Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Victor St. Simon

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, POV Shane Hollander, POV Ilya Rozanov, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Character Study, Explicit Sexual Content, Autistic Shane Hollander, ADHD Ilya Rozanov, Bipolar Ilya Rozanov, Mental Health Issues, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Past Suicide Attempts, Passive Suicidality, Internalized Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Ableist Language, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Additional Warnings in Author's Note, I don't think it's that dark just covering my bases, A Mix of Book and TV canon, Based on the novel of the same title, Depressed Shane Hollander, Realistic depictions of people being bad at therapy

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-07-17 Words: 31,604 Chapters: 1/1

It’s Kind of a Funny Story

Summary

His stomach takes a sharp, screeching left. His heart stalls and then shifts into gear, zero to 180, every tired tract of him seizing and squealing to go, run, leave.

“Hey, I found him,” Tony says, finishing a conversation Ilya wasn’t in, easy like all conversations without Ilya are. Easy like the world isn’t ending. Like Ilya isn’t standing there, wishing every time he tried to self-destruct or kill himself had worked.

Greasy black hair. Sallow freckled skin. A turned head and horror-widened eyes taking in the big bad monster who finally arrived onscreen.

“Shane, Ilya; Ilya, Shane,” Tony says, totally oblivious. “You both like hockey, right? So that’s something in common. I’ve got to take lunch, but I’ll check in on you both before my shift is over.”

Nobody knows if Ilya Rozanov tried to kill himself before the draft. Nobody sane goes first overall. And nobody knows if Shane Hollander is going to survive another mediocre season with the Boston Raiders.

Isn’t it funny how a single nick in the ice can change the entire game?

Notes

y'all wanted me to put them in therapy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Expanded warnings

1. I am not a doctor or therapist. nothing in this fic should be taken as medical advice and is based on my/my family's mental health journey. I also want to note that psychiatric care, hospitalization, and institutionalization can look drastically different from person-to-person, year-to-year, and this is a period piece set in 2010. I strive for realism and research as carefully as I can, but I was never a patient in a fictional Boston hospital in 2010.

2. Ilya and Shane both use ableist language to refer to themselves and fellow patients (crazy, fucked up, etc.), but there are no ableist slurs.

3. This fic contains references to both Shane and Ilya misusing drugs -- benzodiazepines for Shane, cocaine for Ilya -- and discussion of prescribed drugs and stigmas around them.

4. Ilya and Shane both reference self-harm, with Shane biting his arm and Ilya referencing past self-harm from cigarette burns.

5. ETA 7/19/26 the problem with fanfiction is you write a really beautiful story for an oft unexplored side character only to realize that the name is actually Victor not Vincent and you misread it. I also like Victor better. So that’s changed now!

Ok I think that's it. Now watch this drive.

PROLOGUE

“In some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”

—Francis Crick, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature

Nobody knows if Ilya Rozanov tried to kill himself the night before the draft.

Shane thinks about it a lot for some reason. It comes to him at the oddest times, the memory of all the hushed rumors that morning, the men in suits who spoke them, the reporters who circled like vultures. He remembers Liam Casey finding him in line for the hotel’s continental breakfast and telling him in a gossipy voice that it was for sure an overdose. Liam wanted to know if Shane thought it was an accident or on purpose, and rolled his eyes when Shane asked, how could it be on purpose?

He thought Casey or Korogyi would go first. Boston had the pick, and they made it clear they didn’t want Shane. Montreal liked the story, his mom said after his combine interview, liked the idea of a kid with parents who met at McGill, whose mother was the world’s biggest Metros fan.

He was surprised when they called his name. When Shane Hollander went first overall to the Boston Raiders, and the boy he shook hands with in Regina became a footnote on the 2009 NHL Entry Draft Wikipedia page. Another of hockey’s great what-ifs.

Isn’t it funny how a single nick in the ice can change the entire game?

PART 1 | The Worst I’ll Ever Be

“The thoughts trail one another in my brain, running from the back up to the front and dripping down again under my chin: I’m no one; I’ll never make it in my life; I’m about to get revealed as a fake, I’ve already been revealed as a fake but I don’t know it yet; I know I’m a fake and pretend not to. All the good thoughts—the normal ones, the ones that have occasionally surfaced since last fall—scramble out the front of my brain in terror of what lives in my neck and spine. This is the worst I’ll ever be.”

—Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

He lives on a quiet, tree-lined street in Back Bay. He still thinks he can hear every siren in the city.

He lies awake most nights. He listens to the sirens and horns with his hands folded on his chest. He watches the sun creep across the crown molding and white ceiling. He tries not to think about how he got here, how he got to Boston. He usually fails.

He always wonders where he would have lived in Montreal, had he gone second. Would he have billeted with a veteran teammate in Brossard? Bought a sleek penthouse in Westmount? He remembers the listings his mom would email him, back when they thought—

But his townhouse in Back Bay is nice. He likes the neighborhood and the crown molding and the fireplace. The bathroom still needs to be remodeled, but he’ll be in Boston for a long time. His entire career, probably. If he has a wife and kids, it’ll be a nice space for them. Unless she wants to move to the suburbs.

He needs to get out of bed. Workout. Eat his yogurt and hollowed-out bagel with almond butter and drink his acai banana kale avocado chia seed pea protein smoothie. Then he’ll drive to the practice rink. Marly organized a skate now that guys are starting to come back into town. Hammersmith will be there. Probably Vic, if he’s back from Laval.

It’ll be the first time skating with the guys since they missed the final wildcard spot by two measly points, two measly games Shane could’ve, should’ve won. That’s why they drafted him. They didn’t want him, but they still drafted him, and it was his job to return the Boston Raiders to their former glory.

Yesterday, his neighbor had some contractor pressure wash his entire exterior. Shane watched them out of his bay window. One of the guys liked to work in squares. He’d outline a group of bricks and then spray three or four precise lines, horizontal mostly but sometimes vertical. The square would be gone, the bright red bricks advancing and encroaching on the brown soot-stained grime, the whole wall turning clean like time turned back, and it was 1890 again.

When Shane is asked by the media or little kids what he would be if he weren’t a hockey player, he usually says firefighter. But—really, he would want to be a pressure washer.

Pressure washers don’t have to do anything except pressure wash. And they don’t even really have to wash anything; the machine does it all for them. They just have to wave the wand-slash-hose thing back and forth, a single, simple motion to complete a single, simple task and make a problem disappear. Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh.

But if you’re a role model and little kids all across New England and Canada look up to you, you’re not supposed to say that you want to be a pressure washer. So Shane says firefighter, even though the idea of running into burning buildings makes his stomach swim.

He sits down to eat his breakfast in front of the big bay window, the same place he sits every day to eat breakfast unless he’s on the road.

Yesterday, he ate and watched the guy work, and by the time he got a text that made him look away, it was already past noon. It was from Brandon Sutton, his liney in juniors, and it said, hey hollz hope ur good. sad news chucky hung himself last nite. thought u should know. sucks dude.

Hanged. The correct past tense of hanging was hanged when it was done to a person. He didn’t text Brandon that. Brandon wouldn’t care.

Shane called his mom to tell her. He didn’t know why he felt the need to. She probably knew before he did. Still, he told her, and she immediately started crying.

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” she cried. “Oh, honey.”

Shane didn’t say anything. He didn’t know how to make his mom feel better. He was still watching the guy outline squares and erase the last hundred years, over and over and over. Eventually, he asked, “Should we send, like, flowers?”

Mom was quiet. She cleared her throat, thick with mucus, and said, “Honey, I know you two were friends. I mean, you played together for three years, and you’re—are you okay? I can look at flights if you want to come up for the service, and—”

“I can’t,” Shane interrupted. “The season’s getting going. And I have that meeting with the front office. Besides, I’ll just be, like, a distraction. We don’t want press to show up or something.”

“We can keep it quiet. I know it will mean a lot to Linda and Mark, and it would have—” Mom let out a shaky exhale like she was going to start crying again. “It would have meant a lot to Charlie. And your team will understand.”

He didn’t say that Charlie was dead, and that his mom had no way of knowing what would have meant a lot to him.

“The team comes first once August starts,” Shane said instead. “That’s our agreement.”

Mom didn’t say anything for a while, until she finally asked if Shane was okay again. It was understandable to be upset, she said. Everybody would understand if he needed some time.

He lied and said he had an appointment with his physio about his rotator cuff. He immediately felt like shit, and after they hung up, he bit down on his forearm to make the feeling-like-shit-feeling go away. And then Shane felt bad about lying and making his mom cry and doing the biting thing, which his pediatrician always said he was supposed to grow out of, so he worked out again, doing the at-home exercises with the resistance band. But first, he told Mom that he loved her, because he does that every time they talk, which is every day, usually. It’s important to tell her that.

She and Dad have sacrificed so much for him.

They took out a second mortgage to finance equipment and camps. They drove across the whole country and then the States, too, for tournaments because it was too expensive to fly. They paid for skill clinics and trainers and nutritionists. Mom quit her job to be his agent. They both did everything in their power to make sure Shane made it to the show, that he went first overall, and that he didn’t wash out so he could get the press and the sponsorships, and they could start to pay off the mortgages and the credit cards and the debt.

Boston wanted Rozanov, but then Rozanov fucked up and overdosed, and it was maybe on purpose so he couldn’t be drafted, and Boston ended up with Shane. His parents were thrilled.

But there should be a footnote on the Wikipedia page that said Shane was supposed to go second, and he didn’t, and it wasn’t because he really impressed Boston, but because someone else fucked up.

The pressure washers aren’t there this morning. His smoothie doesn’t taste like anything. Charlie wasn’t drafted, and he couldn’t play NCAA hockey because he made it to the O and got a stipend. He wasn’t even good enough to play in the ECHL like Brandon. Last Shane heard, Charlie dropped out of university. He failed. He was a failure. Failures kill themselves. He doesn’t know why his mom was sad. Or surprised.

Shane couldn’t go to his funeral. What if people thought that—

Besides, he has his meeting with the front office. Definitely Reilly, the head coach, and Houghton, their GM. Maybe Jameson, the owner, but who knows.

They’re going to give him the C.

They haven’t said that’s what the meeting is about, but Shane knows. He’s known all summer. Since the end of the season, really. It’s all he was asked about during locker room cleanout. Mostly it was implied. Was he dissatisfied that they missed the playoffs, and would that change next year? Did he think he would win the Calder, and would that have any impact on the front office’s decision?

But a few actually asked outright. Did Shane want to be named the 26th captain of the Boston Raiders now that Alojz Horník was retiring? Did he think that he could fill the Big A’s size 17 shoes?

It doesn’t matter what Shane wants. If you go first, you get named captain. That’s what happens when you’re supposed to be the franchise player.

The problem is—Shane doesn’t have the room. Guys like Marly and Vic like him well enough, but Hammersmith doesn’t respect him, and none of the other older vets do, either, and it’s not just because they respect Hammersmith. They think Shane is whiny and quiet, boring and overhyped.

It should go to Hammersmith. He was the Barges’ C before he was traded a few years ago. He’s been in the league for eighteen years, and most of them were in St. Louis. He’s an ironman who never misses games. Refs respect him. They chat on the ice like they’re old buddies. They probably are.

If Hammersmith is at the skate, it’ll be full contact. It’s not supposed to be, but Hammersmith is old school. Everyone will call Shane a pussy if he says they shouldn’t be checking without trainers and staff present. Hammersmith will say no, no, you’re right, Holly, we can’t injure our precious superstar. Should we get you a pussy pinny?

A pussy pinny is a no-contact jersey. Bright red like a pussy, the guys say. Lighten up, Hammersmith always says. It’s not like the Rook’s ever seen one of those before.

Hammersmith was grandfathered into not having to wear a visor. And this past season, he tore his meniscus and never wore a pussy pinny and only missed one game because Coach said he had to or he’d be a scratch regardless.

Shane sits in his car for a long time before he starts the drive to Wilmington. Eventually, he catches himself sitting there like an idiot where anyone could see, and starts to freak out about someone maybe seeing him just sitting there like a serial killer, and has to bite into his forearm to calm down. He needs to stop doing that now that they’re getting closer to the season. Guys might see the marks in the shower.

He tries not to think about the biting or anything else during the drive to Wilmington. He never listens to music, and he never succeeds at not thinking, so mostly he just goes through on-ice formations and play routes in his head and hopes he doesn’t crash, or that if he does, he doesn’t hurt anyone else. He doesn’t know how many times he’s driven the same route up and down I-93. There’s always traffic. He doesn’t know if the traffic would be better or worse if he lived in Montreal.

He parks in his usual spot at the far end of the parking lot because that’s where rookies park. And it’s a routine. Shane has to stick to his routines, even if it means walking farther in the rain. He’ll probably park at the far end of the parking lot for the rest of his career.

It’s 142 steps to the front door of the rink from his car. He counts them like a little kid learning to skate: one, two, one, two. In February, he slipped on some black ice. If he had hit his head, he would’ve gotten a concussion, maybe. Or maybe it would’ve killed him, and the slush around his head would turn red and brown and gross as he bled out. Maybe they would hire pressure washers to rinse the stain away come spring. Wouldn’t that be a story.

In the locker room, Marly’s playing music and yelling about something. It’s so loud. He’s so loud. But Shane is a hockey player. He’s supposed to be the best hockey player in the world someday. He’s supposed to be one of the boys. He’s gotta be one of the boys. He likes being one of the boys. It’s just—being one of the boys probably isn’t supposed to take effort.

He sits in his stall and starts changing. It’s probably weird that he hasn’t said hello to anyone, but he can’t bring himself to actually make the words come out. Just imagining dragging the thoughts from his brain to his throat and out of his mouth is—not even a nightmare, just. Unnecessary. The guys won’t say anything, probably. Holly the Hockey Bot. Zeroed in and focused as per usual.

A knee knocks into his. Vic, who sits on his left. “Hey,” he says, “you alright, kid?”

That could be Shane’s superhero name. You Alright Kid. No, not a superhero. A sidekick, probably.

“Hey, Padre, leave Holly alone.” Hammersmith is the only one who calls Vic Padre. Because St-Simon. Shane doesn’t really get it. It should be something French, but it’s probably pretty gay to walk around the locker room calling a guy père or something. In his periphery, he can see Vic flip Hammersmith the bird.

“I’m fine,” Shane says to his unlaced skates. He starts tying them, right skate first, always.

“You wanna get lunch after this?” Vic asks. He’s probably talking to Hammersmith or Marly, but then he adds, “I think Rocco’s has wedding soup today.”

Oh—he’s talking to Shane, then. Shane is the only guy on the team who orders the soup and salad at Rocco’s when they go for lunch. The wedding soup at Rocco’s is pretty good. It’s not too salty, and they never forget to put the dressing on the side of his salad or make a fuss about subbing the pork meatballs for turkey.

Shane tells Vic okay. He doesn’t have a reason not to.

The skate is fine. Chill. Hammersmith doesn’t pull any bullshit with him. It’s just. Something is…

It wasn’t how morning skates were during the season. Everyone else seemed—normal. But Shane usually has an easier time shooting the shit in the locker room, or laughing when Marly towel-whips guys on their way into the showers.

It’s fine. He didn’t sleep very well. He’ll pull it together by the time training camp starts.

Shane hangs back to work on some stretches with Tommy, one of their trainers, so Vic’s car is already parked at Rocco’s by the time Shane gets there. He assumes other guys will join them, but it’s just Vic, alone in a booth, sipping from a glass of soda, looking out the window at the rain that’s begun to fall.

“Hey, sorry,” Shane says, sliding into the booth, his legs sticking to the pleather.

Vic waves him off. “I ordered you your soup and salad.”

“With the—”

“Yes, yes, with the dressing on the side,” Vic says with a flick of his wrist that would probably look gay if Vic weren’t from Québec. “Did you have a good summer?”

Shane nods, though he didn’t, really. He spent most of the summer rehabbing his shoulder and watching the playoffs with an emetic jealousy, chafing against his mom and dad. Then they got weirdly concerned about him, so Shane went back to Boston early.

“Sure,” Shane says. “It rained a lot.”

“Tell me about it.” Vic rolls his eyes. “You were in Lanaudière, yes? I proposed to Caro up there at her parents’ place, and I was going crazy thinking it was going to rain that day.”

It didn’t. The weather was nice. Shane saw the photos on Vic’s Twitter and texted his congratulations.

The server comes by with chicken parmesan for Vic and Shane’s soup and salad. They don’t really talk much as they eat, but Vic expects that by now, probably.

“I heard you’ve got a meeting,” Vic says, his mouth half-full.

Shane pokes at a floating meatball with his spoon. “Yeah, tomorrow, with Reilly and Houghton.”

“They tell you what it’s about?”

Shane shakes his head. “No, but…”

“They’re going to offer you the C,” Vic finishes. “Congrats, bud.”

Shane looks up. Vic is smiling, and it should be reassuring, but that’s not how it sits in Shane’s stomach, churning up his salad and soup and smoothie from this morning.

“I don’t think,” Shane starts. He shakes his head. Puts his spoon down. Picks it back up. “I’m gonna say no, I think. It should be Hammy.”

“Why should it be Hammy?”

Shane eyes Vic, but Vic seems like he’s actually asking. “’Cause he’s, y’know. Hammy. He deserves it.”

“You know,” Vic says, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I had a coach in the Q who told me that the word deserve doesn’t exist in sports.”

“Yeah, but…” Shane searches for a way to say this without sounding like a kid. He gives up and says, “Everyone likes him.”

Vic’s brow wrinkles. “You think we don’t like you?”

Yes, he thinks, and says, “No, but—not like. Everybody respects him. He’s got the room.”

Vic doesn’t answer, and his brow doesn’t smooth. After a few quiet moments, he sits back against the booth and crosses his arms. “Just because he’s the oldest fuck on the team with the most gray hairs on his balls doesn’t mean the room respects him. And I don’t think I would be alone in saying I don’t want him as my captain.”

“You don’t?”

Vic pulls a face. “That bâtard? No, no thank you. He thinks he’s God’s gift to the third line and treats rookies like shit. I mean, he yells about how nobody should be too good to block shots, and then boom, torn rotator cuff for you.”

Shane did tear his rotator cuff after he blocked a shot with his right shoulder, but that was only because he was overcompensating with his left, and he’s had rotator cuff issues since he got a nasty check during the Memorial Cup tournament last year. “It wasn’t just that,” he says, quietly. “And he’s right. I’m not too good to block shots.”

“Yes, you are. Anyone who doesn’t have his head up his ass knows this. Listen,” Vic says, dropping his voice and leaning forward. “I’m not Reilly, and I’m not Horny, but he would agree with me if he hadn’t fucked off to Brno. If you’re offered the C, I think you should take it.”

Shane nods, watching a stray carrot float across the broth. It’s nice that Vic thinks that, but Vic is one guy. There are twenty others who definitely don’t think the same. Why would they?

Shane’s gotten really good at knowing when people are staring at him. He’s had a lot of practice over the years. He can tell Vic hasn’t looked away.

He clears his throat and pushes his soup crackers forward. “Want these?”

The plastic is loud and crinkly as they pass from Shane’s fingers to Vic’s. He doesn’t know why they still bring them. Shane’s never going to eat them. They should know better by now.

—

Mom thought Shane should dress up for the meeting. He explained that the front office wasn’t really like that. They settled on him wearing a team polo.

It’s pretty stupid that he can’t figure out how to get dressed for a work meeting without calling his mom.

He still feels overdressed, even though Reilly’s in a team polo, too, and Houghton’s in a crisp white shirt. Maybe Shane should’ve worn khakis and not jeans. But it’s normal not to care about clothes. Reilly and Houghton probably wouldn’t have blinked if Shane showed up in sweats and a Raiders hoodie. Which he kind of wanted to; he didn’t sleep very well last night. Again.

“I bet you know why you’re here today, eh?” Reilly asks, steepling his fingers.

He does. It presses against the lining of his stomach, a constant reminder of everything they think Shane Hollander is and everything Shane Hollander knows he isn’t.

