Rating:

Not Rated

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Suicide Attempt, Suicidal Thoughts, Established Relationship, Character Study, Depression, Angst, Angst with a Bittersweet Ending, Spoilers for Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, the villain of tlg is homophobia, No Character Death

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of a strange door

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-31 Words: 7,280 Chapters: 1/1

lonely i came, and i depart alone

Summary

Ilya has heard people say that suicide is a selfish act. He's heard people say it about his mother, and it used to make him furious. He’d punched Alexei for it, once, broken his nose when he said, why are you still moping over that selfish bitch, she left us without a thought, even though he knew it was his brother’s grief speaking and not his heart.

That word, selfish, made him so furious, maybe, because some small part of him believed it. Some part of himself, a part of him that he was too ashamed of to acknowledge, let alone to name, believed that his mother should have been braver. Should have been stronger. Should have fought harder to stay with him, to keep taking care of him. Would have, if she’d loved Ilya as much as she claimed to.

He knows now, now that he has Shane, that it isn’t true. He knows it is possible to love someone entirely, completely, with the purest and truest love, and for life to still be unbearable.

***

Another look at Ilya's depression in The Long Game.

Notes

Expounding on my conspiracy theory that the plane crash in TLG was meant to have been a suicide attempt. Content notes below. There is very explicit depiction of suicidality in this fic, please take care of yourself.

Content Notes

Explicit depiction of suicidal thoughts.
Explicit depiction of attempted suicide, including depiction of the means used.
Depiction of forced psychiatric hospitalization and medication.
One use of the f-slur.
Allusions to the psychological abuse Ilya experienced as a child.
Depressive thoughts.

Also, I hope Shane doesn't come across as uncaring; keep in mind this is Ilya's depressed and unreliable POV.

Title from "The Suicide" by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

He tries, and tries, and tries. To fit himself into the box Shane has held out to him. Ilya was so grateful when Shane said: here. There’s a place for you in my life. It is this long and this tall and this wide. Climb in. If you fit, I’ll put you on the shelf and sometimes I’ll take it down and let you out and you can be with me. But you’re not getting one more inch than this.

Ilya knows how lucky he is to have that much space in Shane’s life. To be allowed any room at all. He had more than he deserved when all he could claim was a few hours in Shane’s bed every year, the right to touch him in darkness behind closed doors, to be inside his body if not his heart, to see the exquisite glory of his pleasure and to leave treasuring the cloistered memory that it was Ilya who had made Shane feel that good. Ilya didn’t deserve even that much. He wanted so much more.

And then Shane gave him that. Gave Ilya everything he could have hoped for, everything he never should have let himself hope for. Shane carried Ilya’s bags and put his favorite soda in the fridge and picked him up at the airport. He listened to Ilya’s grief and held Ilya’s head in his lap and slept in Ilya’s arms. He welcomed Ilya into his family and insisted that his family do the same for Ilya. He loves Ilya, he says it even though it scares him, even though it could cost him everything.

But Ilya is still greedy. Ilya doesn’t want their love to be contained in little snatches of time, in little corners of Shane’s life. Two hours where their flights overlap in Orlando and they fuck frantically in an airport bathroom with Ilya’s hand over Shane’s mouth, three weeks at the cottage every summer where they are perfectly, incandescently happy, or would be but for the ticking clock looming over both of their heads, a single night after a mid-season game where they don’t even have sex, just curl up together and hold each other, as if they could soak up so much of one another’s touch that they’d store enough away not to ache for each other as soon as they parted.

Shane has been perfectly clear that he is not willing to change this. He will not move up the timeline. He will not come out, and he certainly won’t tell the world that he’s Ilya’s.

He’s made all the room he will make. All those stolen hours. Summers at the cottage. The foundation, and the cover it offers for the occasional lunch or dinner that is almost like a date except, of course, that it begins and ends with a handshake rather than a kiss, no matter how their lips ache for one another’s.

Ilya’s love is still much, much too big. It’s spilling out the corners of the space Shane has generously made for him.

It’s killing him. Maybe it would be easier if he were still in Boston, where at least he would have the distraction of being on a team that occasionally won. Instead of being here, in Ottawa, Shane’s hometown, haunted constantly by what he cannot have. Losing game after game. Playing with strangers who worship him and not the team he’s been part of since he was eighteen. Seeing Sveta, his only other family, only when they have away games in Boston or whatever city she happens to be in, their relationship clouded by her palpable anger at his abandonment.

