Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Hockey Player Shane Hollander, Hockey Player Ilya Rozanov, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt No Comfort, Minor Injuries, Serious Injuries, Head Injury, Hockey Injuries, Panic, Blood and Gore, Murder, First Aid, Stitches, Bugs & Insects, Dismemberment, POV Ilya Rozanov

Language:

English

Series:

Part 4 of kill me (romantically)

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-09 Words: 7,706 Chapters: 1/1

the spot from which the guilt emits

Summary

“Are you hurt?” Ilya presses in the long silence. “Is bad?”

Another indistinct sound, maybe movement, comes over the speaker before Shane talks again. “A little. Maybe. I don't know. I…” he trails off as a background noise draws his attention. “Shit. Shit, Ilya, I have to-”

The call disconnects before Shane can explain what he has to do. Ilya lowers the phone, staring at the blinking four letters above the painfully short call duration, and swipes the redial button without a second thought.

-

Shane calls Ilya for help.

Notes

please dont ask me any questions about the timeline the answer is I made it up

Thank you users @seasick_sparrowhawk and @crockettmarcel as always for their time/advice despite neither of them going here <3

Also thank you to everyone who has been reading and commenting! It truly means the world to me.

title is from "Sin Eater" by Penelope Scott

For as long as he can remember, Ilya has been soft-hearted. His father and brother had seen it in him–had tried to carve it out of him like the eagles coming for Prometheus’ llive–but he's never been able to kill that part of himself and he's paid for it a thousand fold over the course of his life. He figured that Alexei's extortion would be the worst it led him to. But, as with many occasions in Ilya's life, he failed to account for Shane. 

This is his own fault. He remembers making Shane promise to call him for help with vivid clarity: it had felt like the only thing left of himself he could offer that Shane did not already have. Ilya doesn't mind giving himself to Shane in his entirety but at the moment, he had needed to say it like he needs air. Shane had to know that Ilya still wanted him.

Now, several months and another Stanley Cup for the Metros later, Ilya answers the phone in a hotel bed at four in the morning with regret already heavy on his tongue. Shane never calls without a heads up. He always plans it, which drives Ilya crazy in the stupidest way because who plans their phone calls, but it means Ilya has never received an unsolicited, unplanned call from Shane, and his heart drops to his stomach.

Ilya swipes the answer button across the screen before lifting his phone to his face. “Hello.”

“Ilya,” Shane pants through the speaker, his harsh breath crystal clear despite the echo of speakerphone, intercut by an indistinct gurgling sound. “Ilya, I fucked up,” he pleads. “I fucked up really bad, can you come over?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, already swinging his legs over the side of his bed. Luckily, Marleau is a heavy sleeper, and doesn't stir on his side of the room while Ilya tugs a shirt out of his suitcase and stuffs his bare feet into his sneakers without socks. “You are at home?’

He stuffs his key card in his pocket and then he's off. Too antsy to wait for the elevator, Ilya jogs down the stairs, taking them two at a time as he works his way down five flights to the ground level. 

“Yeah,” sniffles Shane. “How soon can you get here?”

Ilya pulls his phone away from his face to call a car. Shane's apartment is close to the rink for convenience, and so is the hotel the team gets put up in, but they're on opposite sides of the stadium this time. Even if Ilya pays extra to get a driver right away, it's still supposed to take twenty minutes. 

“Twenty minutes, but I will try to be faster. What is wrong?”

He has the ride ordered by the time he reaches the lobby. Ilya uses every ounce of self control in his body not to sprint through it, forcing himself to slow to a quick walk toward the automatic doors. Against his ear, Shane is panting, not speaking, as the wretched sound in the background carries on without interruption. 

“What is happening?” Ilya asks again.

His phone pings- a driver has been assigned from only two minutes away, but it's two minutes too long. All Ilya can do is pace the carport of the hotel while he waits.

If he was there with Shane right now, Ilya would be able to see the problem, fix it, then coax Shane from his silent, overwhelmed little freak out.

“Are you okay?” Ilya begs. “Give sign of life, Hollander, fuck.”

Some people comfort themselves with the idea that their imagination must be worse than reality, but Ilya knows better. It's entirely possible that Shane is hurt, dying, and each additional second that Ilya isn't at his side could be the one that dooms him, not that Ilya is very useful at first aid anyways, which in turn makes every ragged sound of Shane's breath hit Ilya like a slap in the face. He hates the uncertainty. 

“Shane!” he demands, still desperate for an answer. 

“I- I think-” Shane stutters.

He does not tell Ilya what he thinks, but the proof he's still conscious soothes a fraction of Ilya's panic. When his car finally arrives, Ilya pulls his wallet out of his pants as he slides into the backseat, thumbing a few twenties out of the billfold. As he shuts the door behind him, he holds the money over the center console. 