He needs to speak. It’s fucked up that he needs to remind himself to take his turn. He never learned how to actually have a conversation. Shouldn’t they teach that in school?

“No,” Shane says, a second too late, and adds, “sir.”

“Well, son, I know you kind of fell in our laps,” which Shane thinks is a funny way to say we didn’t want anything to do with you, “but you’ve had a very impressive rookie year, and it’s clear you’re the future of our organization. We think it’s only natural that you take the C this upcoming season.”

He knew it was coming. It still weighs like another brick on his chest and skull.

They’re waiting for Shane to speak. Everyone is always waiting for Shane to speak.

Shane clears his throat. “With all due respect, Coach, I…”

He trails off. He never learned how to finish sentences, either. He wonders if he could ever talk or if he was always a fucking idiot who couldn’t pretend to be normal. Maybe he’s like a whale. He got trained to walk on land when he learned to skate, and then he dropped his parents off at Logan after he moved into his house, and everyone expected him to start swimming and breathing underwater.

He can’t breathe. Not underwater, not now.

“Hollander?” Houghton prompts. Shane’s staring at the zen rock garden on Reilly’s desk. The grains of sand swim in swirls around the tiny rake.

He doesn’t answer. He tries to unclench his fists from where they rest on the arms of the chair, and he can’t. He needs to calm the fuck down. He needs to be normal. He’s supposed to be normal.

“I’m not sure—” Shane stops. Another sentence he can’t finish. “It’s. You know, uh.”

He’s supposed to say that it’s an honor, but if he tries, he’s positive he’ll say it’s a mistake.

Which. It is.

Be normal. Be normal. Be normal.

“Can I think about it?” Shane asks, eventually, looking up because normal people can make eye contact. He shouldn’t have, because he can see Houghton and Reilly exchange glances. Concerned glances. Confused glances. He knows what they must be thinking: man, this kid really is a fuck up. Maybe we should have gone with Casey or Korogyi. Sucks that we couldn’t take Rozanov.

His throat sticks as he swallows. “Sorry, can I, um, be excused?”

Reilly and Houghton still look confused. Fuck, he shouldn’t have asked to be excused. That’s so weird. This isn’t the dinner table with his parents.

“Sure, kid,” Reilly says, eventually. “Take some time to think it over, and let us know.”

Shane nods as he stands, wiping his hands on his jeans. There’s nothing to think over. There’s a right answer, and a wrong answer, and just like always, he’s the latter. But he needs to leave before they figure out that he’s a fuck up. Except they already know he’s a fuck up. They didn’t even want him in the first place, but he somehow wasn’t the biggest fuck up in the draft, so here he is.

He turns to leave at the same time Tommy appears in the doorway.

“Hey, Mike, you texted?” Tommy asks, eyeing Shane.

“Yeah, Shane looks a little—y’know,” Reilly says. Shane doesn’t know what he looks like, but he still tries to stop looking like that. “Can you get him sorted?”

Tommy nods, and Shane probably nods, too, but it washes over him like the walk down to the training rooms, rows and rows of square fluorescent lights only add to the yellowing of the old, once-white cement blocks, linoleum that’s scuffed from years of sneakers and skate guards and who knows what else. He wonders whether you can pressure-wash scuff marks off linoleum or if there’s a special cleaner for that. In school, he liked to rub the marks with the tip of his sneaker and watch them peel and roll up like a pillbug he’d poked.

“Hey, Rook, you okay?”

It’s Hammersmith. He’s getting his knee looked at. He had surgery over the summer. His second knee surgery. That’s a real injury. He has real injuries. Shane doesn’t. He wonders if that’s why Hammersmith doesn’t like him—because Hammersmith has real injuries and Shane doesn’t, and yet Shane’s the one who constantly needs to be helped and taken care of like a fucking pussy.

He might say he’s fine. That might be Tommy. Either way, he’s led into Dr. Loeb’s office, but Dr. Loeb isn’t here. He works out of Mass Gen most of the time.

“Hey, Shane?”

Shane looks up. Tommy has his hand up, like he’s been waving it in Shane’s face. He looks concerned. “Sorry, what was the question?”

“I didn’t ask one,” Tommy says. “But I will now. You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Shane wipes his palms on his jeans. “Maybe, um. Water?”

Tommy nods and stands. The door is so loud when it closes behind him. Shane doesn’t even have time to start freaking out again because he’s back right away with a green Gatorade bottle. It doesn’t taste like anything. It’s water. He doesn’t know why he has to remind himself of that. Water shouldn’t make him gag. He’s a professional athlete.

He doesn’t grimace as he swallows. He’s pretty good at keeping a straight face.

Then Tommy hands him a little paper cup with some pills.

“Benzos,” Tommy explains as Shane eyes them. “Seems like you’re pretty worked up. They’ll help.”

They’ve offered benzos before, usually on plane rides when he’s injured. He’s always said he could push through, but—it might be worth it. “Will I be able to drive?”

“I’ll drive you home,” Tommy says, and when Shane starts to protest, he holds a hand up. “Don’t worry about it.

Shane really wants to worry about it, but Tommy’s got that no-nonsense look on his face, so Shane takes the pills.

“Holls, you ever think about talking to someone?” Tommy asks once Shane’s taken another sip of water.

“Like…” Shane looks away and then down at the orange cap of the water bottle, unused, with no bite marks. Shane always gnaws his to shreds.

“Like a professional,” Tommy supplies. “A sports psychologist, maybe. There’s a lot on your shoulders.”

Shane shrugs. He worked with a sports psychologist in juniors. It didn’t really help. Shane’s normal, mostly. He’s always had a lot on his shoulders. It’s just, lately…

“I’m fine,” Shane says, trying to meet Tommy’s eyes. “I’ve worked with one before. I still have the techniques.”

“Alright,” Tommy says. “You ’bout ready to go? We can stop at Dunks. Team expense.”

Shane hates Dunkin’ Donuts, which he’s never supposed to tell anyone since they’re a sponsor of him and the team. He’ll still buy Tommy whatever he wants and throw whatever he orders out. He clears his throat again and says, “No, it’s okay. My treat.”

—

He falls asleep on the ride back and startles awake to Tommy’s hand on his shoulder. Shane would be embarrassed or freaked out, but it washes over him in waves of pleasant disorientation.

Every step up his stoop is weighed down and blissfully groggy. Eating is a distant idea before he wakes up on his couch to the bruised sky that only comes before sunrise. They could almost be friends with how often they see each other.

His mouth is full of sandpaper-dry air he’s only tasted on the road in Phoenix. His head is pounding. It’s the most he’s slept since locker room cleanout.

He walks a step behind his body as he stumbles to the bathroom to piss. He should shower or go for a run, but he’s bone tired in a way that has seemed to linger even after the season ended, and there's something gravitational pulling him toward the cool navy sheets of his bed.

He tries to fall back asleep. Can’t. Can feel his heart rate start to pick up again the longer he lies there, can feel the walls closing in, the crown molding shrinking down towards him.

He takes two more benzos and thinks nothing of it. If these pills allow him to rest so he can put his best foot forward for training and the preseason, then that’s fine.

The sun starts to creep across the ceiling, the crown molding stays put, and Shane drifts back to sleep. He thinks he gets up to piss at some point, and to drink some water like he’s dying of thirst, but when he finally wakes up again, it’s dark, and the only thing illuminating his room is the light from the street lamp.

Fuck.

He rolls over and checks his phone—almost dead, and with about a hundred text messages and missed calls. Reilly. Guys on the team. His physio.

He missed a call with some sponsors that he was supposed to attend because his mom was going to be at Charlie’s funeral.

She texted him. She’s disappointed. He needs to be more responsible.

His pulse is elevated. His head is going to explode. There’s a tightness in his lungs like he slept in the wrong position, and his mid-back is all fucked up. He tastes blood and realizes he’s been biting his arm. God. He has to stop doing that. He’s not a fucking child.

He hits his head instead, and then forces himself to get up and stop being such a fuck up.

There’s nothing Shane wants to eat. He stares at his full fridge, the fresh produce, the premade meals of chicken and quinoa from his nutritionist, and wants to throw up. His body protests against his useless, wandering path around his kitchen, each step wading through a lake of lactic acid. He’s never spent an entire day in bed before, except after surgery.

He’s offered the captaincy of an original six team, and his first response is to lie in bed all day like a fucking failure? He’s pathetic.

There’s a text he lingers on. From Brandon, again. Shane never texted him back because he’s a piece of shit, but he’s an NHL player, and nobody expects him to be a good friend. He’s supposed to be focused.

It’s a link to the obituary.

Shane barely reads it, but his eyes linger on the last sentence, below a photo of the team when they were runner-up in the Memorial Cup. In lieu of flowers, Mark and Linda suggest donations to 9-8-8, the national suicide hotline.

Shane can do that. He has money. He never spends it.

He picks up his phone. His hands twitch, halfway to an exhausted tremble. He doesn’t know why.

He types it in: 9. 8. 8.

“Hi there,” a man answers after a few rings.

Shane doesn’t know what he was expecting, but hi there wasn’t it. “Um. Hi?”

“My name is Ravi. What’s your name?”

“Shane,” he says before he remembers he probably should’ve said a fake name or something.

“What’s going on, Shane?”

“Uh.” Everything and nothing floods his brain. He blurts out, “My friend killed himself.”

Ravi makes a noise. “I’m sorry to hear that. How do you feel about it?”

“Um, like.” Shane’s standing in front of the big bay window. He still hasn’t turned any lights on. “Not good?”

“Yeah, I can imagine. It’s tough to lose a friend, especially like that,” Ravi says. Shane can hear typing. “Can I ask where you’re calling from, Shane?”

“Boston.” Fuck. He should’ve lied there too.

“Ah, we’re enemies,” Ravi says. “Life-long Yankees fan right here.”

“Ha, yeah,” Shane says, and doesn’t add that he only pretends to give a shit about the Red Sox when he’s forced to, and that he’s only tangentially a Blue Jays fan through his dad.

“Where in Boston are you?”

“My house.”

“Good. And how old are you, Shane?”

“Nineteen.”

“Do you live with anyone? Your parents?”

“No, it’s just…” Shane stops. His house feels too big around him. Like a hermit crab that moved shells too soon. He did a project on them in grade five. “Me.”

“You seem pretty thoughtful,” Ravi says. “Like there’s a lot on your mind.”

Shane’s always got a lot on his mind. His brain never stops, even on the ice.

“Do you mind if I ask you some more questions?”

“Um.” He doesn’t know how to say he’s just calling to donate money. Maybe the questions are part of that? “Sure?”

“Are you currently taking any medication?”

“No. Well—I took some, um, Benzos?”

“Were they prescribed by a doctor?”

“…Kind of?” Tommy’s not, like, a doctor-doctor, but he’s a trainer with the team. That has to count.

“Okay.” There are more typing noises. “And are you having thoughts of harming yourself or others?”

“Shane?”

“…Shane?”

Shane hasn’t said anything. That’s probably not the right answer to that question. “No?”

“That sounded like a question,” Ravi says. He sounds really—gentle. “It’s okay if you have.”

“I haven’t thought about hurting…” he trails off. He wonders about the time frame of the question. Hockey is violent.

“Others?” Ravi clarifies, and Shane nods. Wait, fuck. God. He can’t even have a phone call like a normal person.

“Yeah. I mean. No.”

“Okay,” Ravi says, like Shane isn’t a fuck up who can’t finish a sentence. “What about the first part? Have you ever thought of hurting yourself?”

“I don’t…” Shane blinks. He’s been staring at the house across the street for a while. His eyes should be dry, but they feel kind of damp. “What counts?”

Ravi doesn’t laugh or make fun of such a stupid question. “It depends. It can be something as innocuous as not eating. It can be cutting yourself, or maybe biting or picking at your skin, or pulling your hair. It can be planning to kill yourself.”

He. He—but he also.

“Shane?” Ravi says. It’s like every other word Ravi says is Shane. “You still with me?”

“Um.” Shane clears his throat. It feels like there’s glass behind his Adam’s apple, and everything’s constricting, like before he knew how to tie a tie properly, or when he’s fucked up and lost a game. “I don’t know.”

Ravi exhales, a low, deep sigh. “Shane, do you have anyone you can talk to? A girlfriend?”

“No,” Shane says too quickly, too sharply. Fuck. “I mean—”

“It’s okay,” Ravi interrupts. “What about a friend?”

“I don’t have any friends. I’m not really a…”

“Not really a what?”

“A, um.” Shane closes his eyes. “Person.”

Now Ravi is quiet. Fuck. Wrong answer.

“I mean…” Shane starts, but he doesn’t know where that sentence ends. So he just. Stops.

Eventually, Ravi asks, “What do you mean when you say you aren’t a person?”

Shane doesn’t say anything, but Ravi doesn’t say anything, either. Like they’re waiting each other out in a face-off, and the ref won’t drop the puck.

He can’t stop it. Shane vomits it out: “I just—I don’t. I don’t want to be a person.”

“Okay,” Ravi says, like that’s a totally normal and okay answer. Like Shane isn’t a failure. “That’s okay, Shane. Can I ask you another question?”

This time, Ravi doesn’t wait for Shane to answer. He just continues, “Do you know where the nearest emergency room is?”

PART 2 | SBH

“The doctors thought I was bipolar because I’m bipolar.”

—Alan, the author’s father

This has got to stop happening.

Ilya has got to stop fucking girls who think they love him and that they’ll save him whenever he inevitably shifts. All it does is end him right back where he started in whatever hospital’s psych ward is closest.

He’s mostly upset that Wegmans is definitely going to fire him. That was a good fucking gig. It’s hard to go back to bussing and bar-backing after Wegmans, and he’s already been fired from two different Dunkins.

“Ilya?”

He exhales noisily, the two front legs of his chair slamming into the tile. To his right, Hernando jumps at the sound.

Suzanne looks pissed. But she always looks pissed at Ilya, especially during group.

“Sorry,” he says, keeping his face blank and innocent to really drive home that he was not fucking listening. “What?”

“Ilya, if you don’t put in the work, you don’t get released,” Suzanne reminds him. As if she needs to. He’s heard it a billion times from a billion different shrinks and doctors and nurses and music therapists and annoying fucking social workers like Suzanne.

“Okay,” he says. She still looks pissy and unimpressed, her greasy maroon lipstick smudged on her chin and her bird’s nest white curls piled into a tragic attempt at a bun on the top of her head. “What was question?”

Her smile is so forced that Ilya has to bite back baring his teeth in return. “What’s something in your life, big or small, that you want to live for?”

Ilya laughs, immediate and loud, and poor Hernando jumps again. God, he hates when he’s stuck with the jumpy ones; the ones vibrating out of their skin and should be in the extra special padded rooms with a sign on the door that says warning: no sudden movements.

It’s not Ilya’s fault that he’s all sudden movements. Until he’s not.

“Ilya?” Suzanne prompts again. He wonders what’s going through her head. A debate whether or not to keep putting in the effort or to send him to the headmaster’s office, probably. He knows what that looks like on a wrinkled face.

Regardless, it’s an absurd question. And how many times has he been asked it by now? There should be a note in his chart in big red letters: DO NOT ASK STUPID QUESTIONS. PATIENT WILL GO FUCKING CRAZY. MORE CRAZY THAN NORMAL.

What’s something in his life, big or small, that he wants to live for? Nothing. It’s always nothing. Nothing big, nothing small, and abso-fucking-nothing in between.

Even Sveta’s done with him at this point. He saw her tired fucking eyes when she brought him clothes and a phone charger in the now-battered suitcase he came to the States with. Back when he thought he would be in the country for a week before he returned to Russia for another year of development with Dynamo and to defend his World Juniors title.

That was a year and five hospitalizations ago.

Ilya just shakes his head, tilting back on his chair legs to look up at the fluorescent lights and the water-stained ceiling tiles overhead.

“Ilya, if you—”

“You are not very good at this,” Ilya interrupts, the chair legs slamming back down, Hernando be damned. His blood is pumping now, irate adrenaline squeezing around his head and neck. “Otherwise, you don’t ask this stupid fucking question.”

Mania is at once a careless puppet master forcing his body upright without his input and a thousand needles injecting steroids directly into every fiber of his being, fueling the fire in his veins and muscles to make a fucking scene. He hates how the people sitting on stupid blue school chairs in a circle stare at him, every single set of eyes apprehensive or exhausted because how many times has he stormed out of group in the last five days?

He hates them. He hates himself. He kicks the chair into a wall covered in scuff marks and tantrum puncture wounds and motivational posters and stalks out of the room.

Jessie fucked it up, calling in her little tattle to the cops right when he could tell everything was shifting again. He told her he was fine, but he forgot that he was fucking Jessie’s best friend last time he was manic, and Kayla said that Ilya is ‘fucking crazy,’ which is true, and that Ilya is ‘scary and dangerous,’ which is subjective, but mostly untrue. Ilya is a danger to the body and furniture and walls that try to contain him, but he’s not a hockey player anymore. He doesn’t get to hurt other people and get away with it.

And now he’s back here, when all he feels is anger and unreleased energy overpowering the nuclear depression, forever burning and wasting at his core. He wants to get in a fight. He wants to score, pussy or coke or cock, who cares. If he had anything to live for, he would know it.

It’s all so fucking stupid.

Tony is at the nurse’s station, and his expression hardens as he sees Ilya approach.

“No,” Tony says before Ilya can even open his mouth. Motherfucker. He needs to go to a different hospital next time. He’s here too fucking often.

“If I don’t take smoke break now, I go up to roof alone,” Ilya says, shrugging as he brushes a piece of lint off the ugly speckled-gray counter.

“I have work to do,” Tony says. He still hasn’t looked away from the computer screen. “I have intakes to process.”

“Okay, so no problem,” Ilya says, holding his hand out. “I take cigarette and go. Roof is nice this time of day.”

Tony slips his glasses off and pinches the wrinkle between his eyebrows. “You’re a real fucking pain in my ass, Rozanov. You know that, right?”

He waves a hand. “Eh. Sure. But I’m your favorite.”

Tony blows out a frustrated breath, shaking his head as he clicks the mouse a few times and the screen goes dark. He walks over to a locked cart and pulls out Ilya’s single allotted cigarette for the day and a lighter.

They don’t talk on the elevator ride down to the designated smoking area. He gets to sit on the bench since it’s just Ilya and his babysitter. When he goes out with the other smokers after lunch, everyone bitches and bickers over who gets the bench, so no one’s allowed to sit on it.

Ilya has learned that crazies are a lot like children, especially when surrounded by their fucked-up brethren. They’re always so concerned about fairness. Probably because they’ve been dealt such an unfair hand in every other aspect of their life.

“So when am I getting out?” Ilya asks, tapping ash onto the side of the plastic bench after they’ve sat in silence for a few moments, smoking and staring straight ahead. There’s a reason Tony is his favorite nurse. He’s the sole person on staff who isn’t annoying as fuck.

With an exhale of smoke, Tony shakes his head and says, “Ask Kaufmann, not me.”

Kaufmann is the attending psych. Ilya has another appointment with her tomorrow. “Yeah, but you know.”

“Well,” Tony starts. He takes another drag and snuffs his cigarette. “I’ll tell you if you do something for me.”

That’s another thing Ilya’s learned over the past year. When you’re in rehab or in an involuntary hold or a psych ward or whatever, everything gets done through bargains and IOUs and promises of good behavior. Maybe if all the shrinks and staff he’s met actually wanted him to get better, they wouldn’t make everything so fucking Slavic.

“Okay,” he says. Tony eyes him and then holds out his hand. Ilya rolls his eyes, but he shakes on it.

“You’re getting a roommate and—nope,” Tony says, holding up his hand at Ilya’s immediate protest. “You shook on it, it’s not my fault you made a bad deal. You’re getting a roommate, and you better be nice to him.”

Ilya snorts. What, is he going to make the guy want to kill himself more? And it doesn’t matter anyway. He’ll just act super fucking gay and make whatever middle-aged bastard stuck with him ask for a trade. That’s why he wasn’t even assigned a roommate to start with—this place knows his tricks by now.