Ilya has done everything he can. He has cut off every piece of himself he can spare. He’s not sure there is anything left. He is not sure he can make himself small enough and still survive.

He also doesn’t know what other choice he has. He could try to go back to Boston, if they’d still have him. At least there his life contained more than what little Shane could spare him. There was a team he felt like part of, men he could call friends at a stretch, his own apartment, Svetlana sometimes. But he’ll never do that. He will never do anything that will take him even one step away from Shane.

Because he had a life in Boston, he did, but he walked through that life like a ghost. Because not one person there loved Ilya. Except Sveta, and though she loved Ilya she would never choose him. Not one person in the world wants Ilya the way Shane wants him. Of course Ilya will take whatever Shane is willing to give him. No matter what he has to give up to keep it.

Shane wants Ilya. But Ilya needs Shane. Needs his wanting, needs his love, needs the baffling choice that he has made to have Ilya when he deserves someone better, a life that’s easier. Ilya can’t give him that. Can’t give him anything except the devotion that’s clearly smothering them both.

It would be better, Ilya thinks, if he could love Shane less. Love him tenderly, easily, not with this all-consuming, selfish greed. The one thing he’ll never be able to do, because it would be impossible to know Shane and not love him completely.

It’s starting to get hard to get out of bed, to go to practice. What’s the point? He’ll go and he’ll play and he’ll do his best and they’ll lose. People will whisper and laugh and wonder about why Ilya would leave his winning team. The rumors have gotten nasty. Criminal charges he’s running from in the States. Child support he won’t have to pay across an international border.

He shouldn’t care about that. People have always hated Ilya. They used to burn him in effigy in Montreal. Boo him in New York. Back then, he relished it. Love his reputation as the league’s biggest asshole, because it meant everyone was looking at him. Asshole was, in its own peculiar way, a title of respect.

But people don’t hate him anymore. They look down on him. They don’t see a brash jackass who is still so good he has to be admired. They see a joke.

And Ilya isn’t sure what the point of playing is, if it just makes him a punchline.

That’s not true, of course. He loves the game itself. The slide of his skates over the ice, the bruising impact of a body on the boards, the perfect arc of a puck towards the net. He still loves the act of playing. He's just getting sick of losing.

The Centaurs are good guys. Friendly, kind. They try to make Ilya feel welcome, even though he knows he’s not being a positive force in the room, let alone a good captain. The fact that they’re all so in awe of him makes things harder. He can’t be just one of the guys. He’s Ilya Rozanov, superstar, legend, top of the league, and he can’t explain why he’s appeared among them. He can’t let them in, so he stays apart. There on the ice, going through the motions, but off to the side.

So the team doesn’t come together, and one star player only makes so much of a difference. They still lose, and lose, and lose. They’re knocked out of playoff contention early.

It looks like Montreal is gonna go all the way to the finals. Shane might take home a third Cup. Ilya hates the part of himself that longs for their run to go ahead and end. Not because he’s jealous that Shane gets to win while he has to lose and lose and lose. That isn’t it.

But the regular season ends in April. Playoffs can go til the end of June. Ten weeks of Shane that he could have. Ten weeks where he wouldn’t have to fight to get out of bed every day, because he’d have a reason to. Ten weeks of wide brown eyes and clever little chirps delivered with a perfectly straight face and a beautiful voice saying I love you in his terrible clumsy Russian accent. Ten weeks of Shane under him, on his knees for him, letting Ilya pin him down like he could keep him there forever, moaning yes, yes, yes when Ilya says you’re mine. Ten weeks of sleeping in the same bed and Shane warm in his arms and kissing Shane with his terrible morning breath.

He aches for it. He hates himself for that.

How could any part of him want to stand between Shane and the thing he cares about most? Ilya can no longer remember why he used to care so much about hockey, but that doesn't mean Shane should have to lose. That Shane should miss out on the thing he loves most just so that he can come here and rescue Ilya from the loneliness that Ilya sometimes worries will destroy him.

Ilya is very good at lying to himself. For two full years, he lies to himself. Through two endless grey winters, two seasons that are shorter and feel longer than any he's ever played, two blissful too-brief summers. Then an invitation arrives in the mail, one he knows Shane will never agree to let them say yes to: Scott Hunter is getting married.