The driver turns toward him but Ilya doesn't wait to hear it. “For you,” he insists, “and I have more, if you get me there fast.”

Ilya barely buckles his seat belt before the car lurches into motion. All he cares about is the indecipherable audio coming from Shane's end of the line, barely loud enough for Ilya to register over the purr of the engine and the rumble of the street, but too suspicious for him to risk turning up. 

“What do you think?” Ilya asks. 

Shane produces a sad, wounded little noise that makes Ilya's heart twinge.

“Is okay, I promise. I am not telling anyone. Just talk to me.”

Out the window, the city lights of Montreal stream past, twinkling indifferent to how Ilya is falling further apart at the seams each second that passes without a word from Shane. As much as the confirmation Shane is at least alive on the other end helps, Ilya needs to know what he's walking into. He can't freeze. He can't panic once he's there. Shane needs Ilya. Otherwise he wouldn't have called. But if Ilya has no idea what's happening, if he has no time to prepare himself-

“I got it wrong,” Shane cries. Something rustles on his end of the call. “I don't know how, I don't know what happened, and- oh, fuck.” His voice cracks, and comes back hysterical. “Fuck! I can't- I-”

Ilya interrupts with an intentionally loud and exaggerated deep breath. “Breathe. I will be there soon, okay?”

When Ilya cocks his head to see the driver's GPS, it shows a little less than ten minutes remaining. So much can happen in such a short time, both on the ice and off, and Ilya has to force himself not to pester the driver to cut more time from the route.

“Are you hurt?” Ilya presses in the long silence. “Is bad?”

Another indistinct sound, maybe movement, comes over the speaker before Shane talks again. “A little. Maybe. I don't know. I…” he trails off as a background noise draws his attention. “Shit. Shit, Ilya, I have to-”

The call disconnects before Shane can explain what he has to do. Ilya lowers the phone, staring at the blinking four letters above the painfully short call duration, and swipes the redial button without a second thought. It rings, and rings, and rings, and rings, until the automated voicemail starts to play. Ilya hangs up and tries again. 

And again.

And again.

The driver clears his throat. “Almost there, sir.”

Ilya nods in acknowledgement and calls Shane again. While he's on his sixth ring, the car starts to slow on a familiar block, so Ilya empties the rest of the cash in his wallet for the driver and dives out of the car before it comes to a complete stop. He's not sure he remembers to shut the door behind him. But the path to Shane's building is muscle memory these days, and Ilya makes it all the way to the back door with that endless ringing on his phone without remembering that it's locked. Shane always has to let him in. 

Ilya curses under his breath and opens his messages, typing out a frantic text for Shane to open the ridiculous metal door between them. He needs to get in there. None of the windows have ledges to climb on, though, and even if they did, Ilya couldn't risk breaking one to climb through it. He could go around to the front, but then another tenant could recognize him, or worse, offer to help. 

When the back door finally creaks open, Ilya is still listening to the buzz of Shane's ringer. His eyes snap up, immediately cataloging the dark, damp hoodie thrown haphazardly over a pair of low slung pajamas, but he's too worried about the blood dripping from Shane's bruised and swollen nose to make a dirty comment about his choice of attire. Instead, he crowds him into the stairwell, not waiting for the door to slam shut before he grabs Shane by the arms to prove to himself that he's real and alive in front of him.

When Shane winces, Ilya immediately lets go. He opens his mouth to ask if Shane is okay, what happened to his face, but the moment Ilya catches sight of the blood staining his own skin wherever they touch, his throat closes up like a noose tightening around his neck.

Shane inclines his head toward the top of the stairs silently: an invitation Ilya has come too far not to take. 

He takes the first step up, stuck staring at his bloodied hands without Shane's visage to distract him. And he still has no warning what he'll find in Shane's overly curated apartment. But he's here. Of course he's here, because Shane called, and there is no universe where Ilya doesn't come running the instant he does. 

At the top of the stairs, the back door is unlocked. Its knob turns easily for Ilya, leaving more blood on the polished handle as he goes, which Shane wipes off with a dry corner of his hoodie on their way in. He gives no warning about the state his apartment is in. 

Ilya had sort of expected the tarp, spread across the living room floor between the couches, and the bag of tools plopped at the near corner, but his knees buckle at the full tableau spread out before him. He hits the floor hard.

At the center of the grisly image lies a middle aged man, spread eagle on his stomach with the bright yellow grip of a handsaw jutting out of his neck, like a flashing arrow pointing toward the pool of blood under it. He's half-naked, too, with his shirt missing to reveal bruises and scratches up his pudgy torso, and his pants around his veiny ankles, while his belt lies coiled on his back with blood gleaming off its buckle. Ilya doesn't recognize anything about this man. The image, however, is one he knows all too well. 

“Fuck,” Ilya whispers, biting back instinctive tears, “люби́мый уби́йца, what happened here?”

