Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova, Shane Hollander & Svetlana Vetrova

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Suicide Attempt, Suicidal Thoughts, Hurt/Comfort, Hospitals, Depressed Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander Takes Care of Ilya Rozanov, Protective Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov Situationship, Ilya Rozanov Gets A Hug, Supportive David Hollander and Yuna Hollander, Tuna Means Love, Shane Hollander is Earnest, POV Multiple, Shane Hollander & Svetlana Vetrova Friendship, Emotional Sex

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of point me towards the real

Stats:

Published: 2026-08-08 Completed: 2026-09-03 Words: 48,336 Chapters: 10/10

I just got here but I'm leaving

Summary

Ilya doesn’t want to be here anymore.

Things get bad for Ilya in 2014 following the Sochi Olympics and winning the Cup. In desperation, he calls Shane. To his surprise, Shane shows up.

Notes

This fic sprang out of reading Heated Rivalry and The Long Game over the course of three days in January, strongly believing that the climax of TLG should have been a suicide attempt from a character development standpoint, and wondering about how Shane's feelings would have developed if Ilya's depression had gotten worse sooner. And my love of angst, of course. That said, this is a fic based pretty solidly in the show version of canon where they're both clearly pretty fond of each other early on.

I have all but the last chapter finished, so I'll be posting a new chapter every few days until the end.

Note that this fic is about the aftermath of a suicide attempt and does go into some detail about the attempt itself.

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

December 2014—Montreal

Shane’s phone rings and he picks it up automatically to answer, pausing only when he sees the name on the screen.

Lily.

His heart leaps up into his throat. Rozanov’s never called him before. They don’t call. Especially not when they’re in different cities with no chance of seeing each other for weeks. Especially not at this time of night.

It’s late. Shane was already halfway to sleep when his phone rang—he keeps the ringtone on for certain people in case of emergencies. It’s not a long list of people: his parents, his coaches, Hayden. And Rozanov.

Should he answer? Shane’s mind races through a scattered list of possibilities: It’s a mistake, and Rozanov meant to call someone else. Or Rozanov is in Montreal somehow. Or it’s one of Rozanov’s teammates trying to figure out who the mysterious ‘Jane’ is. (No, that one doesn’t make sense at all, Rozanov surely has dozens of anonymous women in his phone.) Maybe Rozanov is tired of Shane’s lackluster sexting game and wants to up the ante to phone sex. Maybe Rozanov is tired of him, and he’s calling to cut things off.

“Hello?” Shane keeps his voice as neutral and hopefully unrecognizable as he can. It’ll be pretty obvious Jane isn’t the one answering the phone, but, well. Just in case.

As always, saying no to Rozanov was never really a possibility—even when Shane is sure it’s a mistake.

“Hollander. Are you alone?” Rozanov’s unmistakable voice, looser than usual, his accent thicker, purrs in Shane’s ear.

“Um, yeah. Why?”

“Mm. No reason.”

Shane finds his eyes closing automatically, the better to hear the way Rozanov rounds his vowels, dragging out each word.

“Okay. Why are you calling, then?”

“What, I can’t call you?”

“No. No, I mean, you can call me. I just—we usually don’t.”

“No, we don’t.” Rozanov exhales, and Shane can picture him so clearly—holding a cigarette, maybe, curls of smoke and the curls of his hair framing his sharp features. “I am bored, Hollander. So fucking bored.”

Shane feels himself smile. He shouldn’t be so quietly elated that Rozanov called him just to talk. It doesn’t mean—it doesn’t mean anything, he reminds himself. It doesn’t mean anything.

“Well, I can’t help you with that. I’m boring, remember?”

“Mm, yes. You are boring.” Something in Rozanov’s voice is different than usual. Muted, distracted. Shane can’t place what it is. He doesn’t remember hearing it before, not like this. Rozanov just sounds strange.

“Have you been drinking or something? Are you at a bar?” He doesn’t hear any voices in the background. Maybe Rozanov stepped outside to smoke.

“Nooo, not the bar. Home.”

He’s definitely slurring. Shane feels a twinge of—something—that Rozanov only called him while he was drinking. It’s quickly overridden by concern for the fact that Rozanov is transparently drunk and, apparently, alone. Shane knows he can handle himself. And he also knows that as much as Rozanov likes to live recklessly, he wouldn’t get really trashed on a random weeknight, not with more games coming later in the week. Still—and Shane hates that he even thinks it—it feels good to hear his voice. Good that he called Shane instead of anyone else.

“You’re okay though, right? You sound a little, uh, wasted.” Had he been out earlier? Could someone have slipped him something?

“Mm. You think I cannot hold my alcohol?” The amusement in his voice is faint but familiar, edged with something less recognizable. He sighs. “I am just…bored.”

“Yeah, you said that.”

“Svetlana is gone, out of country. Raiders do not play until night after next. Do not play you until February. ’S terrible.”

Shane can sort of understand that. He always feels untethered without the structure of hockey, and it’s nice to know that Rozanov is looking forward to seeing him, too. The name, Svetlana, sounds a little familiar, like maybe Rozanov has mentioned her before. Shane almost asks who she is—but then again, maybe he doesn’t want to know.

Instead he asks, “What do you usually do when you have a night off?”

“I see you. Or Svetlana. Or other girl. But Svetlana is not here. You are not here.”

“So you decided to get drunk?” Shane doesn’t mean to sound so judgmental. It just comes out of his mouth that way. He hopes Rozanov isn’t too far gone to hear what he really means. There’s something about the conversation that feels off, like he’s missed something important between Rozanov’s slurred words.

“Something like that.” He sounds fainter now, farther away. He adds something in Russian, or maybe it’s just unintelligible English.

“What was that?”

“Hm?”

“What you just said.”

“Don’t remember. Does not matter.”

“Rozanov—”

“Should go now. Bye, Shane.”

Shane?

“Wait, Rozanov, you’re not making sense.”

There is a long pause on the other end of the line, so long that Shane checks to make sure Rozanov hasn’t hung up. And then, almost inaudible: “Love you.”

“What?” Shane feels like he’s taken an elbow to the stomach. All the air rushes out of him. “What did you say?”

Silence on the other end. Shane checks his screen again—the call is still going, but Ilya isn’t saying anything. Had he heard right? Why wasn’t he answering?

“Rozanov…Ilya, can you hear me? Ilya? Say something, please.”

He doesn’t hear a response. He doesn’t hear anything except for the whine in his ears.

He’s—he needs to—

Something is wrong.

Ilya, his brain screams. Ilya, Ilya, just answer me. Please.

He watches himself end the call like the hands holding his phone belong to someone else. Someone who knows what to do, controlling his body while his brain crashes and goes into standby.

The hands that don’t belong to him press the button to call Ilya back: once, twice. No answer.

Are you okay? He watches the message send. No reply. He waits.

He tries another number, one he’s never had to call before in his life.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“I need an ambulance,” Shane hears himself say. “My friend is drunk. He stopped talking—he might be unconscious.” Distantly, he’s impressed by how steady his voice is. How can he sound so calm when it feels like he’s dying? He can’t get a full breath. Maybe he needs an ambulance too.

“Are you there with him now?” The operator’s voice is calm. The part of Shane that’s piloting his body while the rest of him gasps for air is calm. Everyone is so calm.

“No, we were talking on the phone. I’m—he’s in Boston. He’s by himself.”

“Do you have an address?”

“Yes.” Shane has never been to Ilya’s home, but he knows the address as well as he does his own parents’ by now. Has had it memorized for more than a year, since Ilya invited him home and Shane said no, like an idiot, because they can’t do that, he can’t do that, they’ll get caught or Shane will want more, he won’t want to leave, and now he might never get the chance to say yes and Ilya—

His voice cracks on the name of Ilya’s street.

“The EMTs are on their way. We’ll have a team there shortly.”

“Thank you.” The room around him is blurry now. His hands are shaking. Whatever had seized him long enough to make the call has worn off, and he’s falling apart as the world falls to pieces around him. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

His heart is beating so hard that he presses the phone against his chest after he hangs up, trying to remind himself where the boundaries of his body are. He has very probably just done something very stupid. What if Ilya just fell asleep, and Shane sent a fucking ambulance to his house for nothing? What if the call signal dropped? Ilya will be furious, unless—unless—

Unless something really is wrong.

Shane draws his legs up and rests his forehead on his knees.

What if he’s just done something that hurts Ilya’s career? Shane keeps imagining the headlines, the asides thrown in by commentators at the start of the next Raiders game. Rumors swirling around Ilya’s drinking, reporters poking into his—their—privacy. But he doesn’t want to think about that, so he tries to push it out of his head. Then all he’s left with are images of Ilya, unconscious or worse, his arm hanging limply off the side of the couch.

No. Shane presses his hands to the sides of his head, as if he could crush the thoughts inside.

It helps.

It hurts.

Ilya is going to hate him.

Chapter End Notes

Title from 711 by Emei

There are a bunch of other songs that went into this fic. Ask me about my sad Ilya playlist lol

Chapter 2

Three weeks ago—Montreal

The last time they’d seen each other, Rozanov had come to the back door of Shane’s building like before.

“Going to murder me this time?” he asks, smirking.

Shane grins automatically, mirroring him. “Getting slaughtered on the ice wasn’t enough?”

Rozanov rolls his eyes as he pushes past him into the stairwell. “That was not slaughter, Hollander. Was barely a bruising.”

“That’s what you call a bruising? You got lucky it wasn’t a shutout.”

“We will beat you the next time,” Rozanov says with a flick of his hand, a gesture of dismissal Shane thinks of as particularly Russian, or maybe just particularly him.

“Yeah? Was that part of the speech you gave your team afterwards?”

“Oh, it is speech you want?” Rozanov surges forward, crowding Shane against the railing of the stairs. He grinds his thigh against Shane’s cock, just enough to make him gasp in a sharp breath. His smirk widens. “Need some, ah, motivation?”

Shane tries, and fails, to hold back a smile. “No. Do you?”

Ilya just laughs at him.

They stumble up the stairs still locked together, energy pent up and volatile under both their skins. Rozanov’s teeth graze Shane’s throat as he pushes him down onto the mattress, pinning his wrists while he plants a knee on each side of his thighs.

“Got you.”

Shane bucks his hips, more for the friction than anything, only for Rozanov to nip at his throat again.

“No. Not yet.”

“You got plans for me, Rozanov?”

“Mm. Maybe. If you are patient.”

He likes to make Shane wait. Make them both wait, as if the weeks between games aren’t enough. It drives Shane crazy, especially when he’s wound as tightly as he is right now. He pushes up against Rozanov’s grip, makes him work for it to hold him down. But he holds his hips still.

Rozanov meets him halfway, and his mouth is hot on Shane’s lips. His grip loosens as he brings one hand to Shane’s face, the gentle press of his palm at odds with the ferocity of the kiss.

Shane throws his head back to give Rozanov access to his throat, his ear, his jaw. He wants his mouth everywhere, right now. They have weeks, months, to make up for. Every chance they get they’ve been doing this, this thing between them, and it’s still not enough. Shane feels more concerned about that when he’s not pinned between Rozanov’s legs.

Rozanov catches Shane by the jaw to hold him in place, no longer so gentle. Is he frustrated by the loss? Or just losing himself in Shane’s body, the way Shane is losing himself in his?

Rozanov’s teeth scrape his ear. “On your stomach.”

He works Shane open quickly, just on the rough side of pleasurable, the way Shane always wants him to. His hands ball into fists in the sheets as he adjusts to Rozanov’s fingers.

“Good?” Rozanov asks. He knows the answer already, he would have slowed if he didn’t. But he asks like always.

“Good,” Shane pants. “Fuck, Rozanov.”

“Patience.” His lips press against Shane’s spine. Right between his shoulders.

“Fuck you.”

Rozanov laughs, sharp but with a glint of real pleasure he’s unable to keep concealed. Because of Shane. Shane made him feel like that. Then Rozanov pushes into him with an inhaled gasp and Shane groans, relief as much as anything else. There is nothing else that feels like this. Nothing as good as Rozanov at making him feel this way.

“Fuck. Hollander.” Rozanov pulls Shane towards him by the hips, possessive. “You are so good for me, yes?”

“Yes. Yes, fuck, I need—” He needs Rozanov to start moving, right now.

Rozanov does, rolling his hips agonizing slowly, like they have all the time in the world. Like Shane isn’t already ready to come apart at the seams. He goes to lift himself up on his forearms, but Rozanov presses a hand to his back and holds him down.

“This is what you need, Hollander?”

“More.” He isn’t above begging where Rozanov is concerned, not anymore. “Faster.”

“More what?”

“More. Please. You—oh my god, Rozanov, fuck.”

Rozanov circles his hips with a bit more force, still only a fraction of the strength Shane knows he’s capable of.

“You will be good for me?”

“I’ll be good,” Shane gasps. He can be patient. He can ask for more but take what he’s given. He can.

Rozanov’s thumb skims over his shoulder blade. Shane’s oversensitive skin, a source of endless irritation when he’s buying clothes or sheets or towels, lights up immediately under his touch. He likes pressure, force, sensation he can feel down to his bones, not a light touch.

“Tell me what you want, Hollander.”

“Fuck me. Give me more, I can take it.”

“Da, I know you can. But will you last for me?”

“Fuck you, Rozanov.”

“Fuck you, or fuck me? Make up your mind, Hollander.”

Before Shane can growl out a response, Rozanov snaps his hips forward and every thought whites out. Shane grinds his face against the mattress while Rozanov picks up speed at last, filling him up so there is no room for anything else. No anxiety, no doubts, no second thoughts.

Above him Rozanov’s rhythm is faltering. For all his talk, he’s already close.

He presses himself against Shane’s back as he comes, breath hot against his neck, in his ear. With Rozanov’s full weight on top of him, the friction of the mattress under him is enough to bring Shane to the edge. He pushes himself up on his hands, and one touch from Rozanov as he curls his other hand possessively around Shane’s hip is all it takes.

Afterwards, after Rozanov has trailed kisses down Shane’s spine, after they’ve cleaned each other up enough for Shane to relax, still floating on endorphins, he feels the urge to wrap his arms around the body beside him. To hold him. To trace the planes of his face with his lips, like he had the first time they’d been in this bed. Shane thinks of that night and remembers the long months of silence after. He keeps his distance.

Rozanov slaps his thigh as he gets up to shower. He kisses Shane roughly, hungrily, one last time before he leaves, lingering longer than usual.

So Shane must have done something right.

*

December 2014—Boston

Ilya opens his eyes. He doesn’t know where he is, and his throat is raw and aching. The harsh lights above him aren’t like any hotel he’s ever been in. They certainly don’t belong to his apartment. There are people around him, but no one he knows. He shouldn’t be here.

This isn’t right. This isn’t where he’s supposed to be.

“Где я?” Where am I?

The answer isn’t anything he understands. Too many words, the sounds all jumbling together in his mind. He can’t sort them into anything that makes sense. He just wants to sleep, but people he doesn’t know keep waking him up to ask questions his exhausted mind can’t grasp. He doesn’t understand.

He wants to go home. He can’t remember where that is.

“Уходи.” Go away.

If they would just leave him alone, if it was quiet, he could sleep, and maybe this would all finally make sense again. He looks around, searching for one familiar thing to hold onto, at least. Some anchor, a reference point. Instinctively he reaches up and finds the chain around his neck missing.

“Где это? Скажи мне!” Where is it? Tell me.

The strangers hovering around him won’t answer him. They won’t give him the last piece he has of his mother back. They’re not even looking at him now, busy talking among themselves in a language he can’t parse. His head aches, and he’s suddenly uncomfortably aware that his mouth is dry as sand.

In an aching rush, Ilya wishes for a familiar face in a way he hasn’t needed since he was small. He wants his mother. Svetlana. Shane. He wants to be held.

He’d settle for just one person he knows. Anyone at all.

*

December 2014—Montreal

The day after Rozanov calls him is awful. Shane calls out sick from practice for maybe the third time in his whole career. It’s barely a lie, and he doesn’t have to fake anything—he spends the whole day drifting between his bed and the sofa, too consumed with worry to eat or sleep. He feels like he really does have a fever. He’s looking up whether you can give yourself one from stress alone when his mother calls.

He declines the call and texts her instead. He doesn’t think he’d be able to keep the panic out of his voice, and he has no explanation for that that she would understand.

Can’t talk. Lost my voice.

Also not entirely a lie. His throat feels scraped raw, tense as the rest of him.

That bad? Yuna replies. Have you seen the doctor?

Not yet. I will if it gets worse.

Make sure you’re getting enough fluids. And resting. More than you think you need to. Do you need anything?

Shane takes a shaky breath. He needs to know how Ilya is, but that’s not something his mother can give him. It’s the not knowing that’s killing him, spiraling into an all-encompassing dread that something awful has happened.

No, I’m okay. Just resting, like you said.

You’re not the only one out right now. Rozanov’s not playing tomorrow night.

He knows. He’d looked up the Raiders’ news releases right after searching Boston area hospitals and alcohol poisoning. There had been no further information in the release, just that Rozanov wasn’t playing. No reason given. No timeline for his return.

Yeah, I saw.

Well, small mercies. And at least tomorrow is an easy game if you’re still not 100%. Let us know if you need anything. Love you.

Love you too.

Shane lets his phone fall to his chest and stares up at the ceiling, willing the tears in his eyes not to fall. He knows his mom meant nothing by it, but small mercies sticks like shards of glass in his throat.

Small mercies.

What if he never plays against Rozanov again? What if he never sees him again?

Shane feels paralyzed, stuck between his worst fears and his inability to picture or exist in a world without Rozanov in it. Their whole careers, their whole adult lives, it’s been the two of them. Hollander and Rozanov. Rozanov and Hollander. It’s literally unimaginable to him, his life without Rozanov across the ice. Even if it’s only on the ice.

He can’t stop turning it over in his head, wondering how and why Rozanov could have gotten so drunk, drunk enough to call Shane of all people. Shane knows he isn’t stupid, that he knows his limits. Shane’s seen it before at award shows over the years and the way Rozanov sometimes comes to his hotel room buzzing but not out of his head after a hard-fought win. He might pretend to be irresponsible, but he isn’t, not really. He wouldn’t risk being too sick to play if he could avoid it. Wouldn’t—wouldn’t let his team down like that.

Something just feels wrong. Shane knows it the way he can anticipate a play by the smallest detail, his body moving before his brain caught up. And what Rozanov had said before he’d stopped talking—the thing Shane must have misheard—

He’s so afraid that it hurts. Physically. A deep, stabbing ache between his ribs, in his lungs, so acute he can’t draw a full breath. It’s not the shaky thrum of anxiety or the thrashing spiral of a panic attack. It’s fear, real fear. Terror that he’s never going to see Rozanov again, at all. Ever.

Shane had thought he’d lost him before. All those silent months last spring. All that distance between them. Rozanov had shot him down, frozen him out, turned him away. Shane had pressed too close in Sochi. He could understand that now. It hadn’t been safe, and it hadn’t been what Rozanov had wanted from him. Now he realizes that loss was nothing in comparison to this. At least he’d still been able to see Rozanov, to know he still existed.

Shane had learned his lesson after that. He’d really thought he had.

Except now, he wants closeness, or even just simple proximity. He wants to be in the ambulance that took Ilya to the hospital. Wants to be at his side when he wakes up, to be sure he’s okay. Wants to know what happened, how things got to this point, whether his teammates knew he’d been drinking. Wants Rozanov to put him down as his emergency contact.

He can’t. Shane knows that. Of course he does.

If Rozanov had been embarrassed in Sochi, how much more mortified would he be now? If he’d been irritated then by Shane’s constant questions, how livid would he be when he realized who called the ambulance to his house?

He types out half a dozen texts, but ends up sending only one: Please tell me when you get this. That’s all he needs. There are so many things that Shane wants, but he promises himself he’ll be happy with just that. Just confirmation that Rozanov is still there, somewhere, even permanently out of Shane’s reach.

He can’t keep laying on this couch winding himself up. He needs to get up, to move. He needs to do something. He forces himself to his feet and finds himself standing in his kitchen moments later, the keys to his car in his hand.

Shane is not an impulsive person. Not usually. But Rozanov has made him impulsive.

He needs to see him. He needs to be there. Even if there’s nothing he can do.

Even if Ilya doesn’t want him to be.

Chapter 3

Three weeks ago—Montreal

Sitting on the tarmac on the plane from Montreal, Ilya thinks: What if he just ended it? This thing with Shane. One text, a clean break. He could type out the words in under a minute. As long as Shane wasn’t looking at his phone right that second, Ilya could even have the whole flight before he had to deal with the fallout. Shane would surely be disappointed, annoyed even, maybe, but he’d come around. He was the one always reminding Ilya that what they were doing was dangerous, anyway. He was always the one with sense.

The whole thought experiment, the same one Ilya has had a hundred times in the past few years, makes him feel genuinely ill. Aside from this thing he has with Shane, he can’t think of a single thing he’s really looking forward to right now. The thought hurts too much to examine further, like a hairline fracture beneath a blooming bruise. He’s in much, much too deep by now, and he knows it.

Each time, he promises himself it will be different. Each time, it’s harder than ever to leave.

Not texting hadn’t helped. Not kissing Shane hadn’t helped. An ocean between them hadn’t helped. Everything Ilya does to make space between them leaves him thinking about Shane more. And since the summer, they’d fallen easily back into a pattern that felt too good to interrupt.

Shane is comfortable with him again now. Chirping him the minute he walks in the door from the alley, pushing back when Ilya shoves him up against the railing, the wall, the mattress. Smiling, relaxed like he is on the ice, in his element.

It’s good every time. Every single time, it’s better than any regular hookup Ilya has ever had. And lately, it’s the best thing he has going, period.

He’s glad Shane hadn’t kissed him today after he’d cleaned them both up. For a moment, Ilya had thought he was about to. He thinks he would have crawled back into Shane’s arms without hesitation if he had. Shane might even have let him.

Ilya tells himself it’s not about Shane, not really. It’s just touch. Warmth, endorphins. The semblance of connection. Basic human needs. But it’s also the high of watching Shane’s tightly maintained public face come unwound under his hands, about the way Shane looks at him like Ilya has everything he ever wanted.

The thing is, things have not been so good for Ilya, not for a while now. He feels like a teenager again, a little, trapped in a house with men who hate him. He’s not, of course. He’s a long way from that house now.

Still, in the back of his mind, he’s constantly aware of the bottle of sleeping pills he has buried deep in his backpack. It’s not like he’d gone looking for them, but he hasn’t been sleeping well, not for months, and it had finally gotten so bad that the team physician had prescribed him medication for it. The most direct cause of his mother’s death either wasn’t in his records, or no one had thought to check. So Ilya ended up with a fully legitimate prescription in his name that still feels somehow illicit.

It had taken many sleepless nights in a row for him to work up to taking even just one, and then only out of sheer desperation. It turns out they only make him more groggy and exhausted, lost in his own life. Now instead of staring at the ceiling all night, bored out of his skull, he jolts awake in the middle of the night convinced his mother is still alive, calling his name. He can never get back to sleep after those dreams, medication or not. He keeps the bottle in his bag anyway.

He hasn’t told Svetlana, and he doesn’t plan to. Not about the insomnia, not about the dreams, and definitely not about the pills. Not after she’d dragged his sorry ass through the summer as he reckoned with his father’s condition and the fact that he wouldn’t be there to see its progression. He owes her so much already.

Anyway, he isn’t actually going to do anything. It’s just an option. A safety valve. Another thought experiment, like cutting things off with Shane.

So it makes no sense at all why he wants to tell Shane—not about the pills, but the other things. How his father’s diagnosis has wiped out any lingering satisfaction he’d felt over winning the Cup or the MVP award. How he feels unmoored by the victory while simultaneously obligated to repeat it. How badly he wants a long-term path out of Russia, and right now the only path he has is hockey. How he can’t sleep lately, plagued by dreams and unsettling bouts of restlessness that make him want to crawl out of his skin.

Even though he just saw Shane, Ilya wants to call him just to hear his voice. He imagines how that conversation would go.

Hi Shane, my mom killed herself when I was twelve and sometimes I still get so sad about it. Sometimes I think I might be like her. Can you make me feel better? Maybe we can have phone sex. Yes, I’m on a plane with my teammates right now, why do you ask?

Or maybe he could just walk off this plane and back to Shane’s apartment.

Shane could probably give it a good shot. Fixing him. Give him the perfect disgusting smoothie recipe to somehow erase all his exhaustion, walk him through getting a passport from a country that isn’t Russia, and while he’s at it blow him so good and sweet that Ilya forgets his own name, never mind his fucked up family. Teach him perfect, media-ready French while he’s at it too, why not.

It’s an even more insane fantasy than the one he has of Shane asking him to stay the night in his magazine-spread apartment. Ilya knows Shane likes him, sort of, because Ilya is good at hockey and good at sex. It’s not because he’s an emotional wreck who’s started carrying the weapon of his mother’s destruction around along with her cross. Shane is used to being good at things, and he wouldn’t understand how he could do all the right things and not have it make a difference to Ilya’s broken brain.

So, no, Ilya won’t find himself dozing off in Shane Hollander’s bed anytime soon, surrounded by an absurd number of pillows and one maddening hockey player with beautiful freckles. He won’t end their arrangement, either. The next time he sees Shane will be in a hotel room, and it will be good like always, and one of them will leave at the end of it. Like always.

In the meantime, he’ll stay on this plane and keep playing hockey until—what? Until he can’t, he supposes. Or until he starts enjoying it again somehow. Even though he’s felt worn out all season, despite the fact they’ve just started, it hasn’t actually affected his play, not yet. Just his mood.

It’s not worth being dramatic over, so he’s not going to do anything dramatic. Not yet.

*

December 2014—Boston

It’s nearly midnight when Shane gets into Boston. He travels with his team so much that the novelty of driving his own car on the highway is a welcome distraction, requiring just enough of his focus to block out the worst of his fears for Ilya. It’s only when he’s sitting at a stoplight in the middle of the city that he realizes he has no idea where to go.

He doesn’t know the hospital where Ilya is staying. Visiting hours will be long over, anyway, if Shane is even allowed to see him. He’s not even sure he even get a hotel at this hour. Probably he could, but he rarely books a hotel for himself these days.

He finds himself pulling into Ilya’s driveway.

It’s hard to form an impression about the house in the dark. It’s big; that’s all Shane registers. Moving on the same impulse that brought him here, the same animating force that called the ambulance for him last night, he grabs his lone duffel bag and walks up the driveway.

He goes to type in the code Ilya sent him months and months ago, but the door is already ajar. Maybe the EMTs never closed it, or maybe Ilya left it open when he got home. Maybe he was already drunk. The whole thing feels awful and wrong, the same sick feeling in his stomach as when Ilya had stopped responding. Shane stands in the entryway with his bag, feeling dread well up again.

The house is quiet and dark. No sign that anyone lives there or that they will again.

Shane shakes his head. Stop it. Don’t think like that.

He swallows and finds the light switch, stepping into Ilya’s open kitchen. He hesitates again, both drawn in and afraid of what he’ll find. He doesn’t want to invade Ilya’s privacy, but he also wants to know everything about him, immediately. He needs to know what happened, what’s going on with him, where he is, if he’s okay.

Shane drops his bag and rests his forehead on the cool marble of the counter, trying to remember how to breathe. Telling himself there’s nothing he can do for Ilya tonight. He makes a note to start calling hospitals in the morning.

Once his heart stops pounding, he drifts into the living room and sinks onto the sofa. Going into Ilya’s room feels like a step too far. Part of Shane wants to laugh at himself—isn’t he already breaking into Ilya’s house, technically?—but he stays put.

It’s the same feeling he’d had after the phone call, intensified. A strange sort of guilt, like he’d seen something he shouldn’t. Like he’d done something wrong somehow.

He should brush his teeth, at least. Shower. He’s worn and stiff and out of his routine. He needs to sleep so he can focus on Ilya tomorrow.

Flipping on the light in the bathroom, the first thing he sees is the empty bottle on its side on the counter next to the sink, bright orange against the white stone like a warning sign. Shane tries again not to look, to pry, but the name of the drug on the label is instantly familiar, the same as the one on the bottle by his own bedside. Sleeping pills, for the nights when his thoughts are too loud for sleep and his heartbeat is too loud for thought. Prescribed by the team’s own doctors.

Shane’s body puts the pieces together before his brain does, locking up in the doorway with one hand still on the doorknob. He feels like running, but he can’t move. Can’t even look away. He can see it so clearly.

“Fuck,” he breathes, an exhalation cutting through the ringing in his ears. “Fuck, Ilya.”

His first instinct is to text him. To ask if he’s okay again—the stupidest question he could possibly ask in this moment.

How could this have happened? How could Shane not have seen it? Not have noticed anything?

And how—how could Ilya ever do this?

Shane stumbles back to the couch. He remembers the flat look in Ilya’s eyes last winter in Sochi, the closed-off expression revealing nothing. Not that Ilya is ever an open book—and not that Shane is known for his ability to read anyone—but Shane had never seen him like that before. Ilya had been furious with himself, Shane knew, for Russia’s performance in the games. Devastated by the loss. And there was his family, which Shane knew only enough about to know that it was complicated. Complicated and hard.

But Ilya hadn’t looked like that in all the times Shane had seen him since. Not on the ice, not in interviews, and not when they were alone.