And that's when Ilya realizes what his problem is. He’s selfish. That’s the core of it, always has been. (He hears a voice in his head, the voice of a dead man, selfish boy, you do not care about this family, this country). Because letting himself have Shane, letting himself love Shane, is the most selfish thing he could do.

Shane does not have to hide to be loved. Scott Hunter has proven that, Scott Hunter and his sweet and thoroughly inoffensive (and comically young) smoothie shop boyfriend. Surely it has not been easy for Hunter to blaze this trail, but neither has his career ended. Because he loves someone who his whole world doesn’t hate.

If Ilya were a good person, he would let Shane find someone like that. Because Shane’s life would be better without Ilya in it. That’s a simple fact.

If Shane were with anyone except his greatest rival, they could be seen in public together. He could make one polite PR announcement and then step into the sunlight and stay there. There would be questions, there would be backlash, there would probably be hatred directed at Shane, but no one would be able to accuse him of throwing games in Ilya’s favor, no one would be able to erase everything he’s accomplished in his career. His teammates would call him a faggot, probably, but not a traitor. It’s not because he’s gay that he has to hide, it’s because he’s with Ilya. And Ilya has, selfishly, let him do so. Has somehow dared to act like his love could possibly be enough to make up for a life that is clouded with secrecy and even more shame and fear than Shane has been forced to carry as long as Ilya has known him.

Things are hard enough for Shane. He’s one of the only Asian players in the league, the only one playing at his level. He’s keeping the fact that he’s gay secret from everyone, except his team, who have been nothing but cruel about it. He’s autistic, a diagnosis that he’s kept private his whole life, wordlessly absorbing insults about how he’s not sociable or can’t read a room. The only way he’s found to survive is by rising above all of it.

His perfect, golden boy image. Which would crumble in an instant if anyone knew that he had been secretly fucking the league’s biggest asshole, the person who’s been set up as his rival since they were rookies, for over a decade.


There are so many people in the world who could free Shane of at least one of those burdens. Even Shane’s own father said it, the very first time he met Ilya, weren’t there any nice men in Montreal? Shane’s best friend won’t stop trying to set him up with every gay man he knows, even though he’s met Ilya, has heard how Shane talks about him. And some of it is that Ilya plays for a rival team, but some of it is who Ilya is. His brashness, his rough edges, the ugly past he carries around him like a stone and the ghosts that haunt him.


How dare he bring that into Shane’s life? How could his eighteen-year-old self ever have been so reckless, so stupid, so fucking selfish as to pour all that darkness into Shane, who even then he had known was so sweet, so bright?

It’s just like his father had always said. Ilya is selfish.

They’re fighting a lot these days. He and Shane never used to fight before. When things were going wrong between them, one of them would just turn and walk away and not come back. Months of silence would stretch out and then when one of them caved, because they could never figure out how to resist one another ,they would speak of it only in the language of their bodies on each other. They had no words for how to rebuild.

So maybe Ilya should be glad now, that they fight. That they don’t walk away, that they have found the words to say to one another. Even when those words bite. Even when Shane is leaving again and Ilya won’t see him for more than a month again and the only words Shane has left Ilya with, to echo in his head for weeks and weeks are, stop trying to take the easy way out, Ilya.

Ilya had wanted to throw it back in his face: The easy way out is not coming out. Maybe losing my career, never visiting my mother’s grave again, being a criminal in my homeland, becoming a laughingstock, watching you suffer and knowing it’s my fault. That would not be easy at all. The easy way out would be killing myself.

He had imagined how those words would hit Shane. The cold shock, melting into the warmth of concern. How Shane would fuss over him, comfort him, worry. How, for a while, things would change. Shane would try not to fret so much about being caught. He’d call more, maybe not sneak out quite so early on the days when they could be together. He’d insist Ilya get help. He’d try not to let them get into fights. For weeks, months maybe, he would treat Ilya like broken glass, with unbearable, tender pity.

But he wouldn’t come out. If he chose Ilya over hockey, it would only be because Ilya held a gun to his own head, and that’s not something Ilya can do to the man he loves.

So he’d just said, lamely, weakly, “Both ways are hard.”