“And he’s your age, so all your usual bullshit tactics probably won’t work,” Tony finishes.

Ha. Yeah right. They’ll still work. He’ll just need to adjust his play. “Fine,” Ilya says. “So when am I getting out?”

Tony flicks his butt onto the asphalt ahead of them. He slaps his legs and harumphs as he stands. “Looks like this time next week. If,” Tony threatens as he turns, both eyebrows raised as he stares down his nose at Ilya, “and only if you behave.”

Ilya grins. It pulls at his hollow cheeks and reverberates against the walls of an empty, echoing heart, before it’s deadened by the deafening overwhelm in his skull. “You know this by now,” he says, snuffing his own cigarette. If he were alone, it would go straight into his thigh, another red dwarf cast among the constellation of scars. “My brain does not do behave.”

—

Lunch is disgusting, what else is new, but art therapy is after, and that—that Ilya doesn’t mind.

He’s always doodled instead of paying attention, was constantly yelled at in school for it, screwed up when he was thirteen and got caught spray painting dicks and clumsy tags until the cop realized he was the Colonel’s son, and that his punishment should be left in his father’s hands and with his father’s stiff uniform belt.

Now, Ilya draws rivers.

He makes a huge shape on the paper, a blob or a circle or a triangle or whatever, and winds swaths of blue ink in zigzags until the shape is filled in entirely, with bridges of negative space connecting the banks, and bays and islands and lakes created in the wake of the ink.

One time, a grad student doing clinical hours tried to psychoanalyze it. It’s interesting, whatever the fuck his name was said, it’s almost womb-esque, inherently natal. And of course Ilya didn’t understand any of that in English, so the guy actually emailed some Russian professor he knew, and gave Ilya a whole printed-out page analyzing Ilya’s subconscious expression of grief for his dead mother and dead career and how they were one during the winter when he’d blah blah blah blah.

It was such fucking bullshit. Ilya just likes rivers. He’s never lived in a city without one.

He started drawing them during his first stint in the hospital. He’s thought about maybe taking it into different mediums, like carving stamps for prints, but that would require effort and energy, which he doesn’t have, and talent, which he definitely doesn’t have.

It would be cool to get a tattoo of one, maybe. If he ever has enough money, he’d love to get a whole sleeve, rivers meandering all the way to his pec to cover up his stupid fucking cannon tattoo.

Out of all the dumbass decisions he’s made, getting that to show during his combine interview with the Raiders is at the top of the list. It was a stupid, desperate attempt to hide—everything. Would a depressed, strung-out, flighty faggot get a manly tattoo in dedication to the team that had the first overall pick?

Well—yes. He would.

They liked it, though, and they liked Ilya. Everyone likes him at first. Then he fucks it up.

Whatever. He grabs a new sheet of paper from the pile next to him and draws a circle. He always starts with a wide mouth and then moves inland, each curve forced narrow and smaller than the last. People around him are working quietly, or gossiping, or doing nothing at all but staring off into space. He tries not to judge; he does that too. He’ll start drawing and blink back into himself and realize that he’s been nowhere at all for who knows how long.

Somebody starts bitching in English too fast and too nonsensically for Ilya to understand. He looks up to see that it’s Nadia, or whoever is in charge of Nadia’s brain right now. It sounds like Paulie and Ilya hopes that Paulie sticks around for a while. They can talk about hockey at dinner. Nadia knows nothing, but Paulie somehow does. It would be fascinating if it weren’t ruining her life and keeping her locked up in here. She’s the same age as him. It sucks.

He’s about to go back to his river when something catches in the corner of his eye, and he gets a glimpse of a guy with black hair and slumped shoulders walking past the window with Tony.

It kind of looked like—

No. It can’t be. God, it’s going to be a big fucking problem if he adds hallucinations to everything else wrong with his embarrassing excuse of a brain.

He crumples up the paper, his chair scraping across linoleum as he pushes away from the table. He can see April, the art therapy lady, open her mouth—probably to ask what’s wrong, like that’s a question that has an easy fucking answer—but Ilya has dropped the crumpled paper in the recycling bin and is out the door before she can say anything.

He locks himself in the single-stall restroom that’s funhouse-esque in all the ways he can’t kill himself. He can’t spend too long in here before somebody will knock on the door and make sure he isn’t killing himself on the smooth-surfaced porcelain with buttons and sensors instead of handles and taps.

He looks so fucking tired.

His hair is too long. He can’t remember his last haircut. Or when it didn’t fall in his eyes. He could pull the shaggy ends into a small ponytail if he cared. If he could get a comb through it. It’s frizzy and tangled because he doesn’t have Sveta’s products to steal in the shower. The only reason it’s clean now is because he has to take a shower every day while he’s stuck here. His father would smack him and say that only faggots and women have hair that long, and which was Ilya? And his cheeks are stubbly and gross—the safety razors the hospital provides are a fucking joke. The knicks and bumps along his jaw and neck are red and angry. He’s thin. Pale. He hates how un-hot he is in hospitals. Ilya wonders what—

No. It’s not him. Life is pretty fucking cruel to Ilya, but surely God wouldn’t go that far in his punishment for whatever cosmic sins or curses or chemicals Ilya inherited from his mother.

Knuckles rap on the door. He’s too tired to startle.

“Ilya? You okay?” Belinda, one of the nurses, asks. “You’ve been in there for a minute.”

He knows the mirror won’t break if he punches it. He’s tried. It only gets him in trouble, even if the broken and bruised knuckles are a painful relief. “I’m taking a shit,” he says. “Is this allowed, or no?”

He can imagine Belinda rolling her eyes or muttering under her breath, her ugly floral clogs squeaking as she walks away. She doesn’t like him, and she really doesn’t like the jokes he makes when he lines up for meds. But it makes everyone else laugh when he asks for the all-you-can-eat special, so he doesn’t stop. It’s fun to get a rise out of people with no sense of humor, and even better, out of people like Belinda who tut and tsk and say that he shouldn’t make light of his condition.

But if he can’t make light of his condition, what else is there to make light of?

He pisses and presses the stupid button to flush the toilet, and washes his hands. They’re not allowed paper towels, and the hand dryer always works him up when he’s manic. Or whatever he is right now. What was it that resident said during his intake? You may be experiencing a mixed episode. These can be particularly dangerous, Ilya. It’s good you came in.

Like he had a choice. Like this wasn’t his normal.

He wipes his hands on the nylon of his track pants and opens the door. Belinda stares at him from the nurses’ station. They’re supposed to leave the bathroom door ajar when it’s not in use. He stares back at Belinda and yanks it closed.

Then Ilya pulls a smile. “I’m going to nap. This is also allowed, yes?”

Her lips curl, and she shakes her head, turning back to the computer. “I’m not engaging. Picking fights isn’t a productive way to heal. You know this.”

The number of times Ilya has been told that is somewhere between eight thousand and one billion. He won’t stop, though. He is who he is, no matter how depressing that thought is, and picking fights, well—that’s the only normalcy he still has.

He turns on one heel. He makes it halfway down the hall and trips on the strap of his ratty slides, landing on his stomach and knocking the wind out of his lungs.

He read what the journalists wrote after World Juniors, read the scouting reports his agent got his hands on, translated to Russian, giddy and glowing. Rozanov has an unbelievable agility and balance, they wrote. He dances across the ice like he trained with the Russian Five. His agent said that North Americans were impressed. He was confident Ilya would go first come June, especially after a win like that. And he was. He was going first right until he wasn’t.

Red-hot embarrassment boils in his gut, rising like bile in his throat and welling in the corners of his eyes. He would do it. Right here, right now. How much farther can he fall? He’s already lying prostrate to his failures, a skeleton buried on his stomach in a coffin six feet below rock bottom.

“Ilya?”

He opens his eyes to Tony’s sensible sneakers. Blinking away—everything, Ilya pushes himself to his knees. He re-velcros his slides. “I’m fine,” he says to the once-white stitching and dirty Adidas logo. “I just tripped over my shoe.”

“You hurt?”

“No, I’m not hurt,” he mutters, standing. “Is fine. I’m fine. I’m going to nap.”

“Actually, that’s why I was coming to get you,” Tony says. “Your roommate is settling in. I was going to introduce you guys.”

“Okay.” Better to get it over with so he can crawl back to bed and shut everything out.

He follows Tony down the hall and to the right. The door to his room is open, the light spilling onto the ugly green-gray floor.

Tony raps his knuckles on the metal frame as Ilya stops in front of the door.

His stomach takes a sharp, screeching left. His heart stalls and then shifts into gear, zero to 180, every tired tract of him seizing and squealing to go, run, leave.

“Hey, I found him,” Tony says, finishing a conversation Ilya wasn’t in, easy like all conversations without Ilya are. Easy like the world isn’t ending. Like Ilya isn’t standing there, wishing every time he tried to self-destruct or kill himself had worked.

Greasy black hair. Sallow freckled skin. A turned head and horror-widened eyes taking in the big bad monster who finally arrived onscreen.

“Shane, Ilya; Ilya, Shane,” Tony says, totally oblivious. “You both like hockey, right? So that’s something in common. I’ve got to take lunch, but I’ll check in on you both before my shift is over.”

Ilya swallows against an acidic chokehold. “Wait—”

“Nope,” Tony says, turning to Ilya, his eyes hard and uncompromising. “Ward’s full. Play nice.”

Play nice. Ilya barks out a laugh. It’s shifting again, the ground beneath him, whatever’s in his brain and his veins. A free-fall blood-rush. He’s skydiving now, and all that waits below is the cold, hard crushed bones of hitting the reality of an ice rink he hasn’t skated on in over a year, and curled fists he hasn’t been sanctioned to use.

Fighting isn’t a productive way to heal. Ha. Ilya’s been fighting since the day he was born. He wanted to—punch or fuck that eager, exalted, exemplified face the first time he saw it. And that wasn’t even during an episode.

He knew Hollander had to be fucked up—they wouldn’t be as good as they were if they weren’t—and Ilya has never gone more than five minutes without a million different emotions igniting every cylinder in his brain, but right now, surprise isn’t one of them.

Shane Hollander is in a psych ward. This psych ward. He’s fucked it all up, just like Ilya fucked it all up. Equals once again.

Maybe this will be healing. His shrinks are always encouraging him to confront his demons.

Hollander stands, and then sits, and then stands again. “I should—”

“So what did it?” Ilya interrupts, closing the door. He crosses his arms and leans against it. Hollander slowly sits back down. “Losing the Calder?”

He says it to hit, to rile him up. To bring out the Hollander that Ilya once beat for the puck, bruised into the boards, battled behind the crease.

It doesn’t land like that. It shoves Hollander’s already-slumped shoulders forward, a nasty cross-check to the name plate, a slew-foot to take him out at the knees.

Hollander collapses in on himself, an exhausted implosion that Ilya knows intimately.

Fuck. That’s no fun.

“This. This is a mistake,” Hollander croaks, his voice hoarse like it hurts to speak. “I shouldn’t be here.”

Ah. Ilya knows that, too.

He exhales and crosses the small room, dropping onto his bed. “What did you do?”

Hollander blinks at him, the whites of his eyes a blistered, strained red. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what did you attempt?” Ilya says, waving a hand as if to encompass the myriad ways Shane Hollander could try to kill himself. “To get in here.”

“I um. I called this hotline. And they said I should, um, I don’t know…” Hollander trails off, looking up at their meager excuse for a window, too small for a body to fit through and too high on the wall to try. The criss-crossed wire between the panes of glass cast odd shadows across his face. “I didn’t mean to—I shouldn’t be here.”

There are a lot of things that piss Ilya off during hospitalizations. The guys who hit on the eighteen-year-old girls who have just aged out of the teen ward. The addicts in withdrawal who bitch and moan and beg all night long for drugs, something, anything to take away the pain. And most of all, the people who think they're above it; above the crazies, above the treatment, the people who think it's temporary, that they're fine, that think they shouldn't be here.

Maybe it's because Ilya has been those people. Maybe he wishes he could be them again. At least those people can cling to some semblance of real life because they haven't irrevocably destroyed whatever waits for them on the outside.

He uncrosses his arms. Let Hollander see the way his fists have curled. “We have a word for you.”

Hollander turns back to Ilya. Maybe he would look more alarmed if it weren’t for the exhaustion.

Ah. Right. Not that word; the one that he thought of first when he saw Hollander in Saskatchewan. Ilya will come back to that in a minute.

“SBH,” he says, unwilling to keep the disdain from his voice. “You say you shouldn’t be here when you’re just as fucked up as the rest of us. Trust me, is a lot easier if you just accept that you are crazy, too.”

That doesn’t get a reaction from Hollander. He just turns his head back to the window like a zombie. Ilya rolls his eyes and punches his pillow, which is useless because it’s so thin that it’s basically the same as punching the mattress.

He’s about to lie back when Hollander asks, “Why are you here?”

Ilya stills. Tries not to show anything on his face. “You want story long or short?”

Hollander shrugs. “I thought. I don’t know. That you would be—”

“In Russia?” Ha. Funny joke. “No. I live here. Boston. Big Raiders fan, you see. Except their first overall sucks.”

Somehow, Hollander deflates even further at that. God. Ilya is going to have to actually play nice, otherwise Hollander might actually off himself. It’s fucking unfair; there are a lot of things about Hollander that annoy Ilya, chief amongst them that he’s living the life that was supposed to be Ilya’s, and he isn’t even doing a good job of it. Ilya should be allowed his anger and his jabs.

He remembers once, as a child, crouching in the park as a rainstorm dried away, crying as an already dried-out worm stopped wriggling and curled up in death. And after that, how his brother pushed him into the mud and mocked him for it.

Fuck. Fine. “What did they say about me?”

Hollander shrugs. “That you overdosed. Nobody knew if it was an accident or…”

Now that gets a laugh from Ilya. “I think nobody thinks it was an accident.”

For the first time since Ilya appeared in the doorway, Hollander meets his gaze, and his eyes don’t immediately dart away. “It wasn’t?”

Ilya lies back on the bed, folding his hands behind his head. They never actually let you lie down when you talk to shrinks. If Ilya’s going to talk about his feelings and share all his deep, dark secrets, then he’s going to get comfortable.

“No,” he says. “It was not.”

Hollander doesn’t respond. Ilya turns his head to see him leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees as he seemingly works through that. That burns in Ilya’s stomach, too. It’s not Hollander’s to work through.

“My father was sent photos,” Ilya says. He has no qualms with sharing; let it make Hollander uncomfortable. “I was on my knees sucking cock. He beat the shit out of me. Even if I do not take the pills, it would be big story. First draft pick ever to go on stage with black eyes and broken nose.”

He must be shifting again. It’s not even satisfying to see Hollander’s surprise.

“I thought I had the dose right. What I tried when I was fourteen did not work, so I increase it. But still it did not work, so.” Ilya rolls onto his side, propping his head up on his elbow. “Now I know for next time, how to do it right.”

Hollander’s brow furrows. His head twitches, like he was going to shake his head and either thought better of it or couldn’t muster the energy to do so.

When he still doesn’t respond, Ilya sharpens the end of his stick. “Is this why you are here? Photos of you sucking cock?”

Hollander looks the most alive so far when he says, “What? No. I’m not—”

“So is because your father hits you?” Ilya raises an eyebrow. Hollander shakes his head. “Did your mother kill herself?”

Hollander starts to shake his head again and stops. “Wait, your—”

“Ah,” Ilya interrupts. “So it is because you will not admit you are a faggot.”

Hollander stands. “Stop calling me that.”

Ilya stands, too. They’re basically the same height. Hollander should realize that they truly were equals in every way, and now that neither of them is on the ice, only this remains.

“Is okay, Hollander,” Ilya says as he steps closer. “I knew this the first time I saw you. You ask, Ilya Rozanov? And then hold out hand, and I think, I wonder if he knows what I know.”

“I don’t—” Hollander tries to take a step back, but Ilya matches that, too. “I’m not—”

“Is best to be honest,” Ilya says. This time, when he steps forward, Hollander doesn’t move. He’s not sure if it’s the manic puppet master or something elemental in his core urging him to make good on his hunch from that handshake. He’s not trying to get Hollander out of the room anymore, because Hollander makes him—curious.

Ilya has felt too many things in the past year, but never curiosity. It’s a dangerous rekindling, the same fire that climbed into trees as a child and unwelcoming beds as an adult. Curious Ilya, who will always get his nose torn off at the market.

“Otherwise,” Ilya continues, his voice low, “you will never get out of here.”

Hollander starts to say something, and Ilya steps the last inch forward, closing the space between them and stopping whatever Hollander planned to say with his lips. He curls a possessive hand around the back of Hollander’s neck and then slides upward to thread through his hair. Hollander trembles under Ilya’s tracing tongue, an imitation of a kiss accompanied by a wounded sound escaping into Ilya’s mouth.

Hollander’s massive hands meet Ilya’s chest and push him away, hard enough that Ilya stumbles backward onto his bed.

“I’m—I’m not. I’m.” Hollander turns once, then turns back, then halts, a confused animal with the cage closing in. He stares down at Ilya, his chest rising and falling in giant heaves. “I can’t. I’m going to. I’m—”

Hollander leaves. The door would slam behind him if they weren’t specially designed not to.

—

Hollander isn’t at dinner, nor does he show up for the boring movie they play in the common room. Ilya tries not to think about it, but—of course. Of course Hollander would be here. Out of all the hospitals in Boston, of course he would end up in the same one as Ilya. Of course he couldn’t handle the pressure.

Ilya would’ve been able to handle it. If he hadn’t thrown it all away. If he weren’t so weak. If if if if.

The movie ends, and people disperse for the night, to their card games or back to their rooms, or wherever. Ilya lingers in front of the payphone. Hospitals are the only place he still sees them.

He’s only memorized one number in this country.

Sveta might be coming back from dinner or out with that guy she claims she doesn’t have a crush on. She should be back in Russia. She says she stayed for her big fancy internship, but he knows it’s because of him. She would answer. She says she always will, if he calls. What would he even say? Oh, you’ll never guess who showed up, Svetka. Shane Hollander! What your father says is true—he can’t handle it, apparently. Do you want me to get him to sign something for you? It might be worth a lot someday. What draft class has ever had its supposed number one and number two go fucking crazy?

She would stifle a laugh and then scold him. She hates it when he talks like that. He never sees her Americanness more than when she earnestly tells him that he should use this time to fix his medication or whatever, and actually try to get better. It’s fucking annoying.

Ilya returns to his room, where he finds Hollander lying on the bed and staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. The lights don’t turn off for another hour.

He doesn’t react to the noise of the door, or Ilya’s footsteps, or anything. He lies perfectly still, a corpse waiting for the casket lid to close, save for the slow blink of his eyelids and the steady rise and fall of his chest.

“I see you are still here,” Ilya says, toeing off his slides.

There’s no sign of life until Hollander eventually says, “They wouldn’t let me switch rooms.”

Ilya strips off his shirt. “You tell them I kissed you?”

“No.”

Ilya tsks. He turns around and crosses his arms. “Shame. This might have worked.”

Hollander’s eyes slide to him, the flit between Ilya’s pecs and face, and the quick dart back to the ceiling, the only part of him displaying any urgency. Well—his eyes, and the rush of red coloring his cheeks.

Then, he asks, “Did you get that tattoo because you thought you were going to the Raiders?”

Ilya rolls his eyes. It’s the fucking cannon from the logo. “No, I got it because I’m big fan of pirates. There is a cool museum on the cape.”

Hollander keeps staring up at the ceiling. “So...did you?”

“Yes, Hollander, of course I did. I had it at the combine, remember?”

“I didn’t, um.” Hollander finally sits upright. Ilya watches him take the meager pillow and hug it to his stomach. He looks so much younger than he does on TV. “I mean. I don’t—”

“What, look at men?” Ilya sits on the edge of the bed, his hands behind him as he leans back. “Keep your eyes down in the locker room? This is worse, you know. Everybody knows the faggots don’t look.”

“I’m not—” Hollander narrows his eyes, glaring at the floor. “Stop saying that, please.”

