what will get under someone’s skin. I let it provoke me more than I should have.”

“Oh. Something bigoted?” David asks, matter-of-fact and sympathetic at the same time.

“If he was using slurs it should have been a game misconduct,” Yuna says automatically, and Shane’s smile turns… odd. A little tired, maybe, a little fond. Yuna’s not naïve; she thinks about how often she’s shouted is the ref blind while watching a game, and grimly suspects from that smile that if she knew in more detail what was being said on the ice she might start yelling is the ref deaf, too. “Is that what he was doing?”

David reaches over, gently rubs a knuckle over Yuna’s forearm. “Already composing an email to the board of governors?” he teases her, but there’s a warmth there, too.

 “Maybe,” she says. “Was it a slur, Shane?” Shane’s meeting her eyes with his without her having to seek them out; his eyes, like so many of his features, that he inherited so much from her. He was always the only Asian kid in all of his youth skating teams, the first Asian-Canadian man drafted to the NHL; her sweet, sensitive boy that she’d sent onto the ice and into the locker rooms, and so she says, “Because if he was being racist, you shouldn’t have to just take it. You can talk to me about that, we can make a plan…” The ideas start queuing themselves up neatly in her mind. Letters to the governors and to the commissioner; a conversation with club management to press for them to communicate expectations to referees; a social media campaign… maybe pressing for more mic’d up players during games?

“Mom, it’s fine,” Shane tells her, breaking into her mental checklist, awkward and affectionate. “I try not to let that sort of language get to me. I let the refs handle it and just focus on the hockey. That’s what you taught me, right?” Yuna looks at David, troubled; but Shane catches the look. “You don’t need to worry,” he tells her, uncomfortable and earnest at the same time. “I know Kent got under my skin yesterday, but nothing came of it. I know how important it is to stay professional. To play sharper and more skilful, rather than being brought down to their level.”

To be a role model, he doesn’t say, but Yuna hears it anyway, and feels so much pride in him and so much vicious rage at the NHL that it nearly chokes her for a moment. “I’m proud of you,” she manages after a moment. “So, so proud of you.”

There are other things she wants to say; like if people are being racist I wish you would tell me about it and let me help, or I have heard all the slurs before and I’m not going to faint if you repeat those to me, either, or I am so sorry that I strapped skates on your feet and sent you out onto the ice, or I’m not sorry, not for one second, from the first moment we sent you out onto the ice you came alive, you flew, I’m just sorry that we sent you onto this ice, not the ice in a parallel world somewhere where people don’t spit bigoted things at you for doing your job.

But… it’s a good day, still. Shane is smiling and he’s only awkward, not tense, and Yuna weighs up the options of going back to comfortably picking apart a hockey game or of trying to pin Shane in place while picking through his life for feelings he’s trying to smooth over. She weighs up her tendency to push, the chances of Shane turning wary, clamming up… and she makes a choice.

She gets up, circles the breakfast bar, and pulls Shane away from his smoothie to give him a hug. “So proud,” she repeats firmly. “But next time, you should let them see the most professional fight the NHL has ever seen.”

Shane actually laughs at that, and David chuckles, and Yuna relaxes and goes back to hockey talk.

Chapter End Notes

This chapter happens in the same time-frame as the next, and we'll see a little bit more about the incident and the fall-out of it there, too.

Chapter 5: Tooth

Chapter Notes

This chapter takes place in a time span that overlaps the previous chapter, with the middle scene and the coda directly relating to the events of Chirp.
Content Warning: Relatedly, this chapter (specifically the coda / final section) also contains a slur! This is not being used as a direct act of aggression, it's being used when discussing the events of Chirp, but if you want to avoid it anyway just stop reading where it turns into a text message exchange between 'Jane' and 'Lily' and scrolll all the way past that - I'll paraphrase the exchange in the end note.

The next time starts with a tooth.

Or, more accurately, it starts with Yuna worrying about a tooth.

Well, more accurately than that, even, it started with her texting Ilya about the interview, or it started with Yuna slipping a bottle of vodka and an instant ice-pack into a bag for Ilya alongside her business card, or it started with a poorly maintained elevator. But on all of those occasions there was some external reason for Yuna to reach out to Ilya – to repay a debt, or to thank him, or something. That’s not something she can say this time.

But, she’s watching the Boston-Detroit away game, and she sees Ilya – no, it’s Rozanov when he’s on the ice – chirp someone (naturally), goad them into dropping gloves (standard), and then take a punch to the face that has him reeling back and spitting blood onto the ice.

And it turns out that it’s much harder not to think of him as Ilya when he has a smear of blood on his cheek from where he roughly wiped his mouth off, even as he’s also grinning viciously and using the power play to score another goal. After his goal, he leaves for shift end, and the camera cuts away from the bench before Yuna can see if he ends up spitting a tooth out with his mouthguard.

“Huh,” murmurs David, watching next to her. “Shane was absolutely right about him doing that.”

“Jesus,” Yuna mutters. “I’m surprised he hasn’t had all his teeth knocked out by this point.”

David gives her an amused look, and she flaps her hand at him - the game, watch the game, not me. She redirects her attention too – it is a good game to watch, the Raiders pushing hard and forceful but Detroit are rising to it – scrappy but not falling apart under the pressure. Still, she takes David’s point – this is not how she’s reacted in the past to seeing Rozanov take a punch.

The thing is, though, she doesn’t actually watch Rozanov that much. Not in a mid-season game that’s not against Montreal or Ottawa. She always watches Shane’s games, and she’ll admit to watching those against Boston with a particular interest even before this, just because Shane always seems to play with extra brilliance on those days. She might catch the occasional goal compilation, and obviously she follows the playoffs. But a mid-season game, against a team she has no particular feelings about? She wouldn’t turn it off if it came on, but she wouldn’t necessarily turn to David and suggest they watch together.

…so, maybe it didn’t start with the worry about the tooth.

She sends the text during the intermission, and then puts her phone away.

It’s later, after the game, when she and David are finishing up the last tidy of the kitchen and starting to get ready for bed, that her phone buzzes again.

Yuna backspaces her half-written text.

Yuna has that desire to ruffle his hair again.

Yuna puts her phone on her nightstand to charge while she relays the conversation to David. “Do you think I’m being weird about Ilya?” she asks David afterwards, sliding into bed next to him.

He laughs and puts an arm around her, draws her close against him; she relaxes instinctively and leans in. “When the new neighbours moved in you went over and gave them a run-down of which was the good grocery store, and then you found out they hadn’t registered with a local family physician yet, so you told them off and gave them the number of ours.”

“Yes..?” Yuna replies, not sure where he's going with this.

David laughs again. “I think… given your track record you are being only slightly weird about Ilya.”

The next time, it’s about the Toronto Guardians. Now, normally in her rankings of teams whose asses she would like to see handed to them, the Boston Raiders are right at the top, with the Toronto Guardians coming second. But the Guardians had just played the Metros in Montreal the week before, and Dallas Kent and Troy Barrett had been their usual unpleasant selves. There was the standard collection of fouls, which Shane tends to let roll off his shoulders even if Yuna doesn’t, but one boarding incident in particular… Yuna had also been close enough to the ice to see the way Shane’s face changed at one of the chirps Kent had spat at him as they disengaged. Shane always keeps his cool on the ice – she’s rarely seen him lose it – but for a moment, before the ref sent Kent to the box, Yuna thought Shane was going to drop his gloves.

So, the next Toronto game she sits and watches with a notepad beside her. Then she runs some numbers, and concluded that the Boston Raiders absolutely thrashing Toronto wouldn’t materially hurt Montreal’s chances of making it to the playoffs.

And then she picks up her phone and texts Ilya.

It takes a number of messages.

Partway through she sees the dots which indicate that Ilya is typing, but she ignores them and keeps going, and the dots disappear again.

Afterwards, there’s a long pause.

Another long pause.

Another long pause. Yuna is past her instinctive fear that Ilya will somehow use what she’s said to find a weakness, and sink his teeth into it on the ice, but she can’t help wondering what he makes of being asked – indirectly – to avenge his rival.

Ilya sends, and then nothing more.

Three days later Yuna tunes in to watch the Boston-Toronto game. Ilya scores a hat trick, relentlessly goads Dallas Kent into throwing a punch, and leaves him with a broken nose. She surprises herself with how pleased she is about all three.

The next one is after the Boston Raiders and the Metros have both made it into the playoffs. Yuna sends a little congratulatory text about it  - that’s just good sportsmanship, surely - and tells him that Shane will beat him to the cup for a second year running. He responds with a ‘thanks’ and an irritating comment about Shane putting his back out by the end of the playoffs if he has to carry his team the whole way.

And after that it seems, well, only polite to text him occasionally about his games. She’s watching the playoff games anyway, if she can, and watching the highlights if she can’t. It’s only natural to mention it to him.

It’s never long conversations. But she’ll tell him if a goal was impressive, or if the goalie was clearly asleep on the job, or that the ref was fucking blind when he got high-sticked; she asks him about his ribs after he took a stray hit from a puck and tell him not to lie about it and get an X-ray; and on one occasion when she’s waiting for the first face off of Shane’s current game and texting with Ilya about his most recent highlights reel, he reveals that he’s in a sports bar watching the same game, so they spend the first period texting each other reactions until Ilya’s friends arrive and he signs off.

Yuna can’t resist a final dig, texting ‘Don’t have too much fun – don’t forget that it’s still the playoffs’.

‘Not everyone can be as boring as Hollander,’ Ilya shoots back.

She sends him a sympathetic message when the Boston Raiders goalie manages to break several finger bones and had to be pulled, beginning the team’s rapid slide out of the playoffs.

A long pause.

Yuna smiles at that. She’s come to like the idea of Shane not being alone at the top.

Chapter End Notes

Quick paraphrase of the text message exchange - after Yuna tells him about Dallas Kent having said something offensive, Ilya texts Shane and asks him what Kent said in the events of Chirp.
Ilya directly asked if Kent used the f-slur, Shane confirms that he did but also downplays it - "He says that to everyone." Ilya further presses, asking if Dallas said something about him, or something about Yuna; Shane deflects both questions.
At the close, Ilya states he plans to instigate a fight with Kent at the upcoming game, but says he's doing so for Yuna's sake and not for Shane.

As a side note! I recognise that for realism I should prbably have just had Ilya lose the tooth but I discovered that trying to write about tooth damage squicked me out too much.

Sorry to all the commenters who wanted to see Shane fight Kent personally! But hopefully this was still satisfying.

Chapter 6: Lily

Chapter Notes

From this point on the story is very closely woven in with the events of the show - I'll try to flag timelines for each chapter.

This chapter is chronologically a few months after Tooth!
Tooth takes place in Spring 2016. 'Lily' takes place in November 2016. It directly corresponds with the events of Episode 4, specifically being set after the 'tuna melt' scene, around the very awkard lunch Yuna, David, and Shane have where they argue about Rolex and Wimbledon.

The thing is, they truly aren’t trying to pry.

Yuna knows she can be overbearing. Sometimes she rolls with it, sometimes she tries to moderate it, but she’s at least aware of it (and on the rare occasions she’s not, she’s learned to accept David’s subtle ‘lower the volume’ gestures with grace and even gratitude).

It had been – genuinely – innocent on their part. Shane had wanted to get his goddaughters roller blades for their upcoming birthday; he’d been about to head out on a multiple back-to-back away games, and it had just made sense for Yuna and David to take accept the delivery, since they’d see him before their birthday anyway. Then, Yuna knows that Shane gets itchy about clutter, and it was really no trouble to drop the gift-wrapped boxes directly to the Pikes…

So, overbearing – Yuna will own it. But Shane had seemed genuinely grateful or at least relieved by the offer, and Jackie Pike had responded with the calm cheer of a woman for whom any day that her children hadn’t set the house on fire was a good day. “As long as Uncle Shane comes to their birthday party,” she’d said easily. “The boxes can go in the garage with all the other secrets until then.”

And when they got to Hayden and Jackie’s place, well, they’d made good time and the lunch reservation wasn’t for a while. Yuna likes Hayden, and David was delighted at the chance to coo over Arthur, so it had been an easy decision to stay for a few minutes and drink a coffee.

And it’s only natural that they’d talk about hockey.

Hayden looks exhausted. “More from Arthur than from the games,” he reassures them when Yuna asks.

“The games seemed like… a grind,” Yuna says, trying for tact.

“You can say shitshow,” Hayden said with a sigh.

“Hayden! Swear jar!”

“Sorry Jacks! But, I mean, yeah. With Shane… well, I mean, no one was playing well…”

“Hayden,” Yuna says drily, “You don’t need to try to cover for Shane. I watched the games.” She had; chewing her lip or sometimes pacing up and down in front of the TV with her fingers laced behind her head to keep her breathing deep, while David sat with her and offered her soothing reframes about why they might be watching Shane play possibly the most mediocre five game string in his NHL career.

Including a game against Boston, which they’d scraped a pathetic win in only because Rozanov (in his Raiders jersey, and on the ice against Montreal, it’s Rozanov) had played like he was hungover.

“Yeah,” Hayden sighs, seeming almost as disappointed about it as she did. “Ffff-funny Boston,” he adjusts on the fly as his twins bounce in to bother Jackie for cookies, and then out again. Then, under his breath but bitter, “Fucking Lily.”

“Lily?” Yuna asks, baffled.

And that’s when Hayden gets a particularly deer-in-the-headlights expression and says “Oh… you don’t know about Lily?”

She and David exchange a look over coffee cup (her) and baby (him) – a look Yuna has no trouble interpreting as ‘let it go, honey’. And – despite her immediate spike of worry and concern – she has every intention of listening to him.