He’d just won the Cup. He’d won. Shane had seen the wild, joyful pride bursting out of him as he lifted it over his head. Ilya was at the height of his career, shining like a comet every time he was on the ice. So why—?

Why would he—?

He couldn’t have, part of Shane’s mind insists. Ilya wouldn’t have done this. Not on purpose. Never.

What the fuck do you know, the rest of his brain asks. You don’t know anything about him.

When he was a teenager, Shane had a classmate who killed himself. Junior year, just before he met Rozanov for the first time.

They hadn’t been friends or anything. He’d barely known the kid outside of a class or two they’d had together over the years. Shane’s mom had still asked if he wanted to talk about it.

“What’s there to talk about? I didn’t know him.”

“I know, honey, but still. It can be hard to hear about.”

“Yeah, it’s sad.” He didn’t look, but he could feel her hovering in the doorway of his room.

“You’d tell me if you ever felt like that, right? Me or your dad? I know there’s a lot of pressure on you, but if it’s ever too much—”

“It’s not, Mom. Jeez. I can handle it.”

“I know you can. But if that ever changes, or if there’s something else… Or if you ever hear your friends talking about feeling that way—”

Shane didn’t really have friends back then. Shane had hockey. “Mom, I’m fine. I wouldn’t ever do something like that.”

“I know. I just want you to know that I’m here if you need me.”

Shane finally looked up at her. “I know.” And he did.

They’d never discussed it again. He hasn’t thought about that kid in years.

He’d known the kid was gay. Lots of people did, it wasn’t a secret. Shane doesn’t know if that’s part of the reason he was dead. He doesn’t know anything.

Shane drops his head into his hands, finally letting the tears that have been burning the back of his eyes all day go. He still doesn’t know what someone would have to feel to actually want to die. Still doesn’t understand why Ilya would want that. Can’t convince his mind accept that Ilya might—might actually be dead.

For real, forever.

It doesn’t make any sense. It isn’t fair. There’s so much he still wants to know about Ilya, so much he’s never had the chance or reason to ask. They’ve only seen each other a handful of times this season. It feels like they’d barely started talking again since July, not that talking was what they ever really did. But Ilya had started texting him again, and Shane’s heart had jumped to answer every time a notification from Lily lit up his phone.

Shane knows with sinking clarity this isn’t just concern for a fellow player. Not even for a teammate. Definitely not for a guy you fuck a few times a year only because it’s convenient. It probably never was.

He should have known better. Shane can’t do anything casually, not even fold his laundry. Nothing except hockey is ever simple for him. He’s not sure he’s capable of it, fundamentally. The more intense the situation, the more intense he becomes, to a fault. It makes him good at the sport he plays and little else.

Last spring, Shane had convinced himself he could go back to living without Ilya, but it’s not true. He wants Ilya to look at him again and again. He wants to know him. He wants Ilya to call him every time he’s bored, or drunk, or worse. He wants the right to touch him in places outside hotel rooms and hidden apartments. He wants more than a handful of stolen moments and a few hours on the same ice every season. He wants to be with him.

Okay, so maybe he’s a selfish piece of shit. He doesn’t even know if Ilya is alive right now. The fear returns along with the feeling that his chest is being slowly crushed.

Not everything is about you, Hollander. Ilya had yelled that at him on a rooftop just after their rookie season.

Shane feels sick that even now, all he can think about is his feelings, about himself, when Ilya is in a hospital somewhere, probably alone. Does his coach know yet? Does—Shane scrambles for a moment, trying to remember who of the Raiders’ current roster Ilya has spoken of before—does Marleau, or St. Simon? Will there be anyone to pick Ilya up from the hospital when they release him?

Shane curls onto his side and wraps his arms around himself. The cushions smell faintly like Ilya’s body wash.

I’m bored, Ilya had said.

Shane doesn’t know what Ilya was really feeling. Why he would do this. He doesn’t know what Ilya needs now. He barely knows him at all.

He wants to. He wants to know everything.

Shane fishes his phone out of his pocket and opens his texts with “Lily.” Their messages are few and far between, never about anything important, but they’d resumed over the summer as a trickle at first, then more and more frequent. Anything Ilya gives, Shane takes.

He scans their texts now, looking for anything that would help him understand. Had Ilya said anything? Had he seemed off? There’s nothing that Shane can identify, only places to meet, comments about games, occasional references to workout routines and league politics. Nothing concerning, nothing out of place. If anything, Ilya had seemed so much brighter than he had in Vegas.

Shane switches over to his browser and finds a photo of Ilya raising the cup over his head. The one that had been everywhere after Boston’s win. Proud. Defiant. Victorious. Surrounded by his teammates who all look at him like he’s the sun.

Still lying on his side, Shane is surprised to feel tears slip over the bridge of his nose. He feels like calling for help all over again. Someone. Anyone. But who would be able to do anything? Who would he even be able to tell?

He knows he should get up before his tears and snot stain Ilya’s couch. Instead, he falls asleep.

Chapter 4

Chapter Summary

Ilya is trying.

Chapter Notes

This chapter is all flashback and the most explicit about Ilya's headspace before and during the attempt.

The day before—Boston

Practice is a shitshow. Not the team, the team is fine. Just him.

“Sloppy edges, Rozanov,” LeClaire says as Ilya steps off the ice between drills. Not even looking up from his tablet.

Ilya always hates the way he snaps to attention in front of any older man with authority over him. It makes him want to lash out, to prove to himself and anyone who happens to be around that he is not still the scared little boy he fears he is, easy to intimidate and quick to seek praise. He swallows the urge down.

“Yes, Coach. Just tired.”

LeClaire ignores him, which is as much a response as that excuse deserves.

Ilya slumps onto the bench and chews on the stem of his water bottle so he doesn’t start grinding his teeth. Connors shoulder-bumps him.

“Coming out tonight, Cap?”

“We have not won yet,” Ilya grumbles.

“Sure,” Connors shrugs, undaunted. “Celebration if we win, commiseration if we don’t. You in?”

“Maybe,” he says, meaning no. He can tell that today is not one of his good days. It’s not just his lazy skating. It’s the ache in his limbs, like he’s about to get sick. It’s the constant hum of irritation in the back of his head. It’s the way he can’t seem to aim his thoughts in any particular direction.

Some days he feels fine. Good, actually, so good he thinks he’ll never feel anything else. Those are the days he feels like a captain, a legend, a real fucking person again. Those days are rarer than they used to be, but they happen. Those days prove that he still has it in him, somewhere. When he gives a shit. Today is definitely not one of those days.

So, no, he won’t be going out with his team after the game. Lately, even on the good days, it hasn’t been the same anyway. His temper seems to live closer to the surface now, even when he’s in a good mood. All his emotions do, bleeding into one another illogically. Pleasure into melancholy. Melancholy into anger. Anger into a sick kind of pleasure again. Losses cut deeper, wins send him too high. When he drinks he gets too drunk too quickly, growing wild in a way that leaves him exhausted for days after whether he’s hungover or not. Maybe that’s a leftover effect of the fatigue too, fucking up the tolerance he’s spent years building in Moscow clubs.

Connors just shrugs again, leaving Ilya to stew. He tries to make himself focus on the drills, on his team, on the game they have tonight, but his thoughts start drifting again without his permission. First to the gnawing, constant, infuriating exhaustion slowly eating him alive. Then to his father, dying in a way that is slow and ugly and makes him angry at the whole world—and his sons most of all, when he remembers them. Then to Alexei, bleeding him dry dollar by American dollar. Calling him faggot the whole time like the word is punctuation. As if he actually knows anything about Ilya’s life beyond the dollar amount on his contract.

It would be nice if Ilya could get really, properly furious about it all. Instead he just feels the same useless, featureless nothing that seems to be the bulk of his life these days.

Afterwards he strips off his practice gear, planning to go home and crash for a few hours. He can’t take anything without risking it affecting his play, but he’s tired enough that he should be able to catch a couple of hours’ sleep. As long as he doesn’t dream, it might help.

Stuck in traffic on the way home, Ilya wants a cigarette. He wishes he hadn’t quit smoking.

Automatically, he reaches up to touch the pendant under his shirt. The dreams first started a little over two months ago, around the anniversary of his mother’s death. Eleven years. Next year will be twelve, and he’ll have lived half of his life without her.

It would be one thing if the dreams explained all his moods lately, he thinks as he drives back to the open, silent house that is nothing like his father’s home in Moscow. He’s always felt too strongly, too loudly, too much, and he’d never grown out of it. Just learned to hide it. Until he couldn’t. Just like Mama, Alexei would taunt him whenever his adolescent emotions erupted to the surface. Mama’s boy. It was the only time he spoke of her, afterwards.

The dreams may have started two months ago, but the tiredness hadn’t. It went back farther than that. The summer, at least. Maybe before.

It’s been worse, if he’s honest with himself, since he was last in Montreal. Since he last saw Shane. It gets worse and harder every time. Leaving.

Last summer, back in Russia, his father had eyed him with suspicion.

“Are you new?”

“New?” Ilya repeated, not understanding. Assumed it was an insult, a dig at him fucking up one thing or another.

It wasn’t that. His father, retired since the previous summer, and in their own home, had mistaken him for a new hire at work. He hadn’t remembered he had sons until Polina had walked in and he’d snapped back to the present with a look of irritated embarrassment.

As he’d left the room, Ilya thought he should have been more upset about it. Instead he’d just thought, So this is how it’s going to be. Only he wouldn’t be there to see it.

He’s always heard about how quickly dementia progressed. Now that he’s in the middle of it, it feels excruciatingly slow. His father is perpetually, agonizingly stuck between past and present, remembering and forgetting, while Ilya gradually becomes an orphan.

He pulls into his driveway and leaves his bag in the car. No point in bringing it in when he’s heading back to the arena in a few hours. The thought of tonight’s game doesn’t thrill him the way it used to even long after the giddiness of his rookie season. Right now it just feels like another thing to get through. Another thing leading to…what? He doesn’t know. Once his blades touch the ice he’ll remember. He always does.

Maybe, he thinks, this is just what happens when you get everything you want at twenty-three. Almost everything, anyway. Maybe it all just stops mattering.

One of these days he’s going to drive himself crazy, thinking like this. He throws himself onto his bed and prays for a few hours of uninterrupted quiet, with no dreams.

Ilya does dream, but he dreams of Shane.

*

Someone calls for a speech in the locker room before the game. Ilya feels his shoulders sink like someone has set a weight on his back. He’s the captain, so it’s hardly an unreasonable request. But it might be his last fucking straw today.

“No speech. Just win.”

“C’mon, Roz.” Marleau’s voice is teasing, but he looks a little concerned. “That all you got?”

“Yep.” Ilya jams his helmet on. “What more do you need? We win. Simple.”

Marleau forces a laugh, turning back to the team. “Okay then. You heard him, boys.”

Nobody looks convinced. The veterans exchange glances, eyeing Ilya like wolves. The rookies just look confused. They probably think he is crazy anyway, what they have seen of him so far, with his movie villain accent and his moods. Oh well. They will win or they will not. Ilya ignores them all and heads for the tunnel.

They do win, but it’s a slog. Ilya plays rough, rougher than he needs to, maybe to make up for his listless showing at practice. He gets as good as he gives, but it’s not like it is with Hollander. There’s no joy in it. Just hits that he’ll feel later.

He takes an unnecessary penalty in the second period for slashing, feeling LeClaire’s eyes on him as he skates past towards the box. It’s a clear warning. Ilya nods in acknowledgment, feeling his temper flare up in response. It’s a childish reaction and he knows it, which only makes him madder when the penalty is up.

The next one is a double-minor. Four minutes. Chicago’s left winger is staring daggers at him from across the rink even as he holds a wad of tissues to his bleeding nose. Ilya hopes it’s broken.

As he sits out the penalty, he wonders if it’s occurred to the Raiders coaching staff to strip him of the C yet. Maybe they should. Maybe he just needs a break from it. Time to focus on the game itself, remember what he loves about it.

“Goddammit, Roz,” Feller mutters at him during the second intermission. “You trying to lose our lead?”

“Who scored those two goals, Feller? Shut your idiot mouth.”

Feller shakes his head. “Jesus.”

“No, Rozanov is fine. Or ‘Captain.’”

Feller just glares at him in disgust.

Chicago’s defense checks him hard enough in the third that Ilya hits the ice. There are times when he goes down during games lately that he just wants to stay there. He never does, of course. He always gets up. He always gives the game everything he has, even when it’s not giving him anything back.

He dodges the press after the game, making a show of pushing the rookie who’s just extended a three-game point streak towards the cameras. Then he brushes Marleau off about joining in for drinks like he has somewhere else to be and tries to slip out unnoticed.

One of the assistant coaches catches him. “Rozanov, you want to tell me what that was?”

He shrugs, looking down the empty hallway. “An off night.”

“Uh-huh. You haven’t done an interview all month, you know that?” His coach leans in, dropping his voice. “Where are you this season? You gotta start acting like you want to be here again. Part of the job. It’s not all scoring goals. And I know it’s still early, but tone it down with the penalties.”

He doesn’t look angry, or even particularly disappointed. He looks about as tired as Ilya feels, really. He looks like a man doing his job.

The words are nothing compared to what his father would say in this guy’s shoes, but Ilya feels the shame anyway. He’s abruptly reminded that his visa is at the mercy of the Boston Raiders.

“I know. I will.”

“I know you know. Get your head back on straight, kid. Whatever it takes.”

And now—he’s alone. Back in an empty house on a night like many of the nights he’s had in the past months. Each one a little worse than the one before it. Small things adding up to darker days. The cumulative effects of sleepless nights. Everything spiraling downwards, pulling him with it. Or maybe just him pulling everyone else.

It’s only December, yet he feels like he’s weeks deep into the grind of playoffs. On the ice, he’s Ilya Rozanov, Cup winner, player of a generation, captain of the Boston fucking Raiders. Off the ice lately, he’s been…nothing. A fucking shadow. Drifting around his arena, his home, his whole city like a ghost.

He’s sick of it. Sick of everything—the emptiness, the Raiders, Russia, his family, himself. He can’t keep doing this forever, not without some relief. And the one thing that gives him relief he can’t have.

Everywhere he goes, someone wants something from him. Well, what if he wants something too? Why does it have to be impossible?

He pulls himself up from his couch and into the kitchen, where he makes a show of pouring vodka into an actual glass to an audience of no one.

It’s not all scoring goals. Well, what the fuck is he here for, then. Can’t they see he’s trying?

And he is, he really is. Trying to be a good captain, a good teammate, a good son. Trying to be a decent friend to Svetlana like she deserves. Trying to end this thing he has with Hollander before it spirals entirely out of control. Trying, most days, if he’s completely honest with himself, not to drive his car off a bridge somewhere. All this trying feels more like drowning. But there’s no tempest around him, he knows that—it’s all just regular rain.

Is this it? Is this what she felt?

The thought is disloyal, and he’s ashamed of it immediately. He is rich and famous, playing hockey in America like he dreamed of. Like he knows she hoped for him. He is free of his father in a way she never could be. He has a home where he is safe, and the only bruises on his body are the ones he earned on the ice. The only cruel words he hears are the ones he provokes from his opponents. It is all part of the game, a part he doesn’t pretend not to relish. Comparing himself to her…it’s inexcusable. Dishonest.

He drains the glass in his hand. His problems have solutions, don’t they? He knows what he should do. Call it off with Shane, focus on the captaincy, text Marleau back and go out with his team where he belongs.

But it’s a lot easier to take the bottle in his hand back to the living room.

Lazy.

The voice in his head isn’t his father’s, appearing where it’s not wanted to tell him how much of a disappointment he is. It’s just his, and he knows it’s right. He is being lazy. He just doesn’t care very much.

Kind of his whole problem, lately. If he can show up during games, and he does, then he’s capable of doing it the rest of the time. Some part of him is just choosing not to. Like now, choosing to stew in his feelings instead of showing up to celebrate their win.

The thought of the bottle at the bottom of his backpack floats up unbidden. Habitual, like touching the cross around his neck. Another solution to his problems, if a massively overdramatic one.

He’s just feeling a little morbid. On too little sleep, the vodka he’s already drunk is hitting him hard. The world around him gets quieter. His heartbeat gets louder. He really should have gone out with his teammates. He could have gotten drunk there just as easily, and there he could get the contact he craves, the sweat and weight of other bodies around his, voices and music to drown out his thoughts. Here in his living room, there is no one.

He could call Svetlana, except she’s thousands of miles away in Europe right now, hopefully having the time of her life. She’d needed a vacation so badly, and he wasn’t about to ruin it with one of his moods that she’d already put up with so much of. One moderately shitty day, and he feels like doing something drastic.

He shakes out his hands, trying to dispel some of the weight of his thoughts. Picks up his phone to look at the last thing Sveta sent him—clips from a club in Berlin where she’s dancing with an androgynous blond with slicked back hair and a septum piercing. Not his type, and he almost certainly wouldn’t be hers, but he can appreciate the look. Svetlana smirks at the camera, looking lighter than Ilya has seen her in months. At least one of them is happy.

So he doesn’t have her right now, and he doesn’t have his teammates, not really. Even if he showed up late to their regular bar, it’s not as if he could tell any of them the reasons for his shitty mood lately. None of them actually know anything real about him, because letting them in means the possibility of exile from Russia, from hockey—from any human being with a reasonable sense of self preservation, he’s pretty sure.

What did that leave? A lot of hookups that feel less and less worth the effort lately. Shane.

Fuck, Shane.

Ilya throws his arm across his face, as if closing his eyes will help. It only lets him picture Shane more clearly—his liquid brown eyes staring up at Ilya, constellations of freckles glowing on heated cheeks, perfect lips parted slightly. Ilya can almost feel Shane’s hands squeezing his arms, anchoring him. And Shane has such lovely hands.

Fuck it, he thinks. He’s already wallowing, so he lets himself indulge in thinking about Shane too. Ilya wants him so badly right now it aches. Not even for the sex, that’s the worst part. He’s been having a fantasy lately, in his weaker moments, of Shane just…on top of him. Relaxed, unhurried, nowhere for either of them to go. Pinning Ilya down so he can’t leave his body. Can’t leave Shane, like a sleeping cat he doesn’t want to disturb. Skin against skin, their faces close, Shane’s hand tangled in his hair. The warm weight of him.

Every time they’re together, he has to tear himself away. He has to create distance where he can before he smothers Shane with his wanting. Even so, he can’t help taking his time when Shane urges him to go faster. Stretching every moment so he can have a little longer with him. For all the good it does.

Ilya turns on the TV just for the noise, finds a compilation video of his best shots, the kind he watches sometimes when he needs to shake himself out of a bad mood. A reminder that he isn’t completely pathetic, at least not all of the time.

It works, a bit, like it so often does. He’d forgotten about the goal he’d scored off Connors’s assist against Toronto last month. A lighter tap than Ilya was known for, the puck slotting into the narrow gap over the goalie’s shoulder. It was a good goal. Shane had complimented him on it the next night, he remembers now. Well, teased him about it, which is almost the same thing.

Didn’t know you were capable of reining it in a little.

I am capable of all kinds of things, Hollander.

He takes another swig from the bottle and when he looks back at the TV, there’s another video playing. HOLLANDER VS. ROZANOV blares the title. The video shows a clip of him swiping the puck out in front of Shane, cuts to Ilya checking him into the boards, then cuts again to an early interview, Shane smirking as he tells reporters he’ll pay attention to what Ilya says when he catches up in the scoring race.

Ilya has also watched a few of these videos. Usually he finds them funny. Like a washed-up broadcast announcer knows anything about what Ilya thinks about Shane Hollander as a person, or what Shane thinks about him. Right now, though, he’s having a hard time remembering what about them he found so amusing. He doesn’t want to watch nine minutes of Shane rising above it all while he, Ilya, just looks like an aggressive asshole. He doesn’t want to hear the commentary telling him that the whole world thinks he’s a piece of shit. Even watching Shane chirp him to the press, which is usually at least a little thrilling, just makes him ache.

Imagine if Shane could see him right now. Drunk and sad and a little sick to his stomach. He probably looks like shit too, after the day he’s had.

He goes to turn off the TV and finds himself skipping to the next video instead, one a lot like the one he’d started out with. Only this one isn’t him. It’s all Shane. Shane scoring on a power play against the Admirals. Shane at the Olympics. An old Rolex ad. A filthy breakaway goal that on any other day would get Ilya’s blood pumping.

It’s disgusting, actually, how much Ilya wishes Shane was here. Even if he’d be horrified with Ilya right now. Even if it was just to tell him to get it together. Maybe that’s what Ilya needs…

He’s been fighting the urge to call Shane for the past three weeks. Call, not text. Just to hear his voice.

He can hear Shane now, not just in his head but in an interview on the TV. Switching effortlessly between English and French, giving responses that answer the reporters’ questions but leave everyone wanting more. Of course they do. Who wouldn’t want more of Shane Hollander? Ilya is hardly special for that.

He could call him. Shane would probably answer. And then Ilya would say…what? Something stupid. Something he can’t take back. Something Shane would have to deal with or run from. Something like I think I like you more than I meant to or I wish you were here with me. Instead he takes another long pull of the vodka, feeling the burn as it goes down.

Ilya can’t—he won’t become like his father, trapping someone until they can’t see any escape from him. Like his country, closing people away, walling them off, killing them slowly degree by degree. He understands the instinct; he wants, more than anything, someone who won’t leave. He’s just seen the effects of that kind of want too many times.

So he tries to let Svetlana go, tries not to stifle her. He tries again and again to walk away from this thing with Shane, even in the moments when it seems Shane might let him stay. He lets his father die without him there, knowing that the only real thing he can offer his family is his money.

The bottle in his hand is nearly empty and the TV is still going, showing him more clips of Shane, more of what he can’t ever have. Ilya throws the remote at the screen and misses. It was that or the vodka, and he isn’t finished drinking.

Maybe he’ll do it tonight after all. End this little experiment. It seems as good a night as any. He’d been waiting for something, he doesn’t know what—a big moment, he supposes, something that justifies it all, but the ache deep in his chest seems to justify plenty. It hurts to breathe a little in a way he associates with long shifts on the ice, hard sprints during a run. Like maybe he’s given everything and his body knows it.

Part of him knows that this is bad. He hasn’t thought things like this for a long time, probably since signing with Boston. He needs to—something. Something other than what he’s currently doing.

Panic propels him up off the couch, the room tilting around him before he regains his balance. He’s not completely wasted yet, but he’s further than he realized. Before he makes a conscious decision to do anything he finds himself kneeling on the floor, trying to put the pieces of the broken remote back together. He can’t make the battery stay in the slot, can’t figure out which way it’s supposed to sit. Maybe the remote in his brain is broken too, and that’s why he can’t stop thinking in a slowly tightening loop—Shane. Disappointment from the assistant coach. Mama. The pills at the bottom of his bag.

He throws the pieces of the remote down again and braces himself against the wall as he stands. Sveta will be back in just two days. Surely he can wait that long. Two days and then—what?

Once, when they were fifteen or sixteen, the two of them had spent the night together. It was the only time they’d shared a bed after sex, because Ilya had had the rude awakening of Sveta’s foot in his side a few moments before he hit the floor. She’d apologized, profusely and through laughter, and her lethal kicks had become a running joke between them, but it was obvious from then on that they were not going to be that kind of couple. Or any kind of couple, really. Svetlana had never really seemed interested in being tied down, and Ilya was more than happy with Sveta as his confidante and all the sex he could want. He’d never felt like he was missing anything in that realm of his life. Not until Shane.

In two days, Sveta will be back. But Sveta is not his girlfriend or his therapist. Shane is not his…anything. So nothing will change. Part of Ilya will still want to pour his mess at their feet, and proximity will only make the temptation greater. Wouldn’t they all be better off without that risk? Without Ilya simmering around them like a failing nuclear reactor?

He drifts back into the kitchen. Drinking more doesn’t seem like a good idea, necessarily, but it seems like he could make worse decisions under the circumstances. He needs to think. He never wants to think again.

The only thought scarier than the drastic plans his mind keeps conjuring without his permission is the fear that he’ll feel this way forever.

He’s thought about this more than he’d ever admit to anyone. Crashing his car seems like such a waste. Jumping could work, but there’s too much risk that he could hurt someone else, and in any case he doesn’t want anyone to find his body like that. He’s a decent swimmer, usually fine around water, but the thought of actually drowning terrifies him. Water filling his lungs, choking, clawing for the surface in his final moments, the blind fear. No. Too painful. So—the pills.

Ilya knows from his mother that there’s no such thing as a painless death. The body wants to live. It will fight for it. Spending his last moments choking on vomit hardly appeals, but there’s a certain inevitability to it, he feels. Like mother, like son.

He wishes he could just disappear. He wishes he could cry. Maybe it would help. Either it’s too ingrained in him not to, or he’s just too dehydrated. The tears don’t come.

Just in case, he decides to leave a note for Svetlana before he’s too wasted to write. He leaves it in the guest room he thinks of as hers where she’ll know where to find it. He owes her this much, he feels. It’s the very least he can do.

He feels better once his thoughts are out on paper. Calmer. He’s said what he needs to say.

He hopes she doesn’t miss him for too long. He hopes, selfishly, that she does. She’s the only one who really will.

If Irina left a note behind, Ilya never got to see it. She was dead and replaced in a matter of months. Erased from the house except in Ilya’s memory. His father will not need to replace him. He already has Alexei, and dementia will soon do the work of erasing them both.

Shane will move on. Boston will move on. There ends the list of Ilya’s footprint on the world, in the end. Trophies and a tombstone. Not so bad, really. Most people only get the one.

Kitchen, bedroom, living room. The room he’s standing in feels too big suddenly, too open. He drifts towards the hall bathroom, looking for some illogical kind of privacy, maybe. Or maybe he just doesn’t want whoever finds him to mistake what’s happened for anything else.

He takes the pills and the last of the vodka and lines them up on the counter. For a while he just sits on the tiled floor across from them. Acclimatizing. Or something.

He can always change his mind, right up until he can’t. He can always decide to keep the thought experiment an experiment. But he doesn’t think he will. He tried, he really did. But he’s done trying.

So, this is it.

He reaches up for the millionth time to the chain around his neck. Sorry, Mama. Would she understand? Would she be angry with him? Disappointed? I’m sorry, I tried. He thinks he gave it his best shot. He hopes so. He hopes she would be proud of that, at least. Either he’ll know soon enough, or he won’t.

He tips the contents of the bottle into his hand and down his throat, a few hard swallows. Belatedly, he realizes there’s still one last thing to do. Sitting again, the vodka in one hand, he takes out his phone. Calls Shane.

It’s just to hear his voice. He’ll need to hang up before Shane notices anything off. Ilya knows he doesn’t have long.

“Hello?”

It’s good, hearing his voice, just like he’d imagined. It’s always good. It’s just not enough.

“Hollander. Are you alone?”

Chapter End Notes

Computa play Calm Down aka I Should Not Be Alone by Ezra Furman

Next up: some catharsis at last, and it's a long one :)

Come talk to me in the comments or @ witcheryen on tumblr!

Chapter 5

Chapter Summary

Shane makes it to the hospital.

Chapter Notes

I was planning to post Wednesdays and Sundays but I felt a little bad leaving you with that cliffhanger 😅 next chapter coming Sunday unless I get too excited to wait.

Warning in this chapter, and throughout, for self-directed ableism from Ilya.

Soundtrack suggestion: Cry for Judas by the Mountain Goats

December 2014—Boston

Shane wakes up to his phone ringing. An unknown number with a Boston area code, same as Ilya’s. It’s morning.

“Hello?”

“Hello, this is Boston Medical Center. Am I speaking to Shane Hollander?”

“Yes, um—yes. This is Shane Hollander.”

“Great. I’m calling on behalf of Ilya Rozanov.” There’s no sign of recognition at either of their names in the unfamiliar voice on the other end of the line.

“Is…is he okay? Can I talk to him?”

“Yes—to both your questions. He’s awake and his vitals are good. He’s asking to see you.”

“To see me?” Shane tightens his grip on the phone. “He asked to see me?” He’s alive. He’s alive.

“Yes. I have here that you were the one who called 911 for him, is that right?”

“Yeah, I…that was me.”

He doesn’t know why he feels so sick to his stomach again. This is good, right? It’s good that Ilya is doing well. It’s good that Shane can see him. It’s good that this hospital worker doesn’t know who they are, or else is too professional to show it.

“So…I can come see him? Today?”

“Visiting hours just started. You can come anytime.”

“Okay. Okay, I’ll be right there. Thank you.”

“Of course, Mr. Hollander. See you soon.”

*

Ilya hadn’t thought about it. When the nurse asked on the second day if there was anyone they could call, he’d just said, Shane. Shane Hollander. Like they were really friends or something. People who called each other in an emergency. People who had anything to do with each other at all outside of their mutual sport.

The nurse hadn’t questioned it, even when Ilya had had to explain that the contact would be listed on his phone under Jane. Hadn’t reacted at all, in fact, other than to nod. Maybe he wasn’t a hockey fan, or maybe he just didn’t give a shit who Ilya asked them to call.

It doesn’t matter either way. Shane might be one of two people on the planet who still cares even a little about what happens to him—the only one on the continent at the moment—but that doesn’t mean he’s going to drive six hours across a national border to visit his rival-slash-hookup in the hospital after a suicide attempt. Worse, now Shane is going to know the truth of exactly what happened on that phone call. How much of a mess Ilya actually is.