Does he still not get it? Is Ilya not making himself clear? They are the same. They have been the same. And now they’re two zoo animals locked in the same fucking cage match. Hollander needs to realize that he’s in it now. “You have to get over—”

“Why don’t—how come you don’t have a problem with me?” Hollander interrupts, all of it spilling out in a rush. “Why don’t you want a room change?”

Ilya raises an eyebrow. “I have no problems with you.”

Hollander scoffs. “I don’t believe that. You were supposed to go first. The Raiders didn’t want me. I’m in the NHL, and you’re—”

“What?” His other eyebrow raises. “Nothing? Nobody? A fucked up crazy in a fucking psych ward?”

Hollander doesn’t respond.

“Anything you can think about me is something I have already thought,” Ilya continues. Nobody hates Ilya Rozanov more than Ilya Rozanov. “And besides, if I were in NHL, I would have Calder, so.”

“It. I.” Hollander stops. Shakes his head. Pulls the pillow closer.

“What?” Ilya asks. Then, “Wait, do you have problem with me?”

Hollander’s eyes finally flicker up to meet Ilya’s, angry and wet. “Of course I do,” he says, his voice cracking. “It was supposed to be you. I’m not supposed to be here. I—”

“Shouldn’t be here,” Ilya finishes. A flash of—gratitude, maybe, or maybe relief pales over Hollander’s face, briefly washing the red from his cheeks and neck before it rushes back in. “Yes, you have said this. Shouldn’t be in hospital, or Boston, or—” Ilya waves a hand. “Alive?”

Hollander looks away, his lips pressed into a firm levee of a line. He shakes his head, a short, harsh jerk.

Ah.

The realization clogs Ilya’s heart, a pain that radiates into his lungs and ribs. This is—real. For Hollander, this is real. And Ilya is a piece of shit for thinking otherwise. “Yes,” Ilya says finally. “I understand.”

Hollander half-scoffs, like the noise gets stuck in his throat. “Do you?”

“Hollander,” Ilya says. “Look at me.”

He does. The misery on his face could be a memory for how often Ilya has seen it in the mirror. It’s the kind of misery that overwhelms, empowered by the exhaustion to conquer every other urge, even the one screaming at you to end it all.

Ilya stares back. Lets the mask slip. And says, with a foreign honesty, “I understand.”

Hollander nods, just once.

When he doesn’t say anything more, Ilya adds, “But you are here.” In this hospital, in Boston, in this realm of existence. If Ilya’s learned one thing over the last year in the many stabs he’s been forced to make toward survival, it’s: “So you have to deal with it.”

“My parents are coming tomorrow,” Hollander says. “They’ll—I don’t know. Get me out of here, at least.”

Ha, sure. That’s what all the rookies think at first.

“You signed papers, yes?” he asks, and Hollander nods. Ilya continues, “The nurse explained that you won’t leave until doctor discharges you. You are adult, you agree. Your parents will not change this.”

Hollander doesn’t say anything.

“You are here until you are here,” Ilya says, something he was told during his first hospitalization. “You might as well try to get better.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” Hollander juts his chin forward, his eyes locking on Ilya’s. “Trying to get better?”

Wow. Hollander is going to get along great with Suzanne. They both have a knack for asking the stupidest fucking questions Ilya has ever heard.

Finally, Ilya says, “I don’t have anything to get better for.”

PART 3 | The Spiral

“Spirals grow infinitely small the farther you follow them inward, but they also grow infinitely large the farther you follow them out.”

—John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

Ilya Rozanov is here.

In the same country as Shane. The same city. The same hospital and the same psychiatric care unit and the same fucking room. He tossed and turned all night while Shane stared at the ceiling. He didn’t say a word this morning. He seemed—different. Sadder. He still seems that way now, sitting across the meal room from Shane, poking at a tray of food.

Ilya Rozanov is here. Ilya Rozanov is here. Ilya Rozanov kissed him, and Ilya Rozanov is here.

Ilya Rozanov tried to kill himself at the draft, and it didn’t work, and now he’s here. He’s fucked up. He thinks Shane is fucked up. He’s—gay, maybe, and thinks Shane is, too.

Shane can’t think about that, or the itchy scabs on his forearm, or that he’s screwing up his preseason training routine. Apparently, he has the first appointment of the day with the doctor in charge, since he hasn’t seen her before. He doesn’t know what the appointment will be like, but he has one goal in mind: he needs to get the fuck out of here. If he can’t swing it with the doctor, then maybe his parents will when they arrive. When he agreed that he would be admitted until a doctor discharged him, he didn’t know that Ilya Rozanov—

“Shane?” A nurse hovers by the table he’s sitting at and the food he isn’t eating. He doesn’t remember her name. “Dr. Kaufmann is ready for you, but we can wait a few minutes for you to eat.”

Shane shakes his head. “No,” he says, the first thing he’s said all morning. “I’m fine. I’m not hungry.”

The nurse says he'll get a menu to order his upcoming meals from, so maybe he can have something he enjoys for breakfast tomorrow. Nothing on the menu will be nutritionist-approved. Just another reason he shouldn’t be here.

He’s led to a cramped office with an older woman in a sweater. He expected—a white coat, maybe. A couch for him to lie on, like in the movies. But it’s just a desk and chairs, some bookshelves, a lot of diplomas, and a woman who introduces herself as Dr. Maureen Kaufmann.

Dr. Kaufmann is taller than Shane when she stands to greet him. She has the broad shoulders of an athlete and carries herself with the rigidity of a coach who likes to push. She explains that she’s the head of clinical psychiatry. Her handshake is firm, and so is her voice when she suggests Shane sit in the chair opposite her desk.

“We’ll start by going over your intake,” she says, opening a folder full of paperwork. “You said that you think the benzodiazepines your trainer provided made you want to commit suicide.”

He didn’t say that. He said that maybe the medicine was fucking him up and making him feel so shitty, and that Ravi from the suicide hotline suggested he come here. And Shane, who was terrified of somehow accidentally overdosing on medicine, agreed. In case he needed to get his stomach pumped or something.

“Um,” he says. His palms are sweaty. His clothes are dirty. His scalp and brain and eyes and scabs and his whole body itch. His parents are supposed to arrive soon to join this appointment. Tony said only if Shane wanted them to. Shane said he didn’t mind. “That’s not—”

Dr. Kaufmann looks up from the folder. “It’s not what?”

“I didn’t say I wanted to, um. Kill myself.”

“You said you came in because the suicide hotline recommended you do so,” Dr. Kaufmann reads. She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “You also said that you, quote, ‘don’t want to be a person.’”

Shane shifts in his seat. He—yes, maybe. It was less than forty-eight hours ago, but he can’t picture the face of the nurse who talked to him in the triage chair, or the doctor that said she was admitting him and explained that meant leaving the uncomfortable bed in a curtain-drawn bay to go upstairs to the psychiatric care unit, a sentence that made him reach for a bag he was given and puke bile because there was no food in his stomach to throw up.

“How does it feel to hear those words read back to you?” Dr. Kaufmann asks.

“Not, like...” Shane looks at the big window. It’s an overcast day, with the kind of clouds that blanket Boston in an oppressive humidity. His stomach churns, even though there’s still nothing to throw up. “Good?”

“Okay,” Dr. Kaufmann says, noting something. “We’ll talk a little more about that in a bit. I want to return to the medication. Have you ever taken any SSRIs or mood stabilizers?”

“No?” Shane says. He doesn’t mean for it to sound like a question. “I don’t really like taking medicine. I can’t mess with my brain or my body. I’m, um, an athlete.”

“Yes, you listed your profession as such.” Dr. Kaufmann thumbs to another page. “You did not disclose what sport you play.”

Yeah. That was the only smart thing he’s done in the last—he can’t think of how long.

Dr. Kaufmann exhales and closes the folder altogether. She takes off her glasses and sets them in front of her, like her folded hands are staring at him, too. “First, I’ll say this: It’s very, very unlikely that benzodiazepine intake caused any form of suicidal ideation. In some cases, it can cause psychosis, but I don’t believe that’s the case here. You also may not have tolerated some potential side effects, which could aggravate pre-existing feelings of misery and malaise associated with depression.”

“I’m not depressed,” Shane says automatically. “I’m fine. I shouldn’t be here.”

Dr. Kaufmann tilts her head. She writes something on a notepad. “Okay,” she says. “The second thing I want to say is that our professions have a tremendous impact on our mental health. If you don’t share this critical element of your life, we can’t work to alleviate whatever brought you here.”

The lump in his throat somehow grows. A reminder, maybe, stuck and omnipresent, of just how much he’s fucked up. Maybe she knows who he is, and this is just another half-assed charade Shane is doing, one more futile endeavor in a long, pointless list. She probably does know.

He opens his mouth to say something when there’s a knock at the door. Tony pops his head in.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he says as Shane’s stomach sinks. “Shane, your parents are here.”

Shane turns back to Dr. Kaufmann. Her expression hasn’t changed, but her eyes are—softer, maybe.

“They don’t have to join the appointment,” she says. “You can change your mind.”

“It’s fine,” he says quickly. “They—worry.”

“Okay,” Dr. Kaufmann says. “But they’ll only join us to get up to speed, and then we’ll continue with our session.”

He nods, and Dr. Kaufmann nods, and then Tony nods, and the door swings open as his mom pushes her way into the office.

“Oh, Shane, baby,” Mom says, tugging his sleeve so he stands. She throws her arms around him and then pulls back to hold his face in her hands, like she always does when he’s sick or upset, and she’s trying to suss out what’s wrong. Her eyes are red like she’s been crying. God, he’s such a piece of shit. He hates it when he makes her cry. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Tell you what?” Shane looks over Mom’s head to his dad, standing by the door with his thumbs in his pockets. Dad offers a hesitant smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“That you were depressed,” Mom says, thumbing under his eye, like she’s wiping a nonexistent tear, or about to present an eyelash for him to wish away. “We could’ve gotten you a psychologist, or gotten you on medication, or—I just, I knew it. I knew something was off, I could tell when you got snubbed for the All-Star Game, and—”

“I’m not depressed,” he says, and even he can hear this time how hollow and exhausted it sounds. “I mean, I’m...I don’t know.”

Mom opens her mouth to say something else when Dr. Kaufmann makes a polite-sounding noise. Mom releases Shane’s face.

“Hello,” Dr. Kaufmann says, extending her hand. “I’m Dr. Maureen Kaufmann. It’s nice to meet you.”

Mom shakes her hand. “Thank you for taking care of Shane so far.”

Shane lifts his head. “So far?”

“I think we should move you to a different facility,” Mom says. “A private clinic. He’s a public figure, you know,” she adds in Dr. Kaufmann’s direction. “I’m sure you’re great, but we have to be mindful of any potential narratives.”

“I thought—” Shane clears his throat. “I thought I could just, like, go home. That you guys could take me home.”

“Shane, there’s no care plan in place,” Dr. Kaufmann interjects, her face immovable and stone-serious. “When you were admitted you agreed to stay until there was one. It would be against medical advice to leave, and as your doctor, it’s incredibly irresponsible even to entertain the idea.”

His mom won’t meet Shane’s eyes now, won’t see the begging he’s trying to convey. She’s having one of those silent conversations with Dad. Dad clears his throat and crosses his arms.

Mom sighs and turns back to Shane. “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea, honey,” Mom says slowly, exchanging a glance with Dr. Kaufmann. “I think you need a place to get better.”

Why will nobody listen to him? What is he doing wrong that now, after an entire year of nodding and understanding when he said he was fine, nobody believes him?

He could fight. He could tell her that Ilya Rozanov is here. Maybe she’ll worry that he still knows people in the league. Or that he could leak it to the press. She never liked him, even if she tsk’d and said she was worried for Ilya, and also said that you boys are under so much pressure, poor kid. Shane knows if he really pushed, really tried, Mom would get him out of here. Both his parents would do anything for him. He’s their only child. They’ve given him everything, and what the fuck has he done with it? Look where he is. A fucking—psych ward.

He blinks, and blinks again. That alone is exhausting. God, why is he so fucking tired? Maybe he’s in the wrong part of the hospital. Maybe he’s actually sick. Maybe he has cancer. Nobody checked if he has cancer. They should be running blood tests and sending him for scans instead of—this circus.

His parents are concerned. He can see it as he glances from them to Dr. Kaufmann. He can’t figure out what she’s feeling. He’s not good at feelings. He only knows what concern looks like on his parents' faces because it’s how they’ve looked at him for as long as he can remember.

“Shane?” Dr. Kaufmann prompts. “What are you thinking?”

Maybe it’s a brain tumor. Maybe that’s why his head is all fucked up and why he’s so drained. He doesn’t want to fight. He doesn’t want to be a person. He just wants to go back to bed, and not the bed with Ilya Rozanov in its twin, or the bed in Back Bay, but the bed in Ottawa with a headboard covered with dinosaur stickers and a hockey-themed comforter. Which is so fucking stupid. They got rid of that bed when he left home for juniors.

That bed is probably wood chips and splinters now, and every single one is stuck in his throat when he says, “I…I’m. Just. Tired?”

Maybe Dr. Kaufmann’s nod is understanding or compassionate. Who the fuck knows. Who the fuck cares.

“Shane, I think what would be best is if you stay here,” Dr. Kaufmann says. “I think the time spent worrying about any publicity or moving you to another clinic is time that could be spent getting better.”

He watches Mom hesitate, then nod. “And we brought you clothes and toiletries. We’ll get your house cleaned up, and we’ll be here to pick you up when—” she turns to Dr. Kaufmann. “When do you think he’ll be released?”

“It depends,” Dr. Kaufmann says. She gestures for all of them to sit, except there are only two chairs.

“I can stand,” Shane says, stepping aside for his dad. “I haven’t been able to work out at all.” He hasn’t hit the ice since that open skate a few days ago, and has only worked out once. He can’t remember the last time he went more than two days without skating outside of the two-week break he forces himself to take at the cottage, and after those two weeks are up, he has an agreement with a rink thirty minutes away for morning ice time that’s been in place since he was in Bantam. Maybe that’s why his whole body aches—he isn’t working out enough.

Dad rests a hand against Shane’s shoulder. “Thanks, bud.”

Once he’s sitting and Shane is hovering, Mom asks, “So when can he leave?”

Dr. Kaufmann tilts her head. “Again, it depends. We’ll take a few days to see how you’re stabilizing, whether any medication we incorporate into your treatment has negative effects, and whether there are any applicable diagnoses. Once we have an outpatient care plan in place, we can discuss your discharge. Some people are discharged in just three days; others are here for six weeks or more. I’d say the average is five days to a week, depending on whether the patient is cooperative with treatment.”

She’s saying it all to Shane, like he’s—the one in charge. He’s not. It’s his mom. It’s always been his mom. She’s the one who vets trainers and nutritionists, who found a sports psychologist when he made his first Team Canada roster that he met with a few times until some guys on the team found out and called him a pussy.

His parents turn in their chairs to look at him. It’s his turn to speak.

“I think that I, um.” Shane closes his eyes. “I can probably just go home now?”

“Buddy,” Dad says in that neutral, soothing tone of his, the only one he’s ever used with Shane. Rozanov’s dad beat him so badly he had to drop out of the draft, and Shane’s dad has never even yelled at him, not even the time he misjudged the distance between their dock at the cottage and a rental boat he begged to drive and dented and scraped the side, and his dad had to pay a huge fee. “There’s no shame in this, eh? Think about it as, y’know, practice. Training. Getting healthy just like you do after surgery.”

Getting surgery is real, though. Needing to rehab tendons and muscles is real. Shane is just—a fuck up who can’t handle his lifelong dream becoming a reality, and he doesn’t know why.

He opens his mouth to protest again, and the words die before they can even reach his throat, short-circuiting somewhere between his brain and the exhaustion stinging his eyes. He’s tired. He’s so fucking tired.

He nods, just once. He can’t say yes. That’s admitting to failure, to fucking up. He can’t do that. But his parents and Dr. Kaufmann seem to understand. There’s a business card exchanged, and more handshakes. His parents tell him they left a bag with the nurses, hug him, and say they love him.

And then they’re gone, and Dr. Kaufmann suggests he sit again.

“Are your parents very involved in your life?” is her first question.

He shrugs. “I’m their only kid. They couldn’t have more. I...I don’t know.”

Dr. Kaufmann gestures for him to go on, but Shane shakes his head.

“They’re not the problem,” he says, wiping his hands on his sweats. “There’s not even a problem.”

Dr. Kaufmann sighs and picks up her glasses, re-opening his folder. “You know, I was an athlete, too. I played basketball at BC. While I’m sure I faced different pressure than you, it was pressure nonetheless.”

Shane wants to say, yeah, but there’s a big fucking difference between the Boston Raiders and Boston College women’s basketball. But that’s probably impolite or whatever, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“But I also know that you probably have an incredible competitive drive,” Dr. Kaufmann says. Shane realizes she’s waiting for him to respond, so after he nods, she continues, “Clearly, this is disrupting your play. It has to be. Don’t you want to get back on the ice and play your best?”

She definitely knows who he is. He can’t even panic about it. Somewhere in his body, some neuron misfires, as if to tell him, maybe she’s right.

He ignores it.

Dr. Kaufmann presses her lips together. “Here’s the plan. I’m going to assign you to one of our residents, Dr. Nguyen. He also played sports in undergrad. I think you two will do some excellent work together. You’ll do daily sessions with him, and I’m going to suggest you participate in his small-group sessions as well, since I think a large-group setting would be uncomfortable. I’m also going to start you on a medication called Sertraline, or Zoloft; that’s an SSRI. We’ll start you on the standard dose and see how you tolerate it. Does that sound good?”

No. It doesn’t.

“I don’t like taking medicine,” Shane says. “It can mess with my play.”

“Shane,” she says, her tone gentle but firm. “You aren’t playing right now. And if you don’t try to get better, you might not play again. Because you voluntarily admitted yourself, I can’t force you to take the medication. But I strongly, strongly recommend you do. Otherwise, we can’t create a care plan, and we can’t discharge you.”

Shane is going to protest again, insist that he can’t take anything, and then he pictures himself having to call Reilly or Houghton and tell them that he can’t start the season because he’s stuck in a psych ward.

He looks down at his sweatpants. There’s a small hole forming in the pocket stitching. He picks at a fraying thread. “Okay, I guess,” he finally says.

“Good,” Dr. Kaufmann says, marking something in the folder. “I think that’s the right choice. We’ll get you started on 25 milligrams with lunch.”

—

It could almost be a normal day, if there were any such thing in a psych ward, and if the nightmarish ghost that was and is Shane Hollander weren’t lurking in Ilya’s mind and around every corner.

He’s too exhausted to make any jokes at morning meds, which Belinda looks so fucking smug about, like he’s finally controlling himself for once. He hates her so fucking much. He’ll have to go all out tomorrow morning. Maybe he’ll make a lunge for the med cart and yell that he just has to have them all. That’ll really piss her off. And they forget to give him a little tabasco sauce at breakfast, so he barely touches his disgusting, rubbery eggs because Isabelle is now in Nadia’s brain, and Isabelle is four. She doesn’t like to share and wouldn’t hand over the ketchup packet that came on her tray.

But that’s all in the order of things, and so is Kaufmann looking totally fucking disappointed when he has his appointment with her after breakfast.

“Ilya, I will be the first to validate that you have had an incredibly difficult and traumatizing life so far,” she says, staring at him through her horn-rimmed glasses. “But the reason that you keep ending up here, or Mass Gen, or Tufts, or wherever, is because you don’t think you’re worthy of the work, and that is extremely disappointing for someone who is clearly more than capable of accomplishing near-impossible dreams that are only made possible through hard work and dedication.”

God. It’s the same fucking speech she makes every fucking session. Next, she’ll say, Ilya, medication is only a third of the treatment. Ilya, you could be great. Ilya, you’re so lazy. Ilya, you just need to try.