The way Shane had looked at him. He’s seen Shane angry and passionate and lustful and loving and terrified. He’s never looked at Ilya like this. If Ilya had to name it, he would say: disdain.

Pity would have been better.

Ottawa in the winter is endlessly cold and grey. He thinks about going out to the bars with his teammates. That would be good for him, he thinks. He could start making friends, start making a life here. The Centaurs might look at him a little more like a teammate and a little less like a hero if he spent some time with them off the ice, where his superiority wasn't quite so obvious (it's the simple truth: he's never had a real equal in the league except Shane, and the Centaurs are far from close competitors).

He just can't summon up the energy.

He used to like to go out, he remembers. He used to like to stay up until three in the morning doing shots and didn't care if his head was pounding during practice the next morning. He used to know what drugs didn't show up on the league's tests so he could get a little extra wild. He used to love the dark and the strobe of lights and the thrum of music too loud to hear his own thoughts.

And of course, he used to like meeting new people. Women, men, whoever. Fucking them in club bathrooms or the alleyway outside next to the trashcans or in their apartment, being sure to be gone by morning. He used to like the newness, the constant stream of strange bodies. The novelty of life under his hands. The unbridled physical pleasure. The power he had when he was dominating someone—and it was not hard to find someone willing to be dominated by him.

Now that he has Shane, none of that has any appeal. It's not just that he is committed to Shane, not just his promise of monogamy that holds him back. He simply has no interest in anyone but the man he loves.

How could he want the novelty of different bodies when he could be memorizing the familiar shapes of Shane's? Who could bring him more pleasure than Shane, who is made for him? How could holding some stranger down or telling her what to do hold any appeal when he's seen the look in Shane's eyes when he goes to his knees for Ilya?

The drive of sex is as grey as the weather. He doesn't even want to look at anyone but Shane, brushes off invitations to strip clubs, stops watching porn.

At night, while they're in Ottawa, when the rest of the team goes out to blow off steam, Ilya stays home. Sometimes he looks back over his texts with Shane, which he's perfectly aware is pathetic. Occasionally Shane has time for a call, even if it's a short one.

Ilya wishes he had even one picture of him and Shane that wasn't a commercial or a press release, but Shane worries too much about a hack or a leak. Ilya resorts to scrolling through news articles about Shane, watching his old game footage.

He's distantly aware that he's choosing his own misery. He can't put all of his happiness on his boyfriend. It isn't fair to either of them. Shane has his own life: the team he's played on for a decade, his adoring parents, friends who know his secrets, the apartment that he's had decorated. Ilya could build his own life, too. It isn't Shane's fault that he's here in Ottawa. Ilya chose this. Ilya wanted it.

But he still wants more.

Ilya has heard people say that suicide is a selfish act. He's heard people say it about his mother, and it used to make him furious. He’d punched Alexei for it, once, broken his nose when he said, why are you still moping over that selfish bitch, she left us without a thought, even though he knew it was his brother’s grief speaking and not his heart.

That word, selfish, made him so furious, maybe, because some small part of him believed it. Some part of himself, a part of him that he was too ashamed of to acknowledge, let alone to name, believed that his mother should have been braver. Should have been stronger. Should have fought harder to stay with him, to keep taking care of him. Would have, if she’d loved Ilya as much as she claimed to.

He knows now, now that he has Shane, that it isn’t true. He knows it is possible to love someone entirely, completely, with the purest and truest love, and for life to still be unbearable.

Forgive me, Mama, he prays, sometimes. Though he doesn’t believe she can hear him, she did. She believed in a life beyond this one. Died believing that they would see one another again in a world without suffering and pain and Ilya’s father. Forgive me for not understanding. Forgive me for spending so long wishing I could have saved you, when you would only have suffered, staying here with me.



There are, in theory, things that Ilya could do. He knows that. He knows that in the West they say that depression is an illness in the brain, that it can be treated by the right medication. He could go to therapy and take those drugs. Maybe that would make it better.

Ilya does not really believe this. He knows that the dark creeping sorrow is not a disease, not a malfunction of who he is. He was born with it inside him. The legacy of his mama's sadness, twisted by his father's cruelty into this. Into what he is.

He is an empty thing, like a bottle with all the liquor inside poured out. Once there was something in him, but he cracked when his mother died and now even that little cannot remain inside him. He tried for a long time to fill it with pleasure, as though more, and more, and more was what he needed. But the faster he devoured the hedonistic pleasures that made him feel briefly alive, the faster it spilled out. Nothing could fill him up.