He should never have asked Shane to come. Ilya is well aware it’s just another sign of how desperate he is right now. Shane is a good person to his core, and he’ll feel bad that he can’t be there. Not because it’s Ilya in particular, or anything. Just because Shane strikes him as the kind of person who wants to be helpful in a crisis. He won’t like turning down Ilya’s request, insane as it is.

He just didn’t want to be here alone.

Desperate. Weak.

He can add ‘cowardly’ to the list, too, for the phone call that landed him here in the first place. He can’t blame Shane for calling the ambulance for him. It’s Ilya who picked up the phone, after all. The conversation is hazy beyond the first few words, but he remembers with aching clarity the searing, urgent need to keep hearing Shane’s voice even as he felt himself slip under. That part of him, the weakest, most traitorous part, was the reason he ended up here. Still alone. Facing the consequences of his choices.

Boston is going to drop him. He knows it deep in his marrow. He’ll be shipped back to Russia at the end of his visa to live out the rest of his days under his father’s eye and his brother’s thumb with the specter of his mother and his own failure hanging over him. Once again, he reaches for the missing chain around his neck.

The world knows him as Ilya Rozanov, powerhouse, champion, and terror on the ice. Right now, he just feels like a kid, scared of his family’s demons. Scared of his own mind. He wants to beg for another chance. Promise to be good, as long as they don’t send him home. He’ll pretend he wants to be there. He’ll pretend until it’s true again.

Only he isn’t sure he can. He’s already tried that, and he’s tired, and the sharks can smell blood. He’s not often beaten, but he knows it when he is.

But he’s still a coward, so he takes the medication a nurse hands him in a paper cup and answers more questions from the hospital psychiatrist in his faltering English. When they leave, he goes back to staring out the window without seeing anything at all. There are no bars over the glass, but there might as well be. He’s certain it’s locked and reinforced.

He still feels groggy, his throat sore from intubation, from throwing up, his mouth dry and tacky. His own fault, he knows, but still unpleasant. Sleep is the only escape he has left, so he tries to snatch some before the next therapy appointment, call with the player assistance program, medication consult, or whatever else they have in store for him. When he hears the footsteps of the nurse in the hallway again, he tries to ignore them.

“Ilya?”

The familiar voice makes him turn over so quickly he sees Shane startle. Shane. He’s there, standing in the doorway.

Shane crosses the room in three long strides, shedding his hood and cap and reaching for Ilya. His eyes are already wet.

“Ilya. God, are you—“

“You came? You are here?” Ilya hates how breathy his voice sounds, how small. Then Shane’s arms wrap around him, and he shatters.

“I’m here. I’m here, it’s okay.” Shane rubs his back as Ilya sobs brokenly into his sweatshirt, distantly mortified that he couldn’t hold it together for even a second once Shane touched him. It feels like the tears are being torn out of him, like they’re bigger than his whole body. Hard, wracking sobs that scrape the back of his already aching throat raw. He feels like he’s going to fly apart.

“I’ve got you, just breathe.” Shane cradles the back of his head and rocks him like he’s a child. Somehow he seems to know what Ilya needs before he does. It makes no sense that he’s here.

Ilya’s arms are wrapped around his ribs tight enough to hurt, but Shane doesn’t pull away or push him off. He holds on, swaying back and forth until Ilya cries himself out. It takes a long time. Ilya shudders, taking heaving, uncontrolled breaths as he balls up his fists in Shane’s sweatshirt. His sore ribs are throbbing. He rests his forehead on Shane’s shoulder so he can’t see his face.

He hasn’t cried like this in years and years. Maybe ever. When his mother died—after the first, explosive breakdown—he’d cried silently, more or less ceaselessly, for weeks, no matter how many times he was admonished or berated for it, like the tears were a faucet he couldn’t find the handle for. Maybe he’d finally run out, in the end. Maybe they’d been building up inside of him like a well ever since he’d learned to turn off the tap.

Shane’s sweatshirt is damp but soft beneath his cheek, smelling like normal detergent in a sea of antiseptic and starch. The smell does not remind Ilya of home or childhood but of a bed in a darkened room where Shane had held him, much like he’s holding him now, and kissed him like Ilya was someone who mattered to him. That was when Ilya had known for certain he was lost: when he had a glimpse of something he wanted, and it was something he could never have.

Shane strokes his hair so gently. Still holding onto him. “I’ve got you. It’s okay. You’ll be okay.”

Ilya turns his head away, facing the door. The sheer, immediate relief he felt is draining out of him with nothing to replace it. It slips out of his hands like water. He’s asking Shane to be his lifeline when he knows he’s already sunk.

“No. Is not okay, is not fucking okay. Nothing is okay right now.”

“No, I know.” Shane has gone still. “I know that.”

“Do you? I am fucked, Hollander.” His vision goes blurry again. “It is my own fault, I know this, but still, I am fucked.”

He feels Shane tense, then force himself to relax. “Because of the league? Your team?”

“Because of everything.” He doesn’t know where to start. Shane knows nothing about him, of course. About his family. What he comes from. And English keeps abandoning him, clumsy again in his too-dry mouth. His throat tightens painfully.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps.

“No, don’t be. You don’t have to apologize.” Shane’s assurance is immediate and certain.

“I scared you.” He saw the look on Shane’s face when he came through the door. “I made you come here.”

Shane huffs. He still isn’t letting Ilya go. “You didn’t make me do anything.”

It’s hard not to relax fully into him. As always, Shane feels so good, so safe, when nothing else at all feels good or safe. But Shane is not a home for Ilya. Shane is not his, and Ilya does not have a home anymore. Not a real one.

Maybe he should just take what he can get while he can. Before Shane realizes just how fucked up and broken Ilya really is.

“Hey,” Shane says, sensing him retreat. He runs his hand up Ilya’s spine again.

“You should not be here. I should not have…you are not responsible for me. I made a mistake, to call you. To ask you to come. I was not thinking.”

“Don’t say that. It wasn’t a mistake.” Shane’s grip on him tightens. “I want you to ask.”

Ilya shakes his head, blinking back another wave of tears. He doesn’t know how he has any left. The IV attached to his hand that’s meant to rehydrate him must be going straight to his eyes.

“No, you cannot mean that. I am not anything to you—”

“You are.”

“No. I am not. We—we are not anything, Hollander.”

“Saying that doesn’t make it true,” Shane says, sharper than before. “Maybe we’re not…something, but we’re not nothing either.”

There is nothing that Ilya can say to that without everything else pouring out of him too. Seeing Shane in the doorway has left him stripped raw, fully exposed. He is always more honest around Shane than he means to be, and it’s ruining him.

“Look.” Shane sighs, his thumb rubbing little circles on Ilya’s back. “It doesn’t have to be me. As long as you ask someone. Okay?”

He waits for an answer Ilya can’t give. What are any of his promises worth right now?

“Ilya.”

“Okay. Fine.” He doesn’t want to lie. He needs to tell Shane that he cannot fix this, cannot fix him. But he does not have the strength for that conversation. He gives up.

Shane sits back, not going far. He keeps his hand on the back of Ilya’s neck. He’s trying to catch Ilya’s eyes, but Ilya can’t look at him. He can’t seem to let go of Shane, either.

“Do you need anything? Can I get you something?” Shane asks. Heartbreakingly sweet. Even right now. Even after what he did.

“No.”

“Do you want to talk?”

“I have psychologists to talk to. Whole hospital full.” He can’t keep the edge of bitterness out of his voice. At least the word for psychologist is close to the same in Russian, so he doesn’t trip over it too badly.

Shane nods. He doesn’t press further like he so often does. Instead he drops his hands to Ilya’s shoulders and rubs at the tension there. Ilya squeezes his eyes shut so no more tears can fall. Too good. Shane is always more than he could think to ask for, even if he let himself ask for everything.

“Stop,” he whispers, pushing Shane’s arms away.

Shane stops. He waits.

“You do not have to stay.” Ilya makes himself say it.

“It’s okay. I want to,” Shane says. Stubborn. “You asked me to come.”

Ilya presses his fingers against his closed eyes until he sees blooms of color. “It was mistake. I did not think you would really…”

“Hey, hey.” Shane’s fingers wrap around his hand. “You asked me to come, so I’m here. I was already on my way, anyway. I drove to Boston last night.”

Ilya’s hands fall. “What?”

Now it’s Shane who looks away.

“I was freaking out,” he admits. “When you stopped answering, I thought…” He swallows hard. “I couldn’t just sit there not knowing, so I—I drove here.”

Ilya’s heart kicks inside his chest. He feels sick again.

He’d given Shane’s name to the nurse in part because he knew Shane would not come to see him. Couldn’t, even if he wanted to, because he would be in another country hours away. A world where Shane Hollander drives to Boston before Ilya even asks him to is not the one Ilya woke up in this morning. It is not the world he tried to die in.

“I—” Ilya starts. Stops. Looks up at Shane’s searching eyes. His hands are shaking and he tries to hold them still. “I’m sorry. I was going to hang up. Before—before. I did not mean for you to hear…” He’s crumbling again, reaching towards Shane before he can check himself.

Shane pulls him in without hesitation, because he always does.

“I’m sorry.”

I was already on my way, anyway.

It’s too much for his exhausted, medication-fogged brain to process. He collapses against Shane and lets the sound of his murmured comfort in his ear wash over him until he can barely hold himself upright, wrung out so completely that his mind finally quiets. He cries himself nearly sick, like he had on the first day when he finally realized where he was and why.

Shane doesn’t tell him to stop or calm down. He sweeps his hand up and down Ilya’s back, steady as a metronome, his fingers running over bare skin in the gaps between the fasteners of the hospital gown.

Eventually Ilya’s sobs shift to dry, shuddering gasps. He becomes aware enough of himself to realize he’s pulling on Shane’s sweatshirt in a way that must be uncomfortable and forces himself let go.

Shane doesn’t seem fazed by Ilya’s breakdown. He doesn’t say anything about it, just coaxes him to sip water through a straw before leaning him back against the pillows and stretching out at his side. He works his left arm under Ilya’s head and rests his free hand over his ribs.

Like this, Shane’s broad shoulders block Ilya’s view of the hallway unless he raises his head to look. He doesn’t.

Shane lifts his hand and wipes away the tear tracks on Ilya’s cheek with his thumb. His lips press against Ilya’s temple, gentle and sweet, exactly like the kiss he’d given Ilya after their first time in Shane’s bed. That kiss had made Ilya feel like they were something more than what they were. Like he might still mean something to Shane even after they’re both satisfied. That kiss had made him want.

It’s surreal. Shane is lying here next to him, and he doesn’t look like he plans to leave. He came because Ilya asked him to. Before he asked. Before he even thought to.

Ilya is wrung out enough that he starts to drift. He doesn’t feel good—‘good’ is so far away that he can’t imagine it, can’t remember what it feels like. He still doesn’t think he’ll ever get there again, whatever the doctors tell him about things getting better from here. But—

But it is better. Better with Shane here. Better with him than without him, anyway.

For the first time in his life, Ilya falls asleep with Shane beside him.

*

Shane had run through a million things to say to Ilya on the drive to the hospital. He’d needed to get it right—he doesn’t want to cause Ilya even the smallest amount more pain than he’s already in. He just couldn’t figure out why Ilya wanted to talk to him. Asked for him.

He had called Shane first. Asked for him over anyone else. Even with his family across an ocean…it’s painful to think that Ilya has no one closer than Shane that he could trust with this. Not his teammates, not anyone else in Boston. It’s hard for Shane to imagine. Ilya is so easy to like. Once you know him—and it’s not as if Shane does, really—it’s obvious that he’s so much more than his brash persona.

Shane, meanwhile. He knows he doesn’t share Ilya’s ease around people. He isn’t good at talking. He doesn’t know if he’s ever had a real conversation about mental health—not with someone he really cares about, certainly. He’s stilted and awkward in even the least emotionally charged conversations. He might be exactly the worst person for this situation.

Maybe Ilya just needed someone to handle the doctors and logistics, he’d thought as he pulled into the hospital lot. Shane can be good at that, he could understand that. He could do that for Ilya.

But when he’d finally seen Ilya, Shane realized he’d been thinking about all of this as if it made sense. It didn’t. Ilya might have called anyone in his contacts that night. Shane might have called for help a second too late. Anything might have happened differently. And Ilya might not be here anymore.

Ilya called Shane, and Shane answered. That was what happened, and that was all that really mattered.

Shane looks down now at Ilya’s face, slack with sleep, mentally cataloging each exquisite detail. His slightly crooked nose. The smaller mole high on his right cheekbone. The curls now flattened on one side by the hospital pillow. The exact shape and weight of his shoulder, solid and substantial, under Shane’s hand. Ilya always runs hot, and right now, Shane couldn’t be more grateful for the feverish warmth of his skin. Alive. Hurting, but alive.

This is Ilya as Shane has never seen him. Raw, scared. Not the confident, inscrutable boy Shane had first met, not the force he was on the ice. Shane’s first thought when he saw him from the doorway had been sheer relief. His second thought was that for the first time, Ilya looked young. They’re the same age, only a few weeks between them. Shane has never once felt like the elder of the two. Ilya has never seemed young to him, not even at seventeen when they were just kids. Now, in his uneasy sleep, he does. Not small or diminished, not weak, but…vulnerable.

It’s hard to see him that way. Hard to think of Ilya Rozanov as someone who can be hurt.

Obviously he can. Shane knows better than anyone how vast the difference can be between the version he shows the world and how he actually feels.

Shane knows—he thought he knew—what desperation feels like. To want out of something so badly you’d do anything, even something that hurt you. Like an animal gnawing off a limb to escape a trap. Where you don’t stop to weigh the options, you just act, and you suffer the consequences later. He’s felt that before, more often when he was young, but even now, on occasion, when he can’t stand the feeling of his own skin.

He still can’t imagine—he would never—

He can’t imagine Ilya feeling that way. Not even now, seeing him with panic in his eyes and agony in his voice.

Still himself too, though. Proud and perceptive, even through the terror that makes Shane’s heart clench in response. Stubborn. Still the Ilya he knows and only ever wants more of.

A person Shane can’t reconcile with an orange bottle on the bathroom counter.

He strokes Ilya’s hair, letting his fingers run down the back of his neck. The chain he always wears is missing. Shane has never seen Ilya take it off, not even to sleep or shower. It has to be important to him. He’s never asked if Ilya is religious. He doesn’t know if that could be a comfort for him now, or if it would just be one more thing weighing on him.

There’s so much Shane just doesn’t know.

He rubs his thumb against Ilya’s skin, the point where his spine meets his shoulders, and makes a note to himself to make sure Ilya gets the necklace back once he’s cleared.

A little while later Ilya twitches in his sleep, a full-body shudder, and wakes with a gasp of air. His hand flies out and catches Shane by the arm.

“It’s okay.” Shane steadies him, watching Ilya’s unguarded expression close off as he returns to himself. “I’ve got you, you’re okay.”

Ilya isn’t really looking at him, touching his shoulder like he’s still not sure it’s real. His eyes track slowly up Shane’s arm to somewhere off to the side of his face. His expression is…somewhere else. A little vacant. It makes the ache in Shane’s chest return, looking at it.

“You are still here,” Ilya says blankly.

“Yeah. Still here.”

Ilya’s eyes flicker to him, then slide away, his expression returning to that empty look. Shane reaches out before he can think better of it to run his thumb over Ilya’s cheek.

“Hey.”

Ilya starts to pull away, but he stops at the slightest pressure from Shane’s hand holding him in place. “What?”

“I’m not going anywhere. Not unless you tell me to leave.”

“You cannot stay here forever, Hollander.” His voice sounds so hollow.

“Neither will you. They have to let you go home eventually, right?”

Under his palm, Ilya’s jaw tightens. “Eventually. Yes.”

“They haven’t told you when?”

Ilya shakes his head. His mouth is pressed together in a thin line.

Even as he pushes the question away, he shifts a little closer against Shane. Shane turns from his side onto his back so he can coax Ilya to lie across his chest. Maybe it will be easier, he thinks, if Ilya doesn’t have to meet his eyes. He runs his fingers through Ilya’s hair and feels the rise and fall of his breathing. Shane moves from his head down to his neck, massaging at the knots of tension there and in his shoulders. Ilya lies still and quiet, his hand still fisted in Shane’s sweatshirt.

Shane skims the ridges of his spine through the thin hospital gown as he works his way down Ilya’s back. Through his own shirt, he feels the cold trickle of tears as Ilya silently starts to cry again.

With his free hand, Shane pulls the blanket up to cover them both. His heart is breaking for Ilya, for the hurt he can see so clearly but can’t touch.

“Do you want to go back to sleep?”

Ilya shakes his head, another silent no.

Shane lifts his hand back up to Ilya’s neck, scratching gently at his hairline with his fingertips. “I can stop talking if you want.”

“No,” Ilya says, barely audible. “It’s fine.”

Shane can’t see his face, but he can sense how tightly coiled Ilya is against him.

“Why haven’t they told you when you can go home?” Shane is acutely aware again of how little he knows about all of this. What comes next, how this works. What to mention and what to avoid. What Ilya needs from him.

“It’s complicated.” Ilya’s voice is still quiet, like even breathing is difficult. “They are…deciding what to do with me, I think. I am a danger to myself, yes? So they are deciding whether I can be trusted.”

Shane feels himself chewing the inside of his lip and makes himself stop. “Does anyone else know you’re here? One of your teammates, or…you mentioned Svetlana?”

“No, not them. Only my coaches.”

“Oh. Did they—?”

“They say nothing. I do not even know if they will let me play again. If I still have job. No one will say anything to me, of course. Cannot give bad news to crazy person.”

“You’re not crazy.”

“Look at room we are in, Hollander. You think this is fancy hotel?” He sighs. “They keep saying we will talk later. After…after I am released, I guess. Though they will probably have me committed.” The hollowness is back in his voice, undercut with bitterness and fear. He’s so tense that the muscles under Shane’s hand feel like solid iron.

“Oh,” he says, taking a second to process that. “Do—do you get any say in that?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Not really.”

Committed. It sounds so final.

“What happens then? If they want to…you know, keep you.”

“I don’t know.” Ilya’s voice is more strained than before. He swallows. “More talking. Therapy, like yesterday. Group sessions maybe also. It is complicated, because I am famous athlete. And there are not so many Russian speakers here.”

“Oh. Right.” Shane rubs Ilya’s back, trying to imagine what he might be feeling. “Would you—would you want that? If they found a place that worked? Would it help?”

“I don’t know, Hollander. I do not know what I want. I am tired, I am so sick of this hospital. I want to go home.”

Shane wraps his free arm around Ilya, holding him tightly to his chest. Ilya is breathing harder, almost panting, the breathy gasps that precede sobs—or that come when the body is past the point of tears. Shane feels the echo of that ache in his own lungs. His eyes are burning too.

“You are the one who called the ambulance,” Ilya chokes out against his sternum. “It was you.”

It’s a statement, not a question, and there’s no one else it could have been, but Shane nods anyway. Tears slip over the bridge of his nose.

“It was me. Yeah. You—you stopped answering, and I thought…I don’t know. I thought the worst thing. Fuck, Ilya, I was so scared.” He’s really crying now, the way he told himself he wouldn’t. Not in front of Ilya, not here.

Ilya shakes his head. “You would be okay,” he whispers. “You would be fine.”

“No, I fucking wouldn’t be. I thought you were gone.”

Ilya’s hand flexes, still balled in Shane’s sweatshirt as he draws in a shaking breath. “Would not be your fault.”

“I know that, but—fuck, Rozanov. Ilya.”

Ilya shifts, looking up at him, and then he’s pushing himself up against the pillows, curling over Shane with a shattered expression on his face.

“You are crying,” he says.

“Sorry, sorry.” Shane reaches up, trying to wipe away the evidence. “‘M sorry.” He sits up, trying to pull himself back together.

“No.” Ilya touches his thumb to the corner of Shane’s eye. “Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘why?’ You almost fucking died. What the fuck, Ilya?”

Ilya shakes his head, his mouth twisting. “That does not matter. You do not even like me.”

Shane’s breath stops. Ilya could have gut-punched him, and it would have hurt less.

“I do like you. I—why do you think I’m here right now?”

Ilya lifts one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Because you are decent person, and you do not like to see people hurting.”

“No, that—that’s not why. Of course I like you, you’re…we’re friends.”

Friends. Such a stupid word. Like they’re seven and he’s introducing Ilya to his mom. Can my friend Ilya spend the night? Is that okay? Is it okay that I want him to? Stupid word, but he can’t find a better one.

“We are not friends, Hollander.” There’s no heat in Ilya’s voice. No ice, either. There’s nothing. Just flat resignation.

“Fuck you, we are.” He realizes he’s gripping Ilya’s arms, holding him in place. He knows Ilya has a point. They’ve spent, what, maybe all of twenty-four hours together, all told? A little more, counting time on the ice. Where, okay, they aren’t exactly friends. “Why did you call me, then?”

Ilya’s mouth falls open, then shuts again. He tries to pull away, but Shane holds on, tight. Almost tight enough to hurt.

“You called me,” Shane reminds him. “You asked me to come, and I’m here. Because you’re not nothing to me. Because I do like you.”

Ilya stops pulling against him. His eyes squeeze shut. “But you wish you did not.”

“No, that’s not—”

“It would be easier, then. If you did not. Am I wrong?”

“I don’t know. Easier, maybe. It doesn’t fucking matter, because I do like you.”

“It does matter. Things would be easier for you if I was not here.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. You don’t know—”

“Stop.”

“No, Ilya, listen to me. You can’t just—”

“Hollander, stop. Stop. You cannot—fuck, Hollander, there is game tonight, you cannot be here. You will be late, you have to go.” Ilya shoves at him, like he’s just going to get up and walk away right now.

“No, I’m not going to the game. I already told Coach Theriault. Personal emergency.” He needs to do more than the quick email he’d fired off before leaving for the hospital, but he doesn’t tell Ilya that. It’s not his first priority right now. Theriault’s going to be pissed regardless. “I’m not leaving you.”

“No, no. You cannot miss game. Do not do this because of me. Hollander.”

“I told you, I’m staying. If you want me to leave, I’ll go wait in the lobby, but I’m not going back to Montreal. It’s my decision.” He’s being too forceful and tries to soften his voice. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine, you don’t have to worry.”

“It is not okay!” Ilya slams his palm down on the mattress between them. The outburst seems to take all the energy he has. He drops his head as his shoulders fold inwards, collapsing in on himself.

Automatically, Shane reaches out for him. His relief when Ilya lets himself melt into his arms is so sharp it’s almost painful.

“Come here,” he murmurs. The words don’t matter, just the way Ilya trusts him to bear his weight. “I’ve got you.”

He hates the thought of Ilya believing he’s a—a liability. That Shane would be better off without him. Even if Ilya never wanted to see him again, Shane couldn’t bring himself to wish they hadn’t met. He doesn’t know who he would be without Ilya challenging him at every step, pushing him to be better, braver, more than the cookie-cutter outline of the ideal star player that he lets himself be out in the world. Even without any of that, Shane doesn’t want to see a world without Ilya in it. Just to watch him.

He rests his cheek on Ilya’s hair and closes his eyes to better feel the rapid thump of his heart against his chest, the shallow flutters of his breath.

“Listen. Thank you. For calling me.” Shane doesn’t know the right words to say, but he needs Ilya to know it anyway. “I’m glad that you did.”

Ilya turns his face against Shane’s shoulder and doesn’t answer. After a long while, he mumbles something against Shane’s collarbone.

“Sorry. I’m sorry.” He says it again, so quietly it’s hard to hear.

Shane doesn’t tell him to stop, but he squeezes Ilya’s shoulder and turns his head to kiss his temple. He hopes that Ilya can feel the things he wants to say. I hear you. It’s okay. I do like you, I promise.

Something he hasn’t had time to think about floats to the surface of his memory. Ilya’s last words to him on the phone. Shane doesn’t know if Ilya even remembers them. If he’d still been himself by then.

A long time passes in silence. Shane’s hand skims up and down Ilya’s back, over and over. In his arms Ilya is warm and solid and utterly still. Not quite sleeping, but drifting, Shane thinks. He isn’t quite as tense as before.

When he starts to stir, Shane nudges him upright and pushes a cup of water into his hands. Ilya nods in thanks, then groans and presses the heel of his hand against his eye. “Блять.”

“You okay?”

“Yes. Dizzy,” Ilya says hoarsely. “The new meds, they make me so sick.”

“Oh. Can’t they give you something else?”

“Doctors say wait a week, then we try something else. But they want to start quickly, yes? High dose. So next thing will have side effects too.”

“I’m sorry,” Shane offers, feeling useless.

“Is not your fault.”

They sit in silence while Ilya finishes the water, Shane picking at the sheets while Ilya stares blankly across the room.

“What time is it?”

Shane shifts enough to reach his phone. “Oh, um, just past eleven.” He’s been at the hospital for more than three hours. “Are you hungry? Do you want me to get you something?”

“No, they will make me eat bad hospital food. I will have to talk to therapist again soon. Coaches too, probably.” He looks over at Shane. “You should go. Eat. It will be some time.”

“Are you sure? I can stay.”

“No, I do not think they would let you.” Ilya studies him with an expression Shane can’t read, then looks away. “But thank you.”

“Okay. I’ll come back in a couple of hours?”

Ilya nods, eyes flickering up to his for just a moment.

Shane leans forward and kisses him. It’s only a quick press of lips, an attempt to say all the things he can’t figure out how to say out loud. A promise to come back. A reminder of what Ilya is to him, whatever the word for it is. A grasp at something normal, or at least familiar, in all of this.

“Okay. See you in a bit.”

“Bye,” Ilya whispers.

*

Shane knows he needs to eat. He needs to talk to Theriault. He needs to call his mother back before she sends an ambulance to his house.

He heads in the direction of the cafeteria, keeping his head down as he opens his last message to his coach.

I need to take a few days. I’m dealing with a family emergency.

He’s never missed a game before, not ever. He forces himself to take a breath and tells himself this happens. Emergencies happen. This is an emergency.

I thought you were sick, Theriault messages back. What’s going on, Hollander?

Shane winces.

I was. There’s a lot going on. I’ll be back as soon as I can.

If Theriault asks for more details, Shane can just tell him it’s private. He’s absolutely not going to give out anyone’s medical information to his coach, let alone Ilya’s medical information. His parents, though…they will be harder to deal with.

He’s too upset to come up with a reasonable lie for all of this. He isn’t sure that he can bear all of this on his own, anyway. He isn’t sure that he wants to anymore.

He calls his dad first.

“Hey, kid. How are you doing? Feeling any better?”

“Um, yeah. I’m alright. I think.” He feels near tears again suddenly and has to press his thumb against the corner of his eye. Jesus. He’s usually better at this, holding the tears back.

“Is everything okay?”

“Not really. I, um, I need to tell you some things.”

He hears his father sit down. “What’s going on?” David’s voice is gentle. Careful.

Shane is really going to start crying again. He can’t stop it, no matter how hard he tries. He ducks down the first empty hallway he finds and flattens himself against a wall where he’ll be able to see anyone coming close enough to hear him.

“Shane?”

“I—I’m seeing someone, sort of. I’m sorry I haven’t told you, I promise I wanted to. But—” He stops, biting his lip to keep from sobbing. “I promise I had a good reason.”

His dad sucks in a breath. “Shane, kid…”

“I’m not in Montreal right now. I’m with them. In a hospital. That’s why I’m missing the game tonight. I just had to be here.” His voice breaks, and he slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor, his fist pressed against his mouth. His heart is pounding out of his chest.

On the other end of the line, his dad takes another slow breath. “A hospital, huh?”

“Yeah. It’s—it’s serious, I guess. I think…I don’t know. I hope it’s going to be okay.” He’s babbling and he can’t stop it. “I don’t know. He’s—fuck. Fuck.” He almost hangs up the phone then and there. He would, but he can’t get his hands to move.

“Shane,” his dad says in his ear. “Shane, take a breath.”

He does, shakily, and then another. Then, because he knows he can’t blow past this, “He’s—he’s, uh, a him. By the way.”

He waits. He needs his dad to say something. Anything.

“Dad…”

“Shane, are you okay?”

The question startles him out of his panic for an instant. “I don’t know.”

“Okay. Okay, kid. Let’s both take a breath, alright?”

Shane tries, dragging air through his nose that turns into a swallowed-down sob. He feels like a kid again, sitting in his dad’s car in the school parking lot on the days when the world was too much. There used to be a lot of those days. He’d hoped they were mostly behind him.

Maybe it’s the little-kid part of him that asks the question, his voice coming out small and reedy, “Are you disappointed?”

“No! No, Shane, not at all. I’m surprised, that’s all. One minute I think you’re in Montreal with the flu…”

“Yeah,” Shane says faintly, “I guess it’s a lot to take in.”

“Just a little.” There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Probably harder to live through it, though.”

Shane swallows hard. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“Oh, kid.” Shane can picture the look on his dad’s face just from his voice, concern and fondness all mixed together. “Don’t worry about that right now. I love you. Your mom and I both love you no matter what. We’re proud of you. We just want you to be okay.”

Shane squeezes his eyes shut and nods even though he knows his dad can’t see him. “I know. I love you too.”

“I’m here for you, kid. You gonna be okay?”

“I think so.” Shane nods again, taking another breath. “Probably.”

“Okay. Good to hear. You said you’re at the hospital now?”

“Yeah, um. I’ve seen him. He’s awake. He’s talking to the doctor right now.”