“You are very bad shrink,” he says, his leg jiggling as he stares out the real, proper window behind her. “You're supposed to be good, let me cry about feelings and take your stupid notes.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Kaufmann shoots back. “I’m not a shrink, I’m a psychiatrist, and I don’t have to coddle you. Nor am I the type of doctor to continue a course of treatment that results in repeated failure. We got you off of the lithium and put you on Lamictal. Less than five months ago, Mass Gen added Wellbutrin with the Lexapro. And now you simultaneously want me to prescribe you a stimulant—while you struggle with drug use and have previously tried to commit suicide through medication overdose, mind you—and then discharge you. All while you aren’t putting in the work in group or with Dr. Nguyen. Do you understand why I’m hesitant to do that?”

“My friend did look it up on forums,” Ilya says. Sveta took one intro to psychology course, and now she thinks she knows everything about Ilya’s brain. She’s always emailing him articles and forum posts about what other fucked people take to be less fucked up. Well, what they take that’s legal. “A lot of bipolar and ADHD use it.”

Kaufmann pinches the bridge of her nose and takes a deep breath. It’s a common response he receives from shrinks. “Okay. Let’s try this. If you put in the effort over the next couple of days, I will try putting you on Vyvanse.”

Ilya perks up a little. “Vyvanse is name for Adderall?”

“Vyvanse is similar—nope, don’t make that face,” Kaufmann says, holding up a finger. “It just takes a little more time to start working and lasts slightly longer, which should help avoid any increased risks of mania. But again, if I get word that you aren’t doing the work, I won’t prescribe it, and I won’t discharge you.”

“Fine,” Ilya says. He’s more than capable of putting on a convincing show.

“Dr. Nguyen is piloting a new multi-modal small group for a research paper,” Kaufman says, not looking up from what she’s writing in his chart. Ilya doesn’t know what multi-modal means, or how Nguyen is going to fly a small group, but he doesn’t care enough to clarify. “I’m taking you out of the larger group sessions and putting you in this. You will participate, and if there’s a workbook, we’ll get you a Russian copy. Capisce?”

He wonders how much all of this will cost, and then reminds himself that it doesn’t matter. He’ll be in medical debt for the rest of his life, no matter how long or short it may be.

Kaufmann is still waiting for him to agree. He digs a finger into his ear and half-nods as he says, “Yes, fine. Okay.”

Kaufmann stares at Ilya. Ilya stares at Kaufmann. Kaufmann sighs another deep, heavy sigh.

“Alright, scram,” Kaufmann says. “Tell whoever is out there that they can send in Hernando after you.”

“What, you are not going to ask me about feelings?” Ilya asks, just to be snide.

She levels him with another blistering stare. “Are you going to answer my questions about your feelings?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought.” Kaufmann points to the door. “Shoo. Dr. Nguyen’s group is meeting in 812 before lunch.”

Ilya rolls his eyes, mostly for the theatrics. He actually kind of likes Kaufmann. She’s no bullshit, unlike the usual assholes in charge of these places, and she looks like she could rip his head off and dunk it like a basketball if he really fucked around and got on her nerves. He can respect that.

He relays Kaufmann’s instructions to Lucia, the nurse talking quietly to Hernando. Ilya heads back to his room, expecting to find Hollander there, and doesn’t.

He wonders where Hollander is.

He sits on his bed. He lies down. He sits back up. He stands.

The fire is back, and it’s gone straight to his dick, a zero to one hundred kind of horny, raging rampant and liable to burn through his skin.

He needs a shower.

The showers here are just like every rink he’s ever been in, except the rows of shower heads in an echoing, tiled room are for supposed safety, not humiliation or utility or whatever reason rinks design their locker rooms like that.

Ah. There’s Hollander.

The fire licks the walls of his stomach as Ilya strips, leaving his hospital-provided towel and clothes on the sole bench next to the door. He walks to the showerhead three away from Hollander. He’s definitely noticed Ilya, and he’s shit at pretending he hasn’t.

Ilya turns the handle to the hottest setting they allow, which is still fucking cold, and lathers up with the body wash from the wall. He glances at Hollander. Hollander glances back. Ilya turns. He knows what he looks like, even if he’s a little thin right now. Hollander isn’t thin. Hollander’s body is off-season ripe, as if the only part of him willing to live is from the neck down.

His eyes trail further. Interesting. Hollander is hard.

Maybe he’s not on any SSRIs yet. Or maybe he’s got the same fantasies that Ilya’s had since he hit puberty, of cornering another player in the showers and pushing them against the tiles, rutting their sweat-and-steam slick bodies and hard cocks together until they come. Except—ha. Realistically, Hollander’s probably imagined being the one pushed. He wonders what those fantasies look like—a captain or a coach telling him to get on his knees, telling him to be good, telling him to open his pretty pink lips—

Ilya’s been rocking a half-chub since he left his room, but he’s fully hard now, and so is Hollander. Hollander glances his way, and Ilya looks down at his hard cock and raises his eyebrows.

“Fuck off,” Hollander says, turning his head away.

Yeah right. Ilya’s never going to get this chance again, and the curiosity roars back alongside the lightning-strike wildfire engulfing everything in his gut and spreading to his pelvis and every extremity. He wraps a hand around his dick and strokes himself, what he hopes looks purposeful, steady. Confident.

Hollander looks back, his lips parting in a gasp that’s lost to the water pattering against the tile. He’s staring at Ilya, those big brown eyes trained on his dick, his entire body painted the same eager red, consuming Ilya’s blood and bones. Droplets hang from his thick eyelashes, one trailing down his nose and those fucking freckles and landing on his bruise-bitten bottom lip.

He watches the slow blink of Hollander’s eyes before he snaps to attention, turning away. “Not here,” Hollander says, the most human Ilya’s heard since he arrived.

Ilya lets go of his dick and turns to face the opposite direction as he soaps under his arm and between his legs. He hears the water shut off, Hollander hurrying past and wrapping himself in a towel before he leaves the showers entirely.

Ilya exhales a breath he didn’t know he was holding, his heart racing as his lungs struggle for air. He ducks his head under the water and wraps a hand around his cock, tight and painful and punishing as he jerks himself off, spilling into his fist barely a minute later.

Fuck.

He opens his palm, his come rinsing away as it mixes with the frothing soap and circles the drain. Ilya pushes his curls out of his face and finishes washing off. “Fuck,” he says to the tile, blinking the water out of his eyes. He turns the shower off, picks up his towel, pressing his face into the coarse, starched fabric, and half-screams, half-laughs, out of his mind with it all.

He’s so fucked. This is all so fucked.

He wraps the towel around his waist and scoops up his dirty clothes, his slides slapping against the hallway floor as he walks back to his room. Hollander is sitting on his bed, fully dressed in gray sweatpants and a black t-shirt, all of it logoless and lifeless to match the rest of him. He stares at his feet, one foot socked and the other bare, and ignores—or at least pretends to ignore—Ilya throwing his dirty clothes on the floor.

“Uh, look,” Hollander starts. Ilya turns as Hollander fumbles the other sock. They’re the hospital ones with the grip pads dotting the top and bottom. “We can forget that happened in there, okay?”

Ilya raises an eyebrow. Hollander sucks at pretending to be casual. And at pretending to be straight, but maybe only Ilya can see that. “Is what you want?”

Hollander manages to pull the sock on. “Yeah, for sure.”

For sure. Ugh, so fucking Canadian. Like most things in Ilya’s life, it could be the start to a joke—a Russian and a Canadian walk into a psych ward’s showers...

Ilya shakes his head. “Wow,” he says, dragging the vowels out like the rest of Hollander’s bullshit. “You are a really bad liar.”

He turns, a hand gripping his towel to adjust, but Hollander is standing.

“I’m not lying,” Hollander says, his voice returning to that hollow tone he had yesterday. “I’ve got this, um. I’ve got to go.”

Ilya can’t say anything else before Hollander leaves. Right. Ilya forgot. Hollander shouldn’t be here, and his inability to lie extends far beyond this room.

Whatever. Ilya will come back to all of this later; he’s not going to let Hollander just—whatever. He can’t think about it. He has to go to this stupid small group session with Nguyen.

He dresses in clothes that smell like Sveta’s lavender detergent and cigarette smoke, the reminder a stabbing pang of homesickness behind his sternum. He pushes it down and pauses before he towels through his hair. It’ll frizz if he does. Usually, he doesn’t care, but...

He drops the towel on the floor, dries the bottom of his slides off, and heads to 812, where—

Ha. Of course.

“Come on in, Ilya,” Nguyen says, pointing at a chair next to Hollander. Kashif, the next youngest guy on the ward, despite being, like, thirty, is on Hollander’s left. He takes a seat; the chairs are the nice office ones with cushions, not the blue plastic school ones, so this is already a step up from group.

“I want to thank you guys for agreeing to participate in this pilot,” Nguyen begins, spreading his hands. He’s a young guy who apparently played soccer at Brown, which makes him think that he can relate to Ilya. Hilarious.

“I’m not sure if you three have met, so we’ll go around and do quick introductions. Let’s see, we can do name, age, and favorite ice cream flavor,” Nguyen says. “I’ll start. I’m Dr. Ben Nguyen, but you guys can call me Ben. I’m thirty-two, and I’m a sucker for Friendly’s Perfectly Pistachio Almond.”

Nguyen nods at Kashif, who shifts in his chair. “Uh, I’m Kashif, I’m twenty-six, and I guess I like rocky road.”

“Shane. Nineteen.” Hollander stops.

“And...your favorite ice cream?” Nguyen prompts.

Hollander stares blankly at Nguyen. “I don’t eat ice cream.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Ilya mutters under his breath. “I go, then. Ilya, I am nineteen also, and I like cookies and cream, or, wait, no, the Ben and Jerry’s Half Bake.”

Nguyen shoots Ilya a look and then shakes his head. “Okay, well, I’ll just outline a little of what we’ll do here. You three are all different, different ages, different backgrounds, and maybe all of you will respond to different treatment modalities. Not everyone jives with CBT or DBT, you know?”

“Ben, I have question,” Ilya interrupts, raising his hand. Nguyen nods at him, and he schools his face into the picture of innocence. “What is wrong with CBT? I love CBT.”

Kashif snorts. Nguyen closes his eyes and breathes deep. Hollander stares ahead, completely blank.

“Okay, thank you for that, Ilya. There’s nothing wrong with C—nope, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy,” Nguyen corrects, shooting Ilya another look. “But there’s plenty of different modalities out there. I’ll be trying different types and taking notes, and seeing how you guys respond to each one. This is just a pilot to refine my hypothesis, y’know, like the baby stages of research. So we’ll keep it casual. Sound good?”

Ilya nods. Kashif says yes. Hollander doesn’t do anything, realizes they’re waiting for him, and then shrugs and says, “Yeah, I guess.”

“Great. Why don’t you each, in a few words, tell me how you feel coming in here today? Ilya, let’s start with you.”

Ilya glances at Kashif and Hollander and slouches a little into his chair. He reminds himself that Nguyen will be reporting back to Kaufmann. “I am feeling, ah, okay? Not good, not bad. Just middle.”

“Got it, okay,” Nguyen says, making a note on his legal pad. “Shane?”

“Um, I don’t know?” Hollander shrugs. “I don’t really feel, like, anything. I don’t think I need this.”

Nguyen hums. Kashif says he’s feeling anxious that he’s not improving, and scared that this group means he’s more fucked up than he originally thought, while Nguyen scribbles all of it on a yellow pad of paper.

“Okay, good start. Let’s dive in a bit deeper now. What’s your most self-destructive behavior outside of the hospital?”

Oh boy. Ilya fights off an eye roll. Where does he even fucking begin.

“Anger,” Kashif says immediately. “All I do is get angry. I can’t stop it. It’s at the core of everything I do.”

Nguyen nods. “Shane?”

“I don’t, like, do that,” Hollander says. “I have to take really good care of myself.”

Ilya barks a laugh at that, sharp and sudden enough that Hollander startles in Ilya’s periphery.

“What a fucking joke,” Ilya says. Nguyen opens his mouth to say something, and Ilya steams ahead. “We are not all perfect like Shane,” he sneers. “This is easy question for me. Sex. Men, women, safe, risky, who cares. Sex. And also coke, but mostly sex.”

“Ilya,” Nguyen says, reproaching. “Let’s try not to judge our fellow group members, okay?”

“I tell you what his problem is,” Ilya says, cocking his head toward Hollander. “Lying. Pretending. Hiding. He does all this, cannot even admit why he is here, that he is fucked up like us. Is pathetic.”

Hollander is staring at the floor, his ears and neck flushed.

Nguyen starts to say something, but Ilya interrupts again, his eyes locked on Hollander. “Well? Are you going to say anything? You—”

“Yeah.”

“—fucking—what?” Ilya stops short. Hollander hasn’t looked up. Ilya turns to stare at Nguyen, who has stopped looking pissed at Ilya and is also staring at Hollander with surprise.

“I do pretend. And, um. Lie, I guess.” Hollander scratches the back of his neck. “I don’t like to say if there’s a problem? And I guess that hurts me.”

Of course. Of fucking course.

“I have to piss,” Ilya announces, standing. He exits quickly and, instead of turning left for the restroom, turns right to Kaufmann’s office. He knocks, hears a muffled “Come in!” and pushes the door open.

“I am not doing therapy with Shane Hollander,” Ilya says in a rush. He doesn’t know when he started breathing so heavily. “You know who he is. You have to.”

“Ilya, I can’t disclose that information,” Kaufmann says, taking her glasses off. When he doesn’t move, she sighs and nods for him to close the door. “Sit. Two sessions in one day; this is very unlike you.”

“You have to know who he is to me,” Ilya says, leaning forward. “I cannot do this. You are—you are making this a test, and I will fail. He is—perfect, already, at therapy. Like he is everything else.”

“Ilya,” Kaufmann says, leveling him with her blue-gray eyes. “You know I can’t share anything that I may or may not know about a patient’s background.”

“Okay, I share what I know,” Ilya says, crossing his arms. “Everyone say Canada’s Shane Hollander, Russia’s Ilya Rozanov, who will beat who, who will go first overall. And I beat him. I was going to go first. And then—and then you know what happens.”

“I do,” Kaufmann says. “Nobody’s testing you, Ilya. There are no trick questions here.”

“We meet before,” he insists. “We shake hands, he says I am awesome player to watch, see you at the draft.”

“Is that the only time you’ve met before now?”

Ilya hesitates and then nods. Watching Hollander get his abdomen pinched to measure body fat from across a hotel ballroom at the combine probably doesn’t count, and watching his post-game interviews definitely doesn’t count. “So, so I cannot stay in the same room, cannot do therapy with him.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not enough to switch your rooms,” Kaufmann says gently. “Not when we’re over capacity and dealing with much trickier personalities and more men than women. But you don’t have to participate in Dr. Nguyen’s pilot.”

What? Ilya lifts his head. “I don’t?”

Kaufmann holds his gaze. “If there’s one thing I’ve been trying to get you to understand, it’s that the only person who can tell you what to do or not do is you. You don’t just have a say in your treatment, you have the only say. And I know you’re very adept at refusing treatment.”

“But you will not give me meds?” he asks. He doesn’t want to, in case it reminds her to cancel an order she already put in, but—she did say this wasn’t a test. Ilya isn’t sure he can believe her, since basically everything in life is a test he has failed, but Kaufmann has been straight with him so far, not just this hospitalization, but his second one in the fall, when he was here for almost a month.

“I’m still going to prescribe you a stimulant regardless of whether you participate in the pilot or not,” Kaufmann says. “You’ll have to go back to large group, but I agree that adding a stimulant into your treatment could help your impulsivity and keep you from seeking out much more dangerous alternatives to self-medicate. I want you well, Ilya, and I’ll keep saying it until you believe it.”

Something releases then, an unclenching in every taut muscle and uncaging his empty lungs. He sucks in a shameful, shuddering inhale as Dr. Kaufmann and her degrees and his hands and the ugly carpet blur around him.

“Okay?” Kaufmann asks, and all Ilya can do is nod.

He pries his hands from the chair, scrubbing them over his face. When he finds the air and the assurance he won’t sob, he exhales, “Okay. Yeah. Yes.”

—

Shane doesn’t really get the point of what he’s supposed to be doing with Dr. Nguyen. Or Ben. Dr. Ben? Dr. Ben. And he doesn’t even have Rozanov to help him out with suggestions, so he just spends most of the session guessing at what the correct-sounding answer is. He doesn’t know how to answer his questions about his childhood, or how Shane felt about his childhood, or how he relieves stress, which is a dumb question, because Shane doesn’t; he has to use it.

But there’s one question that keeps turning over in his head as Shane makes his way to lunch, even though he’s not hungry. Dr. Ben asked Shane to share the last time he felt happy, and Shane—couldn’t.

Rozanov is already sitting with his lunch, frowning at a sandwich.

Shane stares down at his tray of slimy pasta salad and a tuna fish sandwich. Rozanov has an apple. Maybe they could trade.

He sits down across from Rozanov and starts scraping the tuna from the bread with his flimsy spork. “Can I have your apple?”

Rozanov shrugs. “If I can have pasta.”

They swap, Rozanov passing over the apple for Shane’s small plastic tub of pasta. It’s like Shane is back in the school cafeteria, except people would never trade him for his onigiri until he begged his mom and dad to start letting him buy lunch.

Rozanov eats a sporkful of pasta salad, staring at Shane. Shane flushes and refocuses on his tuna fish separation.

“So,” Rozanov drawls. “How was group?”

Shane shoots him a look. “It was fine until you left.”

“What?” Rozanov’s brow wrinkles. “What do you mean?”

“’Cause all that shit is—stupid, and I don’t have anything to talk about, and then you gave me something to say that sounded right,” Shane says. And then something tugs in his gut, like he said too much, and he twists the apple stem to pull it off instead of looking at Rozanov.

Rozanov hums and drums his fingers on the table. “Is still not good to pretend you are not fucked up.”

Shane looks away. He puts the apple down and then picks it up. “I never said that,” he says eventually. “I said I shouldn’t be here, not that I wasn’t fucked up. I know I’m fucked up.”

He can feel Rozanov’s eyes on him, can feel under his skin, a prickly restlessness that is—odd, but not…unpleasant.

“Just ’cause I’m fucked up doesn’t mean that I should have to sit here and, like, talk about stupid bullshit feelings,” Shane says. “I just—I don’t want to be, y’know.” He waves a hand in the general direction of the room. “Here.”

Rozanov blinks and then throws his head back as he barks out a laugh. It makes half of the people at the surrounding tables jump, including Shane.

“What?” Shane says, his ears warming as Rozanov shakes his head.

“Nothing, nothing,” Rozanov says. “Is just the most real thing I have heard you say.”

Shane narrows his eyes. “What do you mean by real?”

“Pft. How many interviews have you done like hockey robot?” Rozanov stiffens and, in a flat, nasal tone, says, “Beep boop. I am Shane Hollander. Must get pucks deep. Need better power play conversion.”

“Shut up,” Shane hisses, glancing around the room, though nobody seems to be paying them any attention. “You watch my interviews?”

“No, but my friend Svetlana does,” Rozanov says. “She likes you very much. Well, liked.”

Shane looks back down at his apple, rolling it between his clammy palms. “What do you mean ‘liked’?”

“Shane Hollander is supposed to be next great one,” Rozanov says, his tone still flat, like he’s reciting a headline. “And by end of season, his point production is shit, and he loses the Calder. She does not like bad hockey.”

Oh.

“No, don’t—fuck.” Rozanov sighs and puts his spork down. “Do not look like a, a kicked puppy. She just—she wanted more, I think. You did not, ah, live up to the hype.”

Yeah. Shane knows. Shane is very aware that he didn’t live up to the hype, that the expectations of the Boston Raiders and the entire league were on his shoulders, and he couldn’t bear the weight.

“They want to give me the C,” Shane mumbles to his sad tuna fish. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but...yeah.”

“Why the fuck would they give you the C?” Rozanov says. “You don’t have the room.”

Shane winces. “Is it that obvious?”