Hayden, however, is apparently ready to undermine her good intentions. “I mean, of course you don’t know about Lily! I don’t know about Lily. There’s nothing to know, probably! It’s not important. And I don’t even know it was anything about Lily. Maybe something happened in Boston? Forget I said anything. I mean, I didn’t even really say anything…”

Jackie, a woman who spends all day with a baby and two toddlers while her husband is on the road and who therefore is primed to respond to emergencies, swings into action and shoves Hayden’s coffee cup into his hands. “Drink this,” she tells him firmly, then stands beside him, looking entirely ready to either step in and fend off Yuna or cover Hayden’s mouth to shut him up, as needed. “Sorry, he’s punchy from lack of sleep,” she said with a breezy smile. “Arthur isn’t staying down well at the moment…”

David steps into the breach with a warm question about the kids, and Yuna lets them carry on the conversation without her while she eyes Hayden. Hayden sips his coffee as if he’s planning to keep his mouth full for the entire rest of their visit, and studiously avoids her gaze.

Yuna – briefly – considers her options. Jackie’s clearly the stronger link of the two, so it would need to be divide-and-conquer, but if she can just get Hayden on his own for five more minutes…

But no. This is clearly private and she is not trying to pry.

They make their farewells soon – to Hayden’s poorly disguised relief. In the car, Yuna and David make eye contact briefly, before he starts the engine and started towards the restaurant.

“Lily,” Yuna muses.

“Let it go, honey.”

“I’m not going to push! But it’s, well, it’s interesting, isn’t it?”

And the thing is, she really has been trying not to push.

Yuna isn’t stupid or oblivious, and she has known her son for twenty-five years. David is also not stupid and oblivious, and has known Shane for the same length of time. It wasn't like in all that time, they’d never thought about the idea of Shane being gay. When he was a teenager she had meticulously, if awkwardly, added a section on 'we will love you and accept you no matter what,' to one of their Talks and had received a non-commital (and awkwardly muted) acknowledgement in response. Shortly after that, though, Shane had found his first girlfriend, and she and David had focused instead on what felt like the higher priority issues of respect and consent and birth control and STIs. And after the draft... well, she and David had made their peace with the idea of Shane's one true love being hockey. And she'd let the rest go.

She'd thought letting it go was the right decision. She had seen Shane's awkward, frozen responses in interviews or to schmoozing networkers or flirtatious overture slowly become rote and automatic. No, not something he was focusing on right now. He just wanted to prioritise hockey. Time enough for dating after the season… after the playoffs… or probably, in all honesty, after he retired. 

And she'd never wanted to just... ask outright. She’d thought about the pressure of the sport and the locker room chat and the on-ice chirps, and she’d thought that if Shane wasn't comfortable he might just - lie. She didn't want him to feel like he had to lie to her. 

And she’s never been certain, that’s the other thing. Shane has always been so passionate about hockey, it seemed reasonable that it would drive other passions to the fringes of his life. And he was an overthinker, like her… she didn’t want to make him insecure, make him question himself, if it truly was just that he hadn’t met the right person yet.

And now there was Lily.

Or, maybe, given what Hayden said – maybe now there wasn’t.

She’s winding it back and forth in her mind for the whole drive, but outside the restaurant she takes a breath and turns to David. “No prying. No pushing,” she says to him like a promise. He hugs her and says, “I believe in you,” so sincerely that it’s both a tease and a truth all at once, and then they go in.

Unfortunately for her resolve, it doesn’t exactly go great from there.

“Swedish princess?” David says to her drily while Shane is in the washroom.

“I don’t know,” she says on a sigh. His hand wrapping hers is a comfort. “He just – I’m not making this up, am I? He really is off.”

“He’s off,” David agrees. “But we can’t make him talk to us if he’s not ready.”

Shane comes back, and things go a little smoother for a while. They talk about David’s work, and some brands who Yuna has been sounding out, but they don’t talk about Rolex or Wimbledon. They talk about the Pikes, and the cute kids, and they don’t ask any questions about when Shane is planning on making them grandparents. They talk about the food and afterwards they David orders a coffee and Shane and Yuna have herbal tea and no one suggests a dessert that Shane will inevitably decline.

No one mentions the name Lily.

But the duration of a meal is a long time to not bring up hockey and inevitably they end up talking about the playoffs. Who’s looking good so far in each conference… and, inevitably, who is not.

“How are things feeling with the Metros so far this season?” Yuna asks.

“Fine. You know, it takes a while to settle into a new season, get the rust off.” Shane’s response is automatic, and Yuna recognises the smoothness of his expression and his voice as the one he wears when he’s talking to the media after a disappointing game.

“Sure,” says David, as if they don’t all know that Shane is ducking the question. “And a multi-day road trip can be a lot. Easy for teams to get into a bad headspace.”

“Sure. Yeah,” says Shane, and begins fidgeting with his napkin.

Yuna and David exchange a look. He shrugs minutely instead of squeezing her hand, so Yuna asks “And was there? A bad headspace?”

Shane’s own answering shrug turns jerky. “I don’t know, Mom. Everyone has off days. What are you asking?”

“It’s just – it wasn’t just you, the whole team was off, but normally even if the whole team is off you’re still on –”

“And I wasn’t,” Shane finishes flatly. “That’s what you’re trying to say.”

Yuna can feel this going wrong now, but she can see under the flatness that offness, and she hates it. Hates seeing that something is wrong but not knowing what or how to fix it.

She casts David a look, and – bless him – he steps in to join her. “Shane, son, we just know how seriously you take your hockey, so we want to hear about it if something’s going on…” he says.

“Because my off days affect others,” Shane says, voice jerky at the intervals now. “I know already, alright? I've heard it from Coach. I don’t need to hear it again. Because I’m the Captain, and because I’m the only Asian man on the ice, me having an off day is bigger than just me, so I need to get my head back in the game.”

“Honey, that is not what we’re saying!” Yuna says, stricken.

“It’s fine. I already know it. I’m – working on it. I’ll try harder. I’m not going to let anyone down.”

Yuna hurts for him. She reaches for him, touches his hand. “You could never let us down, Shane,” she says. “We are always going to be proud of you.”

Shane’s arm is tense under her hand, and the smile he puts on doesn’t quite fit right. “I know. Of course,” he says. “I’m just in… a weird mood, like I said. I’ll get my head back on right.” In the next moment, he slips his arm free from hers and stands. He’s clearly uncomfortable now, shifting from foot to foot and rubbing the hem of his jacket between his fingers. “It was so good to see you – really, so good – but I think I’m just not, not feeling great… I’m going to just head out. No, I’ve got the bill…”

Shane flags down the waiter before Yuna can say any of the things she is burning to, and there’s instead a series of standard phrases. Lunch was great – he’ll see them soon – they’ll talk about Wimbledon -

Yuna tells Shane she loves him, but it fits so neatly into the exchange of formulas that she can’t tell if it lands as anything other than a rote goodbye, and David are left looking at each other across their unfinished drinks.

David reaches for her hand again, and lets her sit in silence for a moment. Yuna lets it settle into her; her worry for him, her helplessness, her undirected anger at whatever – at whoever – has made Shane lock up so tightly that he isn’t free of it even on the ice.

Finally she’s able to speak. “That… could have gone better,” she says. She can hear the dejection in her own voice.

David gives her hand a little squeeze. “He’s a grown man,” he says. “We can’t solve this for him.”

“Whatever it even is,” Yuna says in frustration.

“Lily, do you think?” David asks.

“I just don’t know. Maybe,” is the best Yuna can do.

They leave the restaurant, they carry on with their afternoon plans, and it’s fine, really it is. But all the way through the day, and through the drive back to Ottawa, Yuna can’t help mentally echoing Hayden.

Fucking Lily.

Chapter End Notes

Profound thanks to those commenters who are kindly pointing out my mistakes about ice hockey - I am very ignorant about ice hockey and trying to teach myself about it, so when I mess up on that score I definitely want to know!!

Chapter 7: Worry

Chapter Notes

This chapter is also set within episode 4! Specifically, I intend it to be read as occuring right after Ilya's teammates first show him the instagram posts about Shane and Rose.
This is also my favourite chapter so far 😈 so I hope you enjoy it too.

Two days after the lunch with Shane, Yuna’s still not been able to let her worry go. But it’s fine; she’s managing it. She’s proud of herself, even, for not texting Shane (or better yet, Hayden) to ask searching questions about Lily.

So it’s fine, but she’s not been sleeping well. Which would normally be – well, fine - but the way she’d typically respond to a sleepless night is to get up and do some work (and it’s all Rolex emails at the moment, and her stomach twists) or get up and watch hockey clips (and she can’t stop worrying about Shane’s lack of interest on the ice).

It was, ironically enough, book club that pushed her over the edge. It’s meant to be something fun – something social, something to prove to David that she can have a good time even when she’s not doing an activity that involves winning. And sometimes it’s good, but today… Well. Ottawa played yesterday (losing miserably), and so hockey’s on everyone’s mind. Which normally would mean she’d enjoy book club more, not less - but not this time, not when conversation the turned to Shane.

“Is he going to come back to Ottawa?”

Probably not, the Centaurs suck. No, wait, edit that – “He’s happy in Montreal.”

“How’s his season going so far?”

Badly. No, wait – “It’s fine.”

“Must be a lot of pressure on him.”

Fuck. “He’s used to it by now.”

“I saw a sports commentator saying he was playing badly since Boston. Did something happen in Boston?”

Yuna responds to that one with a tight-lipped smile and finally manages to turn the bookclub conversation back to the actual book they are there to talk about. (She’s read it, of course; she suspects the woman who asked about Boston has only watched the movie).

But. Well.

Did something happen in Boston? Yuna’s been stewing over Lily, but Hayden even had said – well, babbled – that it might have nothing to do with Lily (whoever she was), that something might have happened in Boston.

Yuna thinks back to the chirp from Dallas Kent, back in the spring, that had made Shane look like he wanted to throw a punch; she thinks of videos she’s seen outside TD Garden of someone burning a figure wearing a mock up of a Metros jersey with the number 24…

Before she can think better of it, she’s pulling out her phone.

She finds herself second-guessing the messages almost as soon as she types them. She wonders if she should just delete them now and try to walk back the embarrassment she's already starting to feel. It's ridiculous, anyway - Shane and Ilya have both consistently denied that they're friends - she really has no rational reason to think that Ilya will know anything at all.

She doesn't delete the messages.

It's irrational, sure, but she remembers (can't forget) how perceptive Ilya can be. How carelessly kind. How he and Shane both seem to act like compasses pointing toward the other.

She remembers Dallas Kent’s broken nose.

She tries to get on with other things. She's too antsy to do any actual work - after she keeps on losing the thread of even the most routine emails, she gives up on trying to force herself to think in straight lines. David has already done most of the housework, but she can’t seem to sit still and so she starts sorting the kitchen drawers. She's managed not only to organise the kitchen bench into several zones of rubber bands and bag clips and other stray oddments, but even to convince herself she's not worrying, when her phone buzzes and she almost knocks over all her piles lunging for it.

The response strikes her as guarded, and the little knot of worry in her stomach that she's been trying and failing to ignore starts to clench tighter.

Yuna looks at the text she's just sent, and winces a bit as she remembers the conversation she'd had with Shane where she'd the same to him.

The way he'd locked up. The way he’d said, Everyone has off days. I'll try harder. The way he'd turned the subject and then hastily left before Yuna could try again.

She taps at her phone again.

Yuna watches as the three dots of Ilya typing come up on the screen, and then vanish. Come up on the screen, and then vanish. Come up on the screen and Yuna feels like she's nearly vibrating herself before the message finally arrives.

Her inbreath catches in her throat and tries to choke her before she forcibly expels it again. Forces her hands to relax from their instinctive clench around the phone.

This time the response from Ilya takes only a moment.

Before Yuna can question the impulse or stop herself, she hits the call button and listens to it ring and ring until it hits “Hi, this is Ilya. I will never listen to your voicemail,” and she hangs up. 

You're being overbearing, Yuna, stop it, she tells herself, and then she presses the call button again.

This time the phone rings three times, and then Ilya answers. "I can't talk about this with you."

They've never talked on the phone before this, but Yuna doesn't think the harshness in his voice is just about the unaccustomed form of contact. Still, she can’t seem to stop herself. "But you do know something. Don't you?" she says. She tries to keep her voice level, but she's probably failing when underneath keep bubbling up all the other things she wants to say, like Why do you know something when I don't? and Why does he let you see him? and Why are you better at this than me? 

"I said I can't talk about this with you!" Ilya shouts.

Yuna jerks the phone away from her ear on instinct at the sudden volume, then presses it back again at the equally sudden silence. It is only for that reason that she catches the sound of a choked off breath and Ilya’s muffled, “Blyat,” before the line goes dead.

Yuna feels frozen for a moment, and then she moves as if hypnotised, as if underwater, lowering the phone. Pressing the call button. Raising it back to her ear.

It rings. And rings. And Yuna replays Ilya’s voice, his words. Rough but even at first, but then that spike of – something.

“Hi, this is Ilya, I will never listen to your –”

Yuna lowers the phone. Looks at it. Types.

Presses call. Picks the phone up and presses it back to her ear.

The tone in Ilya’s voice had been something like anger, but also something like panic and something like pain. Drawn to the surface by her, because once again she hasn’t known how to stop pushing.

“Hi, this is Ilya, I will never listen –”

Yuna’s eyes are stinging. She wants to undo the last ten minutes. She wants to undo the last two weeks, to when she last saw Shane looking anything other than miserable. She wants to scream at Ilya, at Shane, until they tell her what happened and let her fix it.

She should stop. Obviously, she should stop now. The message was clear.

But.

But. It hadn’t been, “I don’t want to talk with you.” It had been “I can’t talk about this with you.”

Ilya could have blown her off after her first text. Could have lied, could have said he’d not noticed anything or said maybe it was food poisoning, could have said “Is Hollander, his hockey is so bad compared to mine, I don’t know how you notice.” Instead he had given her – perhaps – the only honesty he could.

His voice had sounded somehow raw.

She presses call again. Listens to the phone ring and feels her stomach twist as it rings again, and again, and then has to catch herself on a gasp of relief when the line connects.

“I am sorry for shouting at you,” Ilya says, before she can speak. His voice is quiet again, tight and controlled and without any liveliness to it. Then, muttered but somehow vehement, “I am an asshole. Sorry.”