“Sounds like a good sign.”

“Yeah, it’s—we’re not really sure how long he’ll be here. But yeah, he’s…stable.” Shane isn’t really sure how the words he’s heard thrown around on medical dramas apply here.

“Good. That’s good. Make sure you’re taking care of yourself too, Shane.”

“I will, I’m getting lunch. Right after this. Are—are you going to talk to Mom?”

David pauses. “Do you want me to?”

“I…” Shane would love to never have this conversation, actually. But he knows that if his mom doesn’t hear it from him, it will be a thousand times harder to talk about it ever again. “I don’t know.” I don’t know if I can do it.

His dad hums. “Sounds like you’re dealing with a lot right now. How about I convince her to give you some space for a bit? Until you’re ready.”

He might never be ready, but even a few hours feels like a miracle. “Please. Yes. Tell her I’ll call her tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.”

“I’ll do my best. You know how she is.” His voice is fond. Warm. No different than before Shane told him the truth. Most of it, anyway.

“Yeah, I know. Thanks, Dad.”

“Sure thing, kid. I love you. Hang in there.”

“Love you too.”

He sits on the floor for a moment until his legs can support him. Then he walks to the cafeteria and buys the least-gross food he can find. On a whim he adds a bottle of Coke for Ilya. He feels shakier than he should. It hasn’t been that long since he ate.

He tells himself that he’s fine. Ilya is alive. His dad still loves him. He’s okay. This is just stress. A delayed reaction.

Shane eats as quickly as he can and doesn’t taste any of it. Then he locks himself in a bathroom stall and cries until he heaves. Nothing is ever going to be like it was.

Chapter End Notes

I was wondering if I made Shane cry too much in this (I don't think he's much of a crier, actually!) but 1) these are extraordinary circumstances and 2) fuck it, why are we here after all if not to see fictional men cry.

Also in case you were wondering: I promise Svetlana is in fact a major part of this story as the tags suggest! We still have a lot of words to go even though we’re halfway through the chapter count.

I think the next chapter might be my favorite.

Chapter 6

Chapter Summary

The rest of the day.

Chapter Notes

Thank you for all the wonderful comments on the last chapter! Have this one a day early because I’m going to be out of the house all afternoon and it will prevent me from refreshing the comments 20 times an hour.

Ilya’s room at the hospital is almost nice, now that he’s awake enough to notice. It would be, if this was a run-of-the-mill hockey injury and not what it actually is. Private, of course, because he is a star athlete. The sheets are just hospital sheets, but they are not too scratchy on his skin. He has a window with an actual view. He also has a nurse stationed outside his door.

The day nurse has gotten to hear each of the times that he broke down in Shane Hollander’s arms. Now he also gets to hear Ilya choke on his English as he tries to promise a series of doctors and psychologists that he is sane, that he is regretful, that he will be a good patient who is still a good investment for his team.

They all look at him with stern, clinical disappointment, listing the side effects and precautions and treatments that are the results of his failure. He feels like he has been caught doing something wrong whenever they look at him, even just sitting there.

Shane had not looked at him like that. Shane’s eyes had shown all of his hurt, and that makes Ilya feel a thousand times more ashamed.

He is made to talk about his moods, his drinking, his past concussions. Any other risky behavior. (He wants to remind them he plays a contact sport with blades attached to his feet. Risky behavior is the basis of his career, and they probably eat it up when they’re off the clock.) Feelings that he can barely articulate in Russian, let alone English when he is tired and upset and still hungover. His family history with mental illness. It is just a few lines on paper, but it is an enormous part of what put him here.

They do not ask about Shane, at least. Shane is nothing to him on paper.

They tell him he will still be on psychiatric hold for another day. He can have visitors, but not his phone. He can have a break from the doctors and the therapists, but he cannot be left by himself. After that depends on a set of criteria he only partially understands and isn’t sure he can appear to fulfill.

He manages to get a phone call with LeClaire, at least, who he had never removed as his emergency contact and so who knows everything. The therapist he’s seen the most of argues against it, but Ilya thinks the fact that his visa is tied to his continued employment works in his favor. He will lose his mind not knowing if Russia is on the other side of this hospital.

The call does not go well. LeClaire and the team doctors are used to dealing with game-related injuries and the occasional drunken or drug-fueled binge, not a player who has swallowed a bottle of legally prescribed pills on purpose. It is awkward and frustrating for them as well as Ilya. It boils down to we’ll see what the doctors say tomorrow.

Fucking doctors. They tell him nothing except to focus on getting better. As if that means anything. As if he knows what better means anymore.

Ilya knows what he doesn’t want: He doesn’t want to go back to Russia. He doesn’t want to go to an inpatient program where he will lose even more of his privacy than he already has. He doesn’t want to go back to his empty, aching, lonely life. That leaves him with nothing at all, basically.

“Hey.”

Ilya turns his head and sees Shane in the doorway, looking more exhausted but less tense. Not as frantic as when he arrived this morning, even with the dark hollows under his eyes.

“I’m back,” he says, as if Ilya can’t see him cross the room and sit on the edge of the bed. “This is for you.”

Ilya looks down at the bottle Shane has just handed him. “You got me a Coke?”

“Yeah. That’s what you like, right? Sorry it’s not cold. It’s from the vending machine.”

“No, it’s fine.” He cracks the seal and takes a long pull, the carbonation somehow soothing on his throat. The syrupy taste is almost as good as a cigarette.

He’s not going to cry from a warm vending machine soda.

Shane is watching him, warm dark eyes careful and searching on his face. It’s entirely unlike the probing of the hospital staff or his coaches.

“How are you doing?”

“I am here, Hollander.”

Shane doesn’t remind him that’s his own fault. A part of Ilya wishes he would.

“Did the doctors say anything?”

“Nothing new. They tell me nothing.” He realizes he’s fidgeting with the blanket and makes himself stop.

He keeps feeling…not normal, by any means, but steadier, forgetting for a few seconds why and how he got here. Then he remembers that he tried to kill himself. Every time, it feels like the first time he’d come to and realized where he was. That he was still here.

It’s exhausting. Swimming to the surface just in time to see the wave crash over his head again. It feels like he’s only prolonging the inevitable.

“Hey.”

Shane’s hand on his cheek pulls him back up.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“I hate this,” Ilya admits. “Even though it is my fault, I hate all of this.”

Shane blinks at him, and it’s only then he realizes he’d spoken in Russian, not English. Ilya grips the bottle in his hands until the plastic creaks. He feels awful. The terrible hospital food is churning in his stomach, and there’s a whine in his ears he can’t get rid of. He wonders if he’s going to be sick.

Shane steadies him, warm hands on clammy skin. “Hey, you’re okay. Breathe, okay?”

He tries, but his breath catches in his throat. Instinctively, he reaches up to touch the pendant at his collar, coming up short when there’s nothing there. His breath comes out more wheeze than exhale.

“You’re okay,” Shane tells him, but he isn’t. His lungs are burning. This is the opposite of the death he wanted, excruciating and slow. Exposed.

Distantly, he’s surprised that Shane doesn’t look more scared. His expression is worried but focused, like he’s down a goal in the third period and looking for an opening. He doesn’t look like he’s planning on losing.

Shane presses his hand to Ilya’s chest, somehow covering the exact spot where the ache seizing his lungs is radiating from. The pressure makes it strangely easier to breathe.

Ilya realizes his whole body is trembling, completely out of his control. His breath hitches again. What is wrong with him? Did he do some kind of permanent damage to himself? If Boston takes him back, will he even be able to play?

Shane is talking to him, but Ilya can’t make out the words over the frantic beeping of his heart monitor and the roar in his head. He can’t die here in front of Shane. He can’t do that to him.

Shane’s other hand locks around the back of his neck, anchoring him enough in his body that Ilya can lift his arm and grab Shane’s wrist. He’s probably clinging tight enough to bruise, but Shane doesn’t flinch. He’s still talking, a low murmur of sound that Ilya tries to latch onto.

It goes on forever, Ilya gasping and shaking and Shane just barely holding him together. His palm pressed to Ilya’s sternum.

Eventually his body just…gives up. His muscles unlock, and he collapses back onto the pillows, only then discovering he’d been sitting upright, half curled over. He realizes that he’s no longer holding the Coke bottle—Shane must have rescued it from his chokehold before he spilled it everywhere—and his entire body, head to toe, is covered in sweat. Drenched in it, really; it’s disgusting.

And Ilya is already so many kinds of tired. Groggy still from the drugs and the alcohol he’d drunk. Exhausted by the emotional gauntlet of doctors and therapists. Worn out from weeks of restless sleep. Tired of himself, and most of all tired of feeling tired.

This new wave of exhaustion overwhelms all of that, threatening to pull him under in a way his body revolts at instinctively. He’s sick of drowning. He groans, so tired and angry and terrified that he can only express it in inarticulate sound.

“Ilya.”

The sound of his name in Shane’s voice reels him back to his body again.

“What happened?” Ilya fumbles in his broken mind for the English. “What was that?”

“A panic attack. You’ve never had one before?”

“No, not like that.”

“It looked pretty bad. Do you want me to get you some ice or something?”

Ilya blinks, certain his brain is still not working. “Ice?”

“It helps sometimes. Um, for me. The cold, I don’t know.” Shane looks faintly embarrassed, like admitting he’s had a panic attack before is somehow worse than any number of the things Ilya has done in the past few days.

“Oh.” His thoughts are moving in slow motion. “Just water is okay, I think.”

Shane holds the cup for him, offering the straw like he doesn’t think Ilya can do it himself. Which is fair, since Ilya’s hands are still shaking when the rest of him has quieted. The worst part isn’t that Shane thinks he needs help, it’s that a large part of Ilya doesn’t mind. The same part that asked for him to be here in the first place. The part that wants Shane to hold him, to buy him soda from the vending machine and tell him everything will be okay like Ilya hasn’t just burned his whole life down.

Shane keeps being so gentle with him. Ilya wants to resent it, to show him that he doesn’t need it, to hate him for it, but his body keeps betraying him, seeking him out for more.

It’s pathetic. Desperate. Shane is playing along for now, but he has to realize it eventually. The tepid water sits cold in Ilya’s stomach.

Shane skipped a game because of him. Shane.

Ilya retches without warning, managing by sheer force of will not to spit out what comes up. Instead he swallows. Shudders.

“You okay?”

“Stop asking me that.”

“Sorry.”

Ilya tilts his head up to look at the ceiling, breathing through the nausea until it passes. Looking up has the added benefit of keeping his eyes mostly dry.

Shane is looking at him, his eyes sweeping carefully over his face, down to his hands, back up to his eyes. Watching him. Considering. It makes Ilya want to fidget.

Instead, he stares back until Shane swallows.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Shane and his questions. If he’s asking permission, it must be something big. Something like the question Shane has probably been waiting to ask all morning. The one Ilya can’t answer in a way that makes sense to himself or anyone else.

“You can ask.” He doesn’t promise to answer.

Shane nods like he’s said the last part aloud. “Has anyone talked to your family? I know they’re not close, but…they’d want to know, right?”

That is not the question Ilya expected. The heart rate monitor exposes his body’s reaction.

“No. They do not know. They cannot know, you understand? They cannot know.”

“Okay.” Shane holds up his hand, placating. “Okay, I get it. I’m not going to tell them.”

Ilya is way past calming. “No. You do not understand. My father, he would kill me.”

“What?” Shane’s expression falls. “Are you serious?”

“I don’t—maybe.” He’s breathing like he’s just come off a hard shift. Leftover adrenaline from the panic attack. “No. He could not, now.”

He looks down at the bed, unable to meet Shane’s horrified expression. He can’t bear to see the pity he knows must be there. Shane Hollander, with his perfect parents.

Poor him. Sad crazy immigrant with the fucked-up crazy family. Just like he’d told the therapist. Enough to suggest an explanation for what he’d done, anyway.

Ilya clenches a handful of the sheets in his fist. He is probably never going to see his father again, he realizes now. Grigori does not often remember his son’s name now when he calls—some things had moved fast after all—but Ilya is convinced that his father would still know everything with one look at his face, even through the fog of his illness. He has always had a gift for sniffing out signs of Ilya’s weakness.

So. There is a very real chance that he will never be able to see his father alive again.

There is no room inside his heart for all the things he feels about this: Grief. Regret. Relief. Guilt, for his failures as a son and for the relief. They must spill over on his face, because Shane reaches over, grabs his hand, and squeezes.

“What do you mean…now?”

Ilya looks up, confused until he realizes Shane is repeating the last thing he said. Shane’s face is doing a lot of things that Ilya doesn’t think he’s aware of.

He looks away before he answers. “He is…sick. Dementia. I learned in Sochi. Knew something was wrong, before, but—” He shakes his head.

“Oh.” Shane lets out a sound like the breath has been knocked out of him. “Fuck. Ilya, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t. It is—” He stops, realizing he has no way to end that sentence. He shouldn’t be telling Shane any of this, like he’s looking for pity or making an excuse for what he did. He should save his sad stories about his crazy family for the doctors: Here, you see what I am dealing with, I was overwhelmed, it was a mistake, it will not happen again, I will get help. Not Shane fucking Hollander, who looks moments away from getting on a plane to Moscow himself. Who knows, he drove to Boston in the middle of the night, after all. Ilya feels crazier than when he first woke up in the hospital.

“It is just what it is,” he finishes lamely.

“Is there anyone else in your family? You have a brother, right?”

Ilya wants to laugh. Alexei would probably love to hear that he’s tried to kill himself. One more way that he’s tried to run away—abandoning his home, his blood. One more way he’s like their mother. Alexei had been the first to call her weak in Ilya’s hearing. Yes, let’s tell Alexei this news.

Ilya feels his lips twist in a mockery of a smile. “Ah, my brother, he would be very upset. He will lose big source of income if I am dead, you see.”

He finally looks up at Shane’s face, expecting to see sympathy or horror. Instead he finds white-hot anger. Shane looks furious, though the effect is ruined somewhat by the tears in his eyes.

“What?”

“What?” Ilya asks.

Shane’s expression flickers, like he can’t even process what Ilya just said. “He—what? He wouldn’t even care?”

“You think I am asshole? He is real asshole.” Ilya lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “This would be…ah, no, I cannot think of word. Proving him right, yes? About me.”

“What do you mean? Right about what?” It doesn’t sound like Shane actually wants to know.

Ilya shrugs again. “That I am selfish. Lazy. Weak. I run away from things.” The words don’t sting in English. He’s heard a lot worse on the ice.

Shane sets his jaw like he’s about to throw a punch. Like Alexei is in the room with him. Shane against his brother—the thought almost cheers Ilya up a little. Alexei has the advantage of size, but if Ilya was a betting man, he’d bet on Shane.

“None of those things are true.”

“They are not untrue.”

“Yes they fucking are!” He’s never seen Shane get quite so heated. It’s like he feels personally insulted by the things Ilya has heard so often they’ve become background noise. “How can you say that? You’re not lazy. You’re not selfish. You’re not weak.”

“He is not talking about hockey, Hollander. There is more to life than just this.”

“I know that,” Shane snaps. “That still doesn’t make them true.”

“You do not need to get so worked up. Is cute, but it is not so big a deal.”

Shane’s hands ball into fists. “It is a big deal, Ilya. How can your family say that shit to you? How can you believe those things about yourself?”

“You know other people will say these things, yes? Probably to my face, when they find out why I am not playing.” Ilya sighs. “Not everyone has perfect life, Hollander. We are done with this conversation, I think.”

Shane shakes his head, looking away as he blinks back tears. His jaw works as he stares at the wall next to the door.

“We can stop talking about it. But…you should know that I don’t think any of those things. And I think—” He stops, chewing at the inside of his lower lip. “I think you should bring them up with the therapist, if you haven’t.”

“Mm. Okay. Noted.” Ilya rolls his eyes.

Shane glances back at him, then down at the bed. He pulls at an eyelash, a gesture Ilya has seen a few times in interviews when a reporter veers too close to a topic Shane wants to avoid. A tiny crack in his public façade.

“Sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

“You did not yell at me, Hollander.”

Ilya watches the decision to let that go play out on Shane’s face. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Ilya mimics.

At least he doesn’t feel like his heart is going to burst out of his chest anymore. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling, really. All the neurons in his brain have shorted out from overuse. Or maybe it’s just the medication.

“You do not have to stay, if you want. You have been here all day.” He wants to give Shane a real out while he still has the chance. He has to be exhausted too.

“No, I’ll stay,” Shane says immediately, stubbornly. “Visiting hours aren’t over for a while yet.”

“You do not need to wait until they kick you out. You drove here last night, yes? You cannot have gotten much sleep.”

“I’m okay.” Shane looks up at him. “I mean, unless you want to sleep. I can go.”

He should say yes. Yes, I am tired, go, I will be fine. It’s what he should do, but his stomach clenches at the thought. He still doesn’t want to be alone. He is weak, and selfish, and all the other things his family says he is. He has proved that over and over.

“It is up to you. But…I do have favor to ask.”

Shane sits up at that, like he’d just been waiting for Ilya to ask. “Sure. What is it?”

“My friend Svetlana.” Ilya swallows. “She will be back tonight. Probably she is already on her flight.”

“Oh. Yeah. Do you need me to pick her up from the airport, or—?”

“No, no, nothing like this. Is just, she will wonder why I do not text her back, and I do not have my phone.”

“You want me to tell her where you are?”

“I—no, I cannot ask you to do that. Just say I am okay, and I will call her when I can. I will give you her Instagram, you can message her.”

“Okay, but…the message will come from my account, right? Does she know who I am?”

This is the one flaw in Ilya’s plan. “Ah, no. She knows you are Shane Hollander, of course, she is hockey obsessed. She knows about me. But she does not know about us. She will not tell anyone, though, she would never. She is Russian too, she knows what it would mean for me. For both of us.”

Shane nods, his jaw set. “Okay. Okay, I’ll message her.”

“Thank you.” Ilya’s relief is a physical thing. At least Svetlana will not be left wondering. The rest, he will figure out later.

She will be so disappointed in him. That he could not make it two weeks without her around to hold his hand. He knows she has been eyeing a promotion in New York. Now her success will be soured by his stupid fucking brain, and every much-needed, well-earned vacation she takes in the future will be a reminder of the time he tried to kill himself. Or maybe she will be done with him, after this. That would be for the best.

He looks over at Shane. “Really, thank you.”

Shane ducks his head. “No problem. She’s—the two of you are close?”

“Yes, our fathers are friends. We grew up together. You will know her last name—Vetrova.”

He sees the gears turn in Shane’s head. “Sergei Vetrov? The goalie? I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

“Yes. Her mother is American, she has citizenship here now. But we have known each other a long time.”

“Wow. I had no idea.”

“She is incredible. Smartest person I know. Speaks more languages than you, even.”

That wins him the hint of a smile. “You know I only speak two, right? Same as you.”

Ilya waves his hand. “Your French is better than my English.”

“Your English is fine.”

“Now you are trying to make me feel better.”

“I’m not,” Shane says with a sound that might be either a huff or a laugh.

“No, it is sweet.”

“Shut up.” Shane shakes his head. He’s definitely smiling now, but trying not to. So at least Ilya hasn’t broken him completely by talking about his fucked-up family.

“You are staying at hotel?” he asks.

Shane’s expression freezes. If Ilya isn’t imagining it, a flush starts creeping up his throat.

“Oh…no, not exactly.”

“Not exactly? What is ‘not exactly?’ Are you sleeping in your car or something? You know you are rich athlete, yes?”

He’s definitely blushing, pulling at his lashes again instead of looking at Ilya. “I kind of—” he stops, exhaling hard. “I let myself into your house.”

Ilya blinks. “What?”

“Sorry. I know it’s…I wasn’t thinking.”

“You slept in my house?”

“You gave me the code for the door,” Shane points out.

“For when I was home, Hollander. My house?” For the first time in ages, he feels like laughing. “My fucking house. You and Svetlana will get along fine, I think. She also has this habit. Breaking and entering. Criminal streak.”

Shane finally cracks a smile, shaking his head. “I didn’t break in. You gave me the code.”

“Okay. Sure. You are sure you want to stay?” Ilya asks again.

“Yes, I’m staying.” Shane doesn’t even pause to think about it. He looks up at Ilya’s face with that small smile still pulling at the corners of his mouth.

*

A nurse comes in with dinner for Ilya not long after. There have been people outside Ilya’s room all day, but her entry fills Shane with nervous energy, reminding him that there’s a very good chance they’re surrounded by people who know exactly how odd it is that Shane Hollander is the only one in Ilya Rozanov’s hospital room. It’s not enough to overpower his need to attach himself to Ilya’s side, but it still makes his stomach churn.

He gets up to pace around the room for a while after that, rearranging the table next to the bed, getting Ilya to drink more water, and adjusting the blinds so the last rays of winter sun don’t shine in his face. Ilya lets him fuss a bit, either too drowsy or too focused on forcing down bad hospital food to protest.

When he comes back to sit with him, there’s more color on Ilya’s face than Shane has seen all day. He shifts over to make room for Shane on the mattress. They sit pressed together from shoulder to hip. Shane knocks his foot against Ilya’s ankle and smiles when Ilya nudges him back.

It’s almost nice. Shane would like to be able to just sit with him and watch how the setting sun catches the gold in his hair and his eyes. He wants to lie in a bed next to Ilya and not think about where they are or why or how soon he’ll have to leave. He wishes he could say how much he feels. Shane hadn’t known until these past few days how many different things he could feel all at once.

Ilya shifts beside him. “What is it?”

Shane startles. “What?”

“You are winding up like spring. Spit it out.”

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Ilya sighs, turning his head to look at him straight on. “You know you are a very bad liar, yes?”

“Okay, fine.” Shane looks down at his hands folded in his lap. “I have another question, but I don’t know if you want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

“Seriously, we can just—”

“Just ask your question, Hollander.”

Shane takes a breath. “I just wondered…do you remember what you said on the phone the other night?”

Ilya’s shoulder tenses against him, and Shane immediately regrets asking.

“Some things. Not all.”

“Do you remember the last thing you said?”

Ilya pauses, then slowly shakes his head. “No. Why?”

Shane really shouldn’t have asked. He blinks and shakes his head to clear it. “I don’t know. I couldn’t understand everything you were saying. I guess I was wondering if you—why you called me and not someone else. Never mind.”

“Who else would I call?” Ilya asks flatly.

“There’s really nobody else? No one on your team, in Boston?”

Ilya scoffs like it’s a ridiculous question. “No, there is no one on my team I want to call to say, ‘Having fun at bar without me? By the way, I am finally going to kill myself tonight.’”

Shane twitches; he can’t help it. It’s the first time anyone’s said the words out loud so bluntly.

“You see. Even you don’t want to hear this. They would probably think it is a joke.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—it just surprised me. That’s all.”

“Okay.” Ilya sighs, pulling away even though he’s still hooked to the IV and the heart monitor and there’s nowhere on the bed for him to go.

“Listen, it’s not that I don’t want to hear it, okay? You can…you can talk to me about whatever. I shouldn’t have flinched. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not.”

Ilya has always been patient with him, seeing his panic and cutting it off before it can build, diffusing his anxiety with teasing or touch. Letting him talk himself out, when he needs to. Making him comfortable when it feels impossible.

“If you want to talk, you can talk. I’ll listen. I want to help, if I can.”

“No. It is—I don’t know.” Ilya grimaces and makes a tight, frustrated motion with his hand. “There is nothing to say. It is too hard in English anyway.”

“Could you say it in Russian?”

Ilya looks over at him, wary. “You would not be able to understand it.”

“No, but…maybe it would help?”

Shane waits for Ilya to tell him it’s a stupid idea, or more likely to brush him off, but instead Ilya straightens a little, glancing towards the door. He looks back at Shane, maybe waiting to see if he’s changed his mind. Shane tries to nod encouragingly.

Ilya speaks hesitantly at first, words coming in short bursts with long pauses between them. He’s sitting with his legs drawn up, arms resting on his knees, and he rubs at his wrist as he speaks, an uncharacteristically nervous gesture from him. The world shrinks to just the two of them as the words come faster and faster. Ilya looks over at Shane, finally meeting his eyes, and for the first time all day Shane feels like they’re really talking. Like Ilya is telling him things he wants Shane to know, specifically. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but he doesn’t think so. Ilya sounds so—so purposeful, in Russian. Shane can’t understand the meaning of the words, of course. But he can see the things Ilya is feeling in his voice and on his face—things Shane wouldn’t know how to say out loud anyway, even in a language they both share. He doesn’t need the words when Ilya is there with him.

It’s like a dam has opened in Ilya now, all his grief and agony pouring out of him. Shane doesn’t know the source or the geography of that grief; he doesn’t know how to direct its flow. He is only beginning to get the shape of it. All he can do is hold on, trying to keep both their heads above water.

It makes him think again of Sochi, of the blank look on Ilya’s face as he stood high above the ice. Ilya hadn’t wanted to—hadn’t been able to—talk to him then. Shane had wished even back then that he could be someone Ilya wanted to talk to. Even when he hadn’t known what that meant.

Ilya had been so far away in Sochi and in the months after. Now he’s here—next to Shane, talking to him, but also here, in a hospital bed. What had changed in all those months to bring him here?

Shane doesn’t know how long Ilya talks, but eventually the words slow to a trickle. Then they stop, and Shane blinks, returning to the world of the hospital.

Ilya is looking back down at his hands. “That’s it,” he says, voice worn and raspy. He spreads his palms as if everything he just said is laid out on the bed in front of him.

“Do you feel better?”

The sound Ilya makes is not quite a laugh. “No. I don’t know. Maybe.” He swipes his fingers under his eye, then huffs and looks up at the florescent lights above them—but not quickly enough to stop the tear slipping out where Shane can see it.

“Господи Иисусе. Not again.”

“It’s okay.” Shane reaches for him, guiding him back to his arms.

Ilya folds himself against his side. “I am so sick of crying,” he grumbles into Shane’s shoulder.

“Yeah. But it’s probably better than holding it in, right?”

Ilya makes a noise that doesn’t sound like agreement, exactly, but he doesn’t protest and lets Shane rub his back. It’s good to feel his heartbeat, rapid but strong under Shane’s palm. He can tell how exhausted Ilya is in the way he leans his full weight against him, not even trying to hold himself up.

“Are you tired? Do you want to sleep?”

“Mm-mm.” Ilya’s hand is resting on Shane’s chest, his index finger idly tracing the McGill logo on his sweatshirt. It’s probably the oldest piece of clothing Shane owns, and the least directly hockey-related, which is why he grabbed it in his rush to get to Boston.

Stubborn, Shane thinks fondly, dropping a kiss to the crown of Ilya’s head. He hopes that’s all it is, that there’s not another reason he doesn’t want to sleep. With his free hand, Shane reaches up and brushes the sweat-damp curls back from Ilya’s temple, then leaves it resting there in his hair.

The loosely fitting gown makes Ilya look small, but he’s not. He’s sturdy and strong in Shane’s arms. He still looks so young, and he is, both of them are, really. Twenty-three, and twenty-three years isn’t enough time for anyone. It makes Shane feel oddly protective, as if they aren’t both exactly the same age. As if he doesn’t feel small right now too.

Ilya is quiet for so long that Shane thinks he’s fallen asleep again anyway, at least until he shifts, his breath catching almost imperceptibly.

“You okay?”

“You should know,” Ilya says, so quietly Shane has to strain to hear him, “that this did not have anything to do with you.”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to think that is why I called you.” Ilya tenses up, and for a second Shane thinks he’s going to pull away. He doesn’t, just ducks his head beneath Shane’s chin, face hidden from view. His accent is very strong again, and his voice is muffled against the fabric. “You should not feel…responsible, in any way.”

Shane can’t seem to take a full breath, suddenly. “I don’t. I wasn’t thinking that.”

“Okay. Good. Was not your fault. Was no one’s fault. Just mine.”

Shane stills, trying to listen for the thing Ilya isn’t saying. He feels the same as he had on a rooftop in Vegas after their rookie season, knowing he’s missing something important, still unable to avoid saying the wrong thing.

“It’s not—I don’t think that’s how it works.”

Ilya stiffens again, and Shane waits for him to argue, but he just sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe you are right. Maybe this was just—I don’t know. Inevitable.”

“Inevitable?”

Ilya is silent for a long time. So long Shane thinks he’s not going to answer.

“I am not the first,” he says, muffled against Shane’s chest. “In my family. To swallow bottle of pills.”

Shane’s heart stops. It feels like it should fall from his chest onto the floor, gasping wetly on the tile, but instead it kicks up again, now twice as fast. He clutches at Ilya instinctively like he’s trying to drag him to safety.

“Your mother?” his mouth asks without the help of his brain. The mother Ilya never mentions. The topic he always avoids, blatantly, like he’s daring Shane to challenge him on it.

“Yes.” Ilya’s fist is balled up in Shane’s shirt, the knuckles standing out starkly white. “People say we are so alike. But she got it right first time.”

Shane hears himself make a choked noise and curls over Ilya, angling his body to shield him from view of the hallway without thinking about it. Even if it’s why they’re there, a part of him doesn’t want anyone outside to see Ilya like this—torn open.

Still tucked against his shoulder, Ilya gasps through fresh tears. “She—you need to understand, she was not weak. My father was so hard on her. It was so much worse for her than me. I had hockey, I had this…this future. She had nothing. She had nowhere to go.”