Shane's hand lands in Ilya's hair and he flinches, only for his cheek to hit Shane's leg. 

“He's dead,” Shane says hollowly.

Ilya laughs, but the sound comes out all wrong, thick and wet like the gash on the dead man's thigh. “Oh, really?” he deadpans. “What gives you that idea?”

He still turns his face further into Shane, hiding from the sight as if the pungent metallic odor coming off of Shane isn't equally as damning at this moment. However much Ilya meant his offer of help, he now realizes he failed to understand what it would mean. 

“I try to be humane,” adds Shane. His words are easier to swallow when Ilya can't see the evidence. “I swear, Ilya. I- I give them drugs to knock them out, and then I break their necks, so no one suffers,” he explains, fast like his words are racing each other out of his mouth, “but the batch must've been bad, or something, and he didn't stay down, and he got ahold of the saw, and- and I had to- I- I had to- to-”

Unlike Ilya, Shane's legs continue to hold him, but he doubles over so his arms can wrap around Ilya's shoulders and his lips can move against the crown of Ilya's head. 

“I didn't mean…” Shane mumbles.

Ilya coughs to find his voice again. “There was fight,” he fills in. 

Somehow, it doesn't help to hear that this is an anomaly–Ilya hasn't forgotten what he saw the day he discovered the ritual–but Shane seldom shows up to a match in anything less than mint condition.

“You had to protect you. Makes sense.”

Shane nods slightly. 

“And you are hurt,” Ilya finishes, because that seems like the easiest piece to address.

He pushes himself back to his feet, allowing Shane to assist him in the process, and nods toward the bathroom deeper in the apartment, past the waxy corpse burned into the insides of Ilya's eyelids. Between Ilya's uncooperatively stiff limbs and whatever other injuries hide under Shane's hasty dressing, their progress is slow. But, little by little, they make it. 

“Sit on counter,” Ilya instructs when they get there. “You have first aid kit?”

Shane follows the direction well, hoisting himself up beside the sink and allowing his head to fall back against the mirror with a dull thud. Ilya winces but doesn't press. He simply waits, close enough for Shane to reach but not touching yet, for an answer. 

“Under the sink,” Shane finally gets out. “I can- I can do this, I just- I panicked…”

The cabinet under Shane's sink is meticulously organized--not that Ilya expected any less--which makes the oversized blue kit easy to find. Ilya drops it onto the counter next to Shane to free his hands to grab a couple of washclothes as well.

“I told you to call if you needed me. You called, here I am,” Ilya patiently explains. 

He soaks the first washcloth in the sink, waiting for the water to warm before he wrings it out and brings it to Shane's face. The towels are expensive, like all of Shane's impersonally chosen linens, but nowhere near as plush as Ilya's- something Ilya would typically needle him for, but now finds useful for scrubbing the blood off Shane's upper lip. He keeps his touch as light as he can manage. Right now, he's all too aware of the fragile air between them, and the shuddering heave of Shane's chest as he struggles to draw air through his nose. 

“Does not look broken,” Ilya tells him softly, nudging Shane's face from side to side. There are no visible deformities besides the swelling, but it's no guarantee. Surely, the team doctor will assess it more thoroughly before the match. “You are hurt other places?” he asks. “Your arms?”

While Shane grabs at the bottom of his hoodie, Ilya opens the first aid kit and rifles through its contents. In one corner, he finds an instant cold pack with pictogram instructions to activate it, which he follows until the plastic begins to sweat and cool between his hands. Ilya keeps kneading it as he notes the rest of the inventory: well stocked, to the point of overpreparation for the average home kit, in a way that reminds Ilya a lot of the first aid trunk at the foot of his father's bed growing up.

He turns back toward Shane and squeezes the cold pack so hard he fears it might burst. Ilya had, wrongfully, assumed the blood in the fabric of the hoodie belonged to Shane's victim. Now he can see the deep slash in Shane's right bicep, still weeping blood in a torrent that's made it down to his wrist, and the rake of nails on his opposite forearm with jagged, desperate edges.

Air seems to vanish from Ilya's lungs. The room disappears with it. There is only blood, on Ilya's hands, on Ilya's face, on Shane's carpet, on Shane's split skin, on everything, and Ilya is choking on it. 

Then Shane takes the ice pack from Ilya, holding it to his face, and Ilya abruptly remembers to breathe. He takes three or four slow, measured, breaths before getting the second washcloth to press against Shane's cut. 

“Needs stitches,” Ilya manages to tell him. “Мой безупречный дурак. You need doctor.”

As soon as he says it, Ilya knows it's a lost cause. There would be too many questions, and it would take too long, which leaves Ilya and the first aid kit as Shane's last line of defense. 

“Hollander. I cannot give stitches,” Ilya tries again.