“Ilya, honey, no!” Yuna says, appalled. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I was pushing, and I overstepped. I don’t – I know I don’t have a right to know everything. I just worry.”

There is a silence. Then, roughly, “Hollander is lucky. Lucky that you worry. But, I can’t talk to you about this.”

“l won’t ask you to talk to me about Shane again,” Yuna says immediately, then hesitates, wondering if she is about to grievously overstep in a whole new direction. But - Hollander is lucky that you worry - “Ilya, honey… are you alright?”

“…What?” Ilya says. His voice is so surprised and baffled, and Yuna remembers his face from months ago as she gave him Tylenol and Gatorade. She thinks about wanting to stroke his hair and buy him ice packs and check in with him about his dentist appointment.

“It just… sounds like you might be… dealing with something,” Yuna says. Her free hand weaves itself into the little heap of rubber bands one the kitchen counter. “Did something happen to upset you?”

There is the sound of a breath, louder and more ragged than she might expect. “Nothing is wrong for me. Nothing fucking happened.”

Yuna wonders what Ilya must have been like as a boy, as a teenager. She can imagine him, quick with his mouth and with his fists – so different from her Shane, quiet and rule-following and laser-intent on hockey. Ilya is tall now, and broad, but perhaps he had a lanky phase; perhaps there was a time before his size and strength filled out enough to stop the fights before they started. Perhaps there was a time when he stood before his mother saying sullenly “Nothing happened,” as if the bruise on his face (in his voice) wasn’t plain to see.

Then Yuna wonders if his mother was already gone by then.

“Even if it is nothing… you can talk to me. If you want to.”

“I can’t,” Iya says, flat and immediate.

I can’t talk about this with you. Yuna finishes the sentence in her mind, and closes her eyes for a moment against the little punch of it. Then forces herself to breathe, to let it go. Cross one item off the list, move on to the next. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. So, not me. But can you talk to someone?” Ilya is damningly silent. “Friends? Teammates, your coach?” A little scoff that even over the phone manages to sound derisive. Yuna chews her lip, hesitates… but she can’t not try, not when the ‘nothing’ that happened must have happened to them both, and she says, very tentatively, “Can you talk to Shane?”

“Fuck. No,” Ilya says, instant and savage, like the words taste bad. “We are not friends, Yuna. We do not hang out. We do not talk.”

Yuna has so many things she wants to say to that, or maybe just one; just what the hell are you, then? but the question somehow feels too big to be just one question, too big to be asked.

 “It sometimes seems to me that you could be friends. That maybe you would like to be,” she says instead. She feels like she’s standing on a wire above a minefield, like she has to choose each word with care... but in the middle of the minefield are Ilya and Shane, stranded alone, and she can’t bear to not try to reach them.

“Blyat!” Ilya’s voice rises into a snarl again, and there’s the sound of a harsh breath before he speaks again. “I do not need to talk! Nothing happened, nothing but stupid bullshit and this is waste of time.” Ilya’s voice is vicious underneath a layer of tight control, and Yuna’s stomach twists further.

“Ilya, I’m worried about you,” she tries again, but he cuts her off.

“I am not your son, Mrs Hollander,” Ilya Rozanov says, his voice harsh and cold. “I do not want your worry. Do not call me again.”

The call drops, and Yuna covers her face with her hands and leans forward onto the chaos she’s made of her kitchen counter, trying to stop her eyes from stinging as she thinks about how badly she’s managed to mess this up.

Chapter End Notes

Russian -
Blyat - Fuck

Chapter 8: Rose

Chapter Notes

Thank you all for enjoying my 'Ilya Has Feelings About Maternal Affection' chapter! I loved reading your comments about it.
I hope you enjoy my new chapter, 'Yuna Assembles Puzzle Pieces'.

For those tracking episode-by-episode chronology, this chapter takes place the evening following the Montreal/Boston game - so the evening after the night club scene.

After Yuna tells him that evening about the disastrous phone call with Ilya, David wraps an arm around her. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” he tells her quietly. “How are you doing?”

“I don’t know.” She scrubs her hands over her face. “Sad. Guilty. Worried. It does seem like something happened in Boston, but I don’t know what.” A bad fan interaction? Ilya managing to chirp something that finally broke through Shane’s calm, and regretting it later?

“Do you think maybe…” David says, and then leaves it hanging. He’s toying with a glass of vodka, looking at it rather than her. It’s probably the last of the treasured bottle that Ilya – Rozanov? – Ilya gave to him, she can’t help remembering, and wishes she didn’t.

She doesn’t need him to explain any further. The intensity of the rivalry, both men now smarting and silent, Shane’s missing love-life and their own private speculations about it…  she does think maybe. How could she not? 

“Lily, though,” Yuna reminds them both, prodding at the puzzle pieces that don't align like a tongue against a wobbly tooth. Plus… even if Shane is gay he’s still Shane. Still a rule follower, still conscious of appearances and professionalism - and still self-conscious generally. While she can certainly imagine him, ah, looking twice at Ilya, she just can’t imagine him feeling comfortable defying the media narrative – and the antagonism of their teams – and approaching Rozanov directly enough for them to end up having an argument about it.

David nods, accepting her doubt. “Plus, Rozanov is, well, Rozanov.”

“True,” says Yuna. She still doesn't follow tabloids but she does now to some extent follow Ilya. His reputation as a womanizer has been well-earned, it seems. And sure, she knows that someone deep in the closet might put up a front but... that would be quite a front. “I just don't know," Yuna says again, anxious and helpless and aching with it. "I don't know what to do about it."

“Give him time,” David suggests gently. “He’ll come around.”

David doesn’t specify which ‘him’ he means, and Yuna leans into his hold and doesn’t ask. “I won’t push,” she promises instead.

And she manages to successfully stick to this resolution for almost two weeks – even through the next Boston-Montreal game, which she expects to be a disaster. Expects it enough that despite her decision not to pry she still plans ahead for them to visit Shane again the day following, just in case.

At which point Shane manages to blindside her by announcing he has a girlfriend. 

She’d heard about Rose Landry already, of course. She has news alerts set up for Shane, and Shane had spoken about her easily after their initial meeting. So she’d known the basic facts - that Shane had been pleased to meet Rose, that he’d enjoyed her company. But, oddly enough, she’d brushed her way through the rapturous celeb news articles that followed, and the cooing Instagram posts about their grand romance, without it ever occurring to her there was any truth to them. Without it ever connecting with her that Shane and Rose were actually dating.

Which is strange, in hindsight, Yuna realises. But sitting at the dining table in Shane’s home, eating an incredibly healthy meal, she has to try not to gape when he awkwardly admits that they’re together; that they’ve been seeing each other as often as their clashing schedules allow; that he really likes her.

She and David meet each other’s eyes in shared surprise. David is substantially less online than her, of course. He’ll fully commit to feeling appropriately outraged or otherwise emotionally invested in what’s happening on social media, provided Yuna explains the context first – but he’s used to being the one being brought up to speed by her, not having to jump to a conclusion in real time. However, in this particular case Yuna’s failed to brief him – hadn’t realised there was anything meaningful to brief him on - and he’s even more on the back foot than she is.

“That’s – wow, that’s great to hear, son,” David offers. He manages to be not quite as awkward as Shane was, and Yuna mentally awards him points for catching his balance.

“I’d seen some posts on social media,” Yuna says. “But I hadn’t actually realised… But you two seem like you’re having a lovely time together! Are you?”

“Yeah. Yes. Rose is great,” Shane says, with conviction. Yuna and David exchange another look, and this time Shane catches. “What?” he asks, curious. Yuna hesitates, and he presses. “No, really, what is it?”

Yuna feels like she’s slept through her alarm somehow and is having to scramble through her mental checklists at triple speed, metaphorically forgetting to brush her teeth on her way out the door. “Oh… I suppose I was just thinking about the media narrative,” she says. She’s still picking her ways through it, trying to identify what concerns her, but that’s the first thread that lays itself out. “It’s a little embarrassing to admit… but when I saw everything online I didn’t realise there was any truth to it. Not that you’re not a good match for her!” she adds hastily. “I’m sure you are. I can imagine it’s a relief to be with someone who knows about the pressure of being in the limelight. And she sounds great. But… the media narrative is talking like you’re soulmates. I was just thinking, that’s a lot to live up to.” Shane’s tension has softened a bit, and his awkward smile has started to return. Encouraged, Yuna reaches over the table, touches his hand, smiles back. “I just don’t want you to feel pressured by the narrative, to push yourself into moving too fast.”

Shane looks somewhere between baffled and affronted. “Too fast? It’s – we’re dating. Normal dating.”

Yuna should probably just let this go right now, but it’s like the weeks of anxiety and tension have risen up and are taking over. “I mean… moving on too fast,” she says. Shane looks at her, tensely uncomprehending. Yuna takes a breath. “From... well. From Lily.”

The effect is instantaneous, like she’s thrown a bucket of ice water over him. Shane jerks his hand out from under hers and flinches back from the table. His face is flushed, his jaw set tight, and this might be the angriest Yuna has ever seen Shane at her since he was a fourteen year old raging that she wouldn’t let him play a hockey game on a partly-healed sprain.

“What did Rozanov tell you.” It’s too flat to be a question; words squeezed out through gritted teeth, as if he’s working to control every facial muscle at once.

It’s not the response she was expecting, not at all, and Yuna just stares at him for a moment as she tries to marshal her scattered thoughts. “…what?” she manages blankly.

“I know you text him, Mom,” Shane snaps. He’s so tense now that he’s rigid on the chair. "So what did he tell you?"

“I - not about Lily,” Yuna says. She gathers herself, makes her voice as steady and clear as she can. She doesn’t know what landmine she’s stepped onto, but she can at least offer that. “I have never once said that name to him or heard it back.”

“Then how,” Shane begins, and then silences himself. The anger is fading from his expression now, but a wary tension is staying; lips compressed tight and a flush lingering hot on his cheeks.

David shifts so he can run a hand down Yuna’s back. “Hayden mentioned it,” he explains, his voice calm. “When we dropped off the presents for the kids. He’d been up all night with Arthur and wasn’t filtering. We were talking about the Boston game that went badly, and he muttered something about Lily.” Shane's tension isn’t so much easing as transforming into mortification, now. “He didn't say anything else. We know you’re a private person, but your mother and I just assumed… that she might have been someone important to you. We just didn’t know how to bring it up when you'd not broached the subject.”

There’s a long, crackling silence, and then Shane rubs his hands over his face and up into his hair. It’s almost the same gesture as Yuna’s, but he hunches his shoulders, presses his elbows together, ducks his head into the dark space for a moment as he breathes.

“Honey, I’m so sorry,” Yuna says. She feels half-sick with it - the embarrassment of her mis-step, but also the guilt of having stung at Shane without meaning too, and underlying it all, still the worry that just won't subside. “I really shouldn’t have brought it up now, that was really pushy of me. I know that. It’s clearly private. I just – I want so much for things to work out well for you.”

Shane lets his hands fall. “Lily isn’t – isn’t anything,” he says, clearly trying for expressionless but instead managing to look tense and anxious and embarrassed and viciously miserable, all at once. “It was – casual, and it didn’t have a future, and it’s over now. Lily has nothing to do with Rose.”

Nothing happened, nothing but stupid bullshit and this is waste of time.

Yuna manages a nod, and discreetly reaches over to squeeze David’s hand. Hopes it will steady her as her thoughts reel. She wonders if he’s thinking the same thing she is.

It makes sense, in a weird way, is what she keeps sticking on. Ilya and Shane are... odd about each other. The hyperawareness of each other, their competitiveness that made them two apart... But it's like they're kept in constant orbit around each other. Obsession from a distance. If someone had come along and somehow found a way to tug on that elastic, electric link between them… Well. Maybe it would have been sublimated attraction and maybe it would have been just the thrill of the rivalry – but she can see how it would have pulled both of them in. Competing for Lily, competing against the other through Lily…

Being united through Lily, she thinks, and then deliberately sets that thought aside before it can leak into her words and inflame things even more.

“Rose is great,” Shane is repeating, and Yuna tries forcefully to stop her spinning in place and come back to the room. “I’m not – it’s just dating, and we’re not rushing into anything, but I really like her. I like that it feels… possible.”

Yuna’s heart breaks for Shane, and she bites her lip. There is nothing more she can say; she has already said far too much, or not enough, or somehow both altogether. So instead she summons up a smile, and hopes it doesn’t look as fake as Shane’s.

“I’m so glad you’ve met someone special,” she says.

At the end of the night she hugs Shane tightly and tells him that she loves him, that what she wants more than anything else is his happiness.

She tries not to rant in the car – full of rage at fucking Lily - when she and David talk through her wild theory. She tries not to cry that night as she grieves for Ilya and Shane, the balance between them that somehow kept them both stable so clearly shaken. She tries to be happy for Shane as she looks at the social media posts and celebrity gossip with a new eye.

Somehow, she isn’t surprised when Shane tells her they broke up within the week.

Chapter 9: Condolence

Chapter Notes

At first, it’s a series of times when she thinks about Ilya but doesn’t text him.

Shane spends Christmas with them – a brief break before diving back into the season. It’s a good day, but as they play cards and it comes down to a grim battle between her and Shane, while David laughs at him, she can’t help a stray thought about what Ilya’s Christmas is like.

She shoves the thought away and doesn’t touch her phone.

Yuna watches the All Star Game from their living room in Ottawa, and her heart soars and twists simultaneously. Shane and Ilya move on the ice like a right and left hand, like they’re one mind in two bodies, and when Ilya kisses Shane on the side of his helmet Yuna feels her eyes sting with relief. She wants to ask them what twisted them apart from each other, wants to ask what untwisted them again, wants to just send him a text to say how well he played… but she doesn’t.