He thought that Shane was, maybe, going to patch that crack. And maybe he did. Maybe Ilya is not broken anymore, not the way he was. Maybe love has made him whole again.

Shane may have healed him, but he cannot fill up the endless emptiness inside Ilya.

Nothing could.

Nothing is worth trying.

He has a plan. A good one. Almost no one will be hurt, and it’ll be close to painless. It'll only hurt for a moment. And it will work, which is the important thing.

He knows that he could call Shane. Knows that Shane would want Ilya to call him instead of going through with it. He’s not so mired in the depths of depression that he doesn’t know that Shane loves him and wants him to stay. He would be burdening Shane with worry and guilt if he called, but it’s what Shane would want.

Ilya wishes he could tell himself he’s being selfless for once, trying to protect Shane from carrying this burden with him.

But the truth is that he’s not going through with it because of selflessness, or to protect anyone other than himself. He’s just so, so tired. Shane would want him to go to therapy, to try an antidepressant and another and another if that didn’t work, to live. And Ilya is so tired, and he’s so selfish, and he just wants to rest. He just wants to take the easy way out.

So he waits until they have an away game in a state with relaxed gun laws. Florida will do the trick. You can buy a gun at fucking Walmart in Florida. 

They beat Tampa Bay. That’s nice, to end with a win. While the rest of the team is out celebrating, Ilya walks to a gun store and buys a pistol and ammunition. Goes back to his room, puts the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. Sits at the desk and loads the gun.

Then he calls 911. He wishes no one would have to find his body, but that’s impossible. Better to make sure it’s paramedics or police who are trained and doing their job than killing himself out in a field somewhere where, God forbid, some little kid might be out playing and find him. And anyway, Shane deserves to have a body to bury, if he wants one.

“What’s your emergency?”

Ilya keeps his voice calm. “I am at the Marriott on Water Street, near the stadium. Room 5317. How long will it take you to get here?”

The dispatcher checks something. “Seven minutes.”

“Okay. You should send someone over. I am registered as an organ donor, the card is in my pocket. In five minutes, I am going to shoot myself in the chest, and I know is better if someone gets them faster. I want something good to come from me.”

He hangs up. The phone rings back, then rings back again. No doubt a suicide hotline, resources, all the things Ilya does not want.

He picks up his phone. There’s no reason to leave a note. There are only two people who will miss him, anyway.

His message to Sveta is short. Surely she’s been expecting this for a long, long time, since they were children together.

I love you. I have never deserved you. Thank you.

That’s all. Then the last part. The hardest part.

Shane is playing a game right now. That’s another reason why Ilya picked tonight: Ilya's team played in the afternoon, Shane's in the evening, so he'll be busy, he won't be looking at his phone. He won’t see Ilya’s text until afterwards, when it'll be done. He won’t have to be in fear and uncertainty, or try to intervene, or feel helpless. He’ll see Ilya’s message after he's already gotten a phone call from the hospital with the news. He’ll already know Ilya is gone. Won’t even have to read Ilya’s note, if he doesn’t want to.

Ilya isn’t stupid. He isn’t so lost that he thinks that Shane won’t miss him when he’s gone. He just hopes Shane will be furious with him more than he is sad. That will make it easier.

He hopes, more than anything, that Shane doesn’t blame himself. He hopes it will be soon, that Shane can move on. He hopes Shane will have many, many years of joy with someone who deserves him.

Selfishly, he hopes that someday, when enough time has passed, when Shane has found the happiness he deserves with someone else, when the cottage is filled with the laughter of his children and his heart with the love of someone easy and gentle, he’ll remember Ilya with something other than anger and grief. Will maybe even be glad for their time together. And if not, if it’s impossible for Ilya to ever make up for the misery he has surely also brought, at least he can be selfish one more time and tell Shane what he needs to say.

His hands shake as he types the message he has rehearsed in his head so many times. His last chance to say everything he wants Shane to remember. Everything Shane deserves to hear, again and again, from a far better source than Ilya can hope to be.

You are the best thing in my life. I love you. Always. Maybe from the first time I saw you. I am thinking only about you right now. A million memories. Thank you for those. Whatever happens, I am with you. Safe in your heart. I believe it.