“I know.” Shane lowers his hand until his fingers brush Ilya’s jaw and he can wipe away the tear tracks on his cheek with his thumb. “I know, I know she wasn’t weak.” Not if she was anything like her son.

He doesn’t know if Ilya hears him. He’s shaking, one arm clamped across his own chest like he’s trying to hold himself still. Fingers digging into his other arm, the one that’s still clinging to Shane.

“I came home from practice and I could not find her. I wanted to tell her—I wanted to tell her that I was going to leave Russia someday and play hockey. I wanted her to know that I was good at this thing. This one thing. And she was dead. They said—my father, he told me it was an accident but it wasn’t. I saw her. I knew.”

“You found her?” Shane tries to swallow, but his throat is too dry. What can he say to that? “What—how old were you?”

“Twelve.”

Twelve. Shane thinks of Ilya at seventeen, incandescent and cocky and invincible. Of him at nineteen, twenty-one, twenty-two, so confident and sure of himself, so captivating. How had he survived everything he’s told Shane about today—and still, Shane barely knows anything, he realizes that—to become the person he is now?

Had he felt like this the whole time, underneath it all? Is that what he meant by finally, by inevitable? Shane doesn’t know if he can stand the thought.

Holding Ilya isn’t enough, suddenly. Shane needs to see him. He coaxes Ilya’s chin up with gentle pressure at his jaw. Ilya turns his head away, face half hidden in Shane’s palm, but it’s enough. Just a glimpse is enough.

Ilya’s eyes squeeze shut. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry.” For crying, for telling him, for all of it, Shane doesn’t know.

“No, it’s okay. Really. Come here.”

He opens his arms for Ilya to fall back into and pulls the blanket up over both of them, holding on until Ilya’s breath starts to come in dry, punched-out little gasps against his shoulder. Like he doesn’t have any tears left in him. The practical part of Shane that never really turns off, even now, thinks, He needs to drink, he needs more water. Electrolytes, too.

Visiting hours must be ending soon, and he doesn’t want to leave Ilya like this. Doesn’t want to leave him at all, but especially so raw. What he really wants to do is tuck him against his ribs, hide him somewhere safe and private.

He cups the back of Ilya’s neck, scratching lightly at his hairline until his breathing evens out a little. His skin is scalding under Shane’s fingers. Boiling over with emotion on top of his natural internal furnace.

“Hey,” Shane says quietly, still petting his hair. Ilya hums against him, a wordless question. “I meant what I said earlier. Thank you.”

Ilya blinks, heavy against Shane’s side. “Thank you for what?”

“For telling me. All of that. Everything.”

Ilya sniffs. “Yes, well. Now you know. Sad immigrant backstory.”

“Yeah, um. Pretty sure my mom has one of those too,” Shane says, trying for a little lightness even though he still feels sick.

“Wow. Guess I am not special.”

Shane laughs, even though both their efforts fall a little flat. “No, you are. Definitely.” He traces a line from Ilya’s temple to the corner of his jaw with one finger, feeling the tackiness of dried tears on his cheek, then goes back to massaging Ilya’s scalp.

“Are you going to be okay tonight?”

“Probably. Yes. Is not like I will be going anywhere.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Yes, I know. Is best answer I have.”

That’s fair, Shane supposes. He looks up at the clock on the opposite wall and sees how little time they have left together, at least for that day.

“Hey, I have to get up, but I’ll be right back, okay?”

Ilya looks up at him. “You are going?”

“Just into the hall. It’ll only take a second, and I’ll be back. Drink some water, alright?”

Ilya lets go of him as reluctantly as Shane gets up. He ducks into the hallway as quickly as he can without actually running and locates the nearest vending machine. Tucking the Gatorade under his arm—all they have is red, the worst flavor, but it will have to do—he grabs a stack of paper towels from the bathroom down the hall and wets them with just enough cold water to be damp, not soggy. Then he hurries back to Ilya’s room.

It doesn’t look like Ilya has moved. Shane sits on the edge of the bed, facing him, and holds up the paper towels, catching the drops in his palm so they don’t fall on Ilya.

“Do you mind if I—?”

“What?” Ilya looks from the wad of paper to Shane.

“Um, for your face,” he explains, feeling stupid now. He wishes he’d thought to ask one of the nurses for a real towel.

Ilya still looks uncertain, but he gestures in assent. “Go ahead,” he says, still a little hoarse.

Shane steadies Ilya’s head in one hand and dabs carefully at the swollen skin around his eyes. He still feels a little silly, but Ilya closes his eyes and lets him work without protest. It could be his imagination, but he thinks Ilya’s breathing slows and deepens as the water cools the inflamed skin. Shane moves methodically from Ilya’s eyes and brow to the rest of his face, refolding the paper towels to wipe his throat and under his chin.

Sometimes, the rare times Shane is the one to get up first after they have sex, Ilya still prefers to clean himself up. Other times, less often, he lets Shane do it for him, a little like he does now. Shane likes those times in a way he’s never thought much about. There’s nothing sexy about their situation at the moment, but he’s still glad that Ilya isn’t stopping him.

“Still okay?” he asks, just to make sure. He doesn’t want Ilya to feel embarrassed or condescended to, like Shane thinks he can’t take care of himself.

“Yes, okay,” Ilya breathes, though Shane has really finished cleaning up his face and is mostly just passing the damp towels over any of the points that make Ilya’s shoulders relax a little further.

By the time he’s done, Ilya is loose and drowsy against the pillows, watching Shane through half-lidded eyes. Looking at him just then cracks something fundamental open deep within Shane’s ribcage. It’s inescapable and immense, like the moon rising over the lake at his parents’ cottage in Ottawa. Right then, he would do anything, anything at all for the person looking back at him.

It hits him, what this is. How deeply he has come to love Ilya Rozanov, without ever realizing it. More than he’s ever loved anyone. More than he even knew he was capable of. And it terrifies him. He could lose this so easily, for any number of reasons.

He places his hand over Ilya’s where it’s resting on his chest. Ilya doesn’t move except to brush his thumb against his.

What is he supposed to do with this feeling, Shane wonders. There can’t be enough space inside him to keep it all.

“I have to go soon. They’re going to kick me out.” He smooths the blanket down over Ilya’s chest, just for something to do. “I’ll see you tomorrow, though?”

“Yes.” Ilya’s throat works as he swallows. “Tomorrow.”

“Okay. Get some rest. Drink your Gatorade.” He brushes his knuckles against Ilya’s cheek, then leans down to kiss him. Tries not to let any of the feeling pressing against his lungs spill out of his mouth.

“Goodnight, Ilya.”

“Night, Shane.” He’s already all but asleep.

Shane waits until he’s in his car to rest his forehead against the steering wheel and let himself crack open anyway.

Chapter End Notes

Me whenever I was stuck on this fic: okay what's the most sincere and kind of heartbreaking thing Shane could do in this moment.

Up next: Svetlana returns

Chapter 7

Chapter Notes

[Svetlana voice] Surprise!

In the end, Shane doesn’t need to message Svetlana at all. When he reaches Ilya’s house, the sleekest car he’s ever seen is already waiting in the driveway. Which is saying something, since Ilya owns an absurd number of very sleek cars.

He checks his phone and sees he has about a hundred missed texts from Hayden and J.J. Theriault must have announced him as a healthy scratch from the game tonight. My parents are fine, he sends to both of them in answer to their questions. I can’t talk about it right now. Or ever, but he’ll think of something to tell them later.

He checks his reflection in the rearview and knocks on the door, abruptly and painfully aware of how absurd and frankly terrifying this whole situation is. Barely ten seconds later, a woman in a Boston Raiders t-shirt with a mane of curly hair throws open the door. She’s tall enough to look him easily in the eye and has both the looks and demeanor of a professional model, as well as the same uncannily perceptive gaze Shane has seen a thousand times on Ilya.

“Svetlana Vetrova?” Shane manages.

“Yes.”

“Uh, I’m Shane—”

Her frown cracks into a smirk, just for an instant. “I know who you are, Shane Hollander. You are only the most recognizable player in the MLH.”

“Right, yeah. That’s me, I guess. Can I come in?”

“That depends why Shane Hollander is standing on the doorstep of his biggest rival’s house when he should be playing a game in Montreal.” The crease between her eyebrows looks more like worry than annoyance, but she’s squared off in the narrow entry of the doorway, blocking his way. “Where is Ilya? And why is he not answering my calls?”

“He doesn’t have his phone,” Shane says. His palms are sweating. “He’s—he asked me to message you. I was going to as soon as I got here.”

This only makes Svetlana’s frown deepen, but she steps back to let him in and waves him towards the living room. His bag is still sitting on the sofa, exactly where he left it that morning. He sinks down next to it.

“I haven’t heard from him in three days,” she says, perching on the opposite end. “He does this sometimes, so at first I am not worried about it. Then he does not meet me at the airport or pick up when I call him, and now I am very worried. You talked to him?”

“Yes, I just saw him.” Shane swallows and tries to steady himself. “And—first of all, you should know that he’s safe. He’s at Boston Medical, and he’s going to be okay.”

He thinks, by the way Svetlana’s spine straightens and her face goes rigid, that she already knows what he’s going to say. The outlines of it, anyway. He wonders if she knew Ilya’s mother. If they were already friends then, or if he told her later.

“He, um, he…” The words won’t come. Shane gestures in the direction of the bathroom where he found the empty pill bottle, but that means nothing to Svetlana. “He called me two nights ago. I thought he was drunk, like really drunk, but then he stopped answering, and…”

His vision is getting blurry, but he sees her face change, the realization traveling through her whole body.

“I just had this—this feeling. I wasn’t here, I was in Montreal, but I called the ambulance. I thought it was just an accident. I didn’t know—Oh god. Fuck.”

Shane feels dizzy again, the same overwhelming feeling he felt as he left the hospital welling up in his chest.

For the rest of his life, he would have grieved Ilya and everything that Ilya never got to be. And he wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone.

This is no one-off, no no-strings-attached convenient arrangement. Sometime in the past five years, he’s fallen in love with Ilya Rozanov—not “I have feelings for you” love, not “let’s be more than hookups” love, but call-me-whenever, put-me-down-as-your-emergency-contact love. The kind of love that changes you permanently.

He’s falling apart again, and he’s had two days to process where Svetlana has only had minutes.

“I’m sorry,” he manages. “It’s just been a really long day. I know…I know you’ve known him longer than I have.”

When he looks up, Svetlana looks devastated. “You are Jane.”

Slowly, he nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

She leans forward, holding up her head with both hands. Shane can’t read her face, can’t tell if she’s hurt, angry, anything. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling, either, outside of this pulverizing, misplaced grief. He keeps imagining Ilya on his own bathroom floor. Gone.

“This whole time. I did not know.”

Shane looks up and tries to focus on Svetlana. “You mean, about me?”

“No. I mean, yes, that too.” She looks up too, seeming just as lost as he is. “I have known Ilya a long time. I know he struggles sometimes, I have been there to see it. I think I have been afraid this would happen. But…I did not know things were so bad now. Not at all.”

Shane shakes his head. “Me neither. He seemed fine when I saw him. Normal. I mean, Boston crushed Toronto last week.”

Svetlana smiles softly. “Yes, they did. He played very well.” She rubs at her arms. “But you saw him today? He will be alright?”

“Yeah. I mean, physically, you know, he’s fine.”

“And the rest?”

“He’s…” Shane looks away, searching for the words. “I don’t know, he’s a lot of things right now. It was—I guess it was just good to see him talking, you know?”

She nods, her eyes softening. “Yes, that is good. I am glad he had you. That you came to see him.”

“Yeah. Me too. He, um, he actually asked me. To come.”

“He asked you?” Svetlana’s mouth falls open, which would offend him if he wasn’t floored as well.

It only occurs to him then that Svetlana might be hurt by him telling her this. By the fact that Ilya didn’t ask her instead. He hadn’t it meant it like that, he just knew that it was important. That it said something about—whatever Ilya was feeling right now.

“Yeah, I mean. Maybe he just thought I wouldn’t actually be able to come, since I had a game. He basically said as much.”

“Maybe. But…he still asked you. And you came.” The carefully unreadable expression is back in its place.

“Yeah.” He ducks his head, rubbing at his eye. “Of course.” There’s no world where he wouldn’t show up when Ilya asked him to. That’s what he wants to tell Svetlana, who’s known Ilya since he was just a kid.

“So. What happens now?” she asks.

“He’ll be at the hospital for another day, maybe tomorrow night. They’re still deciding what comes after that, I guess.”

Svetlana frowns. “And his coaches?”

“I don’t think they’re telling him much. Waiting to hear from the doctors, maybe. And the players' association.” He pauses. “Could—do you think this could really end his career?”

“If it got out? Yes, certainly.” Svetlana says darkly. “But that would be an extremely bad look for Boston. They could drop him more quietly, but if they are smart, they will treat this like any other major injury or illness. Give him time, treat…treat the recovery seriously. He is still the league’s best player. No offense.”

“Do you think that’s what they’ll do?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. It will come down to money—do they think he will make it for them, or lose it, in the end? I know the answer. I know who he is. Do they?”

Shane’s stomach churns. It’s good news, he thinks. Probably. But it feels wrong and—cold.

Hockey is all business. Shane has known that since he was a teenager, has accepted it, and it’s never stopped him from loving the game itself. Now, for an instant, that love falters in the face of something stronger.

He shakes himself, trying to pull himself out of his head. “I’m going back tomorrow morning, when visiting hours start. We can drive together, if you want. I know he’ll want to see you.”

“I hope so,” Svetlana says. She smiles in a way that isn’t really a smile. “I should sleep. You as well. We have both had long days.”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“It was good to finally meet you, Jane.”

“You too.”

Shane sits on the couch for a long time after she leaves him for the guest bedroom, staring across the room at nothing. He hopes that Ilya sleeps better than he does.

*

Svetlana leaves Shane Hollander in her best friend’s living room and goes straight to the stand next to the bed in the guest room. She opens the drawer that usually holds the few things she leaves for the times she stays over at Ilya’s. This time, instead of her lotion and hair ties, she finds a square of paper labeled with her name in what can only be Ilya’s rough Cyrillic handwriting.

For a moment the world comes to a halt until her body catches up, her heart thundering in her chest. She has to remember how to breathe again. She snatches it up and unfolds the single sheet of paper.

Sveta,

You’ve been the best thing in my life. I know if you’re reading this you will be angry with me. You’re right to be angry. You deserved better. I’m sorry.

I think you will want to know why, and I have no good answer for you. It all just stopped meaning anything, and I can’t find my way back to how it was before. There was nothing more you could have done. You already did so much for me. Anything good still left in me, it is because of you.

I hope you will take that job in New York and leave all of this behind you. You will get the job, I know, because any idiot can see that you are the smartest person in any room you enter, and you work so hard. Take the Lamborghini back when you go. Take anything you want. I know it’s nothing compared to what you deserve.

Summers with you are the best memories I have. If you think of me, think of those summers.

I love you.

Ilyusha

Svetlana closes her eyes, trying to remind her body how to breathe normally. She knows Ilya is safe right now, perfectly alive. She knows she will see him in a few more hours. But all she can see is a body. A hole in the world where her best friend should be. An empty apartment, a text thread gone silent, a jersey with no one to wear it.

She doesn’t want to be angry with him. She knows he didn’t do any of this to hurt her, knows that the thought probably scares him as badly as it does her. She’s angry anyway, so angry she still can’t breathe properly. But mostly, she’s wounded. There is an Ilya-shaped piece of her torn out and bleeding freely.

He of all people should know—No. She knows that isn’t fair.

She wants him here, wants to be able to hug him and feel the thump of his heartbeat for herself. Without her shoes, the differences in their heights would be noticeable. She remembers the summer he’d gotten taller than her, how obnoxious he’d been about it. That was the summer they’d started sneaking off to clubs, pretending to be older than they were and believing they were getting away with it when the bouncers let them in. Trading sips of drinks they didn’t yet know the names of and pretending to like them. She feels as out of her depth now as she did then, just without any of the thrill.

He’d been hurting then, obviously so, and not yet so practiced at hiding it. Slinking off when things got to be too much, disappearing for a few hours or days, cat-like, trying to curl up somewhere dark and small where no one could see him. Somewhere along the way she’d lost the ability to spot it, or he’d gotten better at pretending. Maybe both at once.

She crumples up the letter in her fist and gets in bed. She’s jet lagged and travel tired and her best friend almost died without her knowing it. What else is there left to do?

Chapter End Notes

A little shorter this time but the next one is fairly long. Among other things, we hear from the Raiders organization!

Chapter 8

Chapter Summary

Some conversations.

Chapter Notes

Recommended listening from the sad Ilya playlist: Come Here Get Away from Me by Ezra Furman, Ache with Me by Against Me!

Ilya isn’t awake yet when visiting hours start, so he starts his day with a shitty hospital breakfast, a paper cup of pills that will make him nauseated before they make him sane, and the news that Shane and Svetlana are already in the waiting room to see him.

His stomach churns, and not only because of the food and the pills. He can’t have a repeat of yesterday. Not if he ever wants to play hockey again, or keep living on this continent, or have Shane look at him with anything more than just concern that he’s about to walk into traffic. He has to look and sound like the Boston Raiders’ Ilya Rozanov: a desirable, competent hockey player, still a sound investment, even if he might be a bit of a loose cannon. Not the Ilya Rozanov who falls to pieces every time every time Shane Hollander looks at him. Not the Ilya Rozanov who just wants it all to stop.

Pulling himself together sounded like an impossible task three days ago. Somehow he found a way to go and make it about ten thousand times more difficult.

Everything is hard right now. Eating. Talking. Sleeping. Thinking. It doesn’t make a difference what he does. It’s all hard anyway. He knows he doesn’t have a hope of convincing anyone of anything right now, and whatever happens to him because of that is just going to happen. Not that that makes the dizzying, swirling dread in the pit of his stomach go away.

He made his choices, though, so now he has to find a way to live with them. If there’s one useful thing his father managed to ingrain in him, it’s how to take responsibility. So even though he’s not, he tells the nurse he’s ready for visitors.

He has to dig his fingers into the mattress to keep his eyes from watering again. Now that they’ve started, the tears keep happening, over and over again. Either he’s empty, run dry, or he’s a broken faucet, the handle snapped off while water floods the whole house. He hopes it’s another side effect of the new medication. He can’t spend the rest of his life, however long that is, bursting into tears over every little thing.

He’s not ready to see Shane again. He’s definitely not ready to see Sveta. There are no words that can say how sorry he is that this is what she had to come back to. But they’re here, waiting for him, so he has to hold himself together somehow.

*

Svetlana goes to see Ilya first, leaving Shane in the waiting room with his hat pulled low over his face, holding a book she doesn’t think he’s absorbing a word of. When she gets to Ilya’s room he’s sitting up, pale as a ghost, wound so tightly she can see the stiffness in his shoulders across the room.

She throws her arms around his neck before he can say a word and holds him for a long time without speaking, her breathing ragged in the silence.

Eventually she can’t hold it back any longer. She drops her forehead to his shoulder and lets out a sob that feels like it cracks her in two. Then she sits up and takes his face in both her hands.

“Never again. Don’t ever do that again, Ilyusha, do you hear me? You call me, you wake me up, you get on a plane if you have to, do you understand? Anything but this.”

He opens his mouth—to apologize, to argue—but nothing comes out. He looks at her, his eyes saying everything he can’t. He looks so unlike his usual self. He looks ten years younger, thirteen instead of twenty-three.

She waits until it’s clear he’s not going to speak, then runs her hands down the sides of his face and neck to his arms.

“You’ve eaten?”

He nods. She thinks he’s telling the truth, even if he swallows like he can still feel every bite in the back of his throat.

She takes both of his hands and looks up at his face, trying to search for some sign of how they got here. She’s known him for twenty years. Their whole remembered lives. She has seen him drunk, concussed, miserable with the flu; she has talked him down from bad trips and even worse moods; she has picked him up off of bathroom floors. And he has held her hair back when she was hungover and sat with her through a pregnancy scare when she was seventeen and driven two hours in a New England snowstorm to bring her the ice cream she liked best when yet another industry job rejected her because of her accent or her skin or her gender. They’ve seen the best and the worst of each other, but Svetlana has never had to hold his hand in a hospital bed before. He’s never scared her like this. This badly.

And she hadn’t even known it was coming. She wasn’t even there.

“Sveta,” he finally chokes out.

She squeezes his hand tightly, tight enough to hurt if he wasn’t so used to pain. “I love you. You know this, yes?”

“I know. I love you too.”

“I will tell you more often, so you don’t forget.”

“You don’t need to.” He closes his eyes. “I know it.”

“I will tell you anyway.”

He looks away. Shakes his head.

“Ilyusha.”

“I can’t—” He stops, swallows again. “I’m sorry, Sveta. I am so sorry. I tried, I really did. But I fucked it up. I fucked everything up.”

“No, you did not. A little, maybe. But you will get through this. You have me. You have Jane, too.”

He shakes his head hard, looking at her now with wide eyes.

Svetlana has a memory of the two of them from shortly after Irina’s death, when she was watching him stumble into his teenage years under the weight of a grief she could see but not understand or hold for him. When hockey was the one place he came fully alive again. He’d been a natural leader even then, charismatic and infectiously ambitious, but there was a learning curve to every new role, especially a new captaincy.

He’d struggled to bring them together to play as a team, not a bunch of individuals fighting for the spotlight. An impossible job made harder still by the fact that he was younger than most of them, better than any of them, and they all knew it.

They’d played badly the start of that season, and she’d watched him grow more and more frustrated. She’d tried to help, pointing out strategies and points of weakness that only someone on the sidelines could see clearly. Thought it was making a difference, until one night he’d snuck out to meet her after a game with a swollen eye that hadn’t come from a hit on the ice.

Grigori never left marks on his son’s face again after that night. Not that Svetlana saw, anyway. Maybe not anywhere—there was no need when his words could wound Ilya more deeply than any blow. But the damage had been done. Not to Ilya’s face, which healed quickly enough, but in the way every mistake rattled him for the rest of the season.

That night, she’d pretended not to know the source of his injury. For his part, Ilya hadn’t said anything about it, just grumbled about losing to a worse team as they’d made their way to find whatever booze or cigarettes they could lay their hands on first. It was only later, when the bruise had started to bloom and his eyes were bright with alcohol, that he’d said, “I need to fix it. I will fix it.” He’d said it multiple times with increasing desperation.

“Fix what?” she’d asked, no longer fully sober herself.

“The team,” he’d said. “All of it.”

“All of it?” she’d scoffed. “That’s your coach’s problem, not yours. Focus on your own sad backhand first.”

Even then, Ilya was always taking on responsibility in a way Svetlana knew she never wanted to. Always shouldering burdens that weren’t his. Why couldn’t he just set them down, she wondered. Walk away. Be free of them.

“No.” He’d sounded a bit wild, she remembered. “I have to fix it. If I fix it there’s still a chance.”

“A chance at what?” Yes, she’d definitely been drunk by then.

He’d gestured at her with his cigarette. “To get out.”

They didn’t really talk about it. Leaving Russia. But of course she was already planning her own exit. School, citizenship.

Svetlana had learned real hatred for Grigori that night, watching Ilya probe his blackened eye in the mirror and grimace. Seeing him afraid. She has not seen that same fear on his face again until now. And now she is not sure who to hate for causing it.

“Ilyusha…”

She trails off because she doesn’t know what she can possibly say. Are you okay is laughable. I’m sorry feels useless, and she doesn’t know what she would be apologizing for. Their whole fucked-up lives, maybe. Two words don’t seem enough to contain that.

“What can I do?”

He waves her off. “Nothing. You’re already here.”

“Yes, and I will always be here.” She threads her fingers between his and squeezes hard. Maybe to make up for the fact that she wasn’t actually here when it mattered. “I will be here. But you can ask me for more than that.”

She wants him to ask. She wants him to tell her how to fix this. “Just—just tell me you won’t do this again.”

He’s pulling away, not looking at her. “Sveta, no, you don’t have to—” He shakes his head. “You’ve already done enough for me.”

She gives him a look to tell him what she thinks of this. “Because we’re friends. You know this. You know me. We are not keeping score.”

“I ruined your vacation.” He sounds more upset about this than anything he’s said so far, and it makes her want to throttle him, then bring him back to life to do it again.

“Don’t be stupid, Ilyusha. You think that’s what I care about right now?”

“But I did ruin it.” He stares back at her, stubborn. “I knew how much you needed a break. You deserved one.”

“Yes, from work. Not from you.” Dread seeps through her, heavy and cold. “Tell me you didn’t—tell me you didn’t wait for me to leave. To do this.”

“No.” The horror is plain and immediate on his face. “No, I wouldn’t. I would never.”

“Don’t you dare lie to me, Ilyusha. Not about this.” She knows him, knows the look on his face is genuine. But the thought is too awful to let go.

“It’s the truth, Sveta, I swear. I wouldn’t do that to you. Ever.”

“Okay.” She realizes she’s gripping his arm tightly enough to hurt and makes herself let go. “Okay. Fuck.” She swipes at the tears in the corners of her eyes.

“Fuck,” he agrees. “Fuck, Sveta, I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing and come here.”

She pulls him in by the shoulders and he wraps around her like a vine. His hair is getting too long in the back.

She presses her face against his shoulder. “I’m still taking your stupid car. I’m taking all of your fucking cars.”

She feels the moment it sinks in, the tightening in his body.

“You read it.”

“Yes, I read the note. The one you left me with my name on it.”

He leans away from her slowly, trying to look her in the eyes. She turns her head away because it’s suddenly too much to look at him straight on. The tears are welling up again.

“You’re angry with me.”

She laughs, even though it’s the furthest thing from funny. “Of course I’m angry at you. You almost died, Ilyusha! I am—I’m everything at you.”

She sees his fingers clench a fistful of sheets from the corner of her eye. He looks over at the room’s single window, and in that moment he is unreadable to her, his face so suddenly blank it makes her stomach sink.

“Will you still take the job in New York?”

The abruptness of the question stops her cold for a moment.

“I don’t know,” she says eventually. “I have to get it first.”

“You will get it. Will you take it?”

She throws up her hands. “Why are you asking me this right now?”

“Because you have to take it.” The intensity in Ilya’s eyes is the same she’d seen a decade ago in Moscow, burning against his pale face. “I can’t be the reason you don’t, Sveta. I can’t.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before now,” she snaps, regretting it immediately. She sees his expression shutter.

“Ilyusha, listen.” She reaches out to him, tugging his arm closer until he looks at her. “I can’t think about that yet. We can talk about New York when I actually have the job, alright?”

He blinks hard, looking away, and finally nods. “Fine.”

“What about you? What are they telling you?”

“Nothing. Nothing useful. Always ‘we’ll see, we’ll see.’” He shakes his head. “They are going to drop me.”

“Mm, no, I don’t think so. You are too good a player.”

“As if that matters when I’m locked up in a hospital for the rest of the season.”

“If that happens, they might trade you,” Svetlana concedes. “But they still might not. And either way, you will have a team to play on, I am certain of it.” She pokes him in the shoulder. “Maybe New York, hm? I hear they could use some young blood on that ancient roster.”

He doesn’t crack a smile or even so much as acknowledge her dig at Scott Hunter, usually an easy topic for distraction. It wasn’t her best effort, but still, she expected some kind of reaction. She doesn’t know what to do with this—this blankness.

“What, you don’t believe me?”

“No, I believe you,” he says tonelessly.

“Then what?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What? What doesn’t matter?”

He shakes his head again. “No, I can’t—it’s like you said, there’s no point to talk about it now. The players’ association, LeClaire…they will decide whatever they decide.”

“Ilyusha.”

“Sveta.”

“Alright,” she huffs. “Then we’ll talk when they tell you more. In the meantime, your Jane is probably going crazy in the waiting room.”

Ilya rolls his eyes, so familiar and relieving that it makes Svetlana let out the breath that has been trapped in her lungs since last night.

“He is not my anything.”

“Oh? You should probably tell him that. Considering he is head over heels for you.”

Ilya glares at her. “He isn’t.”

She raises her eyebrows at him.

“It’s not—” Ilya’s fists clench again. “I called him. By accident. We’re not…anything.”

“Oh, I see.” She rolls her eyes back, ignoring the fact that Ilya called Shane by sheer muscle memory both for his sake and her own. “You would drive to another country for someone who didn’t mean anything to you?”

“It’s not like you are thinking. That’s just the way he is.”

“I don’t think so. And I’m usually right, as you know.”

He looks away again. “Not about this.”

“Fine, then. Your very platonic, disinterested rival is still climbing the walls in the waiting room for reasons completely unrelated to you. Should I go get him?”

The tension in Ilya’s shoulders is visible as he shrugs.

“What is it? Do you not want me to?”

“No, it’s fine,” he says quickly. He glances back at her. “Did you already know? Before last night?”

“Know what?”

“About Jane.” He sighs. “About him.”

She almost laughs. “I knew Jane was a man and a bad fake name, yes. I did not know ‘Jane’ was Shane fucking Hollander from the Montreal Metros.”

“Yes, well, that is the whole fucking problem,” Ilya grumbles, sounding almost himself again. He shakes his head. “Why were you so sure that it was fake?”

“Because I know you, and like you said, I am very smart.”

He huffs, almost but not quite a laugh.

Svetlana studies him, the exhaustion in his eyes, the unhappy slant to his mouth, the gray cast to his skin. He looks like a complete mess. But a living, breathing mess. Her mess. But not only hers, maybe.