“Yes, but—Horník just retired,” Rozanov says, and when Shane looks up, he looks genuinely confused. “Nobody would have the room. He was captain for how long?”

“Horny?” Shane shrugs. “I don’t know, like eleven seasons? Maybe twelve?”

“They cannot just give this away after that long,” Rozanov says. “Makes no sense. Is…fuck, what is the word? Goes under the room?”

“Undermines?”

“Yes,” Rozanov says, nodding. “Dynamo, they try to do this with Valya Fetisov. He was captain as long as I remember, then they try to make this new guy captain right after he retires, the whole team starts fighting each other. You would be shit captain this season, yes, but so would anyone.”

Huh. Shane never thought of it like that.

He’s about to ask Rozanov something else—what he thinks of Hammersmith, maybe—when Tony crouches next to their table.

“Hey, guys,” Tony says. “Nice to see you two hanging out. We’re going to do midday meds in a minute if you guys want to finish eating, and then it’s music therapy.”

Rozanov groans, his head tilting back and stretching the line of his neck. “Fuck, no. Please. Anything but this.”

“What’s music therapy?” Shane asks, and immediately wants to hit himself over the head with his lunch tray. That’s just an objectively stupid question. It’s fucking therapy with music. Obviously.

“Hollander, is miserable,” Rozanov says, leaning forward again like he’s letting Shane in on some conspiracy. “We sit in a circle and play bongos, and it is supposed to make us not want to kill ourselves.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “It’s not that bad.”

“Yes, is that bad,” Rozanov says, then: “Wait, Tony, can we go to the gym?”

The gym? Shane sits up straighter, and Tony must sense that Shane would actually kill to do anything resembling exercise, because he agrees pretty quickly.

“I will take you guys to the gym if you promise, and I mean swear to God, that you won’t tell anyone. And,” Tony points at Rozanov, “it’s coming out of your smoke break.”

“Fine, yes, anything,” Rozanov says quickly, taking a huge bite of his sandwich. He shoots a look at Shane, like he’s urging him to eat his gross tuna fish, so Shane shovels a scoop into his mouth and tries to swallow it down without gagging.

Tony relents and says that he’ll take them after meds. He stares at Rozanov’s back as they wait in line for the nurse to hand them pills in tiny plastic cups.

“You take medicine?” Shane asks, careful to keep his voice low. He’s surprised when Rozanov laughs again, another big, bright boom.

Rozanov turns, catching a glimpse of Shane’s face, and then raises his eyebrows. “Ah, you’re serious?”

“Yes,” Shane says, about a hundred decibels quieter than Rozanov. “Obviously.”

“Hollander, of course I take meds,” Rozanov says. “I take basically the whole med cart.”

He must be exaggerating. Shane peers over Rozanov’s shoulder at the cart as they move one person forward. “What do you take?”

“English is annoying to say,” Rozanov says with a shrug. “Three, no, four today. Make me not depressed, make me not crazy, try to make me, like, even.”

Shane stares at his back, glad that Rozanov can’t see Shane’s face or his—disbelief? Discomfort?

“Oh, also meds for sleep and acid reflux,” Rozanov says. He looks over his shoulder and rolls his eyes. “Hollander, is not a big deal. Everybody in the world is on meds.”

“Not—” Shane stops himself from saying us. “Um. Not hockey players.”

Rozanov turns around fully, seemingly considering what Shane said. “No,” Rozanov says. “But they also get hit many times in the head, so, not exactly the smartest people. Meds are not so bad. A lot easier than talking about feelings.”

Oh.

When Rozanov puts it like that, Shane just—maybe he’s being silly about it. Except— “Don’t you ever—”

He’s cut off by the nurse saying Rozanov’s name. Shane watches Rozanov’s head tip back, blue and orange and white and pink ovals and capsules disappearing through the part of his lip, the stretch of his neck, and the bob of his Adam’s apple as he takes the meds like he sees the guys on the team take shots. Rozanov washes it down with a sip from a waxy paper cup, and then it’s Shane’s turn.

The nurse hands him two plastic cups, one with water and one with a single white pill.

Shane forces himself to ignore the swarm of thoughts that roar into the forefront of his mind and takes the pill before the screaming takes over.

He doesn’t feel, like, better. But the world doesn’t end either.

Weird.

Rozanov is talking to Tony while Tony ignores Rozanov, typing something on the computer. Then Tony heaves a heavy sigh and stands. Rozanov turns to find Shane, raises an eyebrow, and that uproots Shane’s feet, following them down a stairwell and across a sad courtyard to a squatter, older building. After a few taps of Tony’s access card, they’re let into a small, dingy gymnasium.

“Key?” Rozanov says, his slides left behind as he backward-jogs away. Tony tosses his keys, and Rozanov catches them and sprints to the far side of the gym without breaking stride or losing balance.

Shane hangs back with Tony. “Why does a hospital have a gym?”

Tony’s pulling a cigarette from a carton in his pocket. “The hospital annexed an old school a while back. Mostly for admin and offices, but you’d be surprised how handy it is to have a place like this around.”

There’s a clatter from an open closet.

“Ilya, you’ve got 30 minutes,” Tony says, raising his voice to carry. “No bullshit or funny business, yeah? I’m not getting written up because of you.”

“I’ll be good!” Rozanov’s muffled voice calls back. He appears with two plastic hockey sticks and kicks a small ball towards them. “Hollander is the one you should worry about.”

Tony rolls his eyes and claps Shane on the shoulder. He might say something as he leaves, but Shane is already grinning. He can’t remember the last time he played ball hockey.

He scoops the ball up and jogs over to Rozanov, accepting one of the colorful sticks, the kind he used to play with in elementary school gym class.

“Nobody to drop the puck,” Shane says, a little breathless already.

“Ah,” Rozanov says, pulling a face. “Mr. NHL cannot play without this?”

Shane opens his mouth to retort, but Rozanov snatches the ball from Shane’s hand, tosses it over Shane’s shoulder, and takes off running toward the scuffed semi-circle painted beneath a basketball hoop. Apparently designating it as Shane’s goal.

Shane sprints after him.

It barely resembles hockey—they’re both sliding around in socks, and Rozanov hasn’t played in who knows how long—but they’re battling each other like it’s World Juniors all over again.

For all his talk about not being a hockey player anymore, Rozanov is still fucking incredible to watch. Stickhandling the ball seems effortless, and he’s so agile and balanced that he dances around Shane just like he did in Regina. And he still plays dirty—there are a few whacks at Shane’s shins, and one particularly nasty move where Rozanov hooks three fingers onto Shane’s hospital bracelet to yank him away from the ball.

At times, he catches himself just—watching Rozanov run, or staring at the damp circles darkening the fabric under Rozanov’s arms and at the base of his spine. Shane works up a bit of a sweat, too, breathless in the good way, the burn he associates with endorphins, not anxiety.

He can’t remember the last time he felt like. This. He doesn’t even know what this is. He can’t put a name to it, but it feels—different.

They’re arguing over what Rozanov claims should be a penalty shot when Tony comes to collect them. Time has moved differently for Shane this offseason, but it’s never gone by as quickly as the last thirty minutes. They keep bickering as they make their way back to the ward until Tony tells them to knock it off. Shane fights a smile, and Rozanov manages to stifle his laughter, but the minute they’re safely behind the door of their room, they both start laughing like idiots.

Shane doesn’t even know what he’s laughing about. Or the last time he laughed like this.

He’s about to say something—he’ll never remember what—when Rozanov presses him against the door, grasps Shane’s chin, and kisses him.

It’s his second kiss with Rozanov, technically, but it feels like his first, sweet and slow and scalding in a way he can’t remember ever feeling with a girl. Shane lets himself be kissed, lets Rozanov trace his tongue along Shane’s bottom lip, lets his eyes close, and doesn’t move an inch as his brain screams, God. No. Fuck. This is fucked. You shouldn’t be doing this. This is why you’re fucked up. And then Rozanov pulls back with a soft, parting smack.

“What was that for?” Shane asks, and Rozanov smiles, just the barest twitch of his lips.

“I have not had fun like that since, ah, World Juniors, I think,” Rozanov says. The hint of a smile disappears as quickly as it came, and Rozanov shrugs. “Or maybe is new Vyvanse. Who knows.” He turns away and strips off his shirt, leaving Shane standing by the door. “I will shower before dinner.”

Shane sure as hell isn’t going in the showers with Rozanov anytime soon—the thought alone burns through his body, an urge to vomit or run headfirst into the boards, all the screaming words rushing back in—so he washes up in the sink and wills his panic to follow the soap down the drain.

They sit together at dinner, and again during a movie that Shane barely remembers watching because Rozanov wouldn’t move his thigh from where it was pressing against Shane’s the entire time.

It’s not until later, when the lights have turned off, and Shane is lying awake like he always is, that the swirls of nerves and confusion coalesce into the question he’s been trying to form all day.

“Aren’t you afraid,” Shane addresses the dark ceiling and then stops. Clears his throat. “Aren’t you afraid the meds will, like, make you—”

“’m not afraid,” Rozanov interrupts, a tired mumble into his pillow. “Leave me out of this.”

Fucking. Fine. It’s dark. Rozanov can’t see Shane’s face. Nobody can see Shane right now. It rattles the caged anxiety in his chest and loosens the chains around the lock ever so slightly. “What if it makes me worse?” Shane asks, almost a whisper. “Maybe—what if this is why I’m good?”

Rozanov snorts. There’s a rustling, and if Shane squints, he can make out Rozanov sitting up in the sliver of streetlight that comes in through their slit of a window.

“Hollander, you fucking sucked this year,” Rozanov says, blunt and dead serious. “If I play, I destroy you. How can you get worse?”

How could Shane get worse? He chokes back a rasping, wounded exhale, or maybe it was half of a laugh, and blinks away the dampness clinging in the corners of his eyes. It’s the first time all day that Rozanov has been wrong. It’s the thought that’s haunted him since—Timbits, since the coaches said he was too weak, didn’t check enough, would never make it, that his parents should save their money; the same fear that kept him up awake on long bus rides across Ontario in juniors, that drove him to obsessively study Rozanov before playing him in Regina; the thought that has kept him from a decent night of sleep all fucking season. Shane could always get worse. This season is fucking—proof.

And—Rozanov is really wrong about the first thing. If Rozanov played this year, Shane thinks that maybe, just maybe, he might have someone to compete against. To try to beat. Maybe he would be in Montreal, maybe he would’ve had a great rookie season, maybe he would’ve won the Calder.

There’s a creak as Rozanov lies back down. “I can hear you think,” Rozanov says. “Go to bed.”

Shane doesn’t think he’ll sleep, but he blinks, and it’s morning again without a single nightmare or interruption.

Another first, courtesy of Ilya Rozanov.

—

Is there a way to tell when miracles occur? Or do you just find yourself at the end of one, unsure of how you got there?

Ilya thinks there might be a miracle occurring in his brain.

There was an inkling of it a couple of days ago when he and Hollander played ball hockey in the gym, a weightless kind of relief that Ilya can’t remember ever experiencing—except, maybe, for when he won at World Juniors.

There are only two options. Either he’s really fucking manic, so manic he’s euphoric, and he’s about to burn his entire life down again, or the Vyvanse is working.

Both scare Ilya shitless.

Those first few days are an out-of-body fever dream. Like he’s watching a movie featuring Ilya Rozanov in an alternate reality where everything went right, where he wasn’t fucked up in the first place. He has no issues eating his shitty breakfast. His meeting with Nguyen isn’t productive, but it’s not combative. He sits through large group and actually listens to Hernando’s rambling and Nadia’s anxieties, and he doesn’t interrupt or make a scene.

It has to be a trick. Ilya is skating on rapidly thawing ice, and he’s just waiting for the inevitable crack that can be heard down the length of the river, echoing off the bridges and banks, the first and final warning before everything solid crumbles beneath him.

“It can’t be this easy,” Ilya tells Nguyen, three days into adding Vyvanse to his med cocktail.

Nguyen cocks his head. “Why not?”

“Because—because.” Wet, hot tears sting the corners of his eyes. Ilya tries to blink them away. “If it’s that easy—”

His voice cracks. Ilya stares beyond Nguyen’s shoulder, out the window into the foggy Wednesday morning. He’s been here for two weeks now. That thought alone makes him want to scream. “Never mind,” Ilya says, finally, looking down at his slides.

“Ilya, come on,” Nguyen says, a trace of poorly hidden disappointment tinging every word. “Take your time and say what you want to say.”

“Fucking—” His fists clench, balled against his thighs. He hits the meat of his quad once, twice, and then stands. “If is this easy, why the fuck did I do all that?” The words scramble out of him, his arm flinging outward to encompass—this hospitalization, each one before that, the fucking draft, swallowing pills when he was fourteen, everything. “If is this easy, then what was the fucking point of all the, the—”

Ilya shakes his head and collapses into the chair. He tries to breathe, but there’s something choking his airway. He runs a hand through his hair and shakes his head again. He sounds so fucking young and stupid when he says, “What was the point?”

It’s quiet. He stares at the flip calendar on Nguyen’s desk. The clock on the ugly cement-block wall ticks.

Eventually, Nguyen hums. “We can’t go backward, Ilya. We can only move forward,” he says, soft and gentle in a way that makes Ilya want to laugh brash and wild. He isn’t a neurotic horse that’s about to kick, and he doesn’t need to be calmed like one.

Ilya looks to the right, at the degrees on Nguyen’s wall, the bookshelf with endless spines embossed with big, long words he can’t read. “This cannot be this easy,” he says, again, a scratched CD skipping and repeating over and over because he’s broken and can’t get it through his brain.

“Is it not exciting if it is?” Nguyen asks. “If it is this easy, think of what you can do now.”

He can’t. He won’t. Because—what if he’s—

“Is not,” Ilya says. He shakes his head once more and stands. “I think I am done for today.”

Nguyen sighs and types something on his computer. He won’t fight Ilya on this and force him to continue the session. He never does. “Okay. We can pick up next time. Good work today.”

Ilya scans Nguyen’s face. He hates when shrinks lie to him, but Nguyen seems to mean it, that Ilya did do good work today. Something irritated and uneasy still prickles at the base of his neck, adding to the odd, untethered restlessness he’s felt all day as he leaves Nguyen’s office.

He tries to shake the session off, to push the lingering thought of it can’t be this easy from his mind, but it sticks like a burr and needles across his skin. He’s not hungry at lunch, but Hollander eats his entire meal, and Ilya’s. He skips his smoke break for the second day in a row and decides to focus the thrumming discontent into his stupid rivers.

“What are you drawing?”

Ilya looks up from his paper. Hollander has been going through a stack of mazes on printer paper.

“Nothing,” Ilya says. He connects two lines to form a bridge, and draws a swirl around an island, etching in some shading as he goes.

“It doesn’t look like nothing,” Hollander says.

Ilya rolls his eyes. “What does it look like, then?”

“Uh...” Hollander leans forward, peering at Ilya’s paper. “Squiggles inside of an oval-ish blob?”

He could get pissy, but no anger wells in his chest, just—something else that makes him exhale a huff of laughter. “Is rivers, or supposed to be, anyway.”

Hollander leans forward even more. Ilya can see each eyelash, can smell the hospital shampoo, could count his freckles. A heady spike of heat coils below his navel.

“Wait,” Hollander says, “that’s really cool. It’s like—a brain, kind of.”

Ilya tilts his head, looking at the winding, whirling ink. It does kind of look like a brain.

“Messy, if it is a brain,” Ilya says, connecting another line.

Hollander sits back. His cheeks have flushed a little. “Yeah, I mean—that’s why I said it. I guess it reminds me of, like, my brain.”

Ilya’s heart rate picks up, a quickening he feels all the way in his core. Yes. Hollander’s brain is messy. So is Ilya’s. He stares down at his drawing and wills the red tipping his ears and crawling up his neck to go away.

“Will you draw me one?” Hollander asks.

Ilya looks up, surprised. “You want?”

“Yeah, I mean, it would be cool to have as, like, art in my place.” Hollander shrugs. “I like rivers. I’ve never lived in a city that didn’t have one.”

His heart is thundering now. He knows Hollander can’t hear it, but—God, Ilya can, and it’s drowning out everything else.

“Sure, I guess,” Ilya says, biting the inside of his cheek to fight back a smile and a million other things he can’t say. “I can draw you one.”

Something is shifting again. Ilya can tell. But it’s not the kind of shift that he associates with chaos, with his brain and his life malfunctioning and breaking down. It’s—different. Unleaded gas in an engine instead of high-octane diesel.

It’s an undercurrent that carries through the rest of the day. Hollander stays close, though they don’t talk much through dinner or the Red Sox game they show in the common area afterward. There’s a million things Ilya wants to say, a thousand questions he wants to ask, his curiosity rolling to a boil the longer Hollander sticks to his side. It’s childish, this urge to tug on Hollander’s pigtails or ask why the sky is blue, why does the sun rise, why are you here, why am I here, why are any of us here, how did I get so bad, how did you get so bad, how can anything ever get any better. It’s embarrassing. Stupid.

Addicting.

He wakes up around four to piss. He shakes off, splashes some water on his face, and opens the bathroom door to find Hollander upright, his skin the same pale as the sheets puddled in his lap from the light spilling into the room.

“Can’t sleep?” Ilya asks, low and sleep-hoarse.

Hollander half-hesitates and then nods.

Ilya doesn’t know if Hollander can see his face, but he still offers a smile. “Want to see something cool?”

Hollander nods again.

He tells Hollander to put on a hoodie, and once they’re both dressed, he leads them through the ward to climb up the back stairwell. They won’t get caught; Manny is on the night shift, and he’s always too busy gaming on his PSP. The door to the roof is never locked for some reason involving helicopters, and Ilya can hear Hollander’s soft gasp as he opens the door to see Boston twinkling before him.

“Holy shit,” Hollander exhales. “Are we supposed to be up here?”

Ilya snorts. “No.”

“We should—I don’t want to get in trouble,” Hollander says. Ilya turns to see him hovering in the doorway. “Maybe we should go back down?”

Ilya won’t roll his eyes. “Do you trust me?”

Hollander shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Um.”

“For fuck’s sake, Hollander,” Ilya says, holding out his hand. “Live a little.”

Hollander is backlit by the stairwell light, but Ilya can see the way his shoulders reset before he nods and takes Ilya’s hand.

He doesn’t take Hollander to the very edge—Ilya has never trusted himself around the edges of roofs—but there’s a cement-covered vent-thing that makes a nice bench.

For a while, they just sit there, shoulder to shoulder, watching the city. They can see the river and Fenway, the flashing red and blue of ambulances, and the cars snaking along Memorial Drive.

It’s really fucking beautiful. Even more so when the navy sky starts to shift, a pale sliver appearing on the horizon. This isn’t the first early morning he’s spent on this roof. He doesn’t know if it’ll be his last. His hope isn’t worth much, but—he hopes it is.

He doesn’t know when he starts watching Hollander, but he realizes he is between one breath and the next, as quick and unthinking as breathing.

Curiosity courses under his skin the longer he watches, the longer he urges to count every freckle, the longer his fingers twitch for a cigarette.

“Can I ask a question?” Ilya says. He looks away before Hollander can see and refocuses on the red and orange bleeding into the barest beginnings of sunrise. “Rumor was you were taking another season in juniors, start in 2010. Why did you not?”

Hollander is quiet for so long, Ilya wonders if he didn’t hear the question over the wind. Right when Ilya is about to repeat himself, Hollander tilts his head.

“Rumor was you were going to go back to Dynamo to develop for another season,” Hollander says. “But if I wasn’t competing against you, there didn’t seem to be a reason to wait.”

Ilya doesn’t know what to say to that. His pulse is in his throat, his stomach, everywhere.

“I used to blame you, I think,” Hollander says. “That everything was so shitty this year. Like, maybe if you got drafted and had gone back to Dynamo and I went back to Kitchener, then I would start this season and be—normal.”

Hollander’s words ache, puck to bone to bruise. Ilya would blame himself, too. He already does.

“You would be in Montreal, though,” Ilya says, once he’s sure he won’t scream or crack or cry.