He sends the message.

Ilya loads the gun. He presses it against his chest, right over own his heart, right next to his mother’s cross. He wishes he could hope he is about to see her again. But he doesn’t believe in the things she believed in. All he can hope for is rest. All he can hope for is a world that will be a little better now that he is gone.

All he can think of is Shane.

Like he said, a million memories. He gives himself one more selfish moment to inhabit them.

Shane with his cheeks pink and his freckles bright in the Saskatchewan cold. Shane shaking his hand for the first time. Shane letting Ilya make him laugh so hard at the photoshoot that they got scolded by the director. Shane's perfect naked body under the shower's spray. Shane's enormous brown eyes heavy with shame and desire. Shane's mouth on Ilya's fingers. Shane's mouth on Ilya's cock. Shane coming down Ilya's throat. Shane learning what pleasure was under Ilya's hands. Shane shocked with bliss.

Shane lighting up his telephone screen, lighting his heart even with the fake name, message after message: Jane. Jane. Jane. Shane letting Ilya inside him, inside him. Shane kissing him in the stairwell like he was something worth caring for. Shane worried for Ilya in Sochi even when he was cruel. Shane begging at Ilya's command in a Vegas bathroom. Shane saying I need you.

Shane under him against the boards, under him bent over the couch, his body so strong everywhere and yet yielding, yielding to Ilya every time. Shane in his bed for the first time, asleep in his arms, Ilya gazing in secret at the perfection of him. Shane eating a meal that Ilya had cooked for him. Shane laughing at an innocent joke. Shane laughing at a filthy one. Shane with Ilya's name on his lips. Shane running away, breaking his heart. Shane coming back.

Shane being brave. Shane telling Ilya who he was, and who he wanted them to be to each other. Shane sitting by his side in the cool sand as the bright sun disappeared into the dark water. Shane's hand daring to brush his. Shane holding Ilya, really holding him, as for the first time in ten years Ilya did not feel like he was alone with his grief. Shane sprawled on the ice and Ilya shattering. Shane in the hospital, his ridiculous little smile, so brave again: come to my cottage.

Shane in the daytime. Shane in his stupid boring car. Shane making burgers. Shane kicking a football around with him in the backyard. Shane losing at video games.

Shane in the lake, wet and beautiful. Shane waking in his arms in the golden sunlight. Shane terrified and crouching at Ilya's feet for comfort. Shane demanding his parents accept Ilya, even when he was so afraid. Shane waking him in the middle of the night to plan their future together.

Shane letting Ilya say I love you. Shane saying it back, the impossible thrill of it. Shane loving him. Loving him. Loving him. Every time he said it. Thousands of times now.

Ilya remembers every one. The shape of Shane's lips every time he formed those words. The softness in his eyes when he looked at Ilya. The sound of his heartbeat under Ilya's hand. After the thousandth time, maybe, Ilya started to believe him.

He remembers every moment since. Every moment of knowing what it was like to live being loved by Shane. A love so beautiful that it almost made the pain of living worth it.

He takes a breath. He pulls the trigger.

In the hospital, they keep him cuffed to the bed. People speak in low, hurried voices. Fluorescent lights hum overhead.

Ilya had always heard that, when people jumped off bridges or buildings, they realized on the way down that they wanted to live. It would be nice, he thinks, if that were true.

He learns that the shot went through-and-through his chest. That there is damage to the muscle but that it will heal with time. He learns that a gunshot wound feels not unlike being slammed hard into the boards, like a bruise that goes all the way through. He learns that the heart is apparently a lot closer to the center of the chest than most people think. He learns that they kept him sedated while they sewed him up, and that now he's in a locked-door psychiatric ward.

He learns that in Florida, like in most states, you can be held in the hospital against your will for up to 72 hours for evaluation if you appear to be a threat to yourself or others. He learns that after those 72 hours they may petition a court to confine you indefinitely. He learns that if no one comes to sign him out of the hospital, if he is left like a piece of unclaimed luggage at the airport, they will almost certainly not agree to release him at all. That most judges will agree that he can just stay here in the hospital, quietly rotting.

He learns that unless someone comes for him he will be given medication that makes him exhausted and foggy and compliant, and when he closes his mouth and tries to refuse the pills they just inject the medication into his arm. That’s better. He’s never liked taking pills.