She will try to convince herself, later, that maybe that is for the best. That maybe Shane Hollander can be what Ilya needs, what she cannot be on her own. Right now, though, she doesn’t want to let go.

Ilya looks at her, a frown forming between his eyes. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” she says. “I’ll get Jane.”

*

Shane doesn’t think anyone in the waiting room has recognized him, but it’s hard to tell. For maybe the first time, he’s glad Ilya doesn’t live in Canada. Even in a city as rabid about hockey as Boston, Shane’s just not as public a figure in the U.S.

Everyone around him seems fully absorbed in their own personal crises, which makes Shane feel like a bit of an asshole for worrying about this. Being recognized here would definitely raise questions, but it’s hardly the most important thing right now. As far as he knows, the fact that Ilya is here isn’t public knowledge. The Raiders still haven’t said why he’s not playing. So there’s no reason for Shane to panic.

He’s still panicking, staring at the pages of his book without absorbing a single word. He has to remind himself to turn pages just to look like he’s still reading. It was stupid to bring a book about hockey.

His anxiety only grows as the minutes pass, spreading beyond fears of being recognized to worry about Ilya. Flashes of his voice over the phone keep replaying in Shane’s head against his will, mixed in with memories of Ilya’s face from yesterday. He doesn’t know what to expect today. Will Ilya even want to see him? Will he regret telling Shane everything he had about his family?

By the time Svetlana comes to get him, he’s tying himself knots, which is the last thing Ilya needs to deal with right now. Get it together, Shane tells himself. Just be there.

Ilya looks even more tired than the day before, somehow. He’s as pale as the starched hospital sheets and looks more exhausted than he ever did after a tough game.

Shane hangs back at first, torn between deferring to Svetlana as Ilya’s oldest friend and planting himself at Ilya’s side for the foreseeable future. A significant part of him is glad that he’s not the only one here today, even if he wants, selfishly, to be surgically glued to Ilya’s hip. He’s glad that Ilya has Svetlana to speak to in Russian, that he doesn’t have to divulge his whole family’s history for her to know some of what he’s feeling. There should be dozens of people desperate to check in on Ilya right now, and Shane wonders if the fact that it’s only the two of them contributed to landing Ilya here in the first place.

He knows Ilya spends time with his teammates outside of games, but Shane has only heard him mention one or two by name with any frequency, and never with any indication that they’re even as close as Shane is with Hayden. Who’s Shane’s best friend, who loves him, but who knows almost nothing about his life off the ice. Because Shane is keeping it from him.

Shane never suspected that Ilya might be keeping even more from his own teammates. More than just…the thing they have.

“Shane.” Svetlana is waving him over, shaking him out of his tangled thoughts. He moves to Ilya’s other side.

“Hey.” Shane interlaces his fingers with Ilya’s, conscious only after the fact that they’ve never really done this. Hold hands. “How are you?”

“Tired. Does not matter how much I sleep, I am still tired.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You apologize a lot. Very Canadian.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“No, Hollander.” Ilya bumps his shoulder against Shane’s. “You are supposed to say ‘sorry’ so I can make fun of you some more.”

“Sorry.”

“There you go.”

“Have you eaten yet?” Shane asks when Ilya doesn’t rise to the opportunity to tease him.

Instead, Ilya’s eyes dart over to Svetlana. “Twelve hours, and you are already sounding like each other. Yes. Terrible hospital breakfast so doctors can give me terrible pills that make me dizzy.”

“Is that getting any better?”

“No. Not really.”

“Do you want to try to sleep now?”

“No,” Ilya says, more decisively. “I have to talk to player assistance program at ten. Then meeting with, how do you say…doctor that gives pills for brain, different from psychologist. Then more meetings, with therapist and regular doctor. Probably also call with coaches.”

Svetlana raises her eyebrows. “That is a lot.”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “More of this in my future. I know, my own fault.”

“Not what I was going to say,” she says softly.

“Я знаю.”

Shane feels, again, like he might be intruding. Svetlana squeezes Ilya’s shoulder and he turns towards her instinctively, leaning into the touch. It’s obvious how much they trust each other. How much Svetlana knows about Ilya that Shane will probably never even have the chance to ask about.

He read something once about mirror neurons, cells in the brain that activated whether you did something yourself or saw someone else do it. He’d thought about it then, like he thought about nearly everything, in terms of hockey. Watching. Learning by example. He’d spent hours studying a goal of Ilya’s, actually, replaying the shot over and over again until he knew just how it would feel in his body before trying it on the ice himself.

Shane wonders now if you can make other kinds of mirror neurons. If he can learn how to be there for Ilya just by watching Svetlana. He hopes so. He hopes he’s allowed to. For the first time, he finds himself wondering what comes next. After Ilya is released and Shane goes back to Montreal. Will things be different? Will it be awkward between them? Or will they just go back to the way things were?

Or will Ilya not want to see him anymore? Shane hopes that’s not the case. He’ll do what’s best for Ilya. Of course he will. Even if that means keeping his distance. But he hopes, maybe selfishly, that isn’t what Ilya wants.

Svetlana asks more questions in Russian, things Ilya answers with single words or slight motions of his head—discussing all the appointments and meetings that afternoon, Shane figures. Ilya seems at least a fraction more settled today, if worn out, though he keeps a tight grip on Shane’s hand. Not that Shane minds. He feels calmer now, too, seeing Ilya sitting up and talking, feeling his warmth beside him.

“So.” Svetlana looks over at Shane. “The doctors will be here soon. Jane and I…we will come back and see you after?”

“Okay.” He turns to look at Shane, squeezing his hand almost imperceptibly. “See you later?”

Shane squeezes back. “Yeah. Good luck today.” It doesn’t feel like quite the right thing to say, but he hopes it’s close enough.

Ilya’s mouth twitches—not quite a smile, not quite a grimace either. “Hm, thank you. I will probably need it.”

“You will be fine,” Svetlana says. She looks over at Shane. “And we will be back.”

Ilya nods.

Shane makes himself let go of Ilya’s hand and resists the urge to fuss over him. Aside from the fact that Svetlana is there, Ilya would almost certainly hate it. God, this whole thing might actually be turning Shane into his mother. The urge to intervene, to try to fix everything, is almost unreal.

He shoves his hands into his pockets just for something to do with them. “See you this afternoon.”

“Goodbye, Hollander.”

Shane looks back at him one more time just long enough to meet his eyes, then follows Svetlana out into the hallway.

They walk together back to the waiting room and out into the main part of the hospital. Svetlana is quiet, lost in thought maybe, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

“He seems a little better,” Shane offers. “Less…I don’t know.” Scared, he thinks, but he doesn’t want to say it out loud, even to Ilya’s best friend.

“That’s good.” She nods, then sighs. “It is so hard to tell with him.”

Shane almost wants to laugh. “Yeah.” He’s a little relieved that it’s not just him.

“He was fine a week ago. I thought.”

Shane runs his hand over his face. “He seemed fine to me, too. Like I said—normal.” He thinks of the way his own mental state generally hovers somewhere north of tense, even on reasonably good days. How even his own parents miss, sometimes, the times he's really freaking out. He’s had a lot of practice at hiding it. Even if it feels like everyone can tell anyway, most of the time.

“Does that—” He swallows. “Do you think he's felt this way for a long time?”

“I don’t know. I think maybe, yes.” She sighs. “I would kill for a cigarette. You don’t have a cigarette, do you, Shane Hollander?”

“No, sorry. I don’t smoke.”

“No, I don’t either. But if you wanted to make an exception, this seems like as good a time as any.”

They’ve left the hospital and are wandering through the small park on the hospital campus. A part of Shane’s mind is focused on scanning everyone they pass for a sign that they recognize him, but it’s a smaller part than before. Everyone is as focused on their own progress through the day as they are.

“This…” Shane hesitates, afraid to hear the answer. “This hasn’t happened before, has it?”

“This? No. Nothing like this. I have been worried before. He gets…low, sometimes. Back home, especially. This summer—I don’t know what he has told you, and it would not be my place, but…”

She chews her lower lip. “It was hard, at times. I do not like seeing him like that. But then he would be himself again, and I would think, no, he will be alright. Once he leaves Moscow, things will be good again. And now? Here?” She gestures out at the city. “He is having the best season of his career. Taking more penalties than he should, yes, but he is playing like he will win the Cup again. I cannot make sense of it.”

She takes a long, shaky breath. “I don’t know. Maybe it is not a thing that ever makes sense.”

Shane blinks, surprised to discover his eyes are wet. Again. “He, um. He told me some things yesterday. About his mom?”

Svetlana turns to look at him with wide eyes. “He told you?”

Somehow she manages to emphasize all the words at once. He told you? He told you? He told you?

Shane nods.

“Oh, Jane.”

“He found her?” The words will barely come out. The thought of Ilya going through something like that so young is just more terrible than Shane can really imagine.

She nods.

“Jesus.”

“Mm. Yes. It was…well, it was awful. There are not words for it, I don’t think.”

“Did you know him back then?”

“Yes. We grew up together, before I moved here for school.” She smiles quickly. “I knew him before he learned to skate. Our fathers, you know—old friends. I did not know Irina, though. Not well. Only that he adored her.”

Shane nods, not trusting himself to speak.

“He thinks the world of you,” Svetlana says suddenly. “And he trusts you very much.”

“He said that?”

“Oh, no.” The corner of her mouth quirks up just for a moment. “He thinks he’s very good at keeping secrets. That I did not know about ‘Jane.’ But that he told you these things, that is enough for me to know.”

“Oh.” Shane blinks back the fresh threat of tears, processing this. He’d known that Ilya was entrusting him with something important in telling him about his family. That much was obvious. But he hadn’t considered what it meant that Ilya had told him. That maybe it wasn’t only because Shane was the most convenient person at hand. He wants to be worthy of that trust, if he can.

Svetlana pushes her hair back from her face and wipes her eyes. “I have not eaten all day. Should we go back to the cafeteria?”

“You go.” Shane doesn’t think he could feel less hungry than he does right now. “I’m going to walk a bit, I think. Meet you back here?”

“Alright. See you later, Jane.”

“You can just call me Shane, you know.”

“I don’t know. I think Jane suits you.” She smirks, walking backwards for a moment as she heads back towards the building. The expression reminds Shane so strongly of Ilya that he has to look away. When he glances back, she’s already gone.

Shane scans the mostly-empty lawn around him. He really needs to call his mom. He wonders what his dad said to her that she hasn’t called him already, impatient to hear what could make him miss a game.

Unsurprisingly, she picks up on the second ring.

“Shane?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Shane, what on earth is going on? Your dad won’t tell me anything. He just said you ‘needed some time.’”

“I know. I know, Mom, I’m sorry. I just—” He really should have planned what he was going to say in advance. He can’t even make this whole situation make sense to himself, so how can he explain it to her?

“Are you okay? Are you safe?”

“Yes—what? Yes, I’m completely fine.” He’d thought that his dad would have made that clear, at least.

“Where are you? You’re not with the team, are you at home?”

“No, I’m not in Montreal. I—I’m in the States, actually.”

“What? Why?”

“I….”

It hadn’t been easy to tell his dad. And Shane loves his dad. Things are just easy between them in a way they never are with anyone else. But if it came down to it, Shane would say he’s closer to his mom. It’s Yuna who tied his skates when he was too small to do it himself. Yuna who cheered at every game as he progressed through Timbits and Juniors and the whole scouting process. Yuna who helped him navigate contracts and moving and sponsorships when he was drafted to Montreal. She’s been with him every step of the way, and in some ways she knows him better than anyone else.

This will change everything she knows about him, if Shane tells her. But he can’t not tell her. She knows him too well for him to lie.

So he tells her the same things he told his dad, more or less. The hospital. The person he’s there for. The guy he’s there for.

“Oh, Shane.”

She doesn’t sound angry, at least. Shane grips the phone to his ear, listening for…he doesn’t know what exactly. Irritation. Disappointment. Just plain confusion, maybe. He doesn’t think his mom is homophobic or anything, but, well—this is a problem. He knows it’s a problem. For his career. His future. The plan they built together.

“I know, Mom. I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, honey, I just…I’m surprised, that’s all. So, what, you’re in a relationship with this guy?”

“No. No, I mean—” Oh fuck, how the fuck is he going to explain this to his mom? “We aren’t like, together, or anything. It’s just, um. Casual.”

“You drove to another country for him,” Yuna says, like this is something that Shane hasn’t realized.

“I mean, yeah.” Shane rubs his hand over his face. “I know. I just…I just wanted to make sure someone was there for him.”

“What about his family? Are they there too? Do they know about you?”

“No, they’re not—it’s complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

“Just complicated. They’re not close. To here.”

“Neither are you,” Yuna points out. “So, you care about him.”

“Yeah, I do, but…that doesn’t mean we’re in a relationship. Or whatever.”

“Does he know that? I mean, who is this guy?”

“I can’t tell you that, Mom. I told you. It’s not—it could be dangerous for him. For both of us.”

“Oh.” The tone of her voice shifts sharply. “This is another player, then?”

Fuck, this is getting way too close. “No, I can’t tell you that either.”

She sighs. “As long as you’re not in one of those religious states where they think it’s a sin to be gay. Don’t tell me that’s why his family isn’t there.”

“No! No, Mom, it’s nothing like that.” Well, it may be something like that, from what Ilya had said. But Shane doesn’t need his mom worried he’s about to be hatecrimed. Rabid Boston fans aside.

“Okay, well, good.” She shifts the phone against her ear, the rustle crackling through the speakers. “I guess—your Dad and I, I guess we thought you might be gay.”

Shane nearly drops his phone. He’s not actually gay, he doesn’t think. Is he? He likes men. Okay. He likes Ilya a lot, apparently. But he likes women too. He’s been with women before. His mom even knows that. Probably.

Was it just that visible on him? Had his mom looked at him with his high school girlfriend and known something was off even then? Could other people tell too?

“Oh,” he finally manages. “You did?”

“We just wondered. I like to think we know you pretty well, though.”

This is all too much to think about right now. Shane realizes he’s stopped walking and has been standing in the middle of the sidewalk for who knows how long, having a fucking crisis.

He swallows. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t mean for it to be like this.”

“Oh, no, Shane. You don’t need to be sorry.”

“I lied to you.” He means about the game he missed, specifically, but maybe about everything else too.

“Oh honey, it’s okay.” His mom’s voice is gentle, even over the phone. “Did…did I make you feel like you couldn’t tell me?”

“I couldn’t tell anyone.” He scrubs at his face; he doesn’t know when he started crying. He can barely admit the truth to himself. How could he tell his parents, who shaped their lives around him? That he was risking all of it, everything they’d done for him?

“You…I need you to know that you can tell us. Your dad and I, you can tell us anything. It won’t change anything. Listen to me. It doesn’t change the fact that I love you.”

Shane nods as if his mom can see him. “I love you too.”

Yuna lets out a breath, and Shane thinks she might be crying too. “I’m so proud of you. I’m proud of everything you do, but…I hope this guy knows how lucky he is to have you.”

“I didn’t come here to do the right thing or…whatever. I just had to be here.”

“I know, baby. I still—well. I’m still proud of you. And I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” Shane repeats, like saying it will make it true.

“Okay. Tell us when you get home, alright? And if you need anything. If you let me know when you’ll be back I can reschedule that shoot with Reebok.”

Shane has no room in his brain left to think about his calendar, but it’s still a relief to hear Yuna switch into manager mode. It’s a small anchor of normalcy when everything else is shifting around him. He promises to keep her updated and ends the call sure of the fact that whatever else happens, he’s still his parents’ son.

It’s done. He came out to his parents. Sort of—now he just has to figure out what that even means.

That’s a problem for later, though, because right now his focus is on Ilya.

Shane runs his hands through his hair, trying to pull himself back together into some semblance of a person. He needs to calm down. He should update his team, his coaches. He also needs to eat something, probably. He has a bit of time before he meets Svetlana—he should look up some of the things Ilya mentioned so he knows more about what the next steps look like.

Having a plan helps. Like battling through a tough game one shift, one play at a time. He only has to get through it, and the rest will come later.

Shane chokes down a sandwich as plain and dry as the bread it’s on and scrolls through a dozen articles with titles like “SSRIs and their side effects,” “What not to say to someone with depression,” and “Psychiatric inpatient care explained.” A lot of the advice seems to be either painfully obvious or several steps above his pay grade. He’s not sure much of it is actually useful in this situation, except to confirm that he was right to try to get Ilya to drink more water yesterday. At least—if the articles are to be trusted—he probably hasn’t said or done anything actively stupid around Ilya so far. So hopefully he can keep that up.

It’s hard to read anything in Ilya’s expression about how the afternoon went as they enter the room. He’s out of bed now, sitting by the window and looking like he wishes he could be smoking a cigarette. He glances only briefly at either of them.

“You’re back.”

“We’re back.”

Ilya looks back out the window, as if he doesn’t care either way. There’s only one other real chair in the room. Shane leaves it and sits on the edge of the bed, turning so he can look at Ilya.

Svetlana takes the chair beside Ilya. “How did it go?”

Ilya shrugs. “Was fine.” He stares out the window determinedly, too tense to be really convincing. Shane sees him unclench his hand and force his fingers to lie more naturally on the chair’s arm.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks. “The meeting with your coach? Or the doctors?”

“No.” Ilya shakes his head sharply. “I am fucking tired of talking.”

Shane nods. He would be too, he thinks, by this point. Even putting everything else aside. “Okay, we can—”

“They are going to let me play,” Ilya continues as if Shane hadn’t spoken. “Outpatient program first. Then mandatory therapy when I start playing. Then we see. The hospital will release me tonight if I agree to treatment plan.”

Shane meets Svetlana’s eyes for an instant, seeing his own surprise reflected back. It sounds promising. The best they could have hoped for. But Ilya seems upset again, almost as upset as when Shane had walked in the day before.

“That’s good news, isn’t it?” Svetlana asks carefully. “That they are not keeping you longer.”

Shane sees Ilya close his eyes. He shrugs and makes an aborted, slightly helpless gesture with one hand.

“Ilyusha.” Svetlana reaches up to brush Ilya’s disheveled hair back from his face. For a moment, Ilya’s rigid expression slips, and Shane can see how hard he’s fighting to stay impassive.

Shane aches. Aches that he doesn’t know Ilya well enough to guess at what he could thinking right now, what he’s feeling. Aches that he can’t be there for him in the long term, like Svetlana can.

“You’re worried about the outpatient program?” Svetlana guesses.

“No.” Ilya’s mouth tightens at the corners. “It means more talking, but no. It is not that.”

“Did they say something to you? Your coaches?”

“No.” Ilya seems frustrated by the question. He sits up straighter, shifting away from her. “They were fine. Nice about it. Like I was injured in game or something.” He nearly spits the words.

Svetlana frowns. “So what happened?”

“Nothing. Nothing happened.” Ilya’s shoulders slump a little. “Is all good news, like you said.”

“You don’t sound like you think it’s good news.”

Ilya shrugs. “Well, I am depressed,” he says flatly, with a hint of bitchiness that Shane privately adores. “So they tell me.”

Svetlana rolls her eyes. “Okay. You are unbelievable.” She sounds like she doesn’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved that he’s joking right now. Shane would sympathize if he had any emotional capacity left available for it.

The fight seems to be bleeding out of Ilya as quickly as it appeared, leaving the listless, eerie exhaustion in its wake. Eerie because it’s so unlike the Ilya Shane is familiar with. The one who picks fights, flirts incessantly, cracks jokes, and plays hockey like he has lightning running through his veins instead of blood. The one who lights up everything around him like fire. Like the sun.

Shane finds his voice. “Is there something else wrong with the plan?”

“The plan,” Ilya repeats dully. “The plan to make me be ‘okay,’ yes? Three days in hospital, three months of talking, everything is back to normal.”

“It’s too fast, you mean?”

“No, is not about the time. Three months, six months, more, it does not matter. The time does not matter.”

Ilya turns his head away, something flickering across his face that Shane is too slow to read. He tries to fit the pieces of what Ilya has told him together, to make them line up with the Ilya he sees in front of him.

“They—they didn’t tell your family or anything, did they?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Good,” Svetlana says. She stands up and walks over to the window, looking like she’s trying to stop herself from pacing. “So what’s the problem?”

Ilya sighs, shifting and stretching like his skin is suddenly too tight around his body. It’s maybe the most visibly uncomfortable Shane has ever seen him.

“I don’t know. I don’t know, is too much, maybe. I am tired, I cannot think that far ahead.” He shakes his head. “This fucking place.”

Shane slides off the bed and goes over to him, claiming the chair Svetlana has just vacated. “At least you get to go home for now, though, right?”

“Yes,” Ilya sighs. He certainly sounds tired. Defeated, even. Shane puts his hand on his arm, wishing he had more to offer than what little physical closeness he isn’t scared to show even here, where their privacy is secured by law.

“So what happens next?” he asks.

“I agree to treatment plan. They are working out a schedule for me. Appointments and things. How to deliver meds.”

Shane nods. It’s surreal, how for a moment they could be talking about a broken wrist or a torn ligament. Recovery time, therapy sessions, long-term effects. He wonders if it could really work like that, if the brain is just another part of the body when it comes down to it. The thought is somehow both reassuring and disquieting.

“Then paperwork, probably. After that, yes, home.”

Svetlana asks a question in Russian that makes Ilya shake his head and another that he nods in answer to. Then he looks over at Shane.

“Oh. I will need change of clothes.”

“What? They won’t give yours back?”

“They will, but there is, um…” he grimaces and gestures down at himself, searching for the word or just hesitant to say it. Embarrassment is a look Shane isn’t used to seeing on him.

“Vomit,” Svetlana supplies tonelessly.

“Right.” Shane doesn’t want to think very hard about that, or anything about that night. “Yeah, I can pick something up from the house.”

“Thank you.”

“Should I go now?”

“Probably yes. You will not miss anything interesting, don’t worry. Svetlana can stay to help with paperwork.”

Shane guesses that was what they had been discussing in Russian. “Alright. See you in a bit, then?”

“Yes, okay. Thank you, Hollander.”

The last part is said quietly, just for him to hear. Shane nods, feeling a rush of some emotion he can’t entirely put a name to. Suddenly it’s not enough just to be sitting next to Ilya. He leans over the arm of the chair to pull him into a hug.

Ilya startles, clearly not expecting it, but after a moment he raises his arms to pull Shane closer. Even with the chair’s metal arm digging into his ribs, Shane doesn’t let go until Ilya starts to move away.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promises.

“Okay.”

“Okay. See you.”

*

Ilya watches Shane leave. He meets his eyes when Shane glances back exactly once before walking out the hospital room’s open door. He can feel Svetlana drilling a hole into his back the whole time. The ghost of Shane’s hug is still wrapped around his shoulders.

He waits for Svetlana to ask. About him, about Shane, about the plan. It doesn’t matter much what the question is when he doesn’t have answers for any of it.

But she only rests her hand on his shoulder for a moment before coming back to sit beside him. “Show me these forms, then.” Her tone is all business, like she’s closing a deal at work and not…here. Like Ilya’s whole future, whatever there is of it, isn’t contained within them.

He hands her the stack of papers. There’s a preliminary diagnosis in there, doctors’ notes about the things he’s said, the medications he’s on, the night they brought him to the hospital. Ilya doesn’t care. Maybe because it’s Svetlana, who knows him as well as he knows himself, when it comes down to it. Maybe because the part of him that’s supposed to care has long since checked out. He doesn’t know.

He’s read through everything already, enough to have the gist. He thinks he understands most of it. It’s not as if Svetlana knows any more about the American medical system than him, really, but she knows business, and hockey, and she’s another set of eyes that he trusts. And he’s tired. And while the MLH never screwed him over with his rookie contract, they could have so easily when he was eighteen and thought he was invincible in spite of his rudimentary grasp of written English. So it helps to have her opinion.

It doesn’t take them very long to conclude that there’s nothing hidden in the agreements and schedules and insurance forms. If you take out a few key facts, squint at the names of the medications and the diagnosis until they blur, it could be any other recovery plan Ilya’s been on or heard his teammates talk about. Only it’s therapy therapy instead of physical therapy, and his progress is measured by metrics he can’t read on a machine.

And the check ins. There are a lot of them. Any freedom he’d clawed his way to after leaving his father’s house is gone, replaced with a roster of names all followed by medical credentials.

All this to keep the thing he’s wanted since he was a child. All of this to keep playing. He just has to sign it.

Except that signing it means he has to follow through. To actually do it. And that means sticking around, doesn’t it? At least for however many weeks they decide he needs to be supervised.

“It’s a lot,” Svetlana says, reading his mind in the way of someone who’s known him for twenty years of his life.

He shrugs instead of answering. It is, and it isn’t. He doesn’t want any of these people—these strangers—in his house, his brain, his memories, but a part of him thinks maybe he did too good a job when they asked him if he still felt the way he did when he took all those pills. He thinks they would have locked him up for sure, if they knew all the things he cannot say.

He signs the forms quickly, before he can talk himself out of it, or paralyze himself by thinking too hard.

Shane comes back with a change of clothes for him, and everything starts to happen quickly. He’s officially turned over to the care of the MLH, more or less.

He doesn’t even get privacy to change his clothes, as if there’s any way to kill himself in this sterile hospital bathroom. Ilya doesn’t think he’s ever felt more smothered or more alone. Everyone watching and nothing helping—story of his fucking life.

He feels marginally more human back in his own clothes, at least, even if his skin is greasy and it’s not even in a satisfying, post-game sweaty kind of way.

“Ready?” Svetlana asks when he rejoins them.

He’s not, but he needs to get out of this fucking hospital. He nods.

Shane’s eyes flicker between him and the bag with the clothes he was wearing when they brought him to the hospital. “Did you get your necklace back?” he asks.

“Yes,” Ilya says, gesturing to the bag that holds his dirtied clothes. Then he looks at Shane. “Why?”

Shane shrugs, worrying the inside of his cheek. “Just thought you’d want it back.”

He does, of course. He just hadn’t realized that Shane had noticed. That he wore it, that it mattered to him.

“Was my mother’s,” he says quietly. He clears his throat.

Shane nods, like he’d already known or had guessed this. Ilya doesn’t know how to feel about that—that Shane was still thinking about what Ilya had told him. It had been a mistake to tell him, probably. Another one in a long list.

Ilya doesn’t fully remember deciding to call Shane that night. By that point everything was a dizzy, motion-sick blur. But he does remember the moment that Shane picked up, the immediate certainty that everything would be all right after all. His brain was stupid that way. Always sure that anything involving Shane was a good idea. Right until he woke up again.

He makes himself turn away and lets Svetlana steer him towards the door. They wait for Shane to get the car and drive around to pick them up.

Right. Yes. Because they cannot be seen together. Because they especially cannot be seen together here, now, with Ilya checking out of a hospital looking like shit and Shane supposed to be in another country with his team. With both of them supposed to be mortal enemies and all. Of course.

Ilya shifts on his feet and ignores Svetlana’s questioning eyes boring into the side of his head. He wants to scream, he’s so tired. But even that feels like more effort than it’s worth.

Chapter End Notes

Two chapters left! How are we feeling?

Find me in the comments or on tumblr at witcheryen.

Chapter 9

Chapter Notes

Today's soundtrack suggestions are Loud Bark by Mannequin Pussy and Hoka, Hoka - One, One by Laura Jane Grace and the Mississippi Medicals.

Shane glances over at Ilya in the passenger seat a thousand times on the way back to the house, but Ilya doesn’t look back at him. He keeps his eyes trained on the window, silent.

“Are you hungry?” Shane asks when they get close to Ilya’s neighborhood. Ilya had picked at the tray of food back at the hospital, but no more. “We could order something.”

“Not really.”

The flatness in his voice convinces Shane not to press. Nobody says anything else for the rest of the drive.

Ilya moves like he’s sleepwalking as they enter the house, with nothing of the grace and power he has on the ice. He stands in the kitchen like he’s forgotten why he’s there.

Svetlana touches his elbow as she passes. “Come on. Time to talk.”

Ilya drifts after her, and Shane after him. He stares at the back of Ilya’s head as if he could make his thoughts visible through sheer willpower.

Svetlana sits on the couch, folding up her long legs beneath her. Shane joins her at the opposite end, leaving plenty of space for Ilya in between. Ilya ignores them both. He sits in the chair across from them, head down, hands clasped in front of him.

Immediately, it feels like a confrontation. Like they’re putting him on trial for something. Shane wants to go to him, but there’s nowhere to go unless he wants to stand there looming over him.

“What happened, Ilyusha?” Svetlana’s face is impassive, but her voice is gentle. If anything, she looks tired. They’re all tired, tired in a way that sleep can only help with so much.

“You know what happened.”

“No, I don’t know. You are not saying anything. You are not telling us anything.”

Ilya’s hands clench. His voice is flat and wrong. “What is there to say?”

“What happened? How did things get like this?”

“Why does it matter what happened?”

She clicks her tongue. “Of course it matters, Ilyusha.”

“What happened is that my brain does not work. And last I checked, neither of you are doctors, so there is nothing you can fucking do.”

“I am not a doctor, but you can be sure that I will make sure this never happens again, not if I have to drag you back to that damn hospital,” Svetlana snaps. “Or did you think I wouldn’t notice that you never promised me that when I asked you to?”

Ilya looks up from his hands, anger flashing across his face.

“I am fine. The doctors all say so. That is why I am here, and not still in hospital.”