Shane fixes him with a flat look, like Ilya has said something insane. “I can't, with my left hand. Check for uh, the…” he scrunches his eyes shut to think, then hisses through his teeth at the way the movement tugs his nose beneath the cold pack. “The skin glue. Blue tube, white text, by the suture kit.”

Under Shane's instructions, Ilya is able to find the small container, but he knows right away it will not suffice. The cut on Shane's arm goes from one side to the other, just over half the circumference of his bicep, and while it's shallow at the edges, the center is deep enough for Ilya to see the shivery pink worms of muscle fiber when he lifts the washcloth. There isn't enough glue to hold it closed, even supposing it would be safe to use on such a severe wound. 

“Glue will not be enough,” Ilya informs. “Too deep.”

Shane wipes his still dripping nose with the back of his opposite hand, smearing more snot than blood across his face this time. “Then I- I need you to do it.”

For a moment, Ilya wants to laugh, because there's something funny about being asked to stitch up defensive wounds on his serial murderer hockey rival/occasional lover before five in the morning on a game day, and if he doesn't look for the humor, he might not be able to stay upright through much more of this. He shakes his head. Blood is soaking through the thin fabric of the washcloth and Ilya wonders how much Shane has already lost. Surely not enough to hurt him. 

“You can watch a YouTube video, there's tons of ‘em,” Shane suggests.

That's Ilya's breaking point. 

He turns his face away to hide his grimace before it falls apart into a humorless bark of a laugh. “I am not watching fucking YouTube video. Fuck you.” 

When he glances back at Shane, their eyes meet and Ilya can't stomach the look behind Shane's. It's all wrong. Glassy. Far away. Ilya has always read the distance fondly, felt like he'd caught Shane daydreaming, but the emptiness now sends a chill down his spine. Perhaps if he didn't recognize the expression, he would be able to move, to run, to fight, to do something, but its familiarity pins him like a mouse caught in a trap. He knows this look on Shane: it's the same one Shane gets before he puts the puck into the back of the net. It doesn't belong here, between them, like this.

“I can talk you through it,” Shane says next, the light apparently brightening behind his eyes once more. “But I- I really need your help, Ilya.” He looks away, down at the floor between them, and adds, “please.”

Ilya sighs, his head lolling to the side.

He hasn't been able to say no to Shane yet. He won't start tonight. 

“I will do my best, but I make no promise that stitches will be pretty.”

Shane makes a heavy exhale that might have been a laugh before directing Ilya through a series of small, intricate cleaning rituals to precede the stitching. He gets a clean washcloth, soaks it in foul smelling yellow antiseptic, and cleans as much of Shane's arm as he can without dipping into the edges of the wound. After pulling on a pair of nitrile gloves from the kit, Ilya follows Shane's directions to rinse the cut with water from the tap carried in his cupped hands.

Once the area is as clean as possible, Ilya selects and peels open one of the suture kits. He lays the packet out open-faced, the way he's seen it done on television, then picks up the curved needle. Ilya has sewn before, but with the thin, straight titanium his mother kept in her mending kit when Alexei wore through the seams of his shirts. He knows how to thread the needle. In order to actually do so, however, he has to ignore the stiff texture of the thread and pretend he's doing simple repair work to stop his hands from shaking long enough to get the end through the miniscule eye.

“It'll probably need a few,” Shane warns suddenly. He twitches when Ilya takes hold of his arm to steady it, wrinkles his nose when Ilya bends to inspect the sluggishly weeping wound, but stays in place without complaint. “You want to, um, pinch the edges together, so the needle can pass through both sides.”

Ilya eyes the wickedly curved needle while he squeezes the sides of Shane's cut together. When Shane whimpers in the back of his throat, Ilya murmurs, “Sorry, sorry.” Then, with the needle still poised in hand, asks, “Do you have painkiller? Something to make you hurt less?”

“Ugh, no,” Shane answers. He tilts his head, squinting at Ilya over his ice pack. “Not on game day. I'll take some ibuprofen after.”

If he notices the look Ilya gives him, Shane doesn't acknowledge it. He simply waits, ever patient despite his injuries, for Ilya to gather his bearings and position the needle. Both of his hands are trembling like a plucked guitar string. He isn't sure he's breathing. 

Shane's arm tenses before the next instruction comes. “The needle has to go in and come out half a centimeter from the laceration.”

Painstakingly, Ilya pushes the needle through Shane's skin, allowing its sharp curve to guide him through the other side as Shane groans, until at last he pinches its bloody surface between his fingers once more.

“Can you tie a square knot?” Shane huffs, shifting his weight but taking care not to move his arm while Ilya works. Ilya has known him to be a masochist for a long time, but the direct evidence of his pain tolerance is difficult to swallow. “Not too tight- leave some breathing room, like you do with your skates.”