“Maybe,” Hollander says, ducking his head slightly. “Maybe that would’ve been better, too.”

“We would be rivals.”

Hollander turns, his torso twisting toward Ilya. “Would that be so bad?”

It’s so easy to lean in, to cup Hollander’s cheek, to thumb at the corner of his mouth.

“No,” Ilya says into the infinitesimal space between them. “I do not think it would be so bad.”

And then he presses their lips together, and holds on as he kisses Hollander, desperate and alive and full of something Ilya can’t name.

PART 4 | Through the Door

JANET: What do you think happens when people walk through the door? It's the only thing in the universe I don't know.

ELEANOR: I don't know either. The wave returns to the ocean. What the ocean does with the water after that is anyone's guess. But as a very wise not-robot once told me: ‘The true joy is in the mystery.’

—The Good Place, Chapter 53: Whenever You’re Ready

They kiss on the roof until daylight breaks, and Shane shivers a yawn into Rozanov’s mouth. But Rozanov doesn’t seem offended.

“Am I boring you?” he asks, his mouth twisting wry. It tugs somewhere in Shane, urging him to kiss Rozanov again. He doesn’t.

Shane shakes his head. There's a panic dawning, rushing into his ears and mirroring the horizon. They’re on a roof. Anyone could see them. He just. Like. Made out with a guy? On a roof. Realization crashes through his veins and churns in his stomach, his blood and bile curdling. “We. Shouldn’t—we need to. Somebody could.”

Shane ducks his head. The noise is really loud. Boston is loud in the morning. To Rozanov’s cross necklace, he says, “Can we go back down now. Please.”

Rozanov presses his thumb into the space between Shane’s lower lip and chin. His hand is sticky. Damp like morning dew. “Yes, okay.”

The warmth of Rozanov’s sly smile and the slapping of their feet in the stairwell surrebound and swell through Shane’s body, raising goosebumps across every inch of his skin, a sickly combination of anxiety and anticipation alongside the cold, sweat pooling on his palms and in the pits of his knees. He kissed Ilya Rozanov. Kind of a lot. And the way Ilya Rozanov keeps smiling over his shoulder means they might—more.

More is too much, maybe. But in the way ghost hunting shows are too much and documentaries about serial killers are too much. A morbid curiosity that tugs Shane forward, that makes him want to—know.

They sneak through the ward until they’re back in their room. Rozanov is looking at Shane in a way that hooks in his navel and claws up his spine, ratcheting his shoulders up to his ears.

Shane. Has to say something. The first attempt sticks in his throat, but he clears it and tries again. “Do you, um, want to talk?”

The sly smile returns. “Hm. Not really,” Rozanov says, his voice low. He guides, no, pushes Shane against the closed door with two fingers pressed to his abdomen. Shane’s chest constricts, a winded gasp escaping him, the same as when he’s checked flat to the ice.

“You want this?” Rozanov asks, his half-lidded eyes flickering from Shane’s eyes to his lips. Shane knows, knows they were just kissing barely five minutes ago, but he doesn’t know how to say he wants it again. He can’t say he wants it again. He’s not like Rozanov. He needs Rozanov to say it first.

Maybe he sees something on Shane’s face, or maybe he’s impatient, because Rozanov shifts from one foot to the next and asks, “You are not going to chicken out?”

“I’m not a chicken,” Shane says. It doesn’t sound very confident, but he doesn’t know what else to say. He knows that Rozanov has done this before, obviously. But also. Shane has no idea what he wants—except, maybe, to know how hot a newly struck match is, and if the pile of sticks in his stomach is flammable, and what steps need to happen next to start a fire when his entire body is screaming to run, strop, drop, roll, kiss—more.

And still, Rozanov waits for something. Else. More. With every passing second, the kindling grows impatient, demanding a spark, his throat and gut and groin begging for the burn.

Shane nods, the barest tilt of his head, his eyes never once leaving the curve of Rozanov’s upper lip.

And then he doesn’t have to wait anymore. Finally closing his eyes is benched relief from the burning in his lungs and legs after a double shift.

Rozanov kisses Shane, his hand sliding to Shane’s jaw and his tongue sliding into Shane’s mouth. A sound Shane has never heard before leaves his lips, quickly lost in the soft smacking between them. He needs to hold onto something, otherwise he’s sure he’ll wake up, so he grips the tight curve of Rozanov’s waist, his other hand unable to find purchase as it slides against the soft fabric covering Rozanov’s chest.

Rozanov takes the hint and pulls off his hoodie, revealing his cannon tattoo and endless, mole-covered skin, every muscle still in perfect condition, ready to take the ice and check Shane into the boards at any moment.

Rozanov tugs at Shane’s shirt, and he doesn’t remember much beyond stripping, or taking Rozanov’s thumb into his mouth, or fumbling with Rozanov’s sweats, or sinking to his knees and wrapping his lips around Rozanov’s thick, flushed dick.

Shane wishes he were better. He tries to emulate the blowjobs he’s gotten before, one from a girl at a party in Sudbury in juniors, the others from the girl he was dating before the draft. But he doesn’t really know if those were any good. If he’s doing any good.

But when Rozanov pulls him off, he says it wasn’t bad. He says that it was too much, too good. Shane could be better. He wants to be better.

He pushes Rozanov toward the bed on Shane’s side of the room.

Shane thought that—maybe he was asexual, maybe, or that he was too focused on saving his season to have any interest in hooking up with girls or jerking off. Getting himself off before bed or in the morning shower waned from a frequent occurrence to—nothing, really. At least, nothing over the summer.

As he strips, it all comes back in a way that he’s never—it’s never been like this before.

He sticks for a moment, wrinkled fabric rented in his hands, the urge to rush back to Rozanov warring with his inability to let go of his shirt. A pressure is building inside him, only partially relieved when he folds his clothes, and partially relieved when he turns back to Rozanov, his nakedness returned in Rozanov’s stare, in his heaving chest and the flex of his abdomen. There’s nowhere to go except for on top of Rozanov on a bed this small, and there’s no time to hesitate because Rozanov is kissing along Shane’s jaw and wrapping his hand around Shane’s cock. Oh god. Fuck.

He wants to get his mouth around Rozanov again. He’s never going to get to do this again, probably. He needs—something. Anything. This.

Shane swings his leg over Rozanov’s massive fucking thigh, his hair prickling pleasantly against Shane’s leaking cock. He wraps his lips around the head of his cock, taking in as much as he can. Rozanov threads his hands through Shane’s hair, the grip and guidance pulling at every nerve in Shane’s body. He can hear Rozanov above him, murmuring, praise just barely audible over the hammering in Shane’s ears.

He wants to stay here forever. Something—wrong but overwhelming echoes through his skull, saying, this is where you should be. Shane ignores it. Has to, otherwise he would never leave.

Rozanov starts thrusting gently. Perversely, Shane wishes it would be more, more force, more everything. His whole body is aflame, and Rozanov pulling Shane off, groaning and striping his come across his fist is gasoline to fuel the burn. Fuck. Shane wishes it were across his tongue or face instead. Fuck. Fuck. That’s really gay.

“Not bad for first time,” Rozanov says with a pant as he pulls Shane to his chest, thumbing away a stray drop of spit, or precome, maybe, from the corner of Shane’s mouth.

“Fuck you,” Shane says, his eyes narrowing.

“Ah, no. Opposite. Let me show you how to do this,” Rozanov says. He pushes and adjusts Shane’s body until he’s hovering above him, but a brief flicker of a frown crosses his face. Confused and concerned, he looks down to see himself—flagging.

“Oh,” Shane says, and he can’t keep the disappointment out of his voice. “Um, I don’t. I don’t know why—”

Rozanov presses a soft kiss to Shane’s navel, the newly scarred bite mark on his forearm, the older scar fading above it, his navel, his dick. “Is okay, probably just meds. Happens to me sometimes, too.”

“But—” Shane cuts himself off. He shouldn’t say that this is how it usually is with girls. But in the shower—

He doesn’t want to stop. He can’t say he doesn’t want to stop.

“Hollander, is okay,” Rozanov says, wrapping a gentle hand around the base of Shane’s cock. “Just—be patient. Let me make you feel good.”

Shane’s head thumps back against his pillow as Rozanov takes Shane into his mouth. He holds Shane’s mostly-soft cock in his mouth, infernally warm but agonizingly cautious. It’s—incredible, and embarrassing, and so, so weird to just be—held against Rozanov’s tongue, to feel Rozanov hum around the length of him as he takes Shane deeper.

The gnawing, clawing hunger returns just as quickly as it left. Shane hardens in Rozanov’s mouth as the suckling turns into long, confident bobs that feel—fucking incredible. He’s losing his mind. He can’t hold on—to Ilya’s hair, or his—anything.

“Fuck, Rozanov, you—fuck. I’m gonna. You better get off, I’m gonna—”

Rozanov just—holy shit, groans around Shane’s dick—and keeps sucking him, going faster, until Shane’s orgasm punches through his stomach and he curls forward, coming down Rozanov’s throat.

“Holy.” Shane can’t catch his breath. “Holy shit.”

Rozanov smirks and slaps his palm against Shane’s abs. There’s nowhere for Rozanov to go, nowhere for him to roll over, so he collapses against Shane’s chest, their softening dicks pressed together. The sun is fully up now, the kind of hazy morning Shane associates with moving to Boston, and the dog days of summer.

They kiss once, heated, and then once again, softer, and Rozanov lays his head against Shane’s chest, and it’s just—nice. To be close like this. If this isn’t going to happen again, Shane wants to enjoy it now.

His eyes close as he drifts, letting the weight of Rozanov and the give-take of their chests against each other anchor him, Shane’s falling on an exhale as Rozanov’s rises on an inhale.

Maybe time moves, maybe it doesn’t. Shane is—content. He can’t remember the last time he was content.

He thinks of something Dr. Ben said in their one-on-one when he was trying to goad Shane into talking. If happiness is what Shane is searching for, Dr. Ben said—though Shane never said he was searching for anything—then he should reframe it as searching for equilibrium, for contentment.

Shane thought it was bullshit because he thinks most of what Dr. Ben says is bullshit. But if this is content, then Shane doesn’t mind searching for this. When he gets out, he’ll have to let Vic set him up with some girl like he’s always asking to do.

There’s a knock at the door that makes Shane jump and accidentally elbow Rozanov.

“Hey, sleepyheads,” a voice that sounds like Tony calls through the door. “Up and at ’em. You’re late for vitals and meds.”

Rozanov groans. “Fuck off, Tony.”

Shane half-panics, but it’s smothered quickly under the warmth of Rozanov. It’s not like that’s giving anything away. That’s what Rozanov says to Tony most mornings.

Tony mumbles, and Shane strains to listen to his footsteps disappear down the hall. He smiles at Rozanov, and Rozanov smiles back, a little sheepish.

“I’m hungry, c’mon,” Rozanov says, hauling himself up and off of Shane and the bed. Shane is hungry, too. Really hungry. The kind of hungry he hasn’t been since the season ended.

Once Shane is dressed, and Rozanov is done in the bathroom, Shane clears his throat. “Um, you’re not going to tell anyone about this, right?”

Rozanov snorts as he rolls on a sock. “Yes, I am going to go to the Herald and say I met Shane Hollander in this psych ward and he sucked my cock.”

He’s joking. He’s definitely joking. Shane shoves his hands into his sweatpants pockets, shifting from one foot to the other. “Um.”

Rozanov looks up and rolls his eyes. “No, Hollander, I’m not going to tell anyone. Is not like I have second father around to beat me about it, so I will just keep it to myself.”

“I’m really sorry that happened,” Shane says, because he didn’t say so the first time. “You didn’t deserve that.”

Rozanov raises his eyebrows and stands. He stalks over to Shane in two strides, wrapping his hand around Shane’s hip. “Are you saying I deserved to go first?”

“Yeah fucking right,” Shane says, grinning. “Not on your life.”

Rozanov laughs and presses a quick kiss to Shane’s cheek, and then smacks his side before hip-checking him out of the way to open the door.

He tries not to let—all of this, Rozanov, this morning, last night—show on his face as he takes his Zoloft and eats breakfast. He has a joint session with Dr. Ben and Dr. Kaufmann after, so he tries to be quick, but the eggs and yogurt on his tray actually taste halfway decent for once, and he has no trouble getting it all down.

Rozanov gets a phone call, leaving Shane alone at the table to finish up. He tries to remember what he ordered for lunch. Maybe the taco bowl? He—

“Shane?”

He whips his head around. It’s. Fucking. Vic?

He watches Vic—fucking Victor St-Simon, his fucking winger—take in Shane’s hospital bracelet, his meal, his. Everything, and. Not freak out. Just...kiss his girlfriend—no, Caro is his fiancée now—on the cheek and then whisper something in her ear. And then take a seat across from Shane.

Shane stares at Vic, and then tracks his eyeline to see Caro sit down next to Nadia and start chatting like they’re old friends. She and Vic both have the same volunteer sticker stuck to their shirts.

“I’d ask what you’re doing here,” Vic starts, smiling and waving at Nadia, “but I can guess, and it’s none of my business anyway.”

“Um.” Shane blinks and looks down at the table. “Please, uh.”

“Shane, kid, hey. Don’t worry about it,” Vic says. Shane looks up. He seems genuinely concerned. “I won’t tell anyone. It’s not my business. It’s not anyone’s business.”

Shane isn’t sure if he should believe him. “Um. Why are you...”

“Here?” Vic tilts his head toward Caro. “Caro was a patient here for about three weeks in January. It was a really tough time, but we were so grateful she got the help she needed that we thought we’d give back once she was feeling good again. We like to come in and visit and chat once, twice a month. I play a mean triangle during music therapy.”

If he thinks back, Shane can remember Vic being a healthy scratch a few times in January, but he never said why. It didn’t seem like anyone had a problem with it.

“I’m not crazy,” Shane blurts out, because Vic has to know that Shane knows this isn’t okay.

Vic turns back and gives that patented Padre face, the one that makes you want to be honest and be a better teammate. “Yeah, you are,” Vic says. “And so is Caro, and so am I. I don’t have meds for it like she does, but we’re all a little crazy. Nobody gets to the show without being a little crazy. It’s just—nobody talks about it.” Vic shrugs. “It’s shit, but...how it is.”

He wonders—who else. And what Vic knows. He wants to ask, but some claxon sounds somewhere in the back of his mind. Any question feels like a step too close to the edge of a cliff, except—

“You didn’t say anything,” Shane says. “When, um. Caro...”

“It wasn’t mine to say,” Vic says with a shrug. “If guys asked, I would’ve talked to Caro, and shared what I could.”

Shane doesn’t know what to say next, but Vic doesn’t press or push or try to make him speak, like they’re sitting in Rocco’s waiting for their lunch and not—here. And eventually, his racing pulse slows into something normal.

Huh. Maybe he’ll properly freak out later, but for now, he’s just—okay?

And then he nearly jumps out of his skin again when a hand lands on his shoulder. Shane cranes his neck to see Tony with his hands up.

“Whoa, sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Tony says. “Hey, Victor.”

“Hey, Antonio, nice to see you, man,” Vic says with a grin.

They bump fists. This is so fucking weird.

Then, Tony says, “Shane, I was just coming to say the doctor is in, etcetera, etcetera.”

Shane stares at Tony.

“Dr. Nguyen and Dr. Kaufmann are ready for you,” Tony clarifies.

Oh, Duh. Right.

Shane stands and gives Vic a half-wave. “I guess...I’ll see you?”

“Yeah, bud. Take your time. Text me whenever.” Vic stands, too. “Just—” he lowers his voice. “The trainers will be good about this, but I wouldn’t bring it up to the front office. Not that they wouldn’t support you, I don’t know. I just think—it’s none of their business, yeah?”

Something sticks in his throat. He keeps forgetting that—there’s real life waiting for him. Explanations and the team and press. Maybe it’s good that this happened now, and not during the season like his dad said.

“Yeah, thanks,” Shane says. Vic nudges him with his shoulder and goes over to where Caro is sitting.

Dr. Ben and Dr. Kaufmann are talking when Tony lets him into Dr. Kaufmann’s office.

“Oh, Shane! Come in, come in,” Dr. Kaufmann says, motioning him in. Shane closes the door and takes an uneasy seat. He kind of feels like he’s in the principal’s office, though he’s only actually been there one time, and it was because some kid was making fun of him and he wasn’t in trouble.

“Dr. Nguyen was just updating me on your progress in his pilot and in your one-on-ones,” Dr. Kaufmann says, putting her glasses on and peering down at his chart. “How are you feeling today?”

“Fine?” Shane says. He’s surprised Dr. Ben said that—it’s not like he ever says much. But he should say he’s feeling better. That always seems to please Dr. Ben. “Better, I think.”

“Good, good. And how are you feeling on the Zoloft?”

“Uh, good.”

“Yeah?” Dr. Kaufmann looks up, a small smile on her face. “No side effects? Nausea, insomnia, decreased appetite, thoughts of self-harm or suicide?”

“No, none of those,” Shane says. Not sleeping last night probably doesn’t count. “And I think my appetite might be better?”

“That’s wonderful,” Dr. Kaufmann says. “Well, if you’re ready, I think we can go ahead and discharge you, as long as you continue your medication, which your PCP or an outside psychiatrist can prescribe. We can offer a referral if you need one.”

“Wait.” Shane leans forward. “What? Discharge?”

“Well, it’s Friday, and I don’t see any emergent need to keep you here for the weekend.” Dr. Kaufmann pauses. “Again, only if you feel like you’re ready.”

Shane opens his mouth. Closes it. “To go home?”

“Yes,” Dr. Kaufmann says, taking her glasses off and folding her hands. “To go home.”

“Oh. I—yes, I mean yeah, I want to go home,” Shane says, standing, before he realizes that he should probably sit back down. “Today, right?”

Dr. Kaufmann’s smile grows. “Yes, today. As soon as the paperwork is finished.”

“And, I’m like. Better?”

Her smile falters. “Better is tricky. You expressed to Dr. Nguyen that you felt you didn’t need a diagnosis, so I can’t say whether or not your mental health issues will resolve with time. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Healing from something like this can be a lifelong process.”

Shane really fucking hopes it isn’t. It can’t be a lifelong process. It needs to—stay gone.

“I recommend that you continue with talk therapy once you leave,” Dr. Kaufmann continues. “However, you are clearly no longer in the state of emergency you were in when you first arrived, and seem more than stable and prepared to return to your daily life.”

Shane stares at Dr. Kaufmann. Stares at Dr. Ben. They both smile back at him.

“You did it, Shane,” Dr. Ben says. “You put in the work. I knew you could.”

“Um. Thanks.” Shane stands, unable to sit any longer. What if they change their mind, tie him to the chair, and keep him here? “What’s like. What do I do?”

“Well, I think I’d get packing,” Dr. Kaufmann says, maybe a little amused. “Tony can go over any other necessary paperwork or procedures. And maybe think about coming by to say hi to us, or volunteering. It’s always lovely to see success stories to inspire patients.”

There’s no way in hell Shane is doing that, but he still nods. “Okay. Um. Well. Thank you.”

Dr. Kaufmann waves him off. “The only person to thank is yourself. And while I hope never to see you in a patient capacity again, if you ever have any trouble, please don’t hesitate to come in.”

Again: no way in hell. “Right,” Shane says. “Okay, well. Bye.”

He’s in a hurry to leave the office when Dr. Kaufmann says, “Shane, one more thing.”

He turns. Her head is poked out of her door into the hall, and she glances side-to-side before stepping out and closing the door behind her.

“I just wanted to say this now that I’ll no longer be working with you in a patient capacity,” Dr. Kaufmann says, her voice low like she’s letting him in on a secret. “Just because Boston drafted you doesn’t mean you have to stay here.”

He doesn’t know what he was expecting her to say—maybe ask him to sign something, or that he’s actually super extra crazy and needs to be locked away for life—but it wasn’t. That.

“Um, what.” He swallows. “What do you mean?”