Ilya told her not to call. He didn’t say not to text, but Yuna knows herself. She knows she can be pushy and overbearing, no matter how much she truly tries not to be. She just thinks too much and plans too much and she can see too many paths spreading out in front of the feet of everyone she meets, while it’s like they stumble around with blinders on. If she can give someone a nudge here and there, or push aside the obstacle they’re about to stumble into… it always felt more selfish to her not to do it than to do it. But here… Ilya has told her no, and told her firmly, and she knows better than to push past it.

After that, it's a series of little things that chip away at her resolve. It’s seeing on ESPN that Ilya didn’t go to Nashville; it’s Shane mentioning in passing a few days later that Ilya’s father died but he’ll be back by the next Boston-Montreal game; it’s hearing Shane sound genuinely sad as he says it. (Yuna ask how Shane knows before ESPN does; it wouldn't prove anything. She has long since known that men in locker rooms gossip even more than the women at her book club.)

Mostly, though, it’s remembering Ilya’s expression in the elevator when he mentioned his mother dying.

So. Yuna picks up the phone.

There’s no immediate reply – of course there isn’t. She doesn’t even know if Ilya’s in Boston or in Russia or what time it is there. But the lack of response niggles at her, and she sees a path spinning out where Ilya sees the text, frowns, blocks her… She bites her lip at the thought, and her thumbs are back on her phone before she can stop herself.

It’s not perfect, but it will have to do, and Yuna lowers the phone, rolls her shoulders and her neck, and then almost gives herself whiplash jerking back upright when the phone buzzes in her hands.

Yuna feels a little stab. She tries to tell herself that at least it’s clear – that at least she knows for sure that Ilya’s not interested in continuing the strange friendship that had somehow accreted between them. She’s mostly failing at that, when the phone buzzes again.

Something unclenches in Yuna, and she draws in a breath. Lets it out as she closes her eyes and pictures Ilya’s face. How it might be set hard over a flicker of something vulnerable. How if she saw it, she would want to reach up and cup his cheek. How she might think, in that moment, that he’s much too tall for a boy so young.

Then she opens her eyes and types.

There is a long pause, but this time Yuna sits and waits. She lets the phone sit gently in her open hands. As if she is sitting beside a hospital bed, holding the hand of someone sleeping, someone who can’t grip back but might still, somehow, sense that she is there.

Yuna thinks that might be it. She draws another breath, stands, and goes back to her day.

A while later there’s another buzz from her pocket.

 And Yuna smiles.

Chapter End Notes

Sorry to those who wanted more of an emphasis on All Stars! But Yuna is trying very hard to be respectful of boundaries.
As a consolation, you will get this chapter early and the next chapter (which is also short) will be coming out also early. Mostly that's because I've ended up jiggling around the chapter count a bit and adding an extra scene but I am desperately impatient for you all to get to read chapter 11.

Chapter 10: Routine

Chapter Notes

Chronologically, this chapter is within days of the last chapter, and takes place the evening before the Montreal-Boston game from episode 5!
Mostly I just wanted a small scene to demonstrate how restrained Yuna is being 😂
I know this doesn't move the plot forward and it's short, so please consider this a little extra! Tomorrow I will put up the next big chapter, and I am very excited.

Yuna checks her watch; she’s deliberately planned the call to Shane for the early evening. She knows her son. She knows that with a game the next day, he'll have the evening planned out ahead of him in orderly chunks, and will struggle to deviate from the plan just for a conversation.

(She’s learned from painful past experience that he would try anyway, for her, and would end up pulled in two by the warring obligations – locking up tight with her and ending the call early.)

To her pleasure, this time she gets a thumbs up emoji in response to her message, and when she calls Shane picks up right away. His “Hi, Mom,” is easy, and a little worried part of Yuna relaxes.

“Hi, honey,” she says fondly. “Have I caught you at an okay time?”

“Yes – I was just about to start cooking dinner. Hang on, I’ll put my earbuds in…” A moment of scuffling, and the sound quality changes.

“Oh good, I timed it right,” Yuna says. “I thought maybe we could talk while you cook? I don’t want to interrupt your evening.”

“Sure,” he says. “Are you going to do the same?”

Yuna can’t help smiling at the gentle teasing. It’s not that she can’t cook, and cook well; it’s just that her making anything beyond the most basic dishes tends to be a stressful experience for her and anyone forced to share a kitchen with her. David’s astonishing ability to do things like substitute new ingredients into a recipe without a blink, or even – most amazing of all – serve up a meal that was not quite perfect without any apparent catastrophising had led to him being head chef in the Hollander household since Shane’s early childhood. “Why would you wish that on me and your father?” she pokes back, and Shane lets out a little huff of a laugh.

They chat a little, idly, about what Shane’s cooking (salmon and rice, obviously); about how practise went today (well; the team seems to be working smoothly together); about his teammates and the latest antics of the Pike children. Yuna’s more interested in the comfortable tone of Shane’s voice than she is in the answers, anyway.

“Oh, your father’s home,” Yuna says with pleasure, as she hears the door open. “David! Come say hi to Shane!”

She puts the phone on speaker as David puts down his bag and joins her in the living room.

“How are you feeling about playing Boston tomorrow?” David asks after the greetings are over. Yuna smiles at him, delighted that he’s asked the burning question on her behalf, and David fondly shakes his head at her.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Shane says. There’s a hint of the eagerness coming through, none of the locking down or deflection that Yuna’s learned to half-expect when it comes to any mention of Boston – or, let’s be real here, any mention of Ilya. It’s enough to bring the media-perfect answer to life. “The Raiders have been playing well. It’s going to be a challenge.”

“I wish we could be there,” Yuna says. It’s a weeknight; while Yuna can work from anywhere she can bring a laptop to, David is expected in the office in the morning. David had suggested she could go alone; but to his deep but quiet amusement, after agonising over it Yuna had ultimately admitted that she didn’t trust not to interrogate either of the boys if she found herself alone with them.

“But how would you know who to cheer for?” David points out, so mildly and reasonably that Yuna clips her shoulder against him as they sit together on the sofa, in revenge for his teasing. From the phone speaker, Yuna can hear Shane’s little huff of laughter, too.

“As if I wouldn’t cheer for the Metros!” she says indignantly. “I’m not going to be caught cheering for the Raiders.”

David only makes a token effort at hiding his grin. “So that game Boston played against Toronto…?”

“Does not count, and you know it,” Yuna says, but she can’t help a little smile. Since things have felt more settled between her and Ilya again, it no longer hurts to think of their friendship.

“The Boston-Toronto game – the one where – where Rozanov broke Kent’s nose?” Shane asks over the phone. “I’ll give you a pass for cheering for that. I suppose.” His voice is sounding a little odd, abstracted, and much as Yuna yearns to know how much Shane’s worked out about that particular incident, she doesn’t want to distract Shane when he has a game to prepare for.

“No broken noses tomorrow, though,” Yuna says firmly. “And no cheering for the Raiders. Not that there’ll be anything to cheer for – you’re going to kick their butts up and down the Bell Centre.”

Shane laughs again. “Is that your official prediction?” he teases her.

“Damn right,” she says, injecting confidence into her voice. Partisanship aside, she thinks the Raiders have the tiniest edge over the Metros… but she’s not planning on voicing that. “Hey, this is the first time you’ve been on the ice with Ilya since the All Stars game, right?” David raises his eyebrows at her, and she winces a bit at how obvious that was. As if she and Shane can’t both recite each game Montreal and Boston have had since then.

“Yes?” There’s a touch of wariness in Shane’s voice, too, as he waits for the other shoe to drop.

“I’m just making conversation! I just wondering if it’s going to be odd, playing against him after playing on the same line.”

“You think I won’t be competitive?” Shane sounds affronted, and Yuna can’t help a laugh.

“No, no, I definitely don’t think that.” She has never once seen Shane step back from a competition, and all too many times has seen him step into them, bloody teeth and clenched fists and stubborn down to his bones. David seems to be following her thoughts, and gives her a fond smile. “Just wondering if it will feel… okay.”

It’s not the question she wants to ask, of course. But the questions she wants to ask – things like what’s going on between you, and have you talked, and what was with Lily, and are you two okay – have piled up behind her teeth and she doesn’t think she can ask one without all of them spilling out. And she won’t do that to Shane, not before a game.

“Skating with him or against him, it’s just good,” Shane answers. It’s more naked an answer than she expects, and it startles and warms her in equal measure. She thinks it’s more naked an answer than he expected to give, too; he quickly says that his food is nearly done, so he needs to go.

Yuna doesn’t argue; she and David wish him luck and then the call drops, leaving her facing her husband’s sardonic smile.

“I didn’t push!” she defends herself. “I’m just – glad he seems happier.”

He laughs. “Well done for not pulling out the thumbscrews,” he says, and draws her in for a kiss.

Chapter 11: Concussion Part 1

Chapter Summary

One time Ilya reaches out to Yuna first.

Chapter Notes

This chapter is the one I have most looked forward to sharing, so I hope you will enjoy it too!

Yuna had planned to text Ilya before the game – just a friendly greeting, and to say that she hoped he enjoyed watching Shane blow past his scoring record and leave him in the dust - but she’d lost track of time picking through a contract. By the time David called to her, the warmups would already have started and she realised she might as well save it for after the game – which had the added bonus of being able to say specifically sarcastic things to Ilya rather than just generic ones. Instead of texting, she idly chats with David about her predictions for the game and cleans up the kitchen as David finishes putting together pasta for them both and carries their bowls to the sofa.

She turns on the screen and he hands a bowl to her, then gently squeezes her leg.

“Even if you don’t want him to win, you’re allowed to enjoy watching him play,” David says to her seriously, and Yuna leans into him. She doesn’t need to ask who he means; his and Shane’s teasing from the evening before is clear in her memory. “I’m sorry we’re not there in person.”

“Honestly, the game I wish I had gone to was the All Stars,” she says regretfully, as they tune out the pre-game commentary and wait together for puck drop. David nods agreement, and puts an arm around her. There’s no need to go over it again – there had been excellent reasons not to go, with their holiday in Mexico on the horizon. Not to mention that Yuna hadn’t wanted to intrude on Ilya - or on Shane either, when he’d been neutral rather than enthused about the idea of having them there. But having seen the boys on the screen as they skated together… well. That regret is useless now.

And at least she’ll get to see them on playing today.

The game starts brilliantly, too. The face off, a moment of poised tension; Shane wins the puck and and then he’s flying down the ice with Rozanov between them, and Yuna’s heart lifts enough for a moment that for once she’s not even thinking about the game. Then, “Head up in the neutral zone,” David huffs next to her – for once beating her to the commentary – and she’s about to make some kind of quip about it – she doesn’t even know what –

Because then the hit comes.

Before the play is whistled dead Yuna’s already sliding out of her seat. David catches the half-full bowl before it can spill from her fingers and drops it onto the coffee table instead, but Yuna barely registers it. All her focus is on the screen, on the blue uniform stark against the white ice where Shane has crumpled, on David’s hand tightly gripping her shoulder.

“Get up, Shane,” she orders him in a fierce undertone. “Get up, get up…”

Her chant lapses into silence and instead she bites hard into her knuckles when the spinal board comes out. Shane’s still not moving – she can’t even see if his lips are moving, if his eyelids have flickered. Her ears feel like they’re ringing; she can hear very distantly a voice say “It’s unclear if he’s responsive or not,” and she realises the commentators are talking, a horrible echo of her thoughts. She looks for something, anything – a quick thumbs up or an OK sign from the medics to the coaches, the lift of a hand from Shane. She looks to Ilya, then – he doesn’t have to rely on cameras, he’s there, surely he can see. She searches for some change Ilya’s expression or the set of his body that would give her an inkling of what he’s thinking, some sign of dawning relief – but there’s nothing. Then the ref pushes Ilya away, and she can’t even rely on his vision to tell her anything about her son.

The camera follows Shane off the ice, but as he disappears down the tunnel Yuna can finally bring her focus onto David’s grip on her shoulder, David’s voice saying, “Yuna, take a breath, honey.” She does; David wouldn’t steer her wrong. “Good, another. Yuna, we need to plan.”

It steadies her, realigns her away from her panic. Her brain moves clunkily back into action again, and she narrates aloud, following the words with movement. “Phones. Wallets. Phone charger. A change of clothes each. Something to read if we’re stuck waiting.” An optimistic thought, she knows distantly – she won’t be reading, she’ll be pacing. David’s already moving; not waiting for her list, really, just knowing that she needs to make it and wanting to share in the load of checking it off for her. “We should load the dishes before we go,” she adds automatically, and David half laughs, but he retrieves the bowls and scrapes the uneaten pasta into the bin. While she’s digging out their phone chargers and throwing some clothes for each of them into a duffle bag she already knows he’ll be haphazardly loading the dishwasher, so that while they are waiting for news Yuna won’t be worrying about vermin or their plates mouldering in the sink.

They’ve already reconvened by the door when Yuna’s phone starts ringing. David’s the one holding it – having scooped it off the sofa for her – so he answers while she’s balanced on one foot pulling on a shoe.

“Yuna Hollander’s phone, David Hollander speaking,” and then almost immediately – a rare act of impatience – “Yes, we were watching. Any news?”

Shoe abandoned, Yuna reaches, takes the phone, hits the speaker button in time for them both to hear “- was still only partially responsive by the time the ambulance left –“

She can feel her body starting to panic again when David meets her eyes and mouths ‘Plan.’ The voice on the phone is continuing “- the medics were on scene immediately, he’s got the best care –“

Yuna closes her eyes for a moment. Plan, she needs to plan. Shoes, she tells herself, putting them on. Car keys, and David is picking them up from the dish by the door. Duffle, and she pulls it onto her shoulder. “- concussion suspected-“ the liaison continues. Phones, and David has slipped his own into his pocket while they both continue their silent choreography around the one she’s still clutching.

“-they’re taking him to Montreal General Hospital,” the voice continues, the knowledge she has needed all along, and then they’re out the door and headed for the car.

“You will keep us updated,” Yuna says. Her voice is very clear and firm, and it’s neither a question nor a request. “David will be driving, so this number is best. We’ll be at the hospital in a couple of hours.”