It’s pretty obvious that Ilya is not fine, but Shane can suddenly picture it so, so clearly. For just a moment, he can see the outlines of the armor Ilya builds around himself, and it’s a convincingly impenetrable shield. Even on one of the worst days of his life, Ilya is smart enough, capable enough, practiced enough to say all the things that everyone already wanted to hear. It had already worked on Shane. Even on Svetlana, with all the years she’s known him.

“You know I know you better than that,” Svetlana says, worry etched all over her face. “Why won’t you just talk to us? We are trying to help.”

“I’m fine,” Ilya repeats, ignoring her. “So you do not need to worry. And I have not had a shower in three days. We can talk later.”

“Really, Ilyusha?” Svetlana asks as he stands and turns away from them both. There are tears running down her cheeks that she doesn’t bother to wipe away.

He stops, already halfway out of the room. “What.”

“You know what!”

“There is nothing else to talk about. It doesn’t matter what happened. It doesn’t change anything.”

Svetlana crosses her arms and turns her head away, visibly upset. “Fine. Go and shower, then. Do you want Shane to come with you, or should I?”

Ilya wheels around, betrayed. “I do not need fucking babysitter, Sveta! I can take a fucking shower in my own house!”

“Can you? You can’t even look me in the eye and tell me you’re not still going to kill yourself! You can’t even say it! And you want me to trust you?”

“Stop.” Shane is between them before he realizes he’s gotten to his feet. “Stop, alright? Both of you. Ilya, go shower. You can leave the door open and I’ll wait outside. Deal?”

Ilya sets his jaw and doesn’t answer. Shane looks over at Svetlana.

She glares between him and Ilya, her jaw shifting like she wants to argue, but after a moment she relents. “Fine. Go.”

“You don’t think I will kill myself with bar of soap while Hollander’s back is turned?” Ilya snarls.

“Don’t,” Shane says, shoving him without any real force to get him moving. “Just don’t, okay? Just go.”

Ilya looks at him coldly. “Fine.” He stalks away with Shane on his heels, shouldering open the door to the bathroom in the hall.

Then Shane almost crashes into him, because Ilya stops in the doorway, one hand still on the knob. He’s staring at the room like he’s suddenly found himself in someone else’s house.

Right.

Shane had avoided this bathroom since the first night when he’d found the empty bottle in the sink. By unspoken agreement, he and Svetlana had only used the ensuites attached to the guest bedrooms.

The bottle is still there in the sink, violent orange. There’s a syringe cap on the floor behind the toilet that Shane had fled too quickly to notice the first time, and a stain on the tile that might be vomit.

“Ilya…”

Ilya backs up into him, and Shane moves aside to let him pass. He doesn’t look angry any longer. Instead he just looks shaken. He seems almost frozen, stuck between reentering the room and walking away.

Shane touches Ilya’s arm, nudging him down the hall in the direction of the bedrooms. “Ilya, hey.”

Ilya blinks, finally stirring to life the doorway. His eyes are glassy, and he doesn’t move.

“I need to clean this,” he mutters.

“Later, okay?” Shane wants to get him away from here, not liking the look in Ilya’s eyes. How rattled he is. There are probably a lot of things that should be cleaned up around Ilya’s house, Shane realizes. Medicine cabinets, cutlery drawers. There’s probably an article about it that he hasn’t had time to read yet. “Come on.”

“I need to—”

“It can wait. Come on, you wanted to shower. Svetlana and I can take care of it.”

Ilya shakes his head. “No. No, I don’t want you to see this.”

He takes another step backward. Shane tugs again at his arm, but Ilya doesn’t even glance at him. Finally he shoulders himself into Ilya’s line of sight, forcing him to look at him or turn away. Ilya blinks as if he’s just realizing Shane is still there, and that expression flashes across his face again, something young and vulnerable. Then it’s gone, and he just looks tired and frustrated.

“You should not have had to see that,” he says, finally allowing Shane to steer him down the hall and towards the stairs.

“It’s fine.” It’s not, obviously. But Shane is fine. Comparatively. He’s not freaking out, anyway. He hovers awkwardly at the foot of the bed while Ilya rummages through drawers for a shirt.

Ilya clears his throat and says without looking up from the dresser, “You know I am not going to, I don’t know, bash my head in on shower wall, yes? Would be a lot of work.”

“Is that the only reason?” Shane hears himself say.

Now Ilya does look at him, his mouth twisting. “No. I would not do that to you. But I know you probably do not trust me.” He says the last part like a tooth he’s spitting out.

Shane isn’t sure what to say to that. Of all the things swirling around in his head, trust isn’t really part of the picture for him right now. He’s not thinking in those terms. But he doesn’t actually think that Ilya is going to try to hurt himself while he’s sitting about six feet away, at least. So maybe that’s a kind of trust.

“It’s not about that. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Ilya studies him for a long moment, then looks away. He holds up a sweatshirt. “I will be fast.”

“Okay. I’ll be…here.”

Ilya nods and ducks into the bathroom. Shane hears the water start a moment later, followed by the rustle of fabric as Ilya undresses. He sits on the edge of the bed to wait.

Ilya showers quickly, true to his word, reentering the bedroom only a few minutes later in the same clothes Shane had picked out for him, plus the sweatshirt. He looks a little better than before: skin less ashen, flushed from the heat of the water, wet hair slicked back from his face. A little of the weight washed away from his shoulders. He catches Shane looking at him and stops, plucking the fabric of his joggers between his fingers.

“You know these cost two thousand dollars?”

“Huh?”

Ilya’s voice is offhand, casual as if they’re hanging out after a hookup. Shane’s brain lags several seconds behind as he stares between the suggestion of a smirk fixed on Ilya’s face and the fabric of the joggers, trying to see whatever makes them so absurdly expensive. He can’t—he’s too thrown by the question and the abrupt change in focus. He’d barely looked at them when he’d grabbed them out of Ilya’s closet, still trying to preserve some small part of his privacy.

“Uh, why? Aren’t they just pants?”

“They are not just pants.” Ilya almost—almost—smiles. “They are nice pants.”

Shane looks again at the joggers. They’re…black.

“Um, okay. Why are you telling me this?”

Ilya shrugs, ghost of the smile sliding from his face. “No reason. You are the one who picked them.”

“Oh. Well, I didn’t know.”

“No, I did not think so. But maybe there is hope. For your taste, yes?”

“What’s wrong with my taste?”

Ilya laughs, a jagged edge in the sound. He turns to the side and rubs at his nose before looking back at Shane. “You are hungry? You did not eat at the hospital.”

The swerve in the conversation again leaves Shane scrambling to keep up, whiplashed by the sudden shifts in Ilya’s mood. If there’s something Ilya is trying to say or not say, or something he wants from Shane in response, Shane can’t read what it is.

“I can make something,” Ilya presses. “There is not much, but there will be something you can eat.”

“Okay,” Shane agrees, if only because Ilya seems oddly insistent about it. He follows Ilya out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen. “Don’t you think we should—you know, finish talking, though?”

“I do not want to talk,” Ilya says flatly. “There is nothing more to say, anyway.”

“Ilya…” Shane catches up with him at the bottom of the stairs, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Ilya.”

Ilya smacks his hand away. “Don’t.” He can feel a dangerous rage building up again from the low simmer that’s been brewing in his chest all afternoon—the urge to lash out, to destroy, to bite the hand reaching out to him.

Everyone is being so fucking careful with him. His coaches, who normally trickled out praise like it came in an eyedropper, reassuring him that he still had a place on the team. If he worked for it. Doctors promising everything would be better, if he was patient. Unfairly, Ilya wonders where all this support was before now. Why should he have to strip himself to the bone to deserve it? Why should he have to bare all the ugliest parts of himself just to keep playing a game?

He doesn’t want to feel it, this awful, corrosive anger. He doesn’t want to hurt Shane or Svetlana. Not more than he already has. But the alternative steadily closing in around him is even worse, and he doesn’t see any other options. He can’t live the rest of his life under lock and key, losing whatever shreds of dignity he has left in bits and pieces. He’s lived his whole life under a spotlight, reveling in it, even, and now he can’t stand the thought of more scrutiny. He senses without needing to be told how conditional all these offers of help are.

He can’t tell them the thing he’s been holding in the back of his throat.

Svetlana is getting up now, coming towards them.

“Ilyusha? What is going on?”

Ilya sees the look she exchanges with Shane. His nails dig into the flesh of his palms and his throat burns, tears or stomach acid or the sheer awful humiliation of all of it. So now they’re…what, teaming up against him? Is this what he has to look forward to?

“Ilyusha?” Svetlana looks at him, wide-eyed.

Next to him, Shane takes a step forward, not quite touching. “Are you going to be sick?”

Maybe he is. Maybe then he won’t have to say it, the thing he knows he has to say.

One of them puts a hand on his back and he gets his feet moving somehow, stumbling back into his living room. Somebody guides him to the couch and a hand shoves a wastebasket in front of his face as he collapses onto the seat.

He stares at the pattern of the cushion an inch from his nose and says in a rush, “I-don’t-want-to-do-it-I-don’t-want-to-play-hockey-anymore.”

Silence falls like the air’s been sucked out of the room. Like he’s been thrown out alone into the vacuum of space.

Shane takes an unsteady breath above him. “Like a break, you mean?”

“No, not a break. No. I am done.”

“What do you….” Shane sounds lost. Untethered. “I don’t—I don’t understand. You love this. Hockey.”

“I did. I used to.” That’s what makes this so hard.

The cushion sinks under his cheek as Svetlana sits down next to him. “When did this start?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs, the motion awkward because he’s half-sitting, half-lying down. “Since the Cup, I think, maybe.”

“Since the Cup?” She’s shaken too, he can hear it. If his closest friend can’t understand, how can he expect anyone else to? “That was months ago.”

“I know.”

She makes a soft sound in the back of her throat. “That long? You never—you never said anything.”

“I…tried? I think that I tried.” He shakes his head, the room tilting around him. “Does not matter. I know I cannot quit, anyway.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Ilya sees Shane shift his weight between his feet.

“Did something change? To make you not love it anymore?”

Ilya shakes his head. “No. I don’t know. I think…I am twenty-three, I have won Cup, I have won MVP. Maybe this is enough, yes? I don’t know what else there is.”

“That’s bullshit, Rozanov.”

Svetlana makes a noise but Shane plows ahead, undeterred, “No, it is. It’s bullshit. One Cup is nothing, it’s just the beginning, you could have fifteen, twenty years left—”

“No. I do not have one year left in me. Never mind twenty. This is not true.”

“What are you talking about? You’re so good at this. And you do enjoy it, I know you do—”

“I know I am good at it! Fucking obviously I am good at it!”

“Then what’s the fucking problem!” Shane yells.

Ilya is truly furious now, lifting himself off the couch to face Shane head-on.

“What is problem? What is fucking problem? How about, I do not want to watch my father die while he tells me he is ashamed of me! How about I do not want to keep giving my brother money he hates me for earning! How about I am tired of this bullshit country and my bullshit country and this bullshit language that I have to talk about them! Is that enough problem, Hollander? And you—”

Ilya stops suddenly, jerking back from the subject like a hot stove. The backs of his knees hit the couch and he folds, weight in his chest too heavy to hold.

“Me?” Shane prompts, even though he has no right to. Just like he had no right to provoke Ilya like that in the first place.

Ilya ignores him. “I do not want this. I do not want this future,” he says quietly, half to himself. “All the time, now, I feel so empty. We win Cup, and I am happy, but only for a short moment. MVP, even smaller moment. Now we win and it is like nothing. Nothing, nothing, all the time nothing, and it is. So. Boring.”

Not boring like Shane is. Boring like it had been that night, the night he picked up the phone. Not safe, but suffocating.

“I do not have anything left. I cannot give them what they want. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

Svetlana puts her hand on his arm. “You said you tried to talk about this. Who did you talk to? Your team? Your coaches?”

Ilya’s stomach lurches with a sick stab of panic. “No, of course not, I am not complete idiot.”

“I did not say that.”

There’s a desperate laugh building in his throat. “I would still be in hospital, I think, if they knew. Must be crazy if I do not to want to play hockey forever, no?”

He can feel the glance Shane and Svetlana shoot each other over his head, even without looking to see it. Hears Shane clear his throat, shift on his feet again. They do think he’s crazy, then. They do.

Then Shane says, “Okay. Okay, so—you retire from playing. Then what?”

Fuck if he knows. He’d thought Shane would put up more of a fight to the idea, though.

Ilya sniffs. “I cannot actually retire, Hollander. That is the whole problem. I have work visa. And my father—”

“Fuck your father,” Svetlana says. “Are you his only son? Alexei can take his turn to contribute for once.”

“He will not,” Ilya says flatly. He doesn’t know if Alexei could, even if he was willing to. He doesn’t know because he’s not there. Will not be there, whatever happens now.

Svetlana’s fingers drum on the couch beside him. “Shane, give us a minute, please.”

“He knows,” Ilya feels obligated to say. “He knows all of it.”

“I know,” Svetlana says, at the same time Shane says, “No, it’s okay. I’m gonna—” and trails off. “I’ll go.”

A moment later Ilya feels Svetlana’s fingers in his hair. “At least lie down properly, Ilyusha.”

His resolve to hold himself distant crumbles immediately with the touch. He arranges himself so his head is in her lap and realizes belatedly his hair is still damp. Oh well, he’s already made enough of a mess as it is.

So much for trying to be a little less pathetic. At least it’s Sveta, who knows as much about him as anyone ever will.

“So you plan to keep playing,” she says, switching to Russian.

He shrugs again. “I signed the treatment plan. I said I would.” Never mind that he doesn’t know how he’s going to complete it. “Why?”

She’s silent for a long moment, scratching at his scalp with her nails. “You are planning to play, then. So why won’t you promise me? That you won’t—” Her breath hitches, a sound she tries to stifle.

Even in Russian, the words are hard to find. “Sveta, you know I do not want to hurt you. I didn’t mean to.”

“But you did. You asshole, you did. That note.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He holds onto her like she’s holding onto him, because he did miss her and she is warm and he’s too desperate to turn away comfort wherever he can get it. He misses her like she’s already gone, moved to New York. “I don’t want to hurt you again. That is the problem.”

“So don’t.”

“I don’t know if I can help it. I don’t want to promise if I can’t—” Can’t follow through. Can’t make it work. Can’t help it. Can’t stay alive.

“Do you think it would really help?” she asks suddenly. “Quitting hockey. Would it be better?”

“I—Yes. I think so.” He sits up and she looks back at him, crying like he hasn’t seen her cry since they were teenagers. Maybe all these tears are contagious. “I don’t know. I can’t.”

“You could,” she says, wiping her face. “You could come to New York with me. Find a job. You are persuasive, you speak Russian, those are useful things. I would help you.”

He blinks at her, forgetting everything for a moment in his surprise. “Get a job. Now? Like this?” He tries to picture himself as he is selling expensive things to expensive people. Like Hollander and his fancy watches. The image doesn’t come.

She rolls her eyes. “Not now, now. Eventually. We could buy you time on your visa. We could—” she laughs, a little hysterically, “—we could get married.”

“Sveta.”

“I know. I know.” She shakes her head, hair falling into her face. “We wouldn’t last two weeks. I’d be climbing the walls and you’d be inventing a new sport to compete in from scratch. We’d kill each other.”

He tries to smile. “I’d have more bruised ribs than I do now.”

That gets a real laugh, if a small one. She loops her arms around his neck and pulls him into a hug.

“Thank you anyway,” he says into her hair as he hugs her back. It comes out only a little wobbly.

She rubs his back. “I want to help. But you have to tell me. Not—not whatever you think you said this summer. You have to actually tell me.”

He nods into her shoulder.

“Promise.”

“I will try. I promise.” It’s the best he can do.

She sighs, and he hopes the disappointment is only in his head. He fears it isn’t.

“Okay.” Her hands find their way back to his hair. “So, tell me about Shane Hollander.”

Leave it to Svetlana to find a way to shock him out of his spiraling thoughts, even now.

“You know who he is.”

“Who he is, yes. Not who he is to you.”

Ilya shifts, uncomfortable in a wholly different way now than the rest of this conversation. “It’s nothing you will think is exciting. We hook up sometimes. That’s all.”

Svetlana peers dramatically around the living room. She’s such a brat, sometimes. “I do not see any of your other hookups here right now.”

“Except you.”

“Shut up, Ilyusha,” she laughs. “So he is different, then? You trust him?”

He shrugs. “I have to. It’s risky. For both of us.”

“You more than him.”

“I don’t know. He worries about it more, I think.”

She hums. “He is not what I expected.”

“No?” In most ways, Ilya thinks Shane is exactly the person he appears to be. It’s one of the many things he appreciates about him. Shane is much more than just his public self, but he’s not terribly different. He’s…genuine. A delicious puzzle sometimes, to get him to reveal all his carefully guarded facets, but one with no traps laid within it.

“For you,” Svetlana clarifies. “He is not what I expected for you.”

“Ah.”

“It’s not a bad thing! I like him.”

“You already liked him,” Ilya grumbles.

“Yes,” Svetlana says, affecting a dreamy sigh just to rile him up. “He is very good at hockey.”

“I know this. I am the one playing him.” Or was, anyway. That part, he will miss. Probably Shane will miss it, too.

But now he’s thinking about the future stretching out in front of him again, endless and full of expectations he doesn’t know how to meet. Just considering it makes the tight, stifling feeling return to his chest.

Svetlana picks up on the shift in his mood, as she so often does. He can tell that he’s upsetting her.

“It’s good that you called him. That he could be here. When I couldn’t be.”

“Don’t.” He closes his eyes, unable to look her in the face and see the hurt he knows is there. “Please, don’t.”

For once, she listens to him.

Ilya doesn’t understand how something that everyone tells him was the right decision feels so much like the worst thing he has done to another person. To Shane and Sveta both. Dragging Shane into his mess while he pushes Sveta further away. He wants to know why both impulses feel so wrong.

He feels her hand wrap around his and squeeze. Still here, for now.

He squeezes back. It’s all he has right now. He just hopes it will be enough.

Chapter End Notes

Fortunately for Ilya it is not going to be so easy to self-sabotage himself out of this one.

Chapter 10

Chapter Notes

It's done!! Thanks for your patience on this last chapter as it turns out having depression is not actually conducive to writing depression. (I'm good, just sick of dragging my brain to work, you know how it is.)

As usual I have song recs: Notes on How to Trust by GGGOLDDD and Dogs in a Cage by Angelfish

Shane knows, he knows he’d said the wrong thing. Knew it even as he was saying it. He wasn’t understanding or empathetic or any of the things the articles he read told him to be. He just—this can’t be the right thing for Ilya.

Shane had thought…well, he’d thought a lot of things. He would never have expected this. Not from Ilya, of all people.

In Shane’s mind, quitting hockey feels the same as giving up. Not just on the sport—the team, the fans, a dynasty, a legacy—but on them. On everything, maybe.

Which isn’t fair. Ilya was right, they aren’t anything. Not really. Not in ways that mean anything outside of Shane’s head.

He’d just reacted, hurt by the thought that Ilya had apparently been thinking about this for months and Shane hadn’t been able to tell. Hurt that Ilya would leave him like this, alone at the top.

He’d thought he wanted that once. To be the best, without question or exception. But hockey without any competition is almost nothing at all. Like being told he’s getting sent down to minors or something. Another self-interested thought, and surely not one his teammates would appreciate, but it’s true.

Shane knows Ilya’s love for hockey isn’t his own all-consuming passion. But he’s equally sure that Ilya feeds on the competition between them, loves it just as much as he does. He was sure. If Ilya didn’t love it too, if he was just…pretending, then a foundational part of the world has collapsed. Ilya kept saying he was bored. Did that include Shane, too?

He stands there uselessly in Ilya’s hallway and runs back the two games they’ve played against each other this season. Ilya’s grin at each face-off. His legs working as they sped down the ice for the puck. The delight he seemed to take in slamming Shane up against the boards before racing off, throwing himself back into the action. The goals he’d scored: the second of them a one-timer from his knee so filthy and fast it would have stopped Shane dead had muscle memory not taken over, legs chasing a rebound that wasn’t there. The roar that tore from Ilya’s throat as the goal buzzer sounded and he threw up his hands, challenging Montreal to answer him. That was the Ilya Shane knew, and it couldn’t be only an act. Bluster didn’t take you all the way to the top. It didn’t make you incandescent.

But the Ilya on the ice that night wasn’t the Ilya Shane saw now. Or else there was a lot to Ilya that Shane still didn’t understand at all, and maybe he never would. Just like he doesn’t understand the anger he feels when Ilya talks about quitting. Sadness, sure. Of course. But not anger.

It’s Ilya’s decision, obviously. Of course he should do whatever he has to do. Shane has no reason to feel betrayed by it.

Right now Shane is desperate for something that he does understand, no matter how prosaic, so he goes back into the hall bathroom and crouches in front of the cabinet below the sink. There’s not much there, but it’s enough to clean the stain he’d noticed off the tile. He scrubs mechanically, gathers the empty bottle and the detritus left by the EMTs, and buries it all in the trashcan by the sink. Then there’s the cabinets. Pills, razors. He gathers it all, not sure what he’ll do with it but relieved to have a goal that keeps him from thinking more than one step ahead. Shane’s not so worried about Ilya’s reaction to his rummaging through his cabinets now because, well, he’s burned that bridge, hasn’t he?

Shane does a sweep of the other bathrooms and drops everything he finds in his car for lack of a better safekeeping place. He comes back in through the front door to the kitchen, headphones in to remove any temptation to eavesdrop. Sitting in Ilya’s big, empty kitchen, he reads the rest of the articles he’d saved and tries to figure out how to fix what he’s fucked up.

He loses track of the time that passes before Svetlana and Ilya enter the kitchen. They both look tired, wrung out. Which is about how Shane feels too.

“Eat something,” Svetlana says to Ilya, pinching his hip with the familiarity that comes from knowing someone since they were small. She doesn’t look over at Shane. “I will see you tomorrow.”

“Я тебя не достоин.” Ilya’s voice comes out worn thin. Shane can hear it even in words he doesn’t understand.

“Мало меня достоин.” Svetlana smiles softly, brushing her hand over Ilya’s arm. “Я тебя люблю.”

“Я тебя люблю. Спокойной ночи.”

“Спокойной ночи, Илья. Goodnight, Shane.”

Shane jerks his head up. “Goodnight,” he manages.

Then it’s just him and Ilya. Shane watches warily as Ilya drifts toward him and sits down at the opposite end of the counter. Ilya studies the marble grain; Shane studies Ilya.

“I think…” Shane starts to say just as Ilya raises his head and says, “Would it—?”

They both stop. Ilya looks back at the countertop. “You first.”

Shane takes a breath. “I don’t think I handled that very well.” He jerks his head back towards the living room even though Ilya isn’t looking at him. “In there. I’m sorry.”

Ilya shrugs, gaze still turned down. Just when Shane thinks he isn’t going to reply, he says, “Would it be so bad? If I did not play anymore?”

Yes, Shane thinks. It would be the worst thing, not to play against Ilya anymore. Almost the worst thing. But this isn’t about what he wants.

“I think you should do whatever you need to do.” He should just stop there, but he can’t help himself from asking, “Would—would not playing anymore really make you happy? Happier?”

Ilya makes a frustrated gesture. “I don’t know. I don’t know what would make me happy. Obviously.”

“You said…” Shane trails off, but Ilya finally looks over at him, clearly waiting for him to go on. “You said on the phone that you were bored. When you called me.”

“Yes,” Ilya says slowly. He traces one finger over the line of the countertop. “Yes, I suppose that is word for it.”

“Bored of hockey?” Shane can’t bring himself to ask about the other thing. About them.

“Bored of everything.” Ilya shrugs. “Or tired, maybe.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Is not your fault.”

“No, I know. Just—that sucks.”

Ilya snorts. “Yes.” He folds his arms on the counter and rests his head on them.

“Ilya?”

“I am fine. Tired. Dizzy.”

Shane stands up to get him a glass of water and finds himself gliding his hand over Ilya’s back as he passes. He doesn’t plan to do it; it just feels like a natural thing to do, in the way that almost nothing outside of hockey ever does for him.

Ilya is sitting up and looking at him when Shane turns back from the sink. Shane rarely has much luck reading faces, but the look in Ilya’s eyes is neither the unsettling flatness of the hospital or the desperate anger from the living room. The knot of feelings wound tight in Shane’s chest uncoils a little.

“I hate that you feel like this.”

Ilya pulls the glass closer to himself, staring down into it. “You hate that you can’t do something about it.”

“Well, yeah. I guess that’s part of it. But it’s not the only thing. I just think that—if hockey is really what’s making you feel like this, then you should stop. Playing. I know you said you can’t, but…we could figure something out. Not that you need my permission, or…whatever.”

Ilya’s mouth thins out, and he turns away so Shane can only see half of his face. Unreadable again, like shutting a door. Shane feels, again, like he’s said the wrong thing. He waits a long time for Ilya to say something.

“Have you eaten at all?” he asks when Ilya doesn’t.

Ilya looks back at him and shakes his head.

“Could you?”

“Mm. Maybe.” He leans back over the counter and rests his head on his folded arms.

Shane opens the fridge and a few cabinets at random, feeling Ilya’s eyes track him around the room. There really isn’t much to work with.

“You don’t have peanut butter?”

“Nuts do not belong on sandwiches, this is American delusion,” Ilya mumbles into his sweatshirt.

Shane levels a look at him. “I’ve seen you eat Nutella.”

“Well, yes, Nutella is good,” Ilya says, sitting up enough to stare at Shane like he’s being exceptionally stupid.

These flashes of his usual self are probably a good thing, Shane thinks. But they’re unsettling, too. Because he can’t tell. He can’t tell if Ilya is faking them, still trying in spite of everything to pretend that he’s fine, or if he’s just feeling all of it at once: the blankness, the anger, the hurt, and the startling normality. Shane doesn’t know how anyone could stand it, either option. The ground inside you constantly shifting, whether you’re controlling it or not. Maybe that’s what Ilya means when he says he’s tired. Maybe Shane does understand it, just a little.

Still. He can’t tell. And they’re not exactly close friends, but Shane has known Ilya for almost six years, and he’s seen literally every part of him, and shouldn’t he be able to tell?

He opens the fridge again like more food will have materialized in it in the last two minutes. The same wall of half-empty condiment jars and tins of fish stare back at him. Shane isn’t much of a cook, but—

“Do you like tuna salad?”

Ilya shrugs. “Yes. Sure.”

They eat huddled around the same bowl at the kitchen island. Most of Ilya’s dishes are piled in the sink, and Shane doesn’t really want to look any more closely at them than he already has. The last bit of bread had gone moldy on the counter, so they share the same sleeve of slightly stale crackers. Shane figures the simple carbs won’t kill him this once, if it means getting Ilya to eat.

“I did not know almost dying was all it took for Shane Hollander to make me dinner,” Ilya says out of nowhere.

Shane chokes on fish and neon-green pickles. “What the fuck, Rozanov,” he coughs.

“Sorry. Sorry, was bad joke.”

“You fucking think? Jesus.” Shane pushes the crackers away, stomach churning.

“I’m sorry. I did not mean it.” There’s real regret in Ilya’s expression, and it doesn’t look right on his face. He drops his head into his hands, body braced like he’s preparing for a hard check. “Fuck.”

“Hey.” Shane taps his knee against Ilya’s. “It’s okay.”

Ilya shakes his head and doesn’t look up.

“Really. I mean—” Shane swallows, still fighting the need to cough. “Please don’t joke about that shit. But we’re okay.”

“How are you—” Ilya shakes his head again, grinding his hands harder against his eyes. “Why are you even still here.”

“Well, I’m not just going to leave you here.”

“You could. Sveta is here. Doctors, they will take me back to hospital if I do not answer check in. So.”

Shane shakes his head. “I don’t want to leave.”

“Because you are still thinking I will kill myself.”

Again, Shane flinches. He knows he shouldn’t. He read all those articles about how he’s supposed let Ilya talk about it, if he wants to. He’s not supposed to reinforce the shame he already feels. That the articles say he feels. But the words out in the open like that just make Shane think of Ilya’s voice fading out over the phone. Of the long drive to Boston, not knowing if he’s alive or dead. Of the empty bathroom and the bottle of pills.

“I’m not—”

“Suicide, Hollander,” Ilya growls, low and mean and wounded. “You can say it.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Shane braces both hands on the counter and makes himself look at Ilya, even though Ilya isn’t looking at him. “Okay, you’re right. I am still worried that you’re going to try again. To kill yourself.” He hears his voice catch on the syllables, dragging out the beginning of words like he did when he was a kid. Like he still does sometimes when he’s nervous. But he says it. “I just don’t want to lose you.”

“I think you can find someone else to fuck without me, Hollander. Handsome guy like you.”

“Fuck off,” Shane says automatically, without feeling. “That’s not what I mean. It’s not about that.”

“Oh, no? What is it about, then?”

“You.” He doesn’t plan to say it, but he means it, and it comes easily. “It’s about you. I feel like I’m just starting to know you.”

Ilya drops his arms to the counter top, looking off to the side away from Shane. “You know me enough.” His shoulders hunch, rounding inwards a little. Collapsing. He lets out an exhausted breath. “There are lots of other people who will want to know you, Hollander. Lots of people you will want to know back.”

“Yeah, but. I want to know you. If you want that.” It feels like a much bigger admission than just the words. Maybe a bigger admission than he should be making right now, too much to be putting on Ilya’s shoulders at the moment. But Shane needs him to know.