Ilya nods. It takes him a moment to recall the steps to the knot, but he executes it well enough to avoid correction as he draws it exactly close enough to sit flush with the cut, yet loose enough not to exert too much stress on the already weakened edges. Studying it this closely, Ilya can make out the waves from what must have been the serrated blade of Shane's saw. He swallows bile down his throat as he ties off the stitch. 

“Cut the excess thread before you start another suture,” Shane finishes, allowing himself to slump into the mirror now that he trusts Ilya to sew the wound shut. “Make the next one about a quarter centimeter away. It doesn't have to be perfect, just- roughly.”

For once unable to make himself speak, Ilya simply starts the next stitch at the prescribed interval. The silence gives him nothing to distract himself from the firm resistance of pushing metal through flesh. He can barely hear Shane breathing. In a moment of weakness, Ilya glances up at him just to make sure he still is. Then he quickly refocuses, because the faster he finishes, the sooner he can bandage Shane up and start trying to scrub this hellish image from his mind. 

Ilya makes it through almost two dozen stitches to bridge the deepest part of the cut before he hesitates. Though the rest is too shallow for stitches to seem worthwhile, it feels wrong to leave it gaping open on either side of the angry red edges of his shoddy stitching job. Wordlessly, he sets the needle aside and grabs the butterfly closures tucked next to the rest of the suture kits. One by one, he peels them open and uses them to draw the edges of the wound shut until he's done all he can.

Next comes the bandage itself, which Ilya pauses to coat in antibiotic ointment before smoothing the soft pad into place over the stitches. Shane holds it in place without prompting while Ilya opens a fresh roll of gauze to secure it, but doesn't manage to keep a neutral face as Ilya carefully maneuvers his arm into a better position for him to wrap: his elbow straightened so that Ilya can make sure the gauze won't slip later, his knuckles resting against Ilya's hip to prop his arm up, and his shoulder braced against the mirror as a counterpoint for his balance. This part, Ilya knows well. He's wrapped hundreds of injuries like this, his own and others’, over the years, and the gentle criss-cross is practically muscle memory. After four complete wraps, Ilya cuts the bandage to tie it off, taking care to tuck the ends of the knot into the bandage as well.

“All better,” Ilya promises, like he isn't already picturing the ugly, gnarled scar his work will leave behind. He ducks his head to kiss the clean gauze. “Other arm now?”

Shane painstakingly switches his cold pack to his right hand. When he extends his left arm to Ilya for examination, the scratches look painful in a different way to the cut, all raw and inflamed, though they're far shallower. They might be able to heal on their own, but Ilya can't take that chance. 

Not when it's Shane.

So he spends a couple of minutes wiping away the blood and early scabs with antiseptic wipes, careful not to press too hard as he washes it clean, before rifling through the plaster bandages in the kit for one large enough to cover all four gouges. He's lucky to find one, which he measures against Shane's forearm to be sure, to slather in more ointment before laying it into place. After fixing the edges, he kisses the center of this bandage too.

When Shane doesn't react, Ilya takes his hands and squeezes to get his attention. “Ты безопасности, I have you,” he assures. “Are you sure you do not want painkiller? Just a little?”

Shane shakes his head so slightly that Ilya would've missed it if he wasn't waiting for the movement. 

“Hollander,” he says firmly, “you are not actually going to play our game tonight.”

He doesn't mean it as a question, but Shane takes it like one, dropping the cold pack off his face to fix Ilya with a glare that would come across far less pitiful if he wasn't so bruised.

“Yeah, I am.”

“No,” Ilya counters, the word soft and delicate. “You are hurt, and your face-”

“You said my nose wasn't broken,” Shane bites. 

“Look in fucking mirror!” Ilya snaps back, taking a deliberate step away. “Maybe not broken, but is definitely bad. People will ask questions.”

He isn't getting through. He knows it, because Shane's expression hasn't moved an inch, as if he's hearing Ilya but the words aren't registering to him. This version of Shane is uncanny, too familiar, but distant at the same time. The discord makes Ilya break out in goosebumps. 

“And your arm, your grip arm, you…” he trails off when even that does not break through.

If he pushes too hard, he could probably withstand any reaction from Shane in this state, but he doesn't want it to go that far. Ilya really would like to believe Shane won't hurt him. Until he does, however, he's caught in moments like these, trying not to give Shane the opportunity to crush the burgeoning trust beneath his heel. 

After a long pause, Ilya plays the only other card he has. “This is not about winning,” he says carefully, “or records, or goals, or anything. All that is useless right now. I am saying, it is not smart for you to play tonight, and you are not too stupid to know that.”

Instead of arguing, Shane pushes off the counter and shoulder checks Ilya on his way out of the bathroom. Ilya follows behind him like a lost puppy despite knowing that when they return to the living room, he'll have to contend with the sight of Shane's latest victim once more. 