Once the car is moving, and she’s looked up the hospital’s address and set it into the GPS, there’s a horrible moment where there’s nothing left to do. Yuna curls over her knees and tries to breathe and ends up sobbing a little. David reaches for her, grips her hand firmly in the space between them. “Sorry,” she says, “Sorry, just let me pull myself together,” and he squeezes.

“Don’t be sorry. I’m the one being selfish, doing the driving and making you be the one who has to have the breakdown,” he says, and she gulps a laugh and then sobs again.

Shane’s been injured before, of course. A broken wrist, cracked ribs. Sprains and nasty bruises and whiplash. But he’s young and he’s healthy and he’s so fast and so precise. He doesn’t normally take big hits, because he can outrun them or dodge them or at least move to soften them.

He’s never had a serious concussion before.

“Lots of people get concussions,” David says, with conviction. “I had a couple myself, and I was fine.”

She leans on that calm for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut tight and trying to let it convince her. “Okay,” she says, “Okay, I’m going to start planning again.”

She calls the hospital. The ambulance will have arrived by now, but she can see the scene playing out in her mind; a busy Emergency Department, doctors still assessing, tests to run, records not assembled yet… much as she wants to reach through the phone line and shake information out of whoever’s nearest, she knows better. When they have nothing to tell her, she leaves her name and number and requests updates as soon as possible, and even manages to keep her voice level throughout.

She dials David’s office and holds the phone for him while he leaves a voicemail to say he'll be out tomorrow.

She texts Shane’s coach to say they’re on their way to Shane and will be staying with him as long as needed.

By that point it’s clear that they’ve already passed the first period because her phone notifications are full. She flicks through them rapidly, looking for updates, but it’s all the same. Hayden’s asking for news. Jackie’s expressing sympathy, offering them a bed if they don’t have a key to Shane’s place (they do, of course), asking them to let her know if they need meals. Their neighbour was watching the game and wants them to know that she’ll keep an eye on their place while they’re in Montreal (oh and do let him know that Shane’s alright.)

Ilya…

Yuna pauses on that one, her thoughts spinning out. She remembers that shot of Ilya on the ice, circling Shane until he was pushed back by a ref. She thinks about how glad she has been that Shane is not alone at the top, and thinks about how lonely it would be for him if he was. Thinks about the two of them in orbit around each other.

Then her phone rings with an update from the hospital and it’s as if the world winds back in again, focusing tight. He was briefly unconscious (they know, they saw). Now conscious but confused. Only partially oriented - knows he was playing against Boston but doesn’t remember the date. Not entirely sure if he’s in Montreal or Boston and can’t remember when he’s told. Keeps saying the same things over and over, like do they know he’s okay and he doesn’t want them to worry.

(David squeezes her hand tightly at that one, and Yuna draws a particularly deep breath).

They suspect concussion. (Well, obviously, Yuna thinks but doesn’t say). They believe he has a broken collarbone and want to check for other breaks too. They’ve ordered a head CT, they’ve ordered X-rays. He’s under continuous observation.

It’s standard, they’re told. Things are stable, they’re told.

It’s all soothing and calm and Yuna clenches her fists until her nails press into her palms, forcing herself to answer politely and not give in to the urge to swear at the member of staff just doing their job. No, no allergies. No routine medications. No pre-existing medical conditions.

She puts down the phone. Takes a breath.

 “Ninety minutes,” David says.

Yuna picks up her phone again and starts researching concussions.

Her phone keeps buzzing under her fingers until she turns off text alerts. Notifications keep on flicking up and she checks and swipes, checks and swipes as she continues to comb through webpages of symptoms and recovery advice. Nausea – fine, most of Shane’s usual diet is easy on the stomach anyway. Avoiding alcohol – fine, Shane doesn’t really drink. Light sensitivity – does Shane even own sunglasses? How does she not know if Shane owns sunglasses?

“Honey, you’re spiralling,” David tells her. “Pause the research until we know more, alright?”

So she pauses. Breathes. Goes back to her text messages.

Hayden again – she flicks past. Coach Theriault – a one word response to her earlier text. Shane’s agent – she heard, she’s thinking of them, she’ll wait for an update when Yuna gets to her. Friend in Ottawa – why does everyone in Ottawa watch hockey? Yuna thinks impatiently, and swipes past.  Ilya –

But the phone rings: the hospital again, and Yuna latches on to every word. Fractured clavicle, stable. No other breaks. CT scan clear. No skull fracture, no bleed (David squeezes Yuna’s hand again). Ongoing confusion and disorientation. Ongoing neuro checks. Overnight monitoring needed.

She’s assured once again that this is standard practise, usual precautions. Yuna swallows down her instinctive protest that Shane being anything but sharp and contained is absolutely not standard. She tries to press aside the image of him lying on the ice, unmoving.

She hangs up with them to find a missed call from the team liaison, so then there is yet another phone call. Directions to the right place to park, the right door to use, he’ll meet them there and walk them through, and a part of Yuna is grateful but another part of her wants to say buddy I will abandon this car in the street and walk through the nearest door and face down anyone who tries to stop me, do you think I even care?

By the time she’s off the phone her knee is bouncing. “Just a few more minutes,” David tells her – tells them both. She reprogrammes the GPS and presses her palm onto her knee to try to still it, watching out the window as if she can close the distance to the hospital faster through sheer effort of will, and nearly sobbing again with relief when she finally sees the signs.

The team liaison is waiting at the door, and is at least efficient. Yuna listens with half an ear to the information shared – being moved now to a private room for neuro monitoring, likely to be discharged in the morning; coaching already knows he’ll be out for the rest of the season, so Yuna and David don’t need to worry about updating them; the team have reached out to their usual orthopaedic surgeon for a consult –

“I thought the collarbone fracture was stable?” Yuna interrupts.

“Better to have the consult and the options and not need it,” the liaison says. “Sometimes surgery is the best way forward, and if it is, we wouldn’t want to delay. But there’s no need to worry about that tonight – we’ll set up the appointment for it and be in touch with Hollander.”

Yuna perversely frets at these responsibilities neatly extracted from her grip, and is relieved to be given a new one when the liaison hands her Shane’s locker contents, bundled into a Metros duffle bag much like the one still in the back of the car. As she takes it, she can just feel the buzz that must be from someone calling Shane’s phone, but before she can check it they’re finally at the room.

They walk into a furry of activity as Shane is moved in. Yuna absently but with relief dismisses the liaison when he politely suggests that maybe there’s no further role for him, too focused on watching the transfer like a hawk while holding David’s hand. For all her good intentions – give them space, Yuna, they’re professionals – she can’t help but start forward when Shane lets out a choked, anguished noise when settled on the bed.

“Can you not give him something for the pain?” she says, caught between pleading and demanding.

“Mom?” Shane says. “When did you get here? Are you okay?” His voice sounds doubtful, as if he knows he’s missing something important about the situation but isn’t sure quite what, and he squints at her as if her movement through the gaggle of nurses and doctors and orderlies is hard for him to track - but he’s talking and looking at her and knows her and it feels like Yuna can take a full breath for the first time in over two hours.

Since there’s finally space next to Shane’s bed, she keeps stepping forward, taking the hand that isn’t in a sling and squeezing it. “Right now, we are making sure that you are okay,” she says, and gives the doctor a firm look.

One neuro exam later, Shane has been given slightly more medication. “Don’t I get the good shit?” he asks, and is told (with more of a smile than Yuna got) probably not until morning. Yuna and David pull chairs up to either side of the bed, and are at last able to sit beside him and finally, finally process that he’s going to be okay.

Initially Shane is confused about them being there – when did they get there? Have they been there all along? Was he playing in Ottawa? – and Yuna has to breathe deliberately slowly to settle a jump of anxiety. After a few minutes, though, Shane seems to accept their presence as a given and agrees without argument when they remind him he’s in Montreal.

“I don’t remember what happened,” Shane complains. “Is the game still going? Did we beat Boston?”

God help her, Yuna hasn’t even checked the scores.

“Has he called? He’s going to be so worried.”

“Has who called, son?” David asks, as Yuna remembers the ringing of Shane’s phone and belatedly starts unpacking the duffle. A rucksack, still zipped and (knowing Shane) meticulously organised, bundled in with a jacket, a charger cable, headphones, and finally Yuna manages to fish out his phone.

“You have a lot of texts and notifications,” Yuna tells him. “The doctor said no screens right now, but if you want I can go through them for you –” The phone vibrates once in her hands, and she automatically goes to open the incoming text only to hit the lockscreen. “If you want to tell me your code…”

“It’s –“ Shane stops, bites his lip. “It’s – I don’t tell people my code. But, has he called?”

“Who, honey?” Yuna tries. “Hayden?”

Shane looks confused by the question, and it breaks her heart a little. “I just want him to know I’m not hurt. He must be really worried.”

“Your coach knows you’re okay, he’ll tell the team,” David reassures him. “And your Mom can text Hayden.”

“That’s – that’s good,” Shane says, as if he’s not entirely sure if that’s the correct response to give. “It’s good that people know I’m okay. But has anyone told him?”

A nurse comes in for another neuro check. “All looking fine,” she tells them with a smile. “You should try to get some sleep, Mr Hollander.”

“I don’t – I don’t want to sleep,” Shane insists. “I need to check that he’s okay.”

Yuna raises her eyebrows at the nurse, who smiles and shrugs. “Confusion is normal, getting stuck on an idea like this is normal,” she says quietly. “He probably won’t even remember this in the morning.”

She slips away again, and Yuna looks at her son. Even in the dimly lit room she can see his eyes glistening and she doesn’t care if he won’t remember this. She wants to fix it.

She’ll start with Hayden, she thinks; at least she can text him, and then can tell Shane firmly that he and the team know. But then the phone in her hand, Shane’s phone, buzzes again. A call, this time, and the screen lights up with a name.

Lily.

She hisses out a breath at the sight. She’s never spoken with Shane about Lily, not since that one time where he said Lily wasn’t anything, telling her he wanted something possible, all the while looking like he’d lost something he thought he’d never get back. She thinks about the balance she and Ilya seem to have regained, the balance that had been thrown so precariously off somehow. She thinks – viciously, venomously - fucking Lily, and then looks at her son, confused and distressed and looking so hopefully at the buzzing phone.

“Is that him?”

The phone goes quiet in her hand, and moments later another unopenable text appears.

“No, honey. That was –” She’s saved from groping for a lie by the ring of her own phone from her pocket. Shane flinches from the noise and Yuna swears. “Shit. Sorry, Shane – sorry –“ She tosses Shane’s phone onto the bed, digs out her own and instinctively silences it; registering only a moment later the name on the screen.

Ilya R.

Moments later a text message appears instead.

“Is that him?” Shane asks again, hopefully, and Yuna goes still, sudden uncertainty hovering on the edge of tipping over into knowledge.

It’s only seconds before Shane’s phone rings again.

Lily.

Yuna feels as if she’s been plunged deep underwater. Her thoughts, normally racing out ahead of her, abruptly slowed, like a ponderously rising bubble.

It’s as if she’s watching herself from a distance as she reaches out, picks up Shane’s phone, and accepts the call. “Ilya,” she says into it.

There’s a harsh intake of breath from the other side, and Yuna’s head comes out from underwater. She can see it now – the sudden stiffness in Ilya’s face as he checks whose number he’s called; the tension between secrecy and Shane’s plaintive he must be really worried… She thinks, again, of them being in orbit around each other; thinks of Ilya skating slow circles around Shane’s body on the ice, looking for a sign of life, looking for a centre of gravity.

“He’s fine,” Yuna blurts. “Shane’s fine. Broken collarbone – stable. Moderate concussion. He’s confused, but he’s conscious. Ilya, he’s okay.”

“Is that him?” Shane asks again. “Is Ilya here?” The glistening has gone from his eyes, and he looks unguardedly, painfully hopeful. He tries to sit upright and David gently pushes him back against the pillows, meeting her eyes with his own dawning understanding.

To Shane, she murmurs, “He’s on the phone, honey, not here,” and then into the phone she says, “He’s asking for you.”

A ragged outbreath. “I am here,” Ilya says. “I am at the hospital. I asked after him – they would not tell me. Said come back for visiting hours. But I…”

“You saw him go down,” Yuna says. Seeing Shane crumpling from the hit – even on the screen – had been the truest image of him she could summon until she came into this room and saw him here, confused and drowsy and with bruises forming over his nose from his helmet, but moving and alive.

“Yes,” Ilya says.

In the room Shane isn’t fighting David’s gentle pressure but is protesting it. “But is that Ilya? I want to see him. Does he not want to see me? Is he mad that I didn’t text him? I said I was going to text him…”

His eyes are glistening again, and Yuna doesn’t even think. “Can you come to the room?” she asks. “He wants to see you.”

There is a hesitation. Then, “I want to see him, too,” Ilya says.

Yuna gives him directions, lingers on the phone and opens the door for him so he doesn’t have to loiter in the corridor checking room numbers. His voice is strained, Yuna notices, and when she sees him walking up the hallway the same strain is visible on his face; eyes red-rimmed as if he’d rubbed them, jaw tight.

He steps into the room in a bubble of awkward silence. There’s something tense and wary in Ilya’s body, his face, as he assesses David and Yuna, and for a moment Yuna doesn’t know what to say.

Then Shane forgets his collarbone as he makes another effort to sit upright, letting out a surprised noise of pain, and before David can react Ilya’s there beside the bed, gently pressing Shane back again.

Shane seems to follow the motion more than the pressure, reaching his own hand up to curl around Ilya’s wrist. He’s smiling at Ilya, warm and easy and relieved, and Yuna’s heart twists to see her son – so guarded, so controlled – look like that at anyone. She bites her knuckle to stifle the sound that wants to rise up.

At the motion Ilya looks up at her, wary again, but when she says nothing he seems to surrender to Shane’s wordless plea and reaches to cup his cheek. “You scared me,” he says quietly.