He hears Ilya sniff, holding himself so still like he hopes Shane will forget he’s there at all.

“Hey. Ilya.”

“Sorry,” Ilya chokes out.

“Hey.” Shane steps around him, coaxing his hand away from his face. He catches a tear at the corner of Ilya’s eye with his thumb. “It’s okay. Really. C’mere.”

Tentatively, Ilya snakes his arms around his waist and pulls them together until his head rests against Shane’s chest. Shane sways a little, rocking them both, and wraps his arms tighter around Ilya’s shoulders.

Ilya mumbles into Shane’s collarbone, “Sorry, sorry.”

Shane squeezes Ilya against him. “Careful. You’re sounding pretty Canadian,” he says gently. It makes Ilya sputter something that might be a laugh, or close to it. He turns his head and presses his closed mouth to Shane’s shirt just over his heart.

Shane brings his hand up to hold the back of Ilya’s head. Keeping him close.

Ilya turns so the side of his head is pressed against Shane’s sternum. Shane can’t see his face. “I don’t know what to do. I am too tired.”

“That’s okay. We can just go to bed.”

“Not that kind of tired. I am not sure that I could sleep yet.”

Shane opens his mouth to suggest they try anyway, but Ilya continues.

“I don’t know why I tell you all this. Why I can’t stop—” He cuts himself off, breathing shallowly but not crying now, Shane doesn’t think. “It’s always you. I should not have called you. It was a mistake. I was—I was scared, I think.”

“I told you,” Shane says. He runs shaking fingers over Ilya’s curls, trying to steady himself and Ilya both. “I told you in the hospital. I want you to tell me. I want to know.”

“I think,” Ilya says. Stops, swallows. “I think you are right. To worry.”

Shane stills, his heart sinking. That first moment in the bathroom again, that night on the phone, his body catching up before his brain. “Ilya. What—what are you saying?” But he knows. He already knows.

Ilya makes a sound low in his throat that makes Shane’s stomach twist.

“You have to tell me, Ilya.” His voice comes out harsh and wrong, choked with tears he’s trying to blink away. “You have to tell me if you’re going to—”

“No, no.” Ilya’s arms squeeze around his waist, an awful reversal of reassurance. “I didn’t mean—I am not going to do anything, I swear.”

“But you want to?” Shane tries to take a full breath and finds that he can’t. He’s clinging to Ilya too tightly, maybe. “You want to.”

“Yes. Maybe, yes.” Ilya inhales, breathy and wet. “Not now, not while you are here. I don’t know.”

“Ilya.”

Ilya says something indistinct, lost in the roar of panic in Shane’s head.

“I can’t…I can’t hear you.”

Ilya raises his head. His eyes are dry, but his face is blotchy and hot. “Do not tell me to go back to the hospital. I can’t—I will not.”

“You just told me—”

“I will not do anything. I promise you. I would not do that to you, I would not make you find me.”

“You did,” Shane reminds him. He doesn’t mean to, but he can’t hold it back. Like he can’t hold back the tears spilling onto his face. “You almost did. On the phone.”

“Accident. I swear it. I meant to hang up.”

“And you lied about it. To the doctors.”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“Why?”

“Shane. They would not let me play otherwise. You know this.”

“You don’t even want to play!”

Ilya’s jaw trembles. He looks sharply away, shame and stubbornness fighting in his expression. “I could not stay there. I could not let them just—put me somewhere. I just had to get out. That’s all.”

Shane brushes his thumb across his cheek, trying to get him to turn back. To look at him. His hand is shaking, he realizes. It doesn’t feel like his hand, somehow.

“It was that bad?”

“No. I don’t know.” Ilya squeezes his eyes shut. “I don’t know. I can’t go back.”

Shane’s heart is pounding in his chest. He becomes aware of it all at once, the blood rushing through his body like he’s been sprinting, like he’s fighting for his life. He doesn’t know what to do. How to help. He isn’t the right person for this, he thinks again.

“Shane.” Ilya’s voice, quiet, a tentative hand on his back. Shane realizes suddenly that he’s bent over the counter, resting his forehead on the cool marble. He thinks he must have blacked out for a second. Or something.

“Fuck,” he gasps. “Fuck, sorry.” It’s not supposed to be him. He’s supposed to be taking care of Ilya right now. He can’t do that, though, because he can’t breathe.

He knows he can’t let Ilya out of his sight, though. Shane reaches behind him, feeling for his wrist until Ilya takes his hand. He squeezes, hard. Ilya squeezes back.

Okay. Still here. Shane breathes a little deeper.

It still takes ages for him to regain control of his body, or it feels that way. He hauls himself upright and turns to Ilya. Shane pulls him in, or Ilya opens his arms, and they end up tangled together, not sure who is holding the other up.

“’M sorry,” Shane mumbles into Ilya’s shoulder. “I think I’m really freaking out.”

“Yes. Me too.”

Shane tries to laugh. Isn’t sure he manages.

Ilya runs his hand up and down Shane’s back. “I did not mean to scare you.”

“Yeah, well.” Shane turns his head and kisses Ilya’s throat just above his collar, trying to convey more than he can put into words. He’s still shaking a little, humiliatingly.

“Ice,” Ilya murmurs in his ear.

“What?”

“You need ice, yes? Like you said in the hospital.” Ilya leans back to look at him, still holding onto his waist.

“Oh. Right.” He’s panicking. That makes sense. Why his body doesn’t feel completely like his at the moment, even now that he can breathe.

Ilya squeezes his hip and moves behind him to the freezer.

“Open.”

Shane opens his mouth and lets Ilya place the ice cube on his tongue. The cold brings clarity, sensation pulling him back to his body.

“Better?” Ilya asks.

Shane nods. He holds his hand in front of his mouth to speak around the melting ice that sticks to his tongue. “A little. Yeah. Thank you.”

Ilya nods back. His eyes scan across Shane’s face, as intense as if they’re at the face-off dot.

“I’m okay,” Shane tells him. “It just…just got to me, I guess. I’m sorry.”

“Do not be sorry.”

Instinctively, Shane starts to apologize again, but he stops, shaking his head at himself.

Ilya’s eyes track the motion. “You need another?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

He lets Ilya feed him another ice cube, gathering his thoughts for what he needs to say. Ilya keeps watching him. Studying him.

Shane reaches out to take both of Ilya’s hands. It helps him concentrate, the press of familiar fingers against his. He remembers how to breathe a little more.

“Okay. Listen.” He feels Ilya’s hands clench around his, but he keeps going. “I don’t want to make you go anywhere you don’t want to go. But I really, really don’t want you to hurt yourself either.”

He watches Ilya’s expression harden into an unreadable mask, feels his body tense like he’s preparing to run.

“I told you, I will not.”

“That’s not what you said. You said you wouldn’t make me find you. What happens when I’m not here? When Svetlana isn’t?”

Ilya’s hands twitch. Shane knows at least a part of him wants to pull away. He doesn’t, though. He doesn’t, and that has to count for something. Shane waits for him to work though whatever is going through his head.

“I do not want you to worry about this,” Ilya finally manages.

“You just told me to worry—”

“I know, yes, I know!” Ilya squeezes his eyes shut, sucking in a shaking breath. “Is because I don’t know, I don’t know what I am going to do now, tomorrow, next week. I do not know what to do. I cannot even picture it.”

“Ilya…”

“What I did—I am so ashamed. I am. But I still…” He drops one of Shane’s hands and raises his palm in front of his chest, fingers splayed. “I still feel so fucking bad, Shane.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Ilya.”

None of the articles Shane read told him how to fix something like that. Or if they did, his head is too full to remember what they said. All he has to work with is himself and the person in front of him.

He pulls Ilya back to him, because touch is the one language he knows they share completely. Ilya lets himself be pulled, resting his head on Shane’s shoulder and turning his face into the side of his neck.

“I want to help,” Shane tells him. “I don’t know how, but I want to try. If you want me to.”

Ilya sniffs, heavy in Shane’s arms. No answer isn’t a yes, but it’s better than a definite no, he thinks.

“Can we…for now, can we just go to bed?”

“I am not sure I can sleep,” Ilya admits, barely audible. “I am tired, but…”

“That’s okay. Just come lie down.”

“Okay,” he sighs. He makes no effort to move.

“Ilya?”

His hands run slowly over Shane’s back. “You will be here? Tomorrow?”

“Yeah. I’ll be here. I can stay another couple of days at least. Before Theriault really loses his shit about it. After that—I don’t know. We can figure it out.”

Ilya’s jaw and throat work as he swallows. “You will miss another game.”

“Yeah, but it’s Vancouver. I think they can handle it without me.”

Ilya lets out another almost-laugh, breath puffing against Shane’s collarbone. Shane wants to hear that sound a million more times. As many times as he can.

“Come on, it’s late.”

*

Ilya has pictured Shane in his bedroom many, many times. This is not how he imagined it. The Shane in his imagination actually wants to be there, for a start.

That isn’t entirely fair. Shane keeps insisting that he wants to stay. If only to keep Ilya from killing himself the moment he’s alone again.

He’s trying very hard not to think about that possibility. That isn’t the thing that scares him.

Shane scares him. He’s the first real, substantial glimmer of relief Ilya has felt in months. A flicker of something besides the crushing, endless, unchanging exhaustion and the certainty that he will never escape it. Around him, Ilya is always giving away so much more than he means to. And Shane is still here somehow, pulling on a pair of Ilya’s sweatpants and folding his own clothes next to his overnight bag. Even after all Ilya has told him.

Every second that he stays feels like Ilya is stealing something that doesn’t belong to him. Something he wants so badly that he might not be able to let go of it when he’s finally caught.

Shane straightens up and turns back to look at Ilya sitting on the edge of the bed, his dark eyes warm. When he walks over and smooths Ilya’s hair back from his face, Ilya can’t help but lean into his palm, letting his eyes drift shut. Why does it feel so good when Shane touches him, every time? He’s not even doing anything. He’s just…touching.

Ilya grabs the backs of Shane’s thighs and pulls him closer. He tilts his head up, looking up at Shane’s face and waiting to see what he will do. If he still wants this. Wants him.

Shane just looks back at him. Does Ilya see hesitation in his eyes, or is it just his own fears reflected back at him?

Well, Ilya will not beg. He has so little left, but he has this scrap of his pride. If Shane does not—cannot—see him that way anymore, the way he used to, then so be it.

Now that he’s tried to kill himself, Ilya knows that every look from his coaches will carry new weight. Every glance from his teammates will be full of suspicion at his unexplained absence, the front office’s silence as damning as a public statement. And Svetlana and Shane will look at him forever with eyes full of pity and concern.

He looks up, but Shane isn’t looking at him. He’s staring off to the side, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.

“What is it?”

Shane glances back at him and steps away out of Ilya’s grasp. Ilya’s heart sinks, but instead of leaving Shane sinks heavily onto the bed beside him.

“There’s something that I probably need to tell you.”

Ilya waits, frozen.

“I kind of—” Shane stops and swallows, breathing hard through his nose. “I kind of came out to my parents.”

Ilya blinks. Half of him is sure he’s misheard. “What? Why?”

“I don’t know. I just—it just sort of happened. I couldn’t lie to them. Not about this.” Shane shrugs. His eyes cut back to Ilya. “I didn’t tell them about you. Who you are. My mom is probably close to figuring it out, though. I’m sorry.”

Ilya shakes his head. Of all the things Shane might have said, he has no idea what to make of this turn of events. “So, what? You told them, ‘I’m gay, this is why I am not playing tonight?’”

Shane snorts. “No. Not exactly. I just told them I was in the U.S., at a hospital.” He sighs. “I should have left that part out. Or asked you first or something. Sorry.”

“You are being Canadian again,” Ilya chides, running on autopilot. “But your parents, they were…good about it?”

Shane looks quietly miserable. “Yeah. They were good. Really good, actually.”

“But?”

“But it’s still a problem, you know? It’s not like I can really come out. Not publicly.” He shakes his head. “I shouldn’t even have told them.”

“And what did you tell to them, exactly?”

Shane shrugs again, rubbing at his eye. “I told them I’d come down to see someone in the hospital. A guy. That we were…you know. Involved.”

Ilya feels his eyebrows shoot upwards. “Involved?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t really mean to tell them, you know? I just needed to let them know where I was. The rest just…happened.”

“So they think we are, what? Boyfriends?”

“No! No. Nothing like that. I told them it was just a casual…thing.”

“Oh. Right.” Ilya very deliberately does not look at Shane. “They believed you?”

“Maybe. I think so. They didn’t really ask me any more. Not about that, at least. My mom might still put it together, but she won’t, like, tell anyone. Obviously.”

Ilya nods, swallowing. “Right.”

He feels Shane turns toward him. “Are you worried about it? Things getting out? About—about us?”

Ilya shrugs. “No.”

Could being outed even make his life any worse at this point? Probably, but it’s hard to imagine how. Boston would definitely drop him, but then at least it would be out of his hands. Being outed would certainly make Shane’s life worse, though. Being outed with him, in particular. Especially now.

He wants to ask Shane what happens next. He wants to ask if it is still just casual, this thing they have. If he can still have it when Shane goes back to Montreal. He fears he already knows the answer, though.

Mutually assured destruction has always been the guarantee of security between them. Now that Ilya has already destroyed his life, what insurance does Shane have with him? What reason does he have to shoulder any of Ilya’s burdens?

Shane leans forward, squeezing his hands between his thighs. “I really am sorry. I don’t want this to come back on you somehow. If there’s something you want me to tell them, to fix this—”

“No. It’s fine. Really.” Ilya is too tired to do this now. Too tired to consider any of the very real consequences of Yuna Hollander, of all people, knowing that he’s been involved with her son. Whatever that means to her. Or to Shane. “It is good that they know. About you. You are close with them, no?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“So it is good that they know.” Ilya inclines his head in the direction of the guest room where Svetlana is hopefully asleep by now. “Like Svetlana knows about me.”

“Okay. Sure.” That at least makes Shane unwind a little, even if he’s still frowning at his clasped hands.

Ilya wishes Shane’s hands were still touching him. The few inches between them on the bed suddenly feel like a very great distance. Ilya sighs and lets himself slump backwards onto the mattress with his feet still planted on the floor. He stares up at the ceiling instead of at Shane’s face looking back at him, pinched with concern.

After a moment Shane lies down on his side facing him, still with that careful gap between them. Shane looks at the empty space when he speaks.

“What are you thinking about?”

“You have a lot of questions,” Ilya says to the ceiling above him.

“Sorry. Just—will you tell me?”

“What if I have a question instead?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Shane’s eyes flicker up to his.

“Okay. What is it?”

What comes out is not the question Ilya means to ask. “What did I say to you? When I called you.”

“Oh.” Shane swallows audibly, loud enough that Ilya can hear the click in his throat.

Ilya’s stomach churns. “It was bad?”

“No. It’s not that.”

“Okay, so…?”

“Just…” Shane is looking away now, back towards the door of the bedroom. “I don’t know if you knew what you were saying.”

“Obviously not, since I do not remember.”

“Right. Yeah.”

“Shane. Tell me what I said.”

Shane closes his eyes. “I love you.”

Ilya can’t catch his breath. His throat closes around any reply he might make, his heart pounding too loudly against his ribs to hear his own thoughts.

Shane’s eyes dart to his, then away. “That’s what you said. ‘Love you.’ Then you stopped saying anything.”

Ilya doesn’t know what his face is doing. He doesn’t know what Shane saw in his eyes just now. For once, his careful hold on himself has no place at all in his conscious mind.

“I don’t know if you meant to say it,” Shane continues, once again addressing the mattress. “You said something before that I couldn’t make out. In Russian, I think. So I don’t know if you still knew you were talking to me.”

But what if I did?

Ilya wants to know the answer so badly. More than anything else right now, more than he’s wanted anything in a long time. But he knows he won’t be able to. The gulf between the before and after of that question is too wide. The consequences of asking too permanent. Ilya doesn’t have a good track record with permanent decisions lately.

He has to say something, though. All he needs to do is agree with what Shane is already saying, take the easy out and flee from this conversation he’s dug himself into. Instead he’s frozen, still lying on his back with his face turned towards Shane, balancing on the knife’s edge of running away or leaping into total darkness.

Shane’s eyes flick up again, meeting him. There’s terror there, strong enough that Ilya feels it in his own chest, mingling with his own.

He could love Shane so easily. He wants to, and it’s killing him. He’s already said as much, in the hospital, in a language Shane doesn’t speak. He’d said it not knowing that he’d already told Shane in English.

He can’t bring himself to say it again. He can’t take it back.

Ilya blinks up at the ceiling, trying to find his voice again. “The day after I called you. You drove here. To Boston. Why?”

“I had to know if you were okay.” Shane’s hand stretches into the gap between them, stopping just short of Ilya’s arm. “I didn’t want to lose you.”

Ilya nods and takes a painful, shuddering breath. “And that is still true? When you go back to your team, do you still…?”

“Yes,” Shane says immediately, any shakiness gone from his voice. “Yes, please. Text me, call me, whatever you want. I know it’s not a lot—”

“Yes, okay, but…when we see each other, do you still want to be—” Ilya searches for the word Shane had used, “—involved?”

Shane nods, his black eyes all seriousness. “Yeah, I do. If you want that.”

“I want it,” Ilya breathes. He knows his voice will betray him if he speaks aloud.

Shane’s fingers close around Ilya’s arm, vice-like, and it’s a relief like nothing else. Ilya is an open wound, and every time Shane touches him is a balm. The relief is only temporary, but it’s real.

Ilya risks reaching over and taking Shane’s arm, tugging him closer. Shane comes willingly, warm and smelling of Ilya’s own soap and toothpaste. He cups the back of Ilya’s neck and meets his lips, letting him take and take and take.

They trade kisses back and forth, Shane tracing the uneven line of Ilya’s nose, Ilya pressing his mouth to the column of Shane’s throat. Kissing until Ilya’s lips are numb and all of his senses are filled with Shane and nothing else.

Shane swings his leg over Ilya’s body, bracketing his hips and lowering his weight onto Ilya’s torso. Ilya’s hands come up to hold him, automatically tracing the muscles beneath his fingers.

Turning his head, Shane kisses each of the parts of Ilya’s face that he can reach, leaning with his strong forearms on either side of Ilya’s head. It’s so good that it’s almost too much, but Ilya, kiss-drunk and wrung out, only wants more. He wishes he could live somewhere inside the cavity of Shane’s chest, tucked safe inside his heart.

Ilya runs his hand down the straight line of Shane’s vertebrae to the soft skin of his hips, then further, slipping his fingers under the waistband of his sweatpants. As if he’s flipped a switch, Shane stops and sits up, reaching back to still Ilya’s hand.

Ilya’s heart sinks. “Do you not want to?”

“It’s not that.” Shane looks down at him. “I just—should we?”

“I am basket case, Hollander, not breakable.”

That only makes Shane roll his eyes. “You know that I don’t mean physically. And don’t say basket case.”

“Oh, you are therapist now too?”

“No. Shut up. I’m just trying not to, I don’t know, take advantage of you.”

Ilya raises his eyebrows at him. “Does it seem like you are taking advantage of me right now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Hollander.” Ilya lifts himself up on his elbows. “What do you think you are going to do that would possibly make things worse right now?”

“I don’t know,” Shane huffs. His shoulders rise towards his ears as he looks around the room like the answer might be written on the walls somewhere. “Am I being stupid?”

Ilya shrugs, careful to keep his face blank. “No, it’s okay. We do not have to do anything if you don’t want to.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“Okay, then what is the problem?”

Shane looks him over from the corner of his eye. “You’re not just trying to distract me or something, are you?”

“Seems like it is not working,” Ilya mutters, making a half-hearted movement towards Shane’s waist. He’s being unfair, probably, and it’s surely another sign of how fucked up he is that he’s still thinking with his dick right now. But sue him for wanting to feel okay again for a few minutes. For wanting to pretend that he is capable, desirable, worthy, even in just one person’s eyes. Shane crawled on top of him first.

“I can’t—” Shane looks away, bites the inside of his cheek, and sighs. “Look. If we’re going to do this, I have to actually know how you’re feeling. For real. Not just what you think I want to hear.”

I have told you everything, Ilya thinks, gutted. More than he’s ever told anyone. So much more than he ever meant to.

But not everything, it’s true. Some things he still can’t say.

He lets his head fall to the side, away from Shane. “I already told you that I do not know. I am not trying to distract you from anything. That is the truth, what else do you want me to say?”

“Okay.” Shane runs a hand over his arm, soothing. “Okay, I just wanted to be sure.”

Ilya risks a glance back at him. “Sure?”

“Sure that you wanted this.” Shane shrugs, a full-body motion when he’s all but sitting on top of him. “Or that I wasn’t missing something, I guess. It’s hard to tell what you’re thinking.”

“I am sure,” Ilya says. “Only thing I am sure of, right now.”

“Okay.” Shane leans down over him again. He stops when Ilya holds him back with a hand on his chest.

“Okay? That is it?”

Shane’s brows draw together, eyes flickering up to Ilya’s. “Yes?”

Ilya’s eyes are stinging and he doesn’t know why. He isn’t sure what just happened, never mind why he’s so overwhelmed by it.

“Ilya?”

He shakes his head numbly.

“Ilya, hey.” Shane’s fingers stroke his cheek. “Did I say something?”

“No. Is just—” That Shane really did only want to know how he felt. That he believed him. That there was no trap laid in case he gave the wrong answer. That Shane does still want him after all.

Ilya swallows. His throat feels tight.

Shane stays bent over, forearms framing Ilya’s face, watching him. Waiting for him to speak.

Ilya can’t. He wraps his arms around Shane’s waist and tugs him all the way down, knocking the air out of them both.

After a moment Shane takes a big, slow breath, his body settling blanket-like around Ilya’s. Some of his weight is still on his legs, but a good deal of it is resting directly on Ilya’s chest, heavy and grounding.

Maybe it’s Shane’s weight that forces the words out of him. “Я тебя люблю. Я тебя люблю.” He drags in enough oxygen to say it again, through tears, “I love you.”

Slowly, Shane raises his head to meet Ilya’s eyes. He doesn’t speak, but Ilya can see the realization spread through the small movements of his face. Like a series of little earthquakes reshaping the landscape.

There’s nowhere for Ilya to go. He can’t snatch the words back. He can’t claim he didn’t mean them a second time. It’s too late.

“Shane—”

“I love you too.” Shane is smiling. He sounds relieved. “Oh my god, I love you so much.”

Ilya is crushed beneath him. Smothered. It’s the only place in the world he wants to be.

“I love you,” Shane tells him again. “I love you so much.”

The sound that punches out of Ilya might be sob or laugh or both. He holds onto Shane so tightly that he feels the grind of their ribcages as they breathe against each other.

He lets Shane pull him upright, kissing him messily just to stay close to him, all spit and teeth. When he looks up and sees how Shane is looking at him Ilya knows that his eyes must give everything away.

I’ve loved you for a long time. I don’t remember saying it, but I meant it.

I loved you so much longer than I knew.

“Come here.”

Shane works Ilya’s shirt off over his head and palms the fading bruises he earned from Chicago’s defensemen. Strange that the marks still show when that game feels more than a lifetime ago. His ribs still ache but it’s nothing compared to the warmth of Shane’s hands.

He hauls Shane up to the head of the bed, feeling the stretch of stiff muscles after days in the hospital. Shane is at least equally graceless, neither of them composed enough to keep track of the placement of their limbs. Ilya knees Shane in the stomach trying to turn him over on his back, but any apology is lost in the press of Shane’s mouth against his.

When Shane works his hand under Ilya’s waistband it’s rough and ungentle and exactly what he needs. Everything simmers beneath Ilya’s skin like Shane is drawing it to the surface, unearthing depths of feeling even Ilya hadn’t known he was capable of.

Undone, he maps Shane’s beloved body with his hands. His broad collarbones. His brows, taut with concentration when he’s focused, as he is now. His muscled thighs and strong shoulders. His plush mouth, parting for Ilya’s fingers to take him willingly, hungrily.

“Come here,” Ilya repeats, never mind that Shane is already wrapped around him. Shane hums around his fingers, rocking against him, eyes half-lidded and starry. Full of wonder.

Ilya wonders. He wonders if he’s dreaming, if he fell asleep in Shane’s arms while they were still talking. He wonders if this can last until morning, through the days ahead. He wonders if it will all still be taken away from him somehow.

Shane takes Ilya’s wrist and guides his hand from his mouth down to where their bodies meet, covering Ilya’s hand with his own. He arches into him as they slide against each other and Ilya stops wondering anything at all, sheer electric sensation whiting out everything else.

Right now, he doesn’t have to care about anything besides Shane. He doesn’t have to think about what he looks like, sounds like. He doesn’t have to worry about tomorrow and all that comes with it. His body knows better than he does, finding its way back to what it needs.

However close they are already, it’s not enough. Ilya curls his fingers around a fistful of jet hair and pulls Shane up to his mouth. Shane’s free hand is gripping Ilya’s thigh tight enough to mark. Breath hot on his face, blunt nails digging into his skin. Ilya is more alive than he’s felt in weeks, more seen than he can ever remember being as he looks back at Shane watching him.

“Ilya,” Shane breathes, and Ilya has to bury his face against his shoulder as his legs go weak and the heat and friction of Shane’s rough hand tips him over into release. Shane’s entire body clenches beneath him a moment later.

“Shane.” Ilya whispers it against Shane’s pulse point, spent in every sense.

The hand that was just locked around his thigh skims up and down his back. His body feels like his again, loose from exertion, still buzzing with pleasure. He’s very tired.

“I love you,” he murmurs against Shane’s skin. This time he concentrates hard, determined to etch it permanently into his memory.

Shane turns his head, lips brushing Ilya’s ear. Ilya thinks he’s smiling. “I love you too.”

*

Shane wishes they could stay like that until morning, but the drying mess on his skin is making him itch. “Okay. We gotta get up, though.”

Ilya rubs his face against Shane’s like a cat, stubble scraping across his jaw. “Mm. No.”

“Come on, we’re gross.”

“You’re gross.”

Shane feels his smile widen. “Okay. Come on. Shower.”

“Already took a shower,” Ilya grumbles, but he lets Shane drag him to his feet and steer him towards the bathroom. Shane turns the water on while Ilya leans against the doorway, all but asleep.

They haven’t showered together since—well. Since the first time, in the locker room after the CCM shoot. Shane has thought about it, though. Often.

His fantasies will wait until the next time. Tonight, he really does just want to clean them both off and finally close his eyes. He’s ready to put the day behind them.

“I’m going to wash the clothes I brought tomorrow, want me to do some of yours?” he asks as he tests the water, adjusting the temperature so it’s perfect. “Maybe order some groceries too.”

Ilya doesn’t answer him. Instead Shane feels arms wrap around his waist and lips press against his bare shoulder. Ilya’s breath comes unsteadily.

“You are really staying.”

Shane rubs Ilya’s forearm with his thumb. “I’m staying.” He’ll say it as many times as Ilya wants to hear it.

In the shower he works shampoo into Ilya’s hair, massaging his scalp while Ilya sways into him. Shane feels an overwhelming rush of fondness as he bears most of Ilya’s weight with an arm around his waist. He can’t believe that he gets to have this. Ilya, still here, loving him, trusting him with all of this.

He rubs Ilya’s shoulder, needing to turn him around to wash the shampoo out but not wanting to get soap in his eyes. “Hey. Wake up.”

“Not asleep,” Ilya mumbles unconvincingly. “Feels good.”

“Yeah?” Shane smiles.

“Yes.” He lets Shane turn him and tilts his head back under the spray. His hands come up to anchor on Shane’s arms.

“This is for real?”

“It’s real, Ilya.”

Ilya lets out a breath, chin dropping as he folds back into Shane’s arms. They stand together under the water until Shane’s fingertips start to wrinkle. Just breathing. He’d hold Ilya forever, but they both need to sleep.

“Bed?” he suggests, feeling Ilya nod against his shoulder.

Too tired to speak, Shane gets them both dry and into clean clothes. The sheets, to his relief, can do without changing. He lies down next to Ilya and pulls him into his arms.

One last kiss, filled with all the relief and affection and uncertainty swirling within him. Ilya looks back at him through the dark, one hand curled around Shane’s hip.

Shane cups Ilya’s face in his palm. “Goodnight. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.” Ilya’s eyes drift shut. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” Shane says, but he thinks Ilya is already out, the last bit of tension in his muscles loosening with sleep. Shane stays awake a while longer, watching him breathe and feeling the rise and fall of his chest. He doesn’t know if Ilya will be okay. He doesn’t know what will come next or whether Ilya will retire or what loving each other will look like when they go back to the rest of their lives. But he knows that they’re both still breathing.

Still here.

Chapter End Notes

So there it is, by far the longest thing I have ever finished, not even counting the 30,000 or so words of cut and rewritten scenes. I’ve spent so much time with this fic (like, upwards of 120 hours) over the last eight months and there’s a whole book's worth of things I could say about it, but for now I’ll leave it to stand on its own.

That said, you may have noticed this is now part of a series. What started as a vague sense of what happened after this story ends rapidly became a detailed outline, which originally I didn’t plan to actually write, and is now an integral part of this story for me that I can’t let go of. I am not a fast writer and there are other stories I’d also like to get to, but subscribe to that series for updates if and when I actually write a part two.

Also, come talk to me on tumblr!