Shane, however, doesn't even blink as he reapproaches the body and kneels next to it on the tarp, using his bad arm to stabilize the head while he fits his other hand around the bloody grip of the saw. At first, Ilya assumes he's going to pull it out. Then Shane squares his shoulders, takes a deep breath, and starts cutting. 

Ilya has to be imagining it.

Or misunderstanding. 

Or- something, anything, other than that because he can't reconcile the Shane Hollander that blushes when Ilya calls him beautiful with the one that calmly saws the head off the body of the man he murdered. Some sort of wounded, disbelieving whine forces itself out of Ilya's mouth as he leans against the wall for support. Shane doesn't acknowledge him. He just keeps working, slicing through meat and tendon and bone with such determination that Ilya can hear his progress, down to the dull scrape when he finally hits the hardwood floor. 

Before Ilya can do something stupid like go back to Shane's side, Shane grabs one arm and sets about cutting through it at the wrist. This time, Ilya covers his ears and shuts his eyes. He shouldn't be here. And yet, he can't fathom making Shane trudge through stitching up his own bicep.

A few minutes later, a heavy thud prompts Ilya to open his eyes and surge forward, terrified that he missed something and Shane has collapsed, possibly onto the same saw that apparently could have taken his arm off with enough dedication. He climbs over the back of the couch as he assesses the situation: Shane, on his knees, breathing heavily; the body, in four distinct pieces, its shoulders on Shane's hands.

“Okay, пиздец,” Ilya swears, crouching beside him to pull Shane away from the body. “What are we doing? I will do, you-” his voice cracks, but Ilya can't take back the words now that he's said them, “you are hurt.”

Shane bites the inside of his cheek, considering, before he answers in an empty, faraway voice, “I have a setup in the basement.”

He picks up the head and hands without a second thought. Ilya, against his better judgement, scoops up the rest of the corpse to follow Shane through his utility room and out another exit that feeds to the interior of the building. Their pay in the league can't be that different, but Shane's sponsorships and Ilya's family have led them down different paths, and owning the building has clearly paid off for Shane's rituals. His home must be four connected apartments by now, and he has exclusive access to the basement. 

Down three flights of stairs and through two more doors, the last of which Shane has to unlock with a keyring from his pocket, they finally reach a small room. In the pitch black, Shane cranks the dial of a light timer for the single strip of overhead fluorescents. One wall boasts three unassuming black industrial barrels and a filing cabinet, while the opposite houses a massive acrylic tank of mulch and flies, bisected by a divider with a handle at the top of it. All the bugs appear to be concentrated on one side of the tank.

Ilya laughs involuntarily, clutching the corpse closer to his body. “You keep flies?”

“And beetles,” Shane answers.

He sets the head and hands on the ground and approaches the tank. Its lid moves on a gliding track with ease, creating a wide enough window for Ilya to presumably fit Shane's victim into. 

“I…” Ilya starts. His tongue feels too large for his mouth and his skull feels like a static radio channel. “What is…?”

“The flies help early decomposition,” Shane explains patiently. He has the decency not to rush Ilya forward, though his muscles are beginning to complain at the weight. “When they're done, I take the rest to the cottage; my beetles prefer the leftovers.”

Ilya nods slowly. He isn't surprised. But understanding, implicitly, what Shane being a murderer entails, means nothing in the face of the cold, hard evidence to how calculated his system is. Of course, Ilya never expected otherwise from him. He just couldn't have prepared himself to feed Shane's victim to an insect farm. 

Somehow, Ilya forces himself to approach the tank. He lowers the body carefully, whispering a prayer for the man under his breath as he does, then steps out of the way for Shane to shut the tank and raise the divider. His flies rush to the fresh blood and gore provided before Ilya has a chance to turn away. 

As soon as Shane is satisfied with the tank, he crosses to the filing cabinet to produce a high quality respirator that he fits over his face. When he speaks, he sounds tinny and distant. “The barrels have saprobic fungi to break down identifiable parts,” he says. “You should wait outside the room, I uh, don't have an extra mask.”

Ilya doesn't fully understand, but he takes the out he's given. If he weren't so soft, he would run while he has the chance, as far and fast as he can, and scream at the top of his lungs what Shane is doing. He might be the only person in the world who could stop Shane. But if he did, he would never get to see Shane again, let alone speak to him, kiss him, make him cum, fall asleep with him, or any number of things Ilya wants but can't have. Maybe this makes him selfish. Or pathetic. Either way, he stays put on the other side of the door despite the horrific amalgamation of guilt and terror turning his blood to ice. 

A few minutes later, Shane emerges with pressure lines on his face and an aura of astringent bleach, locking the door behind him. He nods at Ilya. “Gonna, um, finish cleaning up now,” he says, stilted and uncertain like he had been the first night Ilya went to his hotel room. “You can go. If you want.”