“I’m okay,” Shane tells him earnestly, in defiance of the evidence, and Ilya gently swipes his thumb over Shane’s cheek. Shane’s eyes slip closed and his smile turns even sweeter. “Ilya,” he murmurs, leaning into the touch.

David had already stepped back from the other side of the bed when Ilya stepped closer, but at this his eyes meet Yuna’s in a shared  feeling of helplessness and intrusion. “We’ll just,” he says, and steps automatically towards the door.

Yuna catches herself, nods. “We’ll be right outside,” she says.

And without waiting for an unnecessary answer, she and David step out and are left blinking and reeling in the harsh light of the corridor.

For a moment, two, Yuna just breathes through the aftershocks of their new knowledge. Then she crumples, and David steps to draw her in as if he was waiting for it, stroking her back and murmuring her name.

“He didn’t tell us,” Yuna says painfully. “Why didn’t he feel like he could tell us? We could have helped. We could have been there for him.”

“Oh, honey. Yuna. It’s alright,” David tells her soothingly. “We know now, we can be there for him now. We can figure all the rest out later.” He hugs her close, lets her lean her weight against him. “Shane’s alright. They’re both alright. They’re here, they’re safe, that’s what matters.”

“But are they safe?” Yuna takes her head off his shoulder, but keeps her voice very low. “Are they really? The rivalry - their teams – Ilya’s from Russia…” Her voice spikes for a moment before she forces it down. She doesn’t know the laws there – not the details of them, and she’ll need to. How careful do the boys need to be? How often does Ilya travel back there? What’s his visa status? Will his team support him? Will Shane’s?

“Yuna, breathe,” David tells here. “We’ll help them.” He says it as if it’s simple, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Whatever they need. If they need us to keep the secret, we will. If they need us to reform the NHL and re-write immigration laws for Ilya, I would bet on you when it comes to storming any castle.”

Yuna laughs wetly, and rubs her eyes on her sleeve. She feels wrung out and sunburned raw, all at once. “Whatever they need,” she promises fiercely in return.

It’s a hospital corridor, still, for all it’s getting late; Yuna takes a moment to be grateful that her outburst went un-witnessed, as she and David without conversation take up positions like sentinels on either side of the doorway.

She leans back against the doorframe, focuses on breathing. Lets David deflect a concerned query (“Just taking a moment – it’s been a long evening.”) It’s only when a nurse stops beside them that she pulls back into herself.

“I need to do another neuro check,” the nurse says apologetically.

Yuna freezes for a moment, but David soothes her with a hand on her arm. “I’ll just see if Shane’s decent,” he says easily, slipping inside. A soft murmur, footsteps, and then David’s opening the door and waving the nurse and Yuna in.

The door to the attached bathroom is not quite shut, and Shane is alone; slightly pink, but relaxed and almost drowsing. The nurse finishes her check, tells him to get some sleep, and then is gone again.

Ilya steps out of hiding almost as soon as the door closes behind her. This time, rather than going to Shane, he hovers, meeting their eyes with something between defiance and guilt. Shane makes a discontented noise, and reaches his hand out for him. “I should go,” Ilya says. To all of them, but his eyes turn back to Shane’s.

“Why can’t you stay?” Shane asks. “I want you to stay.” The smile has wavered off his face, and Ilya steps closer to him as if on instinct, to take his hand.

“It is a bad idea,” he murmurs to Shane.

Yuna can’t stand it. “We can say you’re a family friend,” she says abruptly. “The doctors, the nurses, they have laws about confidentiality…”

Ilya looks at her with the same baffled, doubtful gratitude she’s seen on his face before. He visibly wavers, looking between Shane and the door. “Too risky,” he says finally. His voice is flat, verging on harsh, and Shane makes another inarticulate noise of objection. Ilya turns to him, and softens again. “Shane… you are not thinking clearly. If your brain was not bruised you would send me away.” He turns a little, addressing the floor between Yuna and David. “It only takes one patient walking into the wrong room, one doctor who gossips… that is what you would tell me.”

“No I wouldn’t,” Shane says mulishly. “I don’t – are you mad at me?”

Ilya looks at Yuna and David again; David makes a point of angling one of the chairs in the room so it is no longer facing the bed, and sitting. Yuna stays standing, too restless to sit, but after a moment’s tension she withdraws another step, and deliberately turns her gaze to study the door.

“I am not mad at you,” Ilya says quietly. His voice has sunk to a murmur, but the room is so quiet that she doesn’t have to strain to hear. “I promise.”

Shane’s response is inarticulate, rendered incoherent by low volume and the faint slurring at the edges of his words, but the general tone of protest still leaks through.

“Please trust me,” Ilya says. “Moy lyubimyy… please let me take care of you.” A murmured response, even quieter; a soft noise that Yuna deliberately tries not to interpret. “You need to sleep,” Ilya tells him. “Will you try to sleep?” Another murmur, presumably agreement; and then the sound of movement. Ilya steps away from Shane and resolutely turns his gaze to them. “If he asks for me… will you call?” he asks. “It doesn’t matter what time.”

Yuna steps over to him. His expression flickers uncertainly, like he doesn’t know what to expect from her, but she doesn’t stop herself; she stands on her toes to reach for him, draws him down into a hug.

For a moment he is all tension; and then he wraps his arms around her too, and her throat and eyes fog with tears. She finally lets herself do what she first wanted to do some fourteen months ago, locked in an elevator, and reaches up to softly brush her hand over Ilya’s hair. “Only if you promise you will call me, too, if you need to,” she says.

A moment of hesitation; then she feels him nod, and she lets him go.

Chapter 12: Concussion Part 2

Chapter Summary

One time Yuna doesn't need to try to get Shane to talk.

Chapter Notes

The next morning, Shane is very quiet.

After midnight, when they’d reduced the neuro checks to two-hourly, she and David had had a mostly silent clash of wills that ended with her going back to Shane’s to sleep a few hours in his impeccably ordered guest bedroom, while David dozed in the chair in Shane’s hospital room.

She comes back early, still sandy-eyed, with coffee and a newspaper for David, her best approximation of one of Shane’s disgustingly healthy smoothies in an insulated cup, and clothes and toiletries so Shane can at least change out of the hospital gown. She hasn’t yet had time to build up more than her standard baseline of anxiety, but it’s still a relief to see them – David sagging with weariness and rubbing his neck, and Shane looking preoccupied and anxious.

“Honey, how are you?” she asks warmly.

Shane seems to accept rather than appreciate her instinctive touch over his hair, over his shoulder, but he makes an effort to smile at her.

“Sore. Confused, a bit. I think – I think I was more confused yesterday?” Shane says.

“He’s already had a neuro check this morning,” David confirms. “Son, given that last night you weren’t sure what city you were in or what the date was, you were definitely more confused yesterday.”

Shane grimaces. “I still don’t remember the hit, or the game at all,” he says. “I remember… um, I remember warmups, a bit. I think I remember talking to Ilya before the game…” He frowns distractedly, then seems to recognise what he’s said. “Rozanov, I mean,” he corrects himself automatically.

He seems guarded and embarrassed, and Yuna exchanges a little look of worry with David that Shane, thankfully, seems to miss.

“Well… the hit was very early in the first period, so there isn’t much of the game for you to remember,” Yuna says matter-of-factly after a moment’s hesitation.

“Did we win?”

Yuna had, in fact, looked that up this morning while blending Shane’s smoothie. “Sorry, honey. 2-1 to the Raiders.”

Shane seems more resigned than surprised or upset. He just nods, and takes a long moment to try to process it.

Yuna hands David his coffee, places the smoothie on the table for Shane. “Do you want something for breakfast?” she asks gently.

Shane grimaces again as he looks at the cup. “Not really,” he says bluntly, and then belatedly tries to soften it. “I mean, thank you. But I don’t feel so great.” Unconsciously, his free hand rises to knead at his bicep.

“The nurse gave him more pain relief, but said she’ll check if he can have something stronger now that he’s more with it,” David tells Yuna. “You’ll be happy about that, Shane – last night you were asking when they’d let you have the good shit.”

Shane drops his hand away from his injured shoulder, flushing faintly. “I said that?” he asks, looking awkward and embarrassed. When Yuna and David both nod, he screws up his face a bit. “I guess I was in pain,” he says uncertainly.

“You still are in pain, honey,” Yuna tells him quietly.

Shane gives a one-sided shrug, discarding that. “Did I – did I say other odd things?” he asks uncertainly instead.

Yuna meets David’s eyes again, and then reaches for Shane’s hand. “Shane, is this about Ilya?” she asks gently. Shane goes wide-eyed and tense. “If you want, you can tell us what you remember, and we can fill in the blanks. Or I can call Ilya for you, if you’d prefer to hear it from him.”

“So – Ilya was here?” Shane says, looking between them and tensing up. “Was that – when you were here?”

Yuna shoots David another agonised look, and David sighs. “This is awkward as hell,” he mutters. “Yes, son, Ilya was here. We were here when he arrived, and left for a bit so the two of you could talk, then came back before he left.”

Shane is chewing on his lip – a nervous habit of Yuna’s that she’s not seen in Shane since he was a teenager. “Did I – did I say anything – anything strange, or…”

“It was clear to us both that… you and Ilya are very important to each other,” Yuna says carefully. “More important than either of us had realised. But you didn’t say anything to us directly about that, and nor did Ilya.”

Shane is flushing. “It’s not – um, we’re not…” he stammers, and Yuna can feel herself starting to tear up.

“Don’t, honey, please,” she says, squeezing his hand. “Hey, look at me. We’re not – we’re not going to ask you any questions about it today. You don’t have to say anything at all, until you’re able to think a bit more clearly and you’ve had a chance to talk with Ilya. Okay?”

Shane looks flushed and mortified, and he only manages to meet her eyes for a flash of time – enough for her to see the glitter in them before he lowers them, and nods.

“I love you,” Yuna says. “We both love you so much.”

“We are here for you for whatever you need, Shane,” David adds.

Shane nods again, screwing his face up in an effort to contain himself. “Ilya was really here?” he repeats. “He really… wanted to be here?”

Yuna smiles a little. “He called and called until I picked up,” she says. Hesitates a moment. Then, “It’s clear that he really cares about you, honey.”

Shane looks away from her at that, takes a ragged breath, and then curls in place, knees rising to his chest under the blanket, free hand rising to cover his face. Yuna instinctively rises from her seat, resting a hip on the edge of the bed and putting an arm around him; David stands and hovers on the other side of the bed, hand with Yuna’s on Shane’s back.

“I don’t – I don’t know what we are,” Shane blurts. “I don’t – we barely get a chance to even see each other – and with hockey – and there’s the rivalry – we can’t - it’s such a mess, Mom!” Yuna’s eyes are stinging at this. “I really – I really tried,” Shane says, and the word slides into her like a knife and twists like a hook. “I promise, I really tried to not… want him, to not fuck everything up, but it’s – it’s – it’s – he really matters to me.”

Yuna’s cheeks are wet, now. “You have done nothing wrong,” she insists. “You don’t owe us answers. I want to know – we want to know, of course we do – but you don’t owe us anything, and definitely not today. You can take the time to figure it out. You and Ilya. Okay?”

“I just – don’t know what to do,” Shane says, voice quieter now but no less strained. “I just – I’m so tired. I want more time with him. I always want more time.” Why can’t you stay, Yuna recalls from the night before, and her heart aches again. A part of Yuna’s mind weakly grasps at the desire, to do, to plan; to draft a coming out statement, a PR campaign, to hire Ilya an immigration lawyer, to smooth the path before them somehow… but the paths she tries to imagine splinter and tangle in her mind’s eye. “But I don’t - we don’t, we can’t… I want him to come to the cottage with me.”

“Breathe, Shane,” David says to him. The same thing he so often says to Yuna; the same thing Yuna has so often said to herself, or to Shane. But Shane’s always been better at regulating himself than either of them have been at regulating him; they’re not used to him so without his usual guardrails.

“Did I – did I already ask him about the cottage?” Shane says. “Did he say no?”

David’s eyes meet hers over Shane’s head – dark-shadowed and worried and tired and, she’s sure, a mirror of her own. “Honey, I don’t know,” Yuna says quietly. “But Shane – he didn’t leave last night because he wanted to. He was looking out for you.” She rubs a hand over his back again.  “He wanted to be here. He wasn’t embarrassed or angry or upset. Whatever it is that the two of you need to talk about, you still can.”

“Okay,” Shane manages. “Okay, Mom.” He takes a breath, another. Winces and tries to roll his shoulders; Yuna moves off the bed so David can help him lean back onto the pillows again.

“They can’t come quickly enough with the painkillers, huh?” David murmurs, and Shane nods weakly, letting his eyes close.

Yuna digs a tissue out of her pocket and blots her cheeks. Then, in the lingering silence as Shane catches her breath, she digs out her phone to check the text messages she knows will be there.

The scrunching of Shane’s face has eased a little, so after only a moment of hesitation Yuna says, “Shane, honey?” She’s rewarded with his eyes cracking open again, so she smiles at him. “Ilya texted me. Are you happy for me to tell him how you’re doing?”

Shane takes a long moment, then nods.

She hesitates, chews her lip.

The dots of Ilya’s typing linger on the screen for a long time before the text appears.

Yuna looks up; Shane is watching her now, looking uncertain. “Is there something you want me to pass on?” she asks him.

Shane hesitates, then says “Can he… visit later? Or, or call – I don’t remember – he’ll have a flight –”

“Shane, it’s okay. I’ll ask.”

“He says he’ll be here at ten,” Yuna tells Shane, taking his hand for another gentle squeeze.

A rap on the door announces the arrival of a doctor, who after introducing herself brings the welcome news that she’s brought ‘something stronger’ for Shane’s pain. She does another neuro check – with Shane wincing at the penlight but suffering through it – and critically eyes Shane’s pressed lips and wet eyelashes before measuring out a dose.

“Can he have something to help him eat, too?” Yuna asks, and the doctor gives her a professional smile.