He learns that he has no legal next-of-kin except Alexei, and that Alexei, of course, is not answering the phone. He learns that he will have to ask if he wants them to call anyone for him. If he wants them to call Shane. And he doesn’t. He’s not allowed to want that.

He learns that he can sleep for a long time. That’s good too. He learns that that’s almost as good as being dead.

Ilya is collected from his room and deposited in a featureless grey conference room. He’s told that he has a visitor. He isn’t asked if he wants to see them, because no one asks questions here.

The first thing Shane says, when he sees Ilya, is, “Will you marry me?”

"What?" Ilya doesn't know how long he's been here, and he hasn't spoken since he woke up. His voice is creaky, rough. He wonders if they're right and he is actually crazy. If he's hallucinating. Because it doesn't make any sense that Shane would be here. And it doesn't make any sense that Shane would say that to him. If Shane were here, he would be angry at Ilya. Maybe pretending not to be because Ilya did just try to kill himself, but he would be angry. And maybe other things, worse things. Disappointed. Disgusted with Ilya's weakness. Even Shane's kindness, his endless generosity, only goes so far.

"I should have asked a long time ago. I should have asked because I love you and because I want to be with you for the rest of our lives. But I didn't realize… Ilya, I've been looking for you for two days. No one would tell me anything, not where you were, not if you were alive. All I knew was that you sent me that message and then you weren't answering my calls and you didn't play your next game. I called your coach, I'm sorry, I told him everything. I couldn't… I couldn't…" Shane is gasping for air. Tears running down those beautiful cheeks, obscuring the perfection of his freckles. Ilya longs to reach out and wipe them away, but he doesn't dare. "So you have to marry me, okay? As soon as you're ready to get out of here. We can have a wedding later, a beautiful one, like you deserve, but I can't do this again. I can't. I have to be your person, everyone has to know that I'm your person, that if you're sick or hurt or… or… dead, I have to know. I have to know, Ilya."

Ilya doesn't understand. He's trying to listen but he can't make sense of the words. Because they don't make sense. They don't belong in this world, a world shaped by any of the facts that Ilya knows to be true.

Things like: Ilya has been rancid in his soul since the day he was born, and not even his own family could love him. Without him, Shane would be happier. The only happiness ahead for Ilya was small and shrinking every day, and it was not worth surviving the agony to get there. Ilya has given up, and even though he managed to even fuck up killing himself, by giving up he gave up any right to Shane's love.

"Baby, please, say something," Shane pleads. "I'm sorry, I probably sound like a crazy person. Coming in and dumping all of this on you. I just… God, I missed you so much. I was so scared."

"I'm sorry," Ilya says, in his voice that he no longer knows. "I thought I had planned it so you wouldn't have to be scared. That you would have already gotten the call by the time you saw my message, and you would know."

"That's what you're sorry for?"

No. No, Ilya is sorry for a million things. More than he could list, if they sat in this room for the rest of their lives, surrounded by these grey walls and his failures.

"Baby, they wouldn't have called me. They wouldn't have told me anything." Shane has never sounded like this. Ilya has heard him get overwhelmed, heard him have panic attacks, but he's never been terrified like this. Like he's afraid for his own life. "They would have let Alexei decide what to do with your body. I wouldn't even have been able to bury you."

"I—"

Then Shane's voice is matter-of-fact again. "That's why we have to get married. As soon as I get you out of here. Assuming you feel safe to come home, I don't know if you want to go to the cottage, or your place in Ottawa, or we could rent something in Boston, whatever you like. I don't know, I feel like it would be better at home, to be able to pick the right therapist and sleep in your own bed and have me to look after you, but obviously if you still need—"

"Why are you here?" Ilya asks.

"What?"

"What are you doing here, Shane?"

Shane blinks. A moment of shock. His voice is small when he speaks. "You don't want to see me?"

"I always want to see you." It comes out automatically, without Ilya's permission. "But isn't there a game to play? Aren't you worried people will find out you're here?"

Shane looks confused. "Baby, you could have died. I don't care about anything else."

Ilya shouldn't laugh at him. Not when he looks so sad and so scared and so sweet. Not when Ilya has already hurt him so much. "Except hockey, obviously," Ilya prompts.

"That doesn't matter right now."