Shane starts back out of the basement. Ilya follows close behind, leaving enough space between them for plausible deniability, and ascends the steps back to Shane's apartment with the same silent acceptance he had left it. Without Shane's victim in the middle, the mess looks incomplete, but somehow more damning. It isn't just the blood. It's the spread of it, past the reach of the tarp and plastic, in thick lines on the hardwood and rusted dustings across the wall, to the point Ilya can't begin to tell how much came from Shane versus his victim.

Oblivious, or perhaps intentionally ignorant, to Ilya's presence behind him, Shane begins gathering up the tarp, wrapping his bloody tools in the fabric along the way, but leaving behind his bag near the corner. Once he tucks it all under his left arm, Shane takes the bundle out of the room. He doesn't look at Ilya once. 

Left behind in the outlines of the mess, Ilya closes his eyes and takes a moment to collect himself. Shane hasn't kicked him out, and Ilya isn't ready yet to stray much further than the already insurmountable distance of the rooms between them, which leaves him no choice but to make himself useful. He has nothing else to offer. While Shane works on his kit, Ilya can start cleaning the living room. 

He heads into Shane's kitchen to look for supplies. First, he checks under the kitchen sink, where he finds sponges but no effective cleaners. Dish soap won't help, and neither will metal polish. After searching a couple more cabinets filled with various sizes and shapes of tupperware, he finds an array of vitamins, supplements, and medicines that do a decent job disguising three containers: bleach, isopropyl alcohol, and hydrogen peroxide. Ilya doubts many other people would recognize the combination, but he has scrubbed bloodstains before. 

He nudges all the pill and syrup bottles to the side to retrieve Shane's cleaning supplies, then tries his best to put things back where he found them before shutting the cabinet. On a whim, he grabs the paper towels too before returning to the living room. 

Ilya starts with the wall, where the spray has already dried to a fine dust. He knows better than to pour straight peroxide down the plaster, so he picks a sponge out to saturate, reminds himself that this is all he can do, and starts attacking the blood. It's probably not Shane's. If Ilya lets himself think it could be, he won't be able to do this. And he has to do it. He has to do something. He has to put the adrenaline in his veins and the worry in his chest and the desperation in his heart somewhere, and the only place available is here, on the ground, with his knees pressed to the floorboard and tears in his eyes.

As the blood bubbles and fizzes from the peroxide, Ilya tears off a few paper towels to wipe the excess away. It takes several passes, but inch by inch, he scrubs the wall until the sheets come away blank and dry. He's uncapping the bleach for a final disinfection when he hears Shane come back down the hall.

“You're still here,” Shane says. 

Ilya presses his lips together in a tight smile as he turns to face him. “Still here,” he affirms. “Don't want you to have to repaint this wall; you will find even more boring color than eggshell.”

Shane doesn't laugh, but the edges of his expression soften, the tension sloughing away from his muscles exactly as Ilya had hoped. Ribbing is familiar ground for both of them. 

“I keep a can around for touch ups.”

“Mister Landlord,” Ilya teases.

“Funny,” Shane deadpans back, but there's light behind his eyes and a real smile on his face again. 

Automatically, Ilya wants to shuffle up to him on his knees, tug down the blood-stained waistband of his pajama pants, and drive both of their minds blank, but he holds himself back. It would cheapen everything Ilya has done this morning. He isn't here because he wants to fuck Shane, though that's Ilya's daily baseline, but because against his better judgement, he cares for Shane more than he can express in words. Neither English nor Russian would do justice to the enormity of his affection. 

“Thank you, for…” Shane trails off, waving a hand loosely at Ilya, “uh, everything, I guess.”

“Of course,” Ilya answers softly. 

Something must show on his face, longing or desperation or some other stupid vulnerability, because Shane looks away like the mere sight of Ilya pains him. “You should probably go. Try and um, get some sleep before the game, and all. Sorry for calling.”

“No, no sorries,” Ilya tells Shane. He crumples the paper towels in his hands but can't make himself get up right away. “I will go, if that is what you want.” When he tries to catch Shane's eye, Shane turns away from him entirely to study the blood streaks on his floor, refusing to look at Ilya at all now. It stings. But Ilya asks, “You are sure you don't want me to stay?”

Shane's nod is stilted. He doesn't say anything out loud. 

“Okay.”

Slowly, Ilya gets to his feet. He takes the used paper towels to Shane's kitchen to throw out before he leaves, and on his way back, must pass Shane soaking up the worst of the blood on the floor with a dark hand towel like it doesn't make his heart twinge in his chest. Ilya nearly makes it out without incident, only for Shane to call his name at the doorway. He can't turn around fast enough, half-hoping that Shane still needs him enough for Ilya to stay. Right now, he'd take whatever excuse Shane has in stride without comment so long as it means he doesn't have to walk away like he has after so many late night hookups. The time isn't far from his usual departure, after all.