“Feeling nauseous, Mr Hollander?” she asks, and Shane grimaces.

“Some,” he admits.

Yuna tries not to huff or roll her eyes, but the doctor seems to catch the suppressed gesture and her smile turns faintly amused. “Well, the medicine I’ve given you can make that a bit worse, so let’s get ahead of it by giving you something for nausea, too.”

Shane accepts the pills, and the doctor politely excuses herself.

Shane stays quiet, and after a moment of silent conferring, David quietly opens the newspaper while he finishes his coffee, and Yuna starts going through the backlog of notifications on her phone.

A quick text to Hayden (shorter than the one she sent Ilya, just a note that Shane was doing better this morning and would likely be discharged at some point today); a message to Farah giving some basic facts about the injury for her to turn into a suitably tidy statement for the media later; some short notes to friends reassuring them and clearing their texts aside; and then when she looks up, Shane’s opened his eyes properly again and is looking over at her.

She lowers her phone and smiles at him. “Everything okay?”

Shane seems to hesitate a moment. “Did he see me go down?” he asks quietly. “Was it bad?”

Yuna doesn’t need to ask who. “He saw,” she says. Her throat constricts a little, and she swallows. “It… it wasn’t good, Shane.” He just looks at her, waiting. “Ilya was… very close by. You didn’t… move for a while.”

Shane’s face goes very still for a bit as he processes that. “So he was upset?” he says, after a long moment.

“Yes,” Yuna says. “It wasn’t – he didn’t do anything obvious. He didn’t punch a medic or anything.” Shane’s lips twitch faintly at the image. “He just – didn’t leave the ice right away. Not until a ref pushed him back to his bench.”

Shane nods, takes that in slowly. Then, “You should text him,” he says.

Yuna blinks, but willingly reaches for her phone again. “What do you want to say?” she asks.

Shane frowns, then says, “No. No, I mean, you should text him. Yourself.” He fidgets with the edge of the blanket. “I think… I think he likes it when you text. When you… worry.”

Yuna lets herself think that through, as she reaches out automatically to smooth the blanket that Shane is picking at. “What makes you think that?” she asks in the end.

Shane gives a little half shrug. “He asked me if I minded, that you text him.” He’s drawing aimless pictures on the blanket with a fingertip instead, now, but glances up briefly and seems to catch Yuna’s puzzled look. “If he thought I might mind, and he didn’t care… I think he wouldn’t ask. He’d just stop,” Shane says simply.

David has quietly lowered his newspaper again and is listening in, a soft look in his eyes. “I will text him later, then,” Yuna promises. “I like worrying for him, too.”

Shane smiles at that, and relaxes, and reaches for the smoothie Yuna made for him.

David chuckles softly. “You know your mother,” he says fondly. “Plenty of worry to go around.”

Chapter End Notes

The true slow burn of this fic has been Yuna/boundaries and Ilya/emotional vulnerability with parental figures, but I like to think they're each getting there.
After this it's just an epilogue to wrap things up! So I will see you back here tomorrow for that. <3

Chapter 13: Epilogue

Chapter Notes

Things I know nothing about and have tried to research for this chapter:
-The structure of the NHL playoffs
-Beer leagues in the 1980s
-Vodka

If you know something about one of these things and notice an inaccuracy, please let me know in the comments!

David checks the extremely short text thread he now has with Ilya Rozanov, and closes his phone again. Ilya hasn’t replied other than an ‘Okay’ that coincided with his flight landing (David was watching the flight tracker), but he hadn’t been expecting a loquacious texter. Instead, David watches the rear view mirror and lets the radio play quietly as he waits.

It doesn’t take too long before he sees him – height making him stand out even though he keeps his face angled down and his sunglasses on. David turns on his hazard lights for a moment, and off again, and unlocks the trunk as Ilya alters course to walk towards him and stow his bag in the back.

“Thank you for driving, Mr Hollander,” Ilya says stiffly, sliding awkwardly into the passenger seat.

“David, please,” he says, offering a hand to shake. Ilya takes it with only a moment’s hesitation. “Yuna talks about you so much that I’ve been thinking of you as Ilya. Is that okay, or do you prefer Rozanov?”

“Ilya is okay,” Ilya says. Then, as David turns on the engine and sets the car in motion, he says, “I did not know that Yuna talks about me.”

David might just be used to it from Yuna and Shane, but he thinks he picks up on a thread of unease. “Just to me,” he says calmly. “A bit since the elevator. More since Shane’s concussion.” David doesn’t make any effort to hide his warmth or his amusement. “I think it’s been killing her a little not to interrogate Shane, so I’ve been absorbing some of that.”

Looking sidelong, David sees Ilya’s lips curve a bit, some of the tension abating. After a moment Ilya offers, “Shane says she is trying very hard.”

David chuckles. “This isn’t the easiest thing for her – not stepping in. She’d have preferred to put together at least three itemised contingency plans by now.” Ilya relaxes further, and David says, “That’s partly why it’s me picking you up. Shane wanted to, of course, but it’s a two hour drive and he’s still meant to be in the sling part time. Yuna wanted to, but Shane was worried she’d not be able to hold back. And they both worried about photos.”

Ilya nods. “Yes. Hollander is famous, and Yuna is… distinctive?”

David nods for the word, eyes still on the road. “Yes. Shane’s lucky to have his looks from his mother. I’m much more ordinary.” He says it easily – he knows there’s nothing wrong with his looks, but ‘White Everyman’ is going to stand out less at the Ottawa airport, even picking up the infamous Ilya Rozanov, compared to his beautiful Japanese wife. However, when he takes another sidelong look, he sees Ilya’s face look… odd. Like he’s suppressing something. “You might even say, boring,” David continues. He catches Ilya’s slightly appraising look back, and chuckles. “Yes, I’m teasing you. I know you call Shane boring.”

Ilya relaxes again, but David can still tell he’s being watched. “Hollander is boring,” Ilya says. “No drinking, boring food, in bed by 9pm…”

“Apart from when Boston plays Montreal?” David suggests, and Ilya goes a little tense again. David smiles gently, trying to keep the sadness out. “I’m not trying to jab at you. Just… trying to re-calibrate.” Ilya hesitates again, shifting a little in his seat. “Ribs sore?” David asks. “Yuna had me bring along an instant ice pack if you need one. It’s in the back, but I can pull over.”

Ilya actually laughs at that. “Of course she did,” he says, sounding both baffled and fond.  “No, no ice pack, ribs are fine.”

“Well, let me know if that changes. Or if you want to stop for food or something. It’s about a two-hour drive.”

Ilya’s looking at him more openly now, partly turned in the seat despite what Yuna has said must be nasty bruises from being slammed into the boards. “I have heard of American tradition of ‘shovel talk’,” he says.

David chuckles a bit. “It’s a thing in Canada, too. But I’m not planning to poison you if that’s what you’re worrying about. A shovel talk is more a thing for daughters than sons, and I get the sense I’m a few years late for it in any case.” He slides Ilya another look. “Am I right?”

Ilya shrugs. “Something like that,” he admits.

“So, I figure I’ll leave that to Yuna,” David says easily.

“Ah, I see,” Ilya says. “You are vicious.” David laughs, and sees the crooked grin spread wider on Ilya’s face, and he thinks to himself that maybe they’re going to be okay.

It hadn’t been a lie – that they’d thought about paparazzi, that they’d thought about Yuna’s ability to sit in a car with Ilya for two hours without peppering him with questions – but the truth is, David had wanted this chance to sit with Ilya himself. Talk, a little. Yuna frets to him about the boys’ future, frets about labels and definitions and about how to keep them safe, and he knows Shane worries too… but he’s also seen Shane smile that soft smile at his phone, heard the soft murmur of a late-night phone call from Shane’s bedroom when he walked by to get a glass of water. Saw the way Shane reached for Ilya in the hospital, without even thinking. Whatever this is, or becomes, he’s already decided he needs to learn how to hold space for it.

The drive is quiet for a while. They talk, a bit – about the flight (fine), the radio (also fine), but as the silence crawls on David senses Ilya’s tension building again. “When Shane was young, if I was driving Shane to school we used to sometimes come up with conversation topics for him other than hockey,” he reminisces. Ilya looks over at him, slightly incredulous, and David chuckles. “Not whole scripts. Just things like… what movies he’d seen recently. How the latest math test was. What he was looking forward to about summer.”

Ilya takes that in thoughtfully. “Shane didn’t like school?” he asks.

“He did alright,” David says, but without much conviction. “He didn’t really have a place where he fit.” Ilya nods understanding of that. “The better at hockey he got, the more he had a place there, in the hockey camps and then in the juniors, but the less he fit in at his normal school.” Even in the hockey camps, in his teams, of course, Shane had been the prodigy – but he doubts Ilya needs that spelled out for him. “But my point was… I know about awkward silences,” he says kindly, glancing over at Ilya. “So, we can talk about what movies you’ve seen lately, or something. But we can also talk about hockey, if you like.”

Ilya studies him back. “If I like,” he says. “You don’t like hockey talk?”

David chuckles softly. “If I didn’t like hockey talk, I would live a very difficult life,” he says. “I like it. I enjoy watching games, I follow the playoffs. I would know which are the best teams in the NHL and a few of the superstars, even if my son wasn’t one of them. And my son is one of them. I love following Shane’s career. But, Yuna’s a hockey witch and Shane is…”

“Second best hockey player of his generation?” Ilya jabs in.

David doesn’t rise to it. “Something like that,” he says equably.

“Hollander said you played Hockey for McGill,” Ilya says.

David feels a little hit of surprise, then warmth at the idea that Shane had talked about him, named other parts of his world to Ilya, even in the constrained time they’d had together. “Yes, I did. Wing.” He smiles a bit at the memory of it. “I was… alright. Solid. A good teammate, not a star.” David sees that Ilya’s brow is faintly furrowed at the idea. “I enjoyed it. Played a bit in a beer league after graduating, but then Shane came along and even if I hadn’t wanted to be home with him, the beer league wasn’t as fun without Yuna.” He smiled more at the memory. “She was a ref for us for a bit. Used to stand by the bench telling us all what to do until someone finally told her to put on stripes.”

Ilya huffs out a soft laugh. “I can see it,” he admits.

“But, there you have it. I like hockey a more than average amount,” David says. “So if you want to talk hockey, we can.”

“But, you do not need big push to talk about something else?” Ilya asks.

“Pretty much,” David says. Another lull, thoughtful this time. “What about you?”

He sees from the corner of his eye Ilya’s shrug, his cautious easing back into the seat. “I like hockey,” he says. “Not as much as Hollander likes hockey.”

David grins wryly at that. “I’m not sure anyone in the world likes hockey as much as Shane does,” he agrees affectionately.

The quiet sits for a while, and David lets it. “I am… very, very good at it,” Ilya says matter-of-factly.

David nods slowly. “And that matters more than liking it?” he hazards.

Ilya just shrugs again. “Yes, maybe,” he says. “Or it did. Now, I like it because I am very good at it.”

David nods again, taking that in and turning it over. Yuna shares a lot with him, but she has her limits, too – he knows she hasn’t told him all that Ilya’s said. So David knows that Ilya’s father is dead, and that Yuna thinks poorly of the man; knows that Ilya’s mother died young and that Yuna feels for him about it; and he knows that Ilya stroked his thumb over Shane’s cheek in a hospital bed with such naked tenderness that if it had been seen outside that room David would have doubted his safety in going back into Russia. “And you like the competition,” he observes, and Ilya flashes a grin.

“Yes,” he agrees. “I like the competition very much.”

The conversation tails off for a while, with David letting the radio carry the weight of filling the silence. Ilya seems relaxed – or as relaxed as could be expected, David supposes, with the paired pressures of aching ribs and being stuck in a car with Shane’s father. David’s can’t help smiling at the thought.

Ilya catches it, gives him an interrogative look. “I’m just thinking about the elevator,” David says.

Ilya seems to catch on immediately, and grins back, crooked and wry. “Two hours in metal box with each Hollander parent.”

“It’s not exactly a traditional set up for getting to know the parents of your….” David hesitates there. Ilya, curse him, raises his eyebrow, leans in a fraction, and waits, eyes glinting with challenge and humour. “…You know what, I’m not even going to try.”

Ilya smirks like he’s won a point, but doesn’t pursue the advantage. “Is not strange Canada tradition, then?” he asks.

“Not that I’ve ever heard of,” David says. “Not a Russian tradition either, I take it.”

Ilya shakes his head. “All Russian traditions would need vodka.”

David chuckles. “I think I probably have a bit somewhere. Not the bottle you gave me, that’s finished.”

“I have another bottle with me. If you want,” Ilya shrugs.

David feels another hit of warmth at the carefully careless phrasing, and smiles at him. “Thanks, Ilya. Maybe we can each have a bit as we watch the game.”

Ilya sighs. “Might need it, to watch the Admirals win,” he mutters.

“They might not win tonight,” David offers. Ilya just gives him an unimpressed look. “They might win in game seven, instead.”

“Not sure Scott Hunter can afford to wait,” Ilya says. “Could break a hip any day now.”

“Well, soon enough he’ll retire,” David says soothingly. “And then you won’t have to worry about competing with him.” David keeps his eyes on the road, but he can’t help smiling as Ilya makes a scoffing noise and then laughs.

Soon after that, they turn off down the narrower roads that bring them to the drive in front of the cottage – which is, unlike Shane’s mansion, a modest two-bedroom. They don’t have neighbours overlooking the drive, and David isn’t surprised to see Shane emerge out of the front door as if he’d been lying in wait, then hover in place as if he wasn’t quite sure of the next steps. David’s just pulling to a stop, and manages to catch Ilya’s smile blaze up like a spotlight before he takes a breath and eases it down again before he gets out of the car.

David feels amused and fond and sad all at once as he gets out himself, and sees them both apparently locked in place in a moment of mutual uncertainty. He waits a moment, then shuts the car door loudly, ignoring the way Ilya blinks at the sound as if woken from a trance. “I’ll grab your bag,” he tells Ilya easily, as if Ilya and Shane aren’t acting as if there’s some charged current flowing between them.  