It doesn't sound like he's lying. But it doesn't make sense. Ilya's head hurts. He buries it in his hands.

"You know that," Shane says, like he does. "You know how much I love you, right?"

He does. He does know that. Shane loves him so much more than he deserves.

"Listen to me, okay?

Ilya nods. He doesn’t look at Shane. If he does, if he looks at those deep brown eyes and sees the tears in them, the tears Ilya has put there with his selfishness and his weakness, he’ll break in a way he’ll never recover from.

“I don’t want to make you feel guilty. None of this is your fault, and I’m not angry, and I don’t want you to blame yourself for struggling. But I need you to know.”

Shane takes a slow breath. Steadying himself. Ilya wants to reach out and comfort him but he doesn’t know if he can.

“If you died, if you chose to die, I would never be all right, not ever again. It would break me forever.”

Ilya tries to say something. Shane continues, talking right over him.

“I know things haven’t been easy for us. But I have never, never, not for one single second, felt like it wasn’t worth it. Like you weren’t worth it. The thought literally has not crossed my mind. If…” And Shane steels himself visibly before he says this, which is the only way Ilya knows it’s true. It costs Shane even to say the words aloud. “If you needed me to retire today, I would do it. It would be hard, and I would miss it every day, but if it were a choice between your life and my career, I would choose you every single time. You know that, right?”


It’s not true, Ilya wants to say. But Shane is the world’s worst liar. It's impossible not to believe him.


“Ilya, baby, look at me. Please look at me.”

Ilya can’t resist Shane begging. But looking at those wide brown eyes makes him feel like he’s falling. Like he felt in the moment before pulling the trigger, but without the relief.

“Please tell me,” and his voice is cracking, and Ilya did this to him, hurt him like this, and he wishes he were dead all over again. Wishes he had never been born to bring suffering into Shane’s life. If he’d never been born maybe Ilya’s mother would still be alive, if she hadn’t had him tying her to his father. If he’d never been born maybe Shane would have met a nice man in Montreal and been happy. If he’d never been born Ilya wouldn’t have to feel this way. It would have been better for everyone. “Please tell me you know that I need you more than anything else. Tell me you don’t think I would pick hockey over you.”

He can’t answer that. The truth would clearly hurt Shane. Because the truth is, he did think that. He thought it was what Shane was telling him, has been telling him since that day at his parents house when Shane’s mother asked what’s the plan, keep doing this in secret until you both retire? Ilya had looked at Shane, waiting, hoping, and Shane had said, yeah. It didn’t matter that they were in love. It didn’t matter that they’d finally been able to admit it to each other. Ilya would be Shane’s dirty secret for another decade so he could put hockey first. Ilya thought he could stand that. He thought it would be enough. But there’s no end to his greed.

“I’m not worth it,” he says instead.

“You’re worth everything,” Shane says, and the tears are falling now. “Everything to me. If I could relive my life a thousand times, a million, I would pick you every single time. I’m sorry I ever made it possible that you could doubt that. I am going to spend the rest of my life making sure you know how much I love you. I promise.”

“Please don’t cry,” Ilya says. He reaches towards Shane to wipe the tears away, stops himself just in time. Shane isn’t his to touch anymore. “I never wanted to make you sad.”

He wishes he could have brought joy into Shane’s life. He thinks he did, at least a little bit, at least sometimes. He has those memories, those million memories he named in what was meant to be his last message for Shane. The memory of how Shane tasted as he came down Ilya’s throat the first time, his body twisting under the shock of brand-new pleasure. The memory of Shane gasping and then moaning and then sobbing with pleasure underneath Ilya. The memory of Shane in the golden morning sunlight at the cottage, smiling at him so sweetly. Shane was happy then, wasn’t he? Ilya gave him something worth remembering?

“I’m sorry,” Ilya says, as if that counts for anything. He could apologize a million times, matching every sweet memory with his guilt and grief, and it would never be enough to make up for what he has done.

“Hey, no, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be saying all of this to you now. You’re sick, you just need to focus on getting better.” Shane’s words don’t make any sense. It makes even less sense when Shane reaches for Ilya and takes his hand, lacing their fingers together. And even less when he says, “I’m just so glad to see you. I missed you.”

Ilya doesn’t know what to do with that. So he does nothing. Just sits and stares across the room and wonders what this means. Wonders if it means that he’s going to have to try to live.