“Yes, Hollander?” he asks in the most neutral tone he can muster.

Without raising his head, Shane says, “See you tonight.”

Ilya forces himself to repeat the words back despite knowing Shane won't acknowledge them on his way out. Leaving by himself is strange; Shane has always walked him down the stairs and stolen a few more kisses before Ilya made it out. The air feels colder without him in the bitter early morning when Ilya doesn't have a coat to protect him.

In another universe, Ilya hopes Shane trusts him enough to let him stay. 

It's probably the same universe where Ilya trusts Shane enough not to obey the command to leave. 

But in this one, Ilya's teeth chatter as he walks down the block to call a ride back to his hotel, where he won't be able to fall asleep again and Marleau will interrogate him about his disappearance. Ilya has a reputation, after all. He's the playboy, the partier, the one who they assume has a harem of girls waiting for him in each city, and Ilya knows the façade is for the best regardless of how wrong it feels to shove everything Shane means to him in a box. 

Ilya goes through morning practice and lunch with the team in a haze. He responds to everything with one or two word answers and glares any chance of conversation into oblivion so that by the time the Raiders gather in the locker room before the Metros game, no one bothers to start a conversation with him. Marleau comes the closest: he claps Ilya on the back and nods at him. It's the exact quiet, unspoken comfort Ilya can accept. When he inclines his head in return, Marleau smiles before exiting the locker room. 

Unsurprisingly, Ilya is the last to make it to the bench, but the first to skate into position for a face off against Shane. Ilya studies him through the shield of his helmet. His face is clear, free of pain or stress; despite his injuries, Shane appears as focused as ever. 

“Why are you here?” he asks as they wait for their teams to skate into position. 

Shane meets Ilya's gaze with fire behind his eyes. “If I'm not, then it was all for nothing.”

The puck drops. Shane wins the face off, cutting away with it like he can fly across the ice, while Ilya stalls in place for a half-second too long before taking off after him. Yes, Shane is always good, but he plays this particular game like a man possessed. He darts between Ilya's teammates with ease, evading what should be brutal checks and making shot after shot on goal as if he's the only one there. He's effortlessly beautiful. Ilya can usually keep up with him. Tonight, however, he can barely see the blur of blue on the ice enough to make out the bright number 24 emblazoned across Shane's jersey. 

With less than five minutes left in the first period, Shane finally takes a check from St-Simon that sends his right side into the boards hard. It doesn't slow him down, but the next time Ilya looks, he can see the slow soak of blood through Shane's sleeve from what must be at least a couple of popped stitches. 

At the top of the second period, Ilya lines up on the left side while Shane skates into place across from Marleau for the next face off. “Not even worth it, Hollander,” he chirps, praying the other players can't hear the concern rushing beneath his words. “Should quit while you are ahead.”

Shane raises his eyebrows. “Not a chance.”

This time, Shane loses the face-off. Unlike Ilya, however, he makes up the lost ground before it can truly expand, ruthless in his mission to regain control of the puck. Marleau is a team player, though- he passes it off any time Shane gets too close, setting a ping pong pattern that tires Shane's already straining muscles as he struggles to find an in. Ilya skates to the far side of the ice, away from the clusterfuck of players crowding the Raider's side of the rink, and meets Connors’ eyes across the ice.

Hollander is distracted, the Metros are struggling to clear room, and Ilya has the kind of backhand that could easily clear the added distance. It would buy them time and space. Connors ducks into the fray, dropping his interference of Pike to open himself up for the pass. In that moment, Shane looks up at Ilya, clocks the intended play, and begins to twirl his way through the chaos to intercept the puck before Ilya can get to it. Now it's a race. And while Shane has built momentum and raw speed on Ilya, he's exhausted and bleeding. 

He's distracted. 

Ilya is, too, splitting his attention between the puck and the stain on Shane's arm.

Neither of them are watching Marleau. Shane can't see him coming and Ilya isn't paying enough attention. The moment Marleau collides with Shane, Ilya's entire field of vision narrows to the sudden drop of Shane's body and the roar of the crowd dulls to silence as Shane's head cracks against the ice. It's a clean check, no question, but Shane doesn't get up. He doesn't move at all. He just lies there, lips parted and eyes unfocused, one of his skates wedged into the ice from the odd angle he fell at.

A warm body, thickly padded and royal Metro blue, gently bumps into Ilya as another player wraps their arms around him. The medics come. They pack Shane into a brace and backboard. In under a minute, he's gone, leaving Ilya to stare at the space Shane had been like he can undo the past through sheer force of will.

When Ilya finally forces himself to look up, the jumbotron magnifies a single shot of the ice: the splash of blood Shane left behind.