At that, Ilya and Shane simultaneously step in as he opens the trunk. “No, no, I can,” Ilya says automatically, reaching for it.

“How are your ribs?” Shane counters, reaching them and deliberately jostling Ilya’s shoulder to knock him aside (as if that’s not also going to impact on Ilya’s ribs, David thinks fondly) and reaching for the bag himself.

“How is your collarbone?” Ilya retorts, almost absently jabbing his elbow into Shane’s side and stepping back in front to take the backpack. “Heaviest thing in here is vodka, anyway,” he says.

“I can take that, put it in the freezer,” David offers.

Ilya checks himself in the middle of giving the bottle to him, looking insulted. “In the fridge,” he stresses. “For mouthfeel.”

“As you like,” David says easily, accepting the vodka and what he assumes to be a muttered imprecation in Russian. “Shane, why don’t you show Ilya to your room, let him get settled after the drive?”

That at least distracts Ilya from David’s apparent vodka heresies, as Ilya re-orients towards Shane like a heat-seeking missile. “Yes, Shane,” he says, smirking. “Why don’t you help me get settled after drive?”

David’s not quite sure whether to be amused or uncomfortable at seeing Shane flush, duck his gaze, and deliver a hissed “Oh my god, shut up,” but he is definitely sure that discretion is the better part of valour so he keeps moving as if he sees nothing at all.

“I’ll just take this to the kitchen,” he says. ”We’ve got a while before the game, but don’t worry if you want to take a walk, or whatever. We won’t count on seeing you until then.” And with that, he easily leads the way inside, leaving the boys to their own devices.

Despite it having been her own idea to hang back when Ilya arrived and not overwhelm him, Yuna is clearly disappointed not to have witnessed it herself when David describes Shane’s blushing discomposure. She doesn’t so much laugh as snicker, her glee soothing David’s own secondhand embarrassment and letting him relax into the humour of it.

“Oh my god,” she says, low-voiced and looking over in the direction of the bedrooms, as if they might somehow overhear her. “So you sent them away to go make out?”

David tries to ignore her teasing. “Someone had to do something so they wouldn’t just stand there staring at each other and not knowing what to do,” he says. “It was like chaperoning a middle school dance.” That has Yuna dissolving into giggles again. “And I didn’t send them to make out. I just thought they might like an excuse to have some privacy.”

Yuna steps into his arms and continues laughing softly into his neck.  

It’s relief as much as humour, he knows; he feels it too, holding her close and smiling into her hair. Relief that it feels possible, even natural, to view them as awkward kids still figuring things out, and not as figures in a doomed tragedy. And relief, too, that he and Yuna were at least to an extent prepared; that they’d been able to sit down together and map out a plan for being aggressively normal about Shane and his – whatever it was – with Ilya Rozanov, and between the two of them try to knead out the uncomfortable places where cultural baggage met conscious values.

“So do you think they’re…?” Yuna says, dangling the end.

“I don’t want to know,” David says firmly. Then, reluctantly thinking about it despite himself, says, “I don’t think it would be a good idea to go in without knocking. Or even to knock.”

Yuna snickers again. “I can’t imagine Shane would, with us here… do you think we both should have found an excuse to go out to the store or something?”

“I think that would fall under the heading of meddling,” David tells her repressively. “Besides, Shane’s planning to take him to see the mansion tomorrow.” 

Yuna nods. “More privacy there,” she agrees, stepping back out of the embrace. David shakes his head at her. “I mean if they want to walk by the lake or go kayaking,” she says.

“Of course you do,” David says, dry and fond. “Come on, help me get started with game snacks.”

In the end, Shane and Ilya do emerge comfortably before the game. They hear the door opening and quiet voices, and Yuna quickly looks up.

“Remember – “ David says.

“No meddling,” Yuna murmurs back, and smiles at him.

Then she’s out into the main room, smiling at Ilya, drawing him down into a hug of greeting. David washes and dries his hands and follows her out. He’s relieved to see Shane looking a little less awkward (though also relieved, he privately admits, that both Shane and Ilya look relatively tidy and he doesn’t have to pretend not to notice anything that would only make everyone uncomfortable.)

Ilya only looks moderately off-balance about the hug, David notices, and makes a note to reassure Yuna about it later.

“Has Shane had a chance to show you around?” Yuna says, as if they don’t all know that Shane and Ilya have spent the last forty minutes holed up in a bedroom.

The following hour strikes David as some kind of social commentary or absurdist play. Yuna offers a brief tour of the small cottage (“Not nearly as impressive as Shane’s mansion – oh, I mean his cottage – but you’ll see that tomorrow”) and the garden; then Shane and Ilya briefly escape for a walk, while David reassures Yuna that she’s been very normal about the everything so far. The walk is brief by necessity more than by desire, David suspects – it’s before the summer season, but the local paths are public, and they do have neighbours. When the pair returns, David manages to extract Ilya from Yuna’s earnest conversation by setting him to work in the kitchen. Fortunately, Ilya’s surprisingly amenable to following directions and somehow or other, they make it through to a reasonable time to turn on the television and focus on the game.

The game is… fine.

Well, that’s doing it a disservice – it’s a great game, a real nail-biter. Early lead to LA, brought up to a tie that slows into a battle back and forth, with neither team managing to score. Scott Hunter is alive on the ice the way – Yuna, Ilya, and Shane all are happy to tell him, as if he didn’t know himself – he has so often not been, and the rest of the Admirals rise to meet him with their own brilliant plays.

The thing is, as much as he’s enjoying the game he’s enjoyed the periods and time outs possibly more.

He enjoyed the vodka Ilya had brought, even though it came with a side of judgemental instructions about shooting and not sipping.

(“I’ve definitely seen you sip vodka,” Shane pointed out.

“Was special occasion,” Ilya said with a very particular smirk, and offered Shane a glass. “Want to share this one, Hollander?”

David elected to not notice that his son went pink and kicked Ilya in the ankle.)

He enjoyed seeing Ilya mow through the extensive buffet of snacks he’d set out, and enjoyed seeing him without emphasis convince Shane to step a toe outside of his usual careful eating plan. (“Is not even the season, Shane. What, you can’t have even a little? If you want only a little, I will have the rest. Is not big deal.”)

But mostly he’d just enjoyed seeing them together. At first, Ilya and Shane sat next to each other on the couch with a two inch gap between them and nervously straight backs, but with snacks and vodka and fending off Yuna’s concerned fussing about whether Ilya needed an extra cushion and whether Shane needed his sling – and then particularly when the puck dropped and everyone’s attention shifted to the screen – they seemed to relax into each other. David didn’t want to make them feel watched, but it was… nice, he supposed, to glance over after the first intermission and see them hip to hip, with their hands laced together between them. (He’d quickly glanced away and announced that he’d serve more snacks, before they could sense his scrutiny and pull apart again.)

So. The game was fine.

When Scott scores with two minutes to go, Yuna makes a satisfied noise and Ilya lets out a raspberry. Shane elbows him, but softly. “He’s really not a bad guy,” he tells Ilya.

“I liked it better when you punched him,” Ilya says. “I think we should go back to that.”

“Fuck off,” Shane tells him, glaring but not able to help smiling.

“What was that even about, anyway?” Yuna asks curiously. “You never really said.”

Yuna’s still keeping her eyes on the screen, just in case LA sneaks in a last goal before the end of the period, but Shane and Ilya seem to be taking it as a foregone conclusion and so David feels no concerns about abandoning the screen to appraise them. He’s interested to see that Shane looks half embarrassed, half angry at the memory, and that Ilya has the smuggest grin on his face David thinks he’s ever seen.

“It was nothing,” Shane mutters unconvincingly. Ilya’s grin, if possible, ratchets higher.

The buzzer sounds, and Yuna turns to stare at them in rather than staring at the Admirals flooding onto the rink. “It was about Ilya? But that was – that was ages ago. How long have you two even been…?”

“Lovers?” Ilya suggests, and Shane glares at him.

“Ilya, gross! I thought we agreed we weren’t going to use that word?”

“You agreed,” Ilya says, shrugging.

“‘Involved’?” suggests David.

“Boring,” Ilya complains, and Shane kicks him in the ankle again.

Yuna sighs at herself. “Sorry, boys. I know I keep saying I’m going to stop asking questions and wait for you to be ready to tell us. But in my defence you keep throwing these things at us… Wait. Wait.” David thinks he’s already joined the puzzle pieces, but this is far more interesting than watching the Admirals hug or the ice being cleared, so he keeps quiet and watches. “Wait. You two were already together when we were stuck in that elevator?”

Ilya turns to Shane with exaggeratedly raised eyebrows – though David still notices that despite the teasing expression his grip on Shane’s hand hasn’t changed, and when Shane looks like he would quite like the couch cushions to swallow him whole Ilya rubs his thumb gently over Shane’s skin. “Not exclusively,” Shane mutters.

“Wait,” Yuna says again. “Ilya was Lily in your phone,” she says to Shane. “What was your name in his phone?”

Ilya, David notes, looks like he thinks this is prime comedy, even as Shane looks mortified. “You saw my phone screen that night?” Ilya asks Yuna. “So you know I was on my way to see my beautiful… Jane.” He presses his lips to Shane’s cheek with an obnoxious mwah.

Shane pushes him away and then covers his face with one hand. “You are such an asshole.”

“Shane was your date?” Yuna repeats incredulously. “The date you were worrying about being upset?”

After a moment, Shane lowers his hand enough to look at Ilya. “You were worried about that?” he asks softly. “That was – we weren’t anything serious then.”

“I knew you would be upset,” Ilya says. “Of course I did not want that.”

David meets Yuna’s eyes briefly, takes her hand and squeezes as her eyes soften and swim for a moment. “Okay,” she says, a little huskily, then squeezes David’s hand back, gets herself under more control. “Okay, so that’s my prying moment done! But… wow. I had not realised quite how long -”

“Since Rookie year,” Shane blurts.

Yuna chokes a bit. “What?”

“Summer before,” Ilya disagrees.

“What,” says Yuna, and David can’t help it; he lets out a laugh.

“I guess I was more than a few years late for that talk, then,” he says to Ilya.

“You’ve been together since Rookie year?” Yuna repeats incredulously. “This whole time? And – and no one knew?” She seems appalled now as much as incredulous, her eyes bright again as she looks at David. He recalls her cry in the hospital corridor – why didn’t he feel like he could tell us - and he keeps his hand gripped strong on hers.

“Not exclusive,” Shane says again. “And not often, and not – not seriously, not until – not seriously. It’s, well, it’s complicated.”

Shane’s tensing up again; David eyes him with concern but Ilya’s already there ahead of him, switching the hand holding Shane’s so he can put the other arm around him, lightly grip the back of his neck.  “Maybe not good topic for now, yes? Yuna has said she is finished with questions for now, so let’s focus on hockey.”

“Game’s over, Ilya,” Shane mutters, but he’s leaning into the touch.

“Shut up and watch your best friend Scott Hunter lift the Cup before he crumbles to dust,” Ilya says, and Shane’s face relaxes back into a smile. 

Under other circumstances, David would be standing to tidy the snack table at this point, while Shane and Yuna began their spirited dissection of the game. This time,  by silent mutual agreement David and Yuna both stay in place, watching first as the Admirals celebrate with the cup, and then as the families spill onto the ice. David recalls watching this play out for Shane, twice – recalls that moment of joining him on the ice himself. He looks over at Ilya and Shane, wondering if they’re each recalling that moment themselves; if they’re regretting being taken out of the season early.

He clocks their intentness before he sees anything significant himself; a shift forward, a focusing of the eyes, like twin predators sighting onto the same prey. “What is he doing?” Ilya murmurs.

“I don’t know,” Shane replies.

David risks a glance over at the screen – there’s someone descending from the stands, Scott Hunter helping him onto the ice.

“Who is that?” Yuna asks. “Shane, do you know?”

But Shane ignores her, unthinkingly clenching his and Ilya’s linked hands to his lips as he leans forward further, locked onto the scene playing out as if he could not look away. Ilya’s leaning, too, keeping him close, but looks just as frozen, eyes wide on the screen. David’s not entirely sure that either of the men are breathing.

David has to know – he looks over to the screen in time to see Scott Hunter lean down to kiss the man he’s with.

Shane lets out a breath; it’s a tiny sound, under the noise from the speakers, but David is pulled back by it, seeing Shane’s eyes shining with barely-suppressed emotion. Next to him, Ilya’s face looks stripped smiles and of artifice, filled with something David doesn’t know how to name, too stark and determined to be called yearning.    

The kiss on the screen continues, but Yuna, too, has now turned to look at Ilya and Shane as they stay locked on the screen; through the kiss, the hug, and then through the cameras pulling away and back into the buzzing crowd.

David can sense Yuna’s vibrating urgency through their joined hands, but she bites her lip as if to suppress it. He waits with her, neither of them wanting to break this held moment. Finally Shane wrenches his eyes from the screen and angles instead to look at the man next to him. “Ilya,” he says quietly.

Ilya turns to him as well, closes the gap and leans their foreheads together. David’s half-embarrassed to be witness to the intimacy of it, but too stunned still to find a way to excuse himself without blundering.

“Shane,” Ilya murmurs. “Yes.” And then he kisses Shane once – David does manage to look away then – before pulling free and turning to them with a half-wild light in his eyes. “Yuna,” says Ilya. “I think… I think we need a plan.”

Chapter End Notes

And that's a wrap!

Thank you thank you to all my enthusiastic commenters! Genuinely I have been thrilled to pieces to know that you're enjoying this, and hearing from so many of you has been key in me deciding write this sequel at all.
I would love to hear from you about this final chapter and this story as a whole.

I am in the process of plotting out (yet another) sequel focusing on Yuna's plan, but it uhhh has gone off the rails a bit and so I don't have a timeline about when that will be done. If you're interested in reading that, please subscribe to the series page and hopefully that will be published at some point.

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