“If there’s a team that better fits your playing style or a city that fits your lifestyle or needs, you can always request a trade, or not extend your contract when it’s up,” Dr. Kaufmann says.

“Uh.” Is she talking about Montreal? He doesn’t know, but it makes him stand up a little straighter. He had never considered—he just assumed he would play in Boston until he retired. It’s stupid, maybe, that he didn’t realize there was another option. He wonders what his mom would say. She’s big on loyalty, and she didn’t let him quit violin until hockey got intense because she wanted him to always finish out his commitments. But maybe she would make an exception. She really doesn’t like the Raiders. She always wears black at the games, not his jersey. “I’m not. I don’t…”

She rests a hand against his shoulder. “Just something to think about, yeah? Keep it in the back of your mind. Just because you’re in a situation doesn’t mean you have to stay there. You’re the only person in control.”

He nods, and she shakes his hand, and Tony takes him back to his room, chattering about discharge paperwork, billing, which pharmacy to send his script to, whether he wants his parents to come pick him up, to which he says no.

And then he’s alone in his room. He doesn’t know where Rozanov is. He feels kind of like he took a bad hit to the board and hasn’t shaken it off. Maybe he could go to Montreal. But that’s, like, at minimum two years away. And Rozanov—

No. He won’t think about that. He can’t think about Rozanov like—that. He tries to push it from his mind, to pack his things into his duffel from juniors. Tony gives him a plastic bag with the belongings he came into the ER with, his plain black cap. His phone. There are probably so many missed texts and calls. He almost starts to panic, but—

“I don’t have to turn it on yet,” he says, just to himself, and feels silly for it, and—weirdly kind of proud at the same time.

He places it at the bottom of his bag and starts packing folded shirts on top of it when Rozanov comes in, a piece of paper folded in his hand.

“Almost lunch time,” Rozanov says, jamming his thumb back toward the hall. He watches as Rozanov’s eyes go from Shane’s face to the duffel on his bed. “Are you packing?”

“Yeah, I’m getting discharged,” Shane says, shifting his weight. He doesn’t know why it feels shitty to say.

Rozanov raises his eyebrows. “Good for you,” he says, as cold as the first time Shane introduced himself in that Regina parking lot.

Shane doesn’t. He doesn’t know what to do. With that.

“Um, yeah, they said I didn’t need to be here over the weekend, so, yeah.” Shane puts down the undershirt he was folding, and then picks it up to refold it.

“I say good for you,” Rozanov says. “What, you want gold star sticker?”

“Are you—pissed at me?” Shane says, putting the undershirt back down.

Rozanov rolls his eyes and sets the paper down on his bed. “What, you want me to throw you going-away party? Good job. You did it. You won.”

Shane crosses his arms, his eyes narrowing. “What the fuck do you mean I won?”

“I think you know what I mean.”

The stupor is still here, but it’s bad now, the winded kind he hates that makes him feel like he’s back to being the smallest kid in Atom. He sounds like that fucking ten-year-old, his words wavering as he says, “I thought you’d be happy for me.”

Rozanov snorts. “Hollander, if you need me to be happy for you, you should tell Kaufmann you are not ready to go home. Is fucked up.”

What—why did this. Why is he. What did Shane even do.

“What the fuck?” His eyes narrow. “It’s not my fault that you’re, like, a frequent flyer or whatever they say. I did the work. I got better. So don’t get mad at me.”

Rozanov laughs, a sharp bark that scratches across Shane’s already flushed skin. “You did not put in the work. You do not even know what the work is. You will be back. When? I don’t know. But you will.”

This—this is fucking unbelievable. “I don’t know why you’re so, like, angry? It’s not my fault you don’t want to fucking—try.”

Rozanov turns around, shaking his head. “You don’t know shit about me, Hollander.”

“That first night you said you didn’t have anything to get better for,” Shane says. “That’s bullshit. You’re—you’re Ilya Rozanov. You’re the best in the world.”

“I’m not a fucking hockey player anymore,” Rozanov says, turning, his eyes a narrowed, shiny glare.

“You could be if you tried,” Shane shoots back, crossing his arms again. “If you fucking tried to get better, if you got an ATO—I mean, I’m sure Providence would give you one—”

“Hollander,” Rozanov says, bone-fracture quiet and deathly low. “You don’t want to go there. So don’t.”

“I don’t get what your fucking problem is,” Shane says, unable to stop his voice from cracking. He flings an arm toward the door. “If you tried to get out of here, you could. Just—go for it! It would be a mistake not to go for it.”

Rozanov gets up in his face. He’s not that much bigger than Shane, but right now he. Fucking. Looms.

“You will have a good life, Shane Hollander,” Rozanov says. “You marry a nice girl, put babies in the cup. Good for you. Leave me out of it.”

Rozanov turns, at the door between one blink and the next.

“I would be happy for you,” Shane says, barely anything before he can leave. Rozanov pauses in the doorway. “If you got better.”

“Paper is for you,” Rozanov says, eventually, not even bothering to turn around. “Like I say. Good for you.”

And then he leaves, disappearing beyond the door frame and not bothering to look back.

Shane stares at the space he left until he eventually sinks onto his bed. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but—whatever it was, it was silly. It was a one-time thing. It’s not like Shane is going to—fucking. Stay here. Like, fuck Rozanov for being so shitty about it. For not caring.

And fuck Shane for thinking—

Whatever. He blinks away. Nothing. And shakes his head.

He eventually opens his eyes. And sees the paper. He reaches across the small divide between their beds and unfolds the thick paper, like cardstock, or maybe a sketchbook, to find one of Rozanov’s river drawings across two silhouetted heads, one with spiky hair, and one with curly, side by side, like they were this morning at sunrise.

He stares at it, fingers tracing over the ink, trailing along the swirls and swathes until he reaches a small note scribbled at the bottom in clumsy, child-like English.

we 2 fucked up brains. nice not be alone -ir

And a phone number underneath.

The paper trembles a little. Shane wipes at his eye and exhales a shuddering breath. It’s a really nice drawing. Maybe he’ll—frame it. Somewhere people won’t see, maybe. He’s been thinking about building a cottage of his own near his parents.

There’s a quiet knock at the door, and Shane looks up. It’s just Tony. He tries not to feel. Caught.

“We’ve got the paperwork for you to sign,” Tony says. “You ready to go?”

Shane nods and refolds the paper, carefully placing it atop his clothes. He zips and shoulders his duffel, puts on his real shoes for the first time in six days. Signs a stack of paperwork. Looks around for Rozanov, and can’t find him.

There are two doors, the one leading out of the ward, and the one waiting in front of him after Tony walks him down to reception. People come in and out. Doctors, patients, family. Beyond the glass, it’s a sunny day, the early morning haze clearing for a beautiful August afternoon. Boston bustles like it always does. He adjusts the ball cap on his head and nods, just to himself.

He has no idea what comes next. He wishes he did. But maybe it’s okay that he doesn’t.

Shane takes a deep breath, steps forward, and pushes into the light.

PART 5 | Person of Permanent Potential

And then Cathy showed up and we hung out/Trading swigs from a bottle all bitter and clean/Locking eyes, holding hands/Twin high maintenance machines.

I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.

—The Mountain Goats, This Year

Fridays are discharge days. Ilya didn’t know what he expected. Perfect Shane Hollander, to stay here, fucked up like him?

No. Shane Hollander shouldn’t be here. Of course he would get better. Of course he would leave. That’s what you’re supposed to do.

He hides in the single-stall restroom for as long as he can before Belinda threatens to knock down the door. He splashes water on his face, hands gripping the sink, and shakes his head once, twice. Like Hollander is a bad headache that will go away with enough time and Tylenol.

He finds Tony back at the nurse’s station.

“Is Kaufmann still here?” Ilya demands.

“Hello to you, too,” Tony says with an eye roll. “She might be, but she’s got a meeting—hey, you can’t just walk in there!”

Ilya’s already halfway down the hall, flipping Tony off over his shoulder. Kaufmann’s door is open, and she’s packing some charts into a leather satchel.

“I want out,” Ilya says, closing the door behind him. “Vyvanese is making me better. Is that easy. I can be discharged.”

Kaufmann raises her eyebrows, her thin lips pressed together.

Ilya crosses his arms. Raises his eyebrows back.

“Okay,” Kaufmann relents. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

He doesn’t really want to, just wants to get this over with, but he’ll play nice if it means getting out. “Friday. Discharge day. I want out.”

Kaufmann’s eyebrows are still all the way up by the reddish-gray hair collected in a bun on the top of her head. “Does this have anything to do with your roommate getting discharged?”

“No,” Ilya says. “I’m better. Stable. I want to go.”

“Ilya, just because you say you’re stable doesn’t mean you are,” Kaufmann says. “You’ve only been on the new medicine for a few days. We don’t know if you’ve exited this mixed affected state. You could shift or cycle at any moment.”

“I do everything you want,” Ilya protests. “I do group, I do sessions with Nguyen, I play nice with Hollander, I take meds. What more do you want?”

“It’s not about what I want,” Kaufmann says, her tone turning gentle. “It’s about what you want, and if you think you’re ready to go home. Every time a patient leaves, I say the same thing: I hope never to see you again. But if you leave today, will I honestly be able to say that?”

He could lie. He could say yes. It wouldn’t even be a lie, really. He would just make sure to go to one of the other four hundred ERs in the city. But word seems to find its way back to Kaufmann. Maybe he should move. What does Boston have to offer him, really?

Free rent. His best friend. Good Russian food in Brookline.

“No,” Ilya admits. “But. I do want to go.”

“Do you want to leave, or do you want to get better?” Kaufmann asks, still so gentle, like he’s a child. “You can have both. It’s not impossible. You just have to decide. You have the potential.”

Ilya scoffs, a thick sound half-stuck in his throat. He looks away, to the window, and then down to his hands. He has a hangnail.

Potential.

He’s always had potential. That’s all he’ll ever have. He’s a person of permanent potential.

“How about this,” Kaufmann says after a few quiet moments pass. “If you work up a plan—a real plan, a detailed plan—for how you will continue your treatment and care beyond these walls over the weekend, then I will pencil you in for the first thing Monday morning, and we can reassess, and potentially discharge.”

“What,” Ilya starts, and then clears his throat. “What does this plan look like?”

“A daily routine,” Dr. Kaufmann says. “The name of the therapist you’ll see, and the psychiatrist who will continue to prescribe your meds. Three realistic goals for one month, six months, and one year. Where you’ll live, and what job you’ll try to get. A plan of action for your next manic or depressive episode.”

That doesn’t sound impossible. Sveta said she would visit tomorrow. She could help.

“Okay,” Ilya says, finally. Now he sounds like a child. “I will do this.”

“And I’m gonna have the weekend crew keep a close eye on you, okay? So no funny business.” Kaufmann hesitates and then says, “Ilya, you have no bigger champion than me. I want you out of my hospital more than anything in the world. I just want it to be for the right reasons, and for good.”

He grinds the heel of his hand into his eye until spots dance, and he nods again. He believes her. He does. She hasn’t lied to him. She has no reason to.

“I do have to go, though,” Kaufmann says. “My partner is taking me out, and if I’m late, she’ll kill me.”

He looks up, and then to the framed photo on the bookshelf that he assumed was Kaufmann and her sister. Kaufmann never says anything about herself. She obviously knows about him, but—

If he speaks again, he knows it’ll be hoarse and embarrassing, so he just nods and stands.

“See you Monday?” Kaufmann asks as she also stands and returns to packing her bag.

“Yeah,” Ilya says, finally. “Monday.”

It’s only three days. Two, really, now that Friday is almost over. He can do two more days, though it’s always weird to be on the ward over the weekend, when it’s a little emptier before it fills back up on Saturday and Sunday nights.

He drifts through the rest of the day. Nadia went home, which is nice. Kashif is still here for a few more days. They play cards after dinner. He watches half of the movie—some romcom he has no interest in—and returns to his room.

Hollander’s unmade bed stares back at him, stranding him in the center of the room, marooned and unblinking at the island of rumpled bedclothes where they fucked not even twenty-four hours ago.

He won’t be pathetic. He won’t climb into it and try to sniff out Hollander’s scent like a faggy bloodhound.

He turns on one heel and leaves to find the night nurse. There’s no way he’s surviving the weekend without an Ambien.

Either it knocks him out cold, or he’s exhausted from so little sleep the night before, but he nearly sleeps through breakfast and morning vitals, and can’t stomach the idea of another watery scrambled eggs.

He’s never been more grateful when Sveta arrives with a McDonald’s bag in one hand and a Dunkin’ iced coffee in the other.

«I love you, so, so much,» he says in Russian, kissing her on the cheek and pulling her into a bear hug.

«I love you, too, Ilyukha,» Sveta says, pulling away and looking far more serious. «Now sit, your McGriddle will get cold.»

It’s so strange, how she continues to—do this for him. He’s always waiting for the day that she doesn’t, the day she finally gives up on him like everyone else, but it hasn’t come yet, and he won’t look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when that horse comes bearing sausage, egg, and cheese between two pancake buns.

After he’s eaten the first McGriddle and is halfway through the second, he swallows a gulp of caramel, sugar, and caffeine, and says, «Would it be insane to go for an ATO with Providence?»

Sveta lowers her hash brown. «Anything you do is insane, on account of the mental illness.»

He rolls his eyes. «Seriously.»

«Seriously? I think it would be insane not to.» Sveta knocks their knees together. «You know they’d take you in an instant. Maybe you could be Hollander’s winger.»

He raises an eyebrow. «You’d have him center me?»

She tries to keep a straight face. He jabs her in her side.

«Hey!» she yelps. «Ouch. Bully. Of course they’d put you at 2C. I’m not an idiot.»

«Would your father manage me?» There’s no way Kostya would take him back as a client, but he knows Vetrov has dabbled in it before.

«No,» Sveta says. «He’s thinking of politics.»

Ah. Fuck.

«But,» she continues, a sly smile growing on her face. «You wouldn’t want him, anyway. It’s Mama who does all the work and has all the connections.»

That’s not surprising at all. Svetka’s mother is brilliant and terrifying, and knows way more about American business and sports management than Vetrov ever probably could. He would have to follow through on anything he set out to do if she managed him. She might actually castrate him if he didn’t, but—maybe that’s what he needs. What he wants.

Sveta is staring at him. «You seem different.»

He picks up his McGriddle. «How so?»

«Better,» she says. «Or, at least serious about trying to get better.»

«Well, I need an NHL contract to get out of all this debt,» Ilya jokes, though it sounds flat to his ears, and lands the same with Sveta, considering the distasteful twist to her mouth.

He puts the sandwich down. If he can’t tell Sveta the truth, who can he tell?

«I don’t. I don’t want to be a fuck up anymore,» Ilya says. «I don’t know if that’s possible, but...»

«Ilyukha.» Sveta turns in her chair and takes both of his hands in hers. She squeezes tightly. «If you’re going to try, really try, I will do everything in my power to make it happen.»

He laughs, a little wet, and she thumbs away a tear under his eye. «You’re not even twenty yet. What are you going to do, burn Boston to the ground for me?»

«Yes,» Sveta says, her serious expression betrayed by the damp twinkling in her big brown eyes. «Moscow, too. And then you can stop being such a bummer on nights out.»

«Of course,» he says. She sticks her pinky into her mouth, pulls it out with a pop, and extends it to him. Ilya huffs and does the same, wrapping his pinky around hers, and tapping the tips of their thumbs together twice. Their secret handshake for as long as he can remember.

Satisfied and looking a little more than smug, Sveta tucks her head into the crook of his shoulder, her brown curls tickling his chin.

«I told you that first time,» Sveta says, and he thinks back to that night when he was fourteen, the night after he kissed Sasha for the first time, threw up, and then tried to swallow half a bottle of pain pills. Sveta found him and stuck her fingers down his throat to make him puke, and never told a soul. «I’m always going to be by your side. And I’ll always be the first to help you get better. It’s about time you start believing in me.»

«With you?» Ilya presses a kiss to her hair and wraps an arm around his shoulder. «I’ll believe in myself if you believe in me. And if you keep giving me free rent, then fuck, I’ll believe in anything.»

Sveta barks out an ugly laugh, followed by a snort. «Fuck, you’re so stupid. I love you so much.»

He picks up his McGriddle and gestures for her to pick up her hash brown, and they cheers.

«To life,» Sveta declares.

Ilya rolls his eyes, but the light in Sveta’s eyes has always been contagious when she shines it in his direction. «Fine, yes,» he says as she takes his other hand and squeezes it. «To life.»

EPILOGUE

“What's a triumph is that you woke up this morning and decided to live. That's a triumph.”

―Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“So, I think the captaincy is best left unfilled for now,” Shane says. “We don’t want to sow any division. We should see who the room chooses, not the other way around.”

Reilly and Houghton exchange glances. He thinks they’re—impressed, maybe.

“I think that makes a lot of sense, son,” Houghton says. “This vacation seems like it was really productive for you. You seem different.”

He won’t freak out about what that means. He won’t let it show on his face. Shane just shrugs. “Yeah, I think it was helpful, as much as I don’t want to miss any time on ice.”

“Listen, it’s a long season,” Reilly says, spreading his hands across his desk calendar. “Better for you to take some time off now instead of, say, January.”

Is that a dig at Vic? Shane tries to keep a straight face and nods. “Yeah. That’s what—I want to play my best.”

“We know, son,” Houghton says. “I’m feeling confident about this season, eh? Especially with this new attitude you’ve got. Good work, Hollander.”

Shane starts to stand, assuming that’s a dismissal, but Reilly holds a hand up. “Just a sec—you remember Ilya Rozanov?”

Shane blinks, praying the sudden hammering in his chest isn’t audible to Houghton and Reilly. As casually as he can, he says, “Yeah, we played against each other at World Juniors.”

“Looks like his year off was good for him as well,” Reilly says. “He’s got a new agent, reached out to us about an ATO. Thought we’d extend an invite for training camp. Any thoughts?”

A million flood his mind, and he can’t help but think of that argument in the hospital and the guilt that’s sat with him ever since. But—maybe Rozanov listened. He had to listen.

“I think it would be a mistake not to go for it,” Shane says, hoarse with honesty and no hesitation.

Houghton grins. “That’s what we thought, too. It would be great to have that kind of depth at C like Pittsburgh. Get us to the cup even quicker. As long as you don’t think there will be any problems, I know the media always painted you two as rivals.”

Shane shakes his head, immediate and sure. “Nope. No problems.”

“Great,” Reilly says with a grin. He holds out his hand for a shake. “Alright, get going, have a good skate.”

Shane shakes Reilly’s hand, and Houghton claps him on the shoulder, and he might second-guess his reactions or how he responded later, but overall, that went—pretty well.

The guys seem happy to see him once he gets down to the locker room. Even Hammersmith noogies him. He sits in his stall, and on his right, Vic gives him a huge grin and knocks his knee into Shane’s.

“You look good, kid,” Vic says. “Lunch after? Rocco’s has wedding soup.”

“Yeah,” Shane says, grinning. “For sure.”

Getting ready feels different. Everything feels different. But when he steps on the ice, Shane can’t breathe.

No—the weight is gone from his chest. He can breathe.

He forgot what that felt like.

It’s a huge thing, this lift. He can breathe, and suddenly, his brain doesn’t want to think anymore; it wants to breathe. It wants to do.

Breathe. Practice. Play. Check. Fight. Win. Smile. Celly. Walk. Drive. Get lunch with Vic. Get lunch with Rozanov, maybe. Skate, definitely. Skate on the lake at Christmas with Mom and Dad. Run to train, and just because. Run and run some more, until someday, maybe he can run all the way to his townhouse in Back Bay; his own Boston Marathon, just for himself, everything left on the pavement, well-used and enjoyed. He doesn’t have to be a machine that pushes through, that exists because there’s no other option. There is another option, he saw a glimpse of it, and he didn’t like it. So he’ll do, and do more. He can play hockey and—enjoy it. Like he did when he was a kid. Like he did with Rozanov. Like a person.

He can be a person.

Shane is going to breathe, and be a person, and be great at hockey, and. And.